Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Darcy heard the name on Friday, in Longbourn's garden, and Elizabeth watched the cold come up under his face like water rising in a cellar.
It was the first walk since the gravel path of the letter — Bingley and Jane ahead, deep in the architecture of arbours, the proper fifteen paces of chaperonage between the couples and the hedge dripping with the week's rime.
She had mentioned the regiment's new lieutenant because the whole county had mentioned him; it was not until the syllables were out — a Mr. Wickham, lately of town — that she saw what they did.
He walked four paces before he spoke. She had learned the grammar of his silences by now; this one was not the old fortress. It was a man choosing, with great care, among bad doors.
"You will hear," he said at last, "an account of me.
From that quarter. I would lay the odds you have begun to hear it already.
" He looked at her then, and did not perform the look.
"I ask your patience, Miss Bennet, while I do this badly.
There is a history. The greater part of it is not mine to tell — it touches a person who is dear to me, and young, and entitled to my silence before she is entitled to anything else in the world, and I will not buy my own character at her expense.
What I can tell you, I will, and you may do with it what you judge right: the man is plausible.
He is more than plausible; he is the most finished performer of frankness I have ever met, and I have known him all my life.
He makes his way by being believed quickly.
Those who believe him slowly he does not trouble with long acquaintance — there is nothing in it for him.
I say no more than that, and even this much I say only?—"
He stopped. The hedge dripped. Ahead of them Bingley described a curve of trellis in the air, and Jane improved it.
"—only to you," he finished, quietly. "It cannot be proved without what I will not produce: a rich man disparaging a poor one, with no evidence and a visible motive. As a case it is wretched. I bring it to you anyway."
They walked. The frost made the whole garden into one held breath.
She understood exactly what was being placed in her hands: the letter's mirror — the same private interior, this time offered.
Deliberately, awkwardly, against his own rules, with the wound's location named while the wound stayed covered.
He had put the key on the table and trusted her not to turn it.
"Then I will tell you how I have weighed it," said Elizabeth, "and we shall be even in confidences, which I am told is the only safe condition between dangerous readers.
I had your Mr. Wickham's measure on the pavement at Meryton, three days before you gave me a word.
He is all fair copy, Mr. Darcy. I have lately developed a prejudice" — and she allowed the word its full freight, and saw him receive it — "in favour of men whose corrections I have seen. "
The breath he let out had been held, she perceived, somewhat longer than this conversation.
"You asked no particulars," he said.
"You will tell me when they are yours to tell. I have read ahead in you once, sir, without leave. I do not mean to make a habit of it."