Into Kent (21 page)

Darcy looked at
Elizabeth in disbelief: he was astounded she could so misinterpret his actions; he had done no more than what was right, and necessary. In the absence of an overpowering affection for his friend on her sister’s part, how could he
not
act to preserve his friend from such an alliance? And, her partiality to her sister notwithstanding, he knew her to be entirely sensible of her family’s indiscretions and improprieties: had he not seen her embarrassed looks, time and again, in the face of her mother’s ill-bred improprieties? Moreover, if not in justice to his friend, to what purpose did he follow him to London? If it was not a generous act to step in, to save his friend and support him through his heartache, when his own heart was wounded, then he did not know how to call it.

“Can you deny that you have done it?” she demanded, piqued by his silence.

Darcy, still amazed, answered back directly, “I have no wish of denying that I did every thing in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards
him
I have been kinder than towards myself.” While he had no wish to antagonise Elizabeth further, he could not forbear to express somewhat of the anger he felt towards the unfeeling rejection she had offered him, in the irritation of her feelings.

“But it is not merely this affair,” she continued, her eyes fixed hard upon him, “on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? or under what misrepresentation, can you here impose upon others?”

Dear God above! Still, and again?
Darcy felt his control beginning to slip away at the sound of that accursed name, and all his anger came to the fore. With greatest effort did he maintain his control, and manage to say, though in heated accents, “You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns.”

“Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?” demanded
Elizabeth.

“His misfortunes!” Darcy spat out in aggravation and disgust, as his self-command gave way. “Yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.” His abhorrence at having to speak of this individual, to defend himself against him, when he had thought by now to be rejoicing in his betrothal, was beyond all endurance.

Elizabeth would not wait for him to continue. “And of your infliction,” she accused him angrily. “You have reduced him to his present state of poverty, comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages, which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life, of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this! and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule.”

This was Darcy’s end; he could do no more: that she still—even now, after knowing him and knowing Wickham, and after having listened to his proposal of
marriage
—that she still would take Wickham’s part and give him preference; that she would still believe Darcy could somehow throw the man over without cause, could act in complete disregard of all that was right and honourable, was intolerably offensive. His tolerance overborne, he was done; and with the lady of his heart casting her despite in his face, nearly three decades of pent up anger reared its head and released its strength: “And this is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed!” As his anger took possession of him, he turned his back that he might not show all that he felt, and stepped away from her for a moment. She had never said anything, not a single thing! —to prove his actions wrong, or to support her low opinion of him, as in all honesty she could not; he was convinced that she must now be speaking merely from anger—both on her own account, and on her sister’s. But he was well assured that Elizabeth did, in fact, know perfectly well the difficulties that must attend their marriage, and could no longer tolerate accepting any blame on that account; or on
any
account, in fact. These thoughts taking no more than three steps to run through his mind, he spun to face her, and his vaulting anger answered hers: “But perhaps these offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I with greater policy concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination—by reason, by reflection, by every thing. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just.” Unhappily, his tongue was at this point running his affairs without reference to those powers he might, under kinder circumstances, have used to moderate his expressions. With hardly a pause for breath, he drove on: “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connexions? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”

Beneath his high resentment and unfettered emotion, Darcy was immediately ashamed of having spoken the words; but, in the heat of his wrath, he could not allow them to be unjust—they were no more than the regrettable truth. But he saw anger rise in Elizabeth’s eyes, and a momentary foreboding entered his heart.

“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.”

She could not have chosen better: this last accusation, above all others, struck Darcy the hardest blow. To have behaved in an ungentlemanly fashion would have been a violation of every thing he believed to be right, all that he demanded of himself; but it was not he who had begun the incivilities; it was rather she who had set the heated, quarrelsome tone of their exchange, when she had rebuffed the offer of his heart so callously. He was formulating a stinging rebuttal when the import of the former portion of her statement struck heavily upon his consciousness.

When Darcy had been a young boy learning to shoot, the very first time he had fired on a living creature, a curious circumstance had occurred: his intended prey had been a rabbit, and just as he had laid his finger on the trigger, the small thing had turned to look full at him. He felt those rôles now reversed, as he looked into the burning contempt in Elizabeth’s eyes.

With cold precision she said, “You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”

Darcy felt the impact of this statement as it struck him; yet, as with many mortal wounds, he did not at first know its power. His first thought was merely confusion, then a mortified rejection of what his ears were telling him. Elizabeth, her face fully registering her wrath and scorn, went on, “From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

Only then did the truth illume Darcy to his core: this was neither a momentary pique over his delay in confessing his love, nor for his interference in her sister’s life—no; Elizabeth had never
concealed
her love: she had
felt
none, none at all. Nay, infinitely worse—she despised him entirely, and had done, all the time he was imagining she held a regard for him. Deep, deep within him, something failed—something vital and singular; but, still protected by the armour of his anger, he contained his injury and mortification. Their intimacy, the intimacy he had imagined, lay broken and twisted at his feet; he did not meet with her at any point, did not share any coincidence of esteem, hope, or intention; they were as strangers, and it was now absolutely necessary to keep the harm she had done him from showing on his face. With a dazed detachment sprung from his shock, he felt himself to be standing on one edge of a vast divide, and she, far distant, on the opposing; between them stretched a threatening void that pulled at him, compelling him forward towards ruination. In the crushing confusion and passion of the moment, his rational powers utterly renounced their sovereign control, but his manners—dull, plodding, and dependable—came once more to his rescue: “You have said quite enough, Madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.” Hardly knowing what he was saying or doing, he bowed and walked quickly from the room, holding back hard against his fevered emotions.

Once freed from
Elizabeth’s restraining influence, though, his anger emerged to fill his entire being; it supplanted his shame and sustained him on the uncommonly brief journey back to Rosings. Wickham’s treachery and Elizabeth’s wilful complicity in it enraged him with all the frustration and sense of injury he had suffered throughout his childhood; it was no less bitter  now to experience such want of faith and credence than it had been when he was a boy. He let himself in through the west wing, that he might not encounter any one of the household; on gaining his rooms, he instantly set himself the task of accepting and adjusting to this new understanding, and re-establishing his self-command; but in this he was not able to bring his accustomed discretion and judgement to bear—these were denied him. This was not the precision of logic and discrimination, but rather a brutal, maddened bashing of any traitorous emotions that beset him and sought to bring alloy to the purity of his rage. His savage and resentful temper having broken free with transcendent force, he was powerless to contain it; each time such disloyal sentiments as loss or humiliation would break free, he would contemptuously smite them down and cast them back into the darkness, there to await another season. He returned again and again to the revelations at the Parsonage, reviewing every thing that had been said; under the sway of his rage and immoderate condemnation, he could not allow Elizabeth to be justified to the slightest degree; neither in the rancour she had displayed, nor in her uncaring refusal of his love; even though Wickham had perverted her heart and turned it against him, still—she had known them both, and had chosen Wickham over him. He went back over every instance of peculiar favour she had shown him; it was not possible she could have been insensible of his growing admiration and attachment. His resentment grew apace as he reflected on how she must have seen his rising affection for her, yet had done nothing to warn him, nothing to discourage him—how could she be so aloof and uncaring? He hardly knew how to believe Elizabeth would treat him so unfeelingly.

Perkins came and went silently at times, leaving first food, then brandy; Darcy scarcely noticed him, and when he did, dismissed him to his bed. Darcy had no need of food, and he scorned the weakness of drink.

Anger gives strength to endure, but not wisdom to change; through that long night, Darcy’s anger enabled him to vanquish the humiliation and grief that would occasionally seek to overset him—but it did not sanction him to examine them, or credit them in any way. Any time his sense of justice tried to give Elizabeth the right to her feelings, or give credit to any of her assertions, his inflamed sensibilities would strike it down again immediately.

He could, at least, comfort himself on one point: he had rightly interpreted her character. Any one of a dozen women he knew in London would have taken him gladly, regardless of their feelings for him—but Elizabeth had turned him down without a thought. He could almost feel a grudging pride in the disinterested sentiments and delicate sense of honour that motivated her; but in them he saw an uncomfortable reflection of himself, from which he turned instantly away.

Chapter Twenty-Four

When the darkest watches of the night wrapped the house in perfect stillness, Darcy began to feel his honour commanding him to seek redress against Elizabeth’s accusations: he must correct her information—to have her think him a wanton meddler and heartless blackguard was intolerable. Having once allowed a misapprehension to stand between them to his regret, he would not allow again; there were two points on which he could—must—defend himself: Miss Bennet and Wickham. His character must be retrieved from the damage Wickham had done it; and he could not let Elizabeth believe that his influencing his friend was mere officiousness, or pride of position. Therefore, as soon as his passion had waned to the point he felt capable of composing a cold and coherent statement in his defence, he began to write:

Rosings,

8:00 a.m., April 25, —

“Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes, which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten…

That
he
felt the anger behind his words might be argued; but he was persuaded that the words themselves were cool and collected. With something like his accustomed precision of thought, he decided he ought to deal with the first thing first: her sister’s feelings towards Bingley, and its effect on his actions in London. Not only had it been the first accusation levelled at him, but it was the most important argument driving his actions in December. Having reviewed each point many times before broaching the subject with Bingley, his arguments came easily to mind; reassured by this evidence of his self-command, he continued:

I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common with others, that Bingley preferred your eldest sister to any other young woman in the country. —But it was not till the evening of the dance at Netherfield that I had any apprehension of his feeling a serious attachment…

He hoped that this might protect his friend from the disapprobation of both Elizabeth and her sister. But, while Miss Bennet’s indifference was the most important reason for his interference, there were others: he could not, in truth and in justice, pass over the many indiscretions of her family.

My objections to the marriage were not merely those which I last night acknowledged to have required the utmost force of passion to put aside in my own case; the want of connexion could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me. —But there were other causes of repugnance; —causes which, though still existing, and existing to an equal degree in both instances, I had myself endeavoured to forget, because they were not immediately before me…

While these arguments, he believed, were forceful, Darcy knew that Elizabeth would doubtless see a blameable degree of complaisance in Bingley’s willingness to give over her sister; he wished to inform her that his friend was in no way at fault, and did not do so without struggle. He continued:

The part which I acted is now to be explained. —His sisters' uneasiness had been equally excited with my own; our coincidence of feeling was soon discovered; and, alike sensible that no time was to be lost in detaching their brother, we shortly resolved on joining him directly in London…

This, then, accounted for Bingley being persuaded that his belief in Miss Bennet’s attachment was in error. He was careful to recall that, even though she had certainly been thoroughly unreserved last night, Elizabeth had never come out and attested to her sister’s love for his friend. That being the case, he could not but hold to his original conclusion regarding Miss Bennet’s sentiments. But he felt he must allow for the possibility of error on his part, although he could see but little possibility of being mistaken in his observations of the couple; he therefore addressed these issues as well. But neither could he give himself permission to pass over his one true fault: the use of artifice and obfuscation to keep his friend from Miss Bennet’s company in London. It was wrong, and he had felt it to be so at the time, but the sacrifice of principle had been made to spare his friend, and he would abide by its consequences. After having dealt with Bingley’s concerns, and his own contributions to the measures taken in December, he wrote in summation:

…done for the best. —On this subject I have nothing more to say, no other apology to offer. If I have wounded your sister's feelings, it was unknowingly done; and though the motives which governed me may to you very naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn them…

But now, he had Wickham to deal with: as he set out to write on this subject, however, he was cast back into those disturbing and circuitous thoughts that had confounded him in Hertfordshire. But, being influenced by the evidence of Elizabeth’s character and honour in the very act of refusing him, he was now completely satisfied that she could be trusted with this secret; in any event, defending himself against her accusations was required by his honour, regardless of the risk.

At this point Darcy hesitated; having come to the point, he recognised that Elizabeth’s championing of Wickham under such circumstances as last evening’s could only have come from a high regard for the man. While it pained him to imagine Elizabeth could have feelings for him, no matter to what degree, he had to feel that the mere fact of any such regard made it all the more important that she should know the truth.
Inasmuch as he could have no idea what Wickham had told her, from what part of their association he had drawn his lies, the only avenue open to him was to tell her every thing. The tale was long, but every detail was etched clearly in his mind.

With respect to that other, more weighty accusation, of having injured Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you the whole of his connexion with my family. Of what he has
particularly
accused me, I am ignorant; but of the truth of what I shall relate, I can summon more than one witness of undoubted veracity…

Having now given her full details of his association with the man, it still occurred to him that Elizabeth would have no means of judging between the history he presented and the one Wickham had offered her, whatever it might be, not to mention but what she would almost certainly prefer to believe Wickham over him. This delay in responding to her accusations on his behalf might easily be seen an equivocation to gain time in order to concoct a fable; he recalled the notable preference Elizabeth had demonstrated for Colonel Fitzwilliam, however, and was persuaded that she would believe
him
, where she might not chose to believe Darcy. He finished his letter thus:

This, Madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have been concerned together; and if you do not absolutely reject it as false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth of cruelty towards Mr. Wickham. I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood, he has imposed on you; but his success is not, perhaps, to be wondered at. Ignorant as you previously were of every thing concerning either, detection could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in your inclination. You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last night. But I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to be revealed. For the truth of every thing here related, I can appeal more particularly to the testimony of Colonel Fitzwilliam, who from our near relationship and constant intimacy, and still more as one of the executors of my father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of
me
should make
my
assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to find some opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the course of the morning. I will only add, God bless you.

Fitzwilliam Darcy.”

Friday, April 25

As he finished, having expressed himself as completely and rationally as he could, he knew that with his final words he was giving over every thing that mattered to him; he felt all his love and hope fall away into that vast, dark chasm that divided him from Elizabeth. For just a moment, his loss welled up inside him, forsaken and barren, but his eye chanced to light on Wickham’s name in his letter; his anger rose up in an instant, sweeping his quavering weakness away.

The sun was lighting the sky from beneath the horizon by the time he had finished; reference to his watch gave it as close on five o’clock. Darcy sat back down to wait for the household to stir; enervated and stupid, his mental energies banked low, his mind would catch snippets of the scene last night, but would pass on directly without consideration or emotion. Perkins appeared eventually; rousing himself from his lethargy, he asked his man to bring him coffee, and a change of clothes; Perkins looked about the room at the guttered candles, and the bits of quill strewn atop the desk, and left directly without speaking. When Perkins had gone, Darcy went to the window and leaned against the frame, staring out across the lane to the Parsonage for a long while; he felt himself to be balanced on a knife’s edge between the anger that shielded him still, and a bleak desolation that threatened to unseat his very reason. How long he might have stood there, locked in stasis between two powerful forces, he did not know: Perkins’s silent appearance with his coffee and clothes brought him back to himself. Even the mundane and trivial irritation of Perkins’s arrival tipped the scales: his anger flared and centred him. His honour remained to him, if nothing else—and that all woven into the contents of the letter at hand; all that remained was to convey it to
Elizabeth. He drank and dressed without attending, then gave his letter a final cursory review. Signing and dating it, and determining to give it to her at the earliest possible moment, he set out for the grove.

On reaching it, however, he was loathe to return to those spots where he had so recently found such enjoyment in
Elizabeth’s company; therefore, as it was really too early to expect her to be out, he staid in those portions of the grove closest to the Parsonage. He wandered back and forth amongst the trees, not letting himself think of his coming meeting with Elizabeth; his emotions were too raw, and his injuries too deep: if he thought too long on what it would be like to face her, he feared either his resolve would fail or his anger would again break free. But the exhaustion of a sleepless night helped him maintain control; and, putting one foot in front of the other, again and again, trying to see only the path before him, listening only to the breeze and the birds—anything rather than attending to the deep anguish that roiled beneath the surface—he waited out the morning.

After a considerable length of time spent pacing amongst the trees, passing from one side of the Lodge to the other, as he once more turned back down the lane, he spied a lady walking away from the Lodge further along. Quickly following, he saw it was in fact
Elizabeth; she had just reached one of the gates in the paling, and was looking in. He called out to her, and, seeing her stop, made his way directly to the gate.

He could not bring himself to meet her eyes, knowing he would surely see no welcome there—not now, not ever—and he could not bear to see again that look of censure and disgust she had fixed on him the evening before. He therefore kept his gaze away from hers, and holding himself in, that nothing of what he felt might show, with the careful manners that had been worked into him since infancy, told her: “I have been walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?” He bowed as she took it from his hand, and, still without looking at her, turned and made his way back towards Rosings.

He sought out Colonel Fitzwilliam on entering the house, meaning to inform him of the office he had assigned him with regard to Elizabeth. On seeing him approach, however, his cousin cried out: “Darcy, there you are! I was going to trot over to the Parsonage to take leave. Care to join me?”

After a brief hesitation, Darcy nodded without speaking; he must pay his compliments to Mrs. Collins and her husband at some time before he and his cousin left the next day, and, as he was already up and about, he might as well make the return trip now and be done. Besides, there was the possibility that
Elizabeth might not yet have returned, and he would be spared the necessity of attempting to converse with her; if it were otherwise, he could let his cousin take the burden of conversation from him.

“Fitzwilliam,” he said to the Colonel as they walked along, “there is something I want you to do for me.”

“Of course, Darcy. What is it?”

“There is a possibility that Miss Bennet will ask you about Georgiana and Wickham. If she does so, I want you to tell her what you know.”

That Colonel Fitzwilliam was exceedingly surprised at this request was clearly marked by his expression, and he asked, “What on Earth could have brought this about? Why should Miss Bennet have any need to know about Georgiana and Wickham?”