CHAPTER 27 #2
Not as a man entrusted with everything; she had no wish to ruin him with liberty.
Mr. Terling would go, look, ask, measure, report, and return with the sort of facts that saved everyone else from guessing.
Mr. Darcy had built the structure in which those facts became useful: forms, schedules, cautions, and a firm prejudice in favour of putting every claim into writing before it acquired the dignity of custom.
Mr. Hartwood remained for legal dangers; Mr. Beaker for figures, securities, and suspicion.
Mr. Terling had become the legs of the arrangement, Mr. Darcy its order, and Elizabeth its final authority.
The machinery, Elizabeth thought, was improving. That was comfortable. It was also dangerous, because comfort encouraged one to imagine that other matters might be made orderly by equal diligence.
Thursday proved the error.
By Thursday afternoon, Mrs. Westbrook had been discouraged, Jane had become a settled expectation, the dining room had produced no paper fit to be trusted alone with the drapes, and Mr. Terling had been promoted from experiment to instrument.
There remained Mr. Darcy at four.
This, Elizabeth told herself, was a business appointment. The explanation had the advantage of being true, and the disadvantage of being incomplete.
Mrs. Doddridge took her place near the window with her sewing.
Pom-Pom, dressed in a small blue wrapper against the continued offence of January, arranged himself close enough to the hearth to suggest martyrdom without risking discomfort.
The papers were set out; the tea tray had been ordered; the Manchester Square leases waited in a neat pile which Elizabeth had not looked at more than twice.
When Mr. Darcy was announced, Elizabeth did not have him shown to the library. The drawing room was finished, and if she had endured so many samples, invoices, opinions, and near-martyrdoms over curtain fringe, the room should be exposed to every possible judge.
“Mr. Darcy,” she said, as he entered, “you are honoured today. I have abandoned the library.”
He bowed. “I am honoured indeed.”
“You say that without having admired the curtains.”
His eyes moved obediently about the room. “They are very fine.”
“Fine is a poor word after all I have suffered.”
He looked back at her, and the smile he attempted did not reach completion.
That was when she saw it.
Mr. Darcy had not merely come in from the cold.
He seemed to have brought January with him: its hard light, its iron air, its settled displeasure with the world.
His coat still held the weather; his gloves were in his hand; his papers were arranged with his usual exactness.
Nothing in his appearance was neglected, and yet everything about him suggested a man who had been obliged to stand too long against a bitter wind.
His gravity, which Elizabeth had once mistaken for pride and had since learned to read with more care, had altered. It was not reserve today. It was not even severity. It was strain, held so tightly that it had become indistinguishable from composure.
Mrs. Doddridge returned his bow and then became very still. Pom-Pom lifted his head, gave Mr. Darcy a long and suspicious inspection, and did not bark.
Elizabeth found this more alarming than noise.
Darcy placed the papers upon the table.
“I have brought the Manchester Square memoranda, my corrected form for the new tenancies, and Mr. Terling’s final report upon Cotton Lane.”
“Then you have come armed against every possible comfort.”
He looked at her as if the words had reached him from some considerable distance. A moment later, he said, “I beg your pardon.”
“It was not an accusation requiring apology.”
“No. Of course.”
He took his seat. Elizabeth watched him turn one paper, pause, and turn it again. He named Mr. Harding when he meant Mr. Greeves, stopped, corrected himself, and proceeded with such painful exactness afterward that the mistake seemed less concerning than the recovery.
Elizabeth let him continue for another minute. She heard the words: rent, repairs, frontage, custom, memorandum. She understood none of them, because she was attending to the hand that lay too still upon the page and the look in his eyes whenever he thought himself unobserved.
At last she set down her cup.
“Mr. Darcy.”
He stopped at once.
“I do not wish to pry,” she said. “But you are not yourself this afternoon.”
His face closed.
“I am perfectly well.”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “You are perfectly correct. It is not at all the same thing.”
Mrs. Doddridge’s needle moved once, then stilled.
Darcy looked down at the paper before him. A gentleman less disciplined might have denied her more warmly. Darcy did not. He only sat silent, and the silence was answer enough to make Elizabeth regret nothing except the pain which had made the question necessary.
“You need not tell me anything,” she said, more quietly. “But you need not convince me that it is Manchester Square.”
For a long moment, he did not answer.