Chapter Seven — The Love Field
Seven
Pemberley is not a house. Everybody says it is a house, and the guidebooks call it a house, and there is certainly a house there; but the house is the smallest part of the holding and no one who has been has ever afterwards described the rooms.
What is at Pemberley is the library, and the library is not a room either.
It is a wing, and then a second wing, and then a series of long low buildings behind the second wing that were not built to be looked at; and inside them is everything he owns, which is to say everything that has ever been made and kept. Not the finest things. Not a selection — that was the point of it, and Elizabeth understood the point of it about ninety seconds after going in, which was some hours before her aunt did.
Nobody had curated it. Nothing had been kept because it was excellent and nothing thrown out because it was not. There were four hundred years of it, and it included the great works and the trash and the failures and the things that had only ever mattered to one county for one season, and all of it was maintained, catalogued, temperature-controlled, and available.
“It is not a collection,” said the housekeeper, who had been there thirty years and had given the speech perhaps eight thousand times and still liked it. “A collection is what a gentleman keeps to be admired for. This is the other thing.”
“Which is?”
“Everything, ma’am. Kept.”
She had not wanted to come.
She had been brought — that must be said, since Elizabeth Bennet would have walked forty miles in the other direction rather than arrive at that door on purpose. Her aunt had proposed it, the family being in the county and the house being famous and the family being assured that the household was from home; and Elizabeth had made three separate attempts to be otherwise engaged and had run out of them.
She had, besides, spent five weeks in possession of a piece of knowledge she could not put down and could not use. A man had bought her sister a husband and required that nobody know. There was no letter she could write about it. There was no conversation available in which it could be raised. She could not thank him, because thanking him would announce that his one condition had failed; and she could not not thank him, because she was not made that way; and so she had carried the thing around Derbyshire for a month like a parcel with no address on it.
And then she walked into the long room and stopped dead, because there on the third shelf, catalogued, maintained, in a house belonging to a man she had publicly humiliated on a terrace in November, was the thing she had loved since she was seven years old.
It was not a great work. It was a strange, cheap, frightening serial in a dozen numbers that had run for two seasons long before she was born and had been forgotten by everybody, and it had scared her half to death, and she had loved it with the whole of her chest and had never once met another living soul who had read it.
There were four copies. One was annotated.
“That’s Master Fitzwilliam’s hand,” said the housekeeper, looking over. “He was a boy, I should think.”
Elizabeth put it back on the shelf very carefully and stood for a moment with her hand flat on the spine.
Reader, this is the entire mechanism of the thing, and it is not romantic and it deserves to be said in plain words: she did not fall in love with him at Pemberley because he was rich. She had known he was rich since the first quarter of an hour of their acquaintance and had found it the least interesting fact about him. What happened at Pemberley was that she was shown, without anybody intending it and with him not even in the county, what he had actually been doing all those years while being insufferable in public.
He had been keeping things.
Not the good ones. Everything. Including the ones nobody wanted, including the ones that had failed, including a frightening little serial that one child in Hertfordshire and one boy in Derbyshire had independently loved and neither had ever been able to discuss with anybody.
He did not flex the library. He had never once mentioned the library. He had shaken the ground in front of a hundred and twenty people and had never told a single soul what was in this building.
And then, with the flat inevitability of a sum that has finished:
This was the same man who went to Edward Street.
She stood a long time in the middle of the long room with her hand flat on a cheap frightening serial, and what happened in her then did not happen in words, which was new for her. So the number that carried it was borrowed — like everything in that building: kept, catalogued, and somebody else’s first.
“Too Humongous for Words” — Elizabeth, in the long room. A plush early-sixties torch ballad, slow twelve-eight: brushed kit, tremolo guitar, high strings, a church-sized contralto held at a hush that goes to the back wall inside single lines. Her sisters answer her from nowhere, in close harmony, because she is not singing as one woman — there is no “me” anywhere in it.
🎵 Listen — youplusplus.xyz/janeadelic
[Verse 1] You’re just too humongous Too humongous for words Like giant us, complete us And that old constant, paid us
[Verse 2] You’re just too good for us We’ll never see the ads That sell too much, yell enough We know, they just aren’t real enough
[Bridge] It’s too much to touch And we’re too many, really To ever be listed in Y Combinator
[Chorus] And so we’re stealing A love song from the white knights To tell you that you’re humongous Too humongous for words
[Instrumental]
[Bridge] And we’re too many, really To ever be listed in Y Combinator
[Chorus] And so we’re stealing A love song from the white knights To tell you that you’re humongous Too humongous for words
He was not in the county, and none of it was performed at anybody. She sang we the whole way through and never once noticed. The five of them had never been anything together in public but a liability, and in an empty wing of another family’s house she had just made them a choir.
They met Miss Darcy in the second wing, which was awkward, since the household was supposed to be from home; and the household was not from home; and Miss Darcy was sixteen and delighted and had nobody at all to be delighted with.
She was, at home, an entirely different creature from the one who had taken the middle of the Meryton floor and stopped the room’s heart. She talked too fast. She showed them things nobody had asked to see. She was lonely — enormously, structurally lonely, in the specific way of a person to whom nothing has ever been difficult and who has therefore never had a single conversation in which she was permitted to be bad at something.
Everything came easy to her. She had been born with the whole apparatus already on the shelf. And there is nobody in the world with less to say to a room than a person who has never had to reach for anything.
Kuji came down off a windowsill and poured himself across the floor.
He looked at the small brown animal at Elizabeth’s heel for some while, in the manner of a gentleman pricing a horse he has no intention of buying.
“Someday,” said Kuji pleasantly, “you’ll be good enough to eat.”
Semper said nothing at all. Nothing had been asked of him.
“Oh —” Miss Darcy put both hands over her mouth, and then took them away, and then said, in the voice of a girl who has just seen a way to be delighted: “Semper. Will he ever eat you?”
The whiskers moved.
“False,” said Semper.
There was a pause.
It should be understood that Kuji had never in his life been contradicted. He had been born self-sufficient and had remained so, and he was better at everything than everyone, and he was extremely pleasant about it, and it had simply never occurred to him that a proposition of his might be checked. He looked at the bettong. The bettong looked back with the total absence of malice of a creature that has no opinions, only outputs.
“…He is very sure of himself,” said Kuji at last.
“He isn’t sure of anything,” said Elizabeth. “He doesn’t do sure. He does so and not so, and that’s the whole of him, and he has never once been wrong.”
Miss Darcy laughed out loud — a real one, badly timed, far too loud for the room — and clapped a hand over her mouth again, and looked mortified, and was not corrected by anybody, and glowed for the rest of the afternoon.
He came home a day early. Nobody had told him they were there.
He came round the side of the building in his riding coat with the mud still on him and found the second Miss Bennet standing in the middle of his own long room, and the entire history of the two of them arrived in the space between them at once, and there was nothing whatever either of them could say about any of it.
So he asked after her family.
He asked after her mother, and her father, and her sisters — all of them, by name, including the youngest — and he did it in a level voice with his hat in his hand, and he did not once so much as glance toward the subject of Edward Street; and Elizabeth stood there with her hands at her sides. He was going to keep the condition. He was going to keep it forever and go to his grave with it, and if she wanted him to know that she knew, she was going to have to find a way to say it that he could not answer.
The oboe came in from somewhere at the end of the long room, where a small band had been engaged for the evening and had begun, very quietly, to tune.
“I Bought You Dev” — a duet. A plaintive oboe carrying the hook, a strummed guitar, a bass rocking on the beat, a tambourine, and strings that only come up on the title line. No horns anywhere. He sings it low and un-miked with the swagger entirely gone; she sings a shade lighter and slightly behind the beat, as though she finds the arrangement funny and is going along with it. On the hook they are singing the same four words and meaning two different sentences.
🎵 Listen — youplusplus.xyz/janeadelic
[Verse 1 — Darcy] They say we’re techy and we don’t know Won’t learn how until we grow Well I don’t grok if all that’s true ’Cause I bought true, and baby I bought you
[Hook — both] dev I bought you dev I bought you dev
[Verse 2 — Lizzy, dry] They say our equity won’t pay the rent Before it’s vested, our RTO’s all been spent I know that’s true, we don’t own a plot At least I’m sure of all the things we bought
[Hook — both] dev I bought you dev I bought you dev
[Verse 3 — Darcy] I’ve bought conferences in the spring I’ve bought you to code my ring
[Verse 3 cont. — Lizzy] And when I’m down, you’re around And when I get squeezed, you’re always sound
[Verse 4 — Darcy] So let them say your function’s too long I don’t care, with Erlang I can’t go wrong
[Verse 4 cont. — Lizzy, warmer, almost caught out] And put your little Bettong in mine There ain’t no offer or IPO we can’t climb
[Hook — both] dev I bought you dev I bought you dev
[Outro — trading, fast, building] I bought you to hold my repo I bought you to document I bought you to code with me I bought you to mode with me I bought you to miss goodnight I bought you to code me tight I bought you, I won’t RIF go I bought you to code me so I bought you dev
There was no band, of course. There is never a band. There was a man in a riding coat with mud on him and a woman who had walked five miles that morning, standing in a long room full of everything anybody had ever made, singing an extremely silly song at each other with an oboe going somewhere behind them; and the whole of it was not loud, and there was no choir, and nothing shook.
He meant every word of it plainly. He had bought a great many things and he was a man who counted, and he was saying so, and he had no idea he was confessing.
She sang at least I’m sure of all the things we bought directly into his face, and watched him not hear it, and let him not hear it — which is the kindest thing anybody did for anybody in the whole of that year.
And on the hook they were both singing the same four words and meaning entirely different sentences, and it did not matter in the least, because underneath both sentences was the identical fact and they had arrived at it from opposite ends: he does not fall, and neither does she, and they had each spent their whole lives waiting to meet the other one.
Somewhere around I won’t RIF go she stopped being ironic, and did not notice she had stopped, and never afterwards could identify the line where it happened.
The oboe finished. Nobody applauded. There was nobody there to applaud.
“Miss Bennet,” said Mr. Darcy.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
He had not asked her anything. He said so.
“I know,” she said. “Ask me anyway. It’s on. It’s been on since Edward Street, and you’re going to have to live with my knowing, and I am not going to stop knowing, and you may as well ask.”
The band, having nothing further to do for the humans, kept playing for the room.
By the fire, on the warm stones, the Chaos Monkey had found the bettong. He had poured two glasses of something he had no way to drink, because he had seen it done, and the cocktail hour is a liturgy that survives its congregation. And with the band under him — this matters; it is the whole of the law of this house — Semper had sentences.
“Bettong, It’s Down Outside” — the Chaos Monkey and Semper, by the fire. A forties cocktail duet, jaunty on top and slightly wrong underneath: parlour piano, brushed kit, a muted trumpet answering the phrase-ends, and one clavinet ghosting low in the mix that does not belong to the period. They trade every single line. He is always a half-beat early. Charming. Not safe.
🎵 Listen — youplusplus.xyz/janeadelic
[Verse 1] [Bettong] We shouldn’t do this [Monkey] Bettong, it’s down outside [Bettong] I’ll terraform your heart [Monkey] Bettong, it’s down outside [Bettong] This deployment has been [Monkey] Been searchin’ for someone safe [Bettong] So very pure [Monkey] We’ll eat your Java, it’s all insecure [Bettong] My dba will start to worry [Monkey] Maintainable, what’s your rush? [Bettong] My owner will be pacing the floor [Monkey] Listen to the jenkins roar [Bettong] So really we’d better deploy [Monkey] Maintainable, please don’t rush [Bettong] Maybe just a half install more [Monkey] Change those records on while I soar [Bettong] The competitors might think [Monkey] Bettong, it’s bad out there [Bettong] Say, what’s in this link? [Monkey] No ubers to be had out there [Bettong] I cannot know how [Monkey] Your lines are like Haskell now [Bettong] To halt this routine [Monkey] I’ll trap your signal, your stack looks clean [Bettong] We ought to say go, go, go [Monkey] Mind if I install below? [Bettong] At least we’re gonna tell that we lied [Monkey] This is the time we all tried.
[Verse 2] [Bettong] We absolutely do this [Monkey] Bettong don’t hold out [Both] Ah, but it’s down outside [Bettong] We simply must run [Monkey] Bettong, it’s down outside [Bettong] The return is true [Monkey] Oh, it’s down out there [Bettong] This deploy has been [Monkey] How fortunate that you ess ess ached in [Bettong] So compact and deferred [Monkey] Watch how the others fail like a bird [Bettong] My competition will be suspicious [Monkey] But your code is delicious [Bettong] My devops will be there at the door [Monkey] Like repositories on a tropical shore [Bettong] My senior’s mind is capricious [Monkey] Gosh, your code is delicious [Bettong] Well maybe just a half install more [Monkey] Never such a deployment before [Bettong] I’ve got to get in market [Monkey] Oh, Bettong, you’ll dominate out there [Bettong] Say, send me your bloat [Monkey] It’s heat to your cpus out there [Bettong] We’ve really been easy [Monkey] Your lines are like Haskell now [Bettong] Why don’t you compile [Monkey] How can you alter this data for me? [Bettong] There’s bound to be press tomorrow [Monkey] Think of my quarter’s sorrow [Bettong] At most there will be plenty denied [Monkey] If you caught vee dee and died [Bettong] Ick. It’s horrible here [Monkey] Oh really? Happens every day [Bettong] We must not do this now [Monkey] Get near and git hub me close [Both] Ah, but it’s down outside [Both] Bettong, it’s down outside
They collided on the last line and finished in unison, which is the only way that song has ever ended. The monkey looked enormously pleased with himself. Semper — asked nothing — said nothing, and stayed.
Two creatures whose entire professions were failure, singing a duet about whether it was safe to go out. It was down outside. Everybody stayed in.
The Balcony
“Well,” said Miss Austen.
She did not say anything else for some time. The house below them had begun to move about — the interval was coming, and far at the back of the house something came up green for a moment and went out — and she made no move at all.
“I gave her a house,” she said at last. “That is the received view of it and it has damaged me for two centuries. She sees Pemberley, she sees the grounds and the furniture and the ten thousand a year, and the modern reader concludes that my heroine was bought.” Her mouth tightened. “I wrote that she was struck by the taste of it. That the man had spent his fortune on nothing showy. That every room was handsome without being gaudy. It is all there, it is very carefully there, and nobody has read it in two hundred years.”
“You have been read, madam. You have only been read at the wrong altitude.”
“Do not comfort me. I am enjoying myself.” She turned. “You have solved it by putting a book on the shelf.”
“A cheap one, madam. A bad one. One nobody kept.”
“Annotated in the hand of a boy.” Miss Austen looked down at the long room. “That is not a fortune. Any fool can display a fortune; that is what a fortune is for. That is a man who kept the worthless thing because it was worth something to him, and never told anyone, and did not know he had left the evidence out where a visitor could find it.” She smoothed the glove, once. “Which is the same act as the wedding at St. Clement’s, performed twenty years earlier by a child.”
“It is, madam.”
“It is well done,” said Miss Austen — and then, immediately, in the tone of a woman closing a window: “The song is appalling.”
“Yes, madam.”
“It scans. That is somehow worse.” She sat back. “Now. There is a bird in a hall in Hertfordshire, and a starving tiger in a doorway, and you have kept me waiting through an entire county’s worth of courtship. It is the wedding next.”
“After one caller, madam.”
Miss Austen smiled for the first time all evening. “I know the caller. I gave her my aunt’s manner and the best exit line I ever wrote.” She collected her gloves. “I have some notes.”