Chapter 9
Mr. Bingley came early the next morning to call on Jane, properly visible from the parlor windows and radiant enough to alarm the furniture.
Darcy arrived half an hour later, alone, which suggested that Lady Catherine had wasted no time carrying her outrage the three miles to Netherfield.
Mrs. Bennet, who had not known what to make of him when he was merely rich and proud, now regarded him as rich, proud, and possibly matrimonial. This improved him beyond measure.
"Mr. Darcy," she cried, "how very good of you to call. Mr. Bennet is in the library, naturally. Jane is in the garden with Mr. Bingley, where anyone may see them, which is quite proper. Lizzy is somewhere. Lizzy!"
"I am here, Mamma."
Darcy bowed. His face held gravity, but not the old armor. He looked like a man who had seen his aunt in full cry and understood his inheritance more vividly than before.
"Miss Elizabeth," he said, "may I speak with you?"
Mrs. Bennet inhaled.
"In the garden," Elizabeth said quickly, before her mother could call for lace, settlements, or smelling salts.
They walked to the far path, the same path where so many interrogations had lately taken place that Elizabeth wondered whether the shrubbery should be renamed the Court of Domestic Appeals.
Darcy did not begin at once.
"Lady Catherine has been here," she said.
"Yes."
"I thought she might mention it."
"She did more than mention it."
"That also sounds like her."
He looked at her, and despite everything, humor touched his eyes. "She was displeased."
"You astonish me."
"She believed her visit would secure my obedience."
"Did it?"
"No."
The single word changed the air between them.
Elizabeth looked away first. The garden was offensively pretty. It was difficult to conduct major emotional business while surrounded by well-behaved flowers.
"She repeated," Darcy said, "many of the judgments I once allowed to guide me."
"Allowed?"
"Encouraged. Shared. Obeyed." He paused. "Believed."
Elizabeth turned back.
"When you refused me at Hunsford," he said, "I thought you unjust. I knew myself wounded, and therefore assumed myself wronged. It has taken me some time to understand that pain is not proof of innocence."
She almost smiled. "That is a useful discovery. I recommend it widely."
"I deserved that."
"A great many people do. You happen to be present."
He accepted the blow with better grace than formerly. "I came today not to ask what Lady Catherine demanded of you. I know enough of your answer from her distress."
"Then you know I promised nothing."
"I hoped it."
There. Warmth, sudden and dangerous.
He continued before she had to answer. "Bingley means to ask your sister to marry him this morning. He told me because he once allowed my certainty to govern him, and he wished me to know he would not do so again."
Elizabeth's hand flew to her mouth.
"He is asking her now, I believe," Darcy said. "If she accepts him, I thought you should hear it first from Jane, not from me."
For a moment the whole world became Jane's possible happiness.
Elizabeth laughed, then nearly cried, then laughed again because crying in front of Darcy still seemed like conceding too much territory.
"If she accepts him?"
"With any justice, she will," he said. "But the choice is hers."
Elizabeth did cry then, though only a little. Darcy produced a handkerchief so promptly that she looked at him through tears with suspicion.
"Were you prepared for female emotion?"
"I live with a sister."
"That is not the same as understanding women."
"No. But it has taught me to carry linen."
She laughed and took it.
For a few steps, they walked in silence. Jane might be engaged even now. Bingley might be restored. One great injury had not been erased, but it had been answered. Elizabeth felt something loosen in her chest that had been tight since Colonel Fitzwilliam's careless revelation.
"I owe you thanks," she said.
"No."
"No?"
"Bingley must make his own choice. Your sister must make hers. I only stopped obstructing him and told the truth."
"That is more than many men manage."
"It is less than I owed."
She looked at him carefully. "You are becoming difficult to quarrel with."
"I would not presume to deprive you of the exercise entirely."
They had reached the little bench beneath the elm. Darcy stopped.
"Miss Elizabeth, I have one more correction to make. It cannot be made fully here, because the damage was not done only here."
Elizabeth's pulse altered. "What do you mean?"
"I spoke of your family to Bingley and others with arrogance. I allowed my opinions to be known in ways that injured you and your sisters. Caroline Bingley repeated them because I had made them repeatable."
"Yes."
The word cost her. His face showed that he knew it.
"There is to be an assembly at Meryton next week," he said.
"Yes. Nothing remains private in Meryton for long."
"That is why I mention it. I would like to attend. Not to force your attention. Not to display anything false. But if an opportunity arises to correct what I have allowed others to believe, I intend to take it."
Elizabeth's throat tightened. "And if no opportunity arises?"
"Then I will behave respectfully until one does."
It was not a grand declaration. It was better. Grand declarations had already failed him. This was practical, specific, and public.
"You understand," she said, "that this does not purchase anything."
"I do."
"Not forgiveness. Not affection. Not an answer."
"I know."
"Then why?"
He looked at her as he had looked at her sometimes before Hunsford, except now the admiration was stripped of argument.
"Because I was wrong where others could hear me. I must be different where others can see me."
Elizabeth had no ready jest. This was inconvenient, as jests were her preferred method of not revealing that her heart had just stepped closer to a cliff.
"Very well," she said.
"Very well?"
"Attend the assembly. Behave. Try not to repair anyone by managing them."
He smiled. "I shall make it my chief object."
They returned to the house to find it transformed by Jane's engagement into a festival of nerves.
Mrs. Bennet wept, laughed, planned menus, praised Bingley, forgave him everything she had never been allowed to know, and declared Jane the happiest creature alive.
Mr. Bennet looked pleased and quietly moved.
Lydia wanted to know whether officers would attend the wedding.
Mary observed that marriage was a serious undertaking and then sang.
Darcy stayed only long enough to offer his congratulations. Bingley clasped his hand with feeling. Jane, still glowing, looked first at Elizabeth; the questions would come later, in private, where Jane's gentleness did not have to perform before company.
Darcy bowed to Jane. "Miss Bennet, I owe you an apology."
Jane accepted it softly, with a grace that made Elizabeth both proud and protective.
When Darcy left, Elizabeth stood at the window and watched him go.
Her list was not gone. It would never be gone. But it had ceased to be only an indictment. It had become a record of repairs attempted, some insufficient, some real.
At Hunsford he had asked for her hand while explaining why taking it lowered him.
At Longbourn he had asked for nothing and done the harder thing in a room with worn chairs, nosy sisters, and Mrs. Bennet's best china.
Elizabeth, who distrusted easy transformations in novels and men, distrusted this one too.
But she believed what she could see.
What she could see was harder to dismiss.