CHAPTER 75 #3
It was enough because it did not ask to be admired. It only stood there in the room with them: the knowledge of a man who had once made grief out of fear and had lived long enough to see what it cost.
Darcy sat down.
His father remained for one hard hour. At three, Mr. Grant came down, saw him, and said with a severity that made medical authority sound very like moral judgment, “Mr. Darcy, you will return to your rooms.”
His father opened his mouth.
“You will return to your rooms,” Mr. Grant repeated, “or you will require a patient’s share of the attention presently needed elsewhere.”
Edward rose. “Come.”
His father disliked it. Every line of him said so. But he went, and his going was no longer command spoiled by illness. It was only a tired man being led from a room where he could not help.
After that, the parlour felt larger and worse.
At four, Richard slept for perhaps a quarter of an hour in a chair and woke as if he had not. No one contradicted him.
Miss Bingley sent down word, through Richard, that Georgiana and Kitty had both slept a little, though Kitty denied it and Pom-Pom had taken it as a personal betrayal. Mary had fallen asleep over a book she still claimed to be reading. The blue sitting room remained quiet.
Darcy had not gone to see them. He did not trust himself to be kind to fear in anyone else when he had no mastery over his own.
At half past four, Jane came down to the parlour door.
Darcy rose too quickly.
“Mrs. Bingley.”
She was pale and tired, her cap slightly awry, her eyes too bright. She did not come fully in.
“She asked me to tell you that she knows you are not sitting down.”
For one moment he could not speak.
“She asked that?”
“Yes.” Jane’s smile trembled. “And whether Pom-Pom has forgiven us.”
“Has he?”
“I did not like to promise.”
Her composure wavered.
“Mrs. Bingley,” Darcy said, because Jane would not do and anything warmer would undo them both. “Is she—”
“She is very tired,” Jane said. “But she is herself.”
That was not enough. Nothing would have been enough. But it was what she had, and she had brought it carefully, as if it might break.
“Will they let you return to her?”
“If Mrs. Darcy asks for me, or if Mrs. Tate permits it. Mrs. Tate thought I should rest a little. I could not persuade her otherwise.”
He bowed his head. “Thank you.”
Jane curtsied slightly, absurdly formal in the exhausted dawn. “She will be vexed if you are ill when she has finished, Mr. Darcy.”
“I will try not to be.”
She returned upstairs when Mrs. Reynolds came for her.
At five, Darcy thought it must be morning.
The clock had not yet struck five.
After that he stopped looking at it.
The fire sank and was remade. His uncle remained near it, awake or near enough to waking that the distinction did not matter.
Richard stopped pretending to read an old volume from the parlour table and merely held it.
Bingley had been persuaded back to the small library and did not remain there long.
Near morning, the house became very quiet.
That was worse than sound.
Darcy stood once, sat again, and did not know whether obedience still counted as virtue when it was only all that remained.
He sat because his legs had forgotten their office.
He did not mean to sleep.
He would have denied it, had anyone accused him. He had only lowered his head for a moment, one hand still clenched upon the arm of the chair, his whole body listening upward.
The fire made a soft collapsing sound.
His uncle breathed steadily.
Richard shifted once and was still.
The house held itself in silence.
Then a cry cut through it.
Thin, furious, unmistakable.
Darcy was on his feet before the sound ended.
Not Elizabeth.
A child.
For one breath, relief struck him so sharply it was almost pain.
Then fear followed it.
“My wife,” he said.
No one answered at once.
That was the worst moment of the night.
The cry came again, stronger now, indignant and alive. Bingley appeared in the doorway, white-faced and wild-haired. Richard had crossed half the room without seeming to move. Edward set his hand upon the back of a chair and watched the stair.
Footsteps came above. Then upon the stairs.
Mr. Grant appeared first, descending with the measured care of a man who knew every eye below would hate him for taking any time at all. Mrs. Tate came behind him, sleeves still turned back, face tired and composed.
Darcy met them before they reached the parlour door.
“My wife.”
“Safe, Mr. Darcy,” said Mr. Grant.
The word struck him harder than the cry had done.
“Exhausted,” Mr. Grant continued. “But safe.”
Darcy shut his eyes.
For a moment there was no parlour, no clock, no uncle, no cousin, no brother-in-law at the door trying not to weep. There was only the word safe, and the fact that it had been honestly given.
“The child?”
Mrs. Tate’s mouth softened by the smallest degree. Above them the cry rose once more, very much equal to saying so.
“A daughter, sir,” she said. “And not shy of announcing it.”
Richard laughed once, roughly.
Bingley sat down on the nearest chair as if someone had taken his bones.
Edward looked toward the window.
Darcy gripped the door frame.
“My wife asks for you,” Mr. Grant said.
Darcy went upstairs.
He knew every step and none of them. The western stairs, the turn in the passage, the door to the sitting room, the light beneath the bedchamber door — all of it belonged to his house and had become strange in the space of one night.
Mrs. Doddridge opened the bedchamber door before he reached it.
“Softly,” she said.
Then she stepped aside.
The bedchamber was warm and disordered and full of morning.
The curtains had not yet been opened, but grey light found its way round them and mingled with the candlelight.
The fire burned low and steady. A basin stood near the hearth.
Linen had been folded and set aside. A chair had been moved where no chair belonged.
The room smelt of heat, water, lavender, exhaustion, and something new that Darcy did not know how to name.
The pearls lay open on the dressing table, their clasp undone beside a scatter of pins and a folded cloth.
Elizabeth lay against the pillows.
She was pale past concealment. Her hair had escaped every pin and lay damp against her temples; her lips had lost colour; her hand trembled a little where it rested upon the coverlet. She looked so tired that even opening her eyes seemed an act of decision.
But the child lay beside her, wrapped and small, her face red and creased, and Elizabeth’s face changed when she looked at her.
Tired as she was, Elizabeth looked satisfied — deeply, quietly pleased that this particular little girl had arrived and belonged to her.
Darcy went first to his wife.
“Elizabeth.”
She opened her eyes. “You look worse than I do.”
“Impossible.”
“Then we are both to be pitied.”
His laugh failed halfway and became something else. He bent over her hand.
“Are you safe?”
“I am assured so by several authorities.” Her mouth moved faintly. “I am choosing to believe them.”
He pressed her fingers to his lips. They were warm now.
“And you?” she asked.
He could not answer that honestly in a way which would not burden her.
Elizabeth watched him, exhausted and knowing. “You did not sleep.”
“No.”
“I shall scold you later.”
“I know.”
The bundle beside her made a small sound, not quite a cry, but an objection to being overlooked.
Elizabeth turned at once.
The movement undid him more than any weakness could have done. It was slow and careful and full of pain, but the attention in it was complete.
“There,” she whispered. “You see? She has opinions already.”
Darcy looked down.
His daughter’s mouth opened in a trembling protest and closed again when Elizabeth touched one finger to her cheek.
“She is very small,” Darcy said.
“She was not small enough last night,” Elizabeth murmured.
He looked at her.
Her eyes were closed, but the corner of her mouth had curved.
He bowed his head and laughed silently against her hand.
“What shall we call her?” he asked, though he knew.
Elizabeth opened her eyes again. The satisfaction in them steadied into certainty.
“Eleanor.”
“Yes,” he said.
“For Mrs. Marwood,” Elizabeth said.
“For Mrs. Marwood.”
“And because I liked the name before I was old enough to know why.”
“This Eleanor,” Elizabeth said, “has begun with stronger opinions.”
“I am not sure Mrs. Marwood lacked them.”
“No. But she expressed them with better caps.”
He bent and kissed Elizabeth’s hand again, then the child’s forehead, though she was so small and warm and impossible that he hardly dared touch her.
Mrs. Tate, who had been observing him with professional caution, said, “You may sit, sir, if you do not mean to fall.”
Darcy sat.
Elizabeth’s fingers found his. Eleanor made another small sound. Elizabeth did not take her eyes from the child until sleep began to take them from her.
“Fitzwilliam.”
“I am here.”
“She is ours.”
“Yes.”
She looked satisfied with that answer. It was perhaps the only one large enough and simple enough. Her hand loosened in his as she drifted, not quite asleep, but near it, her other hand still curved protectively toward Eleanor.
He sat there while the room quieted.
After a time Mrs. Tate took the child to be settled. Elizabeth slept through it because exhaustion had finally conquered vigilance. Darcy watched Eleanor go only because Mrs. Tate held her as if nothing in the world were more ordinary than carrying away the whole of his life in two arms.
Mrs. Doddridge appeared with broth.
“Drink it,” she said. “Mrs. Darcy will need you upright.”
He obeyed.
Only then did he realise he was hungry with the hollow shock of a man whose body had been neglected by everyone except Mrs. Doddridge.