Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Darcy was in the south field with Ashby examining the fresh timber laid by the lower gate when Hadley came up the path. The wind had grown sharp through the morning. The mere, beyond the rise, showed a skin of steel-grey at the edges and something blacker beneath.
“A second one, sir. At the gate this morning, asking after Mrs Marsden by name.”
Darcy set down the rule. The reading of the timber had not been in his head, only in his hand.
“When?”
“An hour back. I sent Martha in and kept him talking till I had the shape of him. He came up from Bakewell direction, not the lower road. Asked at the smithy after Wetherthwaite House. The smith pretended deafness. Asked at the posting-yard whether the place now called Northmere—the one kept by the gentleman with the invalid sister—had lately received letters or parcels for a Mrs Marsden. The postmaster denied any such. Pemberton lad on the lower road, when he was asked the way up to the ridge, gave him the wrong path and watched him take it. Mrs Hadley would not let him stand at the cottage door. She said two sentences to him I have not heard her speak in two and twenty years. Only then did he come to the lane.”
“His name?”
“Calls himself Briggs. Town hands and country boots, which usually means somebody else’s money.
Represents, by his own telling, no magistrate, no solicitor, and no relation fit to sign his own name openly.
I gave him to understand that gentlemen’s houses are not to be counted like sheep from a lane, and that if he wanted answers from the master he might ask them standing where a horse could see him. He declined the invitation.”
Ashby, driving a peg into the thawing ground with more force than required by mere carpentry, said, “Reckon if a man wants t’ old house name he has been given it southward.
That is how such things travel. Some servant’s memory, some carrier’s guess, some fool wi’ a good ear for gossip and no honest trade.
” He looked up. “Want I should tell t’ men to turn him off if he shows again? ”
Darcy looked toward the house.
Northmere stood pale against the hard light, all its windows innocent as if no roof in England had ever sheltered ambiguity.
Somewhere inside were Georgiana, who must not be frightened; and Mrs Reeves, who would fight the county with ladles if pressed; and Fitzwilliam, who had stayed the night and ridden out to the Hadleys’ at first light because Darcy had not been able to leave a parlour to do it; and Elizabeth, alone since this morning, with the danger he had brought into her room in his coat now doubled by the danger that had come to find her on its own.
“No public scene,” Darcy said. “Not yet. If he returns, send for me at once and let no one else engage him if it can be helped.”
Hadley nodded. Ashby muttered something about scenes being public whether chosen or not.
Darcy went back to the house with the cold on his face and something nearer shame beneath it.
Fitzwilliam met him in the hall—coat still on him, the morning’s ride not yet warmed out of his face. “Mrs Marsden would not come back today. She means to remain where she is for now.”
Darcy set his hat aside. “Did she say anything else?”
“Not to me. Mrs Hadley says she is resting for once, and she is sitting by her. She has eaten broth, twice. She has wept. She has not been asked one question by anyone. Mrs Hadley thinks tomorrow, not today, for bringing her up.”
Darcy let out a breath. “Thank you.”
“She did not ask after you.”
“No. I did not suppose she would.”
“She asked after her sister. I told her her sister was indoors, alone, and as well as could be expected. She seemed to accept it.”
“Thank you. For all of it.”
“It was not nothing, Darcy. The bit of road between here and the cottage was a long bit of road.”
“I know it was.”
Fitzwilliam looked at him. “Hadley says a second hound has been sniffing the gate. I assume from your manner this one bites nearer the truth.”
“Too near. He went to the Hadleys’ as well.”
Fitzwilliam’s face went still. “To the cottage?”
“To the cottage.”
Fitzwilliam said something under his breath that no woman of his acquaintance had been meant to hear, and reached again for his coat.
“Not yet,” Darcy said. “Hadley has him in hand for the present, and Mrs Hadley turned him from the door before he so much as set a foot on the step. Let him go back to whoever sent him and report a stone.”
“And Miss Bennet?”
“I shall go to her now.”
“Now?”
“I have been waiting all morning to be able to.”
Fitzwilliam said, more gently than he had said anything yet, “Tell her the news of her sister first, Darcy. Whatever else you mean to tell her, that first.”
“That is what I have been waiting all morning to be able to do.”
Elizabeth was in the parlour alone.
The room still bore the morning’s rupture.
Jane’s basket was forgotten by the window where she had set it down.
The chair was slightly out of place where she had stood and not sat.
On the small table by the sofa lay Georgiana’s music, unopened since the quarrel.
The leg was supported on the cushion. Elizabeth sat upright, not reading, not sewing, one hand resting on the closed book in her lap as if she had lost the page and not admitted it even to herself.
She looked up when he came in.
The relief in her face at seeing him arrived and was schooled so quickly it might not have shown to another observer. Darcy saw it. Of course he saw it. That was part of the problem.
“Mr Darcy. Have you news of Jane?”
There. The first proof of her mind’s direction even now.
“She is safe at the Hadleys’. Mrs Hadley has had her since the morning.
She is asleep at present, and Mrs Hadley is of the opinion that she will be fit to come home tomorrow but not today.
Fitzwilliam has just come up from the cottage.
He says she is eating, and weeping, and being asked no questions. ”
Elizabeth closed her eyes once, briefly.
“Thank God.”
“Yes.” He shut the door behind him. “Though thanks may be divided among Mrs Hadley, the weather, and my cousin’s view that no woman should be left to the road because proud people had made a misery of a house.”
The dryness was there, but not ease. Elizabeth heard the difference at once.
“Something has happened.”
“I would have given you another hour with the news of your sister if I could.” He came farther in but not far.
He stopped behind the chair Jane had stood at, and did not sit.
“A second man has been asking questions in an order I do not like. He used the old name first. From there he got the house’s present name and enough of the village to identify us.
Only then did he ask whether correspondence for Mrs Marsden had come here, and whether there were one lady under this roof or two.
He did not inquire as a neighbour would, nor go away as an honest fool would.
And he went to the Hadleys’ afterwards. Mrs Hadley turned him from the door before he could speak twice. ”
Elizabeth had gone white by the second sentence.
“Who sent him?”
“I do not know. I know only that whatever time we had has shortened.”
She looked away toward the window. The curtains were half drawn. There was no road through them.
“Then you were right last night.”
The line was the only one he had not been ready for, and it took him for the count of two breaths.
Last night she had given him every truth she had been keeping; this morning the rupture had not been about truth at all; and he could not in this hour, in this afternoon, take credit for having been right about anything.
“I was not sure of that an hour ago,” he said.
“You were right that it would not wait. That is what I meant.”
“Yes.”
He stood with his hand on the back of the chair. He looked at his hand for a second as if it were holding something he had not asked it to hold. “Elizabeth. I did not come down to you this morning to tell you about a man on the road. I came to ask you a question. You know which one.”
Her hand made a small movement on the book. “I know.”
“Your sister did not give me the seconds. I do not hold it against her. I tell you now only because I shall not have you suppose I came to you this afternoon in any other character than the one I came in this morning. The question is not different for what has happened in between.”
She flinched, and he hated himself for seeing it and not moderating. Hated himself more for not being able to stop.
“Do not,” she said quietly, “suppose I am insensible to the justice of your reproaches of last night.”
“I suppose no such thing. I suppose you feel them very well and still continue in the course that makes them necessary.”
Elizabeth rose too quickly, forgetting the leg until pain caught and held her by force against the sofa arm. Darcy moved at once. She lifted one hand and stopped him without touching.
“Do not come near me unless you mean to hear what I say rather than what you have already resolved to answer.”
The command, or plea, checked him more effectively than any physical barrier might have done. He stayed where he was, one pace too far from her and therefore aware of every inch. “Speak then.”
She drew breath. “You know what I have done.”
“I know. I do not care about what you have done.”
“Mr Darcy —”
“I have had a night to think on it, Elizabeth, and a morning, and an hour beside the timber in the south field. I do not care about what you have done. I care about something else, and it is what I came in here to find out.”
“What?”
“Whether you will let me into the rest of it. Whether you will trust me to choose this knowing what it is. Whether you will stop being noble about it on my account.”
She had set the book aside. Her hand had gone toward her throat. The fingers had not quite reached the throat; they had stopped a half-inch short of it. “You would be ruined.”