CHAPTER 36
The Consequences of Tea
By Saturday afternoon, Mr. Darcy had made four corrections to Miss Bennet’s leases, rejected two clauses as insufficiently precise, and read a third so often that it had ceased to signify anything at all.
The papers concerned the remaining Marwood properties: smaller houses whose habits had never been brought under the discipline now imposed upon Cotton Lane, a Manchester Square agreement which Mr. Terling had copied with industry but not yet understanding, and a question of yard access behind two City warehouses which ought, by every reasonable measure, to have occupied him for the better part of an hour.
It did not.
He had written custom must not override written obligation in the margin, and then sat with his pen above the page, understanding too well that the sentence applied to more than carts, tradesmen, and back gates.
Custom must not override obligation.
Nor feeling honour.
Nor desire judgment.
The words were good enough for a lease. They were less useful when a man attempted to apply them to himself.
He had kissed Miss Bennet’s hand.
The thought returned with such force, and with so little invitation, that Darcy laid down the pen.
It had been many days since he had taken that liberty.
Many days in which he had told himself it was nothing worse than a moment of gratitude carried perhaps an inch too far by fatigue, warmth, and the dangerous privacy of a house where he had been allowed to forget himself.
That was false.
He had not forgotten himself. He had remembered himself too clearly, and wanted too much.
There were courtesies in which a gentleman might touch a lady’s hand and leave no history behind him.
This had not been one of them. He had taken her hand as if it were a privilege granted after long deprivation; he had raised it as if restraint were an achievement; and when his lips had touched her glove, he had known, with every part of himself that still pretended to prudence, that he had crossed from gratitude into confession.
She had not withdrawn.
That was the difficulty.
Had she started, frowned, laughed, or looked offended, he might have been restored to himself.
There would have been pain in it, certainly, but pain at least had the merit of instruction.
Instead she had remained still. Miss Bennet, who resisted imposition with the speed of a drawn blade, had not resisted him.
Darcy took up the pen again.
The leases were safer. Leases had clauses, limits, dates, obligations, defaults. A man might serve through leases. He might make order where there had been disorder. He might be useful; and usefulness, properly governed, offended no one.
He had no right to want more than that.
He bent again over Mr. Terling’s copy, found an ambiguity concerning repair to an exterior stair, and corrected it with unnecessary severity.
A clerk knocked.
“Colonel Fitzwilliam, sir.”
Darcy closed the paper too quickly.
The door opened before he had quite composed either the page or himself, and Colonel Fitzwilliam entered with a face which, in any man less accustomed to good breeding, would have declared scandal, amusement, and the lively hope of finding another person more disturbed by both than himself.
In Fitzwilliam, it appeared only as brightness.
“Darcy,” said he, shutting the door, “I come with news so improper that my mother has spent the better part of the afternoon being shocked by it with uncommon enjoyment.”
Darcy’s hand stilled upon the closed lease.
“What news?”
Fitzwilliam removed his gloves with care.
“You know my mother never liked the Fenwicks.”
Darcy said nothing. He had not expected that name in chambers, nor spoken so lightly.
“And she liked the Wickhams less,” Fitzwilliam continued, seating himself without invitation.
“The Fenwicks were at least born inconvenient. The Wickhams had the additional offence of rising by them, depending upon them, and presuming to be grateful only when gratitude answered. You may therefore imagine her satisfaction when she learnt that young Wickham had made himself ridiculous last night in a respectable room.”
Darcy rose.
“What has Wickham done?”
Fitzwilliam looked at him then; the amusement altered, not vanishing, but settling into something more watchful.
“You have not heard?”
“No.”
“Ah.” He set his gloves upon the table. “Then receive it as steadily as you can. Mr. Wickham requested an introduction to Miss Bennet at the Musical Society’s concert last night.
Mr. Pratt himself made the introduction.
It was, by every account, their first meeting.
Within a few minutes, Miss Bennet threw tea in his face. ”
Darcy did not move.
The room seemed, for one moment, to have lost every ordinary proportion. The desk, the papers, the fire, the window, the clerk beyond the door, all remained precisely where they had been; yet none of them belonged any longer to the same day.
“Wickham spoke to Miss Bennet?”
“He did.”
“At his request?”
“So Pratt says, with all the innocence of a man who does not know when he has ruined another.”
Darcy went to the window.
Below, the street proceeded with its usual Saturday industry. A cart laboured past under a load of timber. Two boys argued over a parcel. A woman in a brown cloak lifted her skirt clear of the mud with more sense than elegance. London was crowded, indifferent, and entirely too small.
Wickham had sought her out.
Not encountered. Not been placed beside her by accident. Not drawn into some general conversation where civility required endurance.
Sought her out.
“What did he say?”
“That,” said Fitzwilliam, “is the useful part. No one knows precisely.”
Darcy turned back.
“No one?”
“No one who is telling it. Miss Bennet knows, of course. Miss Hall may have heard enough to form an opinion. Mrs. Pratt seems to have caught more of the effect than the words. Pratt, having done the introduction, appears to have been recalled by common sense only after the tea had flown. The room has produced a dozen witnesses to the cup and almost none to the offence.”
Darcy’s hand closed at his side.
“Do not mistake me,” Fitzwilliam said. “That ignorance does Wickham no service. Had the words been known, he might deny them, soften them, explain them, or accuse some lady’s hearing of excessive delicacy.
As it stands, every drawing room is obliged to invent an offence large enough to fit the remedy. ”
Darcy said, very low, “And Miss Bennet?”
“Came off astonishingly well.”
The words ought to have relieved him. They did not.
“That is the beauty of it, if one is not Wickham,” Fitzwilliam continued.
“Pratt confirms Wickham asked for the introduction. No old acquaintance. No private quarrel. No history to explain matters. A first conversation, Darcy—a first conversation—and tea. Add to that, he was reported to be somewhat in his cups, and every respectable house in town is now left to ask what a half-drunk man may have said to a lady who had every reason to expect ordinary civility.”
Darcy drew breath.
“In his cups?”
“So it is reported. Not disgracefully drunk, I gather. Only enough to make him too easy, too warm, too persuaded of his own address. The worst degree in a man who already believes himself charming.”
That was Wickham exactly. Not insensible. Never insensible, if calculation could serve him. Only loosened: judgment softened, vanity sharpened, malice allowed to wear geniality because it had always done so successfully before.
“And Miss Hall?” Darcy asked.
“Approved the remedy.”
“Openly?”
“With Miss Hall, open approval is not required. She remained by Miss Bennet, did not condemn her, and is said to have called it, in some form, a prudent response. My mother, who would ordinarily sentence every young woman in the room before breakfast and revise the sentence upward by luncheon, has therefore decided that Wickham must have shown in public what she always suspected in private: a want of breeding too deep to be hidden by manners.”
Darcy looked down.
Lady Matlock’s justice, when it appeared, was seldom justice.
It was preference, rank, usefulness, old dislike, old calculation.
She did not defend because defence was owed; she condemned because condemnation now cost nothing and amused her.
Yet even that had weight. If Lady Matlock laughed at Wickham, other houses would learn permission to doubt him.
Fitzwilliam leaned back.
“Had Miss Bennet sat down with the express purpose of injuring Wickham’s credit, she could hardly have chosen better. She has not accused him, which he might answer. She has made him ridiculous, which he cannot. She has left society with a question no one can answer in his favour.”
There was humour in it. Of course there was humour in it. Wickham wet, startled, stripped for once of the graceful readiness by which he made his offences look like other people’s severity—there was justice so sharp in the picture that even Darcy felt the bitter edge of satisfaction.
But satisfaction lasted only an instant.
Elizabeth had been near him.
Elizabeth had heard him.
Elizabeth, who had known only part, had been forced to judge the rest in public, under his eye, under the eye of strangers, with no preparation except her own sense of wrong and that courage which never consulted convenience before acting.
“What did Wickham want with her?” Darcy said.
Fitzwilliam’s amusement disappeared.
“I hoped you might have some guess.”
Darcy had too many.
Wickham might have wanted information. He might have wanted to measure how much Darcy had told.
He might have wanted to discover whether Miss Bennet was merely a wealthy young woman whose property brought Darcy into contact with her, or something more difficult.
He might have wanted to warn, insinuate, flatter, poison, or attach himself to her name long enough that any later denial would leave a mark.
He might have wanted nothing more precise than the old sport of injury under the protection of civility.