Leaving had been simpler while Northmere was only pain, danger, and concealment.
Northmere with ledgers, laughter, and a man who had said he would rather earn a better commendation was another matter altogether.
Chapter Seventeen
ThenextmorningJaneasked for the writing case before breakfast was cleared.
Nothing in the request ought to have signified. In a house still living by trays, lists, physic, and messages run quietly from one floor to another, paper was as innocent a necessity as broth. Yet Elizabeth, propped against pillows with the larger ledger still lying closed on the table by her bed, knew uneasiness at once.
Jane had that look which never belonged to anger in its first heat. It belonged to resolution after wakefulness. She had not slept enough, and her eyes told that plainly. But want of sleep alone did not set her mouth so still.
Martha brought the case, ink, sand, and a sheaf of folded paper. Jane thanked her, waited until the door had shut, then carried the things to the small table near the window.
Elizabeth watched her arrange them with too much care. “You are going to write a treatise,” she said, “or a bill of indictment. I hope, for the credit of the household, it is only the first.”
“A letter.”
“To whom?”
Jane dipped the pen and did not look round. “To Uncle.”
Elizabeth straightened at once, forgetting prudence before pain reminded her of it with a hard pull through the injured leg.
“No!”
Jane set down the pen. “Yes.”
“Jane, you must not!”
“Must not?”
Elizabeth heard, too late, the danger in the quietness. Jane rarely raised her voice. When she ceased softening it for other people’s comfort, the loss of softness did the work of force.
“I mean only that a letter may do harm if it goes at the wrong hour, or by the wrong hand, or says more than ought to travel by post.”
“And I am to judge that on no knowledge at all?”
“Itoldyou there was danger.”
“You told me there was danger and then required me to behave as if vagueness were information.” Jane turned at last. In the clear morning light her face looked paler than the day before, and older by some painful increase of understanding.
“I have borne it while you were feverish. I have borne it while you scarcely knew me. I have borne it while men discussed whether you should keep your leg and when you could do nothing but suffer, because only a monster would demand explanations from a woman half-delirious with pain. But you are not delirious now. Yesterday you spent an hour over estate accounts correcting Mr. Darcy, laughing with him, arguing over false charges as if the world had narrowed to columns and cartage. You are strong enough for figures. You are strong enough for wit. You are strong enough, it seems, for tomorrow whenever tomorrow concerns anything but the truth. And I—”
“Jane—”
“No. No! Let me finish, for I have earned that much. I have tried to be glad you are improved. Iamglad. God knows I am glad. Yesterday I looked at you and thought I had my sister back for half an hour. Then I looked again and saw that while I have been waiting beside your bed, you have still kept from me the very thing that brought you to this house, and you would now forbid me to write to the only person who may help us judge what is to be done. I will not be managed so. Not by Collins, not by fear, and not by you.”
The words were not loud. Elizabeth would almost have preferred loudness. Loudness spent itself. This was pain held upright by dignity.
She looked away to the ledger, the pencil still left where Darcy had forgotten it. Yesterday had indeed given her back too much animation to continue pleading weakness with any honour. Jane had seen it. Worse—Jane had seen Darcy see it.
“Is this about Mr. Darcy?” Elizabeth asked, because cowardice always seeks a smaller battlefield.
Jane gave her a look so sorrowful that shame went through Elizabeth like cold water.
“Not in the contemptible sense you mean. Though I should think you much less of a fool if you would permit yourself to confess that he likes you. And I should think him blind if he did not know you like him. But that is not my present misery. My misery is that he has shown us every kindness in his power while remaining ignorant of what dangermay have entered his house with my sister. Yesterday I watched you both over the same page and thought, with all the charity I possessed, that if you were well enough for that, you were well enough to stop making me an accomplice in ignorance.”
Elizabeth shut her eyes.
