Posted on 2009-10-31

Mr. Darcy gently kissed his sleeping bride on the temple, pushing aside the brim of her bonnet to gaze down at her – the dark hair curling in tendrils around her little shell-like ears, the rosy flush of slumber on her cheekbone like the delicate color of sunrise. She did not stir.

"Dearest," he murmured against her face, tightening his arm around her. "Wake up, my darling. We have arrived."

The new Mrs. Darcy sat up, rubbing her eyes before drawing her gloves back on. "We are at Pemberley already?"

"Certainly," he said, smirking a little at her confused expression. "You have slept for over three hours."

The author feels no need to chronicle in great detail the following events: meeting the servants, Mrs. Darcy's amazement and joy at the vast and elegant rooms of Pemberley, the dinner fraught with romantic tension and much gazing into each other's eyes, followed by Mr. Darcy's request for some music, as was only natural considering he had purchased a brand-new pianoforte as a wedding gift. How his dear wife was able to play at all with his breath gently wafting across her neck while he leaned near her to turn the pages, is a great wonder.

And at last, their first evening together, the bliss, the wonder, the esctasy, heavenly, gorgeous, the background music soared with sweet violins and the filmmakers put on one of those glowy-candlelight filters, etc, etc.

But other authors have recounted all this with greater skill and much less sarcasm than I. Let's skip forward to the next morning.

"Is the master stirring yet?" the parlormaid asked the chambermaid with a giggle.

"Not yet," returned the other.

"Cook complains she cannot hold breakfast warm much longer."

"But who could blame the master? The new mistress is so pretty, ain't she?"

"And charming, did you note how she repeated all our names when master introduced us?"

"I do hope this one lasts."

"Well that ain't likely, is it?"

Here the butler quelled the whispers with a stern frown.

Upstairs, Mr. and Mrs. Darcy had risen at last, but they did not appear to have much appetite for breakfast after all. It was as if they were feeding on each other's smiles like plants feed on sunlight.

"I am sure to lose myself!" exclaimed she, clinging to her husband's arm on the way down the corridor. "The house is even bigger than I remembered from last summer. I am half afraid to stir from your side, sir!"

Mr. Darcy pressed her a little closer. "Indeed, I am loathe to let you leave my presence, dearest, for other reasons. But fear not – I will conduct you on a more private tour, if you like. There are still many rooms you have not yet seen, and then if it is fine, perhaps a walk on the grounds."

"Oh yes, I should like nothing better! You know how I love to walk," she agreed.

Mrs. Darcy's eagerness could not have pleased her husband more. She was interested in all the rooms and what they were used for, and she adored the gardens. She was not even much put off by Mr. Darcy's staff paying her an unusual amount of attention. It was the novelty, she thought.

"But did you not once say there is a very pretty pond?" she inquired when they had reached the bottom of the gravel path through the rose garden.

"I don't recall saying so," said Mr. Darcy, a slight frown crossing his handsome features.

His wife reached up to smooth it away, brushing back the wayward dark curls on his brow. "Never mind, my dear, I must have been mistaken. It is only that Pemberley seems to have everything..."

"Do ye take Mistress to the pond?" interrupted a high, hissing sort of voice. Mrs. Darcy jumped, startled, and turned to see a gardener she had previously observed following them at a distance. Up close, he made a very odd figure, stooped and twisted, with huge luminous eyes.

Mr. Darcy stiffened instantly but the gardener continued in his strange voice.

"Aye, Misssstress, the pond be very pretty, yesss. But ye mussst take care not to fall in. Very dangerousss to fall in."

She shrunk away, disturbed. Mr. Darcy seemed to have recovered his voice.

"Begone, you!" he thundered. "Out of my sight!"

The gardener scampered off with a bizarre sideways loping stride; and Mr. Darcy, grasping his wife's hand in an iron grip, stalked back toward the house, pulling her behind him.

When they reached the french doors in the library, he stopped suddenly and turned to face her. She trembled with apprehension and exertion, bewildered by the change in her loving husband. But to her shock he looked as tender and happy as if the weird incident with the gardener had never happened.

"You haven't seen the portrait gallery yet, dear. But you must be tired. Let us take some refreshment first."

"Oh no," she said, anxious to please him after what had occurred. "I am not tired at all. But just as you like, of course. I believe I saw the portrait gallery last summer at any rate."

"That," said Mr. Darcy with a sweet leer, " was the public gallery. I prefer that general visitors not be shown my private gallery. The paintings within are too precious to be exposed to the uncaring gaze of any summer tourist."

He led her upstairs to the expansive landing, pulled aside a curtain made of some dark, heavy fabric, and unlocked a door concealed behind it.

"I can have no secrets from you now, my darling," said he, with a gentle but unyielding arm around her waist. "Let me introduce you to your predecessors."

"My – what?"

"Here is the first Mrs. Darcy," he continued, leading her to a fine oil painting in an ornate gilded frame. The woman pictured leaned against a classical column. Despite the skill with which the artist had painted her rich silk draperies, there was something about the staring eyes of the portrait that seemed troubling.

"I always admired her eyes," mused Mr. Darcy as if reading her thoughts. "Mrs. Darcy the second was not so beautiful, but she was livelier."

"My dear," faltered his current wife, "I had no idea you were married before..."

"Mrs. Darcy the third charmed me with her innocence, but after a while I found her taste in books a little irritating. I now always discuss books, even at a ball, to avoid future mistakes."

Indeed, the Mrs. Darcy in the third painting held a book between her white, tapered fingers. As she was painted looking down, her eyes did not seem so frightening, but the fourth painting was the worst yet. The woman in this painting looked positively dead.

"Too quiet and simpering for me," commented Mr. Darcy. "And her successor, the fifth Mrs. Darcy, her competence was a bother. I began to believe she thought herself superior to me. The best company indeed!"

The live woman at his side, Mrs. Darcy the sixth, fainted.

When she regained consciousness, it was dark. It appeared that she had been put to bed – she was wearing a nightgown and wrapped warmly in blankets. Turning anxiously, she became aware of her husband breathing slowly and evenly beside her. For a long moment, she lay frozen, hardly daring to breathe herself, her arms clenched beside her. But he was really sleeping, it seemed. He did not move even when she carefully slid out of bed, shaking so hard with fear and shock she thought the oaken bed frame itself would tremble with her.

She threw on a wrap and her slippers and stole out of the bedroom. The door did not squeak, but her footsteps in the corridor sounded impossibly loud. In the hall, she put her hand on the heavy handle of the front door, but hesitated. A shiver ran down her back and she turned, suddenly sure she was being watched. A group of servants stood in the back hall, gazing at her. She looked back. None of the group moved. Mrs. Darcy shrieked, wrenched open the door, and ran.

The garden was bright with moonlight but half-hidden by drifting mist that parted before her in ghostly strands. Standing by the arbor she saw the stooping figure of the strange pale gardener. He grinned at her and spoke.

"Don't follow the lightsss!"

She screamed again and ran faster than she had ever run before, drawn as if by an irresistible force, past the garden, down through the park, across the little bridge over the stream. Behind her, faintly, she heard the gardener's voice – "Don't follow the lightsss! Don't follow the lights!"

Beyond the bridge, in a little hollow, the moonlight shimmered across the surface of the pond.

And not just moonlight, she realized, blinking. There were little glowing lights dancing over the pond, skimming the surface, advancing and retreating. It must be a trick, an illusion, she thought, approaching the bank.

There were faces in the water. She jumped back. No, it must have been the mist. But when she leaned forward she saw them again – white, luminous faces, surrounded by wreaths of floating dark hair. And the faces were familiar – they were the faces of the women in the portrait gallery. Their lips moved faintly below the water, but no bubbles rose to break the surface. She thought she could read the word they formed so incessantly, so silently: Darcy, Darcy, Daaarcy...

"So there you are, my dear," said a deep voice behind her.

Mrs. Darcy whirled around with no more than a strangled gasp – as if all her screams had been torn from her and no more remained.

"If I had known you were so desperate to see the pond," said Mr. Darcy softly, "I would have taken you myself tomorrow. Come back to bed now, darling."

"No!" she cried, taking a step back.

"You are not well," he soothed, coming closer. "You must have your rest."

What followed remained confused in her memory – later she only recalled trying to evade his grasp, a brief struggle on the edge of the bank, then her foot slipping on the grass, the splash, and the dark water closing around her. She thought it pulled her under as if with inexorable hands, and for one moment she thought she heard a hissing whisper of "Daaaarcy..."

The next thing she knew, she was being pulled from the water by the thin, strong hands of the gardener.

"Told you was dangeroussss," he said.

She turned to follow his eyes and saw there her husband floating face-down in the water, draped by what looked like dark weeds, but could have been strands of dark hair.

"Better run far away, Misstressss," advised the gardener.

"And so I did," Marianne finished her story, sobbing. "Forgive me for coming to you – I know you are cramped here in the parsonage, but I had nowhere else to go –"

"Of course, we will care for you," soothed Elinor. "You are ill, dear sister – you must be feverish."

"You don't believe me!"

"How can I believe such a wild tale? It was a bad dream, Marianne. You are safe now. That nice Mr. Willoughby has been by several times already to ask about you..."