Page 102 of Hard Home

"Because?" said Elizabeth.

"Because I was glad it was not me," said Kitty. "There. I have said it now. She would come in and tell me about the walks and I would lie in bed afterwards and beglad it was not meand be sorry it was not me, both at once, all night, and I have never in my life been able to tell which of the two I was."

"Kitty—"

"He liked me first," said Kitty Bennet. "In November. He asked about my cough and he handed me over the stile and he liked me first, and then I got thin and dull and could not walk to Meryton without sitting down, and he stopped, and she is fifteen and never tired and she can dance till four in the morning. So he took her instead. And I have known that since April and I have never said it out loud because it is the ugliest thing I have ever thought."

Elizabeth was quiet for a moment.

"Kitty. Look at me." She waited until she did. "That is not why he stopped."

"It is exactly why—"

"It is not," said Elizabeth. "I am going to tell you the whole of it before this week is out, and you will not like it, and it will be a great deal better than what you have been carrying since April. He did not stop because you were dull. You were dull because ofhim." She took her sister's hands. "You got better in the last week of June. Do you know when he left Meryton?"

Kitty stared at her.

"The twenty-sixth of May," she said.

"Five weeks and one day," said Elizabeth. "I have it written down with the dates. I have had it written down since June and I did not tell you because I thought I was sparing you something, and I have got very tired this summer of people sparing one another things."

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She went up to Mary before she took off her bonnet, which she reflected afterwards was the only wholly right thing she did that day.

Mary was at the window with the third pocket-book and a sheet of paper ruled into a plan of the fields.

She did not get up. She said, "You are come, then," which was what she had said in May, and then: "It has not moved since Sunday the twelfth. Nine days. I went out this morning."

"Mary—"

"There is a letter from Lieutenant Denny. It came at eleven and I have not opened it because I could not do it by myself, and I have been sitting here since eleven o'clock." Mary put both hands flat on the table. "That is a stupid thing and I know it is a stupid thing. I have opened a great many letters."

Elizabeth took off her bonnet and put it on the bed and sat down.

"We shall open it in a moment," she said. "First I am going to tell you about the roads."

Mary looked round at her.

"Lizzy, there is no time for—"

"There is exactly time for it. I promised you in July and I have thought about it every day for three weeks, and if I do not do it now I shall never do it, because after we open that letter there is not going to be a quarter of an hour in this house for anything as long as any of us live." Elizabeth pulled the other chair round. "The road from Hertford goes up very gradually for a day and a half and you do not know you have been climbing until you look behind you. The inns are worse than ours as far as Northampton and better after it. There is a place beyond Ashbourne where the road comes round a hill and the whole of the Peak is in front of you at once, and the man on the box did not say anything about it, and I understood that he does not, because it does it by itself.

"And Derbyshire is not green like this county. It is a colder green, and there is stone in it — walls instead of hedges, going straight up the hills in a way that looks as though somebody very obstinate did it on purpose — and the light comes down between the hills in the afternoon in long pieces. And the water is faster. Everything I saw for three weeks was going somewhere.

"There was a wood at Pemberley that we drove through for a mile and a half, and I have never in my life been in a wood like it, and I shall tell you why another time because it is not the sort of thing you tell in five minutes."

Mary Bennet sat perfectly still with her hands in her lap.

"Thank you," she said.

"Now give me the letter."

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Madam,

I have your letter of the 14th and I shall answer it plainly, which I have not been able to do to anybody for nine months, and I am past caring what it costs me.