Page 27

27. Signs and Portents

Elizabeth was slightly startled by her suitor’s appearance but thought it a very good sign that her first reaction was a smile. She liked to see him walk in the door and wondered if she might just be farther along on the path to true affection than she expected in what was only their third day of real courtship.

She left her chair and gave him her hands. He reciprocated by placing a kiss on her knuckle. She took it as another good sign that she liked the feeling.

“Am I interrupting, Elizabeth?” he asked pensively.

“I did not expect you, Fitzwilliam, but it is a pleasant surprise.”

Darcy wanted to dance a jig over her happy reaction and their easy acceptance of Christian names, but he simply smiled and squeezed her hands tighter, which was another thing she did not hate.

“I see our slow, steady, and quiet plan proceeds apace,” he added with a smirk.

She just laughed and shook her finger at him (the one on the hand he was not still holding). “I suppose that idea was a touch na?ve.”

“What do you mean?” Lydia asked quietly, which pleased both. It may have been slightly intrusive to ask about their private conversation, but since it was happening in the same room a few yards away, it was hardly a capital crime. Since Lydia’s voice seemed to be dropping about an octave a week, it was approaching downright pleasant.

Elizabeth turned to face her charges, with Darcy taking up station beside her. “Do you want an explanation from Lizzy Bennet or Mrs Black?”

“How about Lizzy Black,” Mary hopefully suggested, prompting a bout of giggling that Mrs Black would hate, but Lizzy Bennet rather enjoyed.

Lizzy and Darcy sat on a sofa, and Elizabeth began.

“Courtship in our society is a bit of a fraught endeavour. Ladies are supposed to be demure and opaque, or they are considered forward, while men are supposed to be bold but not too bold, while somehow understanding what is hidden behind the mask of polite demureness. It is absurd, but it is the society we live in. Courtships generally progress in fits and starts, driven at least theoretically by signs and portents. ”

She glanced around to ensure full attention.

“One of the things we usually discuss in the last few days is how to get around those societal limitations by learning to read the signs and make your own indications comprehensible to men, whom we can safely assume are—”

She glanced at Darcy, who helpfully supplied, “Lunkheads… loggerheads… clodpoles.”

“Correct!” she replied to everyone’s amusement. “There is a point where a relationship is nothing, as far as society is concerned. They have not met or have just been introduced. After that, in the ideal scenario, the couple gives signs of increasing intimacy over time. A dance is practically meaningless. A significant dance, slightly more so, depending on previous signs. Two dances in one evening are somewhat more. First, last, and supper sets count for more. Calling at a lady’s home once is meaningless. Twice in a week more. Two significant dances in one evening or calling four times in a week is enough to reasonably raise expectations.”

Elizabeth paused, reluctantly acknowledging that even though that was all basic, it was new to at least half her class—as usual.

“During all those interactions, a couple should be chaperoned or in company, and what they are supposed to say is constrained by the rules of propriety, which I hope all of you understand at this point?”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

“As the couple becomes more intimate, they should increase in understanding such that they can relax the rules, carefully. For example, neither Fitzwilliam nor I gave permission for use of Christian names. That would have been frightfully forward if we knew each other less, but we each took a chance that our intimacy was sufficient to assume such permission.”

“What if one of you was not ready?” Jasmine asked.

“Good question. In that case, you have a test. Do you discuss it and come to a resolution… ignore it and let it fester… ask someone else to help you? Every relationship has many such tests, and how they resolve them has a significant impact on how well they live.”

“That seems complicated,” Amber observed.

“It is, but so is life.”

They all looked thoughtful, so Elizabeth continued.

“All of this should be simple, but it is not, because nobody teaches it. We are all left to muddle through and let us just say, the results are mixed.”

“In our house, they are not mixed at all,” Kitty observed to everyone’s surprise. Nobody contradicted her, nor were they confused about how well or poorly things were handled at Longbourn.

“That is correct, Kitty, and that is where things get tricky. These signs and portents are hard enough for the couple—but to make matters worse, they do not happen in isolation! ”

All the Bennet ladies let out longs-suffering sighs.

“With a mother like ours, you need not elaborate,” Mary said.

“Yes, all of you except Miss Darcy saw how Mrs Bennet abused poor Jane and Mr Bingley. To be honest, they never had much of a chance. Mr Bingley unwisely came on too strong and too fast. I have no idea whether Jane managed to gradually loosen up her general agreeableness enough for him to understand her nature or not, but I doubt he really knew her well enough at the end. Mrs Bennet took his ill-disguised attentions and tried to turn those portents into expectations with brute force. I will be surprised if he returns, but if he does not, I would blame her.”

“Why do you blame her, Lizzy,” Jane asked in a much more serious tone than usual. “Mama would say in a crude and vulgar way that I did not do enough to bring him to the point, but might she be right? What if I did not gradually increase our intimacy as you suggested?”

Elizabeth had not planned to have that discussion publicly, but if Jane was game, she would go along.

“You and your suitor need time and honest conversation to work those things out. To be frank, I was sometimes tempted to light a fire under you while I doused him with a bucket.”

Everyone burst out laughing, especially since she said it in Mrs Black’s voice.

Elizabeth sighed. “That behaviour is not our parents’ only sin, or even their worst one. The behaviour of the whole family at the ball was horrific, and anyone with half an ear knows the financial impediments to a union with a Bennet. However, none of those placed both of you in a thoroughly untenable situation. He is rich enough that your financial straits need not be the death knell to his ambitions, and he must have learnt about that the first week. Boasting loud and long about your supposed conquest , meant Mr Bingley had to decide . He had to commit or withdraw. He did the latter in a rather cowardly way, but withdrawal was nearly inevitable.”

For a minute, Jane looked like she might be angry, though at whom was unclear. Elizabeth let them all stew a moment, but fortunately, Georgiana broke the tableau. “You do realize his sisters come with him?”

The whole room burst into laughter and Elizabeth decided to quit picking on poor Jane for the moment. She personally thought Jane had a narrow escape from a weak-willed man but would never say so. There was always a slim chance he would grow up eventually, but when he did, he would likely find himself either in competition, or more likely, too little too late.

Kitty once again surprised everyone by calling them to order. “Is that why you wanted slow and quiet, Lizzy?”

“Exactly! We have known each other a few months, but I never had any hint of his interest, nor did I expect or encourage it. Quite the opposite, if I am honest. We have had perhaps a dozen conversations in total. They were all quite fraught, so we had more signs to work with than usual, but we still do not know each other all that well.”

Darcy chimed in, “I was somewhere between interested and fascinated in Elizabeth back in Netherfield, but had not decided I was interested enough to pursue her over the objections she just outlined… so… Miss Lydia… what should I have done?”

Lydia was not entirely certain Mr Darcy had ever spoken to her before, but she had been the first to put on the boxing gloves, so she was not to be intimidated.

“You should keep it under your hat.”

“Correct… continue.”

She was flummoxed for a minute, but it became clear. “In the ordinary course of business, you would gradually start calling on her, dancing and conversing in company, and so forth.”

“Go on.”

“Before you could do that, you met Mrs Duff and got dragged into a dance where she smote that deserting scoundrel, so you had to do something more precipitate.”

“That is correct. I believe every couple has trouble knowing what they can or cannot say, but at the very least, they owe each other honesty. If I wanted any hope of success, I had to clearly state my intentions.”

They all nodded in thought, so he continued, “Miss Jasmine, what comes next?”

Jasmine was less startled by being called this time.

“I suppose you had to come clean with Lizzy, and maybe her guardian since you were skipping several steps?” she speculated.

“Yes, but nobody else. Why, Georgiana?”

“Because you are of the first circles, and she is not well known. When it becomes public, society will treat both of you worse than Mrs Bennet, at least until you become engaged. If it goes off, then Miss Elizabeth would suffer society’s derision for disappointed hopes. ”

Elizabeth gently said, “What core principle would be relevant?”

They thought a bit, until Maria suggested, “Unbalanced risks?”

“Mostly. There is also the chance we would just not get on well. If that be the case, it is best to learn quietly and slink off to our corners to lick our wounds.”

They all thought about that a bit.

Lydia finally asked, “You can trust us, Lizzy, but why did you tell us?”

“The same reason Fitzwilliam had to ask my permission to court me without the usual subtle buildup: basic honesty. When I made the offer for you to live with me, you had to know I might not be here. Of course, you will have companions and the like, but it would be dishonest to withhold that.”

Lydia said, “To be honest, I would rather live in the barn with the ogres and eat chalk dust than return to Longbourn.”

The group burst into raucous laughter and became a lot more relaxed. Eventually, they settled down and Elizabeth rang for tea.

Darcy said, “I would like to point out a subtlety of Elizabeth’s offer of a place to live. She said it two ways, with the latter being more correct.”

Everyone, including Elizabeth, looked confused.

“She first offered for you to live in this house, and later said she offered to live with her.”

“What is the difference?” Mary asked.

Darcy chuckled. “If she marries me, as mistress of my homes, she decides who is welcome. This is a very nice house, but mine is adequate enough, despite my decided lack of ogres. You would all be welcome, should my wife invite you. The place has been far too quiet with just Georgiana and me since our parents died, and it will be some years before our children are old enough to liven it up. If the problem is too much quiet, it is hard to beat a gaggle of girls as a remedy.”

Everyone sat stunned while Darcy wondered if he had just scored a goal or dug his own grave.

The question was soon resolved when Elizabeth smiled brightly, leaned across, and kissed him on the cheek—which really set the cat among the pigeons.

Lydia asked rather impertinently, “Is this one of those cases where you can disregard a rule of propriety?”

Elizabeth laughed. “Yes, but remember what I said. Only do it very carefully, and only do it in company you know well, and I suppose we should add one more useful guideline.”

“Which is?”

“Only do it if your beau is devilishly handsome!”