Elizabeth’s answer did not come immediately; yet when she finally raised her eyes again to his face, there remained in her expression very little uncertainty.
“I think, Mr. Darcy, that Hertfordshire is not likely to forget its friends quite so easily.”
Darcy’s composure, though never wholly abandoned, altered visibly at these words; and the relief which passed across his countenance was too sincere to escape her observation. For a moment he appeared on the verge of speaking with less restraint than prudence might entirely justify; yet long habit still governed him too powerfully to permit any unguarded triumph of feeling.
“You allow me more hope than I had ventured to claim before leaving Hertfordshire,” he said at last, with a seriousness which rendered the quietness of his voice only more affecting.
Elizabeth, conscious that another moment of such openness might altogether deprive her of the composure she still endeavoured partially to preserve, attempted once more to recover something lighter in her manner.
“You must not grow too confident, Mr. Darcy. Hertfordshire has welcomed Mr. Bingley with remarkable enthusiasm already; its regard for his friend may perhaps prove slightly more cautious.”
“I should consider even caution encouraging,” Darcy replied, “provided I were still permitted to hope for improvement.”
She smiled then, though less playfully than before.
“You improve very rapidly in your understanding of the county, sir.”
“I have had the advantage of an excellent instructor.”
The warmth with which he spoke these words rendered any further attempt at raillery considerably more difficult than she found convenient; and Elizabeth, lowering her eyes for a moment beneath the steadiness of his regard, became suddenly and most disagreeably sensible that sincerity, when joined to earnest attachment, possessed a degree of influence against which wit itself defended her but imperfectly.
They resumed walking slowly beneath the thinning shade of the trees, neither appearing desirous to hasten a conversation which had already altered, almost imperceptibly, the whole understanding existing between them. Whatever uncertainty still remained was no longer the uncertainty of misunderstanding, but rather that quieter and infinitely more hopeful hesitation which belongs to sentiments mutually acknowledged before they are entirely declared.
At length the nearer sounds of the house began gradually to reassert themselves beyond the quiet of the shrubbery. A servant crossed distantly near the terrace; somewhere beyond the lawn Lydia’s voice became briefly audible before dissolving again into indistinct laughter; and the ordinary life of Longbourn, from which both had for a little while seemed almost removed, slowly reclaimed its presence around them.
Darcy checked his pace slightly.
“I ought not, Miss Elizabeth,” he said with evident reluctance, “to trespass longer upon your kindness before my departure.”
“No,” Elizabeth answered softly, though not immediately raising her eyes again to his face, “for my mother will soon begin imagining either an accident or an engagement, and I scarcely know which conjecture would spread more rapidly through the house.”
The sudden return of her liveliness relieved him enough to smile openly.
“In that case,” Mr. Darcy returned, “I must endeavour to leave Longbourn before Mrs. Bennet succeeds in marrying us entirely by speculation alone.”
Elizabeth laughed despite herself; yet even while she did so, she remained quietly conscious that the subject no longer carried the impossibility it most certainly once would have possessed.
When at last they turned back toward the house together, there existed between them none of the former uncertainty which had so long obscured their understanding. Nothing final had yet been spoken; no promise had formally passed between them. Yet both knew, with a certainty far steadier than impulsive declaration might ever have produced, that Derbyshire would not separate them for very long.
CHAPTER 11
The day appointed for the Meryton assembly arrived with that particular mixture of domestic agitation and public expectation which, in families possessing young ladies, cannot easily be distinguished from importance itself. Longbourn had been in motion from an early hour; not with the sober regularity of ordinary preparation, but with the restless consequence of a house persuaded that its whole future might, before midnight, receive a direction from which no prudent mother would willingly be absent. Mrs. Bennet, whose spirits had risen steadily with every fresh rumour respecting Netherfield, had passed from chamber to chamber with an activity that defied both fatigue and contradiction, now approving Jane’s gown with tears of satisfaction, now reproving Lydia for laughing too loudly before she had even left the house, and now entreating Elizabeth, in tones of mingled affection and alarm, not to employ that sharpness of wit which, however entertaining to some gentlemen, might terrify others out of matrimony.
Mr. Bennet, who had retreated to his library during the most tumultuous part of these preparations, emerged at last with the air of a man resigned to calamity because resistance would only prolong it. He surveyed his daughters with more tenderness than he generally chose to express, his wife with a degree of amusement sharpened by long experience, and the whole expedition with that philosophical indolence which enabled him to enjoy disorder so long as he was not required to govern it. Yet even he was not insensible to the altered importance of the evening; for Netherfield was no longer an empty house, Mr.Bingley no longer a rumour, and Mr. Darcy no longer merely the formidable gentleman whose name had once belonged chiefly to Rosings and distant Derbyshire.
“You look very well, my dears,” Mrs. Bennet declared, standing back from Jane and Elizabeth with the trembling satisfaction of an artist before a completed triumph. “Indeed, Jane, I do not know that I ever saw you lovelier; and Lizzy, if you would only refrain from provoking gentlemen into admiring your understanding before they have had sufficient time to admire your face, you might do very well indeed.”
“I shall endeavour, Mama,” Elizabeth replied, fastening her glove with more composure than she entirely felt, “to allow my face the advantage of precedence, though I cannot promise that my understanding will remain obedient if much is required of it.”
“That is exactly what I mean,” Mrs. Bennet almost cried, turning at once toward her husband. “You hear her, Mr. Bennet. She makes a jest of everything, and then wonders why gentlemen are frightened.”
“My dear,” Mr. Bennet returned, “if a gentleman is frightened by Lizzy’s understanding, I shall count it a very fortunate escape for both parties; and if he survives it, we may perhaps begin to consider him with more seriousness.”
Elizabeth, though smiling, did not answer. Her thoughts had been less easily governed throughout the day than her manner suggested, and though she had resisted every attempt of her mother to attach Darcy’s name openly to her expectations, she could not deny, even to herself, that his promised return from Derbyshire had acquired a consequence wholly disproportionate to the number of days he had been absent. He had written to Mr. Bennet upon business connected with Netherfield andKympton; he had informed Mr. Bingley that he intended to be at Meryton before the assembly; and yet all such practical assurances, however reasonable, did not prevent her from feeling, as the hour approached, an uncertainty which seemed less concerned with his arrival than with the manner in which they would meet when he came.
The carriages at last being ready, and Mrs. Bennet having satisfied herself no fewer than three times that Jane’s cloak had been properly arranged, the party set out for Meryton in a state of spirits various enough to have furnished conversation for a much longer journey. Lydia and Kitty talked incessantly of officers, gowns, dances, and the necessity of standing where one might be first observed upon entering the room; Mary, who had been persuaded with difficulty not to bring a volume of sermons in case the interval between dances should prove morally vacant, delivered several grave remarks upon the dangers of excessive festivity; Jane listened with customary sweetness to all, and Elizabeth, while sometimes joining in the laughter, found her attention wandering repeatedly beyond the carriage windows into the darkening road.
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