Chapter 6
Mr. Darcy
Darcy had not intended to go to Longbourn. Not that Tuesday, not any day.
He had intended to stay at Netherfield, read his book, write to Georgiana, and avoid all social engagement for the remainder of the day.
This was a perfectly reasonable plan. It was the sort of plan a sensible man made after a week that had included a pig on his boot at a dinner party, a pig on his boot at an assembly, and the growing suspicion that the entire county of Hertfordshire considered him an object of comedy.
Then Bingley had said, "I thought I might call on the Bennets this afternoon. Come with me, Darcy. The fresh air will do you good."
"The fresh air will do nothing for me."
"You cannot sit in this house all day."
"I have sat in this house all day for four days running and found it entirely satisfactory."
But Bingley had that look on his face. The earnest, golden look that said he was going to see Miss Bennet and was nervous about going alone and would Darcy please come as ballast. Bingley had worn this look many times before, for other women in other counties, and it had never ended well, but it was impossible to refuse.
So here he was. Riding up the lane to Longbourn on a Tuesday afternoon, in weather that could not quite decide between autumn and winter, telling himself he was here as Bingley's companion and nothing more.
He was not thinking about Miss Elizabeth Bennet. He was not thinking about her chin lifting when he spoke, or the way her eyes sharpened when she was amused, or the colour of her hair in sunlight, which he had noticed at the assembly despite his best efforts not to notice anything about her at all.
He was not thinking about any of this. He was thinking about his book, which he had left at a very interesting chapter, and how much he wished he were still reading it.
Longbourn was a gentleman's house, but only just. The grounds were pleasant if somewhat unruly, with a garden that suggested competing jurisdictions and a lawn that had surrendered to the seasons.
The front door needed paint. The drive was narrow.
It was, in every way, a house of modest means and large family, and it wore both facts openly.
Bingley did not notice any of this. Bingley dismounted with the eagerness of a man arriving at a palace.
They were shown into the parlour. Mrs. Bennet received them with an enthusiasm that made Darcy want to retreat behind the nearest piece of furniture.
She was loud. She was effusive. She directed every comment at Bingley and every pointed observation at Darcy, whom she clearly considered a secondary prize but a prize nonetheless.
Kitty coughed. Lydia stared at them with the frank appraisal of a girl who had not yet learned the art of subtlety. Mary, at the pianoforte, was producing a melody that Darcy suspected had been written in a different key than the one she was playing.
Jane Bennet entered from the sitting room, and Bingley's face did something that Darcy could only describe as melting. He watched his friend cross the room to greet Miss Bennet and felt, simultaneously, affection for Bingley's transparent sincerity and concern about where it was leading.
Darcy chose a chair near the window. It was the farthest seat from the centre of the room and offered a partial view of the garden, which was better than a full view of Mrs. Bennet's performance. He sat down, arranged his coat, and prepared to endure.
He was doing reasonably well at it, too.
He had survived three minutes of Mrs. Bennet's account of Jane's accomplishments, two minutes of Lydia's questions about London, and one minute of Mary explaining the philosophical implications of social obligation.
He had nodded at appropriate intervals and said "indeed" twice, which was his contribution to most conversations and which people generally accepted as sufficient.
Then he made the mistake of glancing at the garden, and he saw Miss Elizabeth.
She was outside, near a flower bed that appeared to have been recently excavated by something with a snout.
She was wearing a plain grey dress and her hair was coming loose and she was bending down to pick up what appeared to be a chewed stick.
She looked up at the window, saw him, and went still for a moment before looking away.
His chest did something inconvenient.
And then the squealing began.
It came from somewhere deep in the house. A crash. A scraping sound. A clatter that suggested a broom handle hitting a stone floor. Then the squealing, high and joyful and unmistakable, followed by the rapid percussion of hooves in a corridor.
Mrs. Bennet's face went white. "HILL!"
The parlour door, which had been closed, burst open.
The pig came through it like a loosed arrow. She crossed the room at full speed, her hooves sliding on the rug, her ears flapping, her small body aimed at Darcy as though he were the only thing in the world worth running toward.
She hit his boot. She sat down. She pressed her flank against his calf and looked up at him with her enormous dark eyes and sighed the sigh of an animal who had been separated from the centre of its universe and had been restored to it at last.
He looked down at her. She looked up at him. Her tail was wagging.
He should have been annoyed. He should have been offended, or at the very least embarrassed.
A pig was sitting on his boot in a lady's parlour, and everyone in the room was staring at him, and Mrs. Bennet was making a sound that suggested she was either about to faint or to commit violence against the pig.
But the pig was warm on his foot. And her eyes were very bright. And her ears were velvet. And she was looking at him with such absolute certainty that he was good, such unshakeable faith in his character, that something in his chest loosened the way a fist loosens when you stop making it.
No one looked at him like that. Not his friends, who respected him. Not his sister, who loved him but also feared disappointing him. Not the women in London, who saw his income and his estate and his name. No one looked at him and saw simply a person worth sitting on.
Except this pig.
He reached down. His hand moved before the thought formed.
He placed his fingers behind the pig's ear and scratched, gently, in the spot where the ear met the skull.
The pig's eyes half-closed. A low, steady grunting vibrated through her body, rhythmic and content, the sound of an animal settling into pleasure the way a cat settles into a warm spot.
Elizabeth would have called it a pig's version of contentment.
Darcy, who had no experience with pig sounds, simply noted that the animal appeared to be enjoying itself enormously.
He scratched again. The pig leaned into his hand with such complete surrender that he almost laughed.
He did not laugh. He was in a room full of people and his reputation could not survive laughing at a pig.
Miss Elizabeth appeared in the doorway. She had been in the garden. There was dirt on her gloves and a leaf in her hair, and she stopped short when she saw him, and her face did something complicated that he could not read.
She crossed the room and knelt in front of him. Their faces were close. He could see the faint freckles across her nose and the exact shade of her eyes, which were brown but not simply brown. There was gold in them, near the centre.
"Mr. Darcy," she said, very quietly. "I am running out of ways to apologise."
He should have said something graceful. Something witty, or kind, or at least warm enough to erase the memory of "tolerable" and "evidently" and "one hopes." What came out was: "The pig has nothing to apologise for. And neither, Miss Elizabeth, do you."
She looked up at him. Her expression changed. He could not name how, but it made his chest feel tight.
She took the pig and left the room. He watched her go. The pig stared at him over her shoulder, as it always did, with its round dark eyes and its drooping ears, and he felt, absurdly, as though he were being abandoned.
Darcy sat very still. His boot was warm where the pig had been. The spot on his hand where her ear had pressed against his fingers still held the ghost of velvet. His heart was doing something unusual, and he suspected it had less to do with the pig than he wanted to admit.
The visit continued. Bingley talked to Jane.
Mrs. Bennet talked to everyone. Mary played.
Kitty coughed. Lydia asked Darcy whether he had ever attended a ball at St James's, and when he said he had, she asked what the ladies wore, and when he said he could not recall, she looked at him with the disappointment of a person who has discovered that a treasure chest contains only accounting ledgers.
Elizabeth returned from the kitchen without the pig but with two spots of colour high on her cheeks and an expression that suggested she had just had a very firm conversation with an animal.
She sat across the room from him and did not look at him, which he noticed because he was looking at her.
She poured herself a cup of tea with steady hands and said something to Jane about the weather that Darcy suspected was not about the weather at all.
She was not beautiful in the way Miss Bennet was beautiful.
Miss Bennet was beautiful the way a painting was beautiful, something composed and perfect and meant to be admired from a distance.
Miss Elizabeth was beautiful the way a bonfire was beautiful, unpredictable and bright and warm in a way that made you want to move closer even when you knew you shouldn't.
He looked away. He looked at the window.
He looked at the carpet. He looked at the pianoforte, which Mary was now playing with renewed vigour and diminished accuracy.
He looked at Bingley, who was looking at Jane.
He looked at Mrs. Bennet, who was looking at Bingley looking at Jane.
He looked at Mr. Bennet's library door, which was closed, behind which he suspected Mr. Bennet was reading and enjoying the only sensible activity available in this house.
He looked at her again. She was listening to Lydia say something, and her mouth was pressed together in the way it pressed together when she was trying not to laugh, and the gold in her eyes caught the light from the window, and he thought, with the quiet devastation of a man who has just walked into a wall he did not see coming, oh no.
Mr. Bennet appeared in the doorway of his library. He had, Darcy suspected, been listening to everything.
"Mr. Darcy," Mr. Bennet said. "A word?"
Darcy followed him into the library, which was small and warm and crowded with books in a way that suggested they were read rather than displayed. Mr. Bennet closed the door and regarded Darcy over his spectacles.
"My daughter's pig appears to be fond of you."
"So it would seem, sir."
"She is an excellent judge of character. The pig, I mean. Although the same might be said of Elizabeth." Mr. Bennet paused. "I am told you find the neighbourhood dull."
Darcy said nothing. He was not certain what the correct response was.
"I find it dull myself," Mr. Bennet said.
"But I have lived here for thirty years and have earned the right.
You are a guest. Guests ought to at least pretend.
" He picked up a book from his desk. "You may borrow this, if you like.
It will give you something to do besides standing at the side of rooms looking displeased. "
Darcy took the book. It was a volume of Cowper's poems, well-worn, with a margin note in a hand he suspected was Elizabeth's.
"Thank you, sir."
"Do not thank me. Thank the pig. She is the only reason I permitted Bingley to call a second time. I wanted to see what she would do."
He paused at the door. "Mr. Darcy. My daughter is the cleverest person in this house. That is not flattery. It is a warning."
Darcy was not certain what the warning was for, but he filed it away.
They returned to the parlour. The visit wound down.
Bingley had secured an invitation for the Bennet sisters to dine at Netherfield, which Mrs. Bennet received with the restrained joy of a woman who had just been told her ship had come in.
Jane accepted with grace. Elizabeth accepted with the careful neutrality of a woman who had mixed feelings about the destination.
Bingley left reluctantly. Darcy left with the book in his coat pocket and the warmth of the pig still on his boot and the memory of brown eyes with gold in them looking up at him from the floor.
On the ride back, Bingley talked about Jane. Caroline, who had stayed at Netherfield, met them in the hall and asked how the visit had gone.
"Wonderful," Bingley said.
"Adequate," Darcy said.
"Did the pig sit on your boot again?" Caroline asked, with a laugh that was meant to be light.
"Yes," Darcy said.
"And the girl was there? The one with the pig? Miss Eliza?" Caroline used the diminutive the way she used everything — to make something smaller than it was.
"Miss Elizabeth was present, yes."
"Her petticoat was muddy, I suppose."
"I did not examine her petticoat."
"You examined something," Caroline said, with a sharpness that surprised him.
He went to his room.
He sat by the window and opened the book. On the third page, he found a margin note, written in a small, sharp hand that he recognised immediately though he had never seen her handwriting before. It read: This is the best line in the whole collection and no one ever talks about it.
He read the line she had marked. It was about the quiet comfort of familiar places, and the way the heart returns to what it knows even when the mind has moved on. He read it again. He read it a third time.
He turned the pages slowly. There were more notes.
Small, decisive annotations in soft pencil.
An exclamation mark beside a passage about solitude.
The word yes beside a stanza about autumn.
A tiny drawing of what appeared to be a pig in the margin of a poem about devotion, which made him close the book and press his hand over his mouth.
He sat in the fading light and thought about a woman who wrote in the margins of books and drew pigs beside poems about devotion and carried a piglet through a village and looked at him, just once, as though she could see something in him that he could not see in himself.
He was in trouble. He suspected the pig had known it before he did.