CHAPTER 72 #4
Jane, once upstairs and refreshed, contrived to draw Elizabeth aside into a small parlour near the guest rooms. Contrived was perhaps too strong a word; Jane had never been excellent at schemes.
But she looked so earnestly at Elizabeth, then at the chair nearest the window where a faint current of air entered, that Elizabeth submitted to being seated before the conversation could become a contest.
"Are you truly well?" Jane asked.
"Yes."
"Lizzy."
Elizabeth smiled. "I am very well if everyone will stop attempting to prove that I am not."
Jane took this with a small, tremulous smile of her own, grateful to be given humour, uncertain how far it might be trusted. Then her eyes moved, almost despite herself, toward the high ceiling, the carved doorcase, the measured quiet beyond the room.
"It is very large," she said.
"That seems to be the general conclusion."
"I do not mean only the house."
Elizabeth looked at her.
Jane flushed a little, but continued. "The servants, the rooms, the drive, the park -- everything. I had not understood."
"No," said Elizabeth. "Neither had I, at first."
Jane's hand tightened around hers. "And are you treated well here?"
The question was so plain, so sisterly in its effort, that Elizabeth could not turn it aside with a joke.
"Yes," she said. "Very well."
"By his father? By Miss Darcy?"
Elizabeth heard the carefulness in it. Jane did not know how much might still hurt, or where the old quarrel lay beneath the new welcome.
"Georgiana is dear," Elizabeth said. "His father wishes us here. That is not the same thing as having made every past wrong harmless, but it is not nothing. Fitzwilliam is acknowledged, needed, and loved here, though they have all taken a very roundabout road to remembering it."
Jane's expression softened. "And you?"
"I am needed also, which Pemberley appears to consider very nearly the same thing as welcome."
"Lizzy."
Elizabeth smiled then, because Jane had earned honesty but not solemnity beyond endurance.
"I am treated well. Mrs. Reynolds is formidable in my favour, Georgiana is affectionate, Kitty is useful, Mr. Darcy Senior is recovering, and Fitzwilliam does not let me stand too long unless I do it before he can prevent me. "
Jane looked relieved, though not entirely satisfied. That was fair. Complete satisfaction would have required a simpler history.
"And the quarrel?" she asked. "Is it resolved?"
"No. Not like a knot pulled loose in one tug. But the rope is no longer around Fitzwilliam's throat."
Jane's eyes filled.
Elizabeth squeezed her hand before sympathy could become too much for either of them. "You are here now," she said. "That is no small thing."
"No," Jane said softly. "It is not."
For a moment they sat so, sisters by blood, by intention, and by effort. It was not less valuable because it was not effortless.
Later, when the travellers had been settled and the house had stopped noticing them quite so visibly, Elizabeth found Georgiana and Kitty in the long gallery.
They were pretending to examine a portrait of an Elizabethan Darcy in a ruff of such astonishing width that no human intimacy could have survived it.
Kitty was whispering something, and Georgiana was biting her lip against laughter.
Elizabeth paused before she interrupted. There was so much good in that small, suppressed laugh. It did not remove what had happened; it did not make Georgiana safe forever; but it proved that fear had not consumed every corner.
"Have you made the gentleman's acquaintance?" she asked.
Kitty turned brightly. "Not properly. He looks as if he would insist upon introductions being performed by trumpet."
"He may have been very shy," said Elizabeth.
"With that collar?"
"Some people must dress largely when they feel small."
Georgiana smiled, and if the smile was tired, it was still real.
Elizabeth let them return to the portrait.
The afternoon belonged to arrival, to sisters, to guests learning their rooms, to Mary discovering whether her pianoforte was honest, to Kitty finding out how many passages Pemberley could contain before a person ought to leave crumbs behind her, and to Georgiana discovering that ordinary company could resume after extraordinary truth.
That, too, was a kind of instruction, and kinder than another lecture.
After tea, Bingley was taken to the stables by Fitzwilliam and returned in excellent spirits, having discovered that a brother-in-law might be grave, exact, and still capable of admiring a horse with proper seriousness.
Elizabeth saw them from the doorway.
"I liked you very well before discovering your battalions of windows," Bingley said, looking back toward the house with helpless honesty. "But now I must like you as a relation, which is more serious."
"That is a relief," said Fitzwilliam.
"Jane says relations are not to be abandoned merely because they have too much park."
"Mrs. Bingley is severe."
"Only when right."
Fitzwilliam smiled, and Bingley, delighted by having produced it, began immediately upon a question about the horses, the lake beyond the paddocks, and whether Derbyshire had invented scenery in order to humble other counties.
Elizabeth looked away before either gentleman could discover himself observed.
By dinner, George Darcy, having slept long enough to satisfy Mr. Grant and complained sufficiently to prove it had not improved his temper, had negotiated permission to appear before the company and remain if Mr. Grant's look did not become too severe.
Mrs. Reynolds treated the achievement as a domestic victory and Mr. Grant as a rebellion deferred.
The introductions were made in the drawing room before they went in, George Darcy pale but exact in every courtesy, his pride sufficiently restored to make weakness look like condescension to medical tyranny.
Georgiana watched him with such open happiness that Elizabeth was glad no one had tried to make the day's earlier conversation a scene of blame. Whatever George Darcy had failed, Georgiana wanted him living, present, and disagreeable about soup.
He stayed through the fish.
Georgiana looked triumphant.
The house, having survived this unprecedented advance, settled into the first odd comfort of guests who had not yet learned the distances between rooms. Jane sat near Elizabeth but did not press her with questions.
Kitty had attached herself to Georgiana with an ease that asked for little and gave much.
Miss Bingley had recovered enough from Pemberley to be beautifully dressed and almost kind.
Bingley admired everything, including two objects that did not deserve it.
Mary was asked to play after dinner.
Once, that request would have been enough to make her choose the most difficult piece she possessed and punish the company for underestimating her. Now she opened her case, hesitated, and selected a shorter manuscript.
"Mr. Pratt has been attempting a trio," she said, with seriousness but not pomp. "This is only a little air from the second movement. Miss Carr says it has sincerity but must not be allowed to grow sentimental."
"She is very exact," said Georgiana, who had heard Miss Carr in London and still seemed half in awe of the recollection.
Mary brightened. "She is."
She played.
The piece was modest, uncertain in one passage, and very far from conquest. Mary played it carefully, as if the room were not an enemy.
That alone was such an alteration that Elizabeth felt a sudden affection for Jane, for Miss Carr, for Mr. Pratt, and even for Mary herself, who had laboured so long to be admired and now seemed almost ready to be heard.
Georgiana turned a page for her. The action was small, but Elizabeth saw the steadiness in it.
When Mary finished, she did not look round to see whether the room had improved morally by hearing her. She waited, flushed but composed.
Jane praised her warmly. Bingley declared it very pretty. Miss Bingley, after a pause just long enough to make approval valuable, said, "You chose well."
Mary's face lit with such restrained pleasure that Kitty stared at her.
"You see?" Kitty whispered to Georgiana, not nearly softly enough. "Miss Bingley compliments people when they deserve it."
Miss Bingley's expression suggested that usefulness had gone far enough for one day.
Later, when guests had gone upward and the house had entered the quiet hour of closing doors, softened footsteps, and candles carried through darkening passages, Elizabeth stood with Fitzwilliam outside their still-imperfect rooms. Their proper winter apartments were not ready; the house remained in transition; Rosings was altered beyond easy repair; the Wickhams were not yet fully answered; and she was very tired.
Fitzwilliam looked down at her. "She looked very young."
"Georgiana?"
"Yes."
"She is." Elizabeth took his hand and drew it, with hers, to rest low against her body, where their child was still more knowledge than shape. His breath altered. "And the world will not be kinder to her for it."
His hand stilled beneath hers, warm and careful.
"No," he said. "Nor to this one."
"Then we must be useful before the world is."
For a moment he did not answer. His thumb moved once over her fingers, not quite a caress and more than agreement.
"I am sorry she needed today," he said.
"So am I." Elizabeth leaned, just a little, against his arm. "But I am not sorry she had it."
Below them, somewhere distant in the house, a door closed; another opened; a servant's step passed over stone.
Pemberley, which had lately been evidence, inheritance, accusation, and duty, had received guests, borne music, restored its master to dinner for the length of a fish course, and taught one young lady that obedience was not surrender.
It was not a complete reform of the house.
Elizabeth had learned to distrust complete reforms.
The useful ones began smaller: with a bell restored, a chair drawn near the window, a letter answered properly, or a girl learning to ask by what right.