CHAPTER 60
The House That Waited
Elizabeth slept when the road allowed it, and Fitzwilliam let her.
There had been too much road. Not adventure, not danger, not even any incident worthy of later telling: only length.
Dust in fair weather, ruts where the last rain had dried badly, hot parlours at inns, indifferent coffee, changing horses, bills, trunks, servants, steps, more dust, and the same anxious party set into motion again before rest could make any proper claim upon them.
By the fourth afternoon the stages had lost their separate names.
The towns, the inns, the hired horses, even the meals had begun to run together, until the journey seemed made chiefly of wheels and waiting.
Elizabeth bore it with her usual refusal to make discomfort important. That did not persuade him she was not tired.
She had done too much in too few days: received Georgiana, steadied the house, sent letters, arranged servants, brought Kitty, answered his first instinct to go alone, and then set herself in the carriage beside him as if there had never been any question of her place there.
If the haste, the inns, and the long roads had worn upon her, he would not make that fatigue another matter requiring her attention.
Once, when the carriage jolted hard over a broken place, she stirred and reached for him without waking. He took her hand, drew her travelling shawl more securely over her, and said nothing.
Georgiana sat opposite them, quiet but not lost. Pemberley did not frighten her as Darcy House had frightened her.
Pemberley had familiar rooms, old paths, the music room, Mrs. Reynolds, and a childhood not wholly surrendered to recent fear.
What waited there might be painful; the house itself was not her enemy.
Kitty seemed to understand, with unusual wisdom, that company was sometimes best offered by being simply there. She asked little, complained only when the inn coffee deserved it, and kept near enough to Georgiana to be chosen without requiring gratitude.
Mrs. Doddridge, in the second carriage with Evans, the lighter trunks, and Lord Pomington’s basket, had reduced the journey to a series of survivable arrangements: food at the proper time, shawls when required, windows opened and closed before anyone could be made ill by principle, and Pom-Pom’s opinion of the road received without allowing it to govern the party.
By the time Derbyshire rose about them, the journey had become less a sequence of miles than a narrowing of the world toward one house.
The country altered before Fitzwilliam was ready for it.
There was no single boundary at which he might have prepared himself, only a sterner line of hill, stone walls where hedges had been, water moving clear and quick over its bed, and a late-spring brightness lying over fields he had once known without having to defend his right to know them.
The road took a turn he knew too well, and he recognized it before he was ready to do so.
Elizabeth woke.
He had not spoken. No one had announced the nearness of Pemberley. But some change in him must have reached her. Her eyes opened; she looked first at him, then through the window, and understood enough.
Her hand found his.
The carriage climbed, turned, and Pemberley came into view.
It stood where it had always stood.
That was the first cruelty of it. The house had not shrunk in his absence, nor darkened, nor taken any visible mark of the falsehoods it had sheltered.
It rose with its old composure, grey and noble against the sweep of park and hill, with water before it and woods gathered close as if every tree had kept faith more faithfully than men.
The long light touched the windows. The park was green with the confidence of late spring.
The house looked inhabited, ordered, innocent.
It had kept itself too well.
Beside him, Elizabeth’s fingers closed more firmly round his. He turned his hand and held hers properly, without disguise.
Georgiana leaned nearer the glass.
“The east windows are open,” she said.
Her voice was not easy, but it was steadier than he had expected. She knew Pemberley by such things: windows, rooms, paths, the hour at which light entered the gallery, the habits of a housekeeper who disliked stale air.
“Mrs. Reynolds will have seen to it,” he said.
“Yes,” Georgiana answered. “She always does.”
The words gave him, unexpectedly, a little courage.
The carriages passed the lodge, where the keeper came out too quickly and bowed too low.
Servants were visible near the stables before they reached the sweep, though not gathered in such number as to make a spectacle.
Someone had had sense enough for that. Mrs. Reynolds, most likely.
Pemberley had always known how to display dignity; now it had, at least, remembered how not to display alarm.
The carriage stopped.
For one moment no one moved.
Then Elizabeth withdrew her hand from his, not in retreat, but because both of them must step out into the world again.
The door opened. Warm air came in, carrying the smell of horses, dust, sun-warmed stone, and green things recently cut.
Fitzwilliam descended first. His boots touched Pemberley gravel for the first time in years.
Nothing happened.
No judgment came from the stones. No accusation spoke out of the windows. Only the waiting house, the bright air, and Mrs. Reynolds coming down the steps with a face so composed that its very composure showed how much labour it cost her.
She stopped before him and curtsied.
“Mr. Fitzwilliam.”
The old name broke slightly in her mouth.
It struck him harder than he had expected. It held childhood, disgrace, distinction from the master of the house, and a kind of loyalty which had survived without permission.
He bowed. “Mrs. Reynolds.”
For a moment she looked at him not as housekeeper to gentleman, but as one who had seen him leave young, proud, wounded, and unbelieved. He read in her expression the same question that had troubled him on the road: whether Pemberley had any right to receive him again.
Then he turned to the carriage and handed Elizabeth down.
Mrs. Reynolds recovered herself at once.
“Mrs. Darcy. You are very welcome to Pemberley.”
Elizabeth inclined her head. “Thank you, Mrs. Reynolds.”
No one could have called it an assumption of authority. No one could have called it uncertainty either.
Georgiana came next.
At sight of her, Mrs. Reynolds’s composure failed more plainly. Relief crossed her face before discipline could conceal it. She recovered almost at once, but not before Fitzwilliam saw it; not before Georgiana saw it too.
“Miss Darcy,” she said.
Georgiana stepped forward. “Mrs. Reynolds.”
“My dear young lady,” Mrs. Reynolds said softly, and then stopped herself from saying more before the servants.
Georgiana’s lips trembled, but she did not cry.
Kitty followed, quiet and a little overawed, though she made a creditable curtsy when Mrs. Reynolds turned to her.
“Miss Bennet,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “I hope you will find everything comfortable.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
The second carriage came up behind them.
Mrs. Doddridge descended with the air of a woman who had survived inns, roads, and human nature without revising her opinion of any of them.
Evans followed. Lord Pomington’s basket emerged in the arms of a footman who had plainly not yet understood that he carried a person of consequence.
The basket gave a muffled protest.
Mrs. Reynolds looked at it.
Elizabeth said, “Lord Pomington has not approved Derbyshire yet.”
“Then Derbyshire must exert itself, madam,” Mrs. Reynolds replied, after the smallest pause.
It was the first moment in which Fitzwilliam could breathe.
“Your rooms have been aired, Miss Darcy,” Mrs. Reynolds said, with deliberate steadiness. “The curtains were opened this morning, and water has been sent up. Miss Bennet is placed just across the passage, should you wish company.”
Georgiana nodded. “Thank you.”
“And Mrs. Darcy’s express was received, sir. Everything is prepared.”
Fitzwilliam inclined his head, though the words affected him strangely. Elizabeth’s express had instructed Pemberley before he could enter it. For once, the house had been told to expect him by someone who wished him there.
They were brought in through the great hall, whose proportions seemed at once familiar and estranged. He had crossed that floor as a boy, as a young man, as a son still secure enough to be impatient with security. Now every footstep seemed to ask by what right he returned.
Elizabeth did not look dazzled. She looked attentive.
He knew that expression. She was seeing the height of the ceiling, the number of servants, the direction of passages, the placement of doors, the way Mrs. Reynolds’s eyes moved once toward the stairs and once toward the offices.
Beauty would not escape her; but danger had the first claim upon her notice.
Mrs. Reynolds led them not to the principal drawing room, but to a smaller room already prepared, with the shutters half-open to the green, tea laid out, and a second tray set apart with more substantial food.
That, too, had sense in it. The room was proper enough for arrival and small enough not to make an exhibition of distress.
“Sit down,” Elizabeth said, almost before anyone else could decide whether sitting was permissible. “All of us. There is no virtue in arriving at Pemberley and immediately proving that roads have made us foolish.”
Kitty sat first, which was either obedience or relief.
Georgiana followed. Mrs. Doddridge, having entered behind them, took a chair near enough to the younger girls to make fuss unnecessary. Elizabeth seated herself beside Georgiana, and Fitzwilliam sat because resisting her before Mrs. Reynolds would have been both useless and ungrateful.
Mrs. Reynolds waited until tea had been poured and Georgiana had taken the cup into her hands. Only then did she answer the question Fitzwilliam had not yet trusted himself to ask.