Page 16 of The Marriage Articles

Chapter Nine

A man may walk the same garden path twice in one week and find it altered beyond recognition, which is a great deal to claim for a gravel walk bordered by bare espalier trees. Darcy turned his collar against the cold and considered the difference. The first time he had traversed this path, he was a man who did not yet suspect he would be refused. Now the settlement was signed, the neighbourhood was congratulating itself upon having foreseen the match, and he was walking to meet a woman who had accepted him with every appearance of wishing she had not. The path was unchanged. The trees were the same. He walked on.

Mrs Bennet had received him in the front drawing room with a rapture that lasted precisely three minutes before it became unmanageable. She had called him dear Mr Darcy twice and rung for tea he did not want. She had assured him that Lizzy would be down directly, that Lizzy was only finishing a letter, and that she had always declared Lizzy to be the cleverest of her daughters. Then she had excused herself upon a sudden recollection respecting the cook, which Darcy understood to be civility of a kind, being the withdrawal of an audience so that the principal performers might take the stage. He stood by the window and surveyed the drive, feeling, for a man lately so battered by this family, strangely at ease.

Miss Elizabeth came in without ceremony, her bonnet already on.

“Mr Darcy. My mother has abandoned you, I gather?”

“She remembered a matter of some urgency in the kitchen,” he said. “I was flattered to find myself considered trustworthy enough to be left alone.”

She adjusted one glove, not quite looking at him, and he understood that she had come downstairs with a purpose. “Will you walk with me in the garden? I find the drawing room very warm this morning.”

The drawing room was not warm at all.

He declared he should walk with the greatest pleasure and presented his arm at the door. She accepted it, and the action possessed its own quiet formality, a piece of public etiquette performed for no observer save a maid passing with a basket. The touch of her hand upon his sleeve remained with him through the whole length of the passage.

Out by the side door and onto the gravel path they went, and for some minutes she said nothing at all. The cold was clean and the sun thin, the kind of morning that promised spring without intending to keep the promise. He matched his stride to hers, which was shorter than her usual stride, he had observed.

“Your settlement is generous,” she said at last. “More generous than I expected. I should like to say so before I say anything else, because I do not want you to think me ignorant of what it must have cost you.”

She stopped and faced him, and the thin sun caught the colour in her cheeks. “You could have refused to offer for me at all. You could have gone back to London the morning after my refusal and left me to the consequences of it, and no one would have blamed you. I refused you in terms which I have since had leisure to reconsider. That you came back, that you stood by the offer when the gossip made it the costlier course, I am very aware of all of it. I am thankful.”

He nodded once.

“I have something further to say, and I am not certain how you will receive it.”

“Whatever it is,” he said. “I would rather be told what you think than what you think I can bear to hear.”

“Very well.” She began to walk again, slowly, her hand still light upon his arm. “Here is the truth, and I owe you the truth.” She hesitated. “I do not know you at all, Mr Darcy. You have conducted yourself, since your return, in a manner that gives me no reason to doubt your character, and I believe you to be an honest man. But we have been acquainted only a handful of weeks, and half of those weeks you spent being distant at gatherings and I spent disliking you for it. You are a stranger to me, Mr Darcy. That is why I refused you. Not the misunderstanding at Netherfield, or not that alone. I would not bind my whole life to a man I did not know on the strength of rumour and other people’s gossip, and I resented being asked to do so. I resented it bitterly.”

He said nothing. His eyes were steady on hers, and the silence was invitation enough.

“I am not marrying you for ten thousand a year. I am not marrying you because the settlement secures my future.” She paused, her voice faltering slightly. “I am not marrying you because you are very handsome.”

A vivid flush rose in her cheeks.

Darcy felt a sudden, unexpected tightness in his chest. The utter simplicity of her admission, made with such glowing embarrassment, affected him more deeply than any studied compliment could ever have done.

“I am marrying you,” she continued, recovering her firmness, “because the people of Meryton have been cruel. Their cruelty falls upon my sisters if I do not marry. I will not have them pay for my mistake. I owe them that duty, Mr Darcy. I hope you can accept it on those terms.”

The garden was exceedingly quiet. Somewhere beyond the boundary wall a farm cart passed along the Meryton road, unhurried and indifferent, attending to the common business of the day while his own world was reshaped.

“It is hard to hear,” said he, after a moment’s silence. “Yet I had rather hear the truth from your lips than remain in ignorance.”

“I did consider not saying it.”

“Then I am obliged to you for the reconsideration.” He found he meant it, which surprised him, and he was still sorting the surprise when she drew a folded sheet of paper from inside her pelisse and held it against her side with both hands, as though it weighed more than paper should.

“There is something else. I intend to put my best foot forward, Mr Darcy. I intend to make the best of this marriage. But I have given the question a great deal of thought, and I have drawn up some articles. I know perfectly well they are not binding. A private agreement between a husband and wife has no standing anywhere. I am asking you to read them, and if you agree to them, to give me your word. Your word is the only jurisdiction I am appealing to.”

She gave him the sheet. Her hand, he saw, was not quite steady.

He unfolded it. The paper was written in her own hand, clear and deliberate. At the top she had written The Marriage Articles, and beneath it, with a formality that would have made his solicitor weep, Mr Darcy of Pemberley promises to uphold the following:

First. Separate bedchambers, and no exercise of a husband’s rights, until both shall freely consent to a change.

Second. Entire truth between us in all things, and an absolute freedom from false pretences.