Chapter Nine #6
Mrs. Collins received this information with the composure of a woman who had already known it. “And what did you make of Miss Eliot, Mr. Bennet?” she asked, turning to James with a directness that was, in its way, a small mercy—it gave him something precise to answer.
“Miss Eliot made a very good impression,” he said.
“In what respect?”
Collins leaned forward, pleased to elaborate on James’s behalf.
“Her appearance and manner are entirely such as one would wish. Lady Catherine spoke of her accomplishments in the highest terms—well-read, well-tempered, and she plays with feeling and accuracy. I had only a brief glimpse of her in the hall today, but I can confirm that her ladyship’s description was not exaggerated. ”
“I was not asking for a description,” Mrs. Collins said, with a gentleness that was also a correction. She looked at James. “I was asking for a genuine impression.”
James was quiet for a moment.
“Miss Eliot was unselfconscious,” he said at last. “She did not perform for the occasion. When she spoke, it was because she had something to say.” He paused. “That is not common.”
Mrs. Collins held his gaze for a moment and then gave a small nod, as though this confirmed something she had already suspected.
“Lady Catherine mentioned,” James continued, setting down his cup, “that there are circumstances which make an early resolution of the matter desirable. She did not explain what those circumstances are. Mr. Collins—did she say anything to you?”
Her husband blinked.
“She indicated that the matter was one of some urgency, yes. I assumed it was a question of timing—the season, or Lord Eliot’s affairs in London. I did not enquire further, as it did not seem my place.”
“No,” James said. “I suppose it did not.”
He looked at Mrs. Collins, who had been sitting with the particular quality of attention that suggested she was listening to rather more than was being said.
“Charlotte,” he said. “What do you think?”
Mr. Collins looked up with mild surprise, as though the question had not occurred to him as a natural one to ask.
Mrs. Collins set down her cup and turned to James with the frank steadiness of a woman who has been waiting to be asked.
“I think,” she said carefully, “that Lady Catherine does not arrange things without reason, and that the reason in this case is one she has chosen not to disclose until she is certain of your intentions.” She paused.
“I also think that Miss Eliot is a young woman of genuine worth, and that whatever the circumstances are, they are not of her making.”
Collins frowned slightly. “I am sure there is nothing—that is to say, Lady Catherine would not propose a connexion that was in any way —”
“No,” Mrs. Collins said, with a gentleness that was also a very firm interruption. “She would not.”
James looked at his hands.
“The difficulty,” he said, speaking as much to himself as to either of them, “is that I am being asked to commit to something I do not fully understand.”
The clergyman opened his mouth, and then closed it again—which was, in James’s experience, the most useful thing Collins had done all day.
“James,” Mrs. Collins said, and there was a gravity in her voice that was not quite warning and not quite reassurance. “I cannot tell you what the circumstances are. What I can tell you is this: the young lady is not the source of the difficulty. She is its consequence.”
James looked at her for a long moment.
“That is not nothing,” he said.
“No,” she agreed. “It is not.”
James rose from his chair. Collins looked up with the eager attention of a man who hopes a decision is about to be announced, and found James’s expression gave him nothing to work with.
“I think I shall take some air,” James said. “There is time enough before this evening.”
Collins settled back, satisfied that the matter was as good as settled. Mrs. Collins said nothing, but as James moved toward the door, she looked up from her sewing with the expression of a woman who has said what she could and is now waiting to see what a man will do with it.
“Thank you, Charlotte,” James said.
Mrs. Collins inclined her head. “Be kind to Miss Eliot,” she said. It was not a request. It was the kind of remark that contained an entire understanding of a situation in five words and required nothing further.
James nodded once, took his hat from the hall table, and went out into the September afternoon to think.
***
Two dozen candles lighted the dining room at Rosings, their light distributed across the long table with the quiet precision of a household in which such matters were attended to not as display but as habit.
The silver was excellent, the flowers—late roses and something white and feathery that Mr. Bennet could not name—arranged with an economy that suggested taste rather than abundance, and the chairs were placed at intervals that permitted conversation without obliging it.
Her ladyship presided at the head of the table with the composed authority of a woman entirely at home in her own consequence, and the dinner, from the first remove onward, was very good indeed.
Mr. Bennet had been placed to Lady Caroline’s left and directly opposite Miss Eliot, which he suspected was not accidental.
Mr. Collins sat beside Lady Catherine, where he was both most useful and least likely to interrupt anything of importance.
At the same time, Mrs. Collins occupied the chair between her husband and Lady Caroline with the quiet competence of a woman who can manage two conversations at once without appearing to attend to either.
The talk at the table proceeded easily, though not without direction.
Her ladyship spoke first of the improvements she intended to make to the south walk before winter, explaining at some length that the gravel had grown uneven in two places and that the yew hedge on the lower side had lost the proper severity of its line.
“It has been neglected,” Lady Catherine said with decision. “I cannot imagine how such negligence has been permitted.”
Mr. Collins inclined his head with grave agreement.
“Your ladyship’s attention to these matters,” he said earnestly, “is always exemplary. Few estates in the county can boast such constant supervision.”
At that moment, Lady Catherine appeared to consider this merely accurate.
Lady Caroline, meanwhile, had turned the conversation toward London. She spoke of the autumn season, of a concert she had recently attended at the Hanover Square Rooms, and of a mutual acquaintance of hers and Lady Catherine’s who had removed to Bath for reasons of health.
“It was a most affecting performance,” she said to her neighbour. “Mrs. Wilton sang Handel with extraordinary delicacy.”
“Handel rewards delicacy,” James Bennet replied, “though not every performer understands that.”
Lady Caroline smiled faintly, as though the observation pleased her without surprising her.
Mr. Collins, meanwhile, had become deeply engaged with the soup.
“This is remarkably fine,” he declared with conviction. “Quite remarkably so. I confess I had not anticipated such richness of flavour, though Rosings is, of course, a household in which every excellence may reasonably be expected.”
Lady Catherine regarded him briefly.
“It is turtle, Mr. Collins.”
“Indeed, your ladyship. An excellent turtle,” Mr. Collins said, exceedingly proud of such a discovery.
Miss Eliot spoke when she was addressed and occasionally when she was not, and Mr. Bennet soon observed that what she said, whenever she chose to say it, was always worth attending to.
The young lady possessed a quiet instinct for the moment at which a conversation was about to become either tedious or contentious, and an equally quiet skill in redirecting it before it arrived at either destination.
A question placed at precisely the right moment, or a remark that opened a new avenue without appearing to close the old one, was often enough.
James noticed this because he possessed the same instinct himself, and recognised it at once for what it was—not training, but temperament: the disposition of a person who finds other people genuinely interesting and therefore prefers their comfort to her own prominence.
When Lady Caroline mentioned the afternoon’s ride, the young lady spoke again of the citadel—not at length, and not with the enthusiasm she had shown earlier in the hall, but with the quieter pleasure of someone recalling a thing already enjoyed.
She had made two further sketches, she said, of the junction between the Roman foundation and the Norman stonework.
The proportions were difficult to capture.
The Roman work was so much more deliberate—each stone placed as though it expected to remain there for a thousand years.
“And the Norman?” her mother asked.
Miss Eliot considered for a moment before answering.
“More urgent,” she said. “As though whoever built it was not entirely certain the ground would hold.”
He smiled slightly.
“That seems a reasonable sentiment for a Norman builder.”
Mr. Collins, who had been following this exchange with the expression of a man determined to admire a subject he did not entirely understand, seized the opportunity to contribute.
“I have always found old buildings extremely interesting myself,” he said. “The church at Hunsford, for example, contains several features of considerable antiquity, which Lady Catherine has been kind enough to point out to me on more than one occasion.”
Her ladyship confirmed that the church was indeed very old and that its antiquity was a matter of some local distinction, after which the conversation proceeded in another direction.
But Mr. Bennet had seen Miss Eliot’s expression in the moment before it moved on—a brief, private amusement, directed at no one in particular, the expression of a person who has long since learned to observe the small comedies of the world without requiring an audience for them.