Arriving to find Jane apparently in the process of being courted was surprising enough. To suspect that something equally perplexing might be occurring between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy struck him as distinctly excessive.
But most curious of all was Mrs Bennet.
She did not dominate the conversation or flutter from subject to subject. She was not even speaking particularly often. Yetsomehow she sat at the centre of everything. Miss Darcy addressed half her observations to her. Mr Bingley sought her approval on all of his many pronouncements. Mr Darcy nodded his silent approval as she held court. Even Mrs Makepeace, who did not strike Mr Bennet as a woman inclined to defer to anyone, appeared perfectly content to share authority.
Mr Bennet had long ago settled upon a theory of his wife which had the considerable advantage of making his own conduct appear both reasonable and benevolent. Mrs Bennet, he had always maintained, was happiest when allowed to exhaust herself harmlessly. Her enthusiasms were best laughed at, her alarms best ignored, and her schemes best discouraged. It was a system that had preserved his peace of mind for many years.
He found himself wondering whether he had mistaken a desperate plea for his support for foolishness and enthusiasm for absurdity. The possibility was not a pleasant one. Few discoveries are less agreeable than finding that an old joke has been at one's own expense.
Chapter Twenty
By the fourth day of Mr Bennet’s residence in Lyme, he had begun to suspect that the place had agreed with everyone in his family except himself.
This was not because he disliked it. Lyme offered tolerable walks, tolerable air, and a sufficient number of strangers whose manners might be examined without obligation. Mrs Makepeace, too, was a kind of entertainment in herself, being a woman who gave opinions with such firmness that disagreement seemed not so much rude as impractical.
Under ordinary circumstances Mr Bennet might have found the arrangement perfectly satisfactory. The difficulty lay in the slightly unnerving circumstance of arriving as head of his family and discovering that his family had been proceeding very well without him.
Jane was happy. That much required no great penetration. Mr Bingley had attached himself to her with all the warmth of a man who had never yet learned to be cautious in his affections, and even Jane, as gentle and composed as ever, could not receive somuch admiration without occasionally betraying that she found it agreeable.
Elizabeth was more difficult. She laughed, talked and moved through company with her usual ease, yet there was a watchfulness in her which did not belong to her.
As for Mrs Bennet, she continued to present the greatest puzzle of all. She had not resumed her old habits, but neither had she remained in the low spirits which had driven her daughters to the sea. She was animated without being frantic and attentive without being anxious. In short, she appeared perfectly content, without or in spite of him.
Mr Bennet did not know what to do with this.
???
The weather had turned fine by Thursday, and Mr Bingley, who never allowed fine weather to remain unemployed, proposed a picnic upon one of the grassy rises above the town. The scheme was received with general favour, though Mr Darcy looked unenthusiastic.
Mrs Makepeace approved it only after assuming full authority over the baskets, and Mrs Bennet declared it an excellent plan provided Mr Bingley did not attempt to instruct any sheep. There was the general laughter among the party although it wasmuted as though it were a polite response to a well-trodden joke. Mr Bingley mumbled that "at least he didn’t go around accosting young ladies’ hands at card parties."
The room went very quiet and Mr Bennet folded his newspaper. "The ‘Bucket’ theory is confirmed," he said to no one in particular and quit the parlour for the solitude of a tiny makeshift library at the back of the house.
The memory of the King’s Arms returned to him. A gentleman from Derbyshire who could afford better manners. Until that moment the story had been an amusing possibility, not a conviction. Now, he began to feel that the gossip had contained more than a grain of truth.
???
The picnic took place shortly after noon. Mrs Makepeace’s baskets were so numerous that Mr Bennet privately wondered whether the party was expected to remain upon the hill until Michaelmas. Mr Bingley showed great gallantry in taking on far too many parcels and baskets until he looked like a human mule, while Jane looked on adoringly.
They walked up from the town in excellent spirits. Mrs Bennet took Miss Darcy’s arm and pointed out every feature of the pathas though she had been born in Lyme and forgotten to mention it. Elizabeth walked ahead with Jane for part of the way, then fell back to tease Mr Bingley upon his heroic service in the matter of the baskets. Mr Darcy kept near his sister, but his attention, Mr Bennet noticed, was almost always on Elizabeth.
The place chosen for luncheon was sheltered from the sharper wind by a line of low trees, and opened before them in a wide prospect of sea and sky. The town lay below, pale and irregular, with its roofs descending towards the harbour and townsfolk moving about to create a constantly changing tableau.
For a time there was nothing in the scene that could alarm anyone.
It was a pleasant and entirely usual kind of day, but Mr Bennet was nervous.He had not thought himself a nervous man. Indeed he had spent much of his married life objecting, silently or aloud, to nervousness in others. But he found that Lyme had been accumulating evidence against his comfort for several days.
Jane and Bingley were simple enough. If that young man was not in love, then Mr Bennet had misunderstood the entire history of human behaviour. But Elizabeth and Mr Darcy were another matter. They were too careful. They did not avoid one another in the ordinary way of people who dislike each other; they avoided one another with careful attention. If Darcy spoke, Elizabeth heard him, though she might be looking elsewhere. IfElizabeth laughed, Darcy’s eyes travelled towards her before he appeared to recall that they should not.
After luncheon, the company dispersed into activity. Mrs Bennet remained near the baskets with Mrs Makepeace and Miss Darcy, engaged in a discussion of ribbon which appeared to involve more judgment than Mr Bennet had ever supposed ribbon could require. Jane and Mr Bingley moved towards a stile from which he insisted there was an instructive view of the neighbouring fields. Mr Bennet, who had already been instructed more than enough by Dorset, wandered a little apart and found a place near a low stone wall where the sea could be admired and nobody was likely to bother him.
It was there that he heard Elizabeth.
"You cannot expect me to be grateful for your repentance merely because it is sincere," Elizabeth was saying. Her voice was low, but the wind carried it surprisingly effectively, so it took very little attention to catch the whole conversation.
"I do not expect gratitude," Darcy replied. "I know too well that I have not deserved it."
"That is something, I suppose. Though I confess I liked you better when you were unbearable. You were much easier to argue with before you became so determined to be reasonable."
