Chapter 4 #2
Mr. Darcy turned briefly to Elizabeth. Behind him, on the gravel above, the sound of wheels carried down through the limes—not one carriage but several, arriving close together. Elizabeth took this as proof that they had been asked to come early so that Mr. Darcy might attend them before the crush.
“You will have half the county upon your steps, I think,” Elizabeth said, and sat down upon the cushion at Mrs. Annesley’s other side as though nothing in the world could have suited her better.
“Hardly. Only a few friends and neighbours,” he told her.
Elizabeth watched as his eyes moved to his sister and then back to her.
Somehow, she thought she understood him.
He was attempting to allow his sister to practise being out among company, and he thought that such a gathering would be an easy introduction to entertaining.
Miss Darcy had done very well in the saloon, and Elizabeth wondered why he would arrange another event the very next day. Perhaps . . .
No. It could have nothing to do with her being here or that they were to depart on Monday. It was only a coincidence.
She smiled at Miss Darcy. “We shall do very well here.”
For a moment Mr. Darcy was silent, but then he said, “You are very good,” and went up to meet his guests.
Elizabeth turned to Miss Darcy. She had no intention of requiring anything of her. She meant only to fill the air pleasantly until the girl forgot to be anxious.
“I have been wondering,” she said, “whether that is a heron at the far end of the water, or only a very ambitious branch. My uncle will be heartbroken if it is a heron. He will think it means to take his fish before he can.”
There was a pause. Then, faintly, Miss Darcy said, “It is a heron, I believe. There is a pair. They nest above the bridge.”
“A pair! Then my uncle is undone and does not even know it.”
The smallest breath of a laugh escaped Miss Darcy. Aunt Gardiner took up the subject at once, asking whether the herons were a trouble to the gardeners, and Miss Darcy answered that question, and then another, and somewhere during the third answer her hands came apart in her lap.
This lasted until the full party arrived.
They came in a body, Mr. Darcy and another man at the head of them, the rest following down the lime walk in twos and threes, so that the quiet square of rugs was, within the space of a minute, a press of bonnets and bows and names given quickly.
Sir Harold Carstairs greeted Aunt Gardiner and then Elizabeth with real warmth; he had met Mr. Gardiner two years before at a lecture in town, and recalled that he had spoken of his family.
“A day’s notice, Miss Bennet,” he said, shaking his head at the rugs and the laden tables, which might have dropped from the sky. “My wife would not stir for the Regent himself on a day’s notice. For Darcy she had her maid come up at six.”
Elizabeth blinked. Whatever did Sir Harold mean?
There was a house party at Pemberley; surely this picnic had been planned as a part of it.
Mr. Darcy had said it was a recent idea, but surely that meant at least a week.
She glanced at the preparations. No, she was certain this could not have been managed in a day.
Perhaps Mr. Darcy had invited more friends so that she and her relations, who had joined the party so recently, would not be the only guests staying elsewhere.
The Reverend Mr. Pelham was mild and scholarly; his daughters were Miss Pelham and Miss Elinor, who were pleased to be presented. They were near to Miss Darcy in age and plainly fond of her.
Lady Carstairs did not wait to be brought to Miss Darcy.
She had known the girl since she was an infant, and she crossed the grass with both hands out and her voice pitched to carry her affection to every corner of the lawn.
When she reached Miss Darcy, she kissed the girl on the cheek and made much over her.
It was the very opposite of unkindness, but the culmination of Lady Carstairs’s warmth, the Pelham girls turning to her, their father inquiring after her health, and Miss Bingley wishing to be introduced to the Carstairses left Miss Darcy rather pale.
Elizabeth saw it happen—the hands finding one another again and the colour going out of the girl’s face.
“Miss Darcy,” she said, as though they had already been speaking and had merely been interrupted, “you must rescue me from my ignorance. I have been trying to determine whether that prospect is finer from the terrace or the bank, and I believe only you can decide it. Will you show me?” She rose, putting herself between Miss Darcy and the crowd, and the thing was done before anyone present could protest.
They stood a little apart near the long table.
Elizabeth asked Miss Darcy a few undemanding questions—whether the raised pie was the cook’s own receipt, whether the dark honey came from the Pemberley hives—the sort of questions a frightened girl might answer with a word, or a nod, or nothing at all while she found her footing.
Elizabeth carried the rest. By the time Mrs. Annesley had drifted near, the colour had come back into Miss Darcy’s cheeks and her hands hung quiet.
“The honey is indeed from the hives, Miss Bennet. My brother will not sell it, though. He prefers to save what we can reasonably use for the house and to give the rest as gifts.”
Miss Darcy had freely spoken an entire sentence, and Elizabeth counted it a victory.