Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
It was Charlotte who told her, on Tuesday, that the visit had been observed.
"Sir William saw him arrive alone," she said, on the walk back from the village.
"Hill told Mrs. Long's housekeeper. Mrs. Long told my mother.
My mother told me, and I expect she has told everyone she has seen since breakfast." She glanced at Elizabeth.
"The neighbourhood has drawn its conclusions. "
"The neighbourhood," said Elizabeth, "has been drawing conclusions since October."
"Drawing them is one thing. Declaring them is another.
Before Monday, there was still a reasonable argument that the calls were social, or Bingley's business, or about books.
" Charlotte paused to let a cart pass on the lane.
"After Monday, there is no such argument, and everyone knows it, including Miss Bingley, who I understand has been apprised. "
"By whom?"
"By the neighbourhood," said Charlotte, with great composure, "which tells Miss Bingley everything eventually, because the neighbourhood enjoys it."
Elizabeth walked on for a moment in silence. The frost was thawing along the hedgerow, and the lane smelled of wet earth and cold air and the particular quality of late autumn that makes everything feel both ending and beginning at once.
"I am not ashamed of it," she said.
"I know you are not."
"I am not going to be made ashamed of it."
"I know that too," said Charlotte. "I am not suggesting shame.
I am suggesting that you have now crossed from the territory of private understanding into the territory of public fact, and the two require different things.
" She looked at Elizabeth steadily. "You will need to be decided.
Not because of what Darcy thinks, or what the neighbourhood thinks.
But because once you are public, hesitation looks different. People take it as evidence."
"Of what?"
"Of whatever suits them." A pause. "Miss Bingley will take it as confusion. Your mother will take it as coquetry, which she will deplore. Wickham will take it as uncertainty he can use." Charlotte stopped at the gate to Lucas Lodge. "So. Are you decided?"
Elizabeth thought of the parlour and the single horse and Darcy's I did not bring Bingley and her own voice saying no, I am not — and of the Cowper passage about a man who makes a home in a place not chosen and finds it his.
"Yes," she said. "I believe I am."
Charlotte nodded, with the small particular satisfaction of someone who has been waiting for a friend to arrive at a destination they could see from a long way off. "Good," she said. "Then go and be decided, and let everyone draw their conclusions."
Caroline's letter arrived on Wednesday, addressed to Jane, written in her most finished hand.
Jane read it at breakfast and offered a mild summary: Miss Bingley hoped they were all well; she was in town for a few days on some business she did not specify; she sent her particular regards to Mr. Darcy, who she understood had been calling a great deal in Hertfordshire, and hoped he was not overworking himself; and she was sure the neighbourhood air agreed with him, though town had its own advantages, as she was certain he would remember when the season began.
"The particular regards to Mr. Darcy," said Elizabeth, "in a letter sent to us."
"She is informing us," said Jane, with her characteristic precision, "that she knows."
"She has known for some time."
"She is informing us formally. There is a difference." Jane folded the letter. "She also wishes me to convey, with every expression of friendship, that Pemberley at Christmas is a very grand affair, and that Darcy's family marks these things."
Elizabeth spread marmalade on her toast. She thought about what Charlotte had said: he has a world.
She thought about Lady Catherine, whose name Wickham had placed like a piece on a board.
She thought about the letter in the wrong hand, and the marked book, and Darcy at her mother's parlour saying I am accurate as though endurance had nothing to do with it.
She had not asked for the simplest version of this, and she was not going to get it.
"Jane," she said, "do you find it frightening?"
Jane considered the question with full seriousness. "Sometimes," she said. "But I find Bingley more frightening if I imagine him absent, and that helps."
Elizabeth thought about Darcy declining the exit from Monday's parlour.
She thought about a man who corrected himself in private.
She thought, specifically, about him staying for two more hours after Mr. Philips left, and talking about Cowper with Mr. Bennet, and accepting a third cup of tea from her mother without any visible performance of patience.
"Yes," she said. "I suppose that is a kind of arithmetic."
She wrote back to Caroline herself — a note of three lines, friendly, unrevealing, containing nothing that could be used. She sealed it with the plain wax.