Chapter One — An Invitation Too Well Arranged #3
The room settled for a moment into thought.
Elizabeth disliked vague hesitation around a woman’s name more than open accusation.
Accusation at least could be confronted, examined, proved or disproved.
Hesitation was more insidious. It allowed suspicion to enter without anyone accepting the vulgar responsibility of having invited it.
“Who else?” she asked.
“Miss Amelia Trent, a companion to Mrs Lyndhurst; Mrs Lyndhurst herself; Colonel Avery, an old friend of Lady Ashbourne’s family; and Miss Portia Vale, Mr Felix Vale’s cousin. There may be one or two others.”
“Mrs Lyndhurst,” said Bingley, with the air of a man who wished to speak kindly and could not immediately discover how.
Elizabeth brightened. “How encouraging. You know her too.”
“A little.”
“And?”
“She is very…” He searched.
“Discreet?” Elizabeth suggested.
“No. Not that.”
“Then we are spared one danger.”
Bingley smiled ruefully. “She is very interested in the welfare of others.”
“Ah,” said Elizabeth. “Worse.”
Jane looked between them, half amused and half reproving. “You are both unkind.”
“I am never unkind, Jane. I only translate.”
Mrs Gardiner’s amusement did not quite conceal her concern. “Mrs Lyndhurst is not malicious, I believe, but she enjoys being near information before it is general. Such people may do harm without intending quite as much as they accomplish.”
“That,” Elizabeth replied, “is the common defence of half the harm done in drawing rooms.”
Bingley had grown more serious. “If Mrs Harrow has any difficulty attached to her name, and Mrs Lyndhurst is to be present—”
“Then,” Elizabeth said, “Lady Ashbourne has either been very careless or very deliberate.”
No one answered at once.
Jane’s gaze had lowered to the work in her lap.
She touched the needle without using it.
Elizabeth watched her and understood that her sister’s thoughts had already moved beyond the possible mystery of Mrs Harrow to the more immediate discomfort of being placed within a house party where her own situation with Mr Bingley would be observed, interpreted and perhaps encouraged by every person present.
Bingley, to his credit, understood something of it too. His expression softened, and he did not press her.
“I hope,” he said, after a moment, “that if you do come, Miss Bennet, it will be because the visit gives you pleasure, and not because anyone has persuaded you it must.”
Jane looked up. The gratitude in her eyes was so tender and so private that Elizabeth felt, for one brief instant, that she ought to have been looking out of the window.
“That is very kind of you,” Jane said.
Bingley shook his head. “No. It is only right.”
There was little in the words, perhaps, for any listener determined to hear little. But Elizabeth heard more. She heard that Bingley had learned not to mistake Jane’s gentleness for acquiescence. She heard, too, that Jane heard it.
A servant entered then with fresh tea, and the conversation moved for a few minutes into safer channels.
Yet the invitation remained upon the table like a small, folded challenge.
Elizabeth found her eye returning to it despite herself.
The handwriting was admirable. It had none of the large flourishes by which some persons attempted to make character visible.
Lady Ashbourne’s hand was exact, elegant, assured.
It did not seek admiration. It expected to be obeyed.
When Bingley at last rose to depart, he did so with evident reluctance, though with better command of it than he might once have possessed.
He hoped they would consider the invitation favourably; he hoped Mrs Gardiner would allow him to call again; he hoped the weather would continue fine, unless they preferred it otherwise.
Elizabeth told him that he had now expressed hopes enough to furnish a sermon, and he laughed with the ease of a man too happy to be wounded by wit.
At the door, he turned once more to Jane. “Whatever is decided,” he said, more quietly, “I hope you will not let anyone decide it for you.”
Jane’s colour rose. “I shall try not to.”
“I am sure you will succeed.”
He bowed and was gone.
For a moment after his departure, the room held the warmth he had left behind. Jane returned to her seat, but not immediately to her work. Mrs Gardiner poured more tea with unnecessary attention. Elizabeth watched her sister and said nothing until silence began to press too much upon them.
“Well,” she said at last, “Mr Bingley has acquired a very inconvenient habit of being sensible.”
Jane looked down, smiling. “I do not find it inconvenient.”
“No. That is precisely what alarms me. I had arranged a number of excellent objections to him, and he is making them difficult to maintain.”
“He has been very good.”
“He has been better than good. Goodness is sometimes merely natural. He has been attentive, which requires thought.”
Jane’s smile faded into something more serious. “Yes.”
Elizabeth rose and crossed to the window.
Outside, Bath moved through the pale spring morning with its usual confidence.
A lady paused at the corner to speak to another, both of them smiling with the bright intentness of persons exchanging something more nourishing than weather.
A chair went by. A boy delivered parcels.
The city, polished and pale, seemed entirely satisfied with itself.
Behind her, Mrs Gardiner said gently, “Jane, you are not obliged to go to Silvermere.”
Jane was silent long enough for the question beneath the statement to become clear.
“I know,” she said. “And I am grateful. But I do not wish to refuse merely because I am afraid of being observed.”
Elizabeth turned.
Jane looked at them both with that soft steadiness which was, in her, more powerful than many louder forms of resolution.
“It is not that I doubt Mr Bingley. I do not. Nor that I am unhappy in the attention. I am very happy.” Her voice trembled faintly on the last words, not with uncertainty, but with the delicacy of speaking aloud what had long been cherished in quiet.
“But I do not want our happiness to become a subject arranged for other people’s satisfaction before it has been settled between ourselves. ”
Mrs Gardiner’s expression softened with understanding. Elizabeth came back from the window and sat beside Jane.
“My dearest Jane,” she said, taking her hand, “if anyone attempts to arrange your happiness without permission, I shall overturn the furniture.”
Jane laughed, though her eyes were bright. “I hope that will not be necessary.”
“It may be my only accomplishment at Silvermere.”
“You have many accomplishments.”
“None so useful in an emergency.”
Mrs Gardiner smiled, but Jane held Elizabeth’s hand more tightly.
“You tease, Lizzy, but I mean it. I know what people expect. I know what Mama would expect, if she were here. I know what everyone must think when they see us together. And perhaps they are not wrong. But I do not want Mr Bingley to feel he must speak because others wait for him to do it. I do not want to accept him as if I were answering a room.”
Elizabeth’s heart gave a small ache. Jane, who had suffered most from uncertainty, was now strong enough not to grasp at certainty merely because it came near.
“No,” Elizabeth said, all teasing gone. “You should be asked because he cannot honourably keep silent any longer, not because Lady Ashbourne has placed enough chairs in a favourable arrangement.”
Jane smiled through feeling. “Exactly so.”
Mrs Gardiner nodded. “Then if we go, we shall go with that firmly understood among ourselves.”
“And perhaps not understood by anyone else,” Elizabeth said, “which may make the visit more interesting than restful.”
“Lizzy,” Jane said again; but this time the reproach was mostly affection.
They spoke a little longer of practicalities—dates, distance, clothing, whether Mr and Mrs Bennet must be informed at once or merely gently prepared for the idea that Jane and Elizabeth might remain in company where Mr Bingley would also be present.
This last subject required some delicacy.
Mrs Bennet’s joy, if given too much notice, might travel faster than the post and arrive at Silvermere before them, decorated with predictions, triumphs and perhaps a list of lace suitable for a wedding gown.
Mr Bennet would receive the same news with amusement, indolence and one or two remarks calculated to irritate his wife and delight himself.
Elizabeth could almost hear him: “So, Lizzy, Jane is to be inspected in the country by a committee of taste. Do try not to be found wanting in wit before dinner.”
The thought made her smile.
Jane soon withdrew to write a letter of her own, or perhaps simply to be alone with the feelings Mr Bingley’s visit had stirred. Mrs Gardiner was called away by a household matter, leaving Elizabeth in possession of the drawing room and Lady Ashbourne’s invitation.
She did not immediately pick it up. Instead, she sat for a moment considering the manner in which new chapters in life so often arrived disguised as folded paper.
A letter had brought Mr Collins to Longbourn.
A letter had altered her understanding of Darcy.
A letter had wounded Jane once by absence as much as by content.
In recent months, letters had served as warnings, confessions, masks and keys.
They preserved truth, distorted feeling, betrayed secrets and survived those who wrote them.
There was something almost indecent in the power of ink once released from the hand that made it.
At last she lifted Lady Ashbourne’s letter and read it through.