Page 76 of Hard Home

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There was one letter she could write, and she wrote it at eleven that night, sitting up in her shift with a candle, and it was nine lines long.

My dear Mary,

I have found out that you were right, in the still-room, about doors — entirely right, in every particular, and more so than you supposed, and I shall tell you the whole of it when I am home on the seventh and not one word of it before, because it will not go in a letter and I have burned three.

Until then I ask you three things and no explanations. Do not lend your books to anybody. Write down, with the day and the hour, everywhere our youngest sister goes and everyone she goes with, and show it to nobody, and if that seems to you an odd or an unkind thing to be asked, do it notwithstanding, and be as dull about it as you like.

And I would take it very kindly if you would find out, without appearing to want to know, what has been done about the ground beyond Barrett's, and whether the officers still ride out to it, and how far up it has come.

You were of more use to me at Netherfield than any person in England and I have been four months getting round to saying so. Burn this.

Your affectionate sister,

E. B.

She sealed it and put it on the tray in the hall for the morning post, and went up, and lay in the dark listening to the parsonage settle.

At Longbourn, four days later, Miss Mary Bennet read it twice in the passage outside the breakfast parlor, and went upstairs, and stood in the middle of her cold little room over the porch for some while.

Then she got out a fresh pocket-book from the drawer where she kept her pens, and dated the first page, and ruled it into three columns with a straight edge, and wrote at the head of them, in her small exact hand:Day. Hour. In company with.

She did not burn the letter. She put it inside the back cover of Harrow, at page four hundred and eleven, where it stayed.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The two gentlemen left Rosings the next morning; and Mr. Collins having been in waiting near the lodges, to make his parting obeisance, was able to bring home the pleasing intelligence of their appearing in very good health, and in as tolerable spirits as could be expected, after the melancholy scene so lately gone through at Rosings.

Elizabeth had nineteen days of Kent left, and she got through them.

She was very much recovered by the second week, and could laugh at things, and did; and Charlotte, who watched her with a steadiness that neither of them ever mentioned, saw that her friend slept better after the first Sunday and worse again after the third, and understood both, and said nothing.

Lady Catherine sent for them a great deal in that fortnight. The loss of her nephews had left a hole in the evenings which had to be filled with somebody, and the parsonage was the only thing within reach.

"You will find, Miss Bennet," said her Ladyship, on one of these occasions, "that a young woman who is much in company forms a very false notion of her own consequence. I have observed it a hundred times. The remedy is to be at home."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Do not sayyes ma'amto me in that voice. Your cousin says it in that voice and it means nothing. I am telling you something for your good, which nobody else in this kingdom will trouble to do, because you are handsome and quick and people are lazy." Lady Catherine set down her cards. "You are two-and-twenty. You have no fortune. You have four sisters and a father who will not live for ever, and an entail which you understand perfectly well because I saw your face when I mentioned it, and you haverefused the one respectable offer that has ever been made you, and you were pleased with yourself for a fortnight afterwards. I know that you were. Do not trouble to deny it."

Elizabeth did not trouble to deny it.

"There," said Lady Catherine. "That is honest, and I like it, and it will do you no good whatever. Go on, Mrs. Collins. It is your play."

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She dined at Rosings four times more, and each time she looked at Anne de Bourgh, and each time Anne de Bourgh did not look back.

It was done so completely that Elizabeth understood by the second dinner that it was being done on purpose, and stopped trying; and after that she watched her instead, in the ordinary way, with her eyes, as anybody may watch anybody at a dinner table.

She saw a woman of nine-and-twenty who did not carve, or pour, or ring, or ask for anything, or answer any question addressed to her, or decline anything either. She saw Mrs. Jenkinson eat half a dish at her elbow and then say that Miss de Bourgh had eaten very well. She saw Lady Catherine order a shawl fetched for her daughter, and the shawl fetched, and the shawl put on, and Miss de Bourgh sit under it.

And on the last Wednesday, when the party rose from the table and Elizabeth was three steps behind her going into the drawing room, she saw Anne de Bourgh's hand come out and rest, for the length of a breath, on the frame of the door.

The frame of that door was carved and gilded and had cost Sir Lewis de Bourgh a great deal of money and there was nothing whatever in it.

Elizabeth thought about that gesture for a long time afterwards. It was the only thing she ever saw the woman do that had not been done for her.