CHAPTER 20
Mr. Darcy's recovery, once it began in earnest, proceeded with a swiftness that surprised even his London doctor, who had traveled at once to attend to him, once Darcy arrived at Netherfield.
Within the fortnight of his proposal, Darcy was pronounced well enough to ride the three miles to Longbourn each morning, rather than take a carriage.
It was an act that Mrs. Bennet found no cause whatsoever to complain of, and every cause to remark upon to anyone in Meryton who would listen.
It had been decided, by Mr. Bennet, that Elizabeth could not properly remain under Mr. Bingley's roof once Mr. Darcy had proposed, whatever the strict proprieties of nursing might have permitted during his illness.
And so she had returned to Longbourn, and Mr. Darcy, rather than accepting this arrangement as the natural conclusion of the matter, had simply transferred the whole of his attention to the lane between the two houses, riding over each morning with a punctuality that Mr. Bennet privately observed put the postal service to shame.
"You are very constant in your visits, Mr. Darcy," said Mr. Bennet, one such morning, looking up from his book with his same dry amusement. "I begin to wonder whether Netherfield's library has failed you, or whether it is merely my daughter's conversation you find superior to your own books."
"Both, sir," said Darcy, with a grin, "though I will allow the conversation weighs rather the heavier in the balance."
Mr. Bennet, who had not expected so plain an answer, laughed outright, and told Elizabeth afterward that he thought he might come to like the man, a concession he did not make lightly, and one Elizabeth received with gladness.
The courtship that followed was conducted with all the outward correctness the neighbourhood could have wished for, and considerably more private feeling than either party cared to display before an audience.
They walked; they sat in the garden when the weather allowed it and by the fire when it did not; they argued, still, with a regularity that Kitty found tedious and Mary found morally instructive, though neither sister could have said what lesson, precisely, she took from it.
And if their arguments had lost something of their former sharpness, had softened, it was only that the other cared only a fraction less about who was the victor.
It was on one such afternoon, some ten days into this pleasant and thoroughly public courtship, that Darcy raised the subject of the wedding itself, as they walked through Longbourn’s gardens.
He said rather unexpectedly, during a lull in their conversation, "I have been thinking that a long engagement recommends itself to me very little. We should marry as soon as we may."
Elizabeth looked up at his face, with her eyes wide, and her mouth forming what looked to be a silent, “Oh.” However, she was not silent for long. "You surprise me, sir. I had thought you a great admirer of caution. Would not a sudden wedding waggle tongues?"
"I am, in all things that want deliberating.
Although, I have found this is not among them.
" He said it plainly, without his usual reserve to soften it, and Elizabeth, who had grown rather better at reading what lay beneath his plainness, saw that he meant it entirely.
"I have spent a great many years, Miss Bennet, deliberating over a great many matters of considerably less consequence than this one, and I find I have no wish to spend one day longer than necessary deliberating over this. "
She smiled widely at his pretty speech, and did not have the heart nor the desire to correct him. "And how long is necessary, in your accounting?"
"As long as the banns require, and not an hour more, if the choice were left entirely to me." He paused. "I do not ask you to agree to a date, only to consider it. I am aware I have not always been a patient man; and, I find, in this instance, I have become entirely incapable of it."
Elizabeth, who had come to Longbourn's garden that afternoon expecting nothing more than the usual pleasant argument over some book or other, found herself obliged to look up into his earnest, waiting eyes, and discovered that she had no ready answer at all beyond the plain and simple truth.
"I should like that too," she said, "rather more than I know how to say properly.
" And then, before either of them had quite decided whether the garden was a suitable place for it, she reached up and kissed him, soundly and without the smallest reluctance, as though she had been waiting rather longer than she cared to admit for the occasion to present itself.
***
It was into this settled and increasingly happy state of affairs that Lady Catherine de Bourgh arrived at Longbourn, unannounced, and in a temper that communicated first by the violence with which her carriage door was thrown open, and confirmed shortly after by the volume of her voice demanding, of a startled housemaid, to be shown at once to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
Elizabeth was soon summoned to the small parlour with no more warning than the housemaid's frightened face could supply, and found her ladyship standing in the centre of the room.
The fine lady's expression was arranged into a particular state of displeasure, and Elizabeth quickly understood, within the first half minute of the interview, that the lady traveled the whole distance from Kent for the express purpose of delivering her opinion to Elizabeth herself.
Lady Catherine cleared her throat before saying. "You will know why I have come, Miss Bennet."
Offering a demure smile, and polite curtsy, Elizabeth replied, "I confess I do not, your ladyship, though I am persuaded you mean to enlighten me directly."
"Do not attempt to be clever with me. A report has reached me, a report so shocking, so entirely contrary to everything that is owed to family, to rank, to every proper consideration of what is due from one station to another, that I could not rest until I had come myself to learn whether there was any truth in it.
I am told my nephew, Mr. Darcy of Pemberley, is to be married to you. "
Not one to retreat from a battle of wits, Elizabeth promptly returned, "If that is the report, your ladyship, I can confirm it is substantially correct."
Lady Catherine's countenance, which had been formidable before, achieved in that instant a rigidity that Elizabeth thought might have done credit to a monument.
"Then it is as I feared. Miss Bennet, I will speak plainly, for I am not in the habit of wasting civility upon those who have shown so little regard for it themselves.
My nephew is engaged to my daughter. Their union has been the settled wish of both families since their cradles.
It is an engagement of long standing, of mutual convenience, of every proper consideration that ought to govern such matters, and you, a young woman of no name, no fortune, and connections I am ashamed to name aloud in a respectable room, propose to set it aside on the strength of nothing more than a country flirtation. "
"I was not aware, your ladyship, that Mr. Darcy considered himself engaged to anybody. He has certainly given me no reason to think so, and I have known him rather better, these past months, than I suspect you credit." Elizabeth replied with grace and a lightness in her tone.
"You know nothing of what you speak!” Lady Catherine insisted.
“Mr. Darcy owes his family a duty he cannot simply set aside because a clever pair of eyes and a readiness of tongue have amused him for a season.
Renounce him, Miss Bennet. Renounce him now, in this room, and I promise you shall find me generous in the matter; generous beyond anything you presently have reason to expect.
Refuse me, and you shall find me a very different sort of adversary. "
Elizabeth felt her own temper rising to match her ladyship's, though she kept her voice, with some effort, considerably more level than the provocation warranted.
"I thank your ladyship for the clarity of the choice you have laid before me.
I find, however, that I must refuse it. I have given Mr. Darcy no promise I did not make freely, and I do not intend to break it merely because his aunt finds the making of it disagreeable to her own wishes. "
Lady Catherine looked at Elizabeth sharply, pointing to her in accusation. "You are determined, then, to ruin him!"
Upon reply, Elizabeth stood boldly, her head shaking somewhat and her tone level. "I am determined, your ladyship, to marry a man I esteem, who has asked me freely and been answered freely in return. If that constitutes ruin, I confess I do not understand the word as you mean it."
The woman’s voice grew louder and angrier. "Impertinent girl! Do you know what you are refusing? Do you understand what you presume to set yourself against?"
"I understand perfectly, your ladyship, and I find my answer entirely unchanged,” Elizabeth said, her chin lifting in her own defiance.
It was at this precise moment, with Lady Catherine drawing breath for what promised to be a still more thorough enumeration of Elizabeth's insufficiencies, that the parlour door opened, and Mr. Darcy, summoned, as it later transpired, by an anxious note dispatched by Mrs. Bennet the moment her ladyship's carriage had been sighted upon the road, entered the room with an expression Elizabeth had seen only once before, on a dark night in a wood.
"Aunt!" he spoke loudly and sternly, "You have said enough."
"Fitzwilliam. I am glad you have come. Perhaps you will succeed where I have failed in making this young woman understand."
He cut her off before she could continue.
"I have heard what you came to say," said Darcy, "having stood outside this door a moment, and I find I have heard entirely enough of it.
Miss Bennet has answered you, I think, with more patience than the questions deserved.
I will not ask her to answer them again. "
"You cannot mean to defy me in this. I have known you since you were in your cradle, Fitzwilliam! I will not stand by and watch you throw yourself away upon."
He interjected at once, more anger in his tone than before.
"You will stand by, Aunt, or you will not.
The choice is entirely your own to make, and I find myself, for the first time in our long acquaintance, indifferent to which you choose.
But you will not speak to Miss Bennet, in her father's or in mine, in the manner I have just now heard you use.
I am going to marry her. I would have preferred to tell you so myself, in my own time, and with rather more ceremony.
You have seen fit to deprive us both of that courtesy, and I find I cannot regret the outcome, whatever I might regret of the manner in which it has arrived. "
Lady Catherine stared at her nephew for a long moment, as though seeking, in his face, some sign of the boy she had once commanded so absolutely, and finding, evidently, nothing there she recognized. "You will regret this, Fitzwilliam."
She crossed his arms to his chest and boldly said, "That is my concern to carry, Aunt, and not yours."
She left, in the end, with the same violence with which she had arrived, her carriage door thrown shut behind her with a force that rattled the parlour windows; and it was some little while after the sound of her wheels had faded entirely from the lane that either Darcy or Elizabeth found themselves equal to speaking again.
"I must apologize," said Darcy, at last, "dearest, loveliest Elizabeth. My aunt has embarrassed me beyond belief.”
"You need not," said Elizabeth, shaking her head a little, while smiling as she looked up into his handsome and sober face. "I found I managed rather well without your assistance, until the very end of it."
"I noticed." Something in his expression, still tight with the aftermath of the encounter, eased and looked, now, nearer amusement. "I confess I arrived prepared to defend you, and found, upon listening at the door rather longer than I ought to admit, that you required no defending at all."
"Then why did you come in?" She asked, her chin still sticking up in the air slightly, and her eyebrows lifted, while her eyes remained brightened with a teasing challenge.
"Because," Darcy started, moving nearer to her and taking both her hands in his, "I found I could not stand outside the door one moment longer, listening to anyone speak to you in such a manner, defending or not.
I am not as patient a man as I have always believed myself to be.
" He squeezed her hands, there in the small parlour, with the housemaid still hovering uncertainly in the doorway and Mrs. Bennet's voice already audible in the hall demanding a full account of what had just transpired.
"I begin to think the wedding cannot come soon enough my dear, if it means I need never again stand outside a door while you are made to defend yourself alone. "
Elizabeth, who had borne Lady Catherine's whole assault without the smallest tremor, found she had considerably less composure to spare for this reply, and answered him only by the particular brightness of her smile, which he seemed to find answer enough.