Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
The light was going off the mere when they came down to the path along the bank. Her hand had been on his arm since leaving the house, and she had not yet put it back at her side.
“You will be cold by the bridge, Elizabeth. The water at this hour.”
“I am not cold, sir, and do not propose to be. If I become cold, I will tell you, and you may give me your coat for the second time in your acquaintance with me.”
“Forgive me if I doubt that you will say anything. You did not once mention that you were cold on the day we met, by which hour you had been in the snow for the better part of one.”
“On the day we met, Mr Darcy, I had a broken leg, and you must grant that the matter was a distraction. I will own the precedent is not in my favour.”
The willow on the bank had been the first thing to colour this spring. They came up to it on the path. “I have been watching this one every morning for a fortnight,” she said. “From the parlour window. I had a wager with myself it would come into leaf before the first of April.”
“You have won your wager. The first of April is still a week off. There is nothing like the view from your window in the morning at half past six. The first light comes off the water at that hour, and the willow stands against it.”
She stopped and smiled up at him. “You know my hours, sir?”
“I have been walking out to the bank of the mere every morning since the second week of January. I have stood at the water and turned back to look at the house. For the first seven weeks your window was empty; Dr Aldridge had not yet permitted you the walk from the bed to the glass. I went down anyway. I stood at the water at half past six, and I looked at the empty window. Three weeks ago you came to it for the first time. I have not, since then, missed a morning.”
“That is a particular liberty, sir.”
“It was the only liberty open to a man whose wedding day had not yet come.”
“And the man whose wedding day has come?”
“He proposes to be in the parlour looking out with her at twenty past six in the morning instead of standing at the water.”
Elizabeth laughed. “He has not the courage.”
“He had not the courage three weeks ago, when she would have laughed at him for it. He has it now.”
She threaded her arm more tightly through his. “Your courage rises, does it, sir? Then I look forward to seeing the proof of it.”
He laughed—properly laughed; she had heard such a laugh from him only twice before in their acquaintance—and he took her hand off his arm and wove her fingers with his. They walked the rest of the way to the bridge without speaking.
At the bridge they stopped. The mere under it was at the place she had waded the week before. The place along the bank where she had come up out of the water was visible from the rail.
“Mr Hadley has counted the lambs,” he said. “There are twenty-three so far, and all thriving.”
“That is very encouraging. The shepherd must be pleased, particularly after the fears of early February.”
“Indeed.”
She looked at the place along the bank where she had come up. “I am glad, after all, that I found this valley, Mr Darcy.”
“You did not find the valley. The valley found you. And I found you.”
“I am glad of all three.”
He did not at once reply. A puff of wind came across the water; she put back the loose hair at her temple.
“You are cold, Mrs Darcy.”
“I am not.”
“You are. The first time I said it on the path, it was a pretext to keep you out of doors longer than the weather warranted. The second time it is a pretext to bring you inside.”
“And which time is the truer, sir?”
“They are both true. They have a particular order of priority, which I propose to take up on the threshold of the parlour.”
She put her hand to his face. “That seems early to me, on a wedding-day.”
“Not half early enough for me.” He took the hand he had inside his own and put it to his mouth, and held it there, and let it go, and they walked on toward the rise.
“I have decided, Mr Darcy, that I should like to take the colonel into the family on a permanent footing. Did you observe him with Mr Collins? He had him by the collar before the matter was half-decided. I had not believed such efficiency could exist in a man not employed by the post office. Pray tell me he is to come and stay every spring.”
“He comes every spring as a matter of habit. He does not, however, customarily remove clergymen for me. I shall enquire whether he means to make the practice annual.”
“He shall be very welcome on those terms. He had a particular pleasure in the matter this morning that did not, to my eye, look like a man putting himself out.”
“He has not forgiven your cousin for a sermon Mr Collins wrote in the spring of ’09, of which my aunt sent a copy to my uncle, of which a copy reached the colonel’s hand. He took exception to a passage on the duties of a younger son. He has not had a civil word for Mr Collins since.”
“Then I have a debt to my cousin for that passage. He has put me in better standing with your cousin than I should otherwise have managed in a twelvemonth.”
The mere was on her right as they walked.
She had not, since coming up out of the water on the morning of last Wednesday, been on this side of it on her feet.
After lingering there some while, they came up to the south side of the house.
The yard was empty; the dogs had been put up; the voices of the rest of the party were at the front, where dinner was being laid in the small dining room.
He held the south door for her and brought her in. The lower passage was empty.
At her parlour door he brought her hand off his arm and put it to his mouth, as he had done at every threshold of every door in the house every day for eleven weeks. He did not let it go this time.
“Elizabeth.”
He brought her along it on his arm, and stopped with her at the door of the parlour that had been her chamber since the eleventh of January, and did not open it. “You ought to change into something less damp before dinner.”
“I ought? And what do you propose to do while I am indisposed?”
“I had thought to go up and do likewise. My coats and shirts are still in the armoire upstairs.”
“You had thought no such thing. You had said it because you have been accustomed to standing on the south side of a closed door parlour door and declining to enter for propriety’s sake. You shall not, today, say it.”
“What ought I to say, then?”
“You ought to say what you mean, sir. It is what I am going to do. I should like you to come into the room with me. I have a great many buttons of yours to undo, and I do not propose to do any of them in the lower passage.”
“Elizabeth! There is a household. There is, at this present hour, a colonel of His Majesty’s hussars in his dress coat in the small dining room.
There is a Mr and Mrs Gardiner who have shown a great willingness to be helpful in the present crisis, and who will no doubt expect to see a decent couple present themselves at dinner before they depart for the inn.
There is a Mrs Reeves who has not, in the several months of my acquaintance with her, missed a sound made on the south side of this house at any time of day or night.
There is a sister upstairs who is at this hour putting on a pair of dancing slippers under the impression that she shall presently sit down to dinner with her brother and his bride.
You propose to do violence to all of these persons at once, do you? ”
“The colonel is at the front of the house, with two passages and a hall between us. My aunt and uncle are with Jane and the colonel, and shall, I am informed, be put on to a hand of cards before dinner so that the colonel may have the satisfaction of beating Uncle Gardiner at piquet. Mrs Reeves is in the small dining room directing the placement of the plates, and shall not stir from her post on any provocation less than fire. Your sister upstairs cannot hear a sound made on this floor through the floorboards of this house if she is putting on dancing slippers; the dancing slippers are louder, sir, than anything I propose to do. The only room that adjoins this one is your study; the study, at present, is locked, and the key to it is in the inner pocket of your coat. I have not, in eleven weeks of being in this room, been at liberty to turn the key in this lock without producing a maid in alarm at the sound. I am at liberty now. I propose to use the liberty.”
“You have surveyed the position, Mrs Darcy.”
“I have. I had a great deal of it from Mrs Reeves at luncheon, when I put to her the question of the disposition of the household at this hour. She informed me, with such delicacy as the subject afforded, that this room is the most private room in the house, and that the household is at this hour engaged in occupations that require none of them to be in this part of it. She offered to put a note on the south door.”
“Did you accept her offer?”
“I declined it, sir, on the ground that a note would constitute a piece of information I should rather not have committed to paper.”
She took her hand out of his and put it on the door behind her, and turned the latch, and walked backward into the parlour, and brought him in after her by his coat.
The door went to behind them and she turned the key in the lock.
Then she put both her hands on the front of his coat at the lapels, and brought him down to her own height, and kissed him.
Within three breaths he had her face in both his hands, and within the next breath he had her back against the door of her own parlour.
When he took his mouth off hers it was to put it at her hair, behind her ear, at her throat, at the place where her throat ran into the line of her shoulder under the wedding silk; and he was not speaking. He had not, in eleven weeks, been so long with her without speaking.
She took the front of his coat in both her hands and walked backward into the room.
He came with her. They came up to the foot of the bed—the bed upon which he had once laid her, broken and bleeding, on the day she first came to this valley.
Elizabeth stood up on her toes, bouncing a little on that left leg as she teased his lips. “Do you know what I always thought?”
His mouth smiled against hers. “I am nearly afraid to ask.”
“This room was always improved by having you in it. I suspect the bed will be much the same.”
Darcy’s throat made a low sound as he scooped her into his arms and laid her back. “Let us find out.”
The candle at the side table burned out at some hour she did not afterwards remember; the fire went to embers and from embers to ash; and the light came across the mere at twenty past five and through the south window and onto her, and was the same light that had come into the parlour every morning since the eleventh of January, and was not, on the morning of the twenty-sixth of March, the same light at all.