Chapter 2
Chapter Two
They came at eleven, Bingley and Darcy, and for a full four minutes the visit was entirely manageable.
Bingley went to Jane with the unerring ease of a man who has performed this operation many times and improves at it each repetition.
Mrs. Bennet received the gentlemen in the parlour with the slightly too-elaborate warmth she produced when she was trying not to appear to be doing what she was obviously doing.
Darcy sat in the chair across from Elizabeth's — the chair that had acquired, over the last several weeks, a kind of gravitational claim — and said that he hoped she was well, and she said she was, and there was a brief interval in which everything was perfectly contained.
Then Lydia arrived.
"Mr. Darcy," she said, without preamble, pulling a chair in from the wall with a scrape that made everyone wince slightly, "do you dance at all at private balls, or only at public ones?
Because at the Netherfield ball you danced only twice, which Kitty said was because you had hurt your foot, but I said was because you are particular?—"
"Lydia," said Elizabeth.
"—and I want to know which it is, because it affects whether I should ask you for the third set at Aunt Philips's next card party, if there is dancing, which I expect there will be?—"
"There is very rarely dancing at Aunt Philips's," said Elizabeth.
"There was in October."
"That was an accident."
"I intend to make it happen again." Lydia turned back to Darcy with the expectation of an answer.
Darcy, to his credit, did not look long-suffering.
He looked — Elizabeth watched with something between amusement and tenderness — like a man who has decided that this particular conversation is simply a room he has entered and will cross.
"I dance at both," he said, "when I am asked by someone I should like to dance with. "
Lydia considered this with the strategic gravity she brought to all information about dancing. "And is there someone here you should like to dance with, if Aunt Philips's should happen to produce a set?"
"Lydia," said Elizabeth, with more force.
"I am only asking?—"
"You are asking considerably more than you should."
Lydia subsided, not in the least chastened, and was diverted at that moment by Kitty, who appeared with a piece of ribbon requiring adjudication. The adjudication took several minutes and involved both sisters disappearing into the hall, returning briefly, and disappearing again.
During this interval, Bingley told Jane a story about a horse, with the ease of a man who has been telling people stories for twenty-three years and expects them to go well; Jane listened with her whole attention; and Darcy sat across from Elizabeth and said nothing, which was not the silence of a man waiting for the room to settle but the silence of a man who was, she thought, privately amused by it.
"I apologise," she said quietly, "for the ribbon inquiry."
"I found it clarifying," said Darcy, with great composure.
"Did you."
"I am always glad to know what is expected of me at Aunt Philips's."
Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing at the exact wrong moment. She looked down at her embroidery and made two stitches that were entirely wrong and did not correct them.
"You are managing very well," she said, when she trusted herself.
"I am attending."
"There is a difference?"
"A significant one." He glanced toward the hall, where Lydia and Kitty could still be heard in their ribbon adjudication. "Managing implies endurance. Attending implies interest."
She looked at him. He was not performing patience; she had seen performed patience — it had a particular set to the jaw, a quality of waiting for the room to be over.
This was something else. He was watching Longbourn the way he had watched her margins: with the attention of a person reading something he had not expected to find interesting and has.
"You genuinely do not mind it," she said, more to herself than to him.
"I find it" — a brief pause, choosing — "clarifying. As I said." The corner of his mouth moved. "Your family is not quiet, Miss Bennet. But quiet is not the same thing as honest, and I have had a great deal of quiet."
Elizabeth set down her embroidery entirely.
Mrs. Bennet leaned toward Darcy with the confidential air she adopted when she felt she was being unusually tactful.
"You must not mind Lydia, Mr. Darcy. She is very lively.
All my girls are lively — Jane is more composed, of course, and Lizzy is very clever, as I'm sure you have noticed, though she reads too much, in my opinion, which is perhaps not a fault in the present company—" she smiled with an air of refined compliment— "and she can be very charming when she chooses, though she does not always choose, which is a great pity, but I'm sure?—"
"Mama," said Elizabeth.
"I am only saying?—"
"Mr. Darcy," said Elizabeth, abandoning the pretence of needle-work she had been using as cover, "was the Cowper question the one about retirement, or the one about enclosure?"
He looked at her — recognising, she thought, the rescue — with the particular expression she had come to know as his version of gratitude, which was simply the absence of the expression he normally wore. "Neither," he said. "It was about sufficiency."
Mrs. Bennet looked between them with the bright alertness of a woman who does not always follow the subject but never misses the tone. She pressed more seedcake on Bingley, who accepted it cheerfully, and sat back with the expression of someone who considers the morning's work substantially done.
From the corner, Mr. Bennet watched over his newspaper with both eyes open.