Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Wickham was in Meryton on Tuesday, apparently by accident, which Elizabeth now understood to mean by design.
She and Jane had come in for thread, and were just departing from the haberdasher's when he appeared at her elbow with the particular facility of a man who has been waiting at an angle.
"Miss Bennet — and Miss Elizabeth — what fortune.
I had been hoping to encounter you before the ball.
" He fell into step beside her with the natural grace that was his best feature and his best instrument.
"I have been reading, of all things. A fellow in the regiment lent me some verse — Cowper — and I thought immediately of you.
You strike me, if I may say so, as exactly the sort of reader who would find him rewarding. "
Elizabeth looked at him with a pleasant expression that gave nothing away. "Do you read much poetry, Mr. Wickham?"
"When the subject calls for it." He smiled, easy and warm. "I confess I find Cowper a little — confined, perhaps? All those rural interiors. A woman of your liveliness must find him rather small."
"I find him underestimated," said Elizabeth.
"Just so — yes, there is something in him, when you look for it. I thought the poem on solitude particularly — the retirement pieces — there is a quality there that a discerning reader would?—"
"Which poem on solitude?" said Elizabeth.
A beat, very brief. "The retirement themes. Generally."
"He writes several." She kept her voice light and curious, the manner of someone pursuing an interesting conversation. "The distinction between the condition and the discipline, for instance — do you find he handles that well?"
Wickham smiled with great warmth. "I think exactly as you do, I am sure."
It was the most revealing sentence she had heard him speak.
He had not read the poems. He had acquired, from the ordinary commerce of a regiment town, that she was associated with Cowper, and had come armed with a vague enthusiasm and the practiced readiness to agree with her before she had finished the sentence.
Ten pencilled words in the margin of a poem about a garden had shown her more.
"I am glad you are reading," said Elizabeth pleasantly. "The retirement poems are worth the effort. I have lent my own copy out, but I am sure the regiment has editions." She smiled at him with genuine goodwill and not one inch more than that, and took Jane's arm toward the glover's.
Jane waited until they were inside.
"Lizzy," she said softly, "that was very decided."
"Was it?" Elizabeth turned over a pair of gloves without seeing them. "I did not intend anything by it. I simply found I was not interested."
"In Mr. Wickham?"
"In the performance." She set the gloves down and picked up another pair. "I find I am growing particular about the difference between agreeing with a person and actually knowing them."
Jane looked at her for a long moment with the expression that meant she understood everything and intended to say about half of it. "The book, Lizzy," she said, "must have been very interesting."
"Very," said Elizabeth. And left it there.