Page 8 of The Marriage Articles

The household had assembled in the hall to see them off, as a household will when a departure is interesting. Mr Bingley stood nearest the door, and his regret was written on him so plainly that Elizabeth was sorry for it. Miss Bingley was beside him. Mrs Hurst stood at her sister’s elbow, and Mr Hurst was at the back of the arrangement with the air of a man who had been told there was to be a leave-taking and had come to see what it was. Mr Darcy was nowhere to be seen.

“We are sorry to lose you both so soon,” Miss Bingley said, to the two of them together. “Netherfield will be quite dull without you.”

“Quite dull,” Mrs Hurst said.

“You have been all goodness,” Jane answered, “and I am more obliged than I can say for your care of me. I shall always remember this week with gratitude.”

“I thank you, Miss Bingley, for your hospitality,” Elizabeth said. Miss Bingley received it with a small inclination of her head.

The footman opened the door. The cold came in, and the carriage stood with the lamps already lit against the dusk, Mr Bingley’s own horses and his own coachman up on the box. Mr Bingley handed Jane in himself, with a care that made Elizabeth forgive him his sisters for the space of a minute. Elizabeth followed.

They rolled away down the drive in the last of the light. Jane sat back against the cushions with her eyes closed. Elizabeth turned to watch the house through the rear window, its windows lit one by one against the dark, growing smaller and less particular, until it was only a brightness among trees, and then not even that. The carriage bent with the road, and the brightness vanished.

Chapter Four

Darcy set his glass of port on the table beside his chair. Every decision he had put off through the evening was waiting for him now. The fire had burned low. Darkness had settled on the rest of the house an hour since. The sisters had gone up, Hurst was snoring somewhere above him, and beyond the windows the frost was coming back after three days of thaw, hardening the path where, that afternoon, he had stood too close to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

He knew precisely what the gardener had seen, because he had read the man’s countenance. The gardener had looked upon them as a man looks at a spectacle he can never forget, and Darcy understood that the tale had already escaped the garden. A man of that station would acquaint his wife with the discovery before he slept, and she would inform the village before two days were past. There was no managing the calamity. There was no exertion of influence that could recall the words, nor any authority that could silence them. It was already gone beyond his reach.

The door opened and Bingley stood in it in his dressing gown, his hair at angles, holding a candle he had plainly carried up and then thought better of.

“Darcy. Thank heaven you are still awake.” He shut the door with his shoulder. “I have been lying in my bed this hour and more going over it, and I cannot make head or tail of a single part of it. Miss Bennet was better. She was quite, quite better this morning, sitting up, talking of coming downstairs tomorrow. Then the carriage is ordered, and they are gone before dark, and nobody tells me one word of why.”

“Sit down, Charles.”

“I do not want to sit down. I want to know what happened. Something happened. Did I give offence? I have thought of everything I said to her and I cannot find the offence in any of it.”

“Sit down, and I will tell you.” Darcy took the candle from him and set it on the table. “We were overheard. Your sisters and I, this afternoon, in the garden, speaking of the family in terms we had no business to use. Miss Elizabeth was on the other side of the hedge and heard the whole of it.”

Bingley sat down.

“It was badly done by all three of us,” Darcy said. “I am sorry for my part in it, and I told her so, or as near to so as she would allow me.”

“She confronted you?”

“She did. She was exceedingly direct.” The corner of his mouth twitched, despite his earnest effort to preserve his gravity. “And at that moment the gardener appeared around the bend of the walk with his barrow, and discovered us standing in closer proximity than decorum strictly allowed.”

“Good heavens!” Bingley buried his face in his hands. “Under my own roof. That my sisters, in my own house, should say things cruel enough to drive Jane Bennet away when she can scarcely walk, while I was engaged at billiards with Hurst in total ignorance of the matter. I had no suspicion of it, Darcy. Upon my honour, I had no suspicion.”

“They did not know she was behind the hedge. That is the only defence I can offer for them or for myself, and I am far from sure it is sufficient.”

“It is not. Will she ever forgive me? Either of them?” He looked up. “Have I lost Miss Bennet’s good opinion for good, do you think?”

“I think Miss Bennet forgives as easily as you do. She will not hold you answerable for your sisters.”

“And Miss Elizabeth?”

“Miss Elizabeth,” Darcy said, “will hold everyone answerable for everything.”

Bingley winced. “Then I am ruined with Miss Bennet. She loves her sister far too well to accept a man whose family has offered such an insult, and Miss Elizabeth will never advise her to forgive it.”

“By no means.” Darcy raised his glass to his lips, only to set it down untasted. “Consider the reality of our position, Bingley. What that man observed will not stay at Netherfield. He will tell his wife before nightfall, his wife will acquaint her neighbours, and before many days have passed every tradesman in Meryton will be discussing the news that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was found in a private shrubbery alone with me.”

“It was a garden path in daylight, for heaven’s sake.”

“It will not be a garden path in daylight by the time it reaches Meryton. You know how these things travel. Her father, if it reaches him in the wrong form, would be within his rights to send to me demanding to know my intentions, and every neighbour would think the better of him for doing it.”

“Your intentions,” Bingley said the words slowly, as though they were in another language. “Darcy, what are your intentions?”