CHAPTER 18 #3
Elizabeth looked away toward a case of small carved figures, their little faces fixed in expressions no modern crowd could disturb.
She had thought herself very active lately.
Rooms, leases, repairs, silver, servants, tenants, instructions, signatures.
Yet activity was not the same thing as life, and Miss Hall, who had very little mercy for self-deception when it inconvenienced her friends, had found the fault exactly.
“I am not becoming Mrs. Marwood,” Elizabeth said.
“No,” said Miss Hall. “Mrs. Marwood had earned the right to be Mrs. Marwood. You have not.”
Elizabeth looked back, amused despite herself. “How severe.”
“How affectionate,” said Mrs. Belwick.
Miss Hall accepted this correction with a small inclination of her head. “You may manage your properties, your rooms, your dog, and your men of business. But you must not make management your only society.”
“My men of business are not my society.”
“No? Then why does one gentleman’s absence make you cross?”
Elizabeth was silent.
Mrs. Hall, with kindness, moved half a step away to examine a nearby case. Mrs. Belwick followed, though slowly enough to show that she missed nothing. Miss Hall remained.
“I did not name Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth said at last.
“No. That was one of the reasons I knew whom we discussed.”
Elizabeth felt warmth rise in her face and disliked Miss Hall for being right.
“He has been very useful.”
“So I hear.”
“There is no romance in usefulness.”
“There may be a great deal of comfort in it. That is sometimes more dangerous.”
Elizabeth’s eyes moved toward the crowd. “He is my solicitor.”
“Is he?”
“He is acting in that capacity.”
“That is not the same sentence.”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. Miss Hall looked not triumphant but concerned, which was worse.
“A kind gentleman is not always a lover, my dear,” she said. “Nor is a useful gentleman necessarily a friend. But even if he were both, you must not make one man’s attendance — or absence — the whole measure of your week.”
Elizabeth said, with more lightness than she felt, “You make me sound very foolish.”
“I make you sound very young. There is no disgrace in it, if one does not insist upon remaining so.”
“I have not done anything improper.”
“I did not say you had. You are used to acting where action is needed. It is one of your best qualities. But a gentleman is not a room to be altered, nor a dog to be rescued, nor a lease to be put into order.”
Elizabeth looked at her then.
Miss Hall’s voice softened, though not enough to become indulgent.
“You must be careful not to do his feeling for him.”
There was no immediate answer to be made to that. Elizabeth was clever enough to find several and honest enough to reject them all.
A little distance away, Mrs. Belwick was informing Mrs. Hall that one of the mummied birds looked as if it had died resenting the tax on tea. Mrs. Hall, who knew when severity had done its work, called Elizabeth over to see whether the catalogue agreed.
The rest of the visit was pleasant. Not easy, exactly; Miss Hall had taken care of that.
But pleasant still. They saw the last rooms, laughed at what might be laughed at, admired what deserved admiration, and came away with a catalogue, two conflicting opinions about a painted coffin, and one settled arrangement that Elizabeth should dine with Mrs. Hall the following week and attend a concert with them the week after that.
“You see?” said Mrs. Hall as they waited for the carriage. “London society is very forgiving. If one engagement disappoints, another is already waiting to be better.”
“Or worse,” said Mrs. Belwick.
“Worse is often more entertaining.”
Miss Hall adjusted her gloves. “And if Mr. Darcy wishes to know whether the catalogue was worth attention, he may ask you himself.”
Elizabeth looked straight ahead. “If he does not?”
“Then you will have attended it without him.”
This was unanswerable and rather bracing.
When Elizabeth returned to Portman Square, a note lay on the tray in the hall.
Mr. Darcy’s hand.
Of course.
She removed her gloves slowly, handed her bonnet to the maid, and took the letter into the morning-room, where Pom-Pom received her absence with reproach, Mrs. Doddridge received her return with calm, and the fire received everyone with more warmth than either.
She opened the note after sitting down.
It concerned a gutter, a tenant’s notice, and a phrase in Mr. Terling’s report which Mr. Darcy thought insufficiently exact.
Elizabeth read it once.
Then she folded it again and placed it beside the others.
“Is there an answer, miss?” asked Mrs. Doddridge.
“Not this evening.”
“No, miss.”
Pom-Pom, who had by then climbed into her lap and discovered the indignity of Egyptian antiquities upon her gloves, sneezed against Mr. Darcy’s letter.
Elizabeth looked down at him.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I think so too.”
Mr. Darcy should not be asked where he had not chosen to come of himself.
And Elizabeth Bennet, she was beginning to perceive, should not become a very young woman buried alive under excellent management.