Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Mrs. Bennet required no further invitation.
“She never listens,” she said, with the comfortable authority of long experience.
“I have always said so. Up at all hours, out in all weathers, coming home in a state beyond redemption. I used to say to Mr. Bennet, I cannot think what is to become of this girl, because a young woman who will not take care of her appearance cannot expect to be taken seriously by the world, and it is not as though she has not been told. She was climbing trees at an age when Jane was already perfectly behaved, and she could not be kept from the fields, and there was that business with the Whitmore boy which I prefer not to think about, and her hair was always—” she paused, appearing to collect herself, and produced a smile in the general direction of the room.
“Well, she has a great deal of spirit. I have always said so. It is her best quality.”
Elizabeth looked at her hands as Mrs. Gardiner set down her cup.
“Elizabeth has a great deal more than spirit,” she said, with the serene composure of a woman who had chosen her moment.
“She has judgment, and steadiness, and a quality of attention that is considerably rarer than people generally suppose. But you will have observed as much yourselves.” She addressed this to the room at large and returned to her tea.
Mrs. Bennet received this with the expression of a woman marshalling her response; but before she could deploy it, Mr. Bingley, who had been peacefully admiring Miss Bennet and had registered the temperature of the room only dimly, looked up with good-natured uncertainty.
"I wonder," he said, to no one in particular, "whether it might rain tomorrow.
The roads were very fine today, were they not, Darcy? Very fine indeed."
In the relative quiet that followed, Mr. Collins leaned toward Elizabeth with the steady confidence of a man returning to a subject he considers well within his rights.
"Cousin Elizabeth," he said, in a lowered voice that was not, in fact, particularly low, "I had hoped, before the afternoon concluded, to speak with you upon a matter of some personal significance.
The accounts I have received, and not only of your domestic accomplishments but of certain other circumstances which are, I believe, known to us both, have led me to anticipate this occasion with feelings of considerable warmth, and I venture to hope that you may have been, in some measure, similarly prepared for—"
"Collins." Mr. Bennet did not look up from his cup.
His voice was pleasant, unhurried, and carried the quality of a man who has been attending to every word and has decided that enough of them have been spoken.
"I believe Lizzy has not yet had the opportunity to taste Mrs. Hill's seedcake.
It is considered very good." He looked at Elizabeth then, briefly, with eyes that communicated nothing useful and everything alarming. "You must try it, my dear."
Collins subsided with the expression of a man reserving his remarks for a more suitable occasion. He had no doubt such an occasion would present itself.
Elizabeth took the seedcake and held it without tasting it, and thought about the word circumstances, and the word prepared, and the particular careful way her father had looked at her just now, and the equally particular careful way he had not.
There was something she did not know. As the thought settled upon her, her eyes met Darcy's across the room, and for a moment the careful attention he had been directing at the company fell away.
She saw instead the man she knew from the beach, and from the morning walks, and from the small excursions with her aunt and uncle that had become, over six weeks, the foundation of everything she had said yes to. He was there, entirely present.
Then someone in the room shifted, or a cup was set down, or perhaps nothing happened at all except that the weight of the afternoon reasserted itself, and the mask returned; not harshly, but completely, the way a door closes in a quiet house.
She looked down at the seedcake in her hands.
She had her answer. She could not, at this particular moment, feel it. But she had it.
Mr. Bennet, behind his untouched book, had been watching them both.
He did not yet know what had been arranged between them.
He knew only that something had been, and that Collins's position had become considerably more complicated than it had appeared that morning.
His plan required revision. Elizabeth must not be permitted to suspect, before the matter was properly settled, that she had any choice in it. He turned a page he had not read.
Darcy had heard every unfinished word. Certain arrangements.
Under consideration for some time. The principal.
He had come to Longbourn to speak to Mr. Bennet openly, as honour required.
He had not anticipated finding that Mr. Bennet might already have made arrangements of his own. He needed that conversation, and soon.
Bingley set down his cup with the cheerful decisiveness of a man to whom a practical thought had just occurred.
“Darcy,” he said, “we have kept these ladies long enough after such a journey. We ought to go.”