Chapter Five — Mrs Harrow’s Silence
There are few cruelties so difficult to answer as those which arrive dressed in sympathy.
Elizabeth Bennet had observed this truth often enough in smaller forms to recognise, by the morning after the letter was found in the music book, that Silvermere House had become a theatre not of open accusation, but of careful withdrawal.
Had Mrs Celia Harrow been denounced, she might have denied; had she been insulted, she might have defended herself or been defended by others; had anyone spoken plainly of guilt, the plainness itself might have shocked the room back into justice.
But no one accused her. No one was openly unkind.
No lady crossed the room rather than sit beside her with any visible violence of manner.
No gentleman refused to bow. No servant neglected her.
Silvermere was too well bred for cruelty of so coarse a kind.
Instead, people became careful.
Care, in such circumstances, was a most efficient instrument.
It allowed Mrs Lyndhurst to say that poor Mrs Harrow must be spared agitation, while contriving never to be alone with her.
It allowed a guest to lower her voice when Mrs Harrow entered a room, not because she had been speaking of her, but because one must be tender of feelings.
It allowed gentlemen to become grave in her presence, ladies to become gentle, servants to become quieter, and every person to feel both compassionate and cautious.
No one condemned Mrs Harrow; they merely stepped back from her by small degrees, as one might step back from a candle discovered too near a curtain.
Elizabeth found the movement hateful.
The breakfast room, which had only the day before revealed its nature as a place of loose freedoms and concealed observation, had sharpened overnight into something more exacting.
Mrs Harrow came down in good time, neither too early nor late enough to invite comment, and took a place where she could not appear to court solitude yet could easily be left to it.
Mrs Gardiner, with instinctive kindness and social courage of the quietest kind, sat near her and spoke of the gardens.
Jane smiled at her warmly. Bingley bowed with particular respect.
Darcy’s civility was grave and unaltered.
These attentions mattered; Elizabeth knew they mattered because others noticed them.
Mrs Lyndhurst noticed most of all.
“My dear Mrs Harrow,” she said, leaning forward with an expression of almost maternal concern, “I do hope you were able to rest. Such an unfortunate event as yesterday’s discovery must have tried the nerves exceedingly.”
Mrs Harrow lifted her eyes from her teacup. “You are kind. I slept tolerably.”
“Tolerably! Poor thing. How modestly you express what must have been a very distressing night.”
“Not more distressing, perhaps, than the situation deserved.”
Mrs Lyndhurst blinked, not quite certain what to do with an answer that neither accepted pity nor rejected it. “Indeed. Yes. Of course. One must not make more of matters than they require. I have always thought that the greatest kindness in such circumstances is not to speculate.”
Portia Vale, who had taken a roll and was tearing it with unnecessary force, said, “Then Silvermere may expect an unusually silent day.”
Felix looked at his cousin with mild reproach. “Portia.”
“What? I did not speculate. I anticipated.”
Colonel Avery gave a short laugh which he made no attempt to disguise.
Lady Ashbourne, at the head of the table, did not appear to hear.
Or rather, Elizabeth thought, she chose not to.
Her ladyship’s face retained its handsome composure, but there was a weariness beneath her eyes which had not been there upon their arrival.
The missing letters, or rather the reappearance of one of them, had touched something more personal than property.
Yet Lady Ashbourne continued to govern the table with practised ease.
She asked after Mrs Gardiner’s plans, invited Jane to inspect the west garden later, and reminded Felix to speak with the steward regarding repairs to a tenant’s roof.
Each ordinary direction seemed to lay another strip of order over the crack widening beneath them.
Felix obeyed beautifully.
That was the word that came again and again to Elizabeth’s mind when she watched him.
Beautifully. He did nothing roughly, nothing openly self-important, nothing that could be called officious by anyone inclined to approve him.
Yet he appeared everywhere a moment before usefulness was required.
Lady Ashbourne had scarcely turned her head before he supplied the date of the repairs.
Mrs Lyndhurst had barely begun to wonder whether the post had come before he informed her that it had not.
A servant hesitated near the sideboard, and Felix removed the difficulty with two quiet words.
He regretted distress, admired composure, hoped the household would soon be at ease, and trusted that no one would permit a mysterious act by some unknown person to injure the harmony Lady Ashbourne had so generously intended.
Unknown person. Unknown motive. Unknown injury.
Elizabeth noticed that every phrase widened the field just enough to prevent thought from settling where it might.
After breakfast, the house party arranged itself into occupations which deceived no one.
Mrs Lyndhurst expressed a wish to write letters, though she had no doubt written three already in imagination.
Colonel Avery declared he would walk to the stables because horses, in his opinion, had the advantage of being incapable of polite falsehood.
Portia said she would accompany him if the horses did not object to unprofitable conversation.
Lady Ashbourne withdrew with Felix and Mr Darcy for a short interval, on the stated purpose of showing Darcy some old correspondence which might help identify the hand of Sir Edmund Vale more certainly.
Elizabeth was not included, which she expected, though not without irritation.
Jane remained in the drawing room with Mrs Gardiner, Bingley and Mrs Lyndhurst. Mrs Harrow, after sitting for several minutes with a book she did not read, quietly left the room through the doors leading toward the conservatory passage.
Elizabeth waited long enough to avoid making the pursuit obvious, then followed.
Silvermere’s orangery lay beyond the east wing, reached by a passage where the air grew warmer before the room itself appeared.
Elizabeth smelled it before she entered: damp earth, leaf mould, citrus, old stone holding yesterday’s heat, and that faint green bitterness peculiar to plants forced to flourish within glass.
The orangery was less immaculate than the principal rooms of the house, and for that reason Elizabeth liked it at once.
Some of the white paint had flaked near the lower windows.
Moss had established itself in a corner where moisture gathered.
The great orange and lemon trees stood in tubs arranged with less mathematical severity than Lady Ashbourne usually permitted, their glossy leaves touched here and there with yellow, their late blossoms scenting the close air.
Sunlight entered through high glass panes and turned everything a little blurred, a little softened, as though the room belonged not wholly to the house but to some more private climate.
Mrs Harrow stood near the far end, beside a lemon tree whose blossoms were beginning to brown at the edges. She did not turn immediately when Elizabeth entered.
“I thought someone might come,” she said.
“Then I am sorry to be predictable.”
Mrs Harrow turned. Her face was composed, but the exhaustion beneath it was now more visible away from the harder light of company. “Predictability may be kindness. One knows where to stand against it.”
“I did not come to interrogate you.”
“No. I suppose Miss Elizabeth Bennet would call it conversation.”
“Only if both parties may ask questions.”
A faint smile touched Mrs Harrow’s mouth. “You are very direct.”
“I have seen enough manufactured disgrace to distrust convenient evidence.”
The smile faded. Mrs Harrow studied her as though trying to determine whether the words were offered as sympathy, warning or alliance. “Do you always speak so plainly?”
“Only when indirection has become indecent.”
At that, something in Mrs Harrow’s expression changed—not softening exactly, but recognition. She looked away, out through the glass to the gardens beyond. “Then you must often find yourself disappointed in society.”
“I find myself entertained by it nearly as often as disappointed. That is its one defence.”
Mrs Harrow laughed then, unexpectedly; not happily, but with the brief astonishment of amusement arriving in a place prepared for pain. The sound faded quickly.
“Margaret Ellery would have liked you,” she said.
Elizabeth did not move. “Would she?”
“She liked women who spoke as if words were meant to carry weight.”
“And you were her friend.”
Mrs Harrow drew a slow breath. “Yes.”
The admission seemed to cost her less than the silence before it, which told Elizabeth something. A concealed truth may become heavier than a confessed one, even when confession cannot yet lift the consequences.
“Margaret Ellery was a gentlewoman,” Mrs Harrow said, “though that phrase is of little assistance when a woman has not money enough to make gentility comfortable. She came into the Vale household as companion to Lady Vale during one of her illnesses. Sir Edmund was then still very much admired, though those who admired him generally found it wise not to examine his accounts. Margaret was clever, proud, and too conscious of dependence to be humble. People disliked that. They prefer poor women grateful. Gratitude reassures those who have the power to require it.”
Elizabeth thought of Miss Trent, pale and silent beside Mrs Lyndhurst. “Yes. They do.”