Chapter 7 #3
Elizabeth stood in her own garden with her wit in her hand like something she had broken.
This was what the quickness was, then, seen from the receiving end.
Not brightness. A verdict, delivered at speed, before the evidence was in.
The judge had found her own rulings so entertaining she never once watched a face while the sentence was read.
She had done it to a proud stranger at an assembly and dined out on it.
She had done it to a charming lieutenant in the opposite direction, sympathies all issued by nightfall.
And now she had done it to Charlotte, Charlotte, who had stood by her since they were girls.
She had borrowed Charlotte's steadiness a hundred times like a shawl.
Charlotte had prepared herself for the blow because she knew her friend's hand so well.
"I hope you will be happy," Elizabeth managed. "Truly."
"Thank you. I expect to be tolerably so, which is the only kind I have ever planned for.
" Charlotte was wounded but was still Charlotte, still watching, still keeping the only honest ledger in the county.
She stepped closer and delivered the rest. "Now I will give you my wedding present early, Lizzy, since I find I am out of patience today and may not have another chance to speak plainly before I am a parson's wife and obliged to be tactful forever.
Mr. Darcy's attention is not nothing. A man does not stare at a woman across every gathering in the county because he finds her tolerable.
He warned you about Mr. Wickham at his own cost, with nothing to gain by it but your resentment, and you have spent a month calling the only unrehearsed man in Hertfordshire a villain on the word of the only rehearsed one.
" Her voice did not rise. It dropped, which was worse.
"That was a man who looked at you the way Charles Bingley looks at your sister, and you are too stubborn to see it. "
"Charlotte—"
"I am done. Wish me joy, and come and see me at Hunsford when you can bear to.
" Charlotte pressed her hand, once, firmly, the old friendship and the new wound in the one grip.
She walked away down the garden path with her back very straight.
Elizabeth stood among her mother's bare November borders and did not call after her.
Every sentence she drafted was witty, and she had finally heard what her wit was for.
The intelligence reached Netherfield by way of the kitchen, the stables, and finally Caroline Bingley. She served it at dinner like an entremet.
"You have not heard the best of it. The Bennet girl has refused the parson.
The cousin, the heir, the olive branch. Mrs. Bennet has told the whole village, between lamentations.
The family is to starve in the hedgerows, I understand, expressly so that Miss Eliza may keep her fine opinions.
" Caroline's laugh ran its scale. "The arrogance of it is almost magnificent.
A girl with nothing, refusing the very roof over her family's head.
What can she be holding out for, one wonders. "
Darcy attended to his wine and let the conversation go on without him, which it was well practiced at doing. He conducted his own inquiry in the quiet underneath.
She had refused Collins. Collins, who would have Longbourn entire the day her father died.
His offer was, in every column a prudent man could rule, the rescue of her whole family.
Mother and four sisters lifted off the entail at the price of one daughter's hand.
Charlotte Lucas had seen the arithmetic inside a week and acted on it.
Any sensible woman saw it. Elizabeth Bennet had seen it.
She had stood in the doorway of the safest room in Hertfordshire.
She had walked out of it, into the wind, with nothing.
Because the man did not see her. Because she would not spend her life as somebody's pew.
She has more courage than you do.
The thought arrived without preamble and stayed.
She had been offered safety and had refused to be reduced for it, publicly.
Her own mother was still announcing the price to the parish.
He had been offered nothing but his own fear, every day for six weeks.
He had paid the bill each morning without complaint.
One of them had stood in a breakfast room and declined to be framed.
The other had a portrait by heart and a wall for every occasion.
He had said tolerable once, loudly, to a room, because the alternative was being seen.
Hope and shame arrived in the same instant, and neither would give way to the other.
He took a book into the library after dinner.
He sat with it open at the first page for half an hour, reading nothing.
The fire did its work. Caroline's laughter arrived faintly through two doors.
When he finally looked down at the page, his thumb had been holding his place the whole time. He had not begun the book.