CHAPTER 19
Friends and Other Accounts
The breakfast room was finished by eleven o’clock on Thursday morning, and Elizabeth, who had expected to feel triumph, found herself instead standing in the doorway with an absurd inclination to apologise to the dead.
There was nothing in the room of which Mrs. Marwood could reasonably have disapproved.
The curtains were well made, the paper soberly pretty, the chairs recovered in a green stuff neither fashionable enough to be foolish nor dull enough to be safe, and the chimney-piece, scrubbed of its old grey film, had acquired a degree of consequence which must always have belonged to it, though no one had lately troubled to notice.
The room had not been made young. That would have been impertinent. It had only been persuaded, with some firmness, that it was not obliged to remain widowed forever.
Mrs. Albright stood beside the sideboard with the bills arranged in exact order.
“The paperhanger’s account is first, miss. Then the upholsterer, the grate-man, the chimney work, and the curtain alterations. Mr. Beaker will want the receipts marked before payment.”
“Mr. Beaker wants most things marked before payment,” said Elizabeth.
“Yes, miss. It is one of his less dangerous habits.”
Mrs. Doddridge, seated near the window with Pom-Pom’s newest wrapper in her lap, did not look up.
Elizabeth crossed to the table and took up Mr. Darcy’s last note.
It was a very proper note. All Mr. Darcy’s notes had lately become proper to a degree that might have satisfied a bishop, a trustee, or a man determined to give no offence while causing several.
He had advised on Cotton Lane. He had enclosed Mr. Terling’s report. He had observed that a phrase in the proposed notice to Mr. Harding was insufficiently exact. He had been useful, prompt, restrained, and almost entirely absent.
Elizabeth had gone to Egyptian Hall without him and had been glad of it. Or, if not glad, then instructed. Miss Hall had been severe enough to be useful.
“You must not turn management into your only society,” Miss Hall had said. “Nor must you do a gentleman’s feeling for him merely because he has not the courage or inclination to do it himself.”
Elizabeth had thought the advice excellent at the time.
She liked it less now.
“Mrs. Albright,” she said, “send to Mr. Darcy’s chambers.
The breakfast-room accounts are complete, and as he was so unfortunately drawn into the first judgment of the room, he must be troubled with the last. Ask whether he will be so good as to call and look over the charges before they go to Mr. Beaker. ”
Mrs. Albright received this without expression.
“Shall I say the receipts may be sent instead, miss?”
“No,” said Elizabeth, rather too quickly. “The chimney-piece account cannot be understood by any person who has not seen the chimney-piece.”
Mrs. Doddridge’s needle moved steadily through the flannel.
Mrs. Albright gathered the message as if it were entirely ordinary for a young lady to require a gentleman’s opinion on a chimney-piece he had already seen before it had been cleaned.
Pom-Pom sneezed into his wrapper.
“And Lord Pomington,” said Elizabeth, “considers the matter urgent.”
“He generally does, miss,” said Mrs. Doddridge.
Mr. Darcy’s answer came within the hour. Mr. Jenkins, he wrote, could collect the accounts and deliver them safely to chambers. Mr. Darcy would examine the charges there and return any observations by the following morning.
Elizabeth read this once. Then again. Then she sat at Mrs. Marwood’s old writing desk and replied.
Dear Mr. Darcy,
Mrs. Albright is unwilling to release the tradesmen’s receipts without a proper list being checked against them, and I am unwilling to send half my breakfast room through London merely to spare you the inconvenience of seeing the other half.
The chimney-piece, in particular, has become a matter of evidence.
Yours, etc.
She sanded the note before she could improve it into cowardice.
Mr. Darcy came at three.
He arrived with all the appearance of a man who had come upon business and intended to leave before business could acquire the dangerous habit of becoming pleasure. His coat was dark, his gloves exact, his expression composed; only the slight pause on the threshold betrayed him.
Elizabeth saw it.
She wished she had not.
For a moment, as his eyes moved over the pale paper, the cleaned stone, the green chairs, the warmer curtains, and the fire already burning with an air of having been expected rather than endured, he forgot to be guarded.
“It is much changed,” he said.
“Yes. That was rather the object.”
His mouth softened, almost but not quite into a smile. “Not merely changed. Better.”
Elizabeth looked down at the bills before she could look too pleased. “You must be cautious, Mr. Darcy. Mrs. Albright is within hearing, and praise of a room is very nearly praise of her government.”
“Then I must be precise. The room is better used.”
That was worse.
She had expected him to approve the paper, perhaps the chairs, possibly the recovery of the chimney-piece if he were feeling expansive. She had not expected him to understand the room so exactly.
Better used.
Not prettier. Not newer. Not lighter. Better used.
Something in Elizabeth’s chest gave a small, foolish turn.
Mrs. Albright, who had heard the compliment and accepted it as no more than truth belatedly arriving, placed the accounts on the table.
“The paperhanger’s account, sir.”
Darcy took it, and the room became safe again because arithmetic was a country in which both of them could travel respectably.
For twenty minutes they were all propriety.
Darcy objected to a charge for additional labour where the labour had plainly been included elsewhere.
Elizabeth accused him of possessing a naturally suspicious mind.
He answered that tradesmen relied upon generous temperaments to make up the difference.
Mrs. Albright produced a second receipt with the silent triumph of a magistrate revealing a witness.
Even Pom-Pom contributed by placing one paw upon the upholsterer’s account and refusing to remove it until Elizabeth scratched behind his ear.
It was pleasant.
That was the difficulty. It was so very pleasant.
Darcy stood beside her at the table, close enough that when he leaned to compare two figures, Elizabeth became aware of the clean wool of his coat and the faint cold still clinging to him from the street.
His hand moved across the paper with controlled exactness.
His voice, low and grave, had lost some of the rigid quality that had lately inhabited his notes.
Here, in the finished room, he was almost the man who had helped choose it.
Almost the man she had thought—
Elizabeth turned a receipt over more sharply than necessary.
“This one is correct,” Darcy said.
“Do not sound disappointed. I am sure someone else will attempt to cheat me before the week is out.”
“I should not wish you cheated for my entertainment.”
“No. Only detected in time for it.”
He did smile then.
It was brief, unwilling, and entirely disastrous.
By four o’clock the accounts had been marked, the doubtful charges separated, the proper receipts tied, and Mr. Darcy had written three observations for Mr. Beaker in a hand so neat that Elizabeth wondered whether strong feeling would look any less disciplined upon a page.
Mrs. Albright took the completed packet.
“Shall I have tea brought, miss?”
Elizabeth should have said yes. A week ago she would have said yes. A month ago she would have commanded it and left Mr. Darcy no room to retreat with dignity.
But she had been cautioned against doing a gentleman’s feeling for him.
She hesitated.
Darcy saw the hesitation. His hand closed once upon his glove.
“I must not trespass longer upon your afternoon.”
There it was: the little withdrawal, civil and bloodless, offered before either of them could discover whether he was wanted.
Elizabeth felt her pleasure in the room cool by one degree.
“Of course,” she said. “I am grateful for your assistance.”
His face altered faintly, as if gratitude had struck him where warmth might have been less painful.
“It was no inconvenience.”
“No,” said Elizabeth lightly. “I begin to think nothing is an inconvenience once it has been made into a memorandum.”
Mrs. Doddridge’s needle stopped.
Darcy looked at her.
Elizabeth looked back, and because retreat was now impossible without cowardice, she smiled.
“I have been encouraged by this room,” she continued. “Dangerously encouraged, perhaps. I think I may next attempt the drawing room. And then the dining room, if Mrs. Albright can be persuaded not to abandon me.”
Mrs. Albright, who was folding the account packet, said, “The dining room paper is offensive, miss.”
“There. You see? I shall be supported by moral necessity.”
Darcy’s gaze moved once around the room again. “You mean to alter both?”
“Not at once. I am not so reckless as that. But yes. The house has been very patient with grief, and I begin to think patience has been mistaken for duty.”
It was too much. She knew it as soon as she had said it.
Not improper. Not even sentimental. But too much.
Darcy heard it. She saw that he did. His attention sharpened and then, as if sharpened attention were itself a liberty, he drew it back.
Elizabeth hated him for that restraint.
She hated herself more for wishing he would forget it.
“When it is all done,” she said, brisker now, “I shall entertain my friends and show them the full scale of my rebellion.”
A silence followed.
It was very small. No one but Elizabeth, who had put all her ridiculous hope into it, would have noticed.
Darcy lowered his eyes to his gloves.
“I am sure,” he said, “you will have a very pleasant party.”
For a moment Elizabeth did not understand him.
Then she did.
Her friends.
Not his.