Mistaken Expectations #2
“I am entirely at her disposal,” said Elizabeth. “Pray assure Mrs Harding I shall wait upon her directly.”
She hesitated a moment, and then added, “My sister is anxious for news of the foal, and desired me to enquire after it, if you would be so good as to inform me how it does.”
Mr Harding’s countenance relaxed slightly.
“It does very well, I thank you. I saw it not an hour ago, and there was nothing to give concern.”
“I am glad to hear it,” she returned.
Mr Harding rose soon after, and, having taken his leave with the same propriety with which he had entered, departed without delay.
Elizabeth returned to her mother, and delivered his message. Mrs Bennet expressed herself gratified by Mrs Harding’s attention, though she lamented her own inability to attend, and charged Elizabeth to give every assurance of her concern.
There was little time lost in preparation. Elizabeth changed what was necessary, and was ready to set out within a short interval; and though she did not question the summons, she could not be wholly without curiosity as to its occasion.
She was soon on her way again to Highfield.
Elizabeth was admitted without delay, and found Mrs Harding alone.
She rose as Elizabeth entered, and received her with kindness, though with a gravity that was more marked than before. There was something in her manner, at once composed and cautious, which Elizabeth could not but observe.
“I am much obliged to you for coming,” said she. “I would not have troubled you, but that I thought it right—”
“You cannot trouble me,” Elizabeth returned. “I am only concerned that you should have occasion to send for me. I hope you are not unwell.”
Mrs Harding seemed to hesitate.
“No—no, not unwell,” she said, though without immediate firmness. “You are very good. Pray be seated.”
Elizabeth complied, but her concern was not wholly removed.
Mrs Harding did not immediately speak. She had the manner of a woman who had determined upon something and was only gathering herself to begin.
“I must tell you something,” she said at last, “which I would rather you heard from me than from any other quarter.”
Elizabeth waited.
“My nephew called upon us this morning.” A pause. “He came to tell us that he is engaged. That he has been engaged for some considerable time.”
Elizabeth was still.
“To Miss Finch,” Mrs Harding added, and looked at her with the careful attention of someone prepared to offer support the moment it was needed.
Elizabeth heard the name and placed her at once. The funeral. Cassandra’s slight smile. A cousin of Matthew’s. The two of them at the far end of the room, Ashton apparently wholly occupied by what passed between them. She had looked away. She had thought nothing of it.
She thought of it now.
“I see,” she said.
The words were quiet, and entirely steady, and she could feel Mrs Harding watching her face for the thing that was not there.
“My dear,” said Mrs Harding, gently.
Elizabeth looked at her, at the kindness in her expression, the careful preparation for a grief she had come to witness, and felt something that was not quite what Mrs Harding supposed.
“You are very good to tell me yourself,” Elizabeth said. “I am grateful for it.”
Mrs Harding reached forward and pressed her hand.
Elizabeth allowed it.
“I will not pretend,” Mrs Harding said, “that I have been entirely easy in my mind this past year. Matthew is not unkind. But he ought to have been clearer. My sister’s illness was so long, and he was unwilling to give her any uneasiness while there was hope she might yet recover.
I believe he thought it kinder to say nothing.
And I am sorry, my dear, that he was not. ”
Elizabeth considered her answer.
“I do not think,” she said at last, “that I was given cause for any expectation that was distinctly his doing.” She paused. “The neighbourhood, perhaps, was somewhat beforehand with the principals in the matter.”
Mrs Harding looked at her a moment.
“You are more generous than he deserves.”
“I am only accurate,” Elizabeth returned.
Mrs Harding was still watching her, with the expression of someone not entirely convinced that the worst had not occurred.
Elizabeth met her gaze, and found she could do so without difficulty.
“I am quite well,” she said. “Truly.”
A silence followed, not uncomfortable.
“Miss Finch was at the funeral,” Elizabeth said.
“She was.” Mrs Harding’s voice was careful. “I should have, perhaps I ought to have told you sooner. But Matthew had asked us to say nothing until he had spoken to her family, and I did not feel it was mine to say.”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “Of course not.”
She looked toward the window. The afternoon light lay quiet across the room, and the house was still around them. She was aware of feeling something, though it was not what she had been prepared to feel, and not what Mrs Harding was preparing to console her for.
What she felt was chiefly the faint indignity of having stood in a room at a funeral, and looked away from something already decided, while the neighbourhood looked on and supposed her interested.
That, and a wish to be out of this room with its careful kindness, and walking somewhere with enough air to think in.
“I hope,” she said, “that they will be very happy.”
She meant it. That, at least, was simple.
She left Highfield without delay.
The air was mild, as it had been earlier in the day, and the light already softening toward evening. She took the path without particular direction, only with the wish to be in motion, and to be alone.
At first, her thoughts returned to what had just passed. She went again over Mrs Harding’s words, and over her own, and found nothing in them to alter. The matter was plain. It had been mistaken, and was now understood.
Yet it did not wholly satisfy her to leave it so.
She resumed her walk, but without the same steadiness.
There were other recollections now, less easily dismissed.
Conversations which had lingered beyond their occasion.
A manner which had not always been easy to account for.
Attention which, at the time, had seemed no more than civility, and which now appeared under a different light.
She stopped.
The path before her lay quiet and empty, and for a moment she did not move. It came upon her then with a clarity that admitted no doubt.
She had not been in danger of loving Mr Ashton.