Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Contradiction
The evening had drawn in early at Longbourn.
A small fire burnt in the parlour. The candles were lighted, and the wind, which had been troublesome all day, beat at the windows with a persistence that made the room within appear doubly comfortable.
Mrs. Bennet had at last retired to confer with Hill on some important subject connected with to-morrow’s dinner.
Kitty and Lydia had, by especial grace, been carried off to Meryton.
Mr. Bennet, with an expression of resigned virtue, had taken himself to the library.
For once, the parlour was comparatively quiet.
Elizabeth sat near the table, trimming a pen and sorting a few letters she had answered.
Mr. Darcy stood at some little distance, his elbow on the mantel, his eye straying, every now and then, rather more to her than to the small volume of essays he held.
Mary had a book open upon her lap, and Georgiana, placed next to her, was diligently plying her needle, though her attention wandered shamefully between her work and the two figures across the room.
“I maintain,” Elizabeth was saying, with that animation which always accompanied a favourite subject, “that a man who never contradicts any body is in far more danger of being thought foolish than one who contradicts a little too often. A silent assent to every thing may be convenient, but it is not very respectable.”
“A disposition to contradiction,” Darcy returned, “is no proof of judgement. A man may oppose everybody in turn, from vanity or ill humour, and be thought only more disagreeable, not more wise.”
“But if he never opposes any one,” she persisted, “how is the world to know that he has any judgement at all? There is more merit in being disagreeable for the sake of truth, than agreeable at the expense of it.”
“There I can have no dispute with you,” he said, the corner of his mouth just stirring. “Only you must allow that truth may be maintained without a perpetual love of disputation.”
“Perpetual? I am sure I contradict very seldom,” Elizabeth protested, laughing. “It is only that the world is so often in the wrong.”
“And I,” he replied, “have been so often in the wrong myself, that I am grown cautious of declaring any one else to be so.”
“You grow cautious in your old age, sir,” she said, with a gleam of mischief. “I claim the privilege of youth to be positively right at least half the day.”
“Only half?” he answered. “You are more moderate than I had supposed.”
“You see, Mary,” Elizabeth called over her shoulder, “Mr. Darcy is determined to make me appear reasonable, whether I will or no.”
“You do that very well for yourself, I think,” Darcy said quietly.
She coloured a little, and, to escape the look that accompanied the words, turned to rally Georgiana on the fineness of her work.
The conversation, thus diverted, took a more general turn, but the impression of that brief exchange remained with the two young ladies who had watched it as narrowly as their delicacy would permit.
When Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth at last quitted the room together—Elizabeth to fetch a shawl for her Georgiana, Darcy to attend to some business with Mr. Bennet—Mary and Georgiana were left alone by the fire.
Georgiana was the first to break the silence.
“I hope,” she said, with an anxious glance at Mary, “that my brother does not appear uncivil when he speaks so. He is always—” She hesitated for a word. “So much in earnest. I am sometimes afraid it must strike other people as—” She coloured. “As if he was determined to find fault with everyone.”
Mary looked up.
“I have observed the manners of both my sister and your brother with some attention,” she said, “and I do not apprehend that incivility is the true description. Their arguments have more warmth than ill will. It is not the language of enmity, but of—” She paused, considering. “Of interest.”
“Interest?” Georgiana repeated, surprised.
“Yes,” Mary continued, more decidedly. “Where there is no concern, there is seldom any zeal. A mind truly indifferent is generally content to acquiesce. It does not exert itself to convince, because it does not care to be understood.”
Georgiana’s eyes, still fixed upon the door through which the others had passed, grew thoughtful.
“Do you mean,” she asked slowly, “that if they were really indifferent to one another, they would not argue so much?”
“I mean,” said Mary, “that people who never think of one another at all, seldom take such pains to differ. Mr. Darcy and my sister Elizabeth are both too fond of being in the right to submit easily, but they are likewise too sensible not to value understanding. They would not spend so much labour in opposing, if they did not, in their hearts, attach some consequence to each other’s opinion. ”
“Oh,” Georgiana breathed, half in relief, half in wonder. “I had not thought of it so. I only knew that when they begin to talk, everybody else might as well be silent, and yet, when they have done, there is no resentment. I have seen people quarrel far less and look far colder afterwards.”
“Just so,” Mary replied. “Their spirits are engaged, not their malignity. I do not say,” she added, with proper caution, “that any particular consequence will follow. It would be foolish to build castles upon so slight a foundation. But I confess I see, in their manner of disputing, more of—of possibility than of dislike.”
Georgiana’s colour rose.
“Possibility!” she repeated, in a whisper. “Do you truly think—? That is, could such a beginning ever—?” She stopped, too much abashed to finish the sentence.
Mary, whose imagination was less timid, but whose sense of propriety was strong, would not be more explicit.
“I think,” she said, “that if ever two people were likely to correct one another’s faults and confirm one another’s virtues, it might be such a pair as your brother and my sister.
They each possess qualities the other wants, and they each esteem what the other possesses.
Whether that esteem will ever take any other form, time alone can show.
It is not for us to conjecture too far.”
Georgiana twisted her thread between her fingers.
“I should like it above all things,” she said at last, softly.
“I do not mean,” she added hastily, “that I desire anything improper—that they should be unhappy now, in order to be happier hereafter. But when I see them—so much alive when they are with one another, so much themselves—I cannot help wishing that their acquaintance might end more kindly than it began.”
Mary’s features relaxed into a smile.
“It would be a very rational wish, if there were any likelihood of its being fulfilled,” she allowed. “At present, we may content ourselves with observing. If there is any such tendency, it will discover itself without our interference. If there is none, no speculation of ours can create it.”
Georgiana looked at her with shy gratitude.
“You make every thing appear more hopeful,” she said. “I had always thought that people who argued so much must dislike each other dreadfully. But if you think it is not always so—if sometimes it may mean—” She broke off again, her cheeks glowing. “I shall watch them with a different mind.”
“A moderate degree of attention,” Mary said, “may be permitted. Only let us be on our guard against seeing more than is really there. It is agreeable to imagine romances for other people, but it does not always lead to justice.”
Georgiana laughed, though she still looked a little conscious.
“I promise you I will not imagine anything,” she said. “I will only—listen carefully whenever they begin to contradict one another.”
Mary opened her book again, with an air of having given the subject all the philosophy it required.
“Contradiction,” she observed, “when it proceeds from esteem, is a much safer amusement than flatteries which proceed from nothing at all.”
With this sober conclusion, the two young ladies resumed their work and reading, but each, in her own way, listened more attentively than ever, when, a few minutes later, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth returned, and the argument—on some new and equally trifling subject—was renewed with undiminished zeal.
Duty
The following day, Darcy called again at Longbourn, less from duty, than from what resembled a need for society.
He sat a little apart and watched the drawing room arrange itself into a pattern he had not expected ever to see there.
Lydia and Kitty, though they whispered more than they sewed, at least had their work in their hands.
Mary and Georgiana bent together over the same page of music, conferring without stiffness, Mary correcting a fingering here, Georgiana suggesting a softer touch there—each so intent upon the music that neither seemed conscious of giving or receiving reproof.
Mrs. Annesley’s quiet figure made a centre of composure.
It was, he admitted, a scene he had once thought beyond Mrs. Bennet’s management.
When Mr. Bennet had done with him in the library—some trifling matter of hedges and tenants, yet treated with more real judgement than Darcy had looked for—they returned together to this unexpectedly orderly room.
Mrs. Bennet, from her place by the fire, surveyed the whole with complacency.
“I declare, girls, you look quite the picture. Mr. Darcy, you must own that Longbourn is wonderfully improved since you and Miss Darcy came amongst us.”
Mr. Bingley, who was seated not far from Jane, turned with an eager smile as if to seek her confirmation of this judgement, and received, in her quiet look of contentment, all the encouragement his heart could desire.
The girls rose and curtseyed. He answered as civility required, but his eye was drawn, as it always did, first to Georgiana, then—almost against his will—to Miss Elizabeth.