Chapter 5
Chapter Five
"Here you both are," said Miss Bingley.
She stood in the doorway in amber silk, and Elizabeth watched her take the inventory: Mr. Darcy out of his fortifications, seated by the window; Elizabeth curled in the window-seat with her feet up like a cat in possession; the abandoned letter; the laughter still hanging in the room, as perceptible as smoke.
The sum was totted in an instant, and the total was alarming.
"Charles has been wondering where everyone had got to," Miss Bingley went on, advancing.
"Miss Eliza, you find the library entertaining?
But of course — your father is quite the famous reader, is not he?
" The smile performed its office. "How wise of you to feel at home among books, rather than people. "
"It is a family failing," said Elizabeth pleasantly. "We are forever at home in the wrong places."
"Mr. Darcy, you at least I may rescue. Louisa proposes cards, and you know you are wanted; nothing can be made of the table without you."
"You are very good," said Mr. Darcy, who had risen and reassembled himself — Elizabeth watched the fortress go back up stone by stone, portcullis, drawbridge, the whole engineering of it, in under three seconds — "but I have letters that must go express tomorrow, and I have made no progress in them this morning. "
"Letters! On a Sunday, you industrious creature. To dear Georgiana, I hope? Do tell her—" and there followed a message of such elaborate affection that it could not have been remembered five minutes, by sender or recipient. Mr. Darcy received it with a bow of perfect nullity.
Miss Bingley's glance came round once more to the window-seat, and Elizabeth saw, with reluctant admiration, the strategy resolve itself: the field could not be held, so it would be burned.
"Miss Eliza, pray, how does your family pass a wet Sunday at Longbourn? Your younger sisters — the dear lieutenants cannot call in such weather; how they must suffer. And your mother — but no doubt the time passes in planning. Your mother is such a manager."
It was prettily done, Elizabeth granted her — three shots, each placed exactly: the militia, the vulgarity, Jane's mercenary mamma.
Two days ago Elizabeth would have returned fire with pleasure and considered the exercise good for everyone.
But two days ago she had not been sitting in the wreckage of a fortnight's conclusions; and what occupied her now was not Miss Bingley at all, but Mr. Darcy at the fire — because she found she was bracing herself for his expression, the one he had worn through every previous performance of the Bennet family's deficiencies: the long-suffering look, the confirmation.
She made herself glance at him.
He was not looking long-suffering. He was looking at Miss Bingley with an expression of cold, settled distaste — the precise expression Elizabeth had spent two months assigning to his contemplation of her family. She looked down at the county history with great attention, and saw none of it.
"I imagine Sunday at Longbourn passes much as it does anywhere," he said. "Shall I ring for more candles, Miss Bingley? You will want them for cards; this light is nothing to play by."
Miss Bingley looked from the fire to the window-seat and back again.
Whatever she found in the two faces, she did not stay to dispute it; she gathered her shawl and her smile.
"How thoughtful you always are. Miss Eliza, we dine at four on Sundays — country hours; I am sure you are accustomed to far worse. Do not let the books keep you."
The door closed on amber silk.
The library resumed its grey quiet. Mr. Darcy had not yet turned from the fire; and the room had changed its nature, for there is all the difference in the world between being alone with a man by accident and being alone with him after a door has shut.
"You will be wanted at cards," she said, for the plain purpose of saying something.
"Yes," said Mr. Darcy, not moving.
"Your letters?—"
"Miss Bennet." He turned. The fortress was down again; he had not troubled to rebuild it; and she understood that this, now, whatever it was going to be, was the deliberate act of a man who had spent the morning deciding.
"When you return to Longbourn tomorrow, I should like permission to call on you there. "