Without Outward Change
Mr Darcy and his steward, Booth, stopped at the inn on their return to Pemberley, having been some hours from home upon business that had taken them further than was usual. The day was warm, and they chose a seat in the tap room, where a small number were already assembled.
They had not long been seated before the conversation of two men at a neighbouring table became impossible to avoid.
“It will be a long business now,” said one. “A full year at least, before anything can be settled.”
“Aye,” returned the other, “and a pity it is. It was as good as settled, so far as any body could tell. Only waiting on the mourning.”
“He might ask before the year is out,” said the first. “There is nothing to prevent it, if both are agreed.”
“Aye, but it would not sit well,” returned the second. “Not after all that has passed. They will expect it done properly.”
“There was some talk of it before, quiet-like, but every body had it in mind.”
“Just so. And it would have been a good thing, by all accounts.”
“She would have done very well there,” the first continued. “Just what the house wanted, after all they have had to go through. There has not been much comfort at Willowbank these many years.”
“No,” said the second, “not since the old gentleman’s death, and the illness after. It has been a hard place, by all accounts. And she so steady, and pleasant with it. It would have been a good thing.”
The steward returned with what had been ordered, and set it before them.
Darcy took up his glass, but did not immediately drink. The conversation, which he had not attended to at first, now fixed itself more distinctly in his mind.
It was spoken of as something already settled, delayed only by circumstance.
He drank, and made no remark.
They rode in silence, as was their custom when the day’s business was done. Booth kept half a length behind, and the road unwound before them through country Darcy knew well enough to traverse without attending to it. The conversation at the inn returned to him.
He had not meant to listen. Such talk was common enough in any tap room, the neighbourhood’s business conducted aloud, without ceremony. He had let it pass over him until the words arranged themselves into something that required attention.
She would have done very well there.
He did not doubt it. That was not the difficulty.
What returned to him, and would not be set aside, was simpler.
He had spent five months in careful restraint, keeping his distance where distance was proper, offering only what could be offered without implication.
He had done it because it was right. Because Ashton had, by every account, a prior claim.
He had believed the difficulty was Ashton.
As he approached the turning that led towards Ivy Cottage, Darcy perceived Elizabeth at some distance, coming from the orchard behind the house with a small basket upon her arm.
She saw him almost at the same moment, and paused. He made a slight gesture to Booth to continue, and turned Wicked in at the gate. He dismounted, and went forward.
“You have been abroad,” she said.
“Only some business beyond the lower farms,” he replied. “There has been a question of fencing along the boundary, which I thought it best to see myself.”
His glance fell to the basket. “You have found some worth bringing in.”
“The first of the apples,” she said. “Lydia is persuaded they improve every hour.”
“I do not doubt it.”
There was a moment’s pause.
“My sister is to begin sitting for her portrait this week,” he added. “She is not much disposed to sit.”
“I should think it a difficult task,” Elizabeth said. “To be so long under observation.”
“She does not think it agreeable.”
He had not meant to say more; yet the pause between them made silence less easy to maintain.
“If it would not be inconvenient, she would be glad of some company while she sits. She has mentioned you particularly, but your sisters would all be very welcome. I believe it would be a great comfort to her.”
She received it with immediate pleasure.
“I shall be very glad to attend her,” Elizabeth said. “Pray assure Georgiana of it. It is very kind of her to think of me.”
He bowed, but did not immediately speak.
It was said with such readiness, such evident satisfaction, that he could not but observe it. Whether the pleasure was wholly for his sister’s sake, or whether there was something more in it, he could not determine. He found himself wishing, for a moment, that he might know.
He made the necessary reply, and something further, though he was not afterwards certain what it had been.
There was no longer any difficulty in speaking; yet nothing was said that advanced what either might have wished to say. He was about to take his leave, when Bingley and Miss Bennet appeared from the orchard behind the house, he carrying a second basket and speaking as they approached.
“We have had some success,” he said. “Though I am persuaded we have been sent out too early.”
“You were determined to go,” Miss Bennet returned, smiling.
Bingley greeted Darcy with ready warmth, and spoke at once of an assembly to be held at Bakewell in a few weeks’ time, and of the general expectation that there could be no objection by then.
“It will be something like society again. Why, we must make a party of it,” Bingley continued. “It will do us all the good in the world. Miss Bennet, you and Miss Elizabeth must join us.”
Miss Bennet smiled, but with some hesitation.
“We should be very glad of it,” she said, “but Mrs Harding is in mourning, and we could not expect her to attend. We must find some other arrangement.”
“That may be managed,” Bingley returned readily. “There is time enough yet.”
The prospect of dancing, lately so remote as to be scarcely considered, presented itself now under a different aspect.
* * *
The morning appointed for Georgiana’s first sitting was clear, and the carriage from Pemberley came for them at the hour agreed upon.
Jane, Mary, and Elizabeth went together, and were shewn, on their arrival, into a smaller drawing room prepared for the purpose. The light had been managed with evident care, and every chair, table, and screen placed with more exactness than comfort.
Georgiana was already there. She looked very pretty, and very composed; yet Elizabeth saw at once that the composure had cost her something.
Mr Darcy stood a little apart, as if he had no concern in any part of it.
The painter, who had the grave civility of a man accustomed to disturb his sitters for their own advantage, bowed to them with proper attention, and then returned at once to his work.
Georgiana held out her hand with more warmth than the occasion seemed to warrant, and Elizabeth, taking it, was glad to feel the sincerity beneath her evident effort.
She was dressed in the pale blue which Elizabeth had helped her choose.
“What a very pretty colour,” said Jane, as they drew nearer. “It suits you exactly.”
Georgiana coloured with pleasure. “I am very glad you think so.”
Mary, who seldom praised where she was not convinced, inclined her head and said that the effect was very pleasing. Georgiana’s colour deepened, though she smiled still, and turned for a moment as if to see whether the painter had heard her commended.
“He has done nothing yet but place me badly and forbid me to move,” she said.
“That is because he means to do you justice,” said Elizabeth.
“I hope he means to do me quickly,” Georgiana returned, in a tone so low that it was almost lost; and Elizabeth, hearing the effort at lightness, smiled and took her seat nearer still.
Mr Darcy, who had hitherto left Georgiana to bear their notice without interference, now said quietly, “You have every advantage but patience, and that perhaps no painter can supply.”
Georgiana glanced at him with an expression caught between amusement and reproach.
“That is very hard, when I am making such an effort.”
“It is meant as praise,” he returned.
“And very justly given,” said Jane.
The painter, hearing more than he appeared to do, looked up only to beg that Miss Darcy would preserve exactly that expression, since it became her exceedingly. Georgiana laughed, and then tried at once to suppress it.
As the painter resumed his work, and Georgiana was once more persuaded into stillness, Elizabeth’s thoughts wandered in spite of herself.
She could not suppose that the matter of Mr Ashton and Miss Finch was yet generally known, for there had been no appearance of it in the neighbourhood, and Mrs Bennet still spoke as if every thing remained where it had been.
If it was not yet abroad, that, she thought, must be Mrs Harding’s doing.
She wondered, then, whether Mr Darcy knew it; and finding no answer, was a little surprised to discover how much she wished to know.
She did not look towards him immediately.
The question, once formed, seemed to make such a glance too nearly an enquiry.
Instead she fixed her attention upon Georgiana’s hands, which lay very prettily disposed, though with more effort than ease, and upon the painter’s slow adjustments to the fall of the sleeve.
When at last she did venture to raise her eyes, Mr Darcy was not in the room.
The disappointment, slight though it was, came and went so quickly that she scarcely knew it for what it was. She bent her head, and blamed herself for having looked at all.
Jane, who was seated a little behind Georgiana with some work upon her lap, asked after the progress of the picture, and drew from the painter an answer so measured and respectful that it conveyed almost nothing.
Mary, who had been silent for some time, observed that likeness was a thing more easily promised than secured, particularly where expression was concerned.
“That is precisely what I have been telling Miss Darcy,” said the painter, looking up again. “Expression is every thing.”
Georgiana sighed, though obediently.
“Then I am very sorry for it,” she said. “For I am certain mine cannot improve by being considered.”
“That is because you consider it too much yourself,” said Elizabeth.
Georgiana turned her head a fraction, then corrected it at once.
“You make every thing sound easy.”
“No,” said Elizabeth, smiling, “only less alarming.”
“That is a great deal better.”
The painter begged that Miss Darcy would preserve that look, and Georgiana, who could not help laughing at being so directed, was obliged to begin again.
The interruption, slight as it was, eased the room.
Even Mary’s mouth softened; and Jane, meeting Elizabeth’s eye for a moment, seemed to feel the same relief.
The sittings, once begun, carried on at intervals through the remainder of September.
Georgiana bore them better than she had expected, or at least with more cheerfulness when she was not left to the painter’s mercies alone; and the visits to Pemberley, repeated often enough to lose something of ceremony, became part of the quiet order of the month.
Mr Darcy was not always present. Estate business, or other engagements, frequently kept him away; yet he appeared often enough that his absence, when it occurred, was felt.
As the month advanced, and the first strictness of mourning gave way to a more allowable intercourse, there was less to separate one day from another, and more to remind Elizabeth how much had altered without any outward change at all.
* * *
October 1811
On the evening before the year was complete, Elizabeth walked out alone.
There had been nothing in the day itself to distinguish it from many others, yet she had felt its approach more nearly with every hour.
The first sharpness of grief had long since altered, and the forms of mourning, now so familiar as scarcely to be remarked, were about to pass from obligation into memory. She could not think of it lightly.
The air was still, and touched already with the cooler temper of autumn. She took the path by the stream, not from any formed intention, but because it had become, in these quieter months, a place where thought was easier.
She walked slowly, and with less attention to the path than to the thoughts that accompanied her.
Her father was in them, as he had been all day, though not with the old violence of absence.
She remembered his voice more readily now than the silence that had followed him.
The turn of his mind, the ease of his affection, the indulgence that had so often taken the place of rule, all returned with a tenderness no longer sharpened by disbelief.
He was loved, she thought, missed, and never to be forgotten. That must now suffice.
She had just reached the bend where the stream ran more narrowly between its banks when she perceived a figure some little way before her, and knew him before he turned.
Mr Darcy stopped as soon as he saw her, with an air that seemed to leave her entirely free either to advance or withdraw. She went on.
“I did not know I should find any one here,” she said.
“Nor I,” he replied. “I have only just come this way.”
There was nothing in the words, yet something in his manner made them seem enough. He fell into step beside her, and for some moments they walked without speaking.
“The water is lower than it was,” Elizabeth said, after a time.
“It will be lower still before November,” he replied. “There has been very little rain.”
“I had not noticed.”
“Nor had I, until Booth remarked upon it.”
She smiled a little. “Then we are both inattentive.”
“In some things,” he said.
They walked a little further, and then turned back by unspoken agreement, the path being narrow where the bank curved, and the light already failing.
He accompanied her as far as the gate, and there took his leave with a bow that was quieter than usual, and nothing further said on either side.
Elizabeth went in.
She did not immediately go upstairs, but stood a moment in the passage, her hand still upon the latch, the cool of the evening still upon her face.
She could not have said what had passed between them. Only that something had, and that she was not sorry for it.