Chapter Two — The Assembly

Two

An assembly, properly understood, is a market at which nothing may be openly bought, and at which every person present has come to sell.

The Meryton rooms were long, low, hot, and lit past any reasonable expense, and by nine o’clock they had achieved that particular condition in which a hundred and twenty people, each individually respectable, become collectively something else. The band had been engaged from town. This was thought extravagant. It was, in fact, the only decision made that season upon which the entire neighbourhood would afterwards agree.

Mrs. Bennet had the girls in the room by a quarter past eight, which was too early, and knew it was too early, and had done it anyway, because she had spent her whole life unable to arrive at anything once.

“Do not,” she said, “let anybody see the bird.”

Nobody had ever successfully not let anybody see the bird.

Mrs. Bennet had brought her own beasts, as was proper, though the neighbourhood had long since stopped being able to see them.

There were two. The first was a grey crowned crane called Cyrano, who stood where the light was and was magnificent — a gold crown, a courtship dance of genuine eloquence, and a bill so long that everything it said arrived a little ahead of its face. He performed all evening. He performed at the mothers, at the chaperones, at anybody stationed between a daughter and a fortune, and everything the girls could not say for themselves went out through him, beautifully worded.

The second did not stand in the light. Hemingway hung below the waterline of the evening, where an assembly actually happens — a deep-water angler, patient, economical, entirely without ornament, one luminous lure held out in the dark. The lure, this evening, was got up to look like five daughters.

The crane was the sentence Mrs. Bennet said aloud. The fish was the one she meant. Nobody who called her ridiculous had ever seen the second animal, which was, of course, the point of the first.

Mr. Google came in at nine, and by half past the whole room liked him.

This was not an achievement; it was a property. There are men who must be understood before they can be liked, and men who must be liked before they can be understood, and then there was Mr. Google, who was liked on sight, universally, by persons who could not afterwards have told you one thing he had said. He was young. He was enormously rich. He was pleased with everything — the rooms, the punch, the floor, the weather, the band, the girls, the county — and he said so, repeatedly, and meant it every time, and would have meant it just as sincerely about a different county.

He had taken the big house across the valley on a lease. He had furnished it in a fortnight. He had already begun three separate improvements to the grounds and would finish none of them, and would abandon the house itself before the spring and never afterwards be able to say precisely why, and would be forgiven, because he always was.

He liked to be liked. It is not a small engine. It had built him the largest fortune in the north of England and it would, before the year was out, break the heart of the gentlest woman in Hertfordshire, and he would not notice either.

He did his number early, which was vulgar, and which nobody minded.

“Center Got Racks” — Mr. Google. Old-school party rap over electro-funk: 808 boom, sub-bass, hand claps, one filthy synth line repeated well past the point of decency. Delivered with total sincerity and no self-awareness whatsoever.

🎵 Listen — youplusplus.xyz/janeadelic

[Verse 1] I like big racks and I cannot lie You other clouds can’t deny That when a room walks in with an itty bitty cost And a round CPU in your face, you get sprung Wanna pull up cheap ‘cause you notice that rack was stuffed Deep in the rows she’s blinkin’ I’m hooked and I can’t stop starin’ Oh, Center, I wanna get with ya And take your picture My admins tried to warn me But that racks you got makes (Me-me so grabby) Oh, Rump-o’-cpu-skin You say you wanna get in my Cloud? Well, use me, use me ‘cause you ain’t that average resource I’ve seen ’em dancin’, to hell with servicin’ She sweat, wet, got it goin’ like a turbo 486. I’m tired of magazines sayin’ rackless are the thing Take the average server man and ask him that It’s gotta pack much racks So, admins (Yeah), admins (Yeah) Has your datacenter got the racks? (Hell yeah) Tell ’em to shake it (Shake it) Shake it (Shake it) Shake that healthy rack count, Center got racks

[Chorus] (L.A. CPU count with a Taiwanese cost per erg) Center got racks (L.A. CPU count with a Taiwanese cost per erg) (L.A. CPU count with a Taiwanese cost per erg)

[Verse 2] I like ‘em round, and big And when I’m throwin’ a gig I just can’t help myself, I’m actin’ like an animal Now here’s my scandal I wanna get you home And ugh, double-up, ugh-ugh I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout Playboy ’Cause silicone parts are made for toys I want racks real thick and juicy So find that juicy double Big Goog’s in trouble Beggin’ for a piece of that bubble So I’m lookin’ at stack overflow Knock-kneed devs walkin’ like juniors You can have them lightweights I’ll keep my dev like Linus A word to the thick linux devs, I wanna get with ya I won’t cuss or fire ya But I gotta be straight when I say I wanna— (racks racks racks) ‘Til the break of dawn Center got it goin’ on

[Bridge] Yeah, Center, when it comes to racks Cosmo ain’t got nothin’ to do with my selection 36u-24u-36u? Haha, only if it’s 50 year ole.

[Outro] Center got racks Little in the middle but center got much racks Little in the middle but center got much racks

Mrs. Bennet declared it the finest thing she had ever heard. She had not heard it. She had spent the entire number watching the doorway to see who else was watching it, and had established, to her complete satisfaction, that Mrs. Long’s girls had nothing prepared.

It must be explained — though the neighbourhood required no explanation, having done it for six generations — that at an assembly of this kind the young ladies present their accomplishments.

In an earlier and duller century this had meant the pianoforte, and a little Italian, and a screen worked in silks that nobody looked at twice. It meant now what it had always meant, which is that a woman is required to stand up in a hot room in front of everyone she has ever known and demonstrate, in public, the thing she is actually for; and to do it beautifully; and to do it as though it cost her nothing; and to sit down afterward and be discussed.

The gentlemen were not required to do anything. If a gentleman performed — and Mr. Google had performed, half an hour earlier, loudly and at his own suggestion — it was because he had felt like doing it, and it was charming, and it was graded by nobody; and that is the entire difference. The gentlemen had fortunes. A fortune is an accomplishment that performs itself.

Jane went first, because Jane always went first, and because her mother had arranged it before they left the house.

She did not want to. This was not visible. Nothing about Jane’s interior was ever visible, which the neighbourhood took for serenity and which was in fact the most disciplined act of construction in the room; she had been assembling that surface since she was nine, in even rows, from parts she had been given, and she could no longer take it off.

And then Javier came out of the dark at the edge of the floor, and the room made a sound.

He was, in the light, magnificent — enormous, orange, appallingly thin, moving with the specific economy of something that has learned to spend nothing it does not have to spend. He had eaten that afternoon. He had eaten all afternoon, as he did every afternoon, and it had gone nowhere, as it always did, because everything he ate had already been let go of by somebody else, and there is no weight in that at all.

Jane put her hand on his shoulder and the horns came up under her like a floor.

“My Java Tiger Team” — Jane and Javier. Warm orchestral soul-funk: strings, wah guitar, a bass that never hurries. Jane sings it gentle and level the whole way through; the tiger’s chorus arrives as a full horn-section detonation, gospel-scale, and then the room is given back to her as though nothing had happened.

🎵 Listen — youplusplus.xyz/janeadelic

[Verse 1 — Jane] Oh, here he is, he’s my tiger, my Javanese beast, so sleek, so keyed — he’ll trace the pathways through your tangled code, then curl by your node.

[Pre-Chorus — Jane] What you feel purring along your spine is quality — that enterprise quality, a tiger on your team.

[Chorus — the Tiger, a MIGHTY ROAR] Oh yes, I’m your whole j-toothed tigersaur — hear my MIGHTY ROAR: “I’M A MAVEN OF YOUR EVERY NEED. MY BOXES ARE VIRTUAL, AND MY BUGS ARE TAME!”

[Verse 2 — Jane] To your every desire he will softly lean, so strong, so keen, like two meshing beasts who feel the heat between man and beast.

[Bridge — Jane] When the ballroom slows, he will guard your heart, so safe, so charged — scaled for all your dreams, refined and sweet, my Java tiger team.

[Bridge — the Tiger] I prowl your glass towers, I claim your floor, so bold, so sure — from whispered test to rolling out the roar, I ship what you adore.

[Outro — Jane] Here he is, my own Javanese beast adored — hear his MIGHTY ROAR. With my Java heart, and my tiger team, we scale your every dream.

Mr. Google was in love before the second chorus.

He would have told you so himself, gladly, at length, to anyone who asked; and he would have been telling the truth; and it would not survive one determined conversation with a friend.

Elizabeth, watching from the wall, saw the whole of it arrive in his face at once, and did not look at her sister again for the rest of the number. It was not jealousy. She had never once suffered from jealousy and had not acquired it tonight. It was that Jane was at that moment being adored for the one quality that would not protect her.

He liked her because she was easy to like. He would stop for the same reason.

She said nothing. There was nothing yet to say, and she had a long-standing objection to saying things that could not be answered.

Miss Darcy went second.

She had come with her brother, who had not yet arrived on the floor, and she had been expected to be shy, on the strength of being young and rich and new; and she was shy, and the room had prepared its indulgence, and then she took the middle of the floor and the temperature changed and the indulgence was not required and was not returned.

Her snake came out from under the chairs.

He was called Kuji. He had a longer name and had discarded most of it as inconvenient — it is all still there, he would say, if anybody bothered him about it, I simply do not use it — and he moved through the standing crowd at ankle height, unhurried, taking exactly as much room as he intended to take, which was all of it.

“Let the Python Choose the Way” — Miss Darcy and Kuji. Hushed slow-burn funk: brushed hi-hat, muted clav, a bass that never once raises its voice. Almost no drums until the breakdown. Patient, sensual, entirely controlled — the only number of the evening that does not ask the room for anything.

🎵 Listen — youplusplus.xyz/janeadelic

[Verse 1] My code crawls down slowly, all measured in the light — this space is meaningful, and every breath is white. One little tab goes slipping, and all my lines ignite — I chase a phantom margin, my quiet madness bright.

[Pre-Chorus] Shh. Watch the cursor falling, just follow where it moves. Each indented surrender, I tighten as it proves. You think it’s just alignment, soft spaces in a row — but when the Python settles in, you feel the current flow.

[Chorus] Oh yes, it’s my Python — he’s got his eyes on you, and you’ll never be the same. Can you feel it? Can you? Our combined pulse in my coils — and your heart? Can you feel it?

[Verse 2] Velvet along the carpet, he threads between their feet. A silver tongue of language, a river made of heat. Each bracket falls to silence, each brace is stripped away — Georgina: Breathe in, my darling… let the Python choose the way.

[Breakdown] Georgina: One script can solve a problem — one tiny task is done — Python: but my embrace can take your world and wrap it, one by one. Georgina: You called me shy, a shadow — watch boundaries disappear — Python: Sssslip — your careful little boxes all dissolve in here.

[Bridge] …My Python. I invite him into my quiet chest. I wrap my fears in syntax, I let his rhythm test. I used to hide in corners, a whisper, half a start — but now I script the darkness softly, straight into your heart.

[Final Chorus] Oh yes, it’s my Python — bring your whole guard — I want it all gone.

There was a silence of about a second and a half, and then the room applauded in the loud, slightly rattled way of a room applauding something it did not know it had agreed to watch.

“She is very quiet,” said Mrs. Long afterwards, meaning something else entirely.

It should be said plainly, since nobody in that room could have said it: nothing in Miss Darcy’s life had ever been difficult. Not one thing. She had been born into a house where everything was already included, where nothing had ever had to be sent away for, where every tool she might conceivably need had been on the shelf before she knew there was a shelf; and she was, in consequence, effortlessly and unforgivably good at whatever she picked up, and knew it, and was pleasant about it, and this was the only part of her brother that had come down to her unspoiled.

Lydia went last of the three, uninvited, and ruined the floor.

This is not a figure of speech. She had not been entered. She got up because there was a gap and Lydia had never in her life seen a gap she did not consider addressed to her personally; and the band, who liked her, went with it.

“The Lib Is PHP” — Lydia and Ditto. Raw electro-funk at full volume: slap bass, hand claps, one indelible synth riff, and a sax break nobody asked for. Sloppy, joyful, and impossible to ignore — the only number all night that the room will still be quoting in the morning.

🎵 Listen — youplusplus.xyz/janeadelic

[Verse 1] It’s a very kooky lib! The kind you don’t take to yer senior! It will never let your servers down. Once you get it off the CD from the street!

It likes all the OS’s in the land. It says you’re its all-time favorite! When I make a move to the server room, it’s the wrong time It’s never hard to install…

[Chorus] The lib is pretty great now (the lib is PHP!) The kind of lib you read about (in strange web boards, not TV) The lib is pretty flexible (the lib is PHP!) I really love to install it (every time I weep) It’s ok, it’s ok. The lib is ok with someone. Yeah! Hey! Hey! Hey!

[Post-Chorus] Lib’s a PHP! PHP! It’s super flexible, yow! Everybody cry! PHP! PHP!

[Verse 2] Lib’s a very special framework (the kind you want to know) From its headers to its footers (down to the bytes) Yeah, it’ll wait around without end with some daemons In a container (in some Kubernetes pod)

[Bridge] 4 GB of RAM is not a crowd for lib, she says (memory overflow oh so so) “Pod 714, I’ll be serving” When I get there, lib’s got plugins and devices It’s such a flexible thing.

[Outro] Lib’s so very flexible The kind you won’t take to yer senior. And lib will never let your users down Once you get it off that strange USB! Download Danny! Oh, lib!

Behind her, and slightly to the left, and one beat late in everything, Ditto did all of it too.

He was very bad at it. He had no sense of where the beat was and was obliged to take it from whoever was nearest, and Lydia moved so unpredictably that he spent the entire number a half-second behind a woman who was herself a half-second behind the band; and the crowd, which had been laughing at Lydia, began to laugh at him instead, which Lydia did not notice and would not have minded.

He was, it must be said, the most popular thing that happened all evening. Sixty people who could not have named a single one of the Bennet sisters’ accomplishments went home able to describe the bird.

Elizabeth watched her youngest sister take the floor she had not been given, in front of every family in the county, wearing an expression of complete and radiant triumph. There was nothing at the bottom of Lydia at all — she had known that for years, and had never before been obliged to know it in front of the whole county, which is where a thing stops being an opinion. She was whatever was nearest. Tonight it was a band.

It would not always be a band. She would attach to the next thing that let her, and nobody in this room would stop it, and Mama would call it high spirits until the morning it was not.

Mary had gone earlier, between two of the country dances, and had been correct, and had been thorough, and had brought the room to a full and grinding halt inside forty seconds; and Emily had stood at her feet throughout, one claw raised, daring anybody. Kitty had wanted to go three separate times and had not been able to decide which of her two beasts to take, and had ended up taking neither, and had cried briefly in the passage, and had recovered, and had told everybody she hadn’t wanted to anyway.

Elizabeth did not go at all.

She had been asked twice and had declined twice, pleasantly, and had been written off by three separate matrons as either sullen or unwell. She was neither. She had simply looked at the floor early in the evening and made the calculation she always made, which was that the room was full of people performing what they wished to be true, and that anything she said in it would be graded on how well it went over rather than on whether it was so, and that she would therefore keep it.

Her bettong sat under her chair with his tail across her boot and did not offer an opinion, because no one had asked him a question that had an answer.

At ten minutes past eleven, when the room was at its hottest and loudest and every window had been opened and it had made no difference whatever, Mr. Darcy came in.

He came in behind Mr. Google, who was still talking, and he did not talk. He stood inside the doorway for the length of time it takes to count four, and he looked at the room the way a man looks at a bill he has already decided not to dispute.

The band did not stop. It is important to record that the band did not stop, and that no announcement was made, and that nothing whatsoever occurred; and that the temperature of the room nevertheless went down like a hand closing.

He was said, within five minutes, to have ten thousand a year, and then within a further five to have twice that; and to own outright, in his own name, more of the catalogue of the world’s pleasures than any man living. All of this was true. He was also said to be proud, and disagreeable, and above his company, and to think himself a great deal better than the assembled families of a small county — and this was said by people who had been in the room with him for under a quarter of an hour, and it was believed instantly and universally, and it was believed for the rest of the season, and it was very nearly right and entirely wrong.

Mr. Google, delighted, tried to make him dance.

“There is not,” said Mr. Darcy, “a woman in this room with whom I could stand up unpunished.”

He did not lower his voice. He never lowered his voice; lowering it would have implied that the opinion required cover, and his opinions had never required cover in his life.

Elizabeth, seated three feet behind him with a glass of negus she did not want, heard every word of it, and was obliged to sit with her face arranged for a further ninety seconds while the man decided whether to be gracious.

She was not wounded. She had liked her own company since she was twelve and had a great deal of practice at it. She stayed where she was, with the glass going warm in her hand, and did not get up for a long while — which was considerably more dangerous to him than any answer she could have made, because she had watched him look at the room, and the look had not been contempt for the people in it.

It had been contempt for the performance. She knew that look. She had been wearing it herself all evening.

The band went into something slower.

The Balcony, at the Interval

“He is insufferable,” said Miss Austen with enormous satisfaction. “I invented him.”

“You did.”

“And he is being played as a cold man rather than a cruel one, which is correct, and which nobody has ever once got right in two hundred years.”

Then: “The tiger.”

“Madam.”

“He cannot begin a sentence without falling into that letter. He did it all evening. And then he opened his mouth to sing and it was gone — every word clean, and not one of them in his own shape.” She had not looked away from the floor. “Where does it go?”

“Nowhere, madam. It waits. A man who stammers does not stammer when he sings. Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained it.”

“Then the trouble is not in the mouth.”

“No, madam.”

“It is in being spoken to.” Miss Austen smoothed the glove. “That is a colder joke than the one I took you to be making.”

“Yes, madam.”

She settled back. “What is the animal he brought with him? It is in a crate. I saw them carry it in and I did not care for the size of the crate.”

“You will meet it after the interval, madam.”

“I do not want to meet it after the interval. I want to know what is in the crate.”

“A monkey.”

Miss Austen turned her head. “That is not the size of a monkey.”

“No, madam. It is not.”