CHAPTER 15 #3
The old curtains would be stored, not destroyed.
The carpet, equally sound and oppressive, would be removed and judged in better light.
The chairs would be recovered. The table polished.
The fireplace stone cleaned. The grate attended to.
The sideboard, having been pronounced excellent and innocent, would remain untouched.
This accounted for the room as it was.
It did not yet settle what the room should become.
Mrs. Albright stood ready with her list.
“Same colour family, miss?”
Elizabeth looked at the walls.
The safe answer was yes. Something similar, only newer. A room altered without being truly changed. A rebellion conducted in mourning gloves.
“No,” she said.
Darcy, who had been examining the curtain cord with grave attention, looked up.
Elizabeth felt herself colour and disliked herself for it.
“I believe the breakfast room calls for brightness,” she said. “Not gaiety. I am not so lost to propriety. But I do not wish to feel oppressed by the drapes or the wallpaper before the day has properly begun.”
Mrs. Albright accepted this as she accepted most things: by translating feeling into action.
“Lighter paper, miss. Lighter carpet. New hangings. The chair covers to answer them.”
“Yes. Something warm. Not pale enough to look timid, and not yellow enough to quarrel with the fire. But brighter than this.”
“The room is used in the morning,” said Darcy.
“Exactly. It should remember the fact.”
Mrs. Albright made another note.
Darcy looked at the room, then at Elizabeth’s list of intended reforms.
“I would advise,” said he, “that nothing be ordered until you have seen the paper, the curtain stuff, the carpet, and any covering for the chairs together.”
Elizabeth turned to him.
“Together?”
“Separately, each may be defensible. Together, they may become a dispute.”
“A room may quarrel with itself?”
“Many do.”
“Then I must prevent civil war before breakfast.”
“That would be best.”
Mrs. Albright said, “I can send for sample books, miss. Or you may view them at the shops.”
“I should rather see them properly,” said Elizabeth. “No more gloom shall enter this room by accident.”
“A wise precaution,” said Darcy.
“And if foolishness enters?”
“Then it should do so by signed instruction.”
Elizabeth laughed.
Mrs. Albright named the proper persons. Mr. Larkin had done upholstery work for Mrs. Marwood twice and had not offended her until the matter of the blue damask.
There was a carpet warehouse from which Mr. Marwood had once purchased a runner of uncommon durability and no charm whatever.
A man could be had for polishing the table and another for the fireplace stone.
Mrs. Albright delivered each name as if presenting witnesses in a trial.
“What was the offence of the blue damask?” asked Elizabeth.
“He recommended it, miss.”
“Severe.”
“It was a poor recommendation, miss.”
Darcy’s mouth twitched.
Names, shops, sample books, and proper sequence were arranged.
Mr. Darcy advised that no agreement be made verbally, that estimates should distinguish materials, labour, removal, storage, and time, and that any man who promised rapid excellence at low expense ought to be distrusted on all three points.
Elizabeth found herself entertained by his seriousness on so domestic a matter.
“You speak,” said she, “as if you had all London’s worst decorators already under professional suspicion.”
“I have known men very ready to promise what they could not perform.”
“In curtains?”
“In everything.”
“That is broader than I asked, but perhaps more useful.”
Lord Pomington, who had been carried in by Mrs. Doddridge and placed upon a chair for consultation, objected loudly when Mrs. Albright mentioned the possibility of pale green paper.
“He has distinguished against it immediately,” said Elizabeth.
“Yes, miss,” said Mrs. Doddridge. “He commonly does.”
Darcy bent his head, whether to inspect the sample list or conceal amusement Elizabeth could not determine.
“I begin to think,” said he, “that Lord Pomington must be consulted in every material alteration.”
“He has a violent but often serviceable taste.”
“That is more than may be said for some persons in trade.”
“You see why I require protection.”
Tea was brought.
This happened in Portman Square with an air of inevitability, as if the house believed no discussion could be trusted to end itself decently without assistance.
Elizabeth had ordered nothing excessive; only tea, small cakes, thin bread and butter, and a plate of savoury patties Mrs. Albright believed any gentleman might be induced to survive upon if properly supervised.
Mr. Darcy looked at the tray, then at her.
“You are very kind.”
“No. Only cautious. Hungry men make poor judgments about curtains.”
“Do they?”
“Almost certainly. I have not tested it, but I dislike the risk.”
He accepted a plate.
It was a very innocent pleasure to see Mr. Darcy accept a second patty. Elizabeth did not know why innocence should need to announce itself so firmly.
By the time tea was taken, the campaign had acquired order. Mrs. Albright had names; Mr. Darcy would require estimates; Elizabeth would inspect samples before any order was given. The breakfast room, still unchanged, had nevertheless been put under sentence.
A few minutes more and Darcy might naturally have gone.
Elizabeth, who had borne the whole discussion with animation, felt the animation alter at the very moment she understood there was no necessary reason for his remaining.
The room had improved in prospect; her spirits had not entirely recovered the effort of sorting Mrs. Marwood’s taste from her own.
She was not unhappy exactly. Only a little tired, a little lower than she liked him to see her.
Perhaps he did see it.
If he did, he was kinder than she had expected; kinder, perhaps, than he knew how to appear.
He did not ask whether she was distressed. He did not offer consolation. He looked instead at the list Mrs. Albright had left upon the table and said, with perfect gravity, “I fear the table has escaped lightly.”
Elizabeth looked up.
“The table has behaved better than the curtains.”
“A moderate defence.”
“It has supported breakfast for many years without presuming to govern it. That is more than can be said for some furniture.”
“Or people.”
“I was being charitable.”
His eyes lifted to hers, and for a moment the room felt altered in a way no paper-hanger could have accomplished.
Then he looked down again, and the moment passed into safety.
A few minutes later, he rose.
Now there was no help for it. He must go, and they both knew it.
Yet Elizabeth, as she gave him her hand, was quite conscious that the latter part of the visit had altered its character.
He had not remained because work obliged him.
He had remained because she had been a little low, and he had seen it; and being gentler than he meant to be, had not forced the feeling into speech.
After he was gone, Elizabeth stood for some moments in the breakfast room and looked about her as if seeing it in a new relation.
Nothing was yet changed. The curtains still hung with all their ancient gravity. The carpet remained dark. The chairs retained their air of moral endurance. Pom-Pom descended from his cushion and scratched at the pale green sample with strong disapproval.
It was still the same room.
And yet it did not feel quite so fixed in its melancholy.
Partly because a plan had been formed. Partly because Mrs. Marwood’s advice, remembered in time, had made action possible. Partly because Cotton Lane had taught Elizabeth that even respectable things might require management before they could become useful again.
But partly because Elizabeth had chosen something.
The curtains would be stored. The carpet judged. The table polished. The fireplace cleaned. The chairs recovered. The paper replaced by something Mrs. Marwood would probably have called too cheerful, after which she would have sat in it every morning and complained of nothing but the coffee.
Elizabeth smiled.
It was not disloyalty, then.
It was inheritance properly used.
She touched the back of a chair absently and thought that it was an unsettling thing to discover one’s own taste in the presence of a man who listened as if it mattered.
“This is unsafe,” said she under her breath.
“Yes, miss,” said Mrs. Doddridge from the window.
Elizabeth laughed in spite of herself.
She did not explain what was unsafe, nor to whom. She only knew that she wanted Mr. Darcy to come again very soon; and that what had begun in gratitude and convenience was becoming, by degrees too quiet to be checked at once, something more serious than either.