Page 18 of Hard Home

Miss Bingley talked for some time afterwards about the impossibility of arguing with people who mistake rudeness for cleverness, and was not attended to by anybody, including herself.

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Mr. Darcy did not go up directly.

He stood a while at the foot of the great stairs with the candle in his hand, because Pemberley had taught him a habit that he could not put off in another man's house: to know, before he slept, what the building was doing.

Netherfield was doing something.

Not much. Not badly. It was a good enough house and it had been standing a hundred and forty years and the ground under itwas ordinary Hertfordshire ground, and there was nothing in it that any sensible man would sit up over.

But there was a —drag. Low down and westward, under the cellars and out past them, in the direction of the fields he had walked that morning: a long slow pull, like a current under still water, of the kind that does not trouble a strong swimmer and drowns a tired one.

And upstairs, in the second room on the west passage, somebody was pulling back.

He stood there for a considerable time.

She was not doing it deliberately; he knew that much; nothing done deliberately is that steady. She had been doing it since she arrived in the rain, all through the fever and the visits and the arrowroot and Miss Bingley's kindness, without waking to it and without stopping — a young woman with no training, no notion, and no idea in the world that there was anything under Hertfordshire to hold, holding it.

Because the room was cold, and she made rooms warm. That was all. That had always been all.

Mr. Darcy went up to bed. In the morning he wrote a letter to a man in London whom he had not written to in four years, and did not mention it to anybody in the house.

Chapter Nine

Elizabeth passed the chief of the night in her sister's room, and in the morning had the pleasure of being able to send a tolerable answer to the inquiries which she very early received from Mr. Bingley by a housemaid, and some time afterwards from the two elegant ladies who waited on his sisters. In spite of this amendment, however, she requested to have a note sent to Longbourn, desiring her mother to visit Jane, and form her own judgment of her situation. The note was immediately dispatched, and its contents as quickly complied with. Mrs. Bennet, accompanied by her two youngest girls, reached Netherfield soon after the family breakfast.

Had she found Jane in any apparent danger, Mrs. Bennet would have been very miserable; but being satisfied on seeing her that her illness was not alarming, she had no wish of her recovering immediately, as her restoration to health would probably remove her from Netherfield. She would not listen therefore to her daughter's proposal of being carried home; neither did the apothecary, who arrived about the same time, think it at all advisable.

"She was never ill a day in her life at home," Mrs. Bennet observed with satisfaction, as though this were an argument for staying. "Never. Not with the measles, when the other four had it together and I was up eleven nights. It is a very odd thing, is it not, that she should be taken so bad the moment she is out of the house?"

"It is very odd," said Mr. Darcy.

"Well, and there it is. Country air, I dare say, and the rain."

"Netherfield is one mile from Longbourn, madam."

"Exactly so! And such a difference! It is a great deal healthier here, I am sure, being higher up, or lower down, whichever it is—" and Mrs. Bennet went on to something else, and Mr. Darcy stood quite still by the window for some little while afterwards.

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After sitting a little while with Jane, on Miss Bingley's appearance and invitation, the mother and three daughters all attended her into the breakfast parlor. Bingley met them with hopes that Mrs. Bennet had not found Miss Bennet worse than she expected.

"Indeed I have, sir," was her answer. "She is a great deal too ill to be moved. Mr. Jones says we must not think of moving her. We must trespass a little longer on your kindness."

"Removed!" cried Bingley. "It must not be thought of. My sister, I am sure, will not hear of her removal."

"You may depend upon it, Madam," said Miss Bingley, with cold civility, "that Miss Bennet shall receive every possible attention while she remains with us."

Mrs. Bennet was profuse in her acknowledgments.

"I am sure," she added, "if it was not for such good friends I do not know what would become of her, for she is very ill indeed, and suffers a vast deal, though with the greatest patience in the world, which is always the way with her, for she has, without exception, the sweetest temper I ever met with. I often tell my other girls they are nothing toher. You have a sweet room here, Mr. Bingley, and a charming prospect over that gravel walk. I do not know a place in the country that is equal to Netherfield. You will not think of quitting it in a hurry I hope, though you have but a short lease."

"Whatever I do is done in a hurry," replied he; "and therefore if I should resolve to quit Netherfield, I should probably be off in five minutes. At present, however, I consider myself as quite fixed here."

"That is exactly what I should have supposed of you," said Elizabeth.

"You begin to comprehend me, do you?" cried he, turning toward her.