“What did you reply to all this?” asked Elizabeth, not very well pleased at being denominated a painted figure.
“I don’t remember. Very likely nothing at all. He said next, ‘All this is a fiction, a pretty piece of poetry!’ Then he began reciting some verses about a cat that fell into a bowl of goldfish.”
“I know them,” said Elizabeth, “but do not perceive the connection.”
“Perhaps none was intended. He has a prodigious memory for poetry and he went on repeating a great many sonnets of Shakespeare’s that I had never heard before.”
“I imagine them to be those that would hardly find their way into the course of a young lady’s studies,” said Elizabeth dryly.
“He said that Shakespeare knew what it was to love, whereas figures in a picture only went through the show of it.”
“It is so easy to deceive oneself with a metaphor or so.”
“He recites extremely well,” Georgiana continued. “His voice and the play of his features lend beauty and life to the dullest, most ordinary words.”
“What is your opinion of him viewed as a man, Georgiana—not as a reciter of poetry?”
“I think that he is extravagant and unpractical, a dreamer bemused with his own fancies.”
Elizabeth could scarcely help laughing at such a judgment from one so fanciful and so little practical in herself. She observed, however, that Georgiana had spoken impartially, even in his praise, and while frankly admiring his gifts was not dazzled by them, and could moreover perceive some absurdity in his behaviour. Satisfied on a point which had been agitating her for the last several hours, she said no more beyond a word of cordial agreement by way of reinforcing a very salutary frame of mind. But she herself ceased not to think of the man for some time longer, for this latest illustration of his character served less to instruct than to perplex her.
The next morning she went to her husband’s room to consult him about an invitation to dinner at a neighbouring great house which had just been brought by hand, and found him walking up and down with knitted brows and arms folded, deep in thought. A letter lay on the writing table; on seeing Elizabeth he turned and picked it up, and without waiting for her to speak said immediately:
“I am afraid you will be disappointed. I have had this morning a letter from Mr. Gardiner, and he writes that it is more than doubtful whether he and your aunt will be able to come to Pemberley on the day originally fixed for the journey.”
“Why is this?” cried Elizabeth. “Surely it is not on account of Lady Catherine.”
“Certainly not,” he replied decidedly. “The fact is, that I had asked your uncle to undertake some business for me in London. It is keeping him longer than either of us had anticipated. I am as sorry as you are. But their visit will not be long postponed—only for a week or two.”
“I trust so,” she answered. Struck by another thought she exclaimed, “So that was in your mind when I was counting up the party to thirteen. You doubted whether they would be here with the others.”
Darcy smiled. “I did foresee the possibility that they might not.”
“But will their visit be shortened?”
“I sincerely hope not.”
“And you say there is no certainty as to when they will be able to travel.”
“The day cannot be fixed until the business I spoke of has been concluded.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask idly what sort of business it could be which hung in so much uncertainty of despatch, but the invitation pressed for a decision and must be discussed, and she lost no further time in referring it to him. Directly she had obtained his agreement to acceptance, she went away to write her reply, for the servant who had brought the invitation was waiting. Darcy was thereby spared the awkwardness of refusing to show her Mr. Gardiner’s letter which she might very naturally have expected to see. The occasion past, there was little chance of a renewal of questioning, for although he valued and often invited his wife’s judgment on practical matters affecting the estate, she never intruded upon his business affairs unasked. While deception of any sort was abhorrent to him, circumstances might arise when to withhold information was expedient. Such circumstances were now present, and having weighed all the consequences of silence, he decided that the contents of Mr. Gardiner’s letter were best kept secret, even from Elizabeth, until the time came when no evil could result from publishing them at large.
Mr. Gardiner wrote with all a business man’s circumspection, omitting names of places and persons from a communication of confidential import lest it should fall into hands for which it was not intended. After the usual preliminaries he thus proceeded:
“Following your recommendation I went direct to the house and asked for the gentleman by name. Your suspicions received instant confirmation. The servant who answered the door informed me that his master was at home, but had only that day risen from a bed of sickness which had left him extremely weak. While he was speaking, the gentleman’s physician, evidently on his way out of the house from seeing his patient, stopped in the doorway to say that although he was glad to be able to report a very material improvement in his patient’s condition he could not sanction his seeing any visitors for some days more. Nothing therefore remained for me but to come away with the greater part of my errand still to perform.
“The matter to be dealt with thus stands in suspense for the period mentioned or perhaps longer. With your concurrence I propose to let several days elapse, then to write to the gentleman requesting the favour of an interview. How he will receive me depends on his part in the business which is still obscure, but as the major question to be resolved is no longer in any doubt, complete elucidation of all that pertains to the affair should follow in due course. When all that is to be known has been ascertained I will acquaint you with the whole without delay.
“I am afraid this halt in the action to be undertaken will entail some postponement of a visit to Pemberley to which Mrs. Gardiner and I have been looking forward this long while. Mrs. Gardiner had some thought of writing to Elizabeth to express her disappointment, but we have decided instead to leave it to yourself to break the news to her of our delayed arrival.”
After Elizabeth had gone, Darcy continued in thought some while longer. His first impulse on reading her uncle’s letter had been to act on it immediately, but as the result of further cogitation he decided that until the further information promised by Mr. Gardiner was in his possession nothing had better be done. A state of affairs highly distasteful to him must therefore continue for the present, and all he could permit himself was the exercise of a greater vigilance than ever upon the doings of a certain person under his roof.
The arrival next day of Mr. and Mrs. Bingley and their two little girls was an occasion that drove everything else temporarily out of Elizabeth’s head. Although marriage had perforce divided them in space, Elizabeth and Jane were still firmly knit in each other’s confidence, and for them to meet was to enter at once into the peculiar intimacy that had always bound them together. Bingley, with his natural and happy manners, was immediately on good terms with everyone in the house. As for little Harriet and Eleanor, they were charming, good-tempered children, not at all resentful of Richard’s unfriendly manner of receiving them. To Elizabeth’s chagrin he hid his face in her skirt, and for a whole hour would not so much as lift his eyes to look at either of them. By the next day, however, he had got over his aversion for Harriet and was induced to play with her, though nothing could persuade him to have anything to do with the infant Eleanor.
“My grandson is already so thoroughly spoilt that I have not the least compunction in continuing the process,” said Mr. Bennet. “I shall therefore encourage him to think as meanly as possible of all little girls and of himself as more important than anyone else in the family.”
“You exaggerate prodigiously, Papa,” complained Richard’s mother. “I can ass
ure you that Richard is instantly corrected whenever he is naughty. But he knows perfectly well that he can take liberties with you.”
“He is an extremely intelligent child,” replied her father, “and we understand one another very well. I have some claim upon his affection, for apparently there is no one else who can tell him nursery fables as I do. His eyes grow larger and larger as the tale proceeds to the grand climax, and when it is reached—when the wolf leaps upon Red Ridinghood to devour her, or the ogre comes roaring out of his castle to chase Jack back to the beanstalk—the pupils snap in the most diverting manner.”
Mr. Bennet took so much more notice of Richard than of the little Bingleys that Elizabeth thought it only due to Jane to put in a plea for Harriet and Eleanor.
“It is not quite fair to Jane’s little girls to distinguish Richard so continually as you do, Papa. He has quite enough attention in the ordinary way. You admit that you spoil him, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” said Mr. Bennet. “Have I not said so? If I do not, somebody else will. We are all either spoilt or spoiling. Look at the way Jane spoils Bingley. The fellow cannot even write a letter but she must advise him what to say and how to say it. As for you, Lizzy, you are become a thoroughly spoilt young woman.”
“Indeed,” exclaimed Elizabeth. “And pray, who spoils me?”
“Do you really need to be told? Who else but your husband? Every woman requires a dose of neglect now and then to keep her from being above herself.”
“This would be very alarming if there were any truth in it.”
“And not only your husband,” continued Mr. Bennet inexorably, “but all these young men to whom you dispense smiles and advice as if you were to each his own particular goddess. Yes, yes, you may well blush.”
“Really, Papa, you are preposterous,” cried Elizabeth, scarlet between vexation, confusion and laughter. “I would like to know who all these admiring young men are, for I do not admit them.”
Mr. Bennet only smiled, and resuming his spectacles went on reading his book.
His observations were sufficiently perturbing to his daughter to determine her upon seeking an opportunity for a good long talk alone with Jane that she might unburden herself upon the subject of Acworth, and get an honest opinion in return. But Jane’s time never seemed to be her own. Either one of her children or her husband required her attention. It was but too true that Bingley, though an affectionate husband, was inclined to be selfish where Jane was concerned, perhaps because she had formed the habit of instantly acceding to any demands he might make on her. It was no use remonstrating with her, for she concluded that she was only doing her duty. Two days passed, therefore, before Elizabeth could get her sister to herself, and then some contrivance was needed. But the moment arrived when Bingley was out riding with Darcy for an hour or two, the children had been fed and had gone to sleep with exemplary punctuality, and Jane was free. Elizabeth proposed that they should go for a walk in the park. Once outside the house she drew her sister out of sight of everyone who might pursue them, by entering the woods at the nearest point.
“Now that we have got rid of our husbands we can talk at our ease,” she said. “Do not look so shocked, Jane. If we do not desert them now and again for someone else’s society, they will cease to value us, and come to regard us as mere appendages.”
“I am not shocked,” said Jane, “for I know you are not serious. Indeed, it is not true that we can ever have too much of the society of those we love.”
“Seriously, I do not agree with you at all. Variety is the spice of life for every one of us. There are often days when my husband and I do not see each other from breakfast till dinner. And what is the result? Instead of having exhausted every topic of conversation, we have something left to talk about when we do meet.”
Jane smiled, but did not look convinced.
“The truth is,” continued Elizabeth, “that there are subjects we can only discuss with another woman. Surely that is self-evident. How many men, I ask you, will talk politics with their wives, or allow them to know anything about such matters? In general they do not, and not because women are any less acute than men on the whole, but as government is out of their reach, they wisely do not concern themselves with affairs which they have no power to influence. Generally speaking, though men have a wider grasp, women have a finer perception—they are seldom deceived in a character, for instance, while men often are. Perhaps that is why so many husbands are suspicious of their wive’s friends, especially of the other sex.”
“A married woman must be doubly careful,” said Jane. “She has in many ways more freedom than when she was single, and greater scope for exercising it. The less apparent the danger, therefore, the more real it is. Our husbands have so much more knowledge of the world than we can ever attain to, that it is but natural they should seek to restrain us from exposing ourselves to temptation.”
Elizabeth laughed. “What becomes of our vaunted freedom then? No, Jane, your discretion and delicacy are so utterly beyond question that I cannot believe for one instant that Charles ever troubles his head about what you may be doing in his absence. But with me it is different. It is unfortunately the fact that gentlemen of all ages do appear to enjoy my society, perhaps because I study to put them at their ease and so make them think well of themselves, for which any man will ever be grateful. My husband trusts me, and would scorn to lay injunctions upon me, nevertheless there have been occasions when a gentleman has so mistaken my liveliness of manner for an invitation to overstep the bounds of propriety.”
“My dearest Lizzy,” cried Jane. “What are you saying? You cannot really mean that you have been indiscreet?”
“Certainly not consciously or wantonly,” replied Elizabeth. And having thus successfully led up to the subject of Acworth, she told her sister all that had occurred between them to the last particulars of their conversation in the wood. “And now that I have told you all, my dear Jane,” she said in conclusion, “what do you think of it? Do not you agree that I have been placed in a very delicate situation?”
“I do think it most unfortunate that he should have spoken as he did. But his words—his expressions, must have been the effect of an excess of grief which we know can produce temporary derangement.”
“Seriously and candidly, Jane, do you really think from what you have seen of him since you arrived that he is in a state of grief bordering on derangement?”
The suggestion conveyed was more appalling to Jane than to believe him mad, since it made him wicked. She knew not what to say, for it so happened that she had never detected anything eccentric in his demeanour. At length she replied that she was too inexperienced in such matters to give an opinion, adding cautiously, “But I have heard of instances where fits of the most violent lunacy alternate with periods of perfectly collected and rational behaviour.”
“I have never seen him violent, except, perhaps, on the occasion I have described, but he does appear to be sometimes out of humour, more out of humour than sorrowing. But what do you advise me to do?”
“I can only counsel you to avoid him as much as possible,” said Jane. “The time will soon come when he will quit Pemberley for ever, and every unpleasantness connected with him can then be buried in oblivion. Unhappy man, in spite of all, I must pity him.”
“Do, by all means. He would be delighted if he only knew it. But Jane, you don’t blame me, do you? Could I have acted otherwise in the circumstances?”
“I do not know that you could.”
“You seem undecided. Perhaps you think I should not have pledged my word to repeat nothing of what he said to me.”
“Then why have you told me?” asked Jane with a smile.
“It is the habit of a lifetime. You have always been the repository of confidences breathed to no other soul, for I knew that they would spread no further.”
“But you can hardly be sure of
it now. I make a point of telling Charles everything.”
“I must beg you not to do so, Jane. It would be very wrong that your husband should know what mine is hitherto ignorant of.”
“Is it fair to keep him in ignorance of what so nearly concerns himself?” asked Jane doubtfully.
“I shall not always keep him in ignorance. That indeed would be treacherous and deceitful. But to tell him now might well involve us all in the most painful consequences—it might even lead to a duel. How could I permit that? You must also remember, Jane, that Mr. Acworth was clearly alarmed at the prospect of what might ensue if I complained of his conduct, and seemed so full of contrition that I felt justified in deeming the incident to be closed.”
“In that case, to be silent for the present is no doubt the right course.”
“But,” continued Elizabeth, “is it closed? Since that unfortunate incident I never see him but what I recall it, for whether it is my imagination or not, his words, his glances most frequently appear to offer a secondary construction meant for my ears alone. Blameless as I account myself, it makes me experience a sense of guilt.”
Jane was silent for some moments from sheer dismay. “My beloved sister,” she said at last, “this must make you very uncomfortable.”
“It does, and I have to summon all my determination to endure it with sealed lips. Sometimes I feel impelled to broach the subject again with Mr. Acworth, to let him know at any rate that I see what he is about. But I might be mistaken, and then what an opening it would give him.”
Pemberley Shades Page 13
