CHAPTER 47 #2
Mr. Darcy bowed. “I cannot claim such success, sir. I believe Miss Elizabeth remains very determined.”
“Then you are wiser than most suitors, for you have already discovered it.”
There was laughter enough to cover the first awkwardness. Elizabeth did not join it with much warmth.
Mr. Bennet’s charm had always been very good at arriving before his responsibility and lingering after it had gone.
Mrs. Bennet’s introduction followed.
She curtsied with great feeling. “Mr. Darcy, I am sure we are very happy to make your acquaintance, though everything has been so sudden, and a mother cannot always know what she is permitted to feel.”
“I am honoured by the acquaintance, madam,” said Mr. Darcy.
He gave her nothing to quarrel with, and nothing to command.
Kitty’s turn came next. She curtsied shyly and nearly dropped her glove.
“Miss Catherine Bennet,” said Mr. Darcy.
Kitty coloured, either from being called Catherine or from being noticed by a gentleman who looked as if he had never dropped anything in his life.
Lydia came forward with far less ceremony.
“Lord, Lizzy,” she whispered, not softly enough, “he is taller than I expected.”
“Then you must not begin the acquaintance by measuring him aloud,” said Elizabeth.
Mr. Darcy, who had plainly heard, said only, “I am sorry to have surprised you.”
“Oh, I am not sorry,” said Lydia.
Bingley laughed; Jane tried not to; Kitty did not try at all. Even Mr. Gardiner’s mouth moved.
Elizabeth felt, unwillingly, the tug of it: Lydia’s absurdity, Kitty’s giggle, Mary’s solemn correction already forming in the air. They were foolish. They were young. They had been brought as if they were luggage, and would no doubt be blamed for being in the way.
They were not the authors of this evening.
Mrs. Bennet was seated by Jane and immediately began proving, by repeated announcement, that she intended to give no trouble.
“I am sure I shall say nothing,” she said, receiving tea. “I have been told I am not to give trouble, and so I shall give none. I am only a guest, as everyone has been so good as to remind me. Jane, my dear, you need not trouble yourself. I am perfectly easy. No one must think of me.”
Jane, of course, thought of her at once.
Elizabeth saw it: the slight turn of Jane’s body, the ready softness of her answer, the way she made herself a cushion before the blow had even landed.
It was unbearable.
Miss Bingley saw it too.
Elizabeth knew she saw it, because Caroline’s eyes sharpened as a fan may sharpen when snapped open.
“Mrs. Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, with a sweetness Elizabeth distrusted on principle, “I have always thought Mrs. Bingley’s complexion remarkably suited to pearls. You must know best, as her mother. Would you advise pearls for the wedding dinner, or something warmer?”
Mrs. Bennet blinked.
The words as her mother did their work.
“Pearls!” she cried. “Oh, certainly pearls. Jane can wear anything, poor dear child, but pearls have always suited her, though I have said a hundred times that blue ribbons make her look like an angel.”
“Then pearls with blue,” said Miss Bingley, as if Mrs. Bennet had contributed to civilisation. “How fortunate.”
Elizabeth looked at her.
Miss Bingley looked back blandly.
Caroline Bingley had not become kinder. Elizabeth was almost certain of it. But she had discovered that Mrs. Bennet could be managed by admiration as easily as by alarm, and applied the discovery with ruthless elegance.
Dinner was announced before Mrs. Bennet could remember her injuries.
The dining room at Brook Street was smaller than Portman Square’s but very handsome, and Jane had made it glow with candles, flowers, bright glass, and the quiet abundance that Bingley thought natural and Jane made graceful.
Elizabeth sat with Mr. Darcy not far from her, near enough that she knew when he turned a glass by the stem, far enough that propriety was not offended.
The meal began well because everyone was occupied with soup.
Elizabeth had never before appreciated soup as an instrument of social peace.
Mr. Gardiner engaged Mr. Bennet upon the roads.
Mrs. Gardiner spoke to Kitty about the journey.
Bingley made Lydia laugh about some harmless London confusion involving a footman, a parcel, and a hat that had not belonged to him.
Mary waited for a pause large enough to introduce music and found none.
Mrs. Bennet, however, had never permitted food to silence feeling for very long.
“And your family, Mr. Darcy?” she asked, with the air of a woman performing a maternal duty against great opposition. “A young lady’s mother must ask. We have heard so little, and a father’s approval is a very proper thing in a marriage.”
The table altered by a degree.
Elizabeth felt it first in Jane’s stillness, then in Mr. Gardiner’s hand pausing upon his glass. Mr. Bennet looked down the table, his expression shifting too late from amusement to attention.
Mr. Darcy set down his spoon.
“My father and I are, unfortunately, not at present of one mind,” he said. “I have therefore been obliged to support myself by respectable exertion. I cannot suppose you would consider that a disgrace, madam.”
Elizabeth’s throat tightened.
He had not hidden. He had not explained. He had not asked her to rescue him.
Mrs. Bennet coloured. “No, no, certainly not disgrace. I never said disgrace. Only a mother must ask, you know, and fathers are very particular things.”
“Very particular,” said Miss Bingley smoothly. “Though in London, I believe, a gentleman is often judged by the respectability of his conduct, not merely by the convenience of his relations.”
Mrs. Bennet looked uncertain whether she had been corrected or complimented.
Mr. Gardiner said, “A sound principle.”
Mr. Bingley, whose own fortune had never been injured by respectable exertion in the family history, added warmly, “Very sound.”
Mrs. Bennet retreated into her fish.
Elizabeth looked at Mr. Darcy across the table and felt, with a sudden ache of pride, that he had left her nothing to defend.
The dinner recovered.
For a time.
Mrs. Bennet next tried to make Jane answer for her.
“Jane, you know I meant nothing by coming to town. Tell your sister I meant nothing. I am sure Lizzy always thinks the worst of me now, and everyone tells me I must be composed, when no one considers what a mother feels.”
Jane began, “Mama—”
Miss Bingley put down her glass.
“Mrs. Bennet,” she said, “Mrs. Bingley has already provided the most forgiving dinner in London. We must not require her to provide speeches too.”
The sentence was so polished that it took Mrs. Bennet a moment to locate the blade.
Bingley looked startled. Jane looked grateful and ashamed of being grateful. Elizabeth nearly loved Caroline Bingley for three seconds, which was an unsettling experience and not one she wished to repeat.
Mrs. Gardiner said gently, “Fanny, you must try the sauce. Jane has told me particularly that Cook was anxious for your opinion.”
Again, maternal authority. Again, diversion.
Mrs. Bennet allowed herself to be turned, because being consulted was more soothing than being opposed.
Elizabeth watched Jane smile and pass the dish.
That was the danger of Jane. She accepted relief as if it were proof she ought to have endured the need for it.
When the ladies withdrew, the drawing room became louder at once.
Lydia liked coffee; Kitty did not; Mary had an opinion on a sonata; Mrs. Bennet wanted Jane to sit beside her; Miss Bingley arranged cups with the precision of a general placing artillery; Mrs. Gardiner quietly took the chair nearest Mrs. Bennet, reducing by one the routes through which appeal could reach Jane.
Mrs. Doddridge settled Pom-Pom upon a low cushion near Elizabeth’s chair. He circled three times, gave a small huff at the general moral condition of Brook Street, and lay down.
Mary was persuaded to play.
Elizabeth prepared herself for affection and endurance, which had often been the two principal requirements of hearing Mary perform. She was therefore unprepared for the first phrase to arrive cleanly, the second to answer it, and the whole to proceed with something very like intention.
It was not brilliance. It was better than brilliance in that moment.
It was progress.
Mary’s shoulders were still too high, her expression still too severe, and there remained in her playing a determined quality, as if each note had been summoned before a magistrate and obliged to give evidence.
But the time held. The left hand no longer thundered merely because it had been given employment.
There were pauses that seemed chosen rather than suffered.
Once, near the end, she allowed a phrase to soften instead of proving that she could make it louder.
Elizabeth looked at Mary’s bent head, at the careful hands, at the steadier time, and felt the sharp, unexpected pleasure of discovering that opportunity, when it was not merely promised but supplied, could alter a person.
Mary finished.
Bingley applauded with honest enthusiasm. Miss Bingley said, “Very creditable, Miss Mary,” in a tone which suggested she had meant to say something smaller and been defeated by evidence.
Mary flushed.
Kitty leaned toward her. “Are London masters so much better than what may be had near Meryton?”
Mary’s eyes remained on the keys, but she sat a little straighter.
“Yes,” she said, with solemn satisfaction. “I have progressed considerably.”
Kitty looked at her with sudden, unguarded envy, and made no request.
Elizabeth saw it and felt the old education fund rise between them like a sealed door that had never been properly opened. Kitty’s envy was not greedy. That made it worse. It was the look of a girl discovering that improvement existed elsewhere and had not been brought to her.
Mary, who had spent much of her life translating neglect into superiority, softened by half an inch.
“Mr. Pratt says progress depends very much upon method,” she added. “A poor beginning need not determine the whole.”