CHAPTER 34
Leases and Lessons
By Monday morning, Elizabeth’s writing table had become a temporary government of leases.
Cotton Lane had been the experiment; Manchester Square had proved that the method could travel. The rest of Mrs. Marwood’s property papers were therefore being tied for Mr. Darcy, not as a new confidence, but as the natural continuation of an old one.
Mr. Hartwood would keep the law. Mr. Beaker would keep the figures. Mr. Terling would learn the roofs, yards, drains, tenants, and repairs.
Mr. Darcy would make the method.
The explanation was sound.
It was also insufficient.
Elizabeth knew perfectly well that the packet on her table felt unlike the first Cotton Lane papers.
Those had been an experiment, approved by trustees, limited by caution, and wrapped in propriety.
These were not all her fortune, not all her affairs, not even the greater part of her legal concerns; but they were a larger confidence than she had meant to give when she first sent a basket to a gentleman who had rescued her ridiculous dog.
Pom-Pom, wrapped in grey wool and placed near the hearth, sneezed.
“I agree,” said Elizabeth. “It is alarming.”
Mrs. Doddridge, seated by the fire with a strip of green ribbon in hand, looked up. “The weather, miss?”
“The weather, the leases, the condition of mankind. Choose whichever seems most in need of flannel.”
“Yes, miss.”
That was comfort of a sort.
Elizabeth drew a fresh sheet toward her and wrote.
Dear Mr. Darcy,
I send the remaining leases and abstracts, as marked in the enclosed schedule.
Cotton Lane and Manchester Square have persuaded me that separate habits have too long been permitted to stand in place of separate principles.
I should be obliged if you would review the whole with a view to reducing it, where proper, into one clearer system: forms for new leases and extensions, clauses suited to the different sorts of property, rent days, repair obligations, notices, inspections, and any indulgences which ought either to be written plainly or ended.
Mr. Hartwood will determine what may be put into legal form, and Mr. Beaker what must follow in the accounts. Mr. Terling, I hope, may learn the physical management under the same plan.
Yours sincerely, E. Bennet
She read it twice, wondered whether “principles” was too grand a word for old leases, and decided Mr. Darcy would know what she meant by it.
That decided, she set the note aside unsealed. No answer had yet come from Mr. Hartwood regarding Mr. Wickham, and Elizabeth would not make one unanswered letter into two merely because patience had become disagreeable.
She had just begun to tie the papers when Mrs. Albright entered with the card tray.
“Mrs. Bingley, miss. And Miss Bingley.”
Elizabeth looked up. “Together?”
“Yes, miss.”
There was no reason they should not come together.
Since Jane’s arrival in town, Miss Bingley had attended her sister-in-law with a vigilance which might have been affection if it had not so often expressed itself in correction.
Still, correction, when applied by good taste and restrained from cruelty, had its uses.
Elizabeth placed the blotter over Mr. Darcy’s note and turned the uppermost packet face-down.
Jane might know that Mr. Hartwood and Mr. Beaker guarded her interests, and Miss Bingley might know that Mr. Darcy had lately joined their table in that capacity.
Neither lady required the privilege of discovering how many roofs, walls, leases, and old obligations Mrs. Marwood’s poverty had contrived to own.
“Show them in, if you please,” she said.
Mrs. Albright withdrew.
Jane entered first, bringing with her the soft colour and settled pleasure of a woman whose happiness had grown accustomed enough to be useful.
Marriage had not made her less gentle; it had given her gentleness a house, a carriage, and Mr. Bingley’s eager consent to almost every generous scheme that occurred to her.
Miss Bingley followed in darker elegance, composed, polished, and already wearing the expression of a lady who had agreed to be useful and meant to suffer from it correctly.
“Lizzy,” Jane said, coming forward.
Elizabeth kissed her. “My dear Jane, you are early enough to have a purpose.”
Jane coloured.
Miss Bingley removed one glove with deliberation. “I told Jane that a purpose ought either to be confessed at once or concealed better. She chose confession.”
“Caroline,” Jane murmured.
“I am supporting you. I merely prefer support to be properly arranged.”
Elizabeth looked between them and smiled. “Then I am to expect an invasion.”
“A very small one,” said Jane.
“That is what invaders always say.”
Jane laughed, but her fingers tightened around her reticule. Elizabeth saw it and grew attentive.
Mrs. Doddridge received their outer things. Pom-Pom raised his head, considered Miss Bingley, and lowered it again with the air of a creature willing to postpone judgment while the fire remained steady.
Miss Bingley noticed. “Lord Pomington is gracious this morning.”
“He is conserving his strength,” said Elizabeth. “He was present at the opera in spirit and has not yet recovered.”
“He was fortunate to be absent in body. There were feathers in that house capable of injuring a smaller constitution.”
Jane sat near the fire. “I liked the opera very much.”
“You looked as if you liked it,” said Elizabeth. “Bingley looked as if liking it through you had become a sacred occupation.”
Jane’s blush deepened, but she did not look unhappy.
Miss Bingley sighed. “Charles has decided that Italian music is the noblest expression of domestic felicity. He does not know Italian.”
“That may assist him.”
Jane laughed again, and the laugh seemed to carry her past hesitation.
“Lizzy, I have been thinking of Mary ever since Saturday.”
Elizabeth leaned back. “Then the opera has more to answer for than I supposed.”
“No, not in that way.” Jane smiled, half-amused and half-earnest. “It was the music. And Mrs. Pratt. And the society concert she mentioned. There is so much here. Masters, performances, people who speak of music as if it is a real occupation, not only something endured in drawing rooms. Mary would have loved it.”
“Mary would have loved the music,” said Elizabeth. “She might have written against the plot before breakfast.”
“She may still do so by letter,” said Miss Bingley. “If properly encouraged.”
Jane gave her a look. Miss Bingley met it with composure.
“I am being hopeful. You see how marriage improves a family.”
Elizabeth turned aside to hide her smile.
Jane’s presence had changed the room already.
The papers remained beneath the blotter; the fire remained; the dry legal smell of old leases remained.
But Jane brought in a warmer air from a different life, one in which a sister might think of another sister’s pleasure without first calculating whether that pleasure would become a claim.
“We have interrupted you,” Jane said, glancing once toward the covered papers.
“Only from business which deserved interruption.”
Miss Bingley’s glance touched the blotter and moved away again with proper discretion.
“I am exceedingly grateful for my brother,” she said. “I have no desire to be busy with papers or men of business.”
Jane smiled. “Charles is not very busy with them either.”
“No,” said Miss Bingley. “He has the sense to pay other people for the discomfort.”
“A handsome arrangement,” said Elizabeth, “when one is born to it.”
“Or married to it,” Miss Bingley replied.
Jane coloured, but her smile did not fail. “That is partly why I wished to come.”
Elizabeth turned to her.
“You know,” Jane said, “that I have always been grateful for what you arranged. The education fund, I mean. For Mary’s music, and Kitty’s drawing, and everything that might help them. I know how much thought you gave it.”
“I gave it money and instructions. Thought was forced upon me when I discovered nobody at Longbourn had used either properly.”
Jane looked pained, but not reproachful. “Then let us use it properly now. Charles and I should like to invite Mary to stay with us.”
Elizabeth looked at her.
“With you?”
“Yes. If she wishes to come.” Jane’s colour rose, but she did not retreat. “There is real music to be had in town, Lizzy. Not only concerts, but instruction. Judgment. People who might tell Mary the truth without laughing at her for wanting it.”
That was so exactly Mary’s need that Elizabeth was silent for a moment.
Jane hurried on. “The lessons may come from the fund, if you think it proper. That is what you intended it for. But her stay with us, and what she requires to be comfortable in town, Charles and I can manage very well.”
Miss Bingley’s brows lifted. “Charles is not in such reduced circumstances that Miss Mary Bennet must become a charge upon your accounts merely because she requires gloves.”
“Caroline.”
“I said gloves. I might have said half-boots.”
Elizabeth laughed, but softly. The distinction mattered. Jane was not bringing another expense to Elizabeth’s door. She was bringing an offer from her own.
“You are very good,” Elizabeth said.
Jane shook her head. “No. I am married. It is different.”
It was different. Jane had a house now, a husband, servants, means, a table, a carriage, and the authority to invite.
She was no longer only Elizabeth’s beloved sister within Longbourn’s noise.
She was Mrs. Bingley, and for the first time Elizabeth saw all that title could do when held by someone whose first instinct was kindness rather than display.
“We will not make her grand,” Jane said. “Only comfortable. Fit enough for town that she is not marked out before she has spoken.”
“Fit,” said Miss Bingley, “is precisely the word. Not brilliant, not overdressed, not ambitious in trimming. Only fit. A young lady may be quite plain, quite solemn, and quite determined to improve herself; but she need not also be badly arranged.”
“Caroline,” said Jane again, though with less distress than before.
“I am being useful at great personal cost.”