CHAPTER 52
Departures and Arrivals
The first days after The Laurels had been spent in discovering how many small arrangements were required before happiness could become domestic.
Mr. Darcy’s rooms had gained hooks, linen, and luncheon; Elizabeth’s household had gained his man, his habits, and the quiet surprise of his presence at breakfast; Pomington had gained nothing he had not already considered his due.
On the third evening, Gracechurch Street expected them.
Mrs. Gardiner had arranged an early dinner before Mr. and Mrs. Bennet returned to Longbourn the next morning.
Mary was to go back afterward to Brook Street, Lydia was to remain with the Gardiners, and Kitty was to return home with enough disappointment to make her silent.
Before they left Portman Square, Elizabeth found Mrs. Doddridge in the smaller parlour, correcting the left side of Pomington’s blue wrapper.
“His lordship objects?” Elizabeth asked.
“With feeling.”
Pomington sneezed.
Elizabeth shut the door. “Mrs. Doddridge, I mean you to understand that my marriage has not altered your place here.”
Mrs. Doddridge’s needle paused. “I had not packed, ma’am.”
“No. But you might have wondered.”
“Only whether I should be required to sit less often between you and Mr. Darcy.”
“Sometimes, perhaps.”
“That will be a relief to us all.”
Elizabeth smiled. “I married Mr. Darcy. I did not marry away everyone who belonged to me before him.”
Mrs. Doddridge resumed her stitch. “Very sensible, ma’am. Marriage is not generally improved by unnecessary dismissals.”
“Then that is settled?”
“Unless his lordship objects.”
Pomington looked up.
“His lordship,” said Elizabeth, “may bear it.”
Gracechurch Street had the peculiar composure of a house determined not to be conquered by visiting relations.
Mrs. Gardiner had made the dinner early, not festive enough to invite speeches and not plain enough to appear unkind.
It was not a farewell party. Mrs. Gardiner had too much sense for that; she had merely gathered the family before everyone was sent, with varying degrees of willingness, where they next belonged.
Mrs. Bennet objected to most of it.
“Lizzy, there you are,” she cried, taking Elizabeth’s hands almost before the footman had completed the announcement.
“Only think of it. We are to leave in the morning, though I am sure another day would harm nobody; Mary is to return to Jane, Lydia is to remain here, and Kitty is determined to be melancholy because she must come home. I shall have nothing at Longbourn but questions, and no one considers how very tiresome questions are when one has not been allowed to arrange the answers.”
“Perhaps fewer answers will be safer, Mama.”
“Fewer answers! Lizzy, you speak like your father. Fewer answers only make people invent worse ones.”
Kitty, seated near the window with her hands folded too carefully in her lap, said, “I should have liked to see more of London.”
“And so you may,” said Mrs. Gardiner, entering with the calm of a woman who had arranged both the dinner and the conversation, “when London can improve you more than it distracts you.”
Kitty looked as if she did not find the distinction comforting.
Mr. Bennet, in a chair by the fire, lowered his paper. “My dear Kitty, to be distracted by London is no disgrace. Many people are ruined by less respectable things.”
“Mr. Bennet,” cried his wife, “how can you talk of ruin when everything is already so vexing?”
“My dear, I spoke only of distraction. Ruin is a later stage, and may safely be left to breakfast.”
Mr. Darcy bowed to Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, then to Mr. Bennet, and then with grave correctness to Mrs. Bennet, who received him with a mixture of awe, grievance, and recollection that she had been warned not to be the main event.
“Mr. Darcy,” she said, lowering her voice by a full quarter and therefore imagining herself subdued, “I hope Lizzy remembers that a married woman has duties as well as advantages.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes for the smallest possible moment.
Mr. Darcy answered with perfect composure. “Mrs. Darcy has never required instruction in duty, madam.”
Mr. Bennet’s mouth twitched.
Mrs. Bennet did not know whether she had been answered or praised. “Well, that is very kind of you, I am sure.”
Mary stood near Jane with a packet of music beneath her arm. Miss Bingley, elegant and severe, was correcting the angle of Mary’s glove as if London improvement might be lost through the wrist. Her influence, Elizabeth judged, had not been tender, but it had been effective.
Elizabeth looked at the music. “So Jane is keeping you a little longer?”
Mary straightened. “If I continue to improve.”
Miss Bingley said, “That is the condition upon which London tolerates most people.”
Mary accepted this as a principle. “Miss Carr is exacting, but not unjust. She says my left hand has ceased to argue with my right, though it still interrupts.”
“A family trait,” said Elizabeth.
Mary considered this. “Possibly. But less excusable in music.”
“And Mr. Pratt’s compositions?”
Mary’s face brightened into seriousness. “He has altered the second movement again.”
“Has he improved it?”
Mary hesitated. “He has made it longer.”
Miss Bingley’s mouth moved.
Mary saw it and, to Elizabeth’s surprise, did not take offence. “That is not always the same thing. But Miss Carr says one must sometimes permit a composer his errors before correcting them. Mr. Pratt says I am of use in sounding out the passages while his ideas are forming.”
“Mr. Pratt,” said Miss Bingley, “has a great many ideas while they are forming.”
“Yes,” said Mary, with dignity. “Some of them may yet become music.”
Elizabeth looked at Mary, at the earnest face, the better gown, the new restraint that did not extinguish her solemnity but gave it something worth doing, and felt a small, sharp pleasure.
Improvement had merely given Mary better material upon which to be serious.
Lydia, meanwhile, had not become quiet. She had only become busier in a direction Mrs. Gardiner could approve.
She sat with two of the Gardiner children and a fleet of paper boats, receiving correction from the youngest upon the direction of a crease and bearing it with all the patience of a person who expected future magnificence to reward present inconvenience.
“Lizzy!” Lydia called. “I am not to be out.”
“You sound delighted.”
“I am not delighted. I am noble. Aunt says I may be in London without being in society, which is very odd, but not so dull as it sounds. I am to help with the children in the mornings, and walk with Aunt when she calls, and learn which shops may be entered without buying everything in them, and have French again, though I cannot think why French people require so many verbs.”
“A full programme.”
“Yes. And I am to be lively without being foolish, which Aunt says is possible.”
“Do you believe her?”
Lydia considered this while pressing a crease much too hard. “I believe it sounds difficult. But London is still London, even if one is not out, and that is something.”
“It is certainly something.”
The youngest Gardiner child reached across the table and corrected the fold. Lydia drew breath for protest, caught Mrs. Gardiner’s eye, and said instead, “Very well. But mine would have been prettier.”
That was not humility, but it was obedience; with Lydia, Elizabeth thought, one must begin somewhere.
Dinner was served early: soup, cold meats, good bread, a pudding for the children, and tea before anyone could make grievance comfortable.
Mr. Darcy sat beside Elizabeth, not too near, not too far, and survived Mrs. Bennet’s intermittent observations with such disciplined civility that Elizabeth began to suspect him of heroism.
“Of course,” Mrs. Bennet said, “Longbourn will seem very quiet now.”
Mr. Bennet looked at Lydia, Mary, Kitty, Jane, Elizabeth, Miss Bingley, Mr. Bingley, Mr. Darcy, three Gardiner children, and the footman carrying pudding plates.
“I await the experiment with interest.”
“Mama,” said Kitty, “Mary will not be there.”
“No, and I am sure I do not know why your sister must have masters in London when there is a perfectly good pianoforte at Longbourn.”
Mary opened her mouth.
Miss Bingley spoke first. “A pianoforte, Mrs. Bennet, is not the same thing as instruction.”
Mrs. Bennet blinked. Miss Bingley’s rank in Mrs. Bennet’s imagination was too uncertain to permit easy offence.
“Well, I am sure Mary plays very well when she chooses.”
Mary, who had once lived on such false praise and starved under it, said, “No, Mama. I played often. That is not the same thing.”
There was a little silence.
Jane touched Mary’s hand beneath the edge of the table. Mr. Bingley beamed at both of them, as if any honest sentence at table deserved encouragement.
Mrs. Bennet looked injured, but Mrs. Gardiner said, “And now Mary has opportunity. That is all to the good.”
Kitty looked down at her plate.
Elizabeth saw it. So did Mrs. Gardiner; but Mrs. Gardiner did not immediately convert the observation into advice. She merely let Kitty feel it.
After dinner, when Mrs. Bennet had gone upstairs to remind Hill’s cousin’s niece—who had attended her in London and been blamed for every misplaced ribbon—that the travelling caps must not be crushed before morning, Mrs. Gardiner came to stand beside Elizabeth near the window.
Kitty sat across the room, pretending not to watch Mary and Miss Bingley discuss a sheet of music.
“Kitty feels the difference,” Mrs. Gardiner said.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “Poor Kitty.”
“For now, home is best. Later, if you should choose to invite her, I can help make it drawing lessons rather than rescue.”
“Not yet,” said Elizabeth. “Portman Square must become a married household before it becomes an improving one.”
Mrs. Gardiner smiled. “Just so.”
Elizabeth looked again at Kitty. “But when the time is proper, I will make the arrangement myself.”
The evening ended without disaster, which Mrs. Gardiner accepted with the modesty of a general who had expected victory.