It had been six weeks since her uncle first permitted Mr. Darcy to call; six weeks since her heart learned a new habit of beating. She wrote nothing of it, for words set down would look presumptuous; yet the truth moved quietly in her, and to deny it would be as false as to deny the tide. Their first morning after Mr. Gardiner spoke to him was a failure of courage on her side. She had fancied herself composed, yet when Mr. Darcy appeared upon the strand she could scarcely command any sentence that did not contradict the one before it. The sea was very still; her thoughts were not. He was kind, and so patient that she might have wept for shame at her own stiffness. That night she lay awake, persuading herself that she had ruined every hope and that he would not come again. In the morning he came. They spoke of nothing of consequence, or so it would seem to anyone overhearing; shells, and a fishing boat, and whether the gulls foretold a change of wind. An hour passed like a minute; when they parted, it felt as though a page had been turned without noise, and a better chapter begun.
The lighthouse followed later that day. She had looked at it often from the beach and thought it cold; yet as they mounted the steps, and the light-chamber opened around them, it appeared the very figure of benevolence. A steadfast thing, set high for the sake of strangers. She told him so, and he smiled a little, not in mockery but with that look of attention which renders one both braver and more careful. “A light that does not ask to be admired,” she said, “yet must be trusted if it is to do any good.” He answered, “There are blessings that do not shine untilwe venture near them. From far away they look severe.” He said nothing of himself; yet she felt he had revealed more than he intended. When they descended, the air was clearer than before, and the day that followed seemed to borrow its pattern from that steady beam.
From that hour their mornings were claimed. James kept his distance at her aunt’s request; she never forgot that he was there; Mr. Darcy never forgot it either. They walked at first in a quiet that did not oppress; then in a talk that gained a little courage every day. He told her, by slow degrees, of the years after his mother’s death; of a house that was grand and unhappy; of duties that began before boyhood had done; of a pride he mistrusted in himself because it had become a screen rather than a guard. She listened because she felt the honour of being trusted; she trembled because she heard in his account something that resembled her own life, although told from another side. When he asked, very gently, about her father’s accounts, she spoke without thought of the long evenings at Longbourn when the books were laid before her and she corrected them while Mrs. Bennet proclaimed herself too weak for sums, and Jane assured her that she had a particular talent for making things neat. She said it smiling, foolish girl that she was, for she had always been proud to be useful. He grew grave in a different manner; not the gravity of coldness but of pain. He did not reprove her; he never presumed. He said only, very low, “It was much to require,” and changed the subject to the tide-table. The words were nothing; the look told her he understood more than she had had the sense to hide. Ever since, whenever she spoke of home, he was tender where others were merely comfortable. He knew there was a kind of love that begins and ends with usefulness, and another kind that begins before it asks anything at all.
There were little excursions among their mornings. Mr. Gardiner took them to the docks to watch the frame of the new vessel rise, and she stood with her aunt while the men spoke of timber and pitch, of sound rivets, and of a ship that must be stout rather than showy. Mr. Darcy asked few questions, yet they were always those which bring a matter forward; never to display himself, always to prove the point. Mr. Gardiner’s eye brightened in answering him, and once, when they fell into a calculation together, Mrs. Gardiner touched Elizabeth’s arm and smiled as though something she had long hoped for had quietly arranged itself.
Afterward, as they passed through the little market, Mr. Darcy paused before a toy stall. “I have promised to send some trifles to our cousins at Ashford House,” he said, looking over a row of painted soldiers and wooden beasts. “Margaret insists her ark has lost half its animals, and George declares that the whale is too proud to swim with the others.” Mrs. Gardiner laughed at this, and suggested a box of paints to replace the broken toys. He considered it gravely, then turned to her with that look of quiet intention which always precedes some kindness. “If I am to remember the Ashford children, I must remember yours as well,” he said. “Grace and Bethany, Eddie and little Freddie must not think their cousin forgetful.”
Mrs. Gardiner was taken quite by surprise and named the children’s small fancies; Grace’s fondness for stories, Bethany’s for ribbons, Eddie’s for ships, and Freddie’s delight in anything that rolls. She added, laughing, that since they had yet to meet their cousin Mr. Darcy, being spoiled by him would serve for an excellent introduction. He took the jest with perfect seriousness, listening as though she spoke of treasures, selecting with care, and asking her to approve his choices. She tried to protest; he would not allow it. “I am already too late in my attentions,” hesaid, smiling. “Let me at least be correct in them.” When the parcels were made up, he paid the shopkeeper with his usual composure, and Elizabeth thought how gentle a nature must be to turn generosity into something so unassuming.
The circular library became a favourite resort on clouded days. They would find a nook under the gallery while Mrs. Gardiner selected a volume for the evening; and there he and Elizabeth spoke of books, and of the way a life sometimes presses one to read only what is set before one. She confessed how much of her reading had been chosen for her by chance and household economy; a sermon-bound miscellany, a family book of travels, volumes borrowed in a hurry from neighbours who valued the size of a book over its sense. He listened as if she had named the rarest catalogue. When she exclaimed, in a foolish moment, that she liked a passage of Cowper because it sounded like wind along the Downs, he repeated the lines very softly, not to perform, but as though they belonged to a memory he was willing to share. It was not gallantry; it was companionship. She did not know how a woman falls in love; only that she stood there with a book open in her hand and discovered she had not turned a page for ten minutes.
There were cheerful afternoons too. Mrs. Gardiner would contrive tea in town when the weather was squally, and they sat by the window while boats ducked under the rise and fall of the water. Mr. Darcy spoke little in company; yet with Mrs. Gardiner he was ready, and Elizabeth loved him for it. He met her aunt’s intelligence as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He invited her uncle’s judgment as if it were a map. When Captain Mountjoy called to report that the wind would serve for a short excursion, Mr. Darcy said only, “If Mrs. Gardiner approves.” It was so simply done that Mrs. Gardiner was more pleased than if he had made a speech in her praise. They went out upon the littleboat two days later. Elizabeth had thought herself courageous until the moment the shore slipped behind them and the water lifted like a creature breathing. Mr. Darcy stood by the rail; he did not insist upon her bravery; he stood where she could look at him without seeming to seek support. When she smiled, more from determination than gaiety, he inclined his head as if to say she need not pretend to any boldness beyond her own. The boat pitched; she laughed in surprise; and at that he laughed too. The sound seemed very young, as if it had escaped him. It was most unfair that a stern countenance should keep such a warm sound hidden.
Sometimes they walked into the poorer lanes beyond the quay. Mrs. Gardiner’s kindness was never paraded, yet all Brinmouth knew it. They passed a child one noon, a little boy with hollow cheeks and bare feet, who stood gazing at a baker’s window as though his eyes might carry food to his stomach. Mrs. Gardiner’s hand went to her reticule, but before she could cross the street Mr. Darcy stopped a moment to speak to the baker, then to the boy, and afterward to a woman at a door who turned out to be the child’s aunt. Elizabeth did not hear the particulars; she saw only that the boy vanished round the corner and reappeared half an hour later with a heel of bread and a cap too large for him, and that he ran straight to Mr. Darcy as if he had known him all his life. “Thank you, sir,” he cried, and Mr. Darcy coloured like a lad, and made too much of the baker. She could not think of it without feeling foolish; yet she had been foolish then. She had wanted to tell him that she had seen it all; that the delicacy with which he contrived to stand aside was the very mark by which he stood out.
There were lowlier kindnesses he never thought she observed. One morning, as they passed a draper’s window, Mrs. Gardiner paused to admire a length of fine muslin, remarkingonly that it was a luxury too idle for her use. She would never have purchased it for herself, though her eye returned to it twice. The next day a parcel arrived at their lodging containing the very piece, folded with another of equal beauty. Mrs. Gardiner was puzzled, for Mr. Gardiner was not with them at the time and she knew his thoughtful habits too well to accuse him unjustly. She said only that she must have been overheard and forgotten the circumstance, yet Elizabeth saw her look at the fabric more than once with quiet pleasure. Aunt and niece were much alike in that; neither of them indulged easily. Mr. Gardiner once told Elizabeth that a good man spoils the ones he loves, and though he had said it after buying her some trifle she had protested, she thought the same sentiment might have guided another hand.
When a journeyman at the yard fell ill, Mr. Gardiner went to call upon the physician but found the account already settled and the visit arranged. He spoke of it to them afterwards, suspecting Mr. Darcy though he would not name him. “It is the manner of his doing things,” Mr. Gardiner said, “that persuades one of his hand, even when it is hidden.” Mr. Darcy never acknowledged the act; others were content to take the credit; he seemed to prefer it so. Only once did Elizabeth venture a playful censure. “Sir,” she told him, “if you will persist in being the cause of so many improvements, you must be careful to keep a very solemn face, or people will suspect you of pleasure.” He bowed with all imaginable gravity. “I am grateful for your counsel, Miss Bennet. I am determined to look severe whenever good is done.” They laughed, and Mrs. Gardiner looked between them with such quiet happiness that Elizabeth wished, for her sake, to be worthy of every hope she might dare.
There are feelings one cannot set aside in six weeks, however kind the company or bright the air. At times Elizabeth felt a strange hesitation, as though happiness were a country whosecustoms she had never learned. She could not account for it. Some part of her still stood back from joy, even while longing for it. Her uncle and aunt could not be more indulgent, yet a voice within her still whispered that she ought to earn what was already given. When Mr. Darcy praised a thought or a remark, she often grew uneasy, fearing she had spoken too much; when he was silent, she feared she had disappointed him. She did not know why she should be so foolish, for he had never once made her feel inferior. It was rather her own heart that betrayed her. There were moments when she seemed to carry some invisible boundary with her, a habit of standing back even when invited forward. Mr. Darcy perceived it, she thought, though he never named it. He only listened when her spirits sank, then turned the subject so gently that her cheer returned before she had marked its loss. Once, after she had repeated something her mother once said of her manner of reading, he smiled and said, “Your voice is the kind that remembers meanings,” and asked whether the sea was rougher on a neap tide. She laughed at the oddness of the change, yet walked the rest of the way with a lighter step. She could not explain such comfort; it was as if he had learned how to steady what she did not understand in herself.
In these weeks of courtship she had learned as much of him as a woman ought to know before she knows the rest. He was exact where judgment is required, indulgent where it is not. He would not praise poor work, yet he honoured quiet excellence. He had a temper; he governed it. He had pride; he examined it. Accustomed to command, he preferred to persuade. He consulted her uncle as if it were an old practice, and attended to her aunt as if she were authority itself. With Elizabeth he was sometimes playful, often serious; and she was no longer afraid of their silence, for it was the ease that follows understanding.
Yet sometimes, when night was still and the house had gone quiet, she began to tremble at how easily joy may slip away. A strange dread stole upon her, a feeling that even if he were to ask what she most longed for, something would arise to forbid it. When they were together she knew no such fear; his presence banished every doubt. But when she was alone, she thought of how brief these days had been, how swiftly they must end. Mr. Gardiner’s business in Brinmouth was nearly complete; only the labour of the shipbuilders remained, and that would take many months. He could not stay for it, and they were soon to return to London, and then to Longbourn. Each day felt both given and held on loan. She told herself that she was foolish to anticipate loss where she had known only kindness, yet the thought persisted.
Chapter Seventeen
He lay awake, the candle sinking low, and let his mind drift to what those weeks had been. The book in his hand had long ceased to claim attention; its print stood sharp and unmoving while thought moved freely beyond it. It had been six weeks since Mr. Gardiner first permitted him to call; six weeks since he learned that happiness may be quiet and still be happiness. He did not write; he never had. Yet remembrance arranged itself as plainly as any page, and he was content to read it in his thoughts.
The lighthouse came first to memory. He had not gone with any expectation beyond civility, yet that day had marked a quiet beginning. He could still see her standing before the great lamp, her eyes lifted toward the glass, her voice speaking of its purpose with a reverence that made simplicity profound. A steadfast thing, she had called it, set high for the sake of strangers. He had smiled at her words, not in jest, but with that attention which makes a man more careful of what he feels. He had spoken inreply, hardly knowing why, that there are blessings which do not shine until one ventures near them, and that from far away they look severe.
After that day their morning walks became a gentle habit. He had not intended to speak so freely, yet her kindness drew truth from him as the sea draws light from the sky. He had told her more of himself than he had ever meant to tell: of his mother’s death, his father’s long solitude, of a pride that had too often stood as armour when it might have served as strength. She had listened, not as one performing sympathy, but as one who understood that sorrow is not always meant to be pitied. He remembered a single moment when her breath caught, not from fear but from recognition, and the sound of it had humbled him.
He thought then of her own story, the morning she had spoken of her father’s accounts. She had told it simply, almost cheerfully, how she was called upon to correct figures, how her mother disclaimed the task, and how her sister praised her neatness. She had been proud to be thought capable, proud to be needed where affection was withheld. He had felt anger then, though he concealed it, anger for her rather than at her. It had tempted him toward speech, yet he knew too well that words born of indignation often wound where they mean to defend. So he had said only that it was much to require, and turned the talk to the tide-table. The words were few, but the thought behind them had never left him.
He knew, better than most, how affection may become a lesson in obedience. He had been raised by a father whose authority was constant, whose company after grief became a solitude with a single door. There had been no neglect of duty, but no ease in it either. Praise came as reward for submission; approval was the price of silence. He had learned to speak little, because silence was safe. At Cambridge, and later throughRichard’s cheerful contradiction, he had begun to unlearn that reserve, to discover that affection may advise without command and honour without fear. Perhaps that was why Elizabeth’s manner moved him so deeply. Her courage was unconscious, her endurance unacknowledged. She believed herself fortunate in usefulness and did not yet see how she had been made to earn what should have been freely given.
He wondered if he had ever loved anyone before her. He had admired, certainly, and approved where approval was due, but this was something wholly different. It was a tenderness sharpened by understanding and enlarged by awe, a wish to protect what was innocent without diminishing what was strong. He had resolved not to awaken her to any painful truth before its time. A heart that has been taught to take pride in service must not be told too soon that it has been used. He would wait. To guard without alarming, to cherish without presuming, that was the devotion he chose. It was not concealment; it was reverence.
At the docks he had stood beside Mr. Gardiner while they spoke of timber and pitch, and found in that good man’s sense of purpose a pleasure equal to his own. Elizabeth had watched the frame of the vessel rise with the same quiet wonder she might have shown before a sunset; she seemed happiest wherever the work of tomorrow was being shaped.
A few days later they had dined in town with the Gardiners, a simple meal taken at an inn that overlooked the quay. The talk had turned, as it often did, upon children and home; Mrs. Gardiner’s counsel flowed so naturally from affection that even prudence seemed gracious. Darcy had watched Elizabeth then, noting how her aunt’s voice softened her own manner, how the sparkle of wit in her eye was tempered by warmth rather than pride. Madeline Gardiner had once been to him the very pattern of sweetness joined to understanding, and he had longsupposed the memory of her settled beyond the reach of present happiness. To find something of her former grace reflected in Elizabeth, softened by youth and brightened by a liveliness all her own, gave him a sensation so grateful that he scarcely trusted himself to speak of it. It seemed to him, in that hour, that affection might indeed be inherited, not by blood alone but by the quiet transmission of example.
Later that week, while visiting the Gardiners’ lodging for tea, he had joined them in a discussion that began upon books and ended upon the subject of character. Elizabeth sat near the window, the light falling upon her face, and spoke of how words may shape the heart without our knowing it. Mrs. Gardiner smiled at her niece’s earnestness, Mr. Gardiner listened with content, and Darcy felt himself drawn into the circle as if it had always been his place. He had stood in finer rooms and known only solitude; he was not lonely there.
There had been the small sail upon the water, when she had looked back to the shore and lost her courage for a moment. He had not urged her to recover it; he had stood near until her smile returned, thinking that her bravery was lovelier for being so modestly won. He could still hear her laughter when the boat rose against the wave, and his own, answering hers like an echo long forgotten.
Even the acts of quiet generosity returned to him, not as boasts but as the natural expression of affection. He had seen a hungry boy gazing into a baker’s window and found means to remedy it without remark. He had cleared a journeyman’s account at the yard because illness should never depend upon good fortune. When Mrs. Gardiner admired a piece of muslin she would not allow herself to buy, he had sent it, with another of equal fineness, to their lodging. He loved her as the cousin of his youth and wished, too, to honour Elizabeth without offence.Two lengths had answered both intentions, and no one need be embarrassed by gratitude. It had pleased him more than any public triumph he could recall.
Not every recollection was of ease. There had been mornings when her cheerfulness seemed a labour, and moments when her thanks for some slight attention carried a tone of apology, as if comfort must be earned. He had seen that habit before in himself and knew its weight. When he praised her thought, she sometimes feared she had spoken too much; when he fell silent, she feared she had failed to please. He learned to change the subject with care. Once, when she recalled some petty censure of her reading, he told her simply that her voice made sense audible. When her colour rose, he asked instead about the tide, and her laughter then was all the reward he sought.
So the weeks passed, each one confirming what the last had promised. He had come to know her as a man may know before he knows the rest:attentive where others are careless, patient where others grow restless. He had seen her listen to her uncle as though prudence were a road to be walked, and consult her aunt as if wisdom were family itself. With him she was sometimes playful, often serious, and always true. Their silences had become as dear as their speech.
Yet as the tide of memory ebbed, he felt again that strange unease which love alone can bring. There were hours when fear returned as the sea returns to the shore, quietly at first, then stronger. It was not the old fear of his father’s shadow; that had belonged to boyhood. It was the fear of a man who has found something precious and cannot believe it will be allowed to last. He knew the Gardiners’ business drew toward its close, that the ship would take months to finish, and that the family must soon depart for London. And after London, she must go home to Longbourn.
That thought returned again and again, and with it a kind of dread he could neither silence nor name. Longbourn. A house where her brightness must appear too bold, where her intelligence must often be met with reproof, where affection would be portioned out in praise for duty rather than delight in her spirit. The idea of her returning there, among those who measured her worth by how well she served them, filled him with a grief that felt almost like guilt. He wanted to love her as she deserved to be loved, freely and without fear. He wished to give her a home where affection would never be conditional, where her laughter might sound without apology. If he could but keep her from being again undervalued, if he could make her happiness a constant thing and not a borrowed light, he would count no cost too high.
