Eventually Darcy, looking at some clouds gathering in the west, said: “I shall go back in; I wish to speak with the Colonel. It threatens rain, Dearest; do keep an eye on the weather.”
Going in, Darcy found that his cousin was in his apartments; he found him busily selecting and laying out a number of personal items to have with him on his journey: books, a carefully folded map, writing materials, and the like. He looked up as Darcy knocked at the open door. “What news? Is all well?” he asked apprehensively.
“Rest assured, Edmund, all is well; there has been no change, and my aunt is asleep.”
His cousin looked relieved, and went back to his work. “I cannot tell you how anxious I am to be gone; at every moment I anticipate receiving word that the plans have returned to status quo ante.”
“No, I think you are safe, there,” Darcy said. “But, Edders, I need to pass along some things your mother told me. Primarily—and these are my impressions, not her words—she feels that all three of you are lost to her: that she is completely bereft and abandoned. And, if I may offer an opinion on so close a family matter, she is not wrong. I find no fault with any one of you, you understand, it is only that your lives are pulling you in different directions at present, and she feels it exceedingly, as it is her lot to be the only one to remain behind. Secondly, I believe she felt a little put upon, as both you and my uncle were so strongly opposed to her: forgive me—again, I find no fault on either side, and am only offering my observations for consideration, not opprobrium.”
“Of course, Dirks—do not trouble yourself over that; but what you tell me is troubling.” He slowly let his things drop from his hands, evidently thinking hard. Looking up, he said, “I fear that, in my eagerness for this assignment, I have lost sight of some things nearer home. Will you excuse me?” So saying, he went to his writing desk, and drew out a sheaf of paper.
Chapter Four
The Colonel left the following morning: the family all turned out to see him off. His mother embraced him most tenderly before he mounted, his missive to her obviously having effected a rapprochement between them. Darcy and Georgiana settled in for an extended stay; early in the first week of June they received the Colonel’s last letter written in England, posted from Dover just before he sailed for the port city of Genoa. It affected Lady Andover very much, and she was in low spirits for several days. Now came the period of waiting: it would be a month at the very least before they might have word of the Colonel’s arrival. During that interval, Lord Andover made several trips to London, but could glean no serviceable news concerning the Italian campaign; Darcy did have the pleasure of seeing his aunt and uncle reconcile—having given his uncle the hint that perhaps a ride together in the countryside around Clereford would not go amiss—and also of seeing his aunt regain somewhat of her former strength, although her careworn features bore evidence that her fears persisted.
But where his own difficulties were concerned, as the days passed Darcy found his thoughts lingering on Elizabeth more and more often with regret, rather than anger; he remembered her many claims to worth and virtue, and began to overlook the manner of her rejection of his proposal; while he did this more often than he realised, whenever he did catch himself at it he would heatedly reprimand himself for the weakness of his resolve, and dwell on his causes for anger with her for as long as necessary to restore order to the state of his emotions.
He instituted a daily constitutional, taking his aunt out for a walk each afternoon, in the shrubbery when the weather threatened, or for longer walks into the park when fine, in hopes the exercise would be of benefit, and that she might find his company soothing. Often Georgiana would accompany them, and on occasion His Lordship would make a point of taking Darcy’s place. Darcy benefitted from these outings too, for they gave him a welcome respite from his own thoughts.
On one such stroll, Darcy and his aunt were by themselves, taking their ease under a spreading tree in the park as relief from the heat of the sun; Darcy, looking out over the countryside and, noting a similarity to the countryside near Meryton, unconsciously allowed his thoughts to drift once again in the direction of Elizabeth.
His aunt broke in on his musings: “Who is she, Darcy?”
Darcy looked at her in surprise. “To whom do you refer, Aunt?”
“This girl you keep sighing over—who is she? Is it the one from Hertfordshire, or some one in Town you have as yet failed to mention? I do you the courtesy of believing it is not Miss Bingley.”
“Pardon me, Aunt, but I was not ‘sighing over’ any one, I assure you,” replied he with dignity.
The lady scoffed. “Men always suppose that they can so perfectly disguise their feelings,” said she, “but in fact, you are none of you any more guarded than puppies; you may be able to regulate your features, but you reveal your thoughts with your every breath, to any one who takes the trouble to look. So, my question stands: who is she?”
“Really, Aunt, you must not ask such things,” Darcy insisted.
“Only one pleasant thing accompanies age, Darcy—the prerogative of speaking one’s mind: saying whatever one wishes, to whomever one wishes. Come now, this dodging about will not avail you.” She set her hands on her hips and faced him squarely. “It is the Hertfordshire girl, is not it?”
“If I say it is, will you let it be?”
She pretended to give it consideration. “To be perfectly honest, I fear that is highly doubtful,” she told him after a moment, a hint of mockery in her tone. “No, I see no hope at all.” She looked at him more seriously: “Darcy—I saw the look upon your face when your marrying was mentioned between us, when first you came to Clereford. Unhappiness recognises its fellows, my dear, and I recognised yours; I have been waiting for you to mention it, but you are determined, it seems, to languish about and brood without the help of your relations.”
Seeing that she would not relent, he offered her his arm and gestured forward along the path. They resumed their stroll, and he said, “What would you have me say? That I fell in love with the wrong lady? That I made a complete fool of myself? That every thought of her carries with it a heavy charge of disgrace, and even, may I say, anger? Very well: all that, and more.” A thought occurring to him, he added, “But Aunt, Georgiana must not know of this; she was greatly affected by even the transitory hope of a sister, and I would not have her regrets re-awakened.”
Lady Andover nodded her understanding. She said, “But that was not anger I saw just now, nor when I first made mention; are you sure that is all there is to it?”
Although it pained him to admit it, after a pause Darcy allowed: “No, I know it is not, but that is only because I am an utter fool. There was a great deal I hoped for, at one point, but I fear that is all in the past.”
“Tell me what happened,” she said, patting his arm comfortingly.
And so Darcy related the history, with as much honesty and detachment as he could, starting in Hertfordshire and then into Kent, not forgetting to describe his actions in the matter of Bingley and Elizabeth’s sister; he finished with his proposal at Hunsford. Lady Andover listened in silence for the most part, occasionally asking for more information on this point or that.
At his conclusion, he found his aunt staring at him in wonder and consternation. “You dear, sweet idiot,” said the lady, not unkindly, but quite distinctly. Darcy looked at her, startled at this less than muted response to the chronicle of his trials of the heart.
“I beg your pardon?” he demanded.
“Not mine, but certainly your Elizabeth’s, and more than likely your friend Bingley’s,” she said reprovingly.
“What can you mean, Aunt?”
“Dear child—have you listened to yourself? What possessed you to explain—in great detail, apparently—how completely she would dishonour you and your family, were you to deign to admit her into it? Is that your idea of a proper proposal? Is that how you would seek to endear yourself to some one? Heavens above!”
“But I
only spoke the truth,” he protested, “as she must have known it, herself; I believed it only right to assure her that I had considered it, too, and it was of no consequence.”
“Oh, Darcy!” cried his aunt. “You told a lady of some standing—in her own country, of course, but still, a gentlewoman by any standard—that to marry her would be a degradation? You imagined that she would feel unworthy of you? So unworthy that she would need to be persuaded to accept your magnanimous offer of protection from the consequences of her unworthiness, before the more respectable members of Society? How uncommonly generous of you!”
In all his previous deliberations, his anger and mortification had largely held Darcy back from considering the affair from Elizabeth’s point of view; now, his aunt’s words brought to him a new perspective on the matter: perhaps he had placed too much emphasis on that aspect, in his attempt to persuade her that it would be well; —had he?
As this first, probing tendril of uncertainly took hold, it grew apace; he came with shocking rapidity to see his entire proposal, from the moment he walked into the drawing-room of the Parsonage till he fled into the night, as one long, wilfully insolent and wholly astounding exhibition of arrogance and presumption; indeed, each moment, and nearly every expression, seemed an attempt to surpass the last for ill-bred effrontery. Knowing now that Elizabeth despised him, and had not the least interest in marrying him, he was forced to examine their exceedingly animated discussion from her position. His memory, unfortunately reliable always, supplied him with a completely accurate and excruciatingly painful transcript of the proceedings, as it must have appeared to her.
“So evident a design of offending and insulting me…”—her first salvo. Weighing his expressions of devotion and esteem, or what he had intended as such, his words now took on a very different tenor: “…the demands of character and judgement always stood opposed to inclination,” he had said. God in Heaven! he railed at himself, why not simply slap her? Could he have been more offensive?
“You cannot deny that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other…”—the second volley. Even at the time, in London with Bingley, he recalled hoping Elizabeth might never know of his interference; fate had, once again, made him its jape. Of course Elizabeth would despise him for an interfering, officious scoundrel: how should she not? And what had he done? Heaped coals on the fire with his affectation of unconcern. The wonder was how Elizabeth had managed to maintain her grip on civility; and he now recognised that, even in such trying circumstances, she had spoken only the truth as it was known to her at the time, without exaggeration or distortion, just as he hoped he would have. To realise this was to see her perfections yet more clearly, and how thoroughly he had destroyed any chance he might have had with her.
“Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham…”—this was the final round, the one that had loosed his tongue and released that torrent of wounded primacy which had sealed the tomb holding all his prospects of happiness. Here was the foundation for all the rest: he had expected her to understand and accept, to take his part, solely on the strength of his character—yet he had shown her little enough to value in it; and certainly, given what he now understood of her views, she had small cause to take his part on any point whatsoever. Prior to his letter, what had he ever done that might have informed Elizabeth on his character, or Wickham’s? And, given his behaviour throughout their acquaintance, why should she not have shown a preference for Wickham? Perhaps, had she had the knowledge he had provided in his letter available to her at the time, especially as regarded Wickham, she might have seen her way to believing him; but surely not as things had then stood. Darcy quite nearly writhed in discomfort as these things became clear to him.
Looking further back, all the way to that first evening at the Meryton assembly, he saw nothing in his behaviour but an endless succession of slights and discourtesy, if not necessarily towards her, certainly towards all her neighbours and relations. She may even have overheard his disobliging comment to Bingley concerning herself (“…almost from the first moments of our acquaintance…”)—Heaven help him, had she? If she had…dear God above! —he was in an agony of shame at the mere possibility. But even had she not, his behaviour that night was calculated to offend the society of Meryton much more than it had been to recommend him to their notice—distant, judgemental, and ill-tempered, it was rather intended to disrupt and unsettle their society, than become part of it: the very height of incivility. “Had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner…” Would he ever be free of the torment of that phrase, after this? Such a fine gentleman was he! —had he not gone to her in the full expectation of her acceptance, if only she might be led to rely on his assurances that he, as her husband and champion, would help her face down her detractors among the “better” elements of Society? How she must despise him! She would never see him again, that was certain—nor could he blame her.
Finally, working his way back again through his proposal, his embarrassment was such that he was almost mad with self-loathing. Impossible to imagine, that he could have said so much in so little time that could redound so to his discredit. On reaching this point in his introspections, which had not, in fact, required too very many steps along their path, he actually groaned out loud.
His aunt, who had been walking by his side in silence while Darcy laboured through these recollections and recriminations, now peered up at him sympathetically: “You begin to see it, do you?”
Unable to answer, Darcy could only nod despondently. After walking a little further, and another consideration obtruding on his internal reproaches, he asked, “You do not blame me for having made the offer?”
“Overmastering passions overmaster us,” the lady replied, a hint of sadness in her tone. “That’s how you know what they are. There is no fighting them.”
The truth of this struck Darcy with force; looking back over the six weeks that had passed since Hunsford, he recognised that in spite of all his anger and shame, Elizabeth had never truly been supplanted in his estimation and in his heart; notwithstanding the wounds he had suffered, his estimation for her continued unabated, and she remained his standard of perfection in women. This insight carried him neatly out of his mortification, to sink him directly beneath a torrent of pain and loss. “But, then—what does one do now, Aunt?” he asked in subdued tones. “Having been overmastered, I find myself alone still—the lady despises me.” All his sorrow and regret from the aftermath of his proposal descended upon him, and he was sore-pressed to keep his aunt from seeing how low he was taken.
“Dear Fitzwilliam,” she said, laying a condoling hand on his arm and shaking her head, “the future is closed to us; were it not, life would be insupportable, as only uncertainty admits of hope.” She considered silently a while as they walked. “There is no worthy answer to your question,” she said at length. “Perhaps the classics hold an answer as good as any: time, and a journey. Take your friend and go—go abroad, or go north, or west; your uncle and I shall care for Georgiana.”
“There is no cure in distance or travel,” he said unhappily. He knew full well that his troubles would follow him, wherever he might contrive to go.
“No—no cure,” allowed Lady Andover. “Only distraction, so that time, the one true cure, can pass more readily.”
Chapter Five
That this was little spoken of between them thereafter, is not to be taken as saying it was little thought of, by either party. But Lady Andover had enough respect for her nephew’s heart and head to leave him to find his way through by himself, that evidently being how he preferred it; and, being not without cares herself, she was more often occupied with her apprehensions concerning her nearer relation.
On his part, Darcy’ reflections were more clamorous and self-critical over the ensuing weeks than at any other time in his life. Not an hour could pass without his wishing he might simply wrest the memories of Kent from him
forever; or better, go back and re-make the past. “In a more gentleman-like manner” became an echoing litany in his mind: each incident, each recollection of his behaviour in both Meryton and Hunsford, concluded inevitably with this thought, scourging him endlessly with humiliation and remorse. At every point he had shown himself to be every thing he abhorred, and now he could barely face himself in the mirror.
Well, Elizabeth had given him to know her disdain, in sufficient and not unjustified reprisal; thinking on the matter more deeply still, he now could only imagine that the women he had known in London must have felt much the same as Elizabeth had, but had forborne to speak, out of an excess of civility, if not out of pure, unsullied avarice.
The one beneficial effect of his trials was that they gave him a new, more sympathetic view of how Georgiana must have suffered, when her dearest hopes were torn away from her; he knew now what it meant to see a future dispossessed of hope and joy; he determined he must do more for her pleasure in future.
But for himself he felt only contempt; there was nothing wise or worthy to be salvaged from his humiliation and anguish. The only wise thing that he could see to do, now it was too late, now that he had betrayed his deepest feelings and Elizabeth was lost to him, was simply to close his heart from that time forward, and neither seek nor expect love to enter his life again. He could not but recognise that much, even most, of his pain had been self-inflicted; yet it was that very knowledge that convinced him that he was unsuited for love, as it had been his own unconscionable assurance, presumption, and disregard for others that left him so little room for consolation. Georgiana had never wronged or slighted another in seeking love, as he had: his offenses were as natural to him as her virtue was to her. The inescapable conclusion was that he was simply not meant to form a true and lasting bond with any member of the other sex; and, with all the mistaken feelings, pain, and misunderstanding that love brought to every one he knew, there could be nothing to regret in letting it go. So he told himself, many times over; eventually, he came to allow it to be true.
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