Chapter 12 #2
She looked up from her work with that mixture of amusement and attention which had become, to him, more engaging than any studied grace. He crossed to her.
“I must own,” he said, “that we have been very happy here. My sister has found more comfort—and more good guidance—than I could ever have expected in a strange house. I have been looking over some letters from Pemberley,” he said, keeping his voice low so that it should not carry to Mrs. Bennet.
“My steward is growing impatient. I must begin to think of taking Georgiana home.”
Her needle stilled. “So soon?” she said, and for a moment he let himself dwell on the two words, hearing in them a deal more than politeness.
Then he remembered the walk in the shrubbery, and how skilfully she had turned his awkward attempt at an avowal into a lecture on the dangers of gratitude, and he checked himself.
“Not immediately,” he answered. “But I should be a poor master if I forgot Pemberley entirely, and a poor brother if I kept Georgiana here until every obligation there had gone to ruin. My duty lies in more than one direction. I have been indulged in satisfying only one part of it. here are decisions I cannot, in fairness, leave to agents. Pemberley has a right to my presence.”
“You cannot give both their due if you remain here,” Elizabeth said.
“I fear I must learn to divide myself better between them,” he answered.
“Whilst she was in immediate danger, every thing else gave way. Now that she is more at ease, I am bound to remember that I am not only a brother but also a master and a landlord. It is an uncomfortable truth,” he added, with a half-smile, “that a man cannot always be where he most wishes to be. If I allowed myself to consult inclination alone, I might never leave Hertfordshire again.”
She looked away quickly. He saw the colour rise in her cheek and cursed, inwardly, his want of restraint.
He had no right to alarm her. She had made it very plain, only days before, that she would not have him mistake gratitude and esteem for anything warmer.
If she suspected him of persisting in that folly, she would keep him at even greater distance.
“Pemberley can scarcely complain of neglect,” she replied.
“You talk of it as though the house would fall in the moment you stepped away. Your steward writes, your tenants manage, Mrs. Reynolds rules her kingdom. They will all be overjoyed to have you again, but I cannot think they are quite helpless without you.”
He smiled, though the smile cost him an effort. “My vanity is gratified by your confidence in my household. I will try not to disappoint your high opinion of my steward’s abilities.”
“You have done a service for us too, in remaining,” she went on.
“My sisters are improved by Georgiana’s example.
We shall be very much the poorer when you carry her away.
” Elizabeth looked across at Georgiana, who at that moment glanced up from her music to share a small, pleased remark with Mary.
“Georgiana will be very sorry to go,” she said. “We shall all miss her sadly.”
“Only Georgiana?” The question escaped him before he could stop it. He knew the impropriety of it as soon as it was spoken, but he could not call it back.
She met his eyes, and for one instant there was no jest in hers at all. “We shall be the poorer for you both,” she said quietly.
The words passed through him with a force wholly disproportionate to their simplicity. It took all his command of himself to answer, “You have made Longbourn quite hard to leave,” and not, as his heart urged, to say that for him, at least, poverty would be on the other side of the door.
“In her last letter to Mrs. Reynolds, Georgiana spoke with real composure of returning to Pemberley. That is owing, in great measure, to what she has found here. She no longer thinks of home only as the place where she was most unhappy. For that alteration, I am more indebted to you than I can easily express.”
“You are fond of talking of debts, sir,” Elizabeth said lightly. “Take care, you will persuade yourself that gratitude is a sort of due you must pay to everybody.”
“Gratitude is the smallest part of what is owing in this case,” he said, his eyes resting on her for a moment longer than civility quite required. Then he looked away. “But we will not speak of that now. My present business is to balance claims, not to indulge feelings.”
“You do very well at the balancing,” Elizabeth said, allowing herself a little smile.
“When you arrived in Hertfordshire you seemed determined to manage every thing and consult no one. You now speak of duties and claims and rights, and even of Georgiana’s wishes.
I shall begin to suspect you of improvement. ”
“I am more improved than I like to own,” he said, with a touch of dryness. “It is inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient?”
“To discover that other people’s judgement must be weighed with one’s own,” he replied. “My affairs were much simpler when I believed myself always in the right.”
“My condolences,” Elizabeth murmured. “Losing the habit of being always in the right must be a sore mortification to a man of your exalted consequence.”
His mouth curved. “You are determined I shall not be too well satisfied with myself.”
“Somebody must undertake the office. Your sister and Mr. Bingley are far too partial.”
He looked at her then, directly. “It is a strange thing,” he said, “to find that one’s sense of duty now pulls against one’s inclination, instead of confirming it.
When I first came into Hertfordshire, duty and inclination were entirely at one: both urged me to keep my distance. I cannot say the same to-day.”
The quiet admission sent a quick colour to her face.
She turned, under pretence of re-threading her needle.
“I am glad, at least, that your inclination has altered in favour of my neighbourhood,” she said, forcing lightness.
“We shall hope that, once you are re-established at Pemberley, your sense of duty will occasionally allow your inclination to have its way.”
“Upon my word,” he replied, “there is one duty I shall find it very easy to discharge—that of bringing my sister where she is so well loved. If I am ever remiss in that particular, you must remind me of my obligations.”
“I shall take great pleasure in doing so,” Elizabeth said. “I am remarkably diligent in pointing out other people’s duties.”
“That I can readily believe.” His smile held a warmth she had not seen in him before. “You have done little else to me since I came into this house.”
She rallied, as she always did, on the safer ground of humour. “We shall trust to your punctual habits to bring you back again,” she said. “You know I set great store by your punctuality.”
He almost laughed. “You are determined to confine my merits to my time-keeping.”
“I find it a solid virtue,” she returned. “It gives one something to rely on.”
Something to rely on. It struck him, with an almost painful clarity, that this was what she allowed him to be: reliable, useful, safe.
A man whose punctuality and sense of duty might be praised, whose judgements might be consulted, but not a man to be loved.
His attempt in the shrubbery—clumsy, half-formed, checked by her quick wit—had taught him as much.
She would not have him imagine himself bound to her by obligation. She would not be the object of a debt.
Very well. If she wished to think his regard no more than gratitude and esteem, he must give her no further cause to suspect it of being anything more. He would not risk losing even her friendship now by pressing a sentiment she did not welcome.
“Then I shall at least endeavour to be punctual in my departures and returns,” he said, schooling his voice to lightness. “It is one duty in which I may hope to satisfy you.”
“You have satisfied me more often than you know,” she answered, with a smile that both warmed and wounded him. “I am apt to scold, Mr. Darcy, but I am not insensible.”
He inclined his head. “I have never found you so,” he said. “On the contrary, I have found your sense and your—” he stopped himself there, unwilling to trust his tongue further, “—your judgement, the safest guide I possess.”
She said nothing to that, but her eyes softened. It was a dangerous look. He turned away from it, towards Georgiana, who had just risen from the pianoforte to show Mary some correction in her fingering.
Duty, he told himself, watching his sister’s calm profile. Duty to Pemberley, duty to Georgiana, duty, even, to Miss Elizabeth, who had made her wishes known as clearly as any explicit refusal. He had never supposed that duty and inclination could be so entirely at odds.
He would go back to Pemberley. He would set his estate to rights. He would see Georgiana re-established in her proper home. If, after all that was done, there remained any hope that Miss Elizabeth might one day accept a heart that had long since ceased to be its own master, he might speak again.
Until then, he would be punctual, he would be proper, he would be grateful.
He would be every thing she could, with justice, approve—and nothing more than she had asked him to be.
Prudence
Elizabeth had not, at first, understood how thoroughly the house had altered until she began to think of it without them.
It was not only Georgiana’s light step on the stairs, or the sound of her practice.
It was Mary’s new earnestness in explaining a passage instead of merely reciting it, Kitty’s anxious glance when Lydia’s voice ran too high, Mrs. Annesley’s quiet hand upon the whole.
The air of Longbourn, which had once seemed all noise and disorder, now held, at certain hours, nearly tranquillity.