Chapter 5
Chapter Five
They walked on because standing still was visible from the house; that much society did for them — it kept their feet moving while everything else stood entirely still.
"I will tell you what I intend by it," said Elizabeth, when she could.
"Nothing. That is the whole of my policy, sir, and I have walked two days around it.
I cannot give the knowledge back; I have learned that knowledge does not fold.
But it shall never be used. Not in argument, not in raillery — and I am told I rally everything, so you will know what the exception costs me.
No third person shall ever hear of the paper's existence.
I had no right to what I saw, and a thing got without right ought to purchase nothing.
" She drew a breath. "I do ask you to believe one thing more, because pretending otherwise is beyond my skill: I cannot behave as though I do not know it.
I am not so good an actress, and you would see through the performance and trust me less. "
For ten paces he said nothing. The paper had gone into his breast pocket; his hand had stayed a moment over it, like a man assuring himself of a wound.
"You might have folded it and said nothing," he said. "I could never have known."
"No."
"It would have been the comfortable course. It is what nine people in ten would have done, and the tenth would have been canonized for resisting." Another silence, of a new texture. "Instead you put the evidence against yourself into my hand, on a gravel walk, in view of your mother's windows."
"You may set it down to vanity," said Elizabeth. "You corrected yourself honestly with no one watching. I found I could not bear to be out-done in the dark by a man I had publicly called proud."
And that — that it should have been that, a sentence half made of mischief — was what unfastened him. Proof that she could hold his struck-through lines in her keeping and still be Elizabeth; that the worst was known, and the sky stood.
"You have read Johnson, you tell me." His voice had come back to him, some of it. "Then you know what he says of friendship — that it is not to be expected where there cannot be confidence."
"I know it. You will observe the Rambler has been more in our affairs this fortnight than Johnson can ever have intended."
"I begin to think," said Mr. Darcy, "that I will not insult you with a request for your discretion.
A man asks discretion of people he cannot otherwise be sure of.
" He stopped — they had reached the end of the walk, where the hedge made its turn and the house windows lost their angle — and turned to face her entirely.
"I sent no fair copy of that letter, Miss Bennet.
What you read, I had not yet had the courage to say to my friend in plainer form.
You are, at this hour, the only person living who knows my mind on the matter.
I find I am — " the pause was visible, a man counting out coin from a deep pocket — "not sorry it should be you. "
The hedge dripped. Somewhere behind them Bingley laughed at something of Jane's, and the sound carried down the garden like news from a kinder country.
"Then we understand each other," said Elizabeth, and her voice was not quite steady either, "and I will say only one thing more on the subject, ever. Send the fair copy, Mr. Darcy. Some letters are wanted more than they are wise."