CHAPTER 37
A Truer Friend
“Miss Bennet,” he said, and the formality barely held. “Pray tell me you are quite well.”
Elizabeth had risen at his entrance; she had meant to do it with all the composure proper to a Saturday afternoon caller.
She had meant, too, to be amused. For Mr. Darcy to arrive in Portman Square without the ordinary pause of a note, without the comfort of arrangement, and with the look of a man who had crossed half London under command of an inward alarm, ought, in some degree, to have been funny.
It was not.
His hat and gloves had been surrendered below, his coat was perfectly brushed, his cravat as correct as ever; yet there was nothing settled in him.
He stood before her as if the whole purpose of the house, the servants, the stairs, the opened door, and Mrs. Doddridge’s respectable presence had been only to bring him to the sight of her alive.
“I am quite well,” said Elizabeth. “Indeed, I have suffered no injury except to my reputation for finishing tea.”
His eyes moved over her face, not rudely, but with an attention too anxious to be mistaken for ordinary civility.
“Quite well?” he repeated.
“Entirely.”
He bowed then, but it came late, as if relief had first to be mastered into manners.
Mrs. Doddridge, who had risen at Mr. Darcy’s entrance, remained with her work gathered loosely in one hand. She had the air of a woman who could be present in any room without adding herself to it; a talent Elizabeth had often valued and never more than now.
Mr. Darcy glanced once toward her, not in dismissal, but in recollection. Even that small motion cost him. He had not come to speak lightly. Whatever had driven him here belonged to some part of his life too sore to be unfolded before even the dullest and most discreet companion.
Elizabeth understood him before he asked.
“I believe,” said she, “Mrs. Doddridge means to leave us.”
“Yes, miss,” said Mrs. Doddridge.
She folded her work, rose without surprise, and withdrew with the air of a woman who had never, in her life, confused discretion with curiosity.
When the door closed, the drawing room altered.
It was the same room: the same pale afternoon at the windows, the same fire kept more for comfort than necessity, the same little table where Elizabeth’s work lay abandoned, the same chair Pom-Pom had selected that morning and then rejected for having been moved three inches from its proper authority.
Yet, with Mrs. Doddridge gone, all the proprieties of the house seemed to draw back and leave Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy standing in the cleared space of something more serious than scandal.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I ought not to have come without notice.”
“If you came only to learn whether I survived Mr. Wickham, I cannot think paper was necessary. A note might have been slower than your anxiety.”
A faint change touched his mouth, but not enough to become a smile.
“I have been very uneasy.”
“So I see.”
The words escaped her before she had considered them. His gaze came to hers quickly, and for one instant the whole room seemed too quiet.
Elizabeth looked down, not from shame, exactly, but from the knowledge that tenderness had approached nearer than she had invited.
“I am sorry,” she said, more lightly. “That sounded like an accusation. I meant only that you need not continue in such alarm. Mr. Wickham left with more tea upon him than triumph, and I came home in perfect safety.”
“Did he attempt to detain you?”
“No.”
“Did he say he meant to call?”
“No.”
“Did he name any house where you might meet again, or any person through whom he might address you?”
“No. Mr. Darcy, I assure you—”
“Were you ever alone with him?”
Elizabeth stopped.
The question was not jealousy. Nor command. Nor even that species of male alarm which thinks a woman injured because she has acted in public. It was too exact for that. Too grave. He asked as a man who knew what might be done under the cover of a crowded room.
“No,” she said. “Not in any meaningful sense. Mr. Pratt made the introduction. The musical society’s rooms were very full.
Mrs. Pratt and Miss Pratt were both in attendance, and Miss Hall was near enough to disapprove if she had chosen to do so, which she did not.
I believe she may have heard more than Mr. Wickham would have preferred, though less than I heard. ”
His hand closed once at his side and opened again.
“What did he say?”
He still stood near the middle of the room. Elizabeth had not resumed her seat. The abandoned work lay on the chair behind her, and for several moments neither of them seemed able to remember that drawing rooms were designed for sitting down.
“He approached me as if he already knew me,” she said. “Or, rather, as if he knew of me, which I liked even less. He said he had heard of me.”
Mr. Darcy’s face sharpened.
“He said that?”
“Yes. I asked why he knew anything of my affairs.”
“And?”
“He said that he had been checking upon an old friend.” Her mouth tightened. “You.”
Mr. Darcy did not answer.
“He implied that you had gone down some dark path from which a lady of my age and sex could not be expected to judge you properly. He was very civil. That was the worst of it. Concern is a useful cloak for insolence.”
“He spoke of me to you as a danger?”
“He attempted to.”
“And you threw tea at him.”
“I did.” She lifted her chin a little. “It was cold.”
His eyes closed for the briefest instant.
When he opened them, there was pain in them, but also something like admiration, though too troubled to give her pleasure.
“I did not come to reprove you for the tea.”
“No?”
“No.”
That quietness, more than praise could have done, moved her.
He took a step nearer, then seemed to recollect himself and stopped. The distance between them remained proper; the feeling in it did not.
“I warned you that Mr. Wickham was unsafe,” he said. “I did not tell you enough to make you safe. After last night, I can no longer defend that silence.”
Elizabeth’s jesting impulse failed her at last.
“Then tell me.”
The word left him with such difficulty that Elizabeth looked toward the chair beside the fire.
“Then you must sit down, Mr. Darcy.”
“I am perfectly able to stand.”
“I do not doubt it. But I am not willing to receive such a history from a gentleman standing in the middle of my drawing room as if he expected to be dismissed before the first sentence.”
His eyes came to hers.
“You will not be dismissed,” she said.
That did what command had not. He bowed slightly and sat.
Elizabeth took the chair opposite him, close enough for conversation and far enough that no one, had Mrs. Doddridge remained, could have found anything to condemn. Her abandoned work lay between them on the little table. Mr. Darcy looked at it once, as if grateful for any object not made of memory.
“You have been,” said he, “a true friend to me.”
Elizabeth’s hand tightened upon the arm of her chair.
“Mr. Darcy—”
“No. Pray let me say it. You had little reason to believe me. Less reason to defend me. Yet you heard enough from Mr. Wickham to know he spoke falsely, or at least dishonourably, and you acted before any account of mine could have instructed you. I am more sensible of that than I can express.”
Elizabeth found no answer ready.
There were compliments one might laugh away, obligations one might reduce to a joke, gratitude one might turn aside by making it ridiculous. This was not one of them. He spoke without ornament. That was its danger.
“Because I am sensible of it,” he continued, “I owe you the truth.”
He drew breath.
For the first time since entering, he looked less like a man arriving in alarm than one standing before an old sentence which must be read aloud.
“It is difficult,” he began, “to explain Mr. Wickham without explaining the whole connection. His father supplied proof. His mother supplied feeling. George supplied the face by which both were believed.”
Elizabeth said nothing.
“Mr. Wickham’s mother was born Margaret Fenwick.
She is not a Fitzwilliam, though she has at times permitted careless people to forget the distinction.
She is, however, a true relation through the older line: a poorer collateral cousin connected by blood to my mother, to my mother’s sister, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and to their elder brother, the Earl of Matlock. ”
“The sort of relation,” said Elizabeth slowly, “whom grand families may neglect until neglect can be made to look cruel.”
His gaze came to her.
“Yes.”
“And then must acknowledge just enough to prove themselves generous.”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth leaned back a little. “I understand the species.”
“I thought you might.” His voice softened by one degree and no more.
“Mrs. Wickham’s genius lies in never asking directly.
She reminds a man what he ought already to have offered.
She speaks of old blood, old kindness, poor relations, dependence, Lady Anne’s memory, what my mother would have wished.
My father loved my mother past prudence.
Anything spoken in her name went deep with him. ”
“And suspicion of Mrs. Wickham became disrespect to Lady Anne.”
“Very often.”
“And refusal became hardness.”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth’s eyes darkened. “That is clever.”
“It is.”
“I did not mean admirable.”
“I did not take it so.”
He rested one hand on the arm of his chair. It was held so still that she knew the stillness cost him.
“Mrs. Wickham’s marriage brought Mr. John Wickham to the edge of Pemberley’s family obligations.
His talents carried him inward. He was clever, patient, exact, useful in the way most dangerous to a great house.
He made himself necessary before anyone thought to ask whether necessity had given him too much power. ”
“As steward?”
“As steward. And as old servant, adviser, messenger, interpreter, friend — whatever name best suited the hour. He knew the accounts, the tenants, the leases, the repairs, the servants, my father’s habits, my mother’s memory, every corridor through which influence may pass in a house that has ceased to watch itself. ”