CHAPTER 7
A Small Dog Enters Society
Elizabeth’s return to Portman Square restored, if not peace, at least proportion.
Rain had fallen hard in the night and left London grey, rinsed, and not in the least repentant.
Mud lay in the grooves of the street, the square trees dripped with a patience Elizabeth did not feel, and every carriage wheel wrote its brown opinion along the curb.
It was not cheerful weather, but it was orderly melancholy; and after Longbourn, Elizabeth found she preferred mud that remained outdoors.
Longbourn had the advantage of blood and the disadvantage of nearly every circumstance attending it.
Portman Square, by contrast, possessed no claim upon her affections except the strongest one in the world: it suited her.
The house received her without surprise, agitation, or schemes.
Its walls did not press daughters toward prudence.
Its drawing-rooms did not resound with maternal projects.
Its servants knew their business. Its carpets required no acts of endurance.
Even the silence in it, which three months earlier had seemed too large to live under, now felt preferable to any quantity of family conversation.
Pom-Pom, restored to his proper hearth, his proper cushions, and his proper rights over the domestic order, forgave London at once.
Mrs. Doddridge resumed her station in the house with the quiet certainty of something placed just where it had always belonged.
The maids unpacked. The footman recovered the habit of opening doors for people who did not scream through them.
The cook, upon learning that Miss Bennet had returned earlier than expected, sent up a dinner so sensible and satisfying that Elizabeth, after the first mouthful, nearly pitied herself for having left it at all.
“Home, at least,” she said, sinking back in her chair after dinner with Pom-Pom stretched in uncompromising ownership across her lap, “has not tried to marry me before dessert.”
Mrs. Doddridge, seated near the fire with some dark brown velvet and an alarming number of very small buttons, said, “No, miss.”
“That is one of its greatest recommendations.”
“Yes, miss.”
“There were moments in Hertfordshire when I thought I had been unjust to upholstery.”
“Yes, miss.”
There were moments when Elizabeth thought Mrs. Doddridge the dullest woman in London, and others when she thought her one of the most necessary. The proportions altered according to circumstance.
By the second morning after her return, the order of the house had already resumed its aunt-shaped habits with such completeness that Mrs. Marwood seemed at once more absent and more present than before.
The tea tray came in at the usual hour. The front drawing-room was opened only when there was reason.
The square beyond the window went on with its ordinary procession of carriages, tradesmen, nurserymaids, and men walking as though they had all been born with appointments.
And Elizabeth, who had escaped Longbourn in a blaze of injured principle, found herself able at last to laugh at it as one laughs at an illness after the fever has gone down.
It helped that London, unlike Hertfordshire, could furnish people properly suited to hear about Collins.
Mrs. Hall had sent a card the day before, inquiring when Miss Bennet might be prevailed upon to call and whether Lord Pomington remained among the living, as Miss Hall had declared that any dog who could survive so much wardrobe deserved to be inspected again before winter.
Elizabeth, who had a strong suspicion that the invitation would be accepted more for the sake of hearing her account of Longbourn than from any anxiety respecting the dog, returned word that she would come the next afternoon if the weather held.
The weather, having some respect for old ladies and their visiting habits, obliged only so far as was strictly necessary.
It did not rain again, but the sky remained low and grey, and the streets retained every sign that it had done so recently.
Elizabeth wore for the visit a dark brown walking dress with velvet cuffs nearly the same shade as Pom-Pom’s new coat, an agreement so close that Mrs. Doddridge could not possibly have achieved it by innocence.
Pom-Pom himself, borne in Elizabeth’s arms and wearing the coat with the air of a small, suspicious magistrate, seemed to consider the harmony of their appearance no more than his due.
The Hall household occupied one of those houses in the adjoining square which appeared from without very much like its neighbours and from within entirely unlike them, because Miss Hall’s taste, once established, had never yielded an inch to fashion.
There were excellent chairs, very little gilding, several fine prints, a pianoforte chosen for sound rather than display, and the sort of order which made every unnecessary object look as though it had been politely denied admittance at the door.
Miss Hall herself, unmarried and in her sixties, received Elizabeth with all the warmth compatible with a temperament that disliked most things on principle and had only learned in maturity to distinguish between what was bad and what was merely common.
She had very good taste in music and painting, very little patience with nonsense, and all her opinions, when not negative, had the air of having overcome substantial objection before consenting to exist.
Mrs. Hall, her widowed sister-in-law and housemate, was softer in address and no softer in judgment, a woman who had spent enough years smoothing difficult people not to confuse gentleness with surrender.
Mrs. Belwick, their neighbour and habitual ally in tea, was already there, upright in a grey silk gown and possessed of that brisk air by which some women announce that folly will be heard but not indulged.
Pom-Pom was received as an established member of the circle.
“He appears thinner,” said Miss Hall.
“He is offended,” said Elizabeth. “It costs him.”
“You match the dog,” said Mrs. Belwick.
“Only in colour, I hope.”
“In consequence also,” said Miss Hall. “Though he has the advantage in self-possession.”
Pom-Pom blinked as if he had expected no less.
“A Chinese crested dog ought to be accustomed to hardship,” said Mrs. Belwick. “I was always told the breed had endured half the world by sea.”
“Then his education is incomplete,” said Miss Hall.
“His education is very much like my sisters’,” said Elizabeth. “Expensive, hopeful, and not yet producing all that was intended.”
Mrs. Hall kissed her cheek.
“You look much improved.”
“I have only just escaped Hertfordshire. Improvement may still be superficial.”
Mrs. Belwick, motioning her toward the sofa, said, “Sit down and tell us everything from the beginning, particularly whatever was worst.”
That was, Elizabeth thought, the kindest invitation in London.
Tea was poured. Mrs. Doddridge settled herself at a little distance with her basket and a gravity so complete that a stranger might have mistaken her for a relation impoverished into stillness.
The old ladies arranged themselves for listening.
Pom-Pom, established on Elizabeth’s lap like a hostile accessory to memory, blinked at the company and then decided not to object, which in him counted as attachment.
Elizabeth began with Jane and Bingley, because that was the part she liked best.
“There is no fault to be found there,” she said. “He is just what he seems — which is so uncommon a condition in a man that one ought to preserve him in a cabinet — and Jane, poor soul, had no chance of remaining unengaged once he had fully seen her.”
Mrs. Hall smiled. “Then we begin well.”
“Almost well,” said Miss Hall. “No family can be trusted to remain sensible after an engagement.”
“Mine did not wait so long,” said Elizabeth. “There was Mr. Collins.”
This produced, just as she had hoped, a small collective stillness of relish.
Mrs. Belwick leaned forward. “Who is he? What did he want? Why was he permitted near you?”
“He is the heir to Longbourn, a clergyman, a worshipper of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and a man whose opinions arrive in the room a full minute before he does. He wanted me, my fortune as he incorrectly understood it, my obedience as he correctly imagined it ought to be, and the removal of Pom-Pom from the future establishment.”
Miss Hall looked down at the dog.
“He objected to Lord Pomington?”
“He called him odious.”
“Then his judgment is unsound at the foundation.”
“It grew no sounder,” said Elizabeth. “He proposed in the breakfast room after being very nicely encouraged into it by my mother, counted my income badly, arranged my life before I had answered, and informed me Lady Catherine would soften me into obedience. I refused him. Mama became tragic. My father became decorative. Pom-Pom disgraced the coat. I took my carriage and left.”
“Quite right,” said Mrs. Belwick.
Miss Hall lifted her cup. “A mercenary fool is still mercenary. People forgive too much in a man because he is ridiculous.”
“And your mother,” said Mrs. Hall, “appears to have mistaken anxiety for a right of disposal.”
“She called it security.”
“Then she named it badly.”
Elizabeth smiled, but only a little. “My father observed.”
“Ah,” said Miss Hall. “The most comfortable form of cowardice.”
That was so accurate that comfort would have been less kind.
“In fairness,” said Elizabeth, stroking Pom-Pom’s narrow head, “if Longbourn must be secured by my marriage, I would sooner marry Pom-Pom.”
“He has better manners,” said Mrs. Hall.
“A better coat,” said Mrs. Belwick.
Miss Hall inspected him. “And a clearer understanding of refusal.”
Pom-Pom, thus praised beyond his deserts and yet not beyond his opinion of them, gave one small sigh.
Mrs. Doddridge, from the background, said, “It would be awkward, miss.”
“It was already awkward, Mrs. Doddridge.”
“Yes, miss.”