CHAPTER 9
Trustees, Baskets, and Consequences
After Mr. Darcy’s departure, the room seemed, for several moments, to have been left with more air in it than it knew what to do with.
Elizabeth remained where she was, his card in her hand and Pom-Pom restored to the nearest cushion with all the exhausted consequence of a creature who had survived a public emergency and meant to be admired for it until supper.
Mrs. Doddridge, having watched the whole astonishing progression from street-rescue to tea-table examination with no visible increase of pulse, folded away one of the remaining biscuits into a small paper.
Whether it was destined for Pom-Pom, the housemaid who liked sweet things, or some later charitable use known only to Mrs. Doddridge and Providence, Elizabeth did not inquire.
With Mrs. Doddridge, one could never be entirely certain where mercy ended and housekeeping began.
The room had resumed itself.
That was the trouble.
The fire still burned properly. The tea things remained in their proper relation to the tray.
Mrs. Marwood’s chairs looked as if no gentleman had ever sat in one of them with mud upon his sleeve and rain in his hair.
Yet something had been left behind. Not disorder precisely.
Darcy had not been a disorderly man. But near the chair where he had sat there lingered, faintly and quite unreasonably, the smell of damp wool, rain, leather, and something clean and dry beneath it, like wood brought in from weather.
It did not belong to the room.
That, Elizabeth thought, was why she noticed it.
She turned the card over once between her fingers.
Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.
The name was exactly what it ought to be: grave, proper, and entirely too solemn for a man who had just been obliged to save a half-bald dog from the wheel of a carriage.
Pom-Pom yawned from his cushion.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, looking at him, “you may be composed now. Your peril is past, your cushion restored, and your rescuer gone.”
Pom-Pom stretched one narrow paw with the selfish languor of convalescence.
“He behaved very well,” she added.
Mrs. Doddridge said nothing.
Elizabeth looked at the card again.
“Mrs. Doddridge.”
“Yes, miss.”
“I think Mr. Darcy will do very well.”
Mrs. Doddridge folded the biscuit-paper into a square with perfect seriousness. “You had decided that already, miss.”
Elizabeth paused.
This was one of those rare moments when Mrs. Doddridge’s want of imagination became nearly majestic.
She never demanded a noun where one had not been supplied.
If Miss Bennet said Mr. Darcy would do very well, then no doubt he would; and whether this referred to business, gratitude, future calling, or the wider correction of Providence did not, for the present, require determination.
“I had not decided,” said Elizabeth.
“No, miss.”
Pom-Pom gave a small snort into the cushion.
Elizabeth rose and went toward the hearth, card still in hand.
“I have merely observed that he has several recommendations.”
“Yes, miss.”
“He can manage horses. He did not drop Pom-Pom, which must be counted in his favour. He answers questions directly, when pressed.”
Mrs. Doddridge waited.
Elizabeth glanced again at the card.
“And he is a solicitor.”
“That may be convenient, miss.”
“Convenient,” Elizabeth repeated. “Yes. That is the word.”
It was a safer word than handsome, and a more respectable one than interesting. A young woman with a house, trustees, correspondence, and a variety of matters not always improved by delay was perfectly entitled to notice convenience when Providence placed it in her hand on good card-stock.
If Providence had also seen fit to make the convenience tall, grave, wet from rain, and possessed of a voice that could quiet horses, Elizabeth could hardly be held responsible.
She set the card down on the table.
Then took it up again.
Mrs. Doddridge made no remark.
“I shall call on Mr. Hartwood and Mr. Beaker tomorrow,” Elizabeth said. “Not because I have formed any fixed opinion. Because one should not employ a gentleman merely because he has rescued one’s dog.”
“No, miss.”
“Though I do think,” said Elizabeth, looking toward Pom-Pom, “that in some households it would be considered a sufficient recommendation.”
Pom-Pom opened one eye, found no worship immediately forthcoming, and shut it again.
Elizabeth dined quietly that evening and slept much better than she had any right to do after such a day.
It was, she reflected while extinguishing her candle, one of the benefits of London that a woman might be frightened, grateful, intrigued, and put in possession of a solicitor’s card before dusk, and still be tolerably composed by bedtime so long as her own pillows received her.
Toward morning she dreamed of a wolf in wet woods: lean, dark, and moving too quickly between the trees to be examined. She could not see that it was hurt, precisely; she only knew, with the unreasonable certainty dreams permit, that it would not have allowed anyone near enough to discover it.
When she woke, she was not thinking of Mr. Darcy.
Not exactly.
She was thinking of the wolf, and of how foolish it would be to follow such a creature too closely into the trees.
By breakfast, she had made the matter practical.
Mr. Hartwood and Mr. Beaker had belonged to Mrs. Marwood’s affairs for so long that Elizabeth had once half-believed they came with the house, like the plate or the green screen by the morning-room fire.
They had not, however, come in the same drawer.
Mr. Hartwood was law: leases, settlements, permissions, cautions, signatures, and all those little gates by which property prevents impulse from becoming expense.
He had a warm manner and a lawyer’s habit of making kindness proceed by document.
If affection required a clause, Hartwood would find the proper form and make it sound almost benevolent.
Mr. Beaker was figures: rents, dividends, repairs paid and repairs deferred, half-yearly abstracts, investments watched with cold devotion, and red tape tied so neatly that even waste looked rebuked by it. He could make a column of income appear morally superior to the person receiving it.
Mrs. Marwood had trusted them both because neither man had ever confused affection with carelessness.
Elizabeth had inherited them as she had inherited the silver, the sideboard, and the habit of keeping a proper account-book.
She had also lately begun to suspect that if they grew any older without warning, they might soon require dusting rather than consultation.
She called on them before noon.
She went properly, of course. Her carriage waited below.
Her gloves were good, her mourning still correct, and her bonnet arranged with that quiet exactness Mrs. Marwood would have called the first defence against being taken for a fool.
Elizabeth was young, rich, and perfectly conscious that she was expected to be guided; she was also sufficiently Mrs. Marwood’s creature to know that guidance, like physic, was best taken by choice and in controlled quantities.
Mr. Beaker received her first, rising with the gravity of a man to whom even courtesy was part of a system. Mr. Hartwood came in shortly after, bringing cold air with him and a look of affectionate inquiry which Elizabeth distrusted at once.
“My dear Miss Bennet,” said he, “this is a pleasure. Though I cannot help observing that Hertfordshire has released you sooner than expected.”
“Hertfordshire did not release me,” said Elizabeth, taking the chair offered her. “I escaped.”
Mr. Beaker folded his hands.
“That is a stronger verb.”
“It was a stronger morning.”
Hartwood’s expression altered; not alarmed, but attentive. Elizabeth saw, with some irritation, that both gentlemen had known Mrs. Marwood too long not to recognize the face of a young woman arranging herself above injury.
“There was,” she said, before either could be kind, “an unfortunate suitor.”
Hartwood gave a small, comprehending sigh.
“Ah.”
“Do not pity me. Pity him if you must. He proposed, was refused, misunderstood that, continued, insulted Pom-Pom, and was finally improved by the dog in a manner I do not recommend for legal documentation.”
Mr. Beaker’s brows moved by the smallest possible degree.
“And your parents?”
“Mama became tragic. My father became ornamental. I came home.”
Hartwood shut his eyes for one moment.
“Entirely right.”
“Just so. Miss Hall took the same view, though more acidly, and Mrs. Belwick with greater cheerfulness.”
“And the matter is closed?” asked Beaker.
Elizabeth smiled.
“Mr. Beaker, if all matters closed because one lady considered them closed, England would be better governed than it is.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No. But it is the answer Longbourn deserves.”
Hartwood’s eyes softened, though he was too wise to offer sympathy where she had not asked for it.
“And now?” he said.
Elizabeth drew Mr. Darcy’s card from her reticule and placed it on the desk.
She did it very calmly. Too calmly, perhaps. But a young woman who possessed her own carriage, her own house, and a dog who required more household management than some families, was entitled to place a card before two old gentlemen without appearing to ask permission to breathe.
“Now,” she said, “I wish to inquire about Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.”
There are names which enter a room before the person attached to them. Darcy’s was evidently one.
Hartwood did not touch the card at once.
Beaker did.
“Where did you meet him?”
“In the street.”
Beaker looked up.
Elizabeth added, with perfect composure, “He saved Pom-Pom from being crushed.”
Neither gentleman laughed. Elizabeth liked them very much for it.
Hartwood took the card next and turned it over.
“He saved Lord Pomington?”
“He did.”
“Then we are already indebted to him beyond ordinary professional measure.”
“So I thought.”
Beaker extended one dry hand for the card again. Hartwood surrendered it.
“You are making inquiry because he saved the dog?”