Chapter Seventeen #5
“Lizzy is a very dear child to me. She will not, I think, make an easy wife to manage. Are you prepared to live with a lady who will not take your word as gospel, who will argue when she thinks you wrong, and sometimes when you are only unfortunate in your manner?”
“I do not desire to manage her, sir,” Darcy answered, “and I have already profited by Miss Elizabeth’s frankness. If I forget myself, I can wish for no better monitor.”
“That she will certainly be,” Mr. Bennet said.
“You will never want for plain dealing. As to fortune, I make no enquiries. I have heard enough of Pemberley to be satisfied that you will not be bringing her to a hovel. Indeed, I suspect it is you who have raised her notions of comfort beyond what a prudent father should approve.”
Darcy’s mouth curved slightly. “I shall think myself fortunate indeed if I may be answerable for that.”
“My chief concern,” Mr. Bennet went on, “has been, from the first, her happiness. I saw very well that she did not like you, when you first came among us. I should be a poor father indeed to barter her for a dozen Pemberleys if that were still the case. I must know that her heart is engaged, before I can give her to any man.”
Darcy’s composure faltered. His hand tightened upon the arm of his chair.
Mr. Bennet looked at him with more warmth than he commonly expressed.
“You need not look so alarmed,” Mr. Bennet added, with a touch of kindness.
“Lizzy is not so discreet as she believes herself. She speaks of you with a regard that does you great credit. She cannot speak of Pemberley without betraying how much she enjoyed being there, and, what is most against her, she has ceased to make a jest of you. For my Lizzy, that is a serious symptom.”
Darcy drew a breath. Colour he could not wholly command rose in his face.
“Then—she—”
“Then, sir,” Mr. Bennet said, and now his voice, though still playful, had an under-tone of feeling, “if she loves you—and I am convinced she does—and you love her as you profess, I have nothing more to say, except that I give you my full and hearty consent. I could not have parted with Lizzy to a fool, or a knave, or even to an amiable simpleton. But to a man who has proved himself capable of protecting those I love, of humbling his pride where he was wrong, and of bearing my household without shooting any of us—why, I suppose I must submit. I could not have parted with her to any one less worthy.”
He held out his hand.
“You have my consent. Take care that you deserve her, for she will not be easily consoled if you do not, and I shall resent it extremely.”
Darcy took the offered hand with a gravity that bordered on solemnity.
“I shall endeavour, sir, for the rest of my life, to justify your good opinion, and hers,” he said.
“You will, I suspect, find Lizzy in the garden on this fine day. Off with you,” Mr. Bennet said. He then turned back to his book, saying, “If you must bring more footmen to Longbourn, send them to my study. I may yet find some use for such magnificence.”
Darcy, amusement flickering in his eyes, bowed and withdrew.
In the Shrubbery
Elizabeth was, as her father had foretold, in the shrubbery. The narrow path turned between lilac and hawthorn. She walked with more speed than the warmth of the afternoon required, her bonnet swinging from her fingers, the crumble of gravel marking every impatient step.
When Darcy's step sounded, firmer and more measured, on the path behind her, she turned.
“Miss Elizabeth,” said Darcy, bowing. “Your father has generously banished me from the library, that I might trespass upon your walk.”
“I hope he did not repent such prodigality,” she answered. “He is not often so rich in entertainment there that he can spare any portion of it to the shrubbery.”
“I believe he was tolerably diverted before I left him.” Darcy paused, then added, “He asked me whether I was prepared to live with a lady who would argue with me whenever she thought me wrong.”
Elizabeth’s laughter broke out before she had time to be prudent. “Then you have been very imprudent, sir. My father has described me exactly.”
“I had hoped,” he said, “that he exaggerated.”
“You have known me quite long enough to know better than to expect such good fortune.”
They moved on together, the path obligingly widening to admit them side by side, the lilac brushing lightly against her sleeve as they passed.
“He also told me,” Darcy continued, with a faint smile, “that I did not deserve you—and then, most astonishingly, consented to give you to me, anyway. I begin to think your father delights in contradiction.”
“That is quite in his manner,” Elizabeth agreed. “He will always say the thing that is most just and then behave in the way that is least consistent with it.”
“It is a contradiction in which I can rejoice in this case.”
She ventured a glance at him and found his expression so earnest that she was obliged to look away again, affecting great interest in a particularly unremarkable hedge, where a few blossoms stirred in the mild breeze.
“You must not say such things in the shrubbery,” she declared. “It is quite improper. One might almost fancy that you were in love.”
“One might almost be right,” he returned.
Her laugh was half a sigh. “Well, since we are to talk nonsense—”
“Elizabeth,” he said, stopping. His use of her name, unadorned, still made her breath catch. The afternoon seemed, for a moment, to grow very still. Even the birds were quiet. “I cannot pretend to know how far I am indebted to you. But it is not gratitude I would place before you now. I love you.”
“You are candid, sir,” she said at last.
“That is, I believe, one of the offences for which you once disliked me.”
“I did dislike you,” she admitted. “I took very great pleasure in it. It spared me the trouble of examining myself.”
“And now?”
“Now,” she said, meeting his eyes, “I find I must be honest in return. If you still wish to be plagued all your life by a stubborn, impertinent wife, I will not disoblige you.”
He drew breath, as if some long tension had at last given way. “I do still wish it. Most ardently.”
“You must not be too eloquent,” she protested, though her smile betrayed her. “You will oblige me to confess that I have been in love with you this half-year at least, and that would punish me quite sufficiently.”
“Half a year?” he repeated. “Then I have been blind indeed.”
“You have been occupied,” she replied, “with villains and magistrates and your sister. I had no reason to expect you to attend to anything so trivial as my feelings.”
“I should have attended to nothing else.”
“There, you see? Already you are saying things which will make me very angry if you persist. We cannot begin our engagement with you being obliging. It would quite overturn my understanding of your character.”
“Then I shall endeavour to be as disagreeable as possible,” he said, offering his arm. “Will that content you?”
“It will do tolerably well,” she answered, taking it.
His sleeve was warm under her hand. The contact sent a small, ridiculous thrill through her.
“Though I warn you, I am never so much disposed to argue as when people attempt to be obliging. Can we not agree that we shall neither of us be grateful, that we shall both be happy, and that Longbourn and Pemberley must settle their accounts between themselves?”
“We can agree,” he said, “that Pemberley will receive you with more joy than it has known these many years—and that Longbourn may take pride in having produced you.”
“That is better. I like the word produced. It sounds so terribly agricultural. Poor Pemberley! To receive such a wild country weed!”
“Pemberley,” he replied, “has been waiting for precisely such a bloom to teach it what beauty is.”
“Mr. Darcy!” she cried. “If you attempt poetry, I shall run away.”
“You cannot. Your father has sent me to prevent it.”
“That was wrong of him. He knows I am never so much disposed to run away as when people become sentimental.”
“Then I shall be as unpoetical as possible. We shall discuss the weather. Or—your mother's triumph. She will be insupportable, you know.”
Elizabeth laughed outright. The sound startled a bird from the hedge. It flew up, then away towards the house. “She will be delighted beyond reason. You must prepare yourself for a degree of enthusiasm which will make our wedding the chief subject in Meryton for at least a twelvemonth.”
“I find,” he said, “that I do not mind it nearly as much as I ought.”
“You are either very brave or very foolish.”
“I am,” he answered, “very happy.”
She looked up at him, her expression full of warmth she no longer tried to hide. The lawn opened before them, the grass bright with new green, and the library window came into view, the blind discreetly lowered.
“I think,” she said, “when I walk here next, I shall look at that window and remember a rather strange season—and be glad that it ended as it has.”
“I,” said Darcy, “shall remember that every step which led you to Pemberley began in this little wilderness.”
“There—you are poetical again. I shall have to take you back to the house before you say anything which will oblige me to be equally ridiculous.”
“Is that so very terrible?”
“For you, perhaps. For myself, I am not at all afraid.”
As they approached the house, the familiar sounds within—her mother's distant exclamations, the faint rattle of china—seemed softened. Elizabeth glanced once more at the library window.
“My father will be glad to know that his fears for my happiness are needless.”
“I must endeavour to give him as little cause to repent his indulgence,” Darcy replied, “as I hope to give you to repent your choice.”
“I do not repent it now,” she said. Then, with that arch look he had come to know so well, added, “Though I reserve the right to do so when you become insufferably proper at Pemberley.”
“I,” he returned, “reserve the right to remind you that you chose me knowing full well what I was.”
“Then we understand each other perfectly,” Elizabeth declared. “What an excellent beginning to a marriage!”
He smiled—that rare, genuine smile that transformed his whole countenance—and the light, falling through the young leaves above them, seemed to smile as well. “I could not wish for a better.”
Finis