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CHAPTER 12

The Language of Home

By the spring of 1811 Elizabeth had learned that London society could make a single evening last for three days: one for the entertainment itself, one for the accounts of what had occurred, and one for the correction of all those accounts by persons who had been elsewhere.

Richard maintained that the safest course was never to be interesting enough to be discussed. Elizabeth observed that he had abandoned such prudence before learning to walk.

"I was a model child," he protested across the breakfast table.

"You were a model of something," Saye replied. "Our governess used to write home for advice."

"And still you speak of my education as a triumph."

"Only because you survived it."

Lady Matlock laid a letter beside her plate. "If the gentlemen have concluded their account of Richard's infancy, I should like Elizabeth's attention. We have an invitation to supper from Lady Wexford. Several visitors from Hanover and Mecklenburg are expected, and Frau Adler tells me that you will find their conversation agreeable."

Elizabeth looked up with interest. "Will Lady Wexford expect me to interpret for the company?"

"Certainly not. She has several German-speaking guests and wishes only that you should meet them."

"I am relieved. Nothing could be more dreadful than correcting a distinguished gentleman's grammar while he was attempting to compliment his hostess."

"You would do it with admirable politeness," Richard said.

"I should do no such thing. I have learned the value of allowing other people their mistakes."

Saye put down his knife. "Elizabeth, if that were true, Richard would have been happy years ago."

At Lady Wexford's house two evenings later, the conversation began in the drawing room beneath a portrait of a stern gentleman whose expression suggested that neither English nor German would have met his approval. Elizabeth stood beside her hostess while introductions were made to a Hanoverian scholar and his wife, a visiting widow from Mecklenburg, and a secretary attached to a German court temporarily resident in London.

The widow, Baroness von Riedesel, had the delicate manners of a woman accustomed to receiving deference and the attentive eyes of someone who rarely missed an answer. She greeted Elizabeth in English, then inquired whether Lady Matlock had exaggerated her skill in German. She accepted Elizabeth's invitation to continue in German.

"If her ladyship has praised me," Elizabeth answered in German, "I should be grateful if you would allow me to disappoint you gradually."

The baroness laughed. "You learned that language at your mother's knee, I think. No English schoolroom teaches a girl how to evade a compliment so gracefully."

"My mother taught me, yes. I fear she also taught me to argue."

"Then she left you two accomplishments that will serve you better than French embroidery."

They spoke of books and the changing manners of society, and Elizabeth found herself at ease in a language she had never regarded as foreign. The secretary mentioned a new collection of tales from the German states, and she compared one of its stories with a fable Minna had told her as a child. The baroness corrected the details of the tale, but Elizabeth answered with such affectionate certainty that the older lady raised a hand in surrender.

"Your mother's version must be allowed to prevail," she said. "A story remembered with love is entitled to some liberties."

Darcy, standing nearby with Lady Wexford's nephew, understood enough German to follow the subject but not the quick exchanges by which Elizabeth turned a scholarly disagreement into general laughter. He had seen her read and heard her play; he knew her letters were clever. Yet there was a kind of freedom in her speech now that he had not witnessed before. She was not carefully selecting foreign words from memory. She was thinking in the language, meeting every challenge without pause and occasionally choosing a beautifully old-fashioned expression that seemed to surprise her companions.

When the guests turned toward the dining room, he offered his arm.

"I fear I have heard only half the argument," Darcy said.

"Then you were fortunate," Elizabeth answered. "The other half concerned the honesty of a talking fox."

"I gathered that the fox's moral character was disputed."

"A common fate among foxes. The baroness thought him treacherous; I said he was only hungry."

"Can hunger justify dishonesty?"