Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Mr. Bennet issued his invitation to the library at half past twelve, with the air of a man extending a courtesy that had never been in question.
"Come and see the fourth Cowper," he said to Darcy. "You have opinions about the third. I suspect you will have opinions about the fourth, and I find I prefer to hear them somewhere the opinions need not compete with a great deal of ambient noise."
This last was aimed across the parlour at Lydia, who was demonstrating something to Kitty using the fire-tongs.
Darcy rose. He looked briefly at Elizabeth — not for permission, she thought, but in acknowledgment that she knew what her father was doing. She did. She gave him the smallest nod, which she was fairly certain Mr. Bennet also caught.
The library door closed.
She heard, at intervals over the next twenty minutes, two voices in the measured exchange of people not entirely agreeing about something, neither of them raised.
Once, a brief silence of the kind that follows a question that has required consideration.
Then a low, dry laugh that was distinctly her father's.
Once, a longer silence. Then her father's voice again, which from this distance had the cadence of a man who has made a point and is waiting to see how it lands.
Then Darcy's, lower, which she could not hear and did not try to hear, because she had the strong sense that the conversation in that room was not one she was meant to follow.
Her father had, over the past several weeks, conducted what she could only describe as a quiet and independent investigation.
He had lent Darcy Johnson, and disputed his response.
He had observed Thursday's visit with both eyes open behind the newspaper.
He had asked about Cowper's domestic poems in a way that had nothing to do with Cowper.
He was, she understood, checking something — not credentials, not income, not connexion.
Something else. The quality of a man's attention, perhaps.
Whether he argued back in ways worth arguing against.
In the parlour, Mrs. Bennet talked. Bingley attended Jane with his whole pleasant heart. Lydia and Kitty achieved some resolution with the fire-tongs. Elizabeth sat with her embroidery and did not make a single correct stitch.
When the library door opened again, Mr. Bennet emerged first and went to his chair by the window without looking at anyone. Darcy returned to the parlour and resumed his seat across from Elizabeth with the composed manner of a man who has come through something and means to say nothing about it.
"Well?" said Elizabeth, when the room had settled around them.
"Your father," said Darcy, "asked me whether I found Cowper's domestic poems more or less honest than his devotional ones."
"And?"
"I said the domestic ones were more honest because they were written from life rather than aspiration."
"He would have enjoyed that."
"He then asked me," said Darcy, with a quality in his voice that she was learning to identify as careful, "whether I thought honesty about domestic life was a quality one could recognise before the fact or only after it."
Elizabeth set down her embroidery. "And?"
"I said I believed it could be recognised before, in some cases, if one attended to the right evidence."
The fire ticked. Bingley said something to Jane that made her colour gently. Lydia left the room in pursuit of something.
"He asked," Darcy said, more quietly, "whether a man of strong opinions and few domestic talents might not find Longbourn rather more lively than suited him."
Elizabeth looked at him. "What did you say?"
"I said," said Darcy, "that I should find it considerably livelier than Pemberley, and that I did not count that against Longbourn." He paused. "He said: good. And gave me the fourth volume."
He produced it from under his arm — a small green octavo, part of the same set as the volumes already lent.
Elizabeth looked at it. She had read the fourth volume.
She knew precisely which poems it contained, and she understood, with the particular clarity of a woman who has been paying attention for some weeks, that her father had given Mr. Darcy not just a book but a considered opinion.
"He likes you," she said, which was not quite accurate.
"He is withholding judgment," said Darcy. "It amounts to the same thing, at this stage."
"He withholds judgment from very few people." She set the fourth volume on the table between them, spine up, the way her father shelved books he intended to return to. "He lent Mr. Collins a volume once. To be rid of him. He has never done that to you."
"The distinction is noted."
"The distinction is significant." She looked at the book.
It was the volume that contained, she knew, the poem about the long view — the one Cowper wrote in the knowledge that he would not be read in his own time, that the audience he was writing for did not yet exist. Her father had opinions about that poem.
She had argued with those opinions in the margin, years ago, in the handwriting of a girl of fourteen who had been absolutely certain she was right and had since revised her position considerably.
She wondered if Darcy had found that page. She suspected he had.
"He asked you something," she said. "Before he gave you the book. He always asks something."
"He asked," said Darcy, "whether I thought Cowper wrote for himself or for posterity."
"And?"
"I said both, but that the best of the poems were for himself — and that posterity was the lucky beneficiary of a man who had been very honest in private." A pause. "He said that was the right answer."
Elizabeth looked at him. "He never says that."
"He said it was the right answer for a man in my particular situation."
She understood, then, what the fourth volume meant. Not just the loan. The selection.