CHAPTER 35 #3
There was nothing more for him to do. A gentleman may survive many improprieties if he can persuade a room to laugh with him; he may survive still more if he can make himself pitied. Mr. Wickham, being neither dry nor believed nor amusing in the right direction, had lost all three advantages.
He left.
Only after the door had closed behind him did the room breathe again. Conversations restarted at once, too loudly in some corners and too softly in others. The stout lady in violet satin, still innocent of her sudden importance, wondered why the interval had become so lively.
Jane reached Elizabeth first.
“Lizzy,” she said, very low, “are you hurt?”
“Not in the least,” said Elizabeth. “I am only glad I did not have to finish the tea.”
Jane’s hand found hers. She looked distressed and almost ready to smile against her will. “Lizzy.”
“I am well.”
“Will you stay?”
Elizabeth looked once toward the door through which Mr. Wickham had disappeared, then back at Jane’s anxious face.
The heat of anger had not left her; it had only settled deeper, where it would be less easily seen.
She could remain. She could smile, admire, sit through the second half, and prove to the entire society that she was not discomposed.
But she did not wish to become the evening’s next performance.
“No,” she said. “I think I had better go home. I want a little time to compose myself.”
“Of course.”
“Stay with Charles,” Elizabeth added, more gently. “And do not look so frightened. I have only spent the tea to better purpose than drinking it.”
Mrs. Pratt came near, Miss Hall at her shoulder.
“Miss Bennet,” said Mrs. Pratt, “you need not stay to be stared at.”
“No,” said Miss Hall. “Nor need you hurry as if you had done wrong.”
“Then I shall do neither,” said Elizabeth. “I shall take my leave properly and go home.”
Mrs. Pratt’s expression warmed. “Very good. Miss Hall and I shall take care that the room is not left in doubt.”
“I am sorry for the disturbance.”
“My dear Miss Bennet, I am sorry for the tea. Had I known its destiny, I would have demanded a better blend.”
That almost made Elizabeth laugh, and the almost was useful.
Miss Bingley approached then, her face composed by heroic effort.
“Miss Bennet,” she said, very low, “I have often thought indifferent tea a social evil. I had not considered its corrective uses.”
“Then the evening has improved us both,” said Elizabeth.
Mrs. Hurst murmured, “Caroline,” in a tone that reproved the amusement without entirely denying it.
Mr. Bingley offered to escort Elizabeth to her carriage, avenge her, fetch her shawl, summon a servant, or possibly all four at once. Jane touched his sleeve, and he quieted immediately, though with visible difficulty.
Mrs. Doddridge had already risen.
“Yes, miss,” she said, though Elizabeth had not yet spoken to her.
There was comfort in such competence.
Elizabeth made her farewells with all necessary composure. She bowed to Mrs. Pratt, to Miss Hall, to Mr. Pratt, who looked as if the society had produced more drama than his compositions ever dared attempt, and to Jane and Bingley. She did not look toward the door through which Wickham had gone.
The great benefit of a public room is that scandal disperses itself before the stairs are reached.
By the time Elizabeth had descended with Mrs. Doddridge, she knew already that half the company would be repeating one account, half another, and all of them with improvements.
But she also knew this: Mr. Wickham would not be the hero of any version fit to travel.
The carriage was called. Mrs. Doddridge settled herself opposite with grave steadiness.
For perhaps half a minute neither spoke.
Then Elizabeth said, “The tea was atrocious.”
“Yes, miss.”
“I am glad of it. A better brew might have delayed justice.”
“Yes, miss.”
Elizabeth leaned back against the carriage cushions and closed her eyes for a moment.
She was not ashamed. She was not sorry. She was, if anything, astonished only that she had waited so long as she had.
Yet beneath the settled clarity of indignation, another sensation had begun to form: the knowledge that whatever society had been before that evening, it would not be precisely the same tomorrow.
She had crossed some line. Not of conduct, perhaps — for conduct is a thing differently measured under real provocation than under none — but of visibility.
People would speak of her now. They would speak of Wickham. They would speak, very probably, of Mr. Darcy too, though whether with more falsehood or less she could not yet tell.
Very well.
If the world wished to chatter, let it at least have something worth the effort.
By the time she reached Portman Square, the first heat of the thing had cooled only enough to leave behind an extraordinarily settled certainty.
Mr. Wickham might call it concern. He might dress his insolence as warning, his curiosity as friendship, and his interference as protection. But he had been wrong in the first thing he had presumed to teach her.
Elizabeth Bennet knew very well how to judge a man.