CHAPTER 2 #3
Miss Bingley did not start. She was too well-bred, or too well-practised, for that. But her eyes returned to Elizabeth’s mourning gown, to Mrs. Doddridge’s respectable stillness, to the quality of Elizabeth’s gloves, and then, with unwilling accuracy, to Elizabeth herself.
“Portman Square,” she repeated. “A very good situation.”
“Mrs. Marwood thought so.”
“Your aunt was settled there long?”
“Long enough to make removal look like vulgarity.”
Miss Bingley’s smile became a little more finished.
“Then you must find Hertfordshire very quiet after such a neighbourhood.”
“Not quiet,” said Elizabeth, glancing toward Lydia, Kitty, Mrs. Bennet, and Pom-Pom in turn. “Only differently arranged.”
“How fortunate that you can be amused by difference.”
“I find one must be,” said Elizabeth, “when returning to family.”
“And you, Miss Bingley?” she added, before Caroline could decide whether to be offended. “Where do you prefer to be when you are in town?”
“We are generally in Grosvenor Street.”
Generally. Elizabeth heard the word and did not smile more than civility required.
“Then you are also conveniently placed.”
“Exceedingly. My brother dislikes being fixed too permanently. It is one of the freedoms of fortune, I suppose, to choose a house according to the season.”
“How fortunate,” said Elizabeth, “when fortune is so obliging as to move with the furniture.”
Miss Bingley’s eyes sharpened.
“There are advantages to not being bound to one address.”
“No doubt,” said Elizabeth. “Though there are also advantages to knowing where the keys belong.”
For a moment, no one spoke. The silence was not long enough to be awkward, but it was long enough to be understood by both ladies.
Mrs. Bennet, who had never knowingly permitted a social undercurrent to remain private when she might trample through it with good intentions, answered before either could improve matters.
“Oh, Lizzy knows all about keys now. Her poor aunt made her very much the mistress there, and now, of course, everything is hers, or as good as hers, though lawyers will have their ways. A very handsome establishment. But family is family, Miss Bingley, and I always say London cannot supply sisters.”
Elizabeth felt the room tilt, not outwardly, but in all its attentions.
Miss Bingley’s interest cooled into a more precise form.
Mr. Bingley looked merely pleased that Elizabeth had sisters.
Jane’s colour rose in distress. Mr. Bennet, who had taken his place near the window, looked into his teacup as if it had suddenly become a stage.
“Mama,” said Jane softly.
“What? I say nothing but what is natural. It is a blessing when a young woman is so well placed, and a greater blessing when she remembers where she was born.”
Elizabeth smiled.
“I have not yet forgotten the road, at least.”
Miss Bingley’s eyes rested one moment on Elizabeth’s mourning gown, another on Pom-Pom’s matching ribbon, and a third on Mrs. Doddridge, who sat in the background with the serene opacity of a locked cupboard.
Her attention was not warmer. Warmth was not the instrument with which Miss Bingley examined other young women.
But it was sharper. A Bennet daughter from Longbourn might have been dismissed before tea; a Bennet daughter in mourning, with a Portman Square household, a proper companion, two maids, and an equipage that did not look hired, required more careful handling.
Elizabeth saw the alteration and understood it perfectly. Miss Bingley had come prepared to be civil to Jane’s sister. She had not come prepared to decide whether Jane’s sister was insignificant, ridiculous, or worth watching.
Jane was inquired after, admired, congratulated on her recovery, and reproved with an anxiety which, in Mr. Bingley’s case, plainly had no affectation in it.
Mrs. Bennet received all this as a queen receives tribute that she always knew was her due.
Miss Bingley added the proper expressions of concern, though with more polish than feeling.
Elizabeth, who had entered the room half prepared to mock, found herself instead watching Bingley with reluctant approval.
He was very evidently in love with Jane, and so unaffectedly so that one almost wished him success from principles of common humanity.
Pom-Pom, who had remained still only because Elizabeth’s hand rested lightly upon his back, now chose to emerge.
It was perhaps unfortunate for Miss Bingley that he did so at precisely the moment when her attention, having completed one circuit of the room, returned to Elizabeth and discovered at last the full oddity arranged at her side.
No person of fashion could have been better prepared to withstand ugliness in the abstract.
But Pom-Pom was not abstract. He was there, in a little garment of green very suspiciously related to the trimming of Elizabeth’s morning dress; with his patches of pale hair, his naked pinkish skin in places where nature had plainly grown uncertain of the undertaking, his beady dark eyes, his pointed teeth, and his tongue, which in moments of emotion was not wholly committed to remaining within his mouth.
Miss Bingley looked at him. Pom-Pom looked at Miss Bingley.
The dislike was instantaneous and mutual.
Lydia, who had been waiting for this introduction with indecent hope, whispered loudly to Kitty, “I told you. He has judged the gown.”
Mr. Bingley, whose curiosity was of the warmest and least prudent kind, bent a little nearer.
“And what,” said he, with evident delight, “is the name of this dignified creature?”
Elizabeth answered with a perfectly straight face.
“Lord Pomington.”
There was, after that, the smallest silence.
Miss Bingley’s expression altered by so little that no one but Elizabeth would have thought it altered at all.
But it had. She had evidently been prepared for provincial excess, perhaps even for vulgarity.
Vulgarity, after all, could be placed. She had not been prepared for a woman in excellent mourning, with a proper companion, a London carriage, and a hideous little dog in a garment related to her own dress, who named him Lord Pomington without the least appearance of jest.
Mr. Bingley, by contrast, was charmed beyond recovery.
“Lord Pomington!” he cried. “Admirable. I beg his lordship’s pardon for not paying him earlier respect.”
Pom-Pom, who was perfectly tolerable so long as no one attempted intimacy, allowed this with no more than a suspicious narrowing of the eye.
“He is civil to gentlemen,” said Elizabeth.
“I am much obliged to him.”
“I would not be too much. It may not last.”
Miss Bingley, whose courage was equal to her curiosity if not to her judgment, extended one gloved hand slightly toward him.
Pom-Pom showed his teeth.
It was astonishing how much hostility could be compressed into so little skull.
Miss Bingley stopped. Pom-Pom, encouraged by this wise hesitation, produced a growl which seemed less to rise from his body than to issue from some old private grudge stored in the soul.
Kitty gave a little shriek. Lydia laughed aloud.
“He objects to haste,” said Elizabeth calmly.
“I have not the least wish to hurry him,” said Miss Bingley, drawing back with perfect grace and no pleasure at all.
“He commonly distinguishes very quickly,” said Mrs. Doddridge from the background, in the flat tone of a woman remarking on rain.
No one had noticed her until then, which was one of the great strengths of her constitution.
Mr. Bingley laughed outright. Even Jane smiled. Miss Bingley chose not to hear Mrs. Doddridge at all.
The conversation recovered and moved on, though with more liveliness than before.
Elizabeth saw very clearly that Bingley liked to be amused and liked her the better for contributing to it; that Miss Bingley was already uncertain how to classify a woman who was plainly genteel, plainly independent, and attended by an aggressively titled dog; and that Jane, poor Jane, was already too far gone to be saved by caution if Mr. Bingley continued another fortnight in his present disposition.
This last reflection might have made the whole scene touching if Lydia had not immediately spoiled tenderness by exclaiming, in a voice audible to every person present, “If Jane is so well again, there ought to be dancing.”
Mrs. Bennet gave a gasp. Kitty cried, “Yes, a ball!” Mary looked as if she thought dancing, in the abstract, a concession to human weakness, but one she was willing to pardon in others.
Jane said, “Lydia, really,” and Mr. Bingley, being precisely the man to seize delight wherever it presented itself, exclaimed at once,
“A ball! By all means. What can be more proper? We have been shamefully idle at Netherfield. If Miss Bennet is recovered enough to dance, I know of no greater happiness for the neighbourhood than that we should all assemble as soon as may be arranged.”
Mrs. Bennet nearly rose from her chair under the force of gratitude.
“Mr. Bingley, you are all goodness.”
“No, no, only selfishness. I wish to dance, and I wish others to be as happy as I mean to be myself.”
Then, turning at once to Jane with an earnestness so open that even Elizabeth was touched by it, he added, “But I must secure the first two dances, Miss Bennet, before the whole county grows ambitious.”
Jane coloured very prettily.
“If there is to be a ball, sir, I suppose I cannot refuse what has helped occasion it.”
“Then I am entirely satisfied with my own idea,” said he.
Miss Bingley, who perhaps had not intended the visit to end in a public commitment, adjusted herself to the scheme with excellent speed.
“My brother,” said she, “is never so happy as when he has conceived a plan in company.”
“And never happier still,” said Elizabeth, “than when company immediately approves it.”
Mr. Bingley bowed. “I am delighted to be understood.”