They find an express at the house. Pemberley has been flooded, the situation is dire. Darcy leaves on horseback the next morning, Elizabeth will join him in the carriage.
"I apologize. I thought your London stay would be more pleasant," he says, when he's at the door.
"My stay in town was very pleasant," Elizabeth answers. "I enjoyed it immensely."
He stares at her. Trying to divine her thoughts, her emotions. Trying to interpret her smile.
Trying to guess if there is… more.
"I am talking, of course, about yesterday dinner," he adds, with a smile of his own. (Apologetic.) (A little shy.) "My family's attitude, and Julia's, is unpardonable."
Elizabeth shakes her head. "It is of no importance. None whatsoever." Then she hesitates, and it is her turn to look shy. "I mean – I understand their judgment is of great importance to you, and..."
"No," he interrupts. "No. It is not."
It is in direct contradiction with what he told her on their wedding night. They look at each other, there is so much more to say, but Pemberley is waiting. (It is a lie. The truth is, he is terrified.)
"I hope we come back in town sometimes," Elizabeth says softly.
"We will."
They are still looking at each other.
He does not know how to say goodbye. (He does not want to.)
So many things to tell her.
They say goodbye. He leaves.
...
Four days later, in the morning, Elizabeth's carriage arrives at Pemberley. Near Pemberley. Because she has to do the last mile on foot.
Three villages flooded, and the main house. The water has receded now, and Elizabeth can enter the… her… She can come home. She's aghast at the damage. It gets worse. After the first flood, a dam broke uphill, she learns, creating a second disaster. Now Lambton is underwater, and another village, and...
No time for grey. No time for self reflection or melancholy. Darcy is in Lambton. She doesn't see him. Elizabeth's duties are food and shelter, for more than two hundred people. Women and children. (Men are away helping.)
People everywhere.
Pemberley's ground floor, the part that hasn't been flooded. Half of Pemberley's first floor.
Fires and warm soup and running around with Mrs. Reynolds and staff. It's like they are allies in a war, she and Mrs. Reynolds, giving orders, making hard decisions. Thinking in essentials. One woman has seen her three children drown before her eyes. News come from Lambton and it's bad, and it's night. Darcy doesn't come back. Then it's morning and people are coughing. Elizabeth thinks of pneumonia, of children dying. "They ingested unhealthy water," the Reverend explains. "Miasma." Fires, blankets, hot tea, hot remedies. One baby has a high fever. He is near death. He vomits. The Elizabeth that once looked for colors in the snow seems to be a thousand years away.
If she ever existed.
It's raining again.
The men are still at Lambton and the other village, trying to save what may. They need food. Elizabeth and three kitchen maids (and mules and a cart) go there, bringing everything they can.
Elizabeth has not seen Darcy since he left the house, in London.
In Lambton it's water and mud and dead bodies. (Aligned in the mud.) "Only" a dozen. (It could have been so much worse, everyone say.) The activity is dwindling down. It's over, mostly. People who could be saved are safe, the others are dead. The water will recede.
(If it ever stops raining.)
Darcy is nowhere in sight.
She looks for him.
He's that way, someone says. No – he left to inspect Brooks' house, someone else explains. Someone talks about the church basement. Then apparently he's helping to empty the Anderson's barn.
Except he's nowhere.
The sun is going down. Elizabeth panics.
She walks north, following the water. Someone said he left that way, an hour ago.
She walks.
...
The noise and voices of the village fade. She keeps walking, calling him.
Nothing. No one.
...
Only water and flooded houses and darkening skies. The world is brown and silver. A universe in dual tones. The sky is an endless mirror.
Emptiness and death. She keeps walking. She goes farther and farther, the only spark of life in a perfectly still world. In fact, she never felt so alive. In the worse way possible: pain, exhaustion, fear. Searing fear.
She keeps calling him.
The rain falls harder.
"Here!" His voice.
"Where?"
"Here!" he repeats. "Hurry! The boy is trapped!"
The house. The flooded house, in the middle of the river, there was a whole hamlet there, now Atlantis. She enters the freezing river, feet, calves, knees, it's getting dark. There is a wall and the door is open but it is flooded to the lintel. It is the only way in. Grey, mud, cold. She can't swim.
"Hurry!" he says. "I'm not going to be able to hold him when…"
She dives under.