Page 10 of The Marriage Articles

“A lady’s reputation,” Mary said, looking up from her book, “is her most precious possession. Once lost, it can never be recovered. Unguarded behaviour is the ruin of more families than poverty or illness. A young woman who walks alone with a gentleman in a shrubbery, whatever her intentions, has only herself to blame when the world believes the worst.”

“Oh, do be quiet, Mary,” Kitty said, and coughed. “You are always reading Fordyce at people, which is very tiresome, and besides, it is Lizzy who is ruined, not you, so I do not see why you should speak so much about it.”

“I speak of it,” Mary said, with dignity, “because it is a salutary lesson to us all, and because somebody in this family must reflect upon the moral consequences, since nobody else appears to do so.”

“Moral consequences!” Mrs Bennet cried. “I am thinking of the consequences to my nerves, which are very bad indeed. Your father’s health will be the worse for this. And poor Jane, who was so near to Mr Bingley, and now he will never offer for her. It is all Lizzy’s fault for walking in shrubberies when she should have been sitting quietly in the drawing room!”

Jane rose and went to her mother and took her hand. “Mama, you must not agitate yourself. We do not know yet what will come of it. Perhaps people will find something else to talk about.”

Mrs Bennet took to her room after that, with Jane following to soothe her, and the drawing room was quieter for it, though not quiet. Lydia went back to the window. Mary went back to her book. Kitty coughed and looked at Lydia for guidance. Elizabeth sat with her work and did not know what to say.

Jane came back in a little while and sat down beside her. “She is lying down,” Jane said. “She will be better by dinner.”

“Will she?” Elizabeth said.

“She is in a terrible fright,” Jane said gently. “She has persuaded herself that the whole world is talking of us, though I am convinced her fears carry her away.”

Elizabeth set down her work. “I am going to Father.”

Mr Bennet was in his study, as he always was, with a book on his knee and a glass of cider at his elbow and the tall windows looking out onto the drive. He did not look up when she came in, but he marked his place with his finger and closed the book, and that was as much of an invitation as he ever gave.

“Well, Lizzy,” he said. “I have been expecting you.”

Elizabeth sat down in the chair opposite him. “Then you have heard.”

“I have heard from Hill, who heard it from the fishmonger, who heard it from the gardener’s wife, who heard it from the gardener himself, who saw you with his own eyes on Friday afternoon, or so the chain of evidence runs.”

“It is not true,” Elizabeth said. “Not as they tell it. I was in the shrubbery, and Mr Darcy was there, and we quarrelled, and the gardener came upon us quarrelling, and that is all. There was nothing more.”

Mr Bennet looked at her over the top of his spectacles for a moment. “And pray, Lizzy, upon what subject of national importance were you and Mr Darcy so vigorously disputing in a secluded shrubbery, that a gardener should mistake it for an intrigue?”

“Upon no subject of importance whatever,” Elizabeth said, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks despite herself. “He was displeasing, and I was uncivil, as is our customary manner.”

Mr Bennet looked at her for a moment. “I believe you, Lizzy,” he said. “But it changes nothing.”

Elizabeth felt her hands tighten in her lap.

“Let us reckon it, since we are both fond of reckoning. Jane’s prospects with Mr Bingley, which were never certain, are now less so, for a gentleman is rarely disposed to attach himself to a family upon which a scandal rests. Your sisters’ chances, which were never flattering, are now dimmer still, for the world will conclude that where one daughter is unguarded, the others must be equally so. Our standing in the neighbourhood is lowered, for the world prefers a scandal to the truth, and will readily repeat the one while forgetting the other. That is the cost, Lizzy, and it is by no means a small one.”

“I did nothing wrong,” Elizabeth said.

“I do not say you did,” Mr Bennet replied.

There was no heat in his voice, no anger, none of the indignation Elizabeth had been nursing for eight days, and it was that very composure, that cold arithmetic, which angered her more than the gossip itself. Meryton she could despise and refute. Her father’s logic she could not, though she would have given a great deal to discover a flaw in his reckoning.

❧ ❧ ❧

There was a peculiar comfort in mud, Elizabeth had long maintained, for a lane that could swallow a boot to the ankle asked no wit of its walker and could not be disappointed in her. She had walked four miles in the bright cold morning, past fields where a thin snow lay in streaks that would be gone by dinner. Nothing pressed on her mind beyond whether the study’s fire would have been lit by the time she came home. Her father’s study was her only comfort in these days, the one room in Longbourn where a person might sit among her father’s volumes and be miserable in decent silence. She wanted the fire, a dry pair of stockings, and an hour in which nobody required anything of her at all. It was not much to ask.

Hill was standing in the hall when she entered, and took her bonnet and wet pelisse with all the solemnity of a woman guarding a momentous secret.

“Mr Darcy is with your father, Miss Elizabeth,” Hill said, her eyes wide with importance. “He has been closeted with the master for more than half an hour. Your father gave particular orders that you were to be sent in to them the moment you returned.”

Elizabeth looked down at her half-boots, which were in no condition for receiving gentlemen, and then at the study door, which was shut. She considered retreating up the stairs, changing her shoes, and letting the two men wait upon her pleasure for a quarter of an hour. But her father had sent for her, and her father never sent for anyone, and that was more alarming than any number of Mr Darcys.

She went in as she was, mud and all.

Her father sat behind his desk with a newspaper folded at his elbow and an expression of mild amusement that the occasion did not warrant. Mr Darcy stood at the tall window with his back to the drive, very straight, with his hands clasped behind him. He had dressed with care. Elizabeth noted this against her will, and noted further that it made no difference to her whatsoever.