CHAPTER 72 #3
Georgiana looked at her through tears. "Mrs. Darcy--"
"No. Hear this part. It is the most important."
The girl stilled.
"You did not only save yourself from George Wickham. You prevented him from becoming harder to remove from your father's house."
The words entered slowly. Elizabeth saw the moment they did. Georgiana's shoulders, which had been curved inward, lifted a fraction.
Fitzwilliam said, "You did well."
She turned toward him, and then, at last, reached for him.
He was already kneeling. It took only a movement for him to take her hands.
"You came when I sent," she said.
"I did."
"And Mrs. Darcy let me in."
"She did."
Elizabeth, still on the footstool, said, "I had a card invested in the matter."
Georgiana laughed into her handkerchief, wept again, and this time did not apologise for either.
They did not keep her long after that. The house beyond the small morning room had returned to its preparations: steps crossing passages, a door opened and closed at the end of the corridor, Mrs. Reynolds's low voice giving some direction that made a footman move more quickly than before.
Life, inconveniently and mercifully, did not pause because one young woman had learned how much danger had stood near her.
Georgiana smoothed one bent page with her thumb and held the book more carefully.
"I shall return this to Papa's room," she said.
"Do," said Fitzwilliam.
"And then I shall wash my face."
"A wise order," said Elizabeth. "Mrs. Doddridge will approve it."
That won another small, exhausted smile.
Before she left them, Fitzwilliam said, "There is one thing my father particularly wished you to know."
Georgiana's attention returned at once.
"He does not wish any person to command you in his name."
Her face altered.
Elizabeth understood the look. Georgiana was not thinking of accusation; she was thinking of her father pale and altered, of the effort it cost him to come down to breakfast, of his hand unsteady on the table. Georgiana loved him too well to make his failures her first thought.
Fitzwilliam continued, more gently, "If any person says my father requires secrecy from me, or haste from you, or obedience that endangers you, you may disbelieve them. If any person speaks in your mother's name, you may still ask by what right."
Georgiana whispered, "Papa said that?"
"Yes."
"He should not trouble himself."
"He is your father," Elizabeth said. "He will trouble himself. The object is to have him do it usefully."
That answer, perhaps because it was practical rather than solemn, steadied Georgiana.
"How am I to know when duty is duty?" she asked.
Fitzwilliam answered, "Any just authority can bear a question."
Elizabeth added, "And haste is often the first sign that a claim will not bear one."
Georgiana looked from one to the other.
"We shall teach you," Elizabeth said. "Not all today.
Not as punishment. And not because you must become suspicious of every kindness.
But because kindness and claim are not the same thing.
You will learn what belongs to you, who may direct what, how a recommendation may be questioned, how a letter may be answered, how an invitation may be refused, and how to recognise when gratitude is being made into a chain. "
Georgiana drew a long, uneven breath.
"That sounds very difficult."
"It is sometimes," said Elizabeth. "But it is less difficult when one begins before one is frightened."
This time, when Georgiana left, Fitzwilliam did not immediately rise. He remained kneeling for another moment, his hand braced on the arm of the chair she had quitted.
Elizabeth looked at him.
"She heard us," he said.
"She did."
"She will ask again."
"Yes. And next time, it will be because she knows there is a question to ask."
That seemed to steady him. He rose, and then gave Elizabeth his arm, not because she could not stand, but because he had begun to understand that assistance might be an expression of affection rather than an accusation of weakness.
They found Georgiana a few minutes later in the breakfast parlour, where she had returned the book and allowed Mrs. Doddridge to press a cool cloth into her hands under the transparent fiction that Pom-Pom had alarmed himself and required an audience.
Kitty was beside her, talking with earnest absurdity about whether a dog might be improved by the contemplation of ribbons.
Georgiana looked pale. She also looked present.
Elizabeth let that be enough.
There was no talk of lessons then. Letters, recommendations, compliments, household authority, refusal -- all of it could wait. The family visit stood before them, and Georgiana had earned the mercy of ordinary company.
When the carriage was heard at last, it did not break into the morning so much as gather all its scattered motions into one purpose.
Mrs. Reynolds moved toward the hall; Kitty sprang up and then remembered dignity; Mrs. Doddridge collected Pom-Pom before he could assist with the reception; and Georgiana, after one quick breath, stood beside Elizabeth.
"Ready?" Elizabeth asked softly.
Georgiana looked toward the stairs, where her father slept or very firmly did not sleep, and then toward the front of the house.
"Yes," she said.
It was not a large yes, but it was hers.
The party had had the full length of the avenue in which to form some opinion of Pemberley. Mr. Bingley's opinion, from the expression with which he descended, had formed itself in delight.
"Darcy!" he cried, seizing his brother-in-law's hand and looking from him to the house and back again. "You surprise us. We expected Derbyshire air, a comfortable roof, and perhaps a tolerable prospect. You have concealed a principality."
"Only a house," said Fitzwilliam.
"Then Derbyshire has a broader notion of houses than Hertfordshire."
"That has long been suspected."
Bingley laughed, delighted with the house, the joke, and the family before him, and wrung Fitzwilliam's hand again as if Pemberley's size were a personal achievement for which Darcy deserved congratulation.
Mrs. Bingley came next.
Jane saw Elizabeth first, not the house. That was something. Her face changed with immediate tenderness; not extravagantly, for Jane was never extravagant, but enough to make Elizabeth's throat tighten in a manner she had not arranged for.
"Lizzy."
Jane embraced her with all the affection she could offer and all the caution of a sister still learning where affection might be received.
Elizabeth held her in return. It was not the embrace of girls who had shared every bedchamber whisper, every punishment, every secret hope.
They had not. Longbourn had kept Jane; Mrs. Marwood had taken Elizabeth; and years did not disappear because two women wished them kinder.
But Jane's arms were warm, and she had come.
"You are here," Elizabeth said, when they parted.
"Of course I am."
It was a very Jane answer: simple, heartfelt, and not entirely aware of all it could not cover. Elizabeth loved her for it without being deceived by it.
Miss Bingley descended with admirable composure, though she had had the whole length of the avenue in which to recover herself, and therefore entered the scene with only the faintest remaining evidence that recovery had been necessary.
Her eye moved once over the front, the steps, the servants, the sweep of park behind them, and then settled upon Elizabeth with a degree of correctness so complete that it might have been designed to correct several earlier opinions.
"Mrs. Darcy," she said, with a curtsey exactly suited to altered circumstances. "You are very good to receive us."
"I am very glad you have come."
It was true enough to be civil and civil enough to be safe. Miss Bingley seemed to appreciate both qualities.
Mary followed last, holding a music case as if it contained not sheets but testimony.
Yet even there Elizabeth saw alteration.
Mary had not become elegant; no miracle so violent had occurred.
But she had learned something of occasion.
Her travelling gown was plain and suitable, her hair less severely arranged, and the music under her arm no longer looked held in readiness against attack.
"Mary," Elizabeth said, kissing her cheek.
Mary coloured with pleasure and solemnity. "Miss Carr desired me particularly to observe any instrument I was permitted to use. She says a neglected pianoforte is a very bad beginning to improvement."
"Then Pemberley must hope not to begin badly."
"I should not judge hastily," Mary said, and then, as if remembering another lesson, added, "Unless invited."
Miss Bingley, who had overheard this, looked away with the faint expression of a woman who had laboured in charity and found charity had begun quoting her.
The first half-hour passed in movement: travelling things surrendered, rooms indicated, cool water offered, servants introduced or not introduced according to the degree of usefulness in their being known.
Jane's attention returned again and again to Elizabeth's face.
Bingley's returned to Darcy, then to the house, then back to Darcy with affectionate amusement.
Miss Bingley saw everything and betrayed almost nothing.
Mary asked, within ten minutes, whether the pianoforte in her adjoining sitting-room might be inspected after tea.
It was very odd to receive them all at Pemberley.
It was odder still to discover that Pemberley received them.
The house did not become gentle at once; houses so large do not lay down consequence merely because one asks it politely.
But cool water was brought, chairs stood ready in shaded rooms, flowers held themselves upright in their bowls, and nobody stared at Elizabeth as if she had smuggled her relations into a place where they must apologise for existing.