LVI The Visitor
LVI
The Visitor
Elizabeth had been at the window for the better part of an hour.
The cold of the glass against her forehead was the only thing in the room that had not betrayed her.
The fire was too much. The broth Mrs Hatchett had sent up was too much.
The faintest movement of her own body was too much.
She kept her face to the panes and her eyes on the rain that had begun to fall in the street below, and she tried not to think of the Tower, which was somewhere in this same city under this same rain, with her husband inside it.
The trying did not answer. The thinking was worse than the nausea, and she had spent the last hour discovering that the two could compete with one another and that neither was prepared to yield.
The tears came and went without her leave.
She had stopped trying to keep them from her face an hour ago, when she had understood that Georgiana could see them and was choosing, with a tact beyond her years, not to remark on them.
“Are you sure you cannot take any of it?”
“I cannot. I am sorry. Truly, I am.”
“Do not be sorry. Will you try water? Or one of the dry biscuits Mrs Hatchett brought up? She said you might bear those better than the broth.”
“In a moment. I cannot manage it just yet.”
“Then I shall ring and have them clear the broth away. The smell of it is making it worse, I think.”
“It is making it worse. You are very kind.”
“I am not kind. You are my sister, and you are not well. Sit a little longer. I shall be only a moment at the bell.”
Georgiana set her work aside and stood. Her steps crossed the rug toward the bell-pull by the door at the far end of the room and stopped, before she had got halfway, at the voices that rose in the passage beyond it.
One was the footman's, low and pressed. “Miss Darcy is engaged with Lady Auchengray, and is not receiving.”
The other rode straight over it, bright and unstoppable, nearer with every word. “An old friend is not a caller — I am expected. You need not trouble to announce me.”
No one had been admitted in days; the knocker had been tied up since the report appeared in the papers. The knock came all the same, and the door opened before it had finished.
“Miss Bingley to call, Miss —”
The footman got no further, and could do no more — not without laying hands upon her.
Miss Bingley was already past him and into the room, her manner assuming a welcome no one had offered, sweeping his protest aside as though it were a curtain in her way.
Elizabeth had turned her head at the name; there was nothing to do but sit where she was while the woman came on.
“My dearest Miss Darcy — forgive me, forgive me — I could not abide to be announced properly, I could not bear to wait below — I came the moment I read of it. Your brother alive! My dear, the shock that must have been! Oh, do not fret, there now.”
She came into the room in a rush of bonnet ribbons and damp pelisse, and both hands extended before her, with the expression Elizabeth had watched her use in Hertfordshire over the spilling of sherry, Jane’s illness, and the ruin of muslins.
She did not appear to see Elizabeth. Elizabeth had not yet risen from the window, and the light was at her back.
What Miss Bingley saw was Miss Darcy halted halfway to the bell-pull, white and astonished, with one hand half-lifted towards the rope.
“Oh, my poor dear girl, can it be true? Mr Darcy suspected of treason! Can it truly be true? A fearful mistake, it must be. I have not slept since I saw it in the paper — you cannot conceive how my heart has been with you —”
She had Georgiana’s hands in her own before Georgiana had managed even a sound of greeting. “M-Miss Bingley! I — I was not expecting callers. How did you —?”
“Not expecting… Oh, my dear Miss Darcy, you are such a treasure! Surely, you would know your friends must be thinking of you at such a time. It was nothing, nothing. I simply told Whitford you would be wanting your friends at such a time. Now, you must not say a word. Not until you have sat down. Where is the Countess? Where is your uncle? Have they left you here without any creature to bear you company at such a — oh, you poor dear, you must let me sit with you, you shall have no peace until you do, I shall not stir from this room until I have seen you composed.”
Then, Miss Bingley stopped and glanced curiously at the sofa, the two chairs by the fire and tea laid for each place. She had been about to say something more, and what she had been about to say was visibly displaced by a second thought.
“My dear Miss Darcy, what of this Lady Auchengray I heard of? Whitford told me below that her ladyship has been sitting with you. I should not for the world wish to intrude upon a private interview with such a fine lady as she must be, although of course I cannot think any conversation could be so private as to exclude an old friend at such a moment. Pray, where is she? Perhaps she has retired for a moment. Well! I shall wait with you, for you cannot be left so much alone.”
Her voice sounded round the room as she spoke, and Elizabeth, with her back to the room and her face still to the cold glass, closed her eyes.
She had heard the voice across dinner tables, and through the walls of Netherfield, and at the close of every letter Jane had read aloud to her with care to keep the cruelty out of her own voice as she read.
She had not heard it in over a year. She had not, in the half-considered way one entertained such hopes, expected to hear it again.
Behind her, she heard the soft click of the door as the footman drew it shut.
The man had been overruled. He had brought no card to the threshold; he had come up only to announce, and Miss Bingley had been past him before the words were entirely out.
There was no instruction in his standing orders that would have permitted him to keep her in the hall once she had decided she would not stay there.
He had, evidently, made the attempt — he had told her, on the stair, that Miss Darcy was already in company.
The information had not slowed her by half a step.
It had only sharpened her appetite for the room.
Elizabeth drew breath against the glass.
She wiped her face once with the heel of her hand, on each side, and she let the rest of the tears go where they would.
She unclenched her fingers from the curtain.
She straightened her shoulders. She lifted her chin into the angle she had carried into a dozen Hertfordshire drawing rooms when she had decided that Miss Bingley should have nothing of her she had not chosen to give.
Then she rose and stepped clear of the chaise.
The small movement of her gown against the cushions was enough, at last, to draw Miss Bingley’s eye to the window seat across the room.
The travelling search of her gaze ceased.
Miss Bingley turned her face towards the window with the bright expectation of being introduced to a person worth the journey across town, and she found, instead, a slim figure in a plain dark gown taking a steadying breath against the curtain.
The expectation did not vanish all at once. It paused. It hung in the air around Miss Bingley’s mouth and eyes while the recognition assembled behind them.
Elizabeth dropped a curtsey of exactly the depth the occasion required. “Miss Bingley. You are very welcome at Matlock House.”
The curtsey was correct. The greeting was correct. There was nothing in either that Miss Bingley could fault, and that was its own visible irritation in her face.
“Miss — ” She stopped. She tried again. “Miss Bennet!”
“You have my old name, ma’am. I have been some time married.”
“I… Indeed.” She cleared her throat and smiled prettily. “Indeed, we all heard of it. Scotland, was it not? How very singular.”
Miss Bingley did not curtsey in return. She did not extend a hand. She turned, with an abruptness that swung her skirts, and laid her own hand on Georgiana’s wrist, and drew Miss Darcy two paces towards the fire as though she meant to confide in her at a private distance.
The private distance was not private. The voice Miss Bingley used was the voice she had always used when she wished to be heard by the person she was speaking of, while preserving the pretence that she was speaking only to the person she was speaking to.
“My dear Miss Darcy. I must beg you not to be distressed. There has plainly been some imposition practised upon you. Whitford told me on the stair that Lady Auchengray was sitting with you. There is no ‘Lady’ of any consequence in this room. That is the former Miss Elizabeth Bennet, of Hertfordshire. I have known her family these several months, and I cannot understand how she has come to be in your drawing room, presenting herself under any title at all. You must let me speak to your uncle at once. Such an imposition cannot be permitted to stand!”
Georgiana drew her wrist out of Miss Bingley’s hand. She looked at Elizabeth, and the look was uncertain — not doubtful of Elizabeth, but bewildered by the gulf between what Miss Bingley was saying and what Georgiana knew to be true, and unable for a moment to find the bridge between them.
Miss Bingley took the small silence as confirmation that her caution had been welcome, and proceeded.