Chapter Seventeen
When there seemed so little reason for cheer, Elizabeth was inclined to be grateful for any she could find. The arrival of a note from Netherfield Park was therefore more of a lift to her spirits than she would have anticipated.
The invitation came from Georgiana Darcy directly, which was also cheering.
Though written to Elizabeth, the invitation included Jane as well, and asked if they might come to Netherfield on Thursday for tea, as she would shortly return to Darcy House in London and wished to see them before her departure.
There was something in the brief note that lifted Elizabeth’s spirits, if only a little. It was so pleasingly open and kind, so wonderfully simple. Not another clever scheme from Miss Bingley, not a Mrs Bennet campaign. Just Georgiana Darcy, who had decided she wanted their company and had said so.
Elizabeth accepted with a warmth that was entirely genuine and a degree of gratitude she did not put in the note.
Thursday was something to aim for. Thursday was a reason to get through Wednesday, which had the low, flat quality that days sometimes have after difficult evenings, when everything had been felt, nothing had been resolved, and the sun rose again anyway.
Mrs Bennet, on hearing that the visit did not include herself, experienced a brief period of grievance before deciding that the intimacy implied by a private invitation from Miss Darcy was itself a kind of distinction. She then quickly reconciled herself to it.
They arrived at eleven and were quickly shown upstairs to the sitting room Miss Darcy had made her own over the weeks of her visit.
It was a smaller room than the drawing room, facing south, with good light and a quantity of sheet music that had migrated from the music room and seemed to have settled permanently.
Tea was brought. Bingley looked in briefly, was charming, admired the arrangement, and was taken off by the steward on a question about drainage that had apparently been waiting for his attention for several days.
Elizabeth noticed that Jane kept her eyes on the spot where he had been standing long after he’d left.
To her considerable relief, Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley were not to join their party, having gone out to Meryton with Mr Hurst. Reading between the lines, Elizabeth rather suspected that they had not known of Miss Darcy’s arrangements.
Surely Miss Bingley would not have so easily left Elizabeth to the company of Miss Darcy if she had.
At first, Miss Darcy was almost too shy to speak. It was evident that it had taken nearly all her courage to send the invitation, leaving little more for conversation, and for a time, their meeting seemed likely to subside into an awkward silence.
But that, at least, was a problem Elizabeth was well-equipped to resolve.
Knowing Miss Darcy to be sweet-tempered and kindly disposed to herself, and wanting only a little confidence to make her quite charming, she began asking her about her recent amusements until she hit upon a novel they had both read and found worthy of attention and debate.
With such a topic at hand, Miss Darcy soon forgot her shyness.
Jane had also read Mrs Radcliffe’s The Italian, but while her opinions were softer and more quietly expressed, they yet allowed her to carry her part in the conversation.
No one would have supposed her to be carrying a weight of sadness from Mr Bingley’s reticence — no one but a concerned and attentive sister.
Elizabeth talked, and listened, and drank her tea, and felt the restlessness she had woken with circling beneath the conversation’s surface.
The company was pleasant, and yet she could not feel herself equal to it.
Had she only been able to sit down with tolerably peace of mind, or even to forget what weighed on her, it would have been a most enjoyable visit, and yet Elizabeth felt almost torn in two by the need to be moving, if she could not resolve any of what tormented her.
Perhaps sensing her sister’s distraction, Jane at length asked Miss Darcy if she might play them something on the pianoforte, a request that was met with a polite demurral and then eager acceptance.
Even in her dark mood, Elizabeth found herself smiling at Miss Darcy’s obvious enjoyment of the instrument.
It was evident that she did not play out of any wish for praise, but out of sheer love of the notes themselves.
When the first piece came to an end, their applause was sincere and enthusiastic, and Miss Darcy was soon persuaded to begin a long concerto. Elizabeth sat for some time, admiring the young girl’s skill, but felt her restlessness at last become insistent.
“Forgive me,” she said to Jane, low enough not to disturb Miss Darcy’s playing. “I have a slight headache. I thought I might find somewhere quieter.”
Jane looked at her with an expression that meant she did not entirely believe the headache and was choosing not to say so. “Of course,” she said.
Elizabeth slipped out, already knowing where she would go.
Though the library at Netherfield Park did not have an impressive collection, that was all the better for her present purposes, for Elizabeth wanted only a little quiet and privacy.
It was conveniently close to the sitting room, and ought to work admirably for her purposes.
Hurrying a little, Elizabeth reached it in mere moments.
She walked through the open door and stopped abruptly.
Mr Darcy was there, Mr Bingley at his side. They stood by the window at the far end, their backs three-quarters toward her, deep in conversation. Neither had heard her.
Elizabeth should have announced herself, but she did not. The ache in her chest kept her rooted firmly to the spot.
Mr Bingley was speaking. She caught the tail of it: “—not see how things presently stand. You cannot pretend things are as you had hoped.”
“I cannot in good conscience continue to bind someone to an arrangement they find repugnant,” Mr Darcy said. “The obligation weighs too heavily. I see it in every forced smile, every dutiful word.”
The room was quite still. Elizabeth stood in the doorway and felt the sentence settle heavily in her stomach.
“She has tried to make the best of it,” Mr Darcy continued, and there was something in his voice she could not bear to examine.
“I have seen her try. And I have watched it cost her, week after week, and I cannot —” He stopped and took a heavy breath.
“It is not honourable to hold someone to an obligation they discharge only out of pride and necessity. Regardless of my own feelings. Surely we cannot go on so.”
Regardless of my own feelings.
She did not hear the rest. She was aware of Mr Bingley beginning to respond — his voice, the warm, earnest tone of it — but the words did not reach her, because she was already moving.
Not running. She was not going to run through Netherfield’s corridors.
But she moved back through the door with quiet speed, desperate to be gone, and the door made no sound as she drew it closed behind her.
Elizabeth walked and did not stop until she had turned two corners and reached the window at the eastern end of the passage.
She stood there with her hands at her sides and her eyes on the winter garden below.
I cannot in good conscience continue to bind someone to an arrangement they find repugnant.
She was the someone. She was the arrangement.
She was the repugnance, and the forced smiles, and the dutiful words.
Apparently, she had been performing them with such convincing accuracy that the man for whom she had been performing was now working out the honourable mechanism of removing himself from the situation.
The garden below was bare and frost-silvered and entirely unhelpful.
Elizabeth thought she had been honest with herself, only to walk into a library and discover that her accounting of her own feelings had not been complete at all, because she had not accounted for the possibility that what she felt was entirely irrelevant.
The image of Mr Darcy standing at that window and thinking about repugnance and forced smiles while she had been sitting in Miss Darcy’s music room trying not to look at the door he might come through hurt her more than she ever thought it could.
Elizabeth pressed her fingers briefly to her eyes.
Regardless of my own feelings.
She returned to those five words, which could mean two devastatingly different things.
With the last small gasp of hope she could muster, Elizabeth reminded herself that she did not know what he felt.
She knew what he had said, which was that she found the arrangement repugnant and that he could see it and that he could not in good conscience continue to bind her to it.
That was what he had said. She was going to be accurate about what had been said and not embroider it into something more comfortable.
Elizabeth straightened. The corridor was empty. Crisp and flowing, the soft sounds of Miss Darcy’s playing drifted toward her; the concerto nearing its end.
She was not going to go back to the library. She was not going to seek Mr Darcy out and correct his impression of her, because she did not know how to correct it without saying more than she could say.
Most importantly, Elizabeth was not going to cry. This was Netherfield. If she cried, the servants would hear, and that was a final humiliation she did not think she could bear.