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“Mama, what is it? Is something wrong with Jane?”
“Nothing is wrong with anybody. The only trouble was your face. I saw it from the window. I never saw a girl look so miserable over a workbasket in my life.”
Elizabeth set the basket on the hall table. Now that she had stopped walking, she did not know what to do with her hands, and folded them tightly together.
“I do not know what I am to do. He wants his answer before he goes on Sunday. If I refuse him now, there will be a dreadful scene, and on Jane's day of all days.”
“Hush.” Her mother patted her cheek. “You are not to worry about Mr Collins. By tomorrow evening, the whole business will be settled.”
“Settled? How?”
“That is my concern, not yours.”
“Mama, what have you done?”
“Nothing at all. Not yet.” Mrs Bennet smiled, and Elizabeth did not much like the smile. “You shall see. All will be well, Lizzy. Not one of my girls is going to be shackled to Mr Collins. I promise you that.”
She picked up the basket and went up the stairs, humming. Elizabeth followed more slowly. Only days ago, her mother had sat on a bench in Meryton and told her a scheme she had not breathed even to Hill. Now it seemed there was another. Mrs Bennet with one scheme was trying enough. Elizabeth did not like to imagine her with two.
***
Upstairs, the talk had turned to Netherfield.
“I hear Mr Darcy dined with you all last night and hardly said a word from the soup to the dessert,” said Aunt Phillips as Elizabeth came in. “Mrs Long had it from her maid, and her maid had it from the Netherfield cook.”
“A proud, disagreeable man,” said Mrs Bennet. “I should not have him in the house at all, only Mr Bingley will insist on it.”
Elizabeth sat down with the ribbon and began to measure it against Jane's sash.
“Mr Darcy speaks when he has something to say,” she said. “The pity is how often he is wrong when he does. Perhaps silence is the kindest thing we can wish for him.”
Lydia giggled, and Aunt Phillips laughed out loud. Aunt Gardiner, however, looked up from the hem, and she was not laughing.
“Lizzy, I did not expect that from you.”
“You were there last night, aunt. You heard how he spoke of Mr Wickham.”
“I heard him speak the truth, and pay for it.” Mrs Gardiner laid her needle down. “You forget that I grew up within sight of Pemberley’s woods. There was no family in that part of Derbyshire more respected than the Darcys. Old Mr Darcy was the fairest landlord in the county, and everybody loved Lady Anne. Every winter she went round the cottages with food and blankets. She did not send a servant to do it, either. She went herself.”
“That does Lady Anne a great deal of credit.”
“Her son went with her. He cannot have been more than twelve. I remember him carrying a basket up the hill to old Mrs Hodge's cottage and sitting with her a full hour, because she was deaf and liked to be read to.” Her aunt took up her needle again. “My friends in Lambton tell me he has not changed. There is not a family in trouble within ten miles of Pemberley that does not hear from him. He paid for the new roof on the schoolhouse and would not let the rector thank him for it from the pulpit.”
Elizabeth missed the eye of her needle. She missed it again. On the third try the thread went through.
“Boys grow into men, aunt.”
“They do. But very seldom into different men.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to answer, though she had no notion what she meant to say. Before she could find out, someone knocked at the door.
Hill put her head in. “Beg pardon, ma'am. There's a young lady downstairs asking for Miss Bennet.”
“A young lady?” Mrs Bennet turned round. “What young lady? Did she give her name?”
“No, ma'am, nor a card neither. Only that she must see Miss Bennet, and it wouldn't wait.”
Jane was helped out of the white gown and into her sprigged muslin with more haste than care. Mrs Bennet would have gone down too, but Aunt Phillips had hold of her sleeve over the question of the lace, and so Elizabeth went alone with Jane. She could not have said why she hurried on the stairs, or why her hand shook a little on the rail.
