Page 87 of A Debt Inherited

“Tell me, Lizzy,” Mr Bennet said, gentler now, “have you found it—this contentment we recommended to you in April?”

She watched the ripple travel beneath their shadows. “I think I have found quiet,” she said. “Contentment is a larger word. But I am nearer to it when we are walking the fields than when we are sitting under chandeliers.”

“A sentiment Addison would admire,” he said. “And I too. I am selfish enough to say that I like you best in hedgerows.”

“I shall wear a bonnet of hawthorn to oblige you,” she said.

“Do so,” he answered. “It will keep foolish men from venturing too near.”

They climbed the rising ground beyond the brook, where the view opened again. From here Longbourn looked handsomer; the approach was planted with elms that carried the eye to the door.

“We must speak of Mr Jeffers,” Mr Bennet said, business returning with the slope. “His rent is eight weeks late.”

“He lost two calves to fever,” Elizabeth said, already ahead. “If we press him now, we shall have worse arrears by Michaelmas. Let him pay in labour—three days in the lower ditch, and his eldest to help with the barley carting. He is willing.”

“You arranged it already.”

She coloured. “I mentioned what might be done, if you approved.”

He looked at her with quiet affection. “I approve. You have the art of making one believe the right thing was one’s own idea. That is the politics of every happy house.”

“Then our house is excellently governed,” she said.

“By you and your mother,” he returned. “I merely sign where I am told.”

They walked on. The sun dipped a little, softening the light; swallows wrote quick strokes across the air.

They turned homeward by the cart track. The ruts were dry; groundsel and shepherd’s purse crowded the edges; a hare started up and ran before them, ears flat, a brown streak along the lane. Elizabeth watched it flash through the gap and vanish into the tall grass.

“Another question, then,” Mr Bennet said. “Which line of poetry would you keep, if all the rest were lost?”

She looked at him, half in jest, half in earnest. “Only one?”

“One,” he said. “I am a hard examiner.”

She thought of Pope— ‘Whatever is, is right’—and rejected him for his complacency; of Milton’s morning hymns; of little lines of Herrick that made her smile. At last she said:

“What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d.”

She pressed her gloved hands together. “Not because I believe the past better, but because it teaches one to be careful with the present.”

“You would choose remembrance.”

“I would choose gratitude,” she answered.

“Good,” he said softly. “Keep it.”

They were near the house again. The kitchen door stood open to the yard; the sound of a knife upon a board came musically through the air; Hill spoke to someone in the dairy and was answered by the clink of a pail. The ordinary business of evening set itself about them like a garment well cut.

“Another practical matter,” Mr Bennet said, as if to dismiss what had grown too gentle. “The north field wants draining near the ash. If we lay a trench now, we shall not curse it in August.”

“I will set Carter on it tomorrow,” Elizabeth said. “And I will go myself to measure the fall.”

“Take a stick,” he said. “And not that pair of shoes.”

She looked down and laughed. “You are as vain of my shoes as Mama is of her caps.”

“I am vain of your feet’s remaining dry,” he said. “A steward who takes to her bed is no use to me.”