Attentions & Assumptions #2
“Proper,” Mrs Bennet echoed, as though the word had been personally contrived to vex her. “It is perfectly proper to observe what any sensible person would observe. Was the dinner-table laid? Were there candles enough to light the whole house? Did you see the plate? The silver?”
Mary’s eyes widened. “No, Mama. I was not making an inventory of Pemberley.”
“No,” Mrs Bennet said, with tragic emphasis, “you were admiring it.”
Jane set down her work. “Mama, Mary has told us what mattered most to her. Surely that is something.”
Mrs Bennet looked from one daughter to the other, then relented with visible reluctance.
“Well,” she said, “I daresay the servants will still be there the next time.” Her eyes brightened. “And there will be a next time.”
Mrs Bennet could not keep her disappointment in silence, though she made an effort to dress it as principle.
“It is a pity,” she said, settling her teacup as though the matter were only a reflection and not a grievance.
“A very great pity. Mr Darcy has ten thousand a year, and it would have been such a thing for Jane. Such security. Such consequence. But he never looked at her as he ought. I cannot imagine why he did not.”
Jane coloured at once, and bent her head over her sewing with the obedient patience of a person determined not to be the subject of anyone’s schemes. Elizabeth said nothing, because there was nothing to say that would not either encourage her mother or wound her sister.
Mrs Bennet, however, had not finished arranging the future.
“When you are in colours again,” she continued, warming into instruction, “you must wear your blue gown, Jane. The one with the narrow trim. It becomes you beyond any other, and a gentleman cannot admire what he does not see. It might have caught his attention at once, if we had not been so afflicted with this melancholy.”
She sighed, then turned her head with sudden brightness, hope shifting direction merely because disappointment had proved useless.
“Still,” she added, “Mr Samuel Harding does seem a very good kind gentleman. I observed how he spoke to you. Civil, but not empty. There is a great deal in that, my dear. A young man who is not all rattle and display is worth noticing.”
Mrs Bennet turned from Jane’s blue gown with a sort of brisk resignation, unable to force Mr Darcy’s eyes where they would not go, and fixed them instead upon Elizabeth with an energy that did not require patience.
“Now you and Mr Ashton,” she said, lowering her voice, as though secrecy itself might make the thought respectable, “that is another matter entirely.”
Elizabeth kept her hands upon her work, because it was safer to appear occupied than amused.
“It is no matter at all,” she returned.
Mrs Bennet gave a small sound of triumph, taking Elizabeth’s answer for agreement.
“You may call it what you please. The whole village calls it something else. You cannot walk into Lambton twice in one week with the same gentleman without people drawing their conclusions, and I do not see why they should not. There is no harm in being thought well of.”
She leaned forward, her eyes bright with that peculiar mixture of tenderness and calculation which always made Elizabeth feel both loved and managed.
“Mrs Ashton speaks of you as though you were already her daughter,” she continued.
“Not that she says it in so many words. She is far too sensible for vulgar declarations. But she says how steady you are, and how useful, and how very much she values good sense in a young woman. And she sends broth as though it were nothing, and meat as a mere convenience, and you know very well that nothing is ever sent without meaning.”
Elizabeth had, in truth, observed the meaning. She had also observed how easily her mother received it.
“And Mr Ashton is attentive,” Mrs Bennet went on, satisfied with her own proof.
“He walks with you, he carries things, he speaks of you in a way that suggests you belong in the place. That is how a gentleman behaves when he intends more than mere neighbourliness. You must not be odd, Lizzy. You must not laugh him out of countenance, or contradict him before shopkeepers, or treat his company as a jest. It will be talked of.”
“It is talked of already,” Elizabeth said, before she could stop herself.
Mrs Bennet smiled, for that was precisely the point. “Yes. And it is a very pleasant thing, for once, to be talked of kindly.”
* * *
The bedchamber was cold at the window and warm at the hearth, the sort of uneasy comfort the cottage offered for everything.
Jane had unpinned her hair and let it fall loose about her shoulders, and Elizabeth sat on the edge of her own bed with her stockings half-folded in her lap, turning them as though neatness might settle her thoughts.
From the other side of the room Jane said, very softly, “You laughed today.”
Elizabeth glanced up. “I should hope I am not yet reduced to solemnity as a permanent condition.”
Jane’s smile came and went. She crossed to her bed and began smoothing the coverlet, but the movement had more care than purpose. “I did not mean that. I meant how easily it came. Mr Ashton makes things easy for you.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened around the stocking. “He does,” she admitted. “He is pleasant. He says nothing that requires defence. He does not insist upon being admired for his civility.”
Jane sat, and in the firelight her face looked even gentler than it did by day. “And does that satisfy you?”
“It ought to,” Elizabeth said at once, because ought was always the first refuge. Then she frowned at herself. “Sometimes it does. I enjoy his company. I enjoy the walks. I enjoy being able to speak without weighing every word, without feeling I must either win or lose.”
Jane nodded, having expected no other answer. “That is liking, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth’s colour rose at the simplicity of it. “Yes,” she said, a little sharply. “And liking is sensible, and safe, and very often what people marry upon. I know all that.”
Jane’s gaze held hers, steady as a hand on a railing. “But you are asking whether it is more than liking.”
Elizabeth looked away, because even Jane’s kindness could feel too clear.
“I am asking whether I am meant to feel more,” she said, and hated the vanity of the question even as she spoke it.
“Or whether the world merely insists I must, because there are walks, and there are eyes, and there is a mother who has decided to be pleased.”
Jane’s expression softened, but her voice did not retreat. “What do you feel when you are with him?”
Elizabeth’s mouth opened, and then closed again. That, at least, ought to have been easy.
“When I am with Mr Ashton,” she said at last, “everything is simple. It is… comfortable. He makes me laugh. He makes Lambton feel less like a place we have borrowed, and more like a place we might belong.”
Jane’s gaze did not waver. “And when you see Mr Darcy?”
Elizabeth’s throat tightened in a way she did not like. “That is not the same,” she said quickly.
“No,” Jane agreed, still mild. “It is not.”
Elizabeth drew a breath. The room was too small for evasion; Jane was too quiet for it.
“I see him only at church,” she said, and heard the absurdity of the complaint in her own voice.
“He bows as he must. He speaks to no one who does not first speak to him. He is gone before the churchyard has properly become a place for conversation. And yet I come home feeling I have been spoken to.”
Jane’s hands stilled on the coverlet. “Do you wish him to speak to you?”
Elizabeth stared at the fire, because the fire was easier than Jane. “I do not know,” she whispered. “That is the humiliation of it. I do not know what I want, and everyone else appears determined that I shall want what is convenient.”
Jane rose, came to Elizabeth’s bed, and sat beside her without asking leave, as she always had done since they were children. She took Elizabeth’s hand, and her fingers were warm.
“Then do not let anyone hurry you into naming it,” Jane said. “Not Mama. Not Mrs Ashton. Not even yourself.”
Elizabeth let out a breath that was almost a laugh, almost a surrender. “You make it sound as though I might be allowed to be uncertain.”
“You are allowed,” Jane replied, and her smile, when it came, was soft rather than teasing. “Uncertainty is not a fault, Lizzy. It is only honesty.”
Elizabeth leaned her head for a moment against Jane’s shoulder, just long enough to borrow steadiness.
Then she straightened, because she was herself again, and because she could not bear too much tenderness without disguising it.
“And if Mama asks tomorrow,” she said, “I shall tell her I am very much in love with lamp oil, soap, and a sensible walk into the village.”
Jane’s quiet laughter followed them both into sleep.