Chapter 14 #4
Inside, there was, for a few minutes, that odd silence which follows a great bustle. Mary smoothed her skirts and regarded the prospect with decorous attention. Mrs. Littlewood settled herself in her corner, her hands folded upon her lap.
“Well, young ladies,” she said at last, “we are fairly on our way. If we do not break down at the first turning, I shall take it as a good omen.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“I am persuaded Mr. Darcy’s horses and harness are equal to more than one turning,” she replied. “He has spared no care, I believe, in contriving that we should be comfortable.”
“So I should hope,” said Mrs. Littlewood. “He was always particular in that way. Your father, Miss Elizabeth, may be easy enough. I told him as much.”
“You have seen him, then – my father?” asked Elizabeth, surprised.
“I had the honour of speaking to him yesterday, at Netherfield” Mrs. Littlewood answered.
“Mr. Darcy thought it proper to request he call, that Mr. Bennet might know into whose clutches his daughters were to fall. He is a shrewd gentleman. I told him I had nursed Master Fitzwilliam when he was not much bigger than his elbow. He said that was recommendation enough.”
Elizabeth, hearing this, was conscious of a warmth she could not wholly attribute to the hot bricks at her feet.
The hedgerows slipped by, bare and brown against the pale sky.
Longbourn, with all its noises and follies and affections, lay behind them.
Before them, somewhere beyond so many miles of turnpike road and posting-inns, was Pemberley.
As the carriage moved steadily northward, Elizabeth, looking out upon the fields, knew that the distance between the two houses was not to be measured only in miles.
Good Heavens,
As they turned in at the lodge, Elizabeth’s spirits rose into a flutter she could scarcely command.
The Pemberley woods, of which she had heard so much, were no longer a name.
The road wound gradually upward through a wide extent of beech and oak, the trunks still bare, yet the underwood already touched with that tender green which promises spring.
Her mind was too full for conversation, yet she missed no turn of the ground, no opening through the trees, no glimpse of the distant hills.
They had ascended for some time, when the wood ceased on a sudden, and the carriage, emerging from the shade, came to the brow of a considerable eminence.
Elizabeth’s eye was instantly caught. On the opposite side of the valley, the house stood upon a rising sweep of lawn, its grey stone fronted by a broad stream that seemed rather enlarged than altered by art.
The water wound away between banks neither stiffened nor tricked out, and behind the house a line of high, dark woods rose to shelter it.
She had never seen a spot where nature had been so much respected, or where taste had interfered so little with her own designs.
For a moment nobody spoke. Then Mary, who had been sitting very upright, said, in a tone of involuntary wonder at odds with her typical sententiousness,
“Good heavens,” said Mary under her breath, quite forgetting, for once, to add a reflection. “It is beautiful.”
The simple word, unaccompanied by any maxim, expressed all that even Lydia’s livelier spirits could not have improved. Mary coloured deeply at her own vehemence, and sat more upright, as if half-ashamed of so unphilosophical an exclamation.
Elizabeth’s own admiration was warmer still.
Every line of the house, every sweep of the ground, appeared to answer exactly to that image of Pemberley which had been forming in her mind since she first heard it described, yet the reality surpassed every expectation.
That this noble place belonged to the man whose character she had once so wilfully misunderstood, that he had invited her to see it, that she was approaching it now as his guest – it was almost too much to comprehend.
At that moment, she could not deny that to be mistress of Pemberley might, indeed, be something.
The road wound down into the valley, crossed the stream by a handsome stone bridge, and in a few minutes they were set down before the great door.
As they alighted, Elizabeth’s earlier apprehensions returned with double force.
The near aspect of the house, the wide steps, the massy door, the very sound of the servants’ feet within, all reminded her that under this roof Mr. Darcy held his place as master.
Whilst they waited to be admitted, she had leisure to wonder how she came to be standing there at all, and whether she ought most to rejoice in or dread the change which one visit to Hertfordshire had begun.
Providence
Darcy chose his place at the great door with a care he would have laughed at in another man.
He watched the road from the upper window till the carriage, dark against the pale drive, turned in at the gate and wound out of sight among the trees.
After that, there had been nothing to do but descend to the hall and wait.
When at last the sound of wheels upon the gravel announced their arrival, he glanced once at the glass over the chimney – more to command his expression than to correct it – before the steps were let down and the door was opened.
Mrs. Littlewood emerged first, with the caution of age, then Mary, upright and composed, and lastly Elizabeth.
She wore a travelling pelisse which he had not seen before.
The simplicity of her dress, the freshness of her colour after the long cold drive, the enquiring look she cast up at the house before her eyes met his – they were particulars that fixed themselves upon his mind with extraordinary distinctness.
“Mr. Darcy,” she said, curtseying.
“Miss Elizabeth. Miss Mary.” His own bow, he hoped, was as composed as any morning greeting ought to be. “Mrs. Littlewood, I am glad to see you safe.”
He offered his hand to assist Mary over the threshold, then Elizabeth, and was aware, even in that short contact, that her fingers trembled slightly. Whether from cold or from agitation, he dared not guess.
“Welcome to Pemberley,” he added, with more feeling than he intended. “My sister waits to receive you in the saloon. I fear she could not be restrained in the drawing-room.”
He led them across the hall, whose height and echoing stone had never before appeared so imposing.
Elizabeth’s gaze turned, as he knew it would, to the sweep of the staircase, the light from the upper windows, the old portraits on the walls.
He found himself absurdly anxious that nothing should offend her eye.
Georgiana rose so hastily that she almost overturned the workbasket at her feet. She came forward with a warmth more sincere than composed.
“My dear Miss Elizabeth – Miss Mary – I am so very happy to see you,” she cried. “I hope you are not excessively tired. Fitzwilliam, I told you they would be cold. Did I not say the fire ought to be larger?”
“The fire is exactly as it ought to be,” said Elizabeth, smiling, and Darcy’s heart, which had been beating in an unsteady fashion since he learnt the carriage had turned in at the lodge, began, gradually, to resume its steady measure.
After Mrs. Littlewood having been politely pressed to take some refreshment, and the young ladies having been persuaded to sit by the fire, Georgiana remembered, with a little flush, what they had intended.
“Fitzwilliam, you wished,” she began, then turned to Elizabeth. “You must see the house – at least the rooms my brother insists upon showing you himself. Mrs. Reynolds is quite prepared, and the day is so fine that, when you have rested a little, perhaps we might walk out doors afterwards.”
“If Miss Elizabeth has any curiosity about Pemberley, it is my business to gratify it,” said Darcy. “The house has never been so much honoured as in receiving our guests.”
Elizabeth looked up quickly, colour rising in her cheeks.
“You are very good,” she replied. “I should be sorry to give you trouble.”
“It cannot be trouble,” he said. “It will be a pleasure.”
He offered his arm. Georgiana, after a whispered consultation with Mrs. Littlewood, took Mary’s, and they set out together, leaving the old nurse contentedly ensconced near the fire, with a cup of tea and a view of the door.
Darcy had often shown Pemberley to visitors.
The words he was accustomed to use came without effort.
He was conscious of seeing the rooms anew through Elizabeth’s eyes.
The dining parlour, with its well-proportioned windows and view of the water.
The library, which he considered the best in that part of the country, the saloon he had refitted chiefly for Georgiana – all took, in her presence, a more intimate character.
She did not exclaim upon the furniture or the plate.
Her remarks were few and quiet, but he could not mistake her interest. She paused longer at the windows than at the mirrors, asked more about the planting of the woods than about the size of the rooms, and seemed to weigh the spirit in which the place had been ordered and not the wealth it represented.
In the gallery she stood before the picture of his father, listening with serious attention as Mrs. Reynolds spoke of his goodness and generosity. When Elizabeth moved on to the more recent paintings, her eyes passed him quickly to rest upon Georgiana.
“She is much like you,” Elizabeth said, turning to him with a smile that had no reserve in it. “Yet I can see, in that expression, all that Mrs. Reynolds has been saying of her – the gentleness, and the modesty.”
“If there is anything good in that likeness, it must be attributed to others,” he replied. “My sister has been formed by the kindness of friends more than by any efforts of mine.”