Page 15 of Hard Home

"Is this a hint to me, Lizzy," said her father, "to send for the horses?"

"No, indeed. I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing, when one has a motive; only three miles. I shall be back by dinner."

"I admire the activity of your benevolence," observed Mary, "but every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required."

"We will go as far as Meryton with you," said Catherine and Lydia. Elizabeth accepted their company, and the three young ladies set off together.

"If we make haste," said Lydia as they walked along, "perhaps we may see something of Captain Carter, before he goes."

In Meryton they parted; the two youngest repaired to the lodgings of one of the officers' wives, and Elizabeth continued her walk alone, crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity, and finding herself at last within view of the house, with weary ancles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise.

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Between the second field and the third there was a strip of ground perhaps thirty yards long where the grass had gone the wrong color.

She noticed it because she noticed things. It was not blighted, and not burned, and not trampled; it was simply a different green from the green on either side of it — an ordinary, cheerful, unremarkable green, of the exact kind that grows in every field in Hertfordshire — and it ran in a line, straight as a hedge and without a hedge, from the corner of Barrett's ground to the water.

Elizabeth stopped for perhaps four seconds. It was very cold in that strip, and then it was not, and then she was over the stile and thinking about her sister.

She would remember it in April, in a parsonage in Kent, when she was made to remember a great many things.

Behind her, half a mile off and out of sight beyond the rise, a man in a plain coat who was not out of uniform for any reason he would have given to Meryton was walking the same line with his bare palm held out at the height of his hip, counting his paces, and finding — as he had found in four fields since Tuesday — that there was nothing there to feel, and that there ought to have been, and that whatever had gone quiet under this county had not been laid down by anybody the Crown had a record of.

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At Netherfield she was shown into the breakfast parlor, where all but Jane were assembled, and where her appearance created a great deal of surprise.

That she should have walked three miles so early in the day, in such dirty weather, and by herself, was almost incredible to Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and Elizabeth was convinced that they held her in contempt for it. She was received, however, very politely by them; and in their brother's manners there was something better than politeness; there was good humor and kindness.

Mr. Darcy said very little, and Mr. Hurst nothing at all.

The former was divided between admiration of the brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion, and doubt as to the occasion's justifying her coming so far alone.

He was also, though he did not say this either, doing the sum that she had not thought to do: three miles, unaccompanied, at eight in the morning, across four unfenced fields in a county whose wards nobody had renewed since the Restoration, in the week that a warding regiment had come north of the Thames for the first time in living memory.

He asked her nothing about it. He had no right to, and he was not a man who took rights he did not have.

But he went out at eleven and walked the same three miles back toward Longbourn with his hand at his side, and returned before dinner, and said nothing to anybody, and was noticeably grim over the fish.

Chapter Eight

At five o'clock the two ladies retired to dress, and at half past six Elizabeth was summoned to dinner. To the civil inquiries which then poured in, and among which she had the pleasure of distinguishing the much superior solicitude of Mr. Bingley's, she could not make a very favorable answer. Jane was by no means better. The sisters, on hearing this, repeated three or four times how much they were grieved, how shocking it was to have a bad cold, and how excessively they disliked being ill themselves; and then thought no more of the matter.

When dinner was over, she returned directly to Jane, and Miss Bingley began abusing her as soon as she was out of the room.

Her manners were pronounced to be very bad indeed, a mixture of pride and impertinence; she had no conversation, no style, no taste, no beauty. Mrs. Hurst thought the same, and added,

"She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an excellent walker. I shall never forget her appearance this morning. She really looked almost wild."

"She did indeed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my countenance. Very nonsensical to come at all! Why mustshebe scampering about the country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair so untidy, so blowsy!"

"Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches deep in mud, I am absolutely certain; and the gown which had been let down to hide it not doing its office."

"Your picture may be very exact, Louisa," said Bingley; "but this was all lost upon me. I thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet looked remarkably well when she came into the room this morning. Her dirty petticoat quite escaped my notice."

"Youobserved it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure," said Miss Bingley; "and I am inclined to think that you would not wish to seeyour sistermake such an exhibition."

"Certainly not."