Chapter Seventeen
Return To Pemberley
The carriage rocked steadily northward, its pace torment to a man who could only think of arriving.
The landscape grew greener with each mile—hedgerows in leaf, fields beginning their spring renewal.
Darcy had given up any pretence of reading.
The wheels jolted over ruts long familiar, and still the distance between himself and Pemberley refused to diminish as quickly as his temper required.
Elizabeth was under his roof. Every fresh mile sharpened the image of her moving through his house as if it were already her own.
He bent his thoughts to the question of how he might speak to her without offending the very independence he admired. The words arranged themselves in his mind then dissolved the moment he imagined her listening.
“You must allow me to tell you—” No, that would never do.
She would hear nothing but presumption in such an opening.
“You have made my house a place I scarcely recognise, and I cannot be at ease—” That was worse.
It sounded like an accusation against her influence instead of a confession of his heart.
“I left you at Pemberley only because duty called me from it. I return because affection draws me back.” That, at least, came nearer the truth, though even there he heard too much of himself and too little of her.
He abandoned the exercise in impatience and turned his attention to the window.
A ploughman guided his team across a dark, newly turned field.
Beyond the next rise he knew a brook ran full with melted snow, the water catching the light where it broke over stone.
These were the fields and farms of his own county, unchanged by his absence.
Yet every mile of them served only to remind him that, a little further on, Pemberley was waiting—with the woman he hoped to persuade to share it.
At the last posting house before Lambton, the coachman drew up for fresh horses.
Darcy paced the yard twice and conceded that he could not bear another hour shut up with his own irresolution.
His horse was led out, the saddle fixed.
The moment he had the reins in hand, something within him settled.
His body possessed an object more definite than tormenting itself with discarded speeches.
He let the horse take a brisk pace along a stretch of level ground. The animal’s movement steadied him. With every stride the distance shortened until the image of Elizabeth in his house would admit of no other thought.
A skylark rose almost under the horse’s feet, shooting upward in a blur of wings and sound, its song pouring down as if the air itself were altered by her presence at Pemberley.
“You owe me nothing.” She had said so plainly when last he had approached dangerous ground. He had seen only a determination to prevent his sense of obligation from what ought to spring solely from inclination. He must somehow make her understand that he asked not out of gratitude, but out of love.
Love. The word had passed through his mind in the past with a measure of scorn for the folly commonly attached to it.
Now it would not admit of denial. He pressed his knees lightly to the horse’s sides, asking a little more speed.
By shortening the remaining distance he might also shorten the interval in which he must hold that word unspoken.
The road turned. The familiar sweep of Pemberley’s woods began to rise in the distance, dark against the paler sky. Smoke would be rising from his chimneys by now. Within those walls, Elizabeth might at that moment be pouring tea in the morning parlour, or walking along the river path.
He saw himself, in imagination, crossing to her. He saw her turning toward him, surprise giving way to that softness he had glimpsed in unguarded moments. He considered another beginning.
“Miss Bennet, I have come back sooner than was expected, because the days away from Pemberley had grown insupportable.” No, that was intolerably dramatic.
“I return to seek a great favour: that you would allow me to devote my life to yours.” That was nearer, though he could not decide whether it bordered upon extravagance.
He gave up forming sentences and allowed the feeling itself to stand, unshaped, whilst the horse carried him up the last rise.
The lodge came into view. The iron gates of the park stood open in expectation of his return.
Whatever words he finally employed, the decision was made.
Nothing in his aunt’s expectations, nor in his own former scruples, could weigh against the determination to ask Elizabeth Bennet to be his wife.
He rode through the gates without pausing.
Change of Heart
The letter lay open on the small table beside her work, its neat, well known hand altering the whole shape of the summer.
Jane was to be married before Midsummer Day.
According to her account Longbourn was in as much bustle as her mother’s nerves would allow.
Elizabeth read the passages a second time, lingering with particular pleasure over those lines in which Jane, almost against her own nature, allowed herself some quiet triumph.
Her sister’s happiness was a settled prospect, and Elizabeth’s heart expanded with it.
That very happiness, however, set her own situation in a clearer light.
Her father would expect both his second and third daughters home.
Mrs. Bennet would never permit so important an occasion to pass without their attendance.
The weeks at Pemberley had suddenly acquired a boundary.
She counted the days that might yet be allowed her in Derbyshire and found the number far too small.
The day without was mild. Beyond the windows, the lawns sloped gently down towards the river.
The first true green of the year lay over the grass, and the new leaves were unfolding.
There had been a time—not so very distant—she could remember well standing upon one of those distant heights, looking down upon the house and its grounds.
Even then she had known she liked Mr. Darcy.
She had yet been uncertain whether his sentiments rose above gratitude for what they had done for Georgiana.
Her own affection had set in so gradually that she could scarce say when it began.
If it must be dated from any particular hour, she was half-inclined to fix it upon that morning when Pemberley first broke upon her view.
It had not been the house alone, it had been everything she had learnt of its master.
His kindness to his servants, his attention to his tenants, revealed a man very different from the one she had once believed him.
Since then, each day at Pemberley had added new proof of his real character.
In their last private conversation, she had checked him almost to silence by her determination that he should not speak out of gratitude.
Gratitude was not a foundation upon which she could accept any man.
In the quiet that followed his departure, she had been obliged to acknowledge that gratitude might not accounted for the whole of his conduct.
His care for her and Mary and his plans for their comfort executed with a promptness that owed nothing to display.
None of this, she told herself, was necessary to discharge any obligation he might imagine he owed her.
How far, then, had her own feelings advanced?
Resentment had vanished long ago. She trusted him, perhaps more than she trusted any man.
She took pleasure in his conversation, in the attention he paid to her opinions, in the restrained humour that appeared when they spoke together.
His absence had altered her days. Both morning and evening wanted that particular animation which had attended the sound of his step entering the room.
Whatever such sentiments might properly be called, they were now her own.
Whether they were returned was another matter.
He had once been on the verge of saying more than she could at that time permit, and she had stopped him before the words were formed.
It was possible he had since resolved never again to risk his peace on so uncertain an encouragement.
She wished she knew whether he would speak again, or whether her silence had discouraged him entirely.
Home
Mrs. Reynolds assured her that her master was expected before dinner, yet the sweep before the house lay empty.
A pale sun rested upon the lawns, and a light breeze stirred the first leaves in the shrubbery.
Remaining within doors would only invite more useless watching from the window.
She exchanged her gown for an old muslin, took up her straw bonnet, and slipped out through the side door that gave upon the gardens.
The air carried the smell of turned earth and damp grass.
Elizabeth followed one of the narrower paths, skirting the shrubbery to a gravelled way that led towards the stables and coach houses.
A small paved court lay between house and yard.
Elizabeth crossed to it, her mind occupied with speculation on the hour of Mr. Darcy’s arrival.
Elizabeth pictured a carriage turning into the park, the slow advance up the drive, and herself receiving him in the saloon with Georgiana and Mary beside her.
She considered which of her gowns she should don to most suit the occasion.
She had almost reached the little archway of the paved court when the sudden clatter of hooves on stone made her start.
The sound was so near that it seemed to burst upon her rather than approach.
Before she could decide whether to step forward or draw back, a dark shape filled the opening.
A horse, checked sharply, tossed its head and sidled, iron ringing against the flags.