Chapter 22 #3
The distinction followed him throughout the evening.
Where Miss Bingley calculated, Elizabeth had simply spoken.
Where one sought admiration, the other had seemed scarcely aware that she inspired it.
Even the differences in their manners of addressing him rose unbidden before his memory.
Miss Bingley had always spoken to please and to secure a response.
Elizabeth had spoken because she felt. Because truth or amusement or indignation moved her to it.
He had never had reason to doubt her sincerity, and because he had once fully trusted it, his present uncertainty wounded him the more.
Bingley, entirely unconscious of his sister’s mortification or Darcy’s abstraction, preserved the general cheerfulness of the table by a sheer abundance of good humour.
He drew Georgiana gently into conversation, spoke with her of music, books, and the prospect of Pemberley in a manner which put her at ease, and addressed Darcy with the affectionate frankness of long familiarity.
“You are very grave tonight,” he said at one point, smiling across the table. “I do not know whether to attribute it to London or to my company.”
“Perhaps to London. Never to yourself.”
“That is civilly answered, but not very reassuring. I had counted on being welcomed with greater warmth after so long an interval.”
“You are always welcome.”
“There. That is better. I shall be satisfied with that.”
Miss Bingley seized on the opening. “My brother requires very little encouragement. He is the easiest man in the world to please.”
“That is an excellent virtue,” Darcy told her, “and one that may make up for my own failing in letting my friends know how much regard I have for them. I admit it is a fault of mine to remain silent when I ought to speak.”
Bingley chuckled. “Never fear, old friend. I know.”
To Darcy’s astonishment, Miss Bingley actually fluttered her eyelashes at him. “But some acquaintances are not accustomed to so much informality, and may need to be told. Formality has its uses.”
“I do not doubt it,” Darcy said hurriedly, and declined to say anything further.
“And you, Caroline,” said Bingley good-humouredly, “require a great deal too much ceremony. Darcy means exactly what he says.”
She smiled and let the subject pass, not with perfect ease.
When the ladies withdrew after supper, Bingley remained for some time in unclouded spirits, speaking of Netherfield, of mutual acquaintances, and of every plan that occurred to him at the moment of speaking.
Darcy listened, answered where he ought, and was grateful for the simplicity of a mind which neither suspected nor concealed.
There were moments, hearing Bingley speak of Hertfordshire without any knowledge of what now connected it to his deepest hopes and fears, when he was tempted to ask some careless question about Longbourn, about the Bennets, about whether any news had been heard.
He did not trust himself to do so. The inquiry would have been too marked, and he had no wish to submit Elizabeth’s name to casual mention when he could not hear it with composure.
When the gentlemen rejoined the ladies, Miss Bingley’s manner had lost something of its earlier confidence.
She still endeavoured to engage him, but less from expectation now than habit.
With every effort that failed she seemed to become more conscious that his mind was elsewhere.
Georgiana, who observed far more than Miss Bingley supposed, said little, but once, when Darcy met her eye across the room, there was a look of mingled concern and comprehension in her expression that made him turn away at once.
The evening concluded at last. Bingley parted from him with unaltered warmth, pressing him to return the visit soon and speaking with cheerful certainty of seeing much of him before he quitted town.
Miss Bingley took leave with all proper elegance, but with a reserve beneath it which even politeness could not wholly conceal.
When they had gone, the house seemed very quiet.
Darcy remained for a few moments where he was, looking at the chair Miss Bingley had lately occupied and feeling, with a weariness that reached beyond the evening itself, how little all such society could now offer him.
There had been a time when her attentions, if not desired, might at least have been easily tolerated.
Now they exhausted him. Every attempt she made to recommend herself only returned him to the same comparison, the same recollection, the same absence.
He had not escaped Elizabeth for a single hour.
London had not restored him. Company had not diverted him.
Time, instead of correcting his feelings, had only stripped away whatever might have distracted him from them.
If he had hoped that removal from Kent would weaken his attachment, he could no longer pretend such hope had been reasonable.
It had survived distance, uncertainty, wounded pride, and every effort of judgement to hold it in check.
Whatever error he might have committed in believing himself loved, there was none in believing himself still irrevocably hers.
Only he had learned, too painfully, that Elizabeth was not his.