CHAPTER FIVE
Departures and Promises
Three mornings after the ball, Bingley rode to Netherfield with a question he did not manage to ask.
He found Jane walking beneath the covered terrace with Mary. Lady Bennet received him warmly. Sir Thomas invited him into the library after half an hour and waited.
Bingley sat, stood, examined a painting, and sat again.
"I admire Miss Bennet very much."
"That has not escaped us."
"I would never behave dishonorably toward her."
"I did not imagine you would."
Bingley's fingers tightened around his gloves.
"I had thought—after the ball—that I might speak.
But Darcy believes I should settle certain business first. My purchase of an estate has been delayed, and my father's investments require review.
He says a proposal made while my future is unsettled may be selfish. "
Sir Thomas studied him. "Do you believe your future unsettled?"
"Not financially. Only—Darcy knows these matters better."
"I did not ask what Darcy knows."
Bingley looked away. "I am to go to London tomorrow for a fortnight. I wanted Miss Bennet to understand that I shall return."
"Then tell her."
"Directly?"
"You appear to have mastered direct conversation with me."
Bingley left the library chastened and hopeful. On the terrace, however, Jane was no longer alone. Caroline and Mrs Hurst had arrived unexpectedly to collect their brother. Caroline remained beside Jane through the entire farewell.
"We shall be only a fortnight," Bingley said. "Perhaps less."
Jane's smile was gentle. "I hope your business prospers."
"I shall write to Sir Thomas about the estate."
"Of course."
Mr Hurst waited in the carriage while his wife and Caroline collected Bingley.
Darcy returned to Longbourn before dinner, and the entire party departed for London the following morning.
Bingley's servants covered the furniture and left only the housekeeper and two maids in residence until his promised return.
There were too many listeners and too little courage. Bingley bowed over her hand and left with what mattered still unsaid.
Darcy told himself the separation was prudent.
He had watched Bingley fall in love often enough to distrust speed.
Jane Bennet was affectionate, but her composure concealed the degree of it.
The Bennets' increased position removed most objections he might once have named, yet Darcy found new ones because caution had become the language in which he disguised control.
Sir Thomas had been knighted yesterday in the reckoning of old families.
Lady Bennet remained too loud. Kitty and Lydia were not yet formed.
The King's favor could elevate; it could also attract resentment.
Bingley, born to trade and aspiring to land, might enter a family whose consequence made him feel less rather than more secure.
Darcy presented these concerns as friendship.
He did not examine why separating Bingley from Hertfordshire also removed Darcy from Elizabeth.
In London, Caroline ensured that every plan extended. A solicitor was unavailable. Mrs Hurst required fittings. An invitation from a duchess could not be declined. Bingley's proposed week became two.
Caroline assured Bingley that Jane remained perfectly serene in Hertfordshire and had made no inquiry after him. She offered the lie lightly, as though reporting the weather.
The letter arrived at Netherfield on a cold December morning.
We are settled for the winter, Caroline wrote. Charles is much engaged with Mr Darcy and his delightful sister. I hope, in time, to call Georgiana a sister myself. She and Charles are so well suited in temper and fortune that one cannot help imagining what might be.
Jane read the page in the morning room. Her face did not crumple. She simply became very still.
Elizabeth took the letter. "This is deliberate."
"Perhaps it is true."
"Bingley looked at you as though the rest of us were furniture."
Jane folded her hands. "He left."
The quiet words checked every easy reassurance.
Lady Bennet entered while Elizabeth was reading the final lines. She saw Jane's face and did not begin with outrage. She crossed the room, sat beside her eldest daughter, and held her.
Jane resisted for one breath. Then her forehead lowered to her mother's shoulder.
"I believed him," she whispered.
"So did I," Lady Bennet said. "If he has been false, the shame is his. If he has been foolish, he may yet discover it. But you will not be ashamed for loving honestly."
Elizabeth looked away, tears burning unexpectedly.
Sir Thomas read the letter that evening. Anger moved through him without noise.
"Miss Bingley writes what she hopes, not what she knows."
"It makes no difference if her brother permits it," Elizabeth said.
"It makes some. Not enough."
"Will you write to him?"
Jane lifted her head. "No, Papa. Please."
Sir Thomas turned toward her. "I would not ask him to marry you."
"I know. But I do not want him summoned like a tenant who has broken a gate."
He accepted the rebuke. "What do you want?"
Jane considered for a long moment. "To go to London with you in January. To see Aunt and Uncle Gardiner. To discover whether Miss Bingley will receive me as a friend when I am before her rather than safely in Hertfordshire."
"And Bingley?"
Pain crossed her face. "If he wishes to see me, he knows where I shall be."
Sir Thomas nodded.
Elizabeth's anger fixed upon Darcy. Bingley could be weak, but someone had strengthened his doubt.
Darcy had left Hertfordshire after the ball without one farewell call.
The memory of their final dance, once warm, became evidence of another kind of arrogance: he had allowed intimacy while deciding his friend's happiness from above.
Two days later, a packet arrived from Darcy containing copies of Wickham's settlement documents and a short note to Sir Thomas. Nothing was addressed to Elizabeth.
She told herself she was relieved.
In London, Bingley's unfinished note to Jane remained folded inside the writing desk in his room at the Hursts' house. He had begun it on his first night there.
Dear Miss Bennet,
I fear I left Hertfordshire without saying what I most wished—
Caroline had entered before he completed it. She did not see the words, but her report that Jane appeared perfectly serene after his departure made the confession seem foolish. Bingley folded the page away.
At Netherfield, Jane folded Caroline's letter into the same small square three times, then placed it in the fire.
She watched until every word was ash.
* * *
Sir Thomas found Elizabeth in the old nursery after midnight.
The room had become a schoolroom years ago, though traces of its first purpose remained: faint scratches on the window seat, a wooden horse missing one wheel, the marks where five small heights had been dated in pencil upon the doorframe.
Elizabeth stood before those marks with a candle in her hand.
"You were shorter yesterday," Sir Thomas said from the doorway.
She did not turn. "Jane cried herself to sleep."
He entered and closed the door.
"She would not wish you to tell me."
"She did not. I heard her."
Elizabeth set the candle on the mantel. "I hate him."
"Bingley?"
"Darcy. Bingley is weak, which may be worse for Jane, but it is Mr Darcy who persuaded him. I am certain of it."
"Certainty has arrived before evidence again."
She faced him. "You saw them. You know Bingley meant to speak. What changed except his friend's counsel?"
"Distance, his sister, his own doubt, perhaps Darcy. A conclusion may be correct and still reached badly."
Elizabeth looked toward the heights on the doorframe. "Jane deserves someone who cannot be redirected by the first grave face."
"Yes."
The agreement took the force from her anger.
Sir Thomas sat on the window seat and picked up the broken horse. "The night I saved the King, you asked whether the guards might have killed me. Do you remember?"
"Everything."
"So do I. Not the swords as much as the carriage afterward. You all looked at me as though I mattered to you, and I realized I had behaved as though none of you required me."
He turned the little horse in his hands.
"I had told myself that your mother's nerves excused my absence, that your good sense would supply my neglect, that laughing at folly was superior to correcting it. The King gave me Netherfield, but fear gave me honesty."
Elizabeth sat beside him.
"You changed."
"Slowly. Badly, at first. I hired Miss Harwood as if employing wisdom discharged my duty. She informed me that governesses cannot be fathers. Your mother informed me more loudly."
Elizabeth smiled despite herself.
"I became involved," he continued. "Then I made the opposite mistake. When Jane was sixteen, I refused a young man's calls without telling her because his debts worried me. She had not cared for him, but she rightly objected that I had decided for her."
"You never told me."
"It was Jane's story. I tell you now because I will not repeat it. I shall investigate Bingley's conduct and speak plainly if he comes before me, but I will not arrange your sister's happiness as if it were a tenancy."
Elizabeth thought of Darcy, whose caution had apparently done exactly that.
"What if Bingley never comes?"
"Then we shall help Jane grieve what she believed possible. We shall not persuade her she imagined it."
He set the horse upon the sill. "And you will not let anger at Darcy become a substitute for attending to Jane."
The rebuke was gentle and deserved.
Elizabeth leaned her head against his shoulder as she had not done since childhood. "I am glad the King ate that sugar plum."
Sir Thomas's chest moved with a laugh. "Do not say so within hearing of the Queen."
Preparations for London occupied the following weeks. The Bennets kept a modest house in Brook Street during the season, purchased after Jane's presentation. Lady Bennet considered it small. Sir Thomas considered any house in London large enough if it possessed doors that closed.
Mary's anxiety increased with each fitting.
"I shall trip," she said while Madame Laurent pinned the hem of her presentation gown.
"Then I shall trip beside you," Elizabeth answered.
"That would make it worse. Everyone would remember both of us."
"Very well. I shall create a more interesting scandal on the opposite side of the room."
Mary's reflection almost smiled.
Jane joined them in London, staying first with the Gardiners in Gracechurch Street. She insisted this had nothing to do with Bingley.
"It has everything to do with Aunt Gardiner," she said.
Elizabeth did not challenge the fiction. Their aunt's warmth and uncle's good sense were reason enough.
The morning after their arrival, Jane sent a note to Caroline. A reply came two days later, affectionate in words and empty in feeling. Miss Bingley was overwhelmed with engagements. She hoped to call when possible.
She did not mention her brother.
Jane read the letter and placed it on the desk. "Now I know."
"You know Caroline is false."
"I know I need not wait for her friendship. The rest is still Mr Bingley's choice."
Her voice trembled only on his name.
Elizabeth embraced her. Jane permitted it, then straightened.
"You must go to your dancing master. Mary will panic if you are late."
"Mary will panic if I am early."
"Then arrive precisely."
In that, at least, Jane could still direct someone.