Page 79 of Hard Home

There was a pause of some length.

"Well," said Jane again, in an entirely different voice.

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It came out over the next hour, in pieces, and not in the order Elizabeth had planned.

Jane's astonishment was very great — she had not, it seemed, ever suspected it, and said so with the particular horror of a woman discovering that she has been in a room with a great deal going on in it and has been thinking about something else. And then, when Elizabeth had told the manner of it, and her own answer, and the shape of what she had said about his being the last man in the world, Jane was silent for a while and then said, quietly:

"Poor Mr. Darcy."

"Jane—"

"I know. I know he deserved it, and that he said unforgivable things about our family, and I am not going to pretend that I do not mind them, because I do mind them very much." She turned the candle round on the little table. "But he was in love with you for six months and thought about nothing else, and he must have been very sure of you to say all that, and he went away from that house at nine o'clock at night into a lane in Kent. That is all I meant."

"You are the only person alive who would have said it."

"I am not," said Jane. "I am only the first."

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The rest of it was harder.

Elizabeth told her that Mr. Bingley had never known she was in London; that the concealment had been Miss Bingley's and Mr. Darcy's between them; and that Mr. Darcy had confessed the whole of it, in writing, without excuse.

Jane took that better than Elizabeth had feared and much worse than she had hoped. She said several charitable things, in a very steady voice, about how it was natural for a sister to consult her brother's interest, and about how a friend of long standing must be supposed to know his own friend's character;and then she stopped in the middle of one of them and said, "It is only that four months is a long time," and did not finish it, and had to be given a handkerchief.

"There is one thing more," said Elizabeth, "and I have been trying since Bromley to find a way not to tell you, and there is not one, and it is the worst thing in the letter and it is not about him at all."

"Then say it."

"Mr. Darcy separated them because he was persuaded that you did not care for him."

"Yes," said Jane. "Well. That is not so dreadful. He was wrong, and I did not show it, and I was brought up not to show it, and I have thought a hundred times since November that if I had been a different sort of girl—"

"Jane. You could not have shown it."

"I could have—"

"Youcould not have shown it," said Elizabeth. "You have never been able to show anything in your life and it is not your fault and it is not modesty and it is not shyness, and I have known it for seven months and I did not tell you, and that is the thing I have to tell you now, and I would rather do almost anything else."

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She told her what Charlotte had said in the field in October.

That the gift does not choose. That it goes out upon everybody in a room alike, without asking, and it soothes; and that what it soothes most thoroughly, and first, and always, is Jane. That a man looking at her sees a young woman who is composed and pleasant and glad — exactly as composed and pleasant and glad to see him as to see the apothecary. That it is not a veil she could lift if she were braver. That it is the thing itself, sitting on top of her, ironing her flat.

Jane listened without moving.

When it was done she sat for a while with the shawl in her hands, and then she said, "Say the last part again."

Elizabeth said it again.

"Every room," said Jane. "Everybody. Always."

"Yes."

"Since I was four years old."