CHAPTER 17 #3
“You doubt my confession?”
“No, ma’am. I doubt the number.”
Mr. Hartwood laughed. Mr. Beaker looked deeply satisfied. Mr. Darcy’s eyes betrayed him again, though his mouth remained under intolerable government.
Elizabeth was delighted.
“And after you have seen the goats?”
“I should record the breach, inspect the damage, ask whether the animals remained on the premises, and report before promising anything beyond what was urgent. If the damage were continuing, I should require their removal. But I should not invent a penalty that was not in the lease.”
“Excellent,” said Mr. Hartwood.
Mr. Beaker said, “And the wallpaper?”
“Estimated separately, sir. Also the passage, if damaged. I should not put goat damage under ordinary wear.”
Elizabeth put down her fork.
“I am relieved to hear it.”
Mrs. Doddridge, from the lower end of the table, said, “Goats are very hard on passages, I believe.”
Every gentleman looked at her.
Mrs. Doddridge took a sip of wine.
Elizabeth said, “There speaks experience.”
“No, miss. Only expectation.”
Even Mr. Darcy laughed then.
It was brief. It was quiet. It was his before he could stop it.
Elizabeth felt it in a manner wholly disproportionate to the sound.
Then he looked down, and the restraint returned.
She disliked restraint. She had decided so.
By the time the apple pie appeared, Elizabeth thought Cotton Lane might do much worse.
The pie was very good. It was the sort of pie that reduced conversation for several minutes out of respect.
The apples were sharp, the crust obedient, and the spice sufficient to remind the company that December had compensations.
Mr. Beaker accepted a second portion after visibly deciding that arithmetic did not apply.
Mr. Hartwood praised Cook with proper feeling.
Mr. Terling ate as if dinner were dinner: gratefully, attentively, and without making virtue of either appetite or restraint.
This was no small recommendation in a young man.
Mr. Darcy, by contrast, had to be pressed into apple pie as if the acceptance of pastry might compromise his principles. Elizabeth had expected better. A man who could face Mr. Harding’s yard ought not to be defeated by dessert.
Then Mr. Hartwood, who had no sense of when Elizabeth’s peace required silence, said, “By the by, has anyone seen the notices for the Egyptian Hall?”
Something inside Elizabeth paused.
“The new exhibition?” asked Mr. Darcy.
“You have seen it?” said Mr. Hartwood.
“I passed the notice yesterday.”
“Half London will go, I suppose, to admire antiquity under improper lighting.”
“A safe occupation,” said Elizabeth, reaching for her wine, “provided antiquity does not object.”
Mr. Darcy looked toward her. “I believe it has endured worse.”
There was almost a smile in his voice.
Elizabeth looked at him quickly.
“Miss Bennet, you must go,” said Mr. Hartwood. “It is exactly the sort of thing Mrs. Marwood would have declared foolish and attended with the greatest possible severity.”
Elizabeth’s fingers stilled upon the stem of her glass.
“Yes,” she said. “She would.”
Mrs. Marwood had meant to take her to the last such exhibition.
There had been a notice clipped and left beside the breakfast things, and a discussion of whether such public enthusiasms were educational, absurd, or only tolerable if one went early enough to avoid being jostled by people who knew nothing of Egypt and everything of hats.
Then Mrs. Marwood had taken cold, and afterward everything had become physicians, fires, whispered servants, closed curtains, and the terrible rearrangement of a house around the fact that its centre might disappear.
Elizabeth had not gone. She had not even looked at the notices since.
“It is said to be well arranged,” said Mr. Darcy.
She turned to him.
“You know the catalogue?”
“I have heard it praised.”
“By whom?”
“A client who had more interest in the arrangement of objects than in the matter upon which he consulted me.”
“That seems a recommendation of taste, if not of judgment.”
“I thought you might find it interesting.”
Elizabeth waited.
The invitation, if it was an invitation, stood between them very properly dressed and entirely unwilling to proceed.
Mr. Darcy added nothing.
She waited one instant longer, which was one instant too long for pride.
“The catalogue is said to be worth attention,” he said.
The catalogue.
“How very improving,” she replied.
His expression altered, but he did not repair himself.
The table, having no notion that anything had gone wrong, continued to discuss antiquities.
Elizabeth answered when required.
She did not look at Mr. Darcy again for several minutes.
When she did, he was listening to Mr. Hartwood with perfect attention and an expression of such correct restraint that she longed to throw a ginger snap at him, though there were none on the table and she was not, in any case, a violent woman where biscuits were concerned.