CHAPTER 33
A Musical Acquaintance
By Saturday evening the weather had chosen sleet, London had chosen mud, and society, with its usual preference for display over prudence, had chosen the opera.
Elizabeth had been conscious, while dressing, of a restlessness she could not entirely blame upon the weather.
Thursday had left the house too full of remembered voices; Friday had left it too full of one gentleman’s warning; and by Saturday evening she was ready to believe that an opera, however crowded, might be preferable to another hour alone with her own reflections.
Evans fastened the last hook of her gown with all the gravity due to silk, weather, and public consequence.
“You have chosen the pearls, miss,” she said.
“I have. They offend no one, I believe.”
“No, miss.”
“That is a recommendation in society.”
“Yes, miss.”
Elizabeth looked at herself once more. The gown was not the claret silk of the dinner, nor the softer grey-blue ordered with Jane for daytime use, but a deep green evening silk Mrs. Marwood had ordered for her before her last illness, and which Evans had since altered enough to belong more properly to Elizabeth.
It had the advantage of quality without proclamation.
The pearls lay cool at her throat. Her gloves were pale, her cloak warm, and her spirits not quite obedient.
Mrs. Doddridge was waiting below, wrapped in all necessary respectability and one shawl more than the weather deserved.
Lord Pomington had been left before the breakfast-room fire in a quilted wrapper of grey wool lined with green silk, the remnant of Elizabeth’s last altered pelisse.
He had looked at her departure with the bitter wisdom of a creature who understood that human beings would always, in the end, choose draughts, crowds, and noise when a fire had been provided at home.
“I believe his lordship thinks us fools,” said Elizabeth, drawing on her cloak.
Mrs. Doddridge adjusted her own gloves. “He commonly does, miss.”
“Tonight he may have evidence.”
“Yes, miss.”
The carriage rolled out into the wet dark.
London in February did not receive pleasure graciously.
It made every amusement a contest between vanity and climate, and vanity, as far as Elizabeth could judge from the line of carriages approaching the King’s Theatre, had again prevailed.
Lamps shivered in the damp air. Horses steamed under harness.
Footmen called through sleet and carriage-rattle.
Cloaks were clutched, hems rescued, feathers defended with the zeal of national borders, and ladies descended upon the pavement as if silk slippers, jewels, and determination were sufficient answer to mud.
The moment she reached the theatre, London did its best to oblige her. There was no room for private agitation in a crush of carriages, damp cloaks, feathers, footmen, lamps, and ladies determined to defeat February by force of silk.
Elizabeth stepped down with Mrs. Doddridge behind her and thought that good sense had been defeated in every direction by satin.
Inside, the crush was no improvement in comfort and every improvement in consequence.
The staircase glittered with lamps. The air was warm with perfume, damp wool, hair powder, wet silk, and overheard names.
Above them the ceilings rose grandly into shadow and gold, and everywhere, beneath the blaze of chandeliers, people arranged themselves to be observed before they submitted to being entertained.
A public room, Elizabeth thought, was a traffic of names as much as persons; one learned who belonged to whom almost before one learned who anyone was.
Mrs. Doddridge followed her steadily through the press, a force of propriety so plain and unornamental that lesser improprieties seemed to withdraw from her path out of respect.
Jane saw Elizabeth before Elizabeth saw the box. Her face lit with such pleasure that the whole damp approach, the crush, the chandeliers, and the restless remnants of the last two days were, for a moment, obliged to retreat.
“Lizzy!”
Jane’s delight made the word nearly childish. She reached for Elizabeth’s hands, then, remembering only affection, took them both.
“My dear Jane,” said Elizabeth, “you are shining so much that the chandeliers are in danger of resentment.”
Jane laughed and coloured. Marriage had made her no less modest, but it had made modesty far less effective. Happiness had become too quick for her habits of concealment.
Mr. Bingley appeared just behind her, so visibly proud of both his wife and his box that Elizabeth suspected he would have thanked the management of the theatre personally if encouraged.
“Miss Bennet! You are come. Excellent. I told Jane you would brave the weather.”
“Did you? I am glad you had more confidence in me than I had in February.”
“February is nothing when music is concerned,” said he.
Mr. Hurst, seated already with the air of a man who had established his position and would not lightly surrender it, said, “February is very much when dinner has been early.”
“Mr. Hurst,” said Elizabeth, curtseying, “I see you have discovered the evening’s chief inconvenience.”
He bowed with grave approval. “Music is well enough in its place.”
“And its place?”
“After dinner. At a proper distance.”
Mrs. Hurst, elegant and languid, offered Elizabeth a cool hand and a cooler smile, but both were civil.
She had the useful married-lady talent of appearing at once attentive and uncommitted, and her glance passed over Elizabeth’s gown, pearls, companion, and expression with a calmness that missed very little.
“Miss Bennet. Mrs. Doddridge. We are very happy to have you with us.”
Miss Bingley turned from the front of the box, where she had been arranging herself and the prospect of being admired with equal care.
“Miss Bennet,” said she. “We have survived the stairs, the crush, and Charles’s conviction that punctuality is the first ornament of civilisation. I begin to think the evening may yet reward us.”
“Then I must thank you for permitting me to share the reward after the worst of civilisation has been endured.”
“Do not be too grateful. Charles has been insufferably pleased with his arrangements. I consider your presence a necessary division of the burden.”
Mr. Bingley accepted this with untroubled satisfaction. “Caroline thinks every pleasure improved by complaint.”
“No,” said Miss Bingley. “Only every pleasure arranged by gentlemen.”
Mrs. Doddridge was placed where she could see both Elizabeth and the room, and where her respectability might be of use without requiring exertion.
Mr. Hurst shifted only enough to acknowledge that another person existed.
Mrs. Hurst resumed her survey of the opposite boxes.
Miss Bingley named two ladies in feathers, one gentleman with an unfortunate waistcoat, and a dowager who, she observed, had attended the opera for twenty years without once appearing to listen to it.
“She comes,” said Mrs. Hurst, “because absence would make people ask whether she is ill.”
“A great many constitutions are preserved by fear of being missed,” said Elizabeth.
Miss Bingley’s mouth moved. “You are in excellent spirits.”
Elizabeth was not certain this was true. She was, however, in excellent armour.
The opera was Così fan tutte, which Mr. Bingley translated for Jane with more kindness than accuracy and Miss Bingley corrected with more accuracy than kindness. The title, once properly understood, did not improve upon acquaintance.
Mrs. Doddridge listened to the explanation with her usual gravity.
“That seems a broad conclusion, miss,” she said to Elizabeth.
“Most ungenerous conclusions are.”
“Very true, miss.”
Miss Bingley looked amused. “Mrs. Doddridge, I begin to think you possess hidden severity.”
“No, ma’am.”
“I am not persuaded.”
“No, ma’am.”
The overture began before Miss Bingley could press the matter, and conversation, though not wholly defeated, was obliged to lower itself.
Elizabeth liked music too well to wish it turned at once into evidence.
She liked it first as movement, then as feeling, and only afterward, if necessary, as a subject about which people might be clever.
Mozart had a way of making lightness dangerous.
The music seemed to smile and question at the same time; it moved with elegance, but elegance was not the same thing as innocence.
Jane leaned forward slightly, her face softened by pleasure.
Mr. Bingley watched Jane more often than the stage and appeared to derive from her expression all necessary interpretation.
Mrs. Hurst attended with correct stillness.
Miss Bingley attended with the air of a woman whose taste must not be surprised into enthusiasm.
Mr. Hurst endured the first act with the fortitude of a man who had dined too early to be entirely happy.
If Elizabeth’s spirits had been unsettled before she came, they had little leisure to remain so. The opera house required attention from every sense at once: music, light, voices, colour, movement, and the small social drama of every box watching every other box while pretending otherwise.
She allowed herself to be carried for a while by the music. It was a relief to let feeling be arranged by instruments rather than by memory.
At the interval, the box came alive again.
Mr. Hurst revived considerably when movement suggested the possibility that refreshment existed somewhere in the building.
Mrs. Hurst named acquaintances with greater energy than she had displayed during the final ensemble.
Miss Bingley received a bow from a distant box and returned it with enough exactness to make Elizabeth wonder whether whole wars had been prevented by such degrees of inclination.
Mr. Bingley, who had stepped out for a few moments, returned with a gentleman of pleasant appearance and open countenance.
“Miss Bennet,” he said, “you must allow me to introduce one of our neighbours. Mr. Henry Pratt. Pratt, this is Miss Bennet, Mrs. Bingley’s sister.”