CHAPTER 27 #3
Then he said, in a voice so low that she had to listen carefully, “Tell me, Miss Bennet. If you were told the worst things of me, and shown papers enough to make them appear true, would you believe them?”
Elizabeth did not answer immediately.
It was not a question asked for compliment. It was not modesty seeking denial, nor pride seeking tribute. It had escaped him. She saw that at once, and saw also that he would have recalled it if he could.
“I should not dismiss such papers merely because I disliked them,” she said. “That would be foolish.”
His face altered, as if he had expected no less and yet been struck by it.
“But I should not let them make me forget what I had seen for myself. If the accusation concerned a stranger, I should examine it carefully. If it concerned you, I should examine it more carefully still.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“Why?”
The word came without ornament.
“Because I have had some opportunity to judge your character.”
His gaze did not move from hers.
“You have been conscientious,” she said. “Reliable where no one could have compelled it. Careful where carelessness would have served you. I should weigh that too.”
The fire shifted in the grate. Outside, a carriage passed; the noise came softened through the glass and was gone.
Darcy’s hand closed once upon the edge of the paper.
“You may hear things spoken of me,” he said. “Things I cannot easily answer.”
“Then I shall judge them for myself.”
“You may not like what you hear.”
“Perhaps not.” Elizabeth held his eyes. “But I am not in the habit of surrendering my judgment before I have used it.”
He looked away first.
It was not triumph. Elizabeth felt no pleasure in having steadied him if the need for steadiness had been so great. Her answer had reached him; she could see that it had. But it had not released him.
He gathered the top paper with an effort at his ordinary composure.
“I have disturbed you. Forgive me.”
“You have not disturbed me.”
He looked doubtful of that.
“Then I have delayed your business.”
“Mr. Darcy, you have seen my business. It is very difficult to delay a thing which arrives in bundles and waits upon tables.”
The faintest movement touched his mouth and was gone.
“Still,” he said, “if there is any matter in which I may be of service, I hope you will tell me.”
Elizabeth looked at him.
It was not presumption. It was not even ease. It was the offer of a man who had found, for the moment, no safer way to remain than to be useful.
“There is,” she said.
His attention sharpened.
“I require your opinion on a matter of consequence.”
“Of course.”
“The dining-room paper.”
For the first time since he had entered, something almost like amusement reached his face.
“The dining-room paper.”
“Yes. I selected it with confidence. I have since discovered that confidence was premature.”
Mrs. Doddridge folded her sewing with the air of a woman who had expected the dining room to become a matter of national importance sooner or later.
Elizabeth crossed to the door and paused, looking back at him.
“You need not look so solemn, sir. No one has yet died of paper, though Mrs. Albright speaks of the drapes as if their destruction would be a felony.”
“I should be sorry to assist in a felony.”
“Then you had better advise me carefully.”
He followed her.
The dining room received them with all its old brown disapproval.
The samples lay upon the table, where Elizabeth had abandoned them earlier in the day: papers, braids, two lengths of silk, a piece of drapery faded by time and loyalty, and three shades of gold which had already caused more disagreement than any colour had a right to do.
Darcy stood beside the table and considered them with grave attention.
“Well?” Elizabeth said.
“The paper is not wrong.”
“That is not the same as being right.”
“No.”
“Proceed, Mr. Darcy. I am prepared for the blow.”
He looked from the paper to the drapes. “It asks too much of them.”
Elizabeth regarded the drapes.
“That is the cruelest thing ever said of upholstery in my hearing.”
The almost-smile came then, tired but real.
Elizabeth saw it and decided, with no consultation of prudence whatsoever, that Manchester Square could not have him back yet.
“Then you must stay to dinner.”
Darcy’s hand stilled beside the samples.
“Must I?”
“Certainly. This will be a long discussion, and I have books and books of samples if one of them is to be changed.”
“Books and books?”
“Mr. Darcy, do not look alarmed. You offered to be of service.”
He looked at her then, and she knew he understood at least part of it.
“So I did.”
“You may yet repent it.”
He looked from the samples to Elizabeth, and then to the condemned room, with its impossible drapes and its brown conviction and its table of small domestic disputes. For a moment he seemed to understand too much and not enough.
Then he bowed his head.
“Then I shall stay.”
The words were nothing more than agreement. They settled in the room like something warmer.
Elizabeth reached for the first book of samples.
“Very well,” she said. “We shall begin with the least offensive.”