Page 63 of Hard Home

Elizabeth played, and was listened to.

She played not at all well, and knew it, and had made her peace with it at fifteen. She had a good ear and no patience and had never in her life sat down to a piece for the fourth time; and what she had instead was the thing that cannot be got, which is that when Elizabeth Bennet sat down at an instrument, whatever else was going on in the room stopped being interesting.

It was very slight in her. It was nothing at all beside what Georgiana Darcy had possessed at seven years old and had since lost. It was enough that on the fourth or fifth bar Colonel Fitzwilliam broke off in the middle of a sentence and did not remember to finish it, and that Mrs. Jenkinson stopped moving the screen, and that a footman standing by the door with a tray forgot for perhaps ten seconds that he was a footman.

Lady Catherine listened to half a song, and then talked on as before to her other nephew, till the latter walked away from her, and moving with his usual deliberation toward the piano forte, stationed himself so as to command a full view of the fair performer's countenance.

Elizabeth saw what he was doing and stopped at the first convenient pause, and turned to him with an arch smile.

"You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me. But I will not be alarmed, though your sisterdoesplay so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me."

"I shall not say that you are mistaken," he replied, "because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know, that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own."

Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said to Colonel Fitzwilliam,

"Your cousin will give you a very pretty notion of me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am particularly unlucky in meeting with a person so well able to expose my real character, in a part of the world where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of credit. Indeed, Mr. Darcy, it is very ungenerous in you to mention all that you knew to my disadvantage in Hertfordshire — and, give me leave to say, very impolitic too — for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such things may come out, as will shock your relations to hear."

"I am not afraid of you," said he, smilingly.

"Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of," cried Colonel Fitzwilliam. "I should like to know how he behaves among strangers."

"You shall hear then — but prepare yourself for something very dreadful. The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire, you must know, was at a ball — and at this ball, what do you think he did? He danced only four dances! I am sorry to pain you — but so it was. He danced only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain knowledge,more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a partner. Mr. Darcy, you cannot deny the fact."

"I had not at that time the honor of knowing any lady in the assembly beyond my own party."

"True; and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball room. Well, Colonel Fitzwilliam, what do I play next? My fingers wait your orders."

"Perhaps," said Darcy, "I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction, but I am ill qualified to recommend myself to strangers."

"Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?" said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. "Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?"

"I can answer your question," said Fitzwilliam, "without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble."

"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done."

"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault — because I would not take the trouble of practicing. It is not that I do not believemyfingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution."

Darcy smiled and said, "You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think any thing wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers."

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He was standing very near her.

He had come to the instrument and stopped at the corner of it, which is where a gentleman stops, and he had not moved since; and Elizabeth, who was two feet from his sleeve and had been for a quarter of an hour, was conscious the entire time of the thing she had felt at Lucas Lodge when Sir William put out her hand, and again through six gloved meetings at Netherfield.

It was not unpleasant. That was the whole difficulty with it.

It sat about her wrists and at the back of her neck, a slow alternation of cold and then warmth, quite steady, and it made her clever — she was aware of being cleverer in that quarter of an hour than she had been at any time since Christmas, and of enjoying it, and of not wishing him to go away.

She was also perfectly certain that she disliked him, and had a fortnight's fresh grievance about Jane; and she put the whole of it down to the wickedness of a man who could produce such an effect and had spent the winter separating her sister from a house in Hertfordshire.

She had not yet asked herself the obvious question, which Charlotte would have asked in four seconds, and which was:and what does it cost him to stand there?

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Here they were interrupted by Lady Catherine, who called out to know what they were talking of. Elizabeth immediately began playing again. Lady Catherine approached, and, after listening for a few minutes, said to Darcy,

"Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss, if she practiced more, and could have the advantage of a London master. She has a very good notion of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne's. Anne would have been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn."