Chapter 6
Chapter Six
He came again on Monday, with Bingley.
This time the parlour was in a different configuration: Mrs. Bennet had a cold and was directing operations from the sofa under a shawl; Lydia and Kitty were engaged in some project involving half the contents of the linen cupboard, the purpose of which was never entirely explained; Mary was at the pianoforte producing scales with great determination and moderate success; and Mr. Philips had arrived at eleven for reasons connected with some estate matter and had stayed past twelve for reasons connected with Mrs. Bennet's cold and her strong feelings about the state of the hedgerow to the east, which she held the Netherfield lease responsible for.
Darcy walked into all of it.
He did not visibly recoil. Elizabeth, watching from the chair by the fire where she had stationed herself as a kind of calm centre to the room's competing energies, watched him take in the scene and settle into it with the careful deliberateness of a man who has thought about this in advance and decided on equanimity.
Mr. Philips, who had never met him, shook his hand with the vigour of a man undaunted by ten thousand a year.
Mrs. Bennet, from her sofa, said he must not come too near as she was very unwell but that it was very good of him to call and would he take some tea because Hill had just brought a fresh pot.
Mary completed a scale and began another.
Kitty, passing through with a tablecloth, knocked into the music stand and caught it before it fell, with an apologetic look at everyone.
"Mr. Darcy," said Mrs. Bennet, adjusting her shawl, "I hope you do not think us always like this."
"I have found Longbourn consistently lively," said Darcy. "It is one of its recommendations."
Mrs. Bennet blinked. This was not the expected response. "Well," she said, in a tone of pleased uncertainty, "we are a large family, and large families are lively, I always say. Mr. Bennet is very quiet, but the girls?—"
"The girls are charming," said Darcy. He said it with the simplicity of a man stating a fact.
He did not elaborate; he did not need to; and Mrs. Bennet, who had been complimented on her daughters in many ornate ways over many years, heard the plainness of it and looked at him with a slightly stunned expression.
"Well," she said. "Yes. They are." She appeared to be revising something. "I mean to say — Jane especially, of course, though Lizzy—" she collected herself— "all of them. Very charming." She patted his arm in a way she normally reserved for Mr. Bingley, who bore it with practice.
Elizabeth looked at the fire.
Across the room, Mary had finished her scale, begun another, and come to a halt of uncertain nature. She looked at Darcy with the faint air of someone recognising a situation she had not been briefed on. "Mr. Darcy," she said, "do you play?"
"I do not," said Darcy.
"Do you sing?"
"No."
"Do you appreciate music?"
"I do," said Darcy, "when it is performed with feeling."
Mary considered this. "I am still working on the feeling," she said, with a candour that seemed to surprise even herself, and returned to the pianoforte with a renewed expression.
Mr. Philips at last concluded his business with the parlour — which had never been the stated business, but had involved extended remarks on the state of the hedgerow, two cups of tea, and a complete account of a legal matter in Meryton in which he played a heroic role — and took his leave with the warm air of a man who would be telling this story at dinner.
Darcy shook his hand. Mr. Philips pumped it.
When he finally departed — carrying with him an impression of Mr. Darcy that would be all over Meryton by Tuesday — Darcy crossed the room and took the chair nearest hers, and for a few minutes they had, improbably, something close to quiet.
"I ought to apologise," said Elizabeth, "for Mr. Philips and the tablecloth and the scales."
"None of it requires apology."
"You are very generous."
"I am accurate," he said. "Generosity implies that I am bearing something. I am not."
She looked at him. He was looking at the fire, and his profile had the settled quality she associated with the library and the garden — the quality of a man who was where he meant to be. She had offered him the exit, and he had declined it, and it was not politeness, and she knew it.