8. Netherfield Park—Saturday, 9 December 1809
Elizabeth was the last Bennet to enter the drawing room of Netherfield Park, and her eyes immediately moved to the tallest person in the room. She was happy to see Mr Darcy’s careful neutral expression soften into a pleased smile as he spotted her.
Mr Bingley introduced his sister, and Elizabeth was assailed by immediate disquiet.
Miss Bingley was tall and willowy and elegant.
She was not more beautiful than Jane—nobody could be—but her face was beautiful, with perfect symmetry and the long, Grecian nose and small, rosebud mouth that defined feminine beauty.
She wore a very fashionable gown made of lustrous silk satin, and although Elizabeth would not choose to wear a burnt orange gown with a coquelicot-coloured turban trimmed with gold-gilded feathers, she knew that Miss Bingley’s clothing must have cost ten times her own.
What constituted feminine beauty was very clear to Elizabeth. Her mother often lectured them all about tall, willowy figures, long noses, and small mouths, as if they could and should work hard at achieving those features.
It was not merely her mother; the fashion plates Lydia and Kitty pored over and talked incessantly of showed that this definition of beauty was universally held—at least in the here-and-now.
Elizabeth had no pretensions of beauty. She was shorter than elegant females such as Jane and Miss Bingley.
Her mirror showed her that she was more curvy than willowy, and although her eyes were as large as any beautiful woman’s, her nose was shorter and her mouth wider than ideal.
Worst of all, in her mother’s oft-voiced opinion, her skin was lightly tanned because she spent so much time out of doors.
Everyone knew that pearly-white skin was much to be preferred.
Given all that, Elizabeth had made her peace with her own lack of beauty.
Some people told her she was pretty—even beautiful—but she knew that her sisters, father, and other relations who made such claims must love her very much.
She had even been told by two men that she was beautiful—but she suspected them of ungentlemanly intentions and disregarded their words.
If a man ever came to esteem her enough to wish to marry her, it would be because of her intelligence and character, not her physical appearance.
Why would she mind that Miss Bingley was so very beautiful? She wondered at her sharp feeling, and deliberately pushed her uneasiness down, telling herself that she had no reason to feel anxiety or envy.
It was not long before her negative feelings evaporated as if they had never existed at all, because Mr Darcy clearly was not drawn to Miss Bingley, beautiful or not.
When she approached him and made a move as if to take his arm, he bowed in such an exaggerated way as to make it impossible for her to grasp his arm.
Still moving gracefully and, to a cursory glance at least, politely, Mr Darcy came out of his bow with a backwards step and a swift move to where Elizabeth was standing.
“Mr Darcy,” she said.
“Miss Elizabeth. It is nice to see you again, after so long a time.” He smiled as he delivered his dryly humorous greeting.
“Indeed.” She laughed, revelling in the joy that had rushed in to replace the unfamiliar emotion of jealousy. “Such good friends as we two should not allow so long a period of time to pass before meeting again.”
A surprised full-out laugh escaped Mr Darcy—and Elizabeth felt triumphant at finally succeeding in her goal. “True,” is all he said, but he had laughter in his eyes as well as on his lips, and it occurred to Elizabeth that they were flirting with one another.
She felt a blush overspread her face, and the realisation of such caused her to feel more embarrassed and probably to redden further.
“I do not know why I am blushing,” she admitted to Mr Darcy in a barely-there whisper.
“Do you not?” he asked.
Miss Bingley had been watching them with narrowed eyes—or, at least, Elizabeth had spotted her doing so three times during their greeting and brief exchange, and she assumed that they had her full attention.
Now, the lady approached them. “How do you know each other so well?” she asked.
Her voice was everything polite—the malevolence was fully contained in the flashing glare the woman sent Elizabeth’s way before she turned her practiced smile to Mr Darcy.
“Miss Elizabeth raises birds in an aviary and exotic or out-of-season plants in a glasshouse, as do I. She has been in communication with me, through her father, regarding glasshouse horticulture for several years.”
Miss Bingley frowned, her eyebrows delicately furrowed, and she asked Elizabeth, “You are involved in business? In trade?”
“I am involved in glasshouse horticulture, Miss Bingley. By my direction, my father’s estate’s resources and agricultural staff are able to raise delicacies my family enjoys. I do not sell them.”
“I see. How very…singular that this is an interest of yours.”
“And me, Miss Bingley?” Mr Darcy asked. “Is it singular that I am interested in glasshouse horticulture, as well?”
The lady tittered and said, “Of course not; you are a man.”
He lifted a shoulder, cocking his head in a distinctly quizzical expression. Miss Bingley did not explain further, and he lifted his eyebrows, saying, “And…?”
“And…well…a lady must.…” Miss Bingley did not apparently know what she wished to say.
Elizabeth said, “Although you have not fully expressed your reasoning, Miss Bingley, I am confident my mother would agree with your original statement. I wonder if you might feel more congeniality speaking with her than with me?” She nodded her head towards her mother who was at that very moment criticising her too loudly, saying, “My daughter Lizzy is far too independent, to my mind….”
Miss Bingley apparently did not appreciate being directed to the most vulgar person in the room. She lifted her nose an inch, gave a decisive sniff, and marched away—but not towards Mrs Bennet.
The dinner gong was soon rung, and Bingley said with a warm smile, “We will sit informally, ladies, gentlemen, and more ladies.” He offered his arms to Jane and to her mother.
Miss Bingley snagged Mr Darcy’s arm, but he had the other one to offer to Elizabeth. Mary and Kitty were led in by their father, and poor Lydia had to follow all the others into the room alone.
Dinner was exquisite, although a bit overwhelming.
Five and twenty dishes were arranged on the table for the first course—and after eating their white soup, the guests were able to eat venison, roast fowl, boiled carp, and other meats and fishes.
Mr Darcy carved and served succulent portions for Elizabeth and Miss Bingley—and for himself, of course.
He offered to obtain slices of meat from further-away dishes, and he skilfully signalled for footmen to actually procure the food.
The second course was even more varied, including savoury dishes such as fricasseed rabbits and oysters en Béchamel and sweet treats such as blancmange and flummery.
A servant lit the many wicks of an Argand lamp, and the light it emitted was startlingly bright.
The servants quickly snuffed out all the other candles.
Elizabeth noted that several servants now held mesh silken nets.
She felt tense—would there be a surprise for the guests?
And would it actually involve the blackbirds she had seen?
Without realising she had done so, Elizabeth had leant towards Mr Darcy, and in the semi-darkness of their end of the table, he comfortingly put his hand over hers and gave it a little squeeze. He swiftly moved his hand away, but she did feel ready for whatever Miss Bingley had in mind.
A large pie was brought in and placed on the table in front of Miss Bingley. After several dramatic moments of silence, a footman suddenly removed the pastry shell. Elizabeth braced herself for flying birds and likely screaming diners—but flights and screams did not occur. Indeed, nothing happened.
Miss Bingley made a soft hiss.
The lack of light at their end of the table was deliberate, Elizabeth was certain. The bright Argand lamp at the other side of the room, positioned on the sideboard, should lure any flying birds, no matter how confused, to that side of the room—and there the servants waited with their nets.
But the dimness meant that it was a bit difficult to ascertain whatever the dark shapes inside the pie shell were doing.
Miss Bingley, likely frustrated, gave a little clap of her hands, and the blackbirds finally emerged.
However, they did not fly towards the lamp—nor did they fly at all.
Instead, they began to run down the table and peck at dishes.
Elizabeth’s mother and Lydia screamed, Kitty jumped back from the table, and Mr Bingley muttered, “What have you done, Caroline?”
Elizabeth squelched her laughter as she attempted to calm the birds with a roosting call: “Chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk.…”
Mr Darcy calmly stood up and dropped his napkin over one of the fluttering blackbirds. The bird instantly stopped moving beneath the napkin.
“Good idea!” Elizabeth exclaimed in a whisper.
She did not have to stand to cover the bird closest to herself with her own napkin.
Mr Darcy snatched up Miss Bingley’s napkin and moved to the other side of the table to cover the blackbird that was seemingly terrorising Lydia.
Jane used her napkin to cover the fourth blackbird.
Then Mr Darcy and Elizabeth each carefully lifted a bird.
Elizabeth politely asked one of the footmen holding a net for the location of the cage, and he led her to the corridor and held open the cage door while she gently transferred the blackbird inside.
She went back for a second napkin-covered bird as Mr Darcy placed his bird into the cage.
When all four birds were inside the cage and the door was carefully latched, Mr Darcy indicated that he would take the cage to Mr Mellin so that there was no chance that an ignorant servant would release the blackbirds into the aviary.
At that point, Elizabeth noted that all of the dinner guests had returned to the drawing room, and a fresh-baked rook pie was being served there. She could hear Miss Bingley giving orders inside the dining room, and she heard the words clean and wash several times.
She felt a swell of sympathy for the lady.
The dinner she had ordered had been very impressive, and her attempted subtlety had been cleverly arranged.
Elizabeth imagined that, if the birds had flown up towards the light, as expected, it would have been an impressive sight, and everyone would be complimenting Miss Bingley’s bold choice.
As it was, however, the household was plunged into an unanticipated amount of cleaning, whatever dessert Miss Bingley had wished to offer would have to be served elsewhere, and people were probably silently condemning such a foolish idea.
As she had that thought, Miss Bingley stepped out of the dining room, saw Elizabeth, and swiftly covered her expression of disappointment with one of haughty disdain. Elizabeth grinned as she realised that she need not feel sad for her hostess if Miss Bingley continued to treat her so poorly.
Elizabeth followed Miss Bingley into the drawing room, turned down the offer of rook pie, and sought a seat near Mary and Jane. “Congratulations, ladies, none of us screamed when the colly birds began to run about.”
Mary said, “I always thought that, being called colly birds, they would be dirtier, and they would leave black marks as they ran around on a white tablecloth.”
“In this case, colly just means coal-black,” Jane said. “That is right, is it not?” she asked Elizabeth.
“It is correct,” she confirmed. “The proper common name for the bird that ran amongst us tonight is blackbird, the archaic or poetic name is ousel, and I believe the scientific name is Turdus merula. But calling the bird a colly bird is just another way of saying blackbird.”
“I see you are tutoring your sisters on birds,” Mr Darcy said.
Elizabeth jumped; she had had her back to the door, and she had not known he had entered. “Hello again, sir. Am I assured of my songbirds remaining safe in the aviary?”
“You are. Mr Mellin will wait to learn what Miss Bingley wishes to do with the blackbirds, but the cage will remain in the house rather than in the aviary.”
“Thank you.”
A footman approached Mr Darcy and offered him a piece of rook pie, which he turned down. Elizabeth smiled to see a faint frown on his face, asking, “Did the terror that the blackbirds felt in the dining room make you loath to eat rooks in the drawing room?”
“Yes. As you saw tonight, I eat all manner of meat, fish, and shellfish; however, seeing live, frantic creatures on the dining table puts me off eating their near-relations for now.”
“I had the same feelings. From what I have seen, we were the only two who reacted in such a way.”
“I suppose we are also the only two who work with and care for birds.”
“I don’t suppose that, I know it very well.”
They shared a smile, and Elizabeth allowed herself to feel happy even while she tried to maintain a cautious guard around her heart.