CHAPTER 7
In the last week before the wedding, Mr. Bingley had the Bennet family over for a small dinner, with no company beyond the two households and Sir William Lucas, who had attached himself to the party on the strength of some errand concerning the church flowers and shewed no early inclination to detach himself again.
It ought, by every reasonable expectation, to have been an unremarkable evening.
Elizabeth had gone to it, if she was honest, in rather good spirits, and had not anticipated that an evening so modest in its scope could produce anything worth remembering beyond the ordinary business of getting through it civilly.
She thought, dressing for it, that she would try to be civil to Mr. Darcy and attempt to stop dreading his company. But, the trouble began, as such trouble generally did, with Mrs. Bennet.
Her mama had taken it into her head, over the fish course, to discourse at some length upon the felicity of having one but eventually probably two daughters married, for she did not scruple to hint, and hint broadly, that where one Netherfield gentleman had led a near friend or London acquaintance might reasonably be expected to follow, and looked, in delivering this sentiment, directly and without the smallest subtlety at Mr. Darcy, who had the misfortune to be seated near enough to receive the whole of it undiluted.
She went on, encouraged by no one's attempt to stop her, to observe that it was a great thing for a family so situated as theirs to have such connexions come their way, and that she was sure she did not know how the Lucases would bear it, Charlotte being three-and-twenty already and nothing in prospect for her at all.
Elizabeth attempted, twice, to turn the conversation.
She was not, on this occasion, been entirely successful.
Her mother having achieved a momentum that light redirection did little to check, and it was some minutes before Mr. Bennet, from the table's foot, observed with dryness that he had not realised the entail extended so comprehensively as to cover the fish, at which the subject was at last permitted to lapse, though not before it had done its work.
She had watched Mr. Darcy through the whole of it, unable to help herself, and had seen him say nothing, eat nothing, and simply hold his wine glass.
She had felt, watching him, a small hot flush of shame on her mother's account, and directly upon its heels a flare of resentment at herself for feeling it, and at him for being the sort of man in whose presence she could not help but feel it; and it was this small, knot of feeling, shame, and resentment of the shame, and resentment of him for occasioning both, that she carried with her into the drawing-room, still unpicked, still working beneath the surface of our being.
It was there, when the party had broken into its smaller currents, that the real damage began. It did not happen all at once, but was rather a slow accumulation of small provocations, each one bearable alone, each one adding its weight to what came after.
She had gone to sit near him, not, she told herself, from any particular design, but because the chair was empty and the alternative was Sir William's continuing effusions upon the church flowers; and, had asked him, in what she believed a perfectly civil spirit, whether he thought his sister might be persuaded to come into Hertfordshire for the wedding itself.
"She will not come," he said. "She has not the constitution for so much company at once, and I would not press her to it only if to satisfy the neighbourhood's curiosity."
"I did not ask from curiosity," Elizabeth said, quite warranted. "I asked because Miss Bingley has spoken kindly of her, and I thought she might have liked to see her brother's friend married."
"You do not know my sister, and I cannot believe you would know her mind on the matter. She is quite indisposed in London with her studies and her governess.”
"I make no claim to know her mind, Mr. Darcy. I only asked a question. You have a talent for hearing an accusation in whatever is said to you, whether or not one was offered."
He bit back rather sternly, "And you have a talent for offering one regardless, and calling it a question when it is remarked upon."
She might, even then, have let it lie. She had let a dozen such exchanges lie across the preceding fortnight, had learned, or believed she had learned, the particular discipline of allowing his sharper replies to pass unanswered rather than fed.
But something in her that evening, the fish course, perhaps, or the shame still working under her composure, or simply a fortnight's accumulated weariness of being made, however subtly, to feel herself and her whole family perpetually under his review, declined, on this occasion, to practise the discipline.
"I collect I am not to be trusted with an opinion on the subject at all, then," she said. "Forgive me. I had forgotten that only persons of a certain fortune are permitted to judge what suits a young lady's constitution."
"You have it in your head that I only give credit to persons of wealth? How very singular of you, Miss Elizabeth,” his voice was grave and quiet.
"Singular, perhaps," Elizabeth said, "but not, I think, unfounded.
You have shown a marked partiality for judging my family, and I confess I have not yet discovered why, unless it be that my sister does not come with five thousand a year and has little else to recommend her beyond her own good nature.
" She said it lightly, in the tone she might have used for any piece of drawing-room absurdity, though she watched him as she said it, curious, despite herself, to see whether the shot would land, or only glance off him as her observations generally did.
"Then let us speak, since you are so determined we shall.
" His voice had dropped further, pitched now for her alone, though the effort of keeping it so cost him something visible in the set of his jaw.
"I was wrong to treat you thusly at the Meryton Assembly, and perhaps I have behaved too silently at Longbourn.
It has not been want of fortune but propriety.
Is that concession enough for you, or would you have me kneel in your mother's drawing-room and say it again for the benefit of Sir William? "
"You need not go so far back as the Assembly," she said, and heard, with some dismay, that her voice had lost the edge she had meant to keep in it.
"That was one evening, and I have made a very good story of it since, at your expense, so you may consider us even on that account.
" She paused. "As for your silence at Longbourn, I had thought it pride, but you say it is propriety.
I collect I am now to think it as something else, though I confess I do not yet know what to call it, if not a selfish disdain for the feelings of others.
" She did not look at him as she said this.
"I am sorry for it, for sharing the truth.
But, what I will not do, Miss Bennet, is pretend the whole of my reasoning, and that I looked at your family and saw only prejudice where there was, in point of plain fact, a great deal to give a cautious man pause, and that no quantity of subsequent regret obliges me to unsee it. "
It was there that the true argument began, the one that would not, this time, be turned aside by the arrival of the tea tray or the interposition of some third party's chatter, for both of them had by now dropped their voices so low, and leaned so close in the pretense of ordinary conversation, that no one else in the room marked anything amiss beyond, perhaps, Caroline Bingley, who glanced their way once from across the room with a small frown.
"No," Elizabeth said. "No, I find I will not permit you that, even as concession.
It is one thing to say you were wrong to slight me at an assembly, wrong to hold your tongue, as I could forgive that easily enough, and nearly had.
It is quite another to tell me that the conclusion stands, only the manner of arriving at it wants apology.
You are not sorry for what you think of us, Mr. Darcy.
You are only sorry that thinking it did not remain a private economy, kept to yourself and Mr. Bingley, and never once required good manners to disguise it in front of me. "
She had not meant to say so much, but she did not take back a word of it.
Instead, she continued. "My mother wants discretion.
I have never once pretended otherwise. My youngest sisters want governing, and my father wants the will to govern them, and I have spent a good part of my life being sorry for all three.
" She lifted her chin. "But I did not think, until this moment, that being sorry for my own family and hearing a near-stranger list their faults to my face, and call the listing reasoning rather than what it is.
You have taught me tonight that they are not.
Now, since you have gone this far. You have never once, in all these weeks of careful civility, said it to my face entire.
Say it now, if it wants saying so badly. "