CHAPTER 40
An Offence Properly Described
The room had not altered after Mr. Darcy left it.
That was the first absurdity.
The sofa remained where it had stood. The fire burned with the same composed industry.
The tea tray, having once been the instrument of restoration, now sat in a condition of respectable redundancy.
Mrs. Doddridge had withdrawn after securing every appearance of propriety that could be secured by a woman who had entered too late to prevent an engagement and too sensibly to disturb one.
Nothing, in short, had happened to the room.
Elizabeth, however, appeared to have been rearranged beyond immediate repair.
She stood for some time beside the sofa, looking at the place where Mr. Darcy had sat, and was obliged to admit that happiness was a much less orderly condition than she had been led to expect.
It did not take possession of a person with dignity.
It did not sit down, fold its hands, and wait to be arranged.
It moved through one's thoughts without permission, opened doors, disordered papers, touched its fingers to one's mouth, and then looked astonished when one attempted to govern it.
Mr. Darcy had told her the truth.
Mr. Darcy had asked her to marry him.
Mr. Darcy had kissed her.
This last fact, being the least suitable for sober reflection, naturally presented itself with the greatest force.
Elizabeth had known him capable of strong feeling. She had seen it in his silence, in the severity with which he commanded himself, in the pain with which he had spoken of Pemberley, his father, Wickham, and Georgiana. She had known, too, that restraint in such a man could not mean emptiness.
She had not known, until permission was given, that all that restraint concealed so much decision.
This was a fact requiring consideration.
Unfortunately, whenever Elizabeth attempted to consider it with proper seriousness, her thoughts returned not to the proposal, nor even to his history, but to the swiftness with which he had said her name and crossed the space between them.
She touched two fingers to her mouth, then dropped her hand at once, as if Mrs. Doddridge might re-enter and detect imprudence by evidence.
She had not expected Mr. Darcy to be so direct.
She had also discovered that she did not mind it at all.
Indeed, she had liked it enough to make her suspicious of her own composure.
This, Elizabeth decided, was not a subject upon which any lady ought to stand alone in a drawing room with the tea growing cold. Reflection had its uses, but there were forms of reflection which soon became only vanity in a more interesting gown.
She turned instead to Mr. Wickham.
The effect was immediate and bracing.
If Mr. Darcy's kiss had disordered her, Mr. Wickham's conduct restored her to a far more familiar condition: indignation with an object.
She had thrown tea at him for impertinence.
She now perceived that impertinence had been the smallest part of his offence.
He had not merely presumed to manage her understanding.
He had not merely attempted, upon first acquaintance, to guide her judgment of a gentleman whose name he had no right to use.
He had tried to make her ignorance another weapon against Mr. Darcy.
The tea had answered his presumption.
It had not begun to answer his cruelty.
Elizabeth went to the writing table.
Mr. Hartwood had not answered her first inquiry.
She knew him cautious. She knew him honourable.
She knew, in ordinary circumstances, that he would rather be late with truth than prompt with conjecture.
Mrs. Marwood had approved this quality in him and had often said that a solicitor who ran faster than his facts was fit only to manage fools and lawsuits.
But caution which arrived after Mr. Wickham had secured an introduction, poured his poison, and been answered by half a cup of cold tea seemed to Elizabeth less admirable than advertised.
She drew a sheet toward her, took up her pen, and began.
The first sentence was too sharp.
She crossed it out.
The second was better only because it could not be sent without making Mr. Hartwood suspect she had lost the habit of sense along with every other form of composure.
She laid that sheet aside, drew another, and wrote steadily.
My dear Mr. Hartwood,
I must own myself disappointed that no answer has yet reached me upon the subject of Mr. George Wickham. I know your caution too well to mistake delay for neglect; but in this instance delay has proved most unfortunate.
Mr. Wickham contrived last evening to be introduced to me at Mrs. Pratt's musical society. His address was unwelcome, presumptuous, and highly offensive. Had his offence ended in an attempt to manage my judgment, I should have thought him merely impertinent. It did not.
He spoke of Mr. Darcy in a manner I now understand to have been not only false, but malicious; and I cannot consider his approach to me as accidental. He plainly wished to use my ignorance as another means of injuring a gentleman who has already suffered too much by his falsehoods.
I therefore beg you will inform me what steps may be taken to prevent Mr. Wickham from approaching me further, using my name, or representing himself as having any claim upon my acquaintance or confidence.
I do not desire noise. I desire protection; and I desire such quiet warning as may be prudently and efficiently given before his credit does further harm.
Pray consider this urgent, and answer me as soon as you are able.
Yours sincerely, Elizabeth Bennet
She read it over once, sanded it, sealed it, and rang.
Mrs. Doddridge appeared with the calm of a woman who had never permitted a bell to suggest emergency merely because it rang.
"This is to go to Mr. Hartwood's house directly," said Elizabeth. "Not chambers. If he is not at home, it is to be left with his servant. If the servant supposes it may wait until Monday, James may inform him that it may not."
"Very good, miss."
Mrs. Doddridge accepted the letter as though it were not an instrument by which Elizabeth hoped to inconvenience a villain, protect the gentleman she had just promised to marry, and perhaps give Mr. Hartwood a very uncomfortable Sunday. Her expression remained unchanged.
This was, Elizabeth thought, one of the highest virtues of Mrs. Doddridge's character. She received even the most extraordinary facts and converted them, by some private alchemy, into errands.
When the letter had gone, Elizabeth remained standing by the writing table. The room was quieter now. The first heat of anger had found its proper channel. Mr. Wickham was not answered; not yet. But he had been described. That was something.
Pom-Pom returned from his walk soon after, wrapped against the evening air and offended by it. He was carried in by a footman, set upon the hearthrug, and arranged himself with the consequence of a creature who had personally survived weather.
"Pom-Pom," said Elizabeth, "I am to be married."
Pom-Pom blinked.
"To Mr. Darcy."
He sneezed, turned in a circle, and tucked his nose beneath the edge of his wrapper.
"Yes," said Elizabeth. "That is very much as I expected."
Pom-Pom, having discharged every duty owed to family intelligence, went to sleep.
Elizabeth looked at him for a moment and found herself steadier for the sight.
It was all very well to have one's life altered by a gentleman of sense, honour, distressing directness, and excellent shoulders; but there was comfort in knowing that some members of the household would continue to receive great events as interruptions to their proper warmth.
She had written against Mr. Wickham.
There remained the more astonishing business of making room for Mr. Darcy.
The thought did not arrive gently. It entered whole, with a certainty that made her turn toward the door before she had quite decided to ring again.
Mr. Darcy was to live here.
Not call. Not visit. Not be admitted at reasonable hours and dismissed before dinner. Not sit in the drawing room by permission of propriety and Mrs. Doddridge.
He was to live here.
Portman Square, which had been Mrs. Marwood's house, and then Elizabeth's inheritance, and lately something like a place attempting to remember how to be alive, must now become their home.
Elizabeth rang again.
This time it was Mrs. Albright who came, her keys at her waist and her expression prepared to learn whether the linen, the lamps, the servants, or the chimney-boys had failed in their duty.
"Mrs. Albright," said Elizabeth, "I am to be married. We must prepare the rooms for Mr. Darcy."
Mrs. Albright paused only long enough to allow the future to enter Portman Square in an orderly fashion.
"Yes, miss."
That was all.
It was exactly right.
The rooms Elizabeth had in mind were on the floor above, in the quieter part of the house, where the best chambers had long ceased to expect company.
They had once been Mr. Marwood's, though Elizabeth had never known them as such.
He had been dead nearly fifteen years; by the time she came to Portman Square, his clothes were gone, his books settled elsewhere, his papers burnt, boxed, or delivered into proper keeping, and every personal object removed with the stern good sense by which Mrs. Marwood had governed grief before it could govern her.
Since then, the rooms had remained in a condition of perfect readiness for nobody.
They were aired, dusted, inspected, and left alone.
Elizabeth had passed their doors for fourteen years without once imagining that they might belong to anyone. They were neither neglected nor occupied, neither sacred nor useful. They were simply part of the house's disciplined emptiness.
Now Mrs. Albright opened them.