Chapter 17 #3
“I am not sorry for that.”
This time she did look at him, and there was no reproach in her face, only that mingling of warmth and uncertainty that had become increasingly dear to him.
“No,” she said softly. “I believe you are not.”
December advanced.
The first real frost settled across Hertfordshire in the second week of the month, and with it came the announcement that Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner were expected from London.
Elizabeth spoke of them often enough that Darcy had formed an impression before he ever met them.
Her affection for her aunt and uncle was not merely dutiful.
It was deep, settled, and touched with the sort of ease that suggested long habit and perfect confidence.
Mrs. Gardiner had assisted in her first coming out, had comforted the family after the accident, had continued to write and send books and practical kindnesses with a constancy Elizabeth never mentioned for effect, but which revealed itself all the more for being spoken of naturally.
“They are staying with the Phillipses in Meryton,” Elizabeth said one afternoon when the news of their arrival had just been received. “My aunt says my uncle would rather endure a week of my mother’s hospitality than one evening in my aunt Phillips’s parlor, but that he has been overruled.”
“And by whom?” Darcy asked.
Elizabeth’s eyes brightened. “My aunt, naturally. She says one ought not burden the household of a daughter when a sister is available to be imposed upon.”
Darcy smiled. “Your aunt sounds formidable.”
“She is sensible,” Elizabeth replied. “Which is a quality my uncle values enough to submit to it.”
When at last he met them, Darcy discovered that Elizabeth had not exaggerated in the least.
The Gardiners came to Longbourn two days after their arrival in Meryton, and from the first moment of their entrance Darcy understood with perfect clarity how absurd Miss Bingley’s contempt for trade had always been.
Mr. Gardiner possessed an ease of manner that would have suited any drawing room in London, not because it was polished to display, but because it was founded upon good sense and genuine consideration.
He spoke with intelligence, listened with attention, and carried himself with that species of confidence that belongs not to vanity but to self-command.
Mrs. Gardiner, meanwhile, was all gentleness without weakness.
There was a fineness in her manners, a discretion and perceptiveness that rendered her immediately agreeable.
She observed much, spoke exactly enough, and had, Darcy thought, one of the kindest countenances he had ever seen.
It was not merely that they were respectable.
It was that they were entirely, unmistakably genteel.
He found himself, to his own surprise, grateful that he should know them. Grateful, too, for the satisfaction of seeing his earlier judgment of the family’s worth confirmed in a manner that would have been impossible to dispute.
Mrs. Gardiner’s eye, he noticed, rested more than once upon him with gentle attentiveness, and if there was any speculation in it, it was so kindly tempered that he could not resent it.
Mr. Gardiner, after some discussion with Bingley on the state of the roads and the relative miseries of winter travel, turned to Darcy with such ease that the conversation passed almost imperceptibly into matters of books, public affairs, and London society.
There was none of the striving awkwardness Darcy had seen in men determined to display their consequence before one they thought above them.
Mr. Gardiner neither diminished himself nor exaggerated his own importance.
He was entirely at home in himself, and Darcy found that he liked him exceedingly.
Elizabeth, who had watched the exchange at first with a degree of guarded expectation she had not successfully concealed, seemed to relax by visible degrees as it continued.
Once, when Mr. Gardiner made some droll remark about the tendency of London merchants to believe themselves ruined every November and prosperous every June, Elizabeth laughed and looked instinctively toward Darcy, as though wishing to see whether he had understood the joke as she had.
He had. Their eyes met, and the ease of that small moment gave him more satisfaction than he would have thought possible from so slight an occurrence.
Later, as tea was set out and the company rearranged itself, Mrs. Gardiner found an opportunity to draw near her niece while the others were occupied.
Darcy did not overhear their words. He had no desire to overhear them.
But he saw the affection between them, saw the manner in which Elizabeth’s face softened when she listened, and wondered—not for the first time—how much of the woman Elizabeth had become was indebted to this aunt whose influence seemed, in every observable way, excellent.
The afternoon lengthened into evening, and at last the Gardiners rose to return to Meryton before the roads worsened with frost. Bingley, in a transport of good spirits, offered the use of his carriage, which Mr. Gardiner accepted only after a protest that decency demanded and which no one present believed sincere enough to be lasting.
When the family had withdrawn and the drawing room at Longbourn settled again into something more intimate, Darcy found himself standing beside Elizabeth near the hearth.
“You approve of them,” she said.
It was not asked as a question.
“I do,” he replied. “Very much.”
The relief in her face was small but unmistakable.
“I thought you would,” she said. “Though I ought not to care so greatly.”
“Your concern stems from their significance to you.”
She looked into the fire. “Yes.”
“That is reason enough.”
For a moment she said nothing. Then, very softly, “You do not know what comfort it gives me that you see them as they are.”
Darcy turned toward her more fully. “I see them as estimable in every regard. Your uncle would not be out of place in any drawing room in London, nor your aunt either.”
At that, she smiled—not the lighter smile of banter, but one touched with something deeper.
“I wish Miss Bingley could hear you say it.”
“I do not.”
The answer came so promptly that she laughed.
“No?”
“No. I have had enough of her opinions to last me comfortably into old age.”
“Then old age must be a very long season indeed.”
“It promises to be longer still if she writes from London.”
That won him another laugh, softer this time, and he thought, with some wonder, that the sound had become one of the things he most looked for.
There were still obstacles before them. He was not such a fool as to think every uncertainty vanished simply because affection had declared itself in both directions.
He had not yet secured from Elizabeth that full confidence which might make a proposal honorable in every particular.
And there remained in her, despite all their progress, traces of the old disbelief that happiness could be safely hers.
But as he stood with her in the familiar warmth of Longbourn, while the house settled around them and the winter dark thickened against the windows, Darcy felt for the first time that he could see the shape of their future without straining after it.
Bingley’s wedding to Jane was set for January.
Charlotte Lucas was to marry before Christmas.
The season moved forward, carrying everyone with it.
And he, who had once been so certain of his own self-command, found that he no longer wished to command this particular hope at all.
He wished, instead, to trust it.
And perhaps, if Elizabeth’s softened reserve and answering gaze meant what he increasingly believed they did, she was beginning to do the same.