Her eyes narrowed, but she only put her chin up, curtsied, and walked away from him. He followed a moment later, his face forcibly reset to impassivity. He would have left if he could, but the nature of the party prevented him. Elizabeth, for the sake of appearances, stood by him and smiled enough for both of them, but they felt the cold divide between them strongly. At the end of that long, long night she gave him her hand and he kissed it, but there was no warmth on either side.
That night in his chamber Darcy paced furiously about as Elizabeth’s cutting comment echoed in his mind. He saw again and again that look in her eyes—that sparkling look that once he had thought meant that she was happy, she was stimulated, she was as attracted to him as he was to her. Even knowing the last wasn’t true, it had never occurred to him that she was displeased with him, that she had always looked so, and gave those gay, bold answers because she was actually angry. It was almost unthinkable, but it had to be true. Her words confirmed it.
Then tonight, again, she had been angry. He would have thought that if she was angry, it would be with the company, with the banal, obsequious conversation, the tactless overtures, the meaningless chatter. He had thought she would be as tired of it as he was, that she would come to him for relief. All he had wanted to do was to take her to a quiet chair in a corner somewhere and have her talk to him; but all the while, she had been angry at him for some unknown offense. He was angry, too, and offended, but he was also, although he tried not to admit it, nervous.
Early the next morning, Elizabeth stood waiting under the beech tree that she had begun to think of as theirs. She felt sure that he would seek her there rather than wait to call at the house. There could be little privacy inside; only out here could they truly have their say.
She had a somewhat fatalistic feeling about the encounter to come. She regretted now what she had said to him, but, really, how could he be so uncivil to her friends? Her resentment over his behavior had built up for as long as she could endure. Who knew what would come of their speaking of it, but if he wanted to do so, she would not be silent.
After a few minutes she could hear hoof beats, and then Mr. Darcy came into sight, riding on his dappled grey. He pulled up a little distance from her, dismounted, and approached slowly. “Good morning,” he said. “Thank you for waiting for me.”
“Of course,” she murmured. There was a short, strained silence before, taking a breath, Elizabeth went on with courage, “I feel I should apologize to you for how I spoke to you last night. It was disrespectful and rude.”
“Yes.” He was studying her face, his own unreadable. Compressing her lips, unwilling to say more, Elizabeth waited in silence. Darcy turned away, removing his hat, and walked a few steps, then back again. He cleared his throat. “I thank you for the apology, but I do not feel I can accept it until you tell me why you were so angry with me last night. The manner of my offense is quite unknown to me.”
“I wonder, sir, how you should feel if, upon attending a social occasion with your friends and long-time acquaintances, I should sit on a chair in a corner the whole evening, making conversation with no one and giving only the shortest possible replies to those who attempted to make conversation with me—and if I should shrug and look away when someone congratulated me on our upcoming union. I wonder, sir, if you would feel that such behavior reflected well on you or on your choice of me as your wife? Would you be proud or mortified? Pleased or offended? I put it to you, Mr. Darcy.” She lifted her chin, “how would you feel?”
Darcy had been staring at her with growing incredulity and chagrin in his expression. The blood rushed to his face; he struggled to maintain an appearance of calm. When she finished, he swallowed and looked away, running his hand through his hair. For some moments he said nothing, then, “My faults, by this calculation, are heavy indeed!”
“That only you can decide, sir, but you wished to know the source of my anger. It is this.”
He did not know what to say; he was well-bred enough to recognize his own rudeness when it was pointed out to him, but, really, with such provocation! “You cannot tell me, Elizabeth,” he said imperiously, “that you do not find the conversation of most of your neighbors generally insipid and foolish. I knew no one in the room beyond yourself very well, and I have told you before that I do not join the conversation of strangers easily. I am sorry if my behavior offended you, but I had no reason to exert myself to please a group of people I do not ever expect to spend much time with.”
Tears started to Elizabeth’s eyes; she whispered, “I can tell you one reason: because they are people who matter to me!” She turned and walked away.
Darcy stared after her for a moment and then, with a muffled exclamation, he pursued her with long strides. “Elizabeth, wait!” he said, gripping her elbow and turning her to him. Then he saw that she was crying, and remorse seized him. Wanting to embrace her but unsure if it would be welcome, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it on her. “Please don’t cry, sweetheart,” he pleaded huskily.
But having begun to cry, Elizabeth found it singularly difficult to stop. It was undignified and weak and thoroughly embarrassing, but it was as if so many of her underlying apprehensions about this marriage were bubbling out now, and the release offered by a bout of crying was overwhelming. So, to Darcy’s exceeding alarm, she buried her face in his large lawn handkerchief and proceeded to sob.
Thoroughly miserable, unable to leave her and unsure what to do, he took a brief, furious tramp in a circle around the clearing before coming back and drawing her with determination into his arms. To his relief, she did not resist him but subsided against his shoulder. Her bonnet prevented him from having access to her face and head, but he stroked the back of her neck lightly, feeling rather like he felt when comforting Georgiana, except that this was the woman he was in love with in his arms, and somehow he had been the cause of all this. He found it hard to believe that his fearless Elizabeth should have been this completely overset simply by his not talking much to her neighbors, but no other cause presented itself for his blame.
When at last she grew still, Elizabeth was surprised to realize how calm and comfortable she felt leaning against him with his arms wrapped around her. His coat was damp beneath her cheek, but she found herself unable to move except to tilt her head up to see his face. She found him looking down with worried eyes. “I—I’m sorry, I—,” she whispered, but before she could continue he bent his head and kissed her, softly and deliberately, once, twice, three times. Again she was surprised to find how comforting it was in that circumstance. Her brows furrowing just slightly, she lifted her hand and tentatively touched his cheek.
It was the first time she had ever touched him so intimately, and Darcy closed his eyes against it, his grip around her tightening. “Fitzwilliam,” she began again, and he smiled now to hear his name on her lips, “can we talk?”
Reluctantly, he nodded and let her go, watching as she straightened her bonnet and dried her cheeks. “I did not mean to disparage your friends, Elizabeth,” he said, though of course that was exactly what he had meant to do. “I am sure they are worthy people in their way, but I simply have nothing in common with any of them.”
“How can you know that?” she asked, meeting his eyes. “You cannot possibly determine something like that without talking to them.”
So they were back to where they were before. He sighed, feeling guilty and defensive and frustrated. “What is it that you want from me?” he demanded at last. “I am what I am; you knew this of me before you agreed to marry me! I have never liked large gatherings of people, and I do not converse comfortably except with those I am particularly acquainted with. Would you wish me to be like Bingley, bestowing my approval indiscriminately upon all?—or do you wish I had the easier manners of another, say, Mr. Wickham? Is that what you wish for me, Elizabeth, that I should make my way through the world by charm rather than by character? It is fortunate for me, I suppose, that Mr. Wickham had no fortune to additionally recommend hi
m, or my offer might not have been received so favorably!”
Elizabeth turned quite pale at his last bitter accusation, but she realized that jealousy had again taken over for him, and it was her turn to feel guilty now because she had wished—if she was honest, still wished—that his manners were a little more like Mr. Wickham’s. “I do not wish to talk of Mr. Wickham,” she said coldly. “And you are mistaken if you think that I value charm over character—or wealth over either!—but what does it say about your character, sir, that you are so willing to discount new acquaintances based on a superficial judgment? That is what you did to me the first time we encountered each other, wasn’t it? You thought me not worth your time, and now it is my friends whom you are treating this way!”
Her tone was bitter and hurt; he turned away angrily. It was not fair of her, he thought, to throw that first meeting up in his face again, when he had already apologized for it. He had been at fault—had he not already admitted he was at fault?—why did she persist in making such a matter out of it?
A long silence lapsed before Elizabeth began suddenly to speak again, this time in a softer voice. Her choice of subject surprised him and caught his attention. “When I was a child,” she began, “a child of eight years or so, I strayed off Longbourn’s property onto land belonging to the Lucas family. Sir William was Mr. Lucas back then. There was an old, dried-up, partially covered well there, and I fell into it, all the way to the bottom, and broke my leg below the knee.” Darcy turned his face back towards her, the frown momentarily gone, listening closely. “Men went out to look for me, but for hours no one could find me. It was Sir William—Mr. Lucas—who, just come home from his shop with all the servants out searching, remembered the well, and without even stopping for the time it would have taken to send a message for help, he took a rope and went out to look for me himself. He tied one end to a tree and climbed down in the well, then he had me hold on to him while he pulled us both back out. He was not, even then, an . . . athletic man, and it was very difficult for him; I do not know how he managed it. But he got us out, and he carried me all the way back to Longbourn.” She paused a moment, her words sinking into the silence. “It is very likely that I owe him my life.”
Darcy swallowed. “I did not know,” he murmured, running a hand through his hair.
She sighed, sitting down on a fallen log. “It’s not just Sir William, you know. Mrs. Long, the lady you once sat next to for half an hour without speaking? She can seem like a foolish old woman when you first meet her, but she has a very tender heart. Nearly all of her free time she spends making clothes for local children. Even the tenth baby of the poorest tenant receives a new gown from Mrs. Long—and one made with the same care that she puts into all of her clothing. I have seen women in tears because they never thought they would have anything so fine for their babies. There are some families I know whose children are kept clothed almost solely by Mrs. Long’s efforts.
“Even my mother has her moments,” she continued, a reminiscent tone taking over her voice. “One year we got news that one of our tenants had an infant son who was sick and going to die. Perhaps because it was a boy, and she had never been able to have one herself, but there was a look on her countenance I never saw before—or since—and before I knew it, she was out the door with Hill and blankets and hot soup and a bottle of Hill’s all-purpose remedy that she used to dose us all with regularly as children, and we did not see anything more of either of them for the rest of that day or the night. When morning came she returned, looking tired, and went straight to her room. She never talked of it—I think she thought a woman of her station should not be nursing the tenants’ children—and out of respect for her neither did Hill, but we heard afterwards that the little boy recovered, and his mother swore that my mother saved his life.” She looked up at Darcy’s back; he had turned from her and was leaning with his arm against a tree. “Every year on the anniversary of that day, that same boy, who is six now, brings my mother a bouquet of flowers he picks himself. She receives him in the parlor and serves him tea and cakes, but nobody knows what they talk of, because she will not let anyone else in until he is gone.” Tears stung at her eyes again; she felt tired and wrung out. When Darcy did not immediately respond, she stood. “I would like to return to the house now, if you do not mind.”
He gave no answer, so she walked home again, went upstairs to her room, and lay down, wondering what on earth would become of her relationship with Darcy now.
As for Darcy, he had been completely unable to speak. Elizabeth’s words had cut through him like knives, shaming him deeply, and shame was not an emotion he was accustomed to experiencing. He could barely accept it, accept the necessity or the rightness of it. Was it possible that he, who had studied throughout his life to improve his mind and character, had overlooked such an essential flaw? Had he been, after all, so much at fault?
He thought about a young, injured Elizabeth, alone and frightened in that well, and of the kindly man who rescued her—and lived to be slighted by her future husband. He thought of Mrs. Long, whose face he could not even remember, but who apparently had deserved greater courtesy from him than she had received. And he thought of Mrs. Bennet, a silly woman somehow miraculously redeemed from her silliness by one selfless act. Elizabeth had told him that story for a reason: not because she was denying her mother’s faults but because she wanted him to mitigate his scorn, to soften his manner and show her some grace. He had, he had to admit it, had very little real grace to bestow on anyone in the vicinity of Meryton except his betrothed, and certainly not within her home. The fact that they were to be his family, too, had made him more short with them, not less; his continual mortification over the connection kept his temper on short rein when he was with them. And he, both selfishly and foolishly, had never paused to consider how his acrimony was affecting the one he loved.
Darcy considered himself a good man—an honest, just, generous man. He practiced those virtues diligently in all his dealings with those he considered within the area of his concern. But when it came to those outside it, those whose station was too high to merit his pity and too low to merit his respect, he was largely indifferent. Up until now, he had never seen any reason to question that attitude, reasoning that his approval was as unnecessary to them as theirs was to him, but Elizabeth’s rebuke had thrown his actions into a new light. He remembered all at once the conversation they’d once had about the relationship between conversation and charity. He had not understood her then, but he did now. His refusal to talk was an active unkindness, a deliberate slight on the value of those he had thought beneath him. He had not thought their feelings even worth the effort of a few polite remarks and a smile or two. He certainly had not been willing to consider lowering his own dignity to promote theirs. Nor . . . his brows furrowed deeply in pain . . . nor to promote Elizabeth’s happiness either. Not even for her.
It was a long time before Darcy slowly made his way back to Netherfield. He did not go to Longbourn that day, and Elizabeth made up some excuse to her family, all the while fearing that she had irrevocably destroyed their delicate relationship. Yet how could she wish words so true, so necessary, so pressing unsaid?
Chapter Seventeen
When the following morning brought no Darcy to Longbourn again, Elizabeth found her family’s surprise and her mother’s alarm more than she could bear. “Did you have a fight?” demanded Mrs. Bennet. “Lizzy, do tell me you did not have a fight! You could not have been so foolish as to quarrel with Mr. Darcy, could you? Oh, I knew how it would be! This fortune—this great good fortune—is thrown in your lap, due to no good quality on your part, and what do you do? You throw it away by pointlessly quarreling with the richest man you are ever likely to meet! Oh, why could he not have proposed to Jane? She would never have behaved this way!”
“We were going to walk into town this morning, Mama,” said Jane hastily. “We thought we could look at lace for Lizzy’s wedding gown.”
“I don’t see wh
y when Mr. Darcy doesn’t want her anymore!”
“Mr. Darcy loves Lizzy,” she insisted, glancing worriedly at her silent sister. “You know how much in love with her he is. Just because he has not come to call this morning does not mean he has ceased loving her! And besides, he is an honorable man. He would never even think of breaking an engagement.”
Mrs. Bennet brightened slightly at this reminder of Mr. Darcy’s honor. “It’s true I suppose, isn’t it? He signed the marriage papers, so he can hardly get out now, can he? Not when it’s been announced in the London papers and everything?”
“I am sure he would never even wish to. It’s just that there is very little to do at Longbourn, you know, and he is a man with many business concerns. Why should he call when we are to walk to town anyway?”
“You should have sent him a note asking him to accompany you. Or maybe he could send you in his carriage!” She brightened still further. “My, it would be a fine thing for my girls to be seen about town in Mr. Darcy’s carriage! Lizzy, you must send a note immediately, asking him.”
“I shall do no such thing, Mama,” said Elizabeth quietly. “We do not need a carriage for a walk we make twice a week anyway. Why should a servant travel the four miles to Netherfield so that a carriage may travel it back again just to convey us one mile to Meryton? Mr. Darcy will come back to Longbourn when he is ready, and we must give him the privacy he needs in the meantime.”
Mrs. Bennet was not so easily silenced, but the girls managed to get away from Longbourn eventually. Kitty and Lydia ran and skipped ahead while the two eldest walked quietly, arm in arm. Jane had already heard the tale of the argument, and while she continued in perfect confidence that Mr. Darcy’s love could not be shaken by anything less than some unthinkably immoral act on Elizabeth’s part, she knew her sister was worried, and so pressed her arm sympathetically. Elizabeth herself said nothing, unable to articulate even to herself the nature of her fears and desires.
Unequal Affections: A Pride and Prejudice Retelling Page 24