CHAPTER 18 #2
Mr. Darcy’s handwriting appeared often enough to prove he had not forgotten her business, and never warmly enough to prove he remembered anything else.
It was unreasonable to resent a man for writing sensibly about gutters when gutters had, in fact, required sense. Elizabeth resented him nonetheless.
By Tuesday evening, she walked through the breakfast room again.
The last of the light had thinned to grey at the windows.
The pale paper held it longer than the old dark walls had done, so that the room seemed not cheerful, exactly, but capable of cheer.
The polished floor smelled faintly of wax.
The hearth shone. The sideboard, freed from oppressive draperies and the weight of old colour, had acquired a sober dignity which Elizabeth suspected it had possessed all along, waiting only for someone to remove its gloom.
Mr. Darcy’s advice had entered the house more successfully than Mr. Darcy had.
The room had obeyed him. Elizabeth found that ungenerous of it.
By Wednesday morning, Elizabeth had decided she would not think of him.
This resolution was immediately challenged by the arrival of another memorandum.
It was not even a letter. It was worse. A memorandum had no pretence of feeling at all.
She dealt with it, because she was not a child. She approved two small payments, refused one charge until Mr. Beaker had compared it with the estimate, and wrote a note to Mr. Darcy informing him that his suggestions respecting Mr. Terling’s authority were accepted.
She had nearly written, “Pray call when convenient.” Her pen paused over the paper.
Then she did not.
If Mr. Darcy wished to confine himself to official correspondence, official correspondence might have the satisfaction of remaining official.
After this very dignified victory, Elizabeth sat for ten minutes in a state of such unprofitable temper that even Pom-Pom removed himself from her lap and went to lie by Mrs. Doddridge, whose emotional climate was more reliable.
It was then that she remembered the Egyptian Hall.
Mr. Darcy had recommended the exhibition at dinner.
Or, more accurately, he had observed that the catalogue was said to be worth attention, and that if a thing had once been worth seeing, it had not become less so merely because she had intended to see it with another person.
He had said it carefully, kindly, and without offering himself as escort.
At the time, Elizabeth had admired the restraint.
She admired it much less now.
If Mr. Darcy wished to recommend pleasures from a safe distance, Elizabeth saw no reason to leave them unpursued merely because he had failed to attach himself to the recommendation.
She wrote to Miss Hall before she could decide she was not offended.
Miss Hall’s answer arrived the following morning.
She would be very happy to attend the exhibition, provided they went early enough to avoid the worst hats and late enough that no one could accuse them of scholarly enthusiasm.
Mrs. Hall had no objection to being conveyed among antiquities so long as she was not required to admire broken pottery beyond its merits; and Mrs. Belwick, on hearing the plan, had declared that Egyptian mummies were likely no worse than half the living company one met in London and generally better wrapped.
This was the first letter Elizabeth had received all week which improved her temper without requiring her signature.
They went on Thursday.
London had discovered Egypt and was determined, as usual, to improve it by crowding round it.
The Egyptian Hall was full enough to make solitude impossible and fashionable enough to make ignorance confident.
Ladies bent toward glass cases with feathers trembling in their bonnets; gentlemen pronounced upon objects they had not understood from the catalogue; a stout man with a quizzing glass declared a figure “very curious” three times in front of three entirely different things; and a young woman in a pelisse of alarming brightness said she adored antiquity, provided it was not too dusty.
Miss Hall, who had come prepared to be displeased but fair, examined the first case for some time and said, “That contains either great antiquity or very little explanation. In London the distinction is often difficult.”
Mrs. Hall, whose interest in exhibitions generally included both the objects and the persons pretending to understand them, smiled. “The lady in yellow has already found three things affecting. I begin to admire her constitution.”
Mrs. Belwick adjusted her glove. “Feeling is never so abundant as when it costs nothing.”
Elizabeth laughed, and felt something in her loosen.
The pleasure was not what it would have been with Mrs. Marwood.
Nothing was. Mrs. Marwood would have disapproved of the crowd, corrected the catalogue, found fault with the arrangement of objects, and then taken more interest in the whole than anyone else there.
She would have said that London had a genius for making foreign civilizations look as if they had been invited to a rout and had come underdressed.
Elizabeth felt the loss of her sharply once, before a case of small figures labelled with more certainty than seemed justified; then Mrs. Belwick said that one little idol had the countenance of a bishop refusing soup, and the moment passed into laughter without becoming less true.
Indoors, Mrs. Marwood’s absence had a chair, a hearth, a window, a time of day. Here it was jostled, interrupted, obliged now and then to make room for feathers, catalogues, and Mrs. Belwick’s opinions.
They moved slowly through the rooms. Miss Hall looked at the objects.
Mrs. Hall looked at the people looking at the objects.
Mrs. Belwick looked at both and trusted neither.
Elizabeth found herself, after the first half hour, less occupied by the absence of the person who had recommended the exhibition and more occupied by the exhibition itself, which she considered a point scored against Mr. Darcy and in favour of the Pharaohs.
When they had made the circuit once and were standing near a less crowded corner, Miss Hall turned to her.
“You are improved by this.”
“By antiquities?”
“By leaving your house.”
“I leave my house often.”
“On errands.”
“Errands are a respectable form of leaving.”
“They are a form of management. That is not the same thing as society.”
Elizabeth looked at her. “I have been to Longbourn. The experiment failed.”
“Longbourn,” said Miss Hall, “is not society, my dear. Longbourn is family. They are two very different afflictions.”
Mrs. Hall gave a soft laugh. Mrs. Belwick said, “Very just.”
“In London,” Miss Hall continued, “when one society becomes tedious, one removes to the next engagement. In the country, one is trapped with the same aunt, the same tea, the same opinions, and the same young man until weather, marriage, or mortality intervenes. You must not judge society by Hertfordshire. That would be like judging music by a child practising scales through a wall.”
“I have not been wholly locked away,” said Elizabeth. “I have had calls. Dinners. Business.”
“Business,” repeated Miss Hall, in a tone that made the word confess.
“Useful business.”
“My dear, men of business appear to multiply about you. Mr. Hartwood and Mr. Beaker were already sufficient for any moderate fortune. Then came Mr. Darcy. Now there is a Mr. Terling. If this continues, you will soon require a separate drawing room only for gentlemen with memoranda.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Mr. Terling belongs to Cotton Lane.”
“That,” said Miss Hall, “is precisely the sort of answer which proves my point.”
Mrs. Hall, who had been watching the lady in yellow attempt to admire something from the wrong side of the case, turned back to them. “Miss Hall is right, Lizzy. You are too young to have only duties for variety.”
“I have Pom-Pom,” said Elizabeth.
Mrs. Belwick gave a small snort. “That is not variety. That is tyranny in portable form.”
“Mrs. Doddridge is excellent company,” Elizabeth said, because it amused her to defend what could not be defended.
“Mrs. Doddridge is a national monument,” said Miss Hall. “She is to be respected, preserved, and not relied upon for liveliness.”
Elizabeth could not dispute this.
“You must go out more,” Miss Hall said. “Not upon errands. Not to correct bills. Not to inspect things which leak, fade, or require signatures. You must go where no one asks you to decide anything.”
“That sounds inefficient.”
“It is meant to.”
Mrs. Hall added, more gently, “Your aunt did not keep you in Portman Square so that you might become a younger version of herself before you are one-and-twenty.”
That struck closer than the others.