Comfort & Disquiet #2
Elizabeth could not hear his reply, only the change in it: a lower murmur, warmth restrained into something firmer. Miss Bingley’s laugh came once, too bright, and then ceased altogether.
In the room, Mrs Hurst, left to the instrument by default, sat down with the air of a woman resigning herself to duty. Her fingers struck the keys with more spirit than Elizabeth would have credited her, and perhaps that too was a kind of irritation.
A moment later Mr Bingley and Miss Bingley returned.
Mr Bingley’s expression was unchanged, amiable as ever. Miss Bingley’s colour was higher, and though her smile was perfectly in place, it did not reach her eyes. She moved at once towards the pianoforte.
As the music gave way to talk and talk thinned into yawns, Elizabeth rose when she could do so without drawing notice. Mr Darcy, who had spoken little since returning, crossed the room at the same moment.
“Good night, Miss Elizabeth,” he said, his smile warm and unguarded.
“Good night, sir.”
She carried it with her as she took her candle and went upstairs, as though the simple courtesy had weight.
Elizabeth set the candle on the table and began to undress with quiet care, as though noise might invite thought. Her gown was folded, her pins laid in a neat row. She washed her face in cool water and let it drip from her wrists, watching the ripples as though they could settle her mind.
When her hair was unbound at last, it fell heavy down her back, and the ache at her scalp felt honest.
She had only just drawn the coverlet back, discovered that Pudding was fast asleep under them, when there came a soft knock at the door.
“Lizzy?” Jane’s voice, gentle and cautious.
Elizabeth closed her eyes once. “Yes. Come in.”
Jane entered with her candle shaded by her hand, fearful, it seemed, of bringing too much light. She set it down and looked at Elizabeth with that quiet steadiness which never demanded an answer and yet always received one.
“I did not mean to disturb you,” Jane said. “I only thought you might not be asleep.”
Elizabeth drew the coverlet a little higher. “You are correct.”
Jane came farther into the room, the candlelight catching the pale edges of her cap and the soft fall of her hair about her cheeks. She paused when she saw the shape beneath the coverlet, then her mouth curved.
“Pudding has found you,” she said, with a faint amusement that did not quite reach her eyes.
“She found the warmth,” Elizabeth replied. Her hand slipped beneath the bedclothes and rested for a moment on the small, solid weight of her. Pudding did not stir. “She has more sense than I do.”
Jane moved to the chair by the hearth and sat, drawing her shawl closer though the room was not cold. She did not at once speak again. There were few people who understood that silence could be kinder than questions, but Jane had always been one of them.
Elizabeth listened to the house. There was a distant closing of a door, the soft tread of a foot in the passage, the faint murmur of voices somewhere below, already thinning into night. It ought to have been peace. Instead it was only a pause in which everything returned to her with sharper edges.
“You were very quiet after tea,” Jane said at last, offering the observation like a hand, not a judgement.
“I was tired,” Elizabeth answered, and then gave a little laugh that sounded more like impatience than humour. “It is astonishing how much fatigue can be produced by doing nothing.”
Jane’s eyes stayed on her. “You were not doing nothing.”
Elizabeth’s brows lifted.
Jane hesitated, then spoke with the gentle certainty of someone who had been watching all evening. “You were listening. You were noticing. You were being careful.”
Elizabeth turned her head on the pillow, fixing her gaze on the dark line of the canopy above. “I am always being careful now.”
Jane’s expression softened. “I know.”
The words did something to Elizabeth’s throat, tightening it as though she had swallowed too quickly.
She reached again for the excuse of Pudding, stroking her once, twice.
Her fur was warm beneath her fingers, indifferent to drawing rooms, indifferent to propriety, indifferent to Pemberley and its measured calm.
“I do not like being here,” Elizabeth said, and found that it was true. It came out plain, without ornament. “Or rather, that is not true. I like it too much, and that is what I cannot bear.”
Jane did not look startled. She only breathed out slowly, having waited, perhaps, for Elizabeth to give it a name.
“It is too easy,” Elizabeth went on, her voice lower now, speaking aloud seeming only to wake the ache again.
“Everything is arranged. One only has to sit, and be handed what is required. The fire is lit. The tea is poured. The very air seems to be managed. And I sit there and I am expected to… to admire it, and to be grateful, and to appear as though my mind is as neatly folded as my gown.”
Jane’s hands, folded in her lap, tightened one upon the other.
Elizabeth blinked hard and stared at the candle flame, because it was easier to look at something that moved in a simple, honest way.
“Yesterday,” she said, and her voice wavered in spite of herself, “my hands were black. I could not scrub them clean enough. I could not see what else might have been saved. I could not stop thinking of what was gone. And then, today, I sat at that pianoforte as though the only thing required of me was to be tolerable.”
Jane’s eyes brightened. She turned her face away for a moment, unwilling, perhaps, to allow tears either.
“It is not wrong to feel both,” Jane said, when she could speak. “Relief does not erase grief. It only gives it room to be felt.”
Elizabeth’s mouth twisted. “Room. Yes. That is exactly it. There is too much room in these rooms. Too much space in which to think.”
Jane’s lips trembled, and she moved onto the bed, taking Elizabeth’s hand in hers. “Oh Lizzy, you do not need to bear it alone.”
Elizabeth drew a breath and let it out slowly, forcing herself, it seemed, to unclench.
She had been braced all day, braced as though a drawing room might strike like a storm if she relaxed her guard.
Now, with Jane sitting there, she found that she could let one piece of herself loosen without everything falling apart.
“There was a moment,” Elizabeth said, and then stopped. Her cheeks warmed even in the dim light. “I do not know why I am telling you this.”
Jane’s gaze was steady. “Because you cannot carry it all by yourself.”
Elizabeth made a sound that might have been agreement, had she allowed herself to be certain.
“When Mr Darcy came into the room,” she said, and kept her eyes on the candle because she could not bear to watch Jane’s face, “and he stood there listening… he looked… pleased.”
Jane’s voice was very soft. “He looked moved.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened upon the edge of the coverlet. “Yes. That. And then, when Mary finished, he asked her to play again, plainly meaning everyone to understand that her effort mattered. To show what he valued.” She swallowed. “It was kind.”
“It was,” Jane agreed.
“And yet,” Elizabeth continued, the truth pressing, “it made me angry.”
Jane’s brows lifted, not in disapproval but in comprehension.
“Because he may do it,” Elizabeth said, the words quickening, afraid, perhaps, that she would lose them.
“He may bestow approval and make it look like justice. He may protect and it is called proper. He may cross a room and it is thought nothing at all, because he is Mr Darcy. But if I feel grateful, if I soften, if I allow myself to be relieved, then what am I? A creature who is pleased to be seen? A woman who sits and waits to be noticed?”
Jane’s eyes held hers now, clear and earnest. “You are a woman who has endured too much in too little time, and who is allowed to be tired.”
Elizabeth’s laugh escaped her, small and broken. “That is a very fine description, Jane. I do not know that it will satisfy me.”
Jane leaned forward, resting her hands on the edge of her chair. “Then tell me what would satisfy you.”
Elizabeth stared at her sister’s face, the familiar lines of it, the kindness that had not altered even as everything else had.
“I want,” Elizabeth said slowly, feeling her way, “to be myself again. Not the Elizabeth who must smile for company, and not the Elizabeth who must count candles and blankets and decide which things can be spared. I want—” She stopped and pressed her lips together. “I do not know what I want.”
Jane’s voice did not change. “You want to feel safe.”
The word landed with the bluntness of truth. Elizabeth’s eyes stung again, and she turned her face away as though she might deny it by not looking.
“I did not ask to be made unsafe,” she said, the resentment returning, sharp and familiar. “I did not ask to be left with nothing to do but remember what was lost.”
Jane rose. She climbed into the bed next to her sister, near enough that Elizabeth could feel the warmth of her presence but not so near as to crowd her. The movement was so quiet and natural that Elizabeth would have accepted it from no one else.
“You are not unsafe here,” Jane said.
Elizabeth’s answer was immediate. “How can you be sure?”
Jane’s gaze did not waver. “Because I watched him all evening.”
Elizabeth turned back, in spite of herself. “You watched Mr Darcy?”
“I could not help it,” Jane replied, and there was a slight colour in her cheeks too, placing her, perhaps, in an awkward position. “He is in his own house, Lizzy. Everything belongs to him, even the silences. And yet he was… uneasy. Not with us. Not with Georgiana. With Miss Bingley.”
Elizabeth’s mouth tightened. “Miss Bingley is uneasy with herself.”
Jane gave a small, reluctant smile. “Yes. But he was not merely indifferent to her. He was watchful. And when you rose to go, he rose too, almost at once, waiting, I thought, for the moment he might speak to you without being seen to pursue you.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught, and she was angry again, because the thought warmed her, and she hated herself for being warmed by it.
“It was only a good night,” she said, too quickly.
Jane’s eyes were gentle. “It was not nothing.”
Elizabeth stared at her sister, torn between the desire to scoff and the desire to believe.
“And,” Jane added quietly, “Mr Bingley took Miss Bingley out of the room for a reason.”
Elizabeth’s head snapped up. “You heard what he said to her?”
Jane’s mouth curved faintly. “Not every word. They were too far down the passage. But I heard enough to know his voice was not playful.”
Elizabeth’s brows rose. “Jane.”
“I know,” Jane said, and there was a tired honesty in it. “It surprised me. He said she was being unkind. Not lightly. He spoke as though he meant her to understand that he had observed it, and that it must stop.”
Elizabeth lay very still. The notion of Mr Bingley speaking firmly to his sister was so unexpected it seemed almost improper.
“And she?” Elizabeth asked, because she could not help it.
Jane hesitated. “She laughed once, at first, trying to turn it aside. But when he answered her, she did not laugh again.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened upon the coverlet. “So she is angry.”
“She is controlled,” Jane replied, choosing her words with care. “And she did not look pleased.”