Writerly Ambitions

by Timothy Underwood

  Elizabeth laughed. “You have the oddest combination of trained manners and no sense at all when something simply ought not be said.”

  “I merely try to speak honestly, and then go amiss — I mean you have no great fortune to inherit, no grand connections, and that was before you… your…”

  “Before it came to be generally believed that I threw myself into sinful relations with a penniless officer of the militia?” Elizabeth did feel a twinge of hurt at Mr. Darcy’s assumption of her undesirability to other gentlemen, and his continued assumption that she had allowed Mr. Wickham to have his way with her. She smiled brilliantly to hide her annoyance. “I am not hurt at all. I have heard it all — you can speak it plainly to me.”

  As she did so Elizabeth twisted her cup of coffee around and around, until a little spilled, even though the cup was more than half empty.

  Mr. Darcy had finished his chocolate, and he put the cup and saucer down on the windowsill. “Miss Bennet, I am chagrined by my own thoughtlessness. I claim to be your friend. I wish to be your friend. Yet I speak thoughtlessly and rudely… I can see in your eye.” He briefly, almost accidentally touched her on the arm, the way a flirtatious gentleman might, but Elizabeth found it comforting. “You were hurt. And I did that. I promise to not do so again. Honesty is no excuse for speaking unkindly.”

  “Ah.” She felt almost teary suddenly. It was odd how Mr. Darcy could toss her emotions from side to side so easily. “No, but — honesty is an excuse for something. I do not wish you to pretend you see me as… as…” Elizabeth thoughtfully chewed on her lower lip.

  “As though you were a woman of great fortune with the general reputation of Caesar’s wife?”

  Elizabeth laughed.

  “It is strange. How these manners and conversations progress — I confess I do find it hard… there is a shade in my character which thinks that if something is true, that is alone enough for it to be right to say so. But I… I also know that is wrong. Why though?”

  “Because I already know.” Elizabeth shrugged. “True things can be painful. Perhaps if you were to tell me something I did not know, then the pain imposed by bringing an unpleasant matter to mind could be of value, for then you should have done me a favor. But to simply say what we both know…”

  “Ah! I think I understand now.”

  “Also, you reveal something of yourself. That you assume my fortune is tiny, my connections contemptible, that shows you see yourself above me, and that you are quite aware of it — Mr. Bingley, he knows his station and his connections are good, but he gives the impression of caring nothing for it.”

  “And I must appear quite aware of mine in comparison.” Darcy sighed. “In truth Bingley does not care much.”

  “And you give the impression of caring very much. That is not a way to engender good feelings in those who are below you.”

  “Ah — but friendship has no requirement of equality, merely independence.”

  “So as I do not depend in any way upon you, we can be friends, while you could not be friends with your valet.”

  “Not in the way we can be friends. He must keep me pleased with him for his own sake. You depend on the reading public at large, which cares little for my opinion of you — which opinion is that I can say honestly that your novels ought be read more widely. I have liked enormously the recommendation given to me that I purchase all of the novels.”

  “Incorrigible! I shall not forgive you so easily, simply because you flatter my work.”

  “Praise it. For it deserves my high praise — I shall try, I promise, I shall try to be more cognizant of the feelings of those whose station is beneath mine. I have always sought to do that with my own employees, but you are right, it is a matter I ought consider when with acquaintances and friends.”

  “Ah. Then I cannot forgive you now, for it is your future which shall determine whether you are worthy of the forgiveness. We must remain friends then for many years, to provide me opportunity enough to judge rationally whether you deserve the forgiveness I expect you to prove worthy of — enough of that. Tell me a tale of your epic quest, like that of Odysseus seeking home, to find a woman worthy to be taken as wife by Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley.”

  “You do laugh at me.” Mr. Darcy grinned back at her, looking not at all displeased by that fact.

  Elizabeth smiled at him and she waved her finger in her face. “You are the subject now.”

  “I have done as normal when a man wishes a wife. Balls and parties, and acquaintances. For three years in a sequence, and not a single girl has yet matched everything upon my list. There have been some who came close, yet… they lacked something. Something I cannot describe. Each such woman felt not… right. And so I am here, when I expected to be married these two years and with a child already. This has become tiresome. Dreadful, dreary, tiresome.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that you have too many particulars on your list?”

  “Yes, but… it cannot be impossible.”

  “You think London must be faced in moderation not on account of any deficiency in London — a perfect place — but because the herculean task exhausts you, that task of finding the single perfect woman who must exist, for after all the single perfect man exists, and God would not have failed to create his—”

  Darcy laughed, and he caught Elizabeth’s eye, which made something flutter in her stomach. “You have painted a pretty, pretty picture of me, as the most pompous and arrogant man imaginable.”

  “You are ‘the single perfect man’. And were I Socrates wishing to dialogue with you, we would quickly establish that perfection must include perfection in arrogance.”

  “You need make no pretense to be an elderly man, with a flowing white beard, and a tendency to corrupt the youth—”

  “Scurrilous lies. The youth corrupted me!”

  “I admit it without argument: I am proud.”

  Elizabeth smiled at him. He had the closest to a defensive look on his face that Elizabeth had yet seen in the course of their delightful acquaintance. There was a wrinkling in his usually smooth brow as he looked back at her, to assess how she considered him.

  For a moment there was a loss of voice and time. They both looked into each other’s eyes.

  Elizabeth just smiled, curious to see if Mr. Darcy would be able to speak whilst he looked at her. She rather wondered if he knew that they were flirting more shamelessly than the most accomplished flirt — for example a Lydia or a Mr. Wickham — could.

  She rather thought he had no idea.

  “You do not wish to crow at my admitting such?” Darcy looked to the side at last, his face a little flushed. It was a good look on his skin.

  “Mr. Darcy, my dear friend — we all know you are arrogant. That was established within ten minutes of your entrance into the room.”

  “Proud, not arrogant — arrogance implies a vanity, an emptiness to the claim of superiority. I cannot stand anything with that emptiness. I am not vain. And I am not proud to an excess. Where there is a real superiority of mind and character, pride will always remain under good regulation.”

  “Of a certainty. Your pride is better regulated than that of any other man with so much pride that I have ever met.”

  Darcy tilted his head and looked hard at her. “I cannot determine if you merely tease me, or if you think me absurd.”

  “What a question!” Elizabeth grinned, and drank the last swallow of her coffee. She set the cup and saucer on the windowsill on top of Darcy’s. “I confess, I do not know. Both. Yes, both. I like you, for all your pride and what absurdity you do have.”

  He grinned again, showing off his gleaming white teeth, and that he was really, beneath it all, quite good natured and a good sport.

  After this the conversation became general again, and soon dinner was called.

  But Elizabeth could not help feeling a glow in her heart, and a slight jump every time she looked at Mr. Darcy. She was falling into a dangerous infatuation. She k
new that Mr. Darcy would never marry her — and she would never marry him.

  To depend upon any man, even a man she liked so much as Mr. Darcy, was an anathema to Elizabeth’s soul.

  Mrs. Bennet through stratagem placed Elizabeth between Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy. While she thought that Mr. Darcy was a more likely conquest for Elizabeth from the way they spoke, she also knew that he was a very great man, and she should not count on such a hope.

  Elizabeth did seem to enjoy speaking to Mr. Bingley.

  Besides a little jealousy between the two friends, a little competition could only be good for Elizabeth’s appeal to the both of them.

  The party at the table was small enough that the conversation remained general, and much of it consisted of Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bennet arguing over a point of philosophy and the best means of translating certain texts from Greek or Latin into the vernacular.

  Elizabeth was not at all surprised to find that in addition to his other, ample, virtues, Mr. Darcy had a scholarly bent.

  Following dinner the women returned to the drawing room.

  Mrs. Hurst clearly liked neither Mrs. Bennet nor Elizabeth, but she was polite, and the three engaged in a conversation upon the fashions in London that entirely lacked animation, and included, on occasion, what Elizabeth believed to be sly references to how unfashionable Elizabeth’s dresses were.

  Elizabeth had long since decided she would not throw away her slender resources on clothes, and instead only replaced her garments when they grew old and worn.

  Fortuitously Mr. Bennet did not keep the gentlemen seated around the dining table with their cigars and port for any great length of time. Instead they rejoined the women, and the group played a game of speculation, followed by a call for music which Elizabeth and Louisa Hurst both indulged.

  Elizabeth had never been a great musician, and she had practiced seldom while in London. However she did enjoy singing, and despite the ample deficiencies of her performance, it was clear that Darcy was decidedly taken by her song. She smiled at him after she finished her performance, and he smiled back at her.

  Soon the time would come for the party to break up.

  Elizabeth looked at Mr. Darcy’s shining face, and she could not recall an evening that she had enjoyed more, not even in London. And she was quite too pleased with the time she had spent tonight to worry as to the cause of her joy.

  However then it chanced that a rough knocking on the door of Longbourn shattered the tranquility of the quiet night and brought this fine evening of conversation, cards, company and song to an untimely and unpleasant end.

  An end that would leave the memory of the night stained black in our heroine’s mind, for that was the color of the envelope that arrived.

  Mr. Bennet started from his reclined seat when the first pounding shook the front door. “Who could make such a racket at this hour. Overly polite thieves?”

  “Perhaps news for one of you that could not await your return to Netherfield?” Mrs. Bennet said worriedly to Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley.

  That thought brought a cold presentiment to Elizabeth, though Mrs. Bennet’s particular notion was highly unlikely.

  A pale Mrs. Hill brought a sweaty rider into the drawing room from the door. The man pulled his wet oilskin cap from his head, and pulled politely at his forelock. “Which of you gentle sirs is being Mr. Bennet?”

  “I am.” Papa came towards him, with a stride firmer than his voice.

  “Express message! An express sent direct from Downling Parsonage, sir. Not a good message, I fear me. Not one pleasant at all.” He pulled from his pouch the fateful message in its fateful black envelope.

  Jane!

  Elizabeth’s heart seized as though an icy fist clenched her chest.

  Was it Jane? Had Jane died?

  Would she never see Jane alive, smiling serenely again? Would she never be able to accuse Jane angrily for her abandonment, and then forgive her for it afterwards?

  Had one of the nieces Elizabeth had never met passed? But the death of a child would be no reason to send a letter by express. That happened too often.

  Her father worried the envelope open. His face was pale, sweaty, old.

  He pulled the letter with a spidery scrawl on it, in a weak feminine hand, from the black envelope. Mr. Bennet stared, barely breathing, at the words. The white of the paper, and the dyed black of the envelope made a striking contrast, like a skull gleaming empty socketed in the darkness.

  At last he let out a long sigh. “Mr. Hawdry, Jane’s husband, has died. Jane and her children will return to us once the new vicar has been chosen.”

  Chapter Nine

  Mr. Darcy did not see Elizabeth Bennet, the woman who occupied day by day an ever larger portion of his waking and his dreaming thoughts, until the fourth day following that eventful dinner at Longbourn.

  He had feared the Bennet family would enter deep mourning, and he would not see Miss Bennet again for several weeks. By such a late date he would have neared the projected end of his so far delightful stay at Netherfield.

  However when Mr. Darcy arrived at Lucas Lodge for a supper party with Mr. Bingley, Mr. Hurst and Mrs. Hurst, he found Elizabeth along with her father and mother already present in the low ceilinged drawing room.

  She wore a lovely light yellow dress that left her fine rounded arms bare, and allowed Darcy to admire the glowing skin above Elizabeth’s collarbone. She smiled brilliantly at him, and drawn happily by her delight in seeing him, Darcy swiftly stood near to Elizabeth — she was too dear a friend to be that distant Miss Bennet in his mind. But that meant nothing beyond that they were intimate acquaintances who valued each other greatly. “You look lovely—” Darcy flushed slightly as he realized he had complimented her person, and as he saw Elizabeth’s smile brighten. “I worried you would not come in company, for at least a while longer.”

  “No, no — I am determined to visit my friends, no matter that Mr. Hawdry determined it was incumbent upon himself to die.”

  There was something odd about Elizabeth… her appearance, her manner… something. This niggled at the back of Darcy’s mind. But he could not pinpoint immediately what.

  “When shall your sister return to Longbourn? — I can imagine what melancholy I would feel were my sister’s husband to depart.”

  “Yes. Only a week more.” Elizabeth shrugged. She spoke with an unusually flat tone. “She claims to long for home, to be surrounded by us — if what life she had built in Downling for herself cannot hold her, it is sensible to return to her new settled location quick as can.”

  “You do not sound…” Darcy shook his head. “Shall you refrain from entering company for her sake, once she has arrived?”

  “Have you a particular interest in my answer?” Elizabeth replied archly, a mischievous light in her eyes.

  Darcy laughed at himself, and smiled at her, and he liked to see how she smiled back at him. Her brown eyes striking as always. “I speak as a selfish creature, caring nothing for your unhappiness at the death of a man I have never met.”

  “I shall forgive you, Mr. Darcy, as your selfishness lies in desiring more of my company. And being a vain woman, as you are a vain man—”

  “I would protest, but you have already rejected such protest, and insisted I am vain.”

  Elizabeth laughed, and Darcy was glad to see that despite somewhat less enthusiasm than her normal manner, she had not been cast low and dejected by the death of her brother-in-law.

  “As a vain woman, I like when men such as yourself display such selfishness.”

  “What did he die of — I cannot imagine Mr. Hawdry was very old if he had married your sister.”

  “No, neither very young. Some fever, inflammation of the lungs. Something.” Elizabeth flapped her hand back and forth, dismissing the question. “Jane hardly wrote out a proper retelling of whatever quackery the doctors blamed his death upon — understandable. Understandable under the circumstances — Mr. Hawdry caught sick during a dutiful pastoral vis
it, and I can only rejoice that he did not deliver the contagion to Jane or one of the children.”

  “Simply like that, and so fast.” Darcy grimaced. “Momento mori.”

  Elizabeth wagged her finger in front of Darcy’s face.

  This was the third or fourth time she had made that gesture in his presence; it must be one of her habitual forms of action. “No, no — say nothing like that. Always morose. We are always morose after someone dies. Everyone clatters on upon the commonness of death, its suddenness; how we should each and every one think upon how we might slip away in an instant. The consequence of every death is that we each find ourselves obliged to say the same over-worn trite phrases, again. And again. And then yet one or two more times again. It kills by boredom when the disease killed by killing.”

  “Miss Bennet, that is not… your normal manner. You do despise the trite — but there is nothing trite about our departure from this world. Death is not a matter to make jest about.”

  “Why ever not? Following the black death, they decorated every house and church with grinning skulls — I do not wish to make jest of Mr. Hawdry’s death. I wish merely to avoid thought upon it. I am bored with it. We each shall die all the same no matter how much or how little we speak upon it: No talk of death!”

  “You are not wearing the black armband for your brother, like your parents.”

  It gave Darcy an uncomfortable feeling, to see Elizabeth acting in an exaggeratedly improper manner, when he expected her to be… unconventional, but not sneering at a matter of such seriousness as mourning conventions, and the death of her own brother-in-law. It was like she was not so good, and not so moral as he imagined her.

  Of course a woman who would let Wickham have his way with her would not be moral nor good.

  Elizabeth stood tall and said with a firm, unapologetic voice, “No. No I have chosen not to.”

  It was unspoken, but clear, she was challenging him, saying he could think ill of her as he wished.

  “I had thought something off — when I saw you. Why not? That is a sunny dress. Are you happy that he is deceased?”