CHAPTER 18 #2
Elizabeth took the letter from him, feeling some trepidation at its contents.
She did not know Darcy’s aunt, but felt that the lady could not be well pleased with his situation, given the words he just spoke to her.
Although Elizabeth, being the curious sort, was far too eager to learn about what this aunt from Rosings had written, and so, rather than return the letter back to Darcy, she read it.
Nephew,
I write to you on account of your recent conduct that I confess has occasioned me the most serious alarm.
I am informed that you travelled, entirely unchaperoned save for a common coachman, above four days together with a young woman of no particular family or fortune, one Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Hertfordshire, and that this scandalous exposure has already become the subject of general gossip throughout the neighbourhood in which her family resides.
I need not remind you, Darcy, of what is owed to the name you carry, nor of the connections that name has always been understood, by every member of your family, to demand.
Whatever imprudent attachment this extraordinary and regrettable circumstance may have produced in your own mind must be abandoned immediately and entirely.
The young lady's family, as I understand the matter, possesses neither fortune nor consequence to recommend any further association, and the scandal already attached to your having travelled together unchaperoned can only be compounded, not remedied, by any public acknowledgment of attachment on your part.
I trust you will see the wisdom of extinguishing the connection at once, quietly, and without further exposure of either party to the kind of talk that presently, I am given to understand, occupies every drawing-room in Hertfordshire.
I remain, as I have always been, entirely devoted to your true interest, whatever present feeling may protest to the contrary.
Catherine de Bourgh
Elizabeth read the letter through once, and then, unable to help herself, a second time, and felt, by the conclusion of the second reading, a colour born less of any injury done to herself than of a temper roused on another's behalf, which she generally found provoked her a good deal more thoroughly than any offence levelled at her own person ever could.
"Your aunt certainly writes plainly; whatever else may be said of her," Elizabeth managed, folding the letter with hands that were somewhat shaking, after its contents.
"She writes as she has always written," said Darcy, taking the letter back from her with considerable restraint, "believing herself entitled to direct the whole of my life according to a design she settled upon before I had reached my majority, and finding, whenever that design is challenged, no better recourse than to threaten and to insult in the same breath.
I confess myself, upon this particular occasion, a good deal more thoroughly angered than I have generally permitted myself to be by her interference. "
Elizabeth could sense the anger in Darcy, but she held her chin in the air, aiming to hold her wits about her. "I see your aunt calls me a woman of no particular family or fortune."
Elizabeth said nothing to this at first. While his aunt’s letter did trouble her somewhat, it was not his aunt's opinion alone that troubled her, for she had weathered worse insults from lesser people with considerably less feeling than Lady Catherine's letter.
It was the very fact of the thing having been said at all, so publicly, so pointedly, by a party with every evident intention of forcing the question toward a conclusion of her own choosing rather than allowing it to unfold in whatever time and manner it was meant to, was a liberty Elizabeth found she could not easily forgive.
Whatever understanding exists, or might yet come to exist, between us, she thought, watching him where he stood with his back half turned to her, is ours to arrive at. In our own time, and by our own lights.
She wondered, watching him now, whether he understood that this was the true injury.
It was certainly not his aunt's rudeness, which she could forgive as the rudeness of an old woman too long accustomed to having her own way, but the fact that a thing so private between the two of them that had grown in their peril might now be spoken of by strangers before either of them had found the courage to speak of it plainly to each other.
***
Elizabeth walked home to Longbourn later that afternoon, alone, having declined Bingley's offer of the carriage in favour of the exercise, and found, examining her own feelings better set on a familiar road, where she might reflect longer.
I do not want to be married because Meryton demands it, she reflected, feeling a growing alarm.
I do not want him to offer for me because his aunt has forbidden it and his pride cannot bear to be seen obeying her, nor because my mother's nerves require some settlement before she can rest easy, nor because four days alone together have made the whole neighbourhood expect it of him as a matter of simple decency.
I want him to ask me because he wishes to, in some ordinary room, on some ordinary day, with no fever and no danger and no letter from Rosings to press either of us toward an answer we might not otherwise have given so soon.
The following morning, Elizabeth set out again for Netherfield. However, before she went to visit with Mr. Darcy, Jane requested her time in her sister’s favourite sitting room. Jane was eager to hear Elizabeth’s perspective, having been made aware of the letter from Mr. Bingley the evening prior.
"I think," said Jane, when Elizabeth had laid the whole of her private fear before her, “that you are worrying over a danger that does not exist. I have known Mr. Darcy above two months now, Lizzy, through your own account of him if nothing else, and I do not believe him a man easily moved by pressure of any kind, and his aunt's least of all.
I think, whatever the gossip presently demands of him, he will ask you in his own time, for his own reasons, and not one moment before he is entirely satisfied.
Those reasons are the true ones and not merely the convenient ones. "
"I hope you are right, Jane. But I confess I do not know how a man is meant to separate the two, once the world has made its own expectations so very plain. How is he to know himself, whether he asks because he wishes it, or because he can no longer bear to be seen not asking?"
"I do not think that is a question anyone but Mr. Darcy can answer." Jane took her sister's hand. "You must trust him, Lizzy, or you must ask him plainly, one or the other, for I do not think this particular fear will mend itself through worry alone, however thoroughly you examine it."
"You make it sound very simple," Elizabeth sighed.
Jane shook her head. "No, I do not think it simple at all.
I think it very hard, and very brave, and exactly the kind of thing you have never yet shrunk from doing.
" Jane smiled, and pressed her sister's hand once more before releasing it.
"Though I will own I do not think either of you has very much longer to wait, whatever the reason, for the answer to make itself known one way or the other. "
The two spoke a little more before Elizabeth went upstairs to visit with Mr. Darcy, though she carried Jane's words with her the whole way up.
It was not that Elizabeth doubted Mr. Darcy's feelings.
But, she understood, better perhaps than Jane could, how heavily a man of his particular pride might feel the weight of being seen to act under compulsion, and how intolerable he would find it, once his strength returned to him in full, to know that his aunt believed herself to have arranged his marriage by the simple expedient of announcing it loudly enough.
And she understood, too, how far that pride, roused now into something nearer open anger than she had yet seen from him, might carry a man toward a course of action undertaken more in defiance of Lady Catherine than in any settled certainty of his own readiness for it.
Is he ready to marry me? she thought, pausing a moment outside the door with her hand not quite yet raised to knock. Or only ready to prove to his aunt that he cannot be told whom he may not?
She knocked, and was beckoned inside to see the man himself.