The Way Back
Life at Pemberley settled into a routine.
Elizabeth rose early, and instead of walking the grounds, she went each morning to the cottage to see what progress had been made.
Mr Darcy, as good as his word, had a carriage ready for her whenever she wished to go; by the third day, it waited almost as a matter of course, appearing as soon as she came down.
The cottage had little in common with the home she had lived in for so many months.
The changes only made the damage plainer.
Windows were kept wide whenever the weather allowed, so that smoke and damp might be coaxed out inch by inch.
Boards were lifted, plaster scraped back where it had blackened, and the smell of soot clung stubbornly to every room no matter how often it was washed.
Men came and went with buckets and brushes; paint was spoken of as a remedy, but not yet applied, for nothing would take properly until the walls were dry.
The tang lingered in the woodwork; damp gathered in the corners, and every room looked half-finished, safe enough to enter, too raw to inhabit.
The true labour now was slower: washing down, scrubbing, airing, and the long business of paint.
But watching the progress day by day gave her hope that, very soon, she and her sisters and her mother would be back under their own roof again, no longer obliged to live upon the kindness of others.
She generally returned to Pemberley in time to meet Mr Darcy in the drive, coming in from his morning ride, and they went in together to breakfast. He asked, as he always did, after the cottage. Elizabeth answered, and within minutes they were deep in particulars.
“Did the walls dry at all yesterday?” he asked, as soon as they were seated.
“A little. The parlour is improved, but the back passage is stubborn. The damp keeps returning.”
He set down his cup. “Which wall?”
“The one behind the pantry. It is not as blackened as the rest, but it feels alive, as though it is holding the wet in its bones.”
He considered that. “And the carpenter?”
“Not yet. Mr Green says he will come tomorrow, but I am not certain he means it.”
Mr Darcy nodded once. “Then I will send for Mr Wilks from Lambton instead. He will come when he is told.”
Elizabeth hesitated. “You need not.”
“I do not mind it,” he said simply. “Tell me what else has not improved.”
“The kitchen,” she admitted. “It is clean enough to see, but not to feel; I cannot decide whether it will ever seem ours again.”
He did not contradict her. “What was saved?”
“The pots are safe enough; they may be scrubbed and made clean. The tea canister survived too, though whether the tea within is fit, I do not yet know. I have learnt not to be over-confident.”
He inclined his head, taking that caution for sense, not excess. “And the rest?”
“The shelves are scorched,” Elizabeth said. “The cupboard doors swell and stick. There are things that might be made serviceable again, if the smell will yield and the wood does not warp further, but I cannot yet tell what will be worth the labour.”
“Then do not decide it today,” he replied. “Let it be opened, dried, and tried. If it fails, it fails; you need not take the blame for it.”
Elizabeth looked up at him then, startled despite herself.
Mr Darcy’s gaze did not waver. “You have already done what can be done,” he added more quietly. “Now it is only time and work.”
The work in the poor-basket went on without ceremony.
What had begun as a kindness became, within days, a habit: lengths of linen cut and folded, stockings matched and mended, small bundles tied with thread and set aside.
Mrs Reynolds did not praise them; she merely began to leave the basket where it might be reached, and to add to it what was needed without being asked.
Miss Darcy sat with an eagerness that made the hours pass quickly, Mary with quiet steadiness, and Jane with the air of one who had always known what was required and never doubted it could be done.
With her hands employed, Elizabeth found her thoughts less restless.
There was comfort in work that asked for patience rather than courage, and in small proofs, gathered day by day, that ruin did not always remain ruin.
Each morning brought some change at the cottage: a room aired longer, a patch of plaster dried, the soot lifted where yesterday it had seemed fixed for ever.
The place was still raw, still half-made, but it had begun, in its quiet way, to look as though it might live again.
It steadied her in another way as well. So much of her life had altered at once that she scarcely knew where to set her feet; and here, at least, there was something she could do that required neither permission nor apology.
To sit idle in another man’s house, living upon courtesy, had a bitterness she could not quite swallow.
But a needle in her hand, a basket that grew lighter, a list of linens finished and folded, allowed her to feel, if only for an hour, that she was not merely endured.
Her place in the world had shifted; she could not undo it, but she could refuse to be useless within it.
The thought came with curious force, for she had learnt too quickly how wholly a life might be altered.
A fortnight had taken her from Longbourn, from habits she h believed fixed as the seasons, into a world of borrowed rooms and new necessities.
If so much could change by loss, might it change as utterly by choice?
Marriage was spoken of as a settled state, a woman’s proper future; yet she saw now that settled only meant different certainties, different claims. She did not know whether she could bear such a turning again, or whether, having endured one, she was less afraid of the next.
And if she did not? The question had never seemed urgent before; it had been a jest, a defiance, an indulgence permitted by her father’s library and her own contentment.
Now it stood before her as plainly as an account.
She might remain unmarried, and then what?
A life passed in other people’s houses, useful by turns, grateful by necessity; a small room set aside out of charity, and a voice that must always be careful.
She did not despise it, but she could not pretend it was what she had once imagined for herself.
For an instant her thoughts darted to two men, Mr Ashton’s ready good humour and Mr Darcy’s quiet steadiness, and then she was ashamed of having thought of either at all. Marriage was not a subject to be entertained like a fancy. She set her needle more firmly and kept her eyes upon the stitch.
Elizabeth glanced over to where Jane sat nearby, her work in her lap, her head bent in that quiet way which always made her look more composed than she felt.
Mr Bingley had drawn a chair a little closer than was strictly necessary; he spoke to her in a low tone, and whatever he said brought a smile to Jane’s lips, small but unguarded.
It pleased Elizabeth to see it. There was nothing strained in their ease, nothing that required notice or comment; it was simply that he sought her, and that she received him as naturally as she had once received sunshine.
It did Elizabeth’s heart good to see Jane falling in love with Mr Bingley, and she flattered herself that such was indeed what was happening.
“Jane,” Elizabeth said softly when they were alone for a moment, “Mr Bingley grows more attentive every day.”
Jane’s colour rose at once. “He is only kind.”
“He is kind to everyone,” Elizabeth returned, smiling, “but he is not attentive with everyone.”
Jane bent over her work, the corner of her mouth betraying her. “You will persuade yourself into thinking more than is proper.”
“I think only what I see,” Elizabeth said, her voice warm. “And I confess it does me good to see you smile so easily.”
Jane’s needle paused for the smallest moment.
“You are very good,” she said quietly, and went on again as though the stitch required all her attention.
After a few minutes she added, in a tone meant to be calm and failing in it, “It is only that he is everything one could wish a young man to be. So cheerful, so obliging, and so very considerate that one is ashamed of having expected less.”
Elizabeth’s eyes softened. “Indeed?”
Jane’s colour deepened. “He makes it easy to be pleased with him,” she admitted.
“And do you prefer him,” Elizabeth asked, her smile returning, “to both the Harding sons together?”
Jane looked up at last, half laughing. “Elizabeth!”
“Answer me.”
Jane’s gaze dropped again, but there was no real reluctance in it. “Yes,” she said, scarcely above a whisper. “I believe I do.”
Elizabeth delighted in exploring the grounds.
She liked the turns of the path that led her from sun into shade, the sudden opening of a view where the river lay bright below, and the quiet places where one might sit without being observed.
The stream pleased her most, for it never kept the same character long: here running clear over stones, there widening into a smooth reach beneath the trees.
She admired the great old oaks, the banks set thick with fern and wildflowers, and the neat crossings that spared her muddy shoes after rain.
Even the kitchen garden held its charm: orderly rows, trained fruit against warm walls, and the honest busyness of it, so different from the smoke-stained rooms of the cottage and yet a comfort for being so plainly alive.