Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The silence that followed was the kind that precedes the main event.
Lady Catherine collected herself — she was, Elizabeth could see, not accustomed to the word no delivered plainly and without apology — and tried a different approach. The approach of a woman who has many weapons in her arsenal and is not yet near the end of them.
"You do not understand what you are declining," she said.
"You are a gentleman's daughter, from a family whose connexions are adequate for Hertfordshire, and entirely inadequate for the position my nephew occupies.
You have no fortune, no family of consequence, an entail that must shortly deprive you of your home, and — forgive me, Mrs. Bennet — relations whose behaviour has given your own neighbourhood occasion for observation. "
Mrs. Bennet made a sound.
"The world my nephew moves in," Lady Catherine continued, "is not this.
His connexions are not Mr. Bingley's. His estate is not Netherfield.
Pemberley is an institution. It has obligations that extend beyond the private preferences of its master, and a mistress of Pemberley who cannot meet those obligations does not merely fail herself — she fails the position, the family, and the tenants and dependents who rely on Darcy taking the matter of his own marriage seriously.
" She paused. "I do not say you are a bad young woman.
I say you are an unsuitable one, and that honesty requires me to tell you so. "
Elizabeth looked at her without heat. She had prepared for this — not the specific words, but the structure. The argument from consequence. The implication that her personal qualities were real but beside the point; that the point was a ledger in which she would always be found short.
"Lady Catherine," she said, "I have considered the argument you are making.
I have been considering it for some weeks — not because anyone put it to me in these terms, but because I am not so foolish as to have missed it.
" She kept her voice level. "You are right that I have no fortune.
You are right that my mother's connexions are in trade, and that my family has given its neighbourhood occasion for observation, and that Pemberley is not Netherfield.
" A pause. "I am not under any misapprehension about what I would be entering into. "
"Then you see that you are not suited?—"
"I see," said Elizabeth, "that those are the facts of my situation.
They are not, however, a verdict on whether I am suited, because suited is not a calculation of deficits.
It is a question of whether two people are capable of building a life together honestly.
And on that question, Lady Catherine, I am rather better placed to judge than you are. "
Lady Catherine stared at her.
"You have not seen him argue about Cowper," Elizabeth said.
"You have not seen him sit in this parlour for three hours with Lydia and the fire-tongs and my mother's opinions, and look precisely like a man who wished to be exactly where he was.
You have not read his letters or watched him correct himself or heard him say, in plain terms, that silence is no longer his method.
" She looked at Lady Catherine steadily.
"I have. And I will not be told I do not know enough to decide, when knowing him is exactly what I have spent the last several months doing. "
Lady Catherine's expression had done something complicated during this speech. She was not a stupid woman. She had come, Elizabeth understood, expecting to find uncertainty — a young woman half-convinced, easily tipped by consequence and rank. She had not expected to find evidence.
"You are decided," Lady Catherine said at last.
"I am decided," said Elizabeth.
"And nothing I can say?—"
"Nothing you have said," said Elizabeth, "has told me anything I did not already know.
You have reminded me that his world is large and that I would need to be equal to it.
I believe I am. Not without effort. Not without the particular attention to a room that tells you when to speak and when to let things pass.
But I am my father's daughter, Lady Catherine, and I have been reading rooms all my life. "
A pause.
"He would have been wasted on someone who merely expected him," said Lady Catherine. It was not a compliment. But it was, Elizabeth thought, a concession — and from Lady Catherine, a concession was as close to acknowledgment as the situation was going to produce.
Lady Catherine was quiet for a moment. The fire had burned down during the interview; the room was cooler.
Mrs. Bennet had not moved from her chair, a fact Elizabeth noted with a gratitude she intended to express later.
Mr. Bennet had not moved either, but his expression had acquired the particular quality it wore when he had reached a verdict and was satisfied with it.
"You are not what I expected," said Lady Catherine again. The repetition was interesting — it was not an insult this time. It was closer to a concession. "I expected either tears or performance. You have given me neither."
"I have given you my honest answer," said Elizabeth. "I cannot give you the answer you came for, because it would not be true."
Lady Catherine looked at her steadily. "You are very certain."
"I am certain of what I know," said Elizabeth.
"I am not certain of everything. I am not certain of how large a room I will be required to stand in, or whether I will always stand in it well.
But I am certain of the man I have been watching since October, and certain of what he has shown me, and that is enough to answer you. "
Something moved in Lady Catherine's expression — not softness, exactly, but a kind of recognition.
She was, Elizabeth realised, a woman who respected the thing she was encountering even as she opposed it.
Honesty, when it was structural rather than convenient, was something Lady Catherine understood, because it was, underneath the rank and the condescension, something she herself possessed.
She did not say any of this aloud. She said, instead: "You will have a difficult time of it."
"Most worthwhile things are difficult," said Elizabeth.
The door opened.