Our final day in Kent is spent in such a flurry of preparations that I do not have time to think at all. Our clothes are packed and our trunks taken downstairs by John; Mrs. Baxter and I have left out only William’s and my clothing for tonight, when we will attend our last dinner at Rosings Park, and our traveling clothes for tomorrow.
Louisa seems baffled by so much activity, and she goes to bed early, exhausted by being so alert to our movements throughout the day. I stroke her hair as she drifts into sleep for the final time in this cot, in this nursery. Tomorrow, though she does not know it, she begins her new life as a gentleman’s daughter. I am glad for her, truly, and I hold on to that gladness as her breathing slows and deepens, and as I creep from the nursery and into my bedchamber and begin to ready myself for dinner.
“YOU ARE LOOKING very tired this evening, Mrs. Collins,” Lady Catherine says over the soup.
“I have been very busy, ma’am—”
“No doubt you have been too excited to sleep much. I can understand it, though I must remind you of the importance of a good night’s sleep; you are becoming mistress of an estate, and you cannot allow tiredness to keep you from your responsibilities.”
“Indeed, Lady Catherine, I have no intention of—”
“I remember Longbourn as being smallish, with an unfortunate arrangement of rooms, but it is larger than what you are accustomed to, at least, and I am sure with some guidance you will make what you can of it. No doubt your mother will help, and I would by no means consider it an imposition if you were to write me with any questions that you might have.”
I feel very removed from this conversation; my voice echoes oddly in my ears as I say, “Thank you, Lady Catherine. That is most generous of you.”
“You are magnanimity itself, Your Ladyship,” William says.
Lady Catherine accepts our compliments with all the graciousness I have come to expect.
“You will be with your family at Christmas,” she says. “That will please you, I expect, though I suppose you will miss the splendor of the holiday here. Still, I will send you Cook’s recipe for rum cake, and that should cheer you. I cannot count the number of people who have sat at my table at Christmas and told me it is the finest they have ever tasted.”
When the time comes at last to take our leave, her ladyship sends us off with much advice about our journey and with happy wishes for our new life, echoed listlessly by Miss de Bourgh. So many words are required to express William’s gratitude toward her ladyship that it is another quarter hour before we are gone.
Though it is quite dark when Lady Catherine’s carriage returns us to the parsonage, I look back through the carriage window to see Rosings’s silhouette, even darker than the sky, soaring above us.
DESPITE MY TIREDNESS, I cannot sleep; my mind will not still, and my body is restless. I try to lie unmoving beneath the blankets, but it is difficult, and at last, fearful of waking William, I leave the bed and wrap myself in my warmest shawl. My feet in their stockings are quiet against the floorboards, and the door, well oiled, does not creak when I open it.
I find my way downstairs by touch and close myself in my parlor. The moon is nearing its fullest phase, and the room is washed in shades of gray. It is all so familiar: the furniture, with its dark wood and blue upholstery; the fireplace, cold now, the face of its mantel clock gleaming palely in the moonlight; the window looking out on the garden. I have already packed away the few items we will be taking with us: my sewing box, my books, the painted bowl from Elizabeth, and a rather amateurish watercolor rendering of Lucas Lodge, sent to me by Maria soon after my marriage. The rest will remain, and though I chose none of it myself, I am suddenly choked by the dearness of it all, even the carpet, whose pattern, blurred now by the room’s dimness, has never been to my taste.
I sit in my favorite chair, legs drawn up against the cold, and wrap my shawl more securely around me.
I MUST HAVE slept a little, for when next I look out the window there is the palest light at the horizon, so faint that I know it must be an hour at least until true sunrise. My limbs are cramped and protest when I stretch them. I stare out at the lightening garden, where the plants sleep on through the winter, and wish that I could see it once more in the fullness of summer.
An old familiar urge takes hold of me, and I rise and leave the parlor.
Upstairs, I enter our bedchamber as quietly as I can. William rolled in his sleep and now lies sprawled across the entire bed. I remove my nightshift and begin to dress in the gown Mrs. Baxter left out of the trunk for me yesterday; I make it as far as sitting down at my dressing table, my fingers working to free my hair from its plait, before William awakens.
“What are you doing?” he says. His voice is heavy with sleep.
My hands still. “I could not sleep. I thought I might take a walk in the garden.”
“At this hour? It is still nearly dark!”
“Yes.” I have unbound my hair and now I am gathering sections of it to pin. On impulse, I add, “I might go a little farther, perhaps—I have enjoyed my walks here so, and would like to . . . say good-bye.”
“We leave this morning!” William sits up a little more in bed. “Charlotte, I hardly think—”
“Go back to sleep, my dear,” I say, and jab the last pin in place. “I will be back before you awaken, and long before we must leave. The carriage will not arrive until after nine o’clock.”
He looks as if he might protest again, but I do not give him the chance, rising from my chair, crossing the room quickly, and opening the door. I do not look back as I close it behind me.
THE SILENT GARDEN holds no comfort for me. I walk the familiar paths, past the hedgerows and the dormant fruit trees, past beds of flowers I will not see bloom again.
I reach the edge of the garden and stop. Here, beside the lane, the roses stand sleeping as soundly as the other plants, their branches nearly bare of leaves.
Autumn, I think. He said autumn was the best time, and I have missed that; it has grown too cold, perhaps.
I could try anyway. A knife, I need a knife—
I rush to the little outbuilding where William and John keep their tools and find a small pruning knife. Back to the roses, my boots scattering gravel, but here I pause. I am no gardener, and I do not know where to cut.
At last I take the knife and grasp a stem between the thorns, cut it off, then move to the next bush, and the next, and the next, until I have cuttings from each. In my hand, they look like a bundle of dead sticks, and I feel silly even as I return the knife to its proper place and put the cuttings at the bottom of the basket I usually use for carrying herbs and flowers into the house. Then I hurry through the garden and out the gate before I can think better of it.
In the woods, the ground is hard and cold beneath a thick brown blanket of dropped leaves. My skirt rustles through them, the only sound besides my increasingly labored breathing. I move faster and faster until I am nearly running, the trees a blur to either side of me, my blood beating wildly, until at last my breath runs short.
I am accustomed to extensive walking but not to more vigorous activity. I stop, press one hand to my breast and the other against the trunk of the nearest tree. I wish we could stay here for another half year so I can see the woods once more in the spring: the ground lightly furred with green; the shy faces of the first violets; the gentle slant of the sunlight through the trees’ new leaves.
I wish that we could stay forever.
I begin walking again, my pace quick but not so fast as before, and soon I have reached the fields. I feel strong and reckless, the grass crackling under my feet.
When I reach the last familiar hill before the Travis farm, the muscles in my legs are burning. At the top I look down at the buildings spread out before me, thinking of what I ought to do; it is an indecent hour to pay a call, but I hope Mr. Travis, keeping a farmer’s hours, will already be at work outside somewhere.
And I blink, for there he is, walking up the hill toward me. My heart’s rhythm is suddenly fast enough to hurt as it thumps behind my ribs. His head is down, and so he does not see me, and as he nears me I can hear him muttering to himself, though I cannot make out the words.
“Mr. Travis,” I say when he is nearly upon me, and he lets out a startled noise and steps back, head jerking up to look at me. He gapes.
“Mrs. Collins! What are you—what are you doing here?”
I am intensely aware of the absurdity, the impropriety, of standing here at such an hour, but I swallow the apology that rises in my throat and say instead, “We are leaving today.”
In the early light, I cannot quite make out Mr. Travis’s expression. “I know.”
“I . . .” I thrust the basket toward him. “I brought you cuttings. From the roses.”
“The . . .” He stares down at the basket, and I am suddenly flooded with the heat of humiliation. I begin to draw the basket away.
“It was foolish,” I say, speaking too quickly. “It was your father who would have really appreciated them—I do not know what I was thinking—”
He reaches out, his hand closing over mine around the basket’s handle. My teeth click together as my mouth closes abruptly. “It was not foolish,” he says, and there is a roughness to his voice that makes me uncertain where to rest my eyes. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He releases my hand very quickly, as though suddenly aware of what he is doing. Though we are both wearing gloves, I wish he would touch me again. The thought should shame me, but I am too full of other feelings, just now, to allow shame any space.
I hand him the basket. “I did not know what I was doing—I hope they will grow for you.”
He takes one cutting out and holds it up, squinting. “I think I can make it root,” he says, and then he looks at me. “They will remind me of you.”
I do not know what to say. The sun is rising higher, far too quickly. I need to return to the parsonage, but I cannot make my feet move or my mouth form the words it ought, words of polite farewell.
“I should not have been so ungracious, when last we met,” he says after a moment.
I shake my head. “I was . . . I do not know why I said the things I did. I pushed you, and I . . . cannot explain myself.” I do not ask whether he will offer for Miss Harmon, after all; I do not need to know.
“And when I learned that you were leaving . . . I thought I would not have a chance to say good-bye.” He looks down. “I have been a coward. Even now—even now, just before I met you, I was trying to talk myself out of walking toward Rosings.” A quick glance up at me, and then away again. “I thought that even if I chanced to see you, we would not be able to speak; and I feared that if we were, by some good fortune, able to exchange a few words . . . I would not be able to speak as I ought.” He swallows, and I track the movement of his throat with my eyes.
My voice catches so that it is nearly a whisper. “What do you feel you ought to say?”
A faint, ironical smile. “I ought to wish you well in your new life. I ought to have done so long ago, when I first heard the news, instead of . . . But I am more selfish than I had thought myself to be. I did not think of your good fortune, but of my own—my own loss.”
The words will fester inside me if I do not release them. “It is my loss, as well.”
Mr. Travis reaches one hand into the basket and withdraws two cuttings. He stands holding them for a moment before looking up and offering them to me. “You should have some, as well,” he says. “For your new home.”
I reach out and take them gently. His words echo in my head—They will remind me of you—though I dare not speak them aloud. We stand looking at each other, and then I glance at the sky, which is streaked with pink and gold. “I must go,” I say. “We leave soon—I should not have come. But I am—glad—to have had the chance to see you again.”
Mr. Travis glances from me, to the fields I will travel to return to the parsonage, and back again. He looks as though he wishes to speak, but then he shakes his head. Now that it is growing light, I can see that he seems as tired as I feel, his eyes shadowed with purple, the lines about his mouth cutting deep.
“I am grateful to have known you, Mrs. Collins,” he says at last.
The space behind my eyes burns. “And I you.”
There is so much else I could say, but I touch my fingers to my mouth before any more words escape. From the corner of my eye, I see Mr. Travis lift a hand as though to reach out; then his fingers curl into his palm, and his arm drops back to his side.