Chapter 8 The Morning Call
The Morning Call
"I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr Darcy would never have come so soon to wait upon me."
“You may be right, Charlotte. He barely knows you, and I cannot imagine Mr Darcy rushing to meet Mr Collins,” said Elizabeth with a nervous laugh.
Elizabeth became pensive, considering the abrupt appearance of the gentlemen. She had not intended to meet Mr Darcy at Rosings and might have deferred her visit had she known it coincided with his, but the thought had never occurred to her.
Charlotte joined in, not in the least offended.
She knew what she had married and did not repine the union.
She had her own home and her own poultry, would someday have children, and saw her husband a few hours a day.
He visited her bedchamber one night a week for a quarter hour that was only moderately irksome after she obtained some helpful advice from Lady Catherine.
She would one day be mistress of Longbourn.
She was content with her lot in life, and nearly giddy when compared to the spinsterhood she had expected four months earlier.
Now that Mr Darcy was present, Elizabeth was anxious to determine if he were harmed by what they euphemistically called Jane’s Little Prank, of which Elizabeth had learned only after the fact.
She knew that if Mr Darcy could trace the business to the Bennets, they would be in danger, but she was convinced Jane had been careful enough.
He might guess or speculate—but unless he interrogated Betty or Justin, he would not know, and it was unlikely the best Bow Street Runner would even approach the truth.
Her curiosity overriding her animosity, she met the man with more complaisance than usual.
Since she wanted to study him to see if she could discern his state of mind, she gave him a subdued smile of welcome—though compared to her previous disapprobation in Hertfordshire, she likely appeared giddy.
In fact, the mere absence of a desire to do him violence was enough to render her more welcoming than she had been.
Mr Darcy introduced his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was not as tall, not as rich, and not as handsome, but infinitely more amiable.
Of course, simply refraining from calling her 'tolerable' was enough to cast him in a good light, so Elizabeth suspected her standards were quite low. It took little time to learn that the colonel was an amiable man, much as Mr Bingley would be had he possessed any resolution. Elizabeth was certain she could grow to like him very well given time, and it might even occur if Lady Catherine’s nephews remained a few weeks.
Of course, she had a new aversion to amiable men like Mr Bingley, so perhaps the colonel was not so attractive after all.
That said, she was far more curious about the landowner than the colonel.
Even though he began with his usual practice of speaking hardly a word, staring out a window, or even worse, being trapped by Mr Collins, she exerted herself to draw him into the conversation using sheer force and repetition, as one might with a particularly dull pupil.
After all, she could not subtly interrogate him if she were as unwilling to speak to him as she had been in Hertfordshire, and his volubility was only a theoretical possibility that she had never witnessed.
Soon enough, Elizabeth found her powers of teasing persuasion were having an effect.
Mr Darcy became slightly less stilted, slightly less silent, slightly less prone to disconcerting stares, and slightly less stiff.
Considering how their time in Meryton had passed, Elizabeth considered 'slightly less' to be little short of miraculous.
If she kept softening the man, they might even have a genuine conversation in a fortnight or two.
She observed Charlotte Collins eyeing their discussion with obvious fascination, and she knew she would be walking a narrow path in convincing her friend she was not flirting with Mr Darcy.
It never occurred to her that she needed to worry whether Mr Darcy would think she was flirting with him, any more than she would be concerned about a Duke suspecting as much.
They were fish and fowl, chalk and cheese, and she was not in the least concerned on that score.
Even if Mr Darcy thought she was flirting with him, he would merely accept it as either his due or the price of his wealth and status.
She eventually discovered that, on balance, once she dragged Mr Darcy into the conversation, he could hold up his end.
He was certainly educated, and even occasionally witty, much to her shock.
His humour was subtle, so it was entirely lost on Mr Collins, and even escaped the colonel occasionally—though not Charlotte, of course.
Overall, she was surprised to find the afternoon visit quite enjoyable.
She even began to interpret the unspoken communication between the cousins, who appeared more like brothers on closer inspection.
She imagined a particular wink from the colonel signified, ‘if we do not leave soon our aunt will complain—a fate worse than death,’ while the corresponding lift of Mr Darcy’s left eyebrow said, ‘run for your life… Mr Collins is beginning to speak.’
Of course, all that was pure speculation, but it was the most diversion she had ever gleaned from the taciturn gentleman.
Charlotte questioned her as soon as the gentlemen left, and Lizzy steadfastly maintained that since Charlotte’s comfort and security depended on Lady Catherine, and the nephews were important to the great lady, as a guest it was her duty to refrain from smacking Mr Darcy with a rock. She almost sounded convincing.
Over the next week, the gentlemen visited almost daily, sometimes alone, and sometimes in pairs.
As expected, the colonel was a jovial man, and she found conversing with him quite pleasurable, although she paid most of her attention to Mr Darcy, if he was available.
Once she gave up trying to draw blood with every word, the man was well worth speaking to.
The colonel was amusing, but Mr Darcy was deep.
They were eventually invited to dine at Rosings, and Elizabeth found it even more amusing than her previous visits.
Between Mr Collins’s preoccupation with Lady Catherine’s approbation, that lady’s compulsion to gather Mr Darcy’s, that gentleman’s valiant attempts to maintain his equanimity, Miss de Bourgh’s thorough indifference to all that happened, and the colonel’s tendency to provoke both his cousin and his aunt—Elizabeth had never been so entertained.
At one point, Lady Catherine, apparently fatigued by Mr Darcy’s indifference, thought to intrude on her other nephew:
"What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is."
"We are speaking of music, madam," said he, when no longer able to avoid a reply.
"Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight.
I must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music.
There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste.
If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.
And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to apply.
I am confident that she would have performed delightfully. How does Georgiana get on, Darcy?"
Elizabeth required all of her nerve to stop from laughing, and when she glanced at Darcy, she could see him doing the same.
Naturally, to someone who had not been scrutinising him for a fortnight or longer, he would look as stoic and bad-tempered as always, but she thought she saw through to the man beneath and knew he was barely keeping his countenance.
To be honest, she admired him for the Herculean effort and wondered what the evening might have been like if she were still angry.
For certain, he had never apologised for the assembly, but her mother said worse nearly every day and she never apologised either.
Why should Mr Darcy be held to a higher standard?
When coffee was over, Colonel Fitzwilliam reminded Elizabeth of having promised to play to him; and she sat down directly to the instrument.
He drew a chair near her. Lady Catherine listened to half a song, and then talked, as before, to her other nephew; till the latter walked away from her, and making with his usual deliberation towards the pianoforte stationed himself so as to command a full view of the fair performer’s countenance.
Elizabeth saw what he was doing, and at the first convenient pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said:
"You mean to frighten me, Mr Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me? I will not be alarmed though your sister does play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."
"I shall not say you are mistaken," he replied, "because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own."
Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself. Without the one-sided reconciliation they had enjoyed at Rosings, she might have attempted to tease him enough to know how much he had annoyed her in Hertfordshire, but in this case, she simply laughed at the ridiculousness of their discourse.
While the colonel was amiable, Mr Darcy was amusing in a subtle way when he wanted to be.
She found it quite agreeable and was left to wonder if she knew the man at all.
She had quite forgiven whatever churlishness he had shown in Meryton, belatedly recognising that, for the most part, he was no worse than her father—or better.
All she really still had to hold against him were Mr Wickham’s words, and did she really want to condemn a man over the words of the lowliest officer in the entire militia while much closer to thirty than twenty?
Who was to say the lieutenant was not lying through his teeth?
Lady Catherine was not above proclaiming an engagement that was clearly less likely than a lightning strike, so why did she implicitly trust a man she had known but a day before he started prattling worse than Mrs Bennet?
For that matter, did the man not say he would never speak publicly out of respect for the father, and yet the story was on everyone’s lips once Mr Darcy was not there to defend himself?
That thought gave her pause and it was fortunate the evening was ending. They returned to the parsonage in one of Lady Catherine’s many carriages, and she spent the next hour reflecting upon it.