Chapter Text
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a mother in possession of five unmarried daughters must be in want of a wall.
Mrs. Bennet had long been persuaded that the chief impediment to her daughters’ happiness was not want of beauty, nor want of spirits, nor even want of eligible gentlemen within a reasonable distance, but the very unfortunate liberty those gentlemen possessed of seeing too much before they felt enough. A man, once allowed to look about him, was always discovering reasons to hesitate. One lady had too little fortune; another too many sisters; a third a mother with nerves; a fourth a father who would not be civil to a fool merely because he had two thousand a year. There was no end to the objections a gentleman might discover when his eyes were left at large.
“If gentlemen would but fall in love first,” cried Mrs. Bennet, “and look after, there would be no difficulty at all.”
Mr. Bennet, who had been reading with unusual serenity for a man whose breakfast had been interrupted by nerves, upholstery, and a plan of domestic revolution, turned a page.
“My dear, you improve upon nature. I had thought men generally saw first and repented after.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Bennet. That is just what I mean to prevent.”
“A benevolent undertaking.”
“It shall be done by conversation.”
“Then it is more dangerous than I supposed.”
“And by screens.”
“Ah. There is safety.”
Mrs. Bennet, who found in opposition only proof of her own genius, continued with increasing animation. The assembly rooms were to be hired. The great room was to be divided into compartments. The ladies would sit on one side, the gentlemen upon the other. They would converse without seeing one another, and form attachments upon the purest principles.
“No local men,” she added, with solemn emphasis. “I will have no local men.”
“No?”
“Certainly not. Local men have had every opportunity. They have looked and looked, and what has come of it? Nothing. Not one engagement. Not one proposal. Not one thing to comfort my poor nerves.”
“Then their eyes have failed them exceedingly.”
“They have failed me, Mr. Bennet, which is much worse. No; we must have strangers. Men who cannot say they know all about us. Men from other places. Men of fortune, if possible. Men of feeling. Men who will listen.”
“An ambitious list. I hope Phillips has ordered reinforced curtains.”
Mrs. Bennet waved this aside. It had been represented to her, with some difficulty, that five daughters could not each be properly discovered, admired, preferred, and proposed to in a single evening. She had yielded, therefore, to a three-night arrangement, though not without observing that a truly sensible man ought not require so much time to know his own happiness.
“I shall call it Affection Without Appearance. Is it not elegant?”
“Very elegant, my dear.”
“I knew you would like it.”
“That would be overstating the case; but I admire it extremely.”
Mrs. Bennet, satisfied by the word admire and deaf to the rest, rose from the table to find Hill and send three messages at once.
“Affection Without Appearance!” she repeated. “Only think, Mr. Bennet! How refined! How delicate! How likely to end in marriage!”
When she had gone, Elizabeth, who had been sitting at the end of the table with her eyes lowered and her mouth pressed into a line of dangerous composure, looked up at her father.
“Papa.”
“My dear Lizzy?”
“You are not truly going to allow this?”
“Allow it? I am going to study it.”
“She will turn the assembly rooms into a matrimonial rabbit-warren.”
“A valuable improvement. At present they produce little beyond sore feet and disappointed suppers.”
Elizabeth laughed in spite of herself, then checked it. “It is ridiculous.”
“Entirely.”
“And humiliating.”
“Possibly.”
“And Mama will tell everyone.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Then why do you not stop her?”
Mr. Bennet closed his book upon one finger and regarded his second daughter with grave affection.
“Because, my dear, a father with five unmarried daughters must sometimes choose between preventing absurdity and observing it. I confess that, in the present instance, the claims of observation are very strong.”
Elizabeth shook her head, though her eyes sparkled. “You are very wicked.”
“Not very. Moderately, perhaps. Besides, your mother’s title has merit. Affection Without Appearance! It is almost respectable. Though between ourselves, I think a fuller style may be wanted.”
“A fuller style?”
“For dignity. For records. For future historians of folly.” He leaned a little nearer, lowering his voice as Mrs. Bennet’s steps sounded in the passage. “The Society for Concealed Hearts, Eligible Men, and Engagements.”
Elizabeth stared at him for half a second before the initials arranged themselves in her mind.
“Papa!”
“Do you object?”
“You have named it a scheme.”
“No, no. Your mother named it Affection Without Appearance. I merely discovered the initials concealed within it.”
Elizabeth, overcome, bent her head over her teacup.
Mr. Bennet resumed his book. “I rely on your discretion. Your mother must not be alarmed by accuracy.”
By the appointed evening, the Meryton assembly rooms had been so transformed that any gentleman entering them might have supposed himself admitted not to a dance but to a polite captivity. The long room, usually devoted to music, flirtation, and the circulation of gossip, was divided down the middle by a barricade of curtains, screens, and improvised solemnity. On one side stood five little curtained recesses for the Bennet ladies; opposite them, though entirely concealed, five matching recesses for the gentlemen. Each contained a chair, a small table, a glass of negus, and beside it a little card and pencil, after the fashion of a dance card, though the spaces had been reserved not for partners but for Christian names, impressions, and such probabilities of attachment as could be achieved through a curtain.
Mrs. Bennet moved among her arrangements in a state of triumph bordering upon fever.
“Jane, you must speak sweetly. Lizzy, not too cleverly. Mary, do not begin with Fordyce. Kitty, do not cough unless you cannot help it, and even then only gently. Lydia, if you look behind that curtain once more, I shall have Hill stand before you the entire evening.”
“But Mama,” cried Lydia, “how am I to know whether they are handsome?”
“That is the point,” said Elizabeth.
Mrs. Bennet turned upon her. “No, Lizzy, the point is that they are rich. Handsome is very well after.”
Jane, who was disposed to think well of the enterprise because it had been undertaken with such maternal hope, looked anxiously at the curtains. “Perhaps it may be pleasant to speak without the embarrassment of being observed.”
“Perhaps,” said Elizabeth. “Though I have often found embarrassment very capable of travelling through fabric.”
Mary, seated with her hands folded and her expression serious, observed that the soul, being invisible, might naturally be best apprehended by invisible means.
“That is very pretty, Mary,” said Mrs. Bennet, “but do not say it to a gentleman unless he has already proposed.”
Kitty whispered that she did not like not knowing who was on the other side. Lydia whispered back that she did not like not knowing whether there were officers.
Elizabeth’s own opinion of Affection Without Appearance, or the Society her father had more correctly named, was already formed. It was nonsense, but not ordinary nonsense. It was nonsense with curtains, and therefore likely to be quoted forever.
Elizabeth had also determined that any gentleman who willingly submitted to such an arrangement must be either vain, desperate, mercenary, or so easily led that his wife would have the management of him before breakfast.
She took her place in the third recess with as much dignity as could be managed by a young woman being installed in a matrimonial cupboard.
Elizabeth glanced at the little card beside her glass of negus. It bore five spaces, one for each interval, and beneath them the printed headings: Christian Name. Temper. Attachment. Objections.
In the margin, she wrote: The card has begun with objections and concealed them badly.
On the opposite side of the room, Mr. Darcy was arriving at precisely the same conclusion from the other direction.
“I cannot believe,” said he, standing just inside the gentlemen’s entrance, “that I permitted myself to be brought here.”
Mr. Bingley, who had brought him, looked exceedingly pleased with both the evening and himself.
“But you did permit it, Darcy, which proves you are more sociable than you claim. Only think! No awkward introductions, no staring, no standing about the room wondering whom one ought to ask to dance. Only conversation.”
“Only conversation,” Darcy repeated. “With strangers. From behind curtains. Across three evenings. Under the direction of a woman whose footman informed me that proposals may be delivered at any properly tender moment, and that delay, though permitted, is not encouraged.”
Bingley laughed. “You must not attend to footmen on matters of the heart.”
“I had hoped to attend to no one on matters of the heart.”
“That is because you are determined not to enjoy yourself.”
“That is because enjoyment has not yet presented a rational argument.”
Bingley clapped him on the shoulder. “Then you shall be rational, and I shall be happy, and between us we shall do very well.”
Darcy looked towards the door by which they had entered. Retreat remained possible, if not graceful. Yet retreat would involve returning to the hall, where Mrs. Hurst had been sighing, Mr. Hurst had been eating, and Miss Bingley had last been seen asking pointed questions about why an entertainment involving unknown ladies had not required her presence.
Half an hour free from Miss Bingley had seemed, when Bingley first proposed the evening, a poor compensation for absurdity; but as the absurdity increased, so did its compensations.
Whatever lay beyond the curtain, at least it could not, by any rule yet announced, be Miss Bingley.
“No previous acquaintance, no partialities already formed, and no one who can reproach you for standing up with her only once,” said Bingley cheerfully. “Mrs. Bennet was most particular.”
This, as every person of experience knows, was precisely the sort of assurance upon which fate most likes to improve.
Darcy expected simpering compliance, studied sweetness, or the sort of vivacity which mistakes noise for wit.
He entered his recess.
Darcy looked at the card sitting beside a glass of negus. It resembled a dance card closely enough to offend him, and differed from one sufficiently to make the offence novel. He turned it over.
A bell rang.
Mrs. Bennet’s voice carried through the room with all the delicacy of maternal ambition.
“Begin!”
There followed, for several seconds, the peculiar silence of ten people being expected to form attachments on command.
Elizabeth regarded the curtain before her.
The gentleman beyond it cleared his throat.
“Good evening,” he said.
His voice was low, grave, and already displeased.
Elizabeth’s spirits rose.
“Good evening,” she replied. “I hope, sir, that you find yourself comfortably concealed.”
A pause.
“I had not thought concealment a comfort.”
“No? Then you must have led either a very blameless life or a very unimaginative one.”
Another pause followed, shorter but more pointed.
“I believe,” said the gentleman, “we are required to exchange Christian names.”
“Required? How tenderly despotic.”
“It is among the rules.”
“Then by all means let us obey. I should hate to endanger the experiment so early.”
“Fitzwilliam.”
There was a silence.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Fitzwilliam,” he repeated, with the air of a man surrendering a fortress.
“That is your Christian name?”
“It is.”
“How very ambitious of it.”
“May I ask yours?”
“Elizabeth.”
Darcy found, unreasonably, that he liked the name; perhaps because it sounded less like an introduction than a challenge.
“Elizabeth,” he repeated.
“Careful,” she said. “You make it sound almost severe.”
“I had not intended severity.”
“No? Then I congratulate you on achieving it without effort.”
Darcy sat a little straighter.
He had expected either shyness or artifice. He had not expected attack.
“Are we also required to write one another down?” said Elizabeth.
“So it appears.”
“Then I hope you will be accurate. I should dislike to be misrepresented in pencil.”
Darcy glanced at the overturned card. “I have not yet decided what to write.”
“Begin with Elizabeth. It is the least disputable thing about me.”
“Is it?”
“For the present.”
“Am I to understand,” he said, “that you approve of the present arrangement?”
“Approve? Certainly. I always admire desperation when it is carried out with upholstery.”
“You consider it desperate?”
“Do you not?”
“I consider it ill-judged.”
“How moderate. You must be a gentleman of great restraint.”
“I am a gentleman of sense.”
“Then how unfortunate for the organizers. I do not believe sense was advertised for.”
Against his will, Darcy nearly smiled. It was a dangerous sensation.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, had begun arranging him in her mind. Proud. Educated. Exact. Unwilling to be pleased. He sounded like a man who had never been surprised by his own inferiority, and would consider it improper if anybody attempted the experiment.
A gentleman of fortune, probably. A gentleman of consequence, certainly. One did not sound so displeased by accident; it required practice.
“You do not appear to take the matter seriously,” he said.
“The matter does not appear to have taken itself seriously. I merely follow its example.”
“Marriage is serious.”
“Indeed. That is why I object to being delivered towards it by bell.”
The bell, wherever Mrs. Bennet had stationed it, seemed to Darcy a very poor substitute for judgment. “On that point, at least, we are agreed.”
“Are we? How alarming. I had already formed a very comfortable opinion of you as a man determined to disagree with everything.”
“With everything absurd.”
“A broad field.”
“Particularly this evening.”
Elizabeth smiled at the curtain. “Then your attendance is noble indeed. To submit yourself to so much absurdity must be a sacrifice.”
“I was brought by a friend.”
“By force?”
“By persuasion.”
“A subtler violence.”
Darcy’s smile came this time, though reluctantly.
“My friend believed I should benefit from the attempt.”
“Your friend must either be very sanguine or very cruel.”
“He is very sanguine.”
“Ah. That explains it. The sanguine are always dragging the rational into mischief and then calling it improvement.”
Darcy was silent a moment.
That was, with uncomfortable precision, Bingley.
From that point they proceeded, with increasing spirit, to disagree upon the merits of secrecy, the usefulness of first impressions, the reliability of cheerful friends, and whether any chair placed behind a curtain could properly be called comfortable.
Elizabeth found, to her annoyance, that the gentleman’s displeasure, though evident, was not dull. It had shape. It answered. She was amused.
And amusement, in such circumstances, was a dangerous beginning.
“And you?” he said at last. “What brought you? Besides circumstance.”
“Filial obedience, curiosity, and the hope that my father may be supplied with amusement enough to last him until Christmas.”
“Does he require much?”
“He requires quality rather than quantity.”
“And this evening supplies it?”
“In abundance. He has already named the thing more accurately than its inventor, which is always the first step in enjoying it.”
Darcy heard the smile in her voice and wished, unexpectedly and strongly, to see it.
“What name has he given it?”
Elizabeth hesitated. It would be imprudent. It would also be irresistible.
“The Society for Concealed Hearts, Eligible Men, and Engagements.”
There was a pause.
Then, from the other side of the curtain, a very controlled voice said, “I see.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“And do you admire it?”
“I admire the initials.”
Elizabeth laughed.
It was a laugh full of intelligence, mischief, and an ease Darcy had not expected to envy. It struck him with the peculiar force of something both unknown and already missed.
He did not approve of the room. He did not approve of the experiment. He did not approve of being made the object of a matchmaking enterprise conducted through drapery.
He did, however, approve of the laugh.
This was inconvenient.
“You are amused by your own danger,” he said.
“Not danger, sir. Exposure.”
“You are concealed.”
“Only from sight. Character has been escaping everywhere.”
“A hazardous confession.”
“Not at all. I did not say whose.”
Darcy leaned back, studying the curtain as though it might, under sufficient scrutiny, surrender the lady behind it.
Elizabeth, on her side, was no less occupied. The gentleman had not flirted. He had not flattered. He had not asked after accomplishments, fortune, complexion, or whether she liked music. He had disapproved of everything with such unyielding consistency that she ought to have found him intolerable.
She did find him intolerable.
Yet it was the sort of intolerable one wished to contradict again.
“May I ask,” she said, “whether your friend is also concealed somewhere in this excellent establishment?”
“He is.”
“And is he enjoying it?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“You sound resigned to his happiness.”
“I have had practice.”
“He must be very amiable.”
“He is.”
“And you must be very severe.”
Darcy stiffened.
Elizabeth, hearing the change in silence, understood she had touched something true enough to be unwelcome.
“I beg your pardon,” she said lightly, though not without sincerity. “I ought not to judge a gentleman by the first interval of his captivity.”
“No,” he replied. “You ought not.”
There was a coolness now that might have ended the conversation, had Elizabeth been less herself or Darcy less interested against his will.
“But you have judged me,” she said.
“I have formed impressions.”
“How genteel. And are they kinder than judgments?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Then I hope they are at least accurate.”
“They are incomplete.”
“A handsome retreat.”
“A truthful one.”
Elizabeth rested her chin on her hand. “Then let us exchange. I shall tell you what I have determined of you, and you may tell me what you have determined of me.”
“That seems unwise.”
“Excellent. We are unlikely to be bored.”
Darcy considered refusing. Refusal would be prudent. It would also leave him wondering what she had seen—or thought she had seen—with nothing but his voice and his temper to guide her.
“Very well,” he said.
Elizabeth brightened. “You first.”
“Cowardice?”
“Strategy.”
“You are lively,” he said, after a moment. “Quick in judgment. Fond of ridicule. More willing to wound than you perhaps believe, though not, I think, from malice.”
Elizabeth’s smile faltered, then returned in a smaller form.
“That is a great deal from a curtain.”
“I warned you it was incomplete.”
“And unflattering.”
“Not wholly.”
“No? Where was the compliment hidden?”
“In quick.”
She laughed again, but more softly.
Darcy knew, as soon as he had said it, that he had revealed too much.
“Now you,” he said.
“With pleasure. You are proud, rational, unwilling, excessively conscious of discomfort, loyal to your friend despite yourself, and so accustomed to disapproving that approval must come upon you like an illness.”
Darcy’s mouth compressed.
“Incomplete?” she asked.
“Not wholly.”
“Where was the compliment hidden?”
“In loyal.”
Elizabeth felt a quite unreasonable warmth at this. She had meant to tease him; she had not meant to be answered so well.
The bell rang before either could say more, announcing, with all the importance of a town clock, the end of the first half-hour.
Mrs. Bennet’s voice announced the end of the first interval and the beginning of private reflections.
Darcy rose slowly.
Elizabeth did the same.
Neither said goodbye.
Both, however, thought about the omission.
The ladies’ Looking-Glass Room had been contrived out of a small retiring room, one candle, a chair, and a mirror which rendered every face slightly longer than nature had intended. Elizabeth sat before it and found the distortion appropriate.
She consulted her conversation card. Opposite Fitzwilliam she had written: proud; rational; severe; attached to exact language; dislikes upholstery.
After a moment, she added: listens.
Then, because fairness had become irritating: in a proud way.
“Well,” she said to her reflection, “I have conversed with a gentleman who came determined to despise everything and has succeeded with considerable elegance.”
The mirror looked sceptical.
“He is proud. That is certain. He considers himself rational, which is often pride in a plain coat. He dislikes surprise, upholstery, bells, maternal schemes, and being laughed at.”
She paused.
“And he is severe. He told me I am fond of ridicule, which is very impertinent in a stranger and very disagreeable in a man who may not be entirely wrong.”
Elizabeth leaned closer to the glass, as though a better view of herself might explain why the observation had landed.
“I dislike him, of course.”
The mirror, being no fool, said nothing.
“Or I intend to. There is a difference, but perhaps not a permanent one.”
The reflection accepted this amendment.
“And he is severe. He told me I am fond of ridicule, which is very impertinent in a stranger and very disagreeable in a man who may not be entirely wrong.”
On the gentlemen’s side, Mr. Darcy stood before his own looking-glass with the expression of a man who had been asked to provide evidence against himself.
He looked down at his own card. Opposite Elizabeth he had written only one word: quick.
This was insufficient. He added: impertinent.
This was unjustly incomplete. He added: very quick.
“I have spoken,” he said, after a long silence, “with a lady of uncommon quickness and very little restraint.”
His reflection, accustomed to hearing reports delivered with confidence, waited.
“She is impertinent.”
The reflection did not dispute it.
“She judges hastily.”
A pause.
“As do I, perhaps, when circumstances are particularly absurd.”
This concession displeased him.
“She laughs too readily. Though not foolishly. She understands more than she ought from very little, and less than she believes from enough. She is prejudiced against seriousness because she mistakes it for arrogance.”
The mirror continued to display a gentleman who was in no position to complain.
Darcy frowned.
“She has decided I am proud.”
Another silence.
“She has insufficient evidence.”
The mirror was merciless.
Darcy turned away.
“Not none,” he muttered.
Elsewhere, earlier in the same interval, a young lady had lowered herself into a chair and arranged her voice into its most becoming sweetness.
“Hello?” she breathed. “Are you there?”
“Yes,” said a cheerful gentleman. “Quite here.”
The young lady smiled. “And what wonderful specimen of man am I speaking with?”
There was a silence.
Then, in tones of dawning horror:
“Caroline?”
All elegance vanished.
“Charles?”
“Caroline!”
“Charles! What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was invited!”
“You were not!”
“That is a very ungenerous thing to say to a sister.”
“That is because sisters are not allowed!”
“Then perhaps brothers should not sound so pleased to be admired by strangers.”
“I did not know the stranger was you!”
“Yes,” said Miss Bingley coldly. “I had gathered as much.”
“No, no, I mean—I am always happy to speak with you, Caroline, naturally—but there are five ladies and five gentlemen, and if you are here, then somebody else is not, and you cannot possibly have come for me.”
There was a silence.
“I am sure I do not know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do,” cried Mr. Bingley, with sudden comprehension. “You came for Darcy!”
“Charles!”
“You did! You meant to sit opposite Darcy and ask him what wonderful specimen of man he was!”
“I should never express myself in so unbecoming a manner.”
“You just did!”
“Because I believed I was speaking to Mr. Darcy.”
“That is not better!”
Miss Bingley drew herself up, though only the curtain received the full benefit of it.
“I do not see why you should be so astonished.”
“Because Darcy came here to avoid you!”
A silence followed.
Mr. Bingley, who had not intended to say quite so much truth, added weakly, “I mean—to avoid all of us. Society generally. In a very honourable way.”
Another silence.
Mr. Bingley stared helplessly at the curtain between them and considered the half-hour remaining before him.
“I had such hopes of this evening,” he said mournfully.