At those words, Darcy let himself sink into an armchair, as though another hell were loosed within a breast that had but now learned to be unshackled.
“Good God,” he said. “It is too late for that.”
And the pain of her loss grew all the greater now that he knew himself free.
“Do not be a fool,” the colonel returned in that commanding tone which alone could reach Darcy at such a moment. “Nothing is lost until she has said yes.”
“Do you imagine, Fitzwilliam, that I shall go to the church and stop her?”
“That is precisely what I imagine.”
“You are mad… I could never do such a thing. How should I spoil another man’s marriage?”
“By telling Miss Elizabeth that you are free, and leaving her to decide.”
“Never!” Darcy declared in a tone of resolve; yet the colonel no longer feared his obstinacy.
He called the valet and bade him prepare a room and one of Darcy’s best clean shirts for the morning.
“What are you about?” Darcy stammered.
“I shall sleep here; we rise at six and go to the church.”
“But we do not even know to which church,” he pleaded, hoping to escape.
“We do; I called at the club and learnt it.”
“I cannot do this,” Darcy insisted. “We shall be the mockery of London—you married to my fiancée and I seizing another man’s betrothed.”
“To the devil with London and with decorum. When happiness is at stake, these are obstacles devised by fear, without justification. I shall take you by force if need be; I shall fetch my mother as well—the only sensible person amid this madness, who is surely now laughing with my father at our folly and who would take the greatest pleasure in seeing you compelled to save Miss Elizabeth and, in truth, to save yourself..”
Chapter 36
A thinning October mist veiled the church when Darcy’s carriage climbed the final rise, giving the place a touch of strangeness so fitted to the mission he had to accomplish. St John-at-Hampstead stood upon a small hill above the road, grey and solemn against the pale sky, its square tower crowned by a slender spire that caught the faint glimmer of dawn. A few yellow leaves clung yet to the limes near the iron gate, fluttering as the carriage drew nearer. Beyond the low wall, the path to the porch shone faintly with moisture, and a bell began to sound—deep and slow—each note breaking through the mist like a summons from another world.
“I cannot do this,” said Darcy, and bade the coachman turn back.
The colonel made no answer for a while; then, directing the carriage farther down the road from the church, he ordered it to stop and almost compelled Darcy to alight.
“How can I enter a church and stop a wedding?” Darcy struggled. Yet the colonel perceived that the obstinate resolutionnot to interfere, lest he be ridiculed, was beginning to yield before the strength of feeling that urged him on. What would his life be like if he lost Elizabeth through the same fear of decorum that ruled all their kind? He was but a step away from trying to prevent her from becoming another man’s wife, and this was the final moment when her fate and his might still be changed.
They strolled towards the church, Darcy still waging a battle within himself to return to the carriage and depart, but the colonel knew the struggle was already lost.
“Darcy,” he said gently, “you need not make a scene within the church—”
“An odious one,” murmured Darcy.
“Agreed, it would be odious, particularly for Mr Clinton.”
“For you do not doubt that Elizabeth would renounce him and depart upon my arm?”
“I do not,” returned the colonel gravely. However, in his heart a shadow of doubt persisted—not because Miss Elizabeth did not love him, but because of that same tyranny of custom which had brought them all to this dreadful pass.”
“And what am I to do?” Darcy asked, a note of hope trembling in his voice; anything seemed preferable to breaking in upon a ceremony.
Being a man of strategy, the colonel had already observed the place—the iron gate of the churchyard, where the carriage must inevitably stop, and from which the bride would walk those few yards to the porch where her father would most likely await her.
“The carriage will stop there—just there—before the gate.”
