Chapter 12 #2
Elizabeth was not done taking him to task.
All the conflicting emotions incited in her over the past weeks erupted to his detriment.
“Your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others are consistent with everything I had heard, long before I had the privilege of making your haughty acquaintance. As a consequence of your callous disregard for my own sensibilities when you professed your admiration, I have firmly sketched your character. I take great pleasure in telling you that you are the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
Now it was Darcy who looked as though he had been punched in the stomach. Good. It is only fitting he should suffer the pain he has inflicted upon me!
“You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been.” Standing straight and tall, he jutted his chin. “Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.”
With these words, he hastily left the room. The next moment, Elizabeth heard him open the front door and quit the house.
Elizabeth stood at the window awaiting the carriage due to arrive to take her to Longbourn. Two days had passed since she last saw the haughty, presumptuous Mr. Darcy.
“You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire you.” To think she actually had listened to his oration and had stood amazed when hearing she had been such a target of his esteem.
She had listened without speaking as one after another, he disparaged her mother, her father, and her younger sisters.
Had she put a stop to his offensive declaration, she might never have known how much he despised her family and how much she in turn despised him.
Elizabeth’s heart swelled with indignation.
The bits she overheard when she stood outside the door at the inn were all starting to make sense.
When Mr. Darcy made mention of the family who was so despicable—the family he would never wish to align himself with, he was speaking of her family.
He was speaking of my sister and Mr. Bingley when he boasted of trying to persuade his friend against making a grave mistake.
What if he had succeeded? How devastated Jane would now be.
Everything Mr. Wickham said about him is true.
How could it not be when she had levelled all of Mr. Wickham’s accusations against him, and he made no attempt whatsoever to deny a word of it?
Standing there, gazing outside, Elizabeth was not of a mind to regret any of the words she had spoken to Mr. Darcy despite the hurt that was so evidenced on his face pursuant to her rejection.
Even if he were guilty of none of these things, how could I possibly have said yes to a man who cares so little for my loved ones?
They are my family—the people I care most about in the world. I could no sooner give them up than I could give up the air I breathe.
His poorly chosen words meant to sway her echoed in her ears. “It will be impossible for you assume your life as Mrs. Darcy and maintain your ties to those people!”
Elizabeth stood away from the window when she espied a gentleman walking up the lane towards the gate.
It was not Mr. Darcy, but rather it was the colonel.
What could be his purpose? As much as she had admired him upon first making his acquaintance, she had learned to think less of him since their encounter in the lane.
His own avowed habits of taste which demanded he marry a woman of substantial fortune had been enough to have his name scratched from her list. Still, he was noble and everything a gentleman ought to be.
Perhaps he had heard of her pending departure, and he only meant to say goodbye.
Just because she suspected the worst in everything that Mr. Darcy did and said, there was no need to assign such foul motives to his cousin.
The colonel had hardly taken his seat before he launched into a full assault in his cousin’s defence. The nature of his defence was rather uncertain to Elizabeth.
“Did Mr. Darcy tell you all the particulars of our disagreement?”
“No. He only confided that you hold George Wickham in some esteem.”
“How might anyone who knows of his plight help feeling sorry for him?”
“If you truly knew what that gentleman was about, I wager you would not be such a staunch supporter.”
“Please, sir, I have heard enough about the purported deficiencies in Mr. Wickham’s character from both your aunt and your cousin to know he is fairly deplored by your family.”
“There is a reason neither Darcy nor I can abide him that I believe you out to know. Perhaps, it will help you see Darcy and Wickham in the light they both deserve.” The colonel urged Elizabeth to have a seat.
“You already know that Darcy and I are Georgiana’s guardians.
Darcy had to come to her rescue when George Wickham followed her to Ramsgate and pledged violent love to her.
The reason Georgiana does not speak ill of him is because she blames herself.
She does not know his true character—that he only wanted to control her fortune of thirty thousand pounds, that he would have done anything to spite her brother.
Neither Darcy nor I told her the true reason for Wickham’s defection.
It was enough that he fled town. We did not want her thinking less of herself for falling for a man who meant her such harm. ”
“Perhaps, had Mr. Darcy honoured his father’s wish and gave Mr. Wickham the living he ought to have, he would not have resorted to such desperate measures.”
“I am afraid you have been woefully misled on that score, for Wickham came to Darcy even before the Ramsgate affair with demands of his own. He did not desire the living. He demanded three thousand pounds in lieu of the living, a demand to which Darcy acceded, for he knew Wickham was not fit for the clergy.”
“I posit it is merely Mr. Wickham’s word against Mr. Darcy’s. I would expect you to side with your cousin.”
“I have seen the proof of Darcy’s allegations in the form of a letter in Wickham’s own hand.
The man is a fool to spread his lies about Darcy to anyone who would hear, but then again, he knows Darcy would not expose him.
It would be beneath my cousin to give credence to the man in any such fashion. ”
Elizabeth did not know what to think or how to feel.
The carriage’s arrival could not have been better timed.
Elizabeth desperately needed a chance to consider all that she had heard.
Mr. Darcy is good, and Mr. Wickham is so very bad.
She connected her friend Georgiana’s account of her painful past with an unnamed lover with the colonel’s words.
Mr. Wickham was the scoundrel who broke my friend’s heart and taught her not to trust and not to believe in love.
How could I have been so mistaken about his character? Do I even know myself?
Moments later, Elizabeth stood outside the Parsonage gate with her intimate friend Charlotte before boarding the carriage.
“Dear Eliza, it has been such a pleasure having you here.”
“Charlotte, I do not suppose my cousin shares your sentiments. I fear my presence may have exacerbated or given rise to matters best left undisturbed.”
“Whatever do you mean? Certainly you do not refer to his manner of speaking to me.”
“I would be lying if I denied that I find his manners officious and dogmatic.”
“Why, Eliza, you could not have chosen two better words to describe the greater percentage of the male populace.”
Elizabeth could not deny the veracity of her friend’s claim, but she certainly would not submit to its acceptability as regarded her own sensibilities. She did not walk in her friend’s shoes. “Charlotte, as long as you are contented in your situation, I have no right to judge.”
“Truly, it is all I ever asked of you. I am quite contented. It is so nice to be mistress of my own home. Although it may not seem like very much now, I trust my situation will not always be this way.”
Elizabeth drew her head back and regarded her friend in dismay. “Pray do not allow my mama to hear you speak this way.”
“Forgive me, Eliza. I did not mean to sound insensitive as regards the entail.”
Having taken no offence, Elizabeth said, “No—I understand. Truly I do. It is not your doing. You have every right to anticipate your becoming Longbourn’s mistress someday.”
Charlotte smiled meekly. “As for the other aspects of my life, I never suffered any misapprehensions of what my future held. It is for that reason I have learned to do a great deal of seeing and hearing those things that give me pleasure and disregarding those things that do not.”
Elizabeth placed her hands on Charlotte’s.
“It seems you have adopted a very wise philosophy.” She embraced her.
“Thank you for your hospitality. While I do not suppose I shall ever visit you again here in Hunsford, owing to my cousin’s censure and her ladyship’s stern disapprobation, I can certainly say I am forever altered by having been here. ”
“Why do I suspect your alteration has more to do with the company you were keeping even before you arrived in Hunsford?”
Elizabeth looked over to where Mr. Collins and the colonel stood. They were industriously overseeing the carriage’s imminent departure. The latter signalled the time had come for Elizabeth to take her leave. “Oh, Charlotte, it has everything to do with the two gentlemen who accompanied me here.”