CHAPTER 22
Small Remains of Christmas
Christmas came suddenly that year.
Elizabeth had known the date, of course; Mrs. Albright permitted no festival to approach Portman Square unaccounted for.
The kitchen had been warned, the linen examined, the coal supply considered with the seriousness due to English weather and old chimneys.
Yet knowledge and arrival were not the same thing.
Between drawing-room estimates, corrected agreements, letters, servants’ arrangements, and Mr. Darcy’s apology — which had said more than he perhaps intended and less than she wished — December had advanced upon her with almost indecent speed.
Thursday afternoons had not yet begun. The appointment existed in prospect, sober and useful, like a room marked on a plan but not yet furnished.
Mr. Darcy had been given a place in the week after New Year; he had not yet occupied it.
There had been no further call, no note beyond what business required, and no explanation of the circumstances he had named only enough to make more mystery of them.
He had not been indifferent.
That ought to have settled something.
Instead, it unsettled several things at once.
Portman Square did not become merry; it became prepared.
Mrs. Albright saw to the kitchen. Mrs. Doddridge saw to the smaller civilities. Elizabeth saw to the uncomfortable business of ensuring that no one who ought to be remembered was forgotten, for generosity, if left unorganised, had a disagreeable habit of becoming either neglect or extravagance.
The servants’ Christmas allowances were settled first, with such additions as Mrs. Albright considered proper and such comforts as Elizabeth considered possible without offending either discipline or gratitude.
There were extra things for the kitchen, a few useful gifts for those whose names Elizabeth was still learning to remember without prompting, and enough provision to suggest that Portman Square, though sober, had not mistaken Christmas for an audit.
Mrs. Albright herself received a length of fine dark wool, so excellent in quality and so sensible in colour that even her principles could not object.
She accepted it with a grave, “Thank you, miss,” which conveyed, to one acquainted with Mrs. Albright’s scale of expression, something very close to pleasure.
Mrs. Doddridge received a shawl of such determined warmth that Elizabeth suspected it might outlive every constitution in the house.
“Yes, miss,” said Mrs. Doddridge, folding it over her arm with respectful approval. “Very serviceable.”
“That is the highest praise I could have hoped for.”
“Yes, miss.”
Pom-Pom received a cloak.
This was not, strictly speaking, necessary.
Mrs. Doddridge, however, maintained that Christianity did not require a dog to be cold, and Elizabeth, unable to dispute the doctrine, supplied a brooch for the fastening: a monstrous red glass stone in a gilt setting, of such excessive pretension that it would have disgraced a countess and therefore suited Pom-Pom exactly.
The stone was glass, but it had the manners of a ruby.
Pom-Pom, once dressed, stood very still upon the hearthrug, as if waiting for foreign ambassadors to be admitted.
“You perceive,” said Elizabeth, “that prosperity has ruined him.”
“Yes, miss,” said Mrs. Doddridge.
“He will never again be content with flannel.”
“No, miss.”
Pom-Pom stretched one narrow paw, yawned with princely indifference, and settled more deeply into his consequence.
Beyond the household there were lists. Letters to Longbourn, with proper wishes for Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and such messages for the girls as would not set Lydia scheming, Mary moralising, or Kitty wondering whether London had forgotten her.
A separate letter to Jane at Netherfield proved harder, for Mrs. Bingley’s first Christmas required good wishes Elizabeth sincerely felt and could not quite enter.
There were greetings for Gracechurch Street, civil acknowledgements for Miss Hall and Mrs. Hall, a note for Mrs. Belwick, and small tokens for Mr. Hartwood, Mr. Beaker, and Mr. Terling, whose good conduct at Cotton Lane had earned more encouragement than his modesty would know how to enjoy.
Gracechurch Street required more thought than size: enough gratitude to honour Mr. Gardiner’s assistance, not so much as to suggest that Elizabeth had discovered, at Christmas, a sudden hunger for relations.
Mr. Darcy’s name did not properly belong to any list, which made it necessary to put him on one at once.
He was not family. He was not a servant of the house.
He was not merely a man of business, though business had become the narrow bridge by which they crossed all unsafe ground.
He was not, precisely, a friend; or if he was, the term had lately proved too undefined to be relied upon without amendment.
He could not be excluded. Exclusion would be a distinction, and Elizabeth had no wish to distinguish him.
Therefore his name was written among the acknowledgements, neither first nor last, and Elizabeth was satisfied with herself for nearly half an hour.
Christmas morning came cold, bright, and still.
Portman Square kept it decently, which in that house meant no evergreen excess, no ambitious festivity, but fires well built, linen properly laid, and a degree of polished order implying that even rejoicing must not be allowed to fray at the edges.
Mrs. Doddridge appeared in her best bonnet.
Elizabeth dressed with more simplicity than colour.
Pom-Pom, who had not been invited to church and considered the omission a personal failure of the national religion, remained before the fire in his cloak and ruby-glass splendour.
“You see,” said Elizabeth, drawing on her gloves, “what comes of trying to worship properly. We leave behind the only ornament the day possesses.”
Pom-Pom gave a small bark.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “I know. The Archbishop shall be informed.”
Mrs. Doddridge said, “Yes, miss,” and they went to church.
There was comfort, Elizabeth thought, in Christmas service precisely because no one attending it could pretend the season belonged entirely to cheerful family arrangements.
One might sit beneath prayers and music older than one’s own little wants, and for an hour at least be reduced to scale.
Her loneliness, which had seemed so particular in Portman Square, became there only one of many human insufficiencies held quietly before heaven.
That did not remove it. But it made it less vain.
She thought of Mrs. Marwood only once during the sermon, and then with less pain than surprise.
Last Christmas had been governed by the old lady’s sharp preferences and sharper refusals: no excessive greenery, no inferior pudding, no sentimental hymns unless unavoidable, no poor relation to be remembered merely because guilt had grown festive.
Elizabeth had spent the day under authority and chafed at it as she had chafed at many things.
This year there was no authority to resist.
Freedom, she was discovering, could be a very draughty room.
She saw Mr. Darcy only when the congregation began to disperse.
He stood a little apart from the densest press, grave as ever, his dark coat severe against the pale winter light near the door. He did not look neglected. That would have been easier to dismiss. He looked composed, correct, and solitary.
When he saw her, he bowed at once and came nearer.
“Miss Bennet.”
“Mr. Darcy.”
“Mrs. Doddridge.”
Mrs. Doddridge acknowledged him with the composure of one who accepted gentlemen as she accepted weather: as existing, and not to be discussed unless necessary.
“You walk home?” said Mr. Darcy.
“It is not far.”
“May I have the honour of attending you?”
Elizabeth said yes, because there was no proper reason not to say it, and perhaps one or two less proper reasons for being glad to do so.
So they went together into the cold.
London on Christmas morning had that peculiar look by which even the busiest streets seem briefly to remember that they are not wholly made for commerce.
Sound carried farther. Hoofbeats came more distinctly.
Chimneys smoked with greater domestic meaning than usual.
There were fewer people abroad, and those who were seemed either to know exactly where they belonged, or not to know it at all.
For some little while they spoke only of ordinary things: the weather, the service, whether the roads would hold if the frost deepened.
Mrs. Doddridge walked with steady propriety a little to one side, never intruding and never absent.
Elizabeth was glad of her, though her presence did not, in truth, prevent the walk from feeling curiously private.
It was Elizabeth who first touched Christmas itself, and even then only because silence had become too companionable to be left entirely unacknowledged.
“I hope,” said she, “that the day will pass tolerably with you.”
“Quietly, I expect.”
“Then we are matched. Mrs. Doddridge and I shall dine respectably, and Pom-Pom will forgive the church by degrees.”
“I hope his forgiveness may be obtained without negotiation.”
“No. There will be negotiation. He has a brooch now and must be treated with consequence.”
A slight warmth crossed Mr. Darcy’s face.
“Then he is better provided than most of us.”
The words were lightly said, but not light enough to be mistaken entirely.
“You have no engagement?” she asked.
“No dinner engagement.”
“Not even Colonel Fitzwilliam?”
“Colonel Fitzwilliam is with his family.”
He said it without bitterness, which made the answer worse.
Elizabeth looked ahead at the pale street. Pity would be impertinent; indifference, false.
“I may call upon my uncle in a day or two,” he added, as if honesty required the qualification. “But Judge Darcy does not keep Christmas in a manner likely to distress either law or household economy.”
“A very moderate celebration, then.”
“Almost judicial.”