Chapter Sixteen
Bingley called the very next morning.
He arrived at Longbourn at eleven o’clock, which was really rather too early for a formal call, and anyone observing the general atmosphere of the house might have concluded that the hours since the family’s return had been spent in a state of barely-contained anticipation of exactly this moment.
Mrs Bennet had found some excuse to be in the front parlour since ten.
Mary was in the back parlour practising scales with great determination.
Kitty appeared to have mislaid something of extraordinary importance which required her to cross and re-cross the hall with great frequency.
Mr Bennet was in his library, but had elected to leave the door slightly ajar, which was quite unlike him.
Only Jane appeared truly composed, sitting with her embroidery in the window seat as though she had not been watching the lane all morning.
Elizabeth saw the horse first, and then its rider, and barely had time to say “Jane” before her sister’s needle had pricked her finger and she was pressing the little wound to her lips and turning to look out of the window with a composure so obviously effortful that it was endearing.
Bingley dismounted with the easy, cheerful grace of a man thoroughly at home in the world and handed his horse to the groom without looking, because he was already looking at the house.
Elizabeth rather thought he had been not taken his eyes from the house since he topped the hill between Longbourn and Netherfield.
“He looks well,” she observed.
“He does,” Jane said, and then, as though realising she had confirmed that she had an opinion on the subject, looked back down at her embroidery.
There was a small spreading stain on the white linen where her pricked finger had caught it.
She folded it with great care so the stain did not show, and set it aside.
In the hall, Mrs Bennet could be heard greeting their visitor with a degree of warmth which would have done credit to a prodigal son rather than a man she had not seen in several months, and Elizabeth pressed her lips together firmly against the smile that wished to escape.
“Mama is pleased he is come,” Jane said, very neutrally.
“I believe that is one way of expressing it,” Elizabeth agreed.
Bingley came into the parlour behind Mrs Bennet and stood blinking for a moment, as though requiring a moment to remember to how to use his voice in Jane’s presence.
He was indeed well, Elizabeth noted; a little more sun-browned than she had noted him in Derbyshire, his fair colour vivid, his smile breaking across his face with its characteristic readiness.
“Miss Bennet,” he said. “Miss Elizabeth. I am so very glad to find you returned to the neighbourhood! I had written to Mrs Nicholls to have Netherfield opened up the moment I received Darcy’s note that you were in Brighton and would be returning home shortly.
I do hope it was not too inconvenient, my coming so soon on your heels, but I found I could not wait any longer to… ”
He stopped. He appeared to have just recalled what it was he could not wait to do, and had very possibly been about to say it in front of Mrs Bennet and Elizabeth and quite possibly the entire household.
“To renew our acquaintance,” he finished, with the air of a man congratulating himself on recovering well.
Mrs Bennet pretended not to notice any of this, though the wide smile she made no effort to suppress said otherwise as she settled busily into her chair and called for Hill to bring tea.
Elizabeth caught Jane’s eye and received in return a look of such transparent private amusement, so perfectly concealed from everyone else in the room, that she realised her quiet, contained sister had been holding back that smile for a very long time.
They spent a pleasant three-quarters of an hour discussing the neighbourhood, Brighton, Bingley’s time in Scarborough, and the upcoming wedding, upon which topic Mrs Bennet was capable of speaking without pause for considerably longer than any of them were capable of listening.
Bingley absorbed this with great good nature, attending to whatever was said to him with the generous interest of a man who found everyone he met genuinely likeable, which had always been one of his most engaging qualities.
He had not looked away from Jane for more than two minutes together.
He had, Elizabeth thought, quite clearly come to Longbourn with every intention of doing something in particular, and something – probably the presence of Mrs Bennet, and Elizabeth herself, and the persistent arrival of refreshments just at the moment when the conversation might have thinned – had thus far prevented him.
When he rose to take his leave, she said “Oh, Mama! Will you help me? There is something I purchased in Brighton that I want to find at once; we can use it to improve the blue room before any guests arrive!”, and whisked her mother out of the room before anyone could object.
Jane’s quick, grateful glance told Elizabeth she had made exactly the right decision, and Bingley’s eager expression as he turned back left no room for doubt as to what was about to happen.
Lydia came downstairs just in time to see Bingley’s horse disappearing down the lane and Jane turning back from the front door with a warmth in her face which would certainly have answered Mrs Bennet’s perpetual anxious question, had she been present to see it rather than having been firmly detained upstairs by Elizabeth.
“Well,” Lydia said.
“Well,” Jane agreed, and smiled, and Lydia felt the same small wistfulness she had noticed in the carriage – the sense of her sister knowing exactly what she wanted and finding it within reach – and then let it go, because Jane had waited a very long time for this, had been heartbroken for months, and she would not begrudge her a moment of it.
She linked her arm through Jane’s instead, and walked with her into the garden, and let Jane talk, which Jane did rather more than usual, and listened, because Lydia was practising at that.
It was one of the most pleasant half-hours she had ever spent with one of her sisters.
Basking in Jane’s pure, uncomplicated happiness felt like bathing in warm sunlight.
And then going inside and seeing how overjoyed Elizabeth was for Jane, and Mrs Bennet’s transports of delight at having two daughters to be married, and Mr Bennet’s quiet satisfaction for Jane’s happiness – all in all, Lydia could not recall a better day ever having being spent at Longbourn.
She tried to fix it all in her memory, gazing on each happy face as she sat at the dinner table.
Soon enough she would be gone, living in whatever quarters Fitzwilliam secured for them in whatever town he might be sent to next.
She would write to them, of course, and they to her, but the Bennet family would never be the same again.
These were her last days of childhood, Lydia realised, with far deeper introspection than she had ever imagined herself capable of.
She would savour every moment.
The Matlocks arrived at Netherfield three days before the wedding, which was three days earlier than expected, and threw Mrs Bennet into a renewed frenzy of preparation which could only be calmed by Elizabeth pointing out, very firmly, that the earl and countess were guests of Mr Bingley and were therefore Mr Bingley’s problem and not theirs.
“But we are invited to dine tomorrow!” Mrs Bennet cried.
“Then we shall wear our best and be on our very best behaviour, Mama, and it will all be perfectly fine.”
Mrs Bennet was not at all convinced, but she had rather run out of things to do, the curtains having been re-hung, the silver polished, and every dress in the house examined and found wanting.
She subsided into a state of anxious anticipation, which was at least quieter than a state of anxious preparation.
Fortunately, Mrs Phillips and Lady Lucas arrived, enabling her to shut herself in the parlour with them and hold forth at great length on the state of her nerves without further inflicting them on her daughters.
Lydia heard the news of the Matlocks’ early arrival and went upstairs to sit by her window for a little while. She had the countess’s letter, which she had been reading and re-reading until she knew it by heart, and she held it in her lap without opening it, looking out at the bright sunny garden.
Richard’s parents, she thought. The earl and countess of Matlock, who had written to her with warmth and what seemed like genuine pleasure, and who were now three miles away at Netherfield. In two days she would be their daughter.
She had meant what she told Kitty; she was not afraid, not exactly. But she was keenly aware of the distance between Miss Lydia Bennet and Mrs Richard Fitzwilliam, and she was not at all sure she knew how to bridge it.
Squaring her shoulders, she reminded herself that she had faced Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by Richard’s admission by far the most formidable of his relatives, and had not disgraced herself in the encounter. She would not disgrace herself tomorrow either.
Hold your head up, she heard General Lewes say in her memory, with his dry blue-eyed smile. You are every bit as good as anyone in that room, my girl.
She folded the letter carefully and went to ask Elizabeth’s opinion on whether the pale yellow muslin or the white would be better for tomorrow.
“The white,” Elizabeth said, without hesitation. “You always look your best in white.”