Chapter 10 The Bargain
The Bargain
They were expected at Rosings for dinner, but Elizabeth did not feel equal to the task without laughing at the sheer absurdity of Lady Catherine and Mr Collins in the same room.
Mr Darcy was to leave on Saturday, and all her efforts to learn what had passed in London had produced exactly nothing.
She supposed they might meet on one more walk, and the gentlemen would obviously take their leave properly, so she would have one last opportunity to speak with him—but attempting to manage it at dinner was beyond her.
She was just sitting down to write to Jane about her success as a spy—or lack thereof—when the bell rang, and much to her surprise, Mr Darcy entered. She was certainly not distressed by his visit, although meeting him alone in the parlour was tempting fate so their meeting should be brief.
He asked about her headache, and she replied that it was improved—a necessary falsehood, as it had never existed.
He walked to the fire in some agitation, ran his hand through his hair—which she had to sheepishly admit made him more handsome—and finally blurted out the most astonishing declaration.
"In vain I have struggled. It will not do. I want to know! I need to know! I must know!”
Feeling trapped, she thought for a moment, but when he did not elaborate, she replied curiously.
“Must know… what… exactly? Aside from the particular rule of politeness that says a very tall gentleman should not tower over a seated lady,” said she with a tiny smile to remove the sting.
He became abashed and apologetic, then sat down immediately, which placed her on a slightly more even footing, though she felt unaccountably guilty for calling him to task.
She repeated, “You must know—what, exactly?”
He sighed. “Something you will not wish to tell me.”
“I see—” she dragged out, though she really did not. “I suppose we are at an impasse. You may need to continue struggling in vain.”
“Perhaps not. I should like to offer a bargain that you may take or leave as you choose.”
Elizabeth felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation but finally nodded.
“Since you will not wish to tell me what I wish to know, I must negotiate. I will tell you two things that you will want to know, but both will make you so angry I must check the surroundings for lethal weapons and rocks first.”
She could not help herself—she burst out laughing. She had thought the gentleman had an understated sense of humour, but he was certainly carrying his share of the teasing load for the day.
“And?” she asked, almost too curious to remain composed, and not truly heeding his warning that she would likely be angry soon.
“After I give you two secrets for free—to establish my sincerity, such as it is—I will trade you my deepest secret for yours… it is but a fair exchange.”
She considered this for a few moments. Gentlemen and ladies were not supposed to make bargains, especially about secrets, but unless he had overlooked one of the lethal weapons he mentioned, nobody would ever know.
“I agree,” she said with an impish grin. “Do your worst, sir.”
He looked as though he were steeling himself for battle.
“First: I convinced Bingley to give up your sister!”
Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent.
He looked very much like a schoolboy standing in the master’s study, eyeing the cane upon the wall, having just been caught saying the man was a big fat idiot with stupid and rather smelly children.
He looked positively ghastly, as if expecting to be run out of the parsonage with a broom or fire iron.
She frowned and nodded tersely for him to continue.
“As you probably suspect—or possibly know—his sisters opposed yours from the start. He rarely listens to their opinions, but he takes mine seriously. I told him the obvious drawbacks of your family that you know well—namely the entail, the relative poverty of the sisters, and to be candid,” then he paused to draw a shuddering breath before continuing, “that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by every member of your family save you and Miss Bennet. That would have been distressing, but manageable—however, I observed Miss Bennet carefully, and the serenity of your sister’s countenance and air was such as might have given the most acute observer a conviction that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be easily touched, while you may remember your mother’s amiable temper was of a very different nature. ”
He sighed. “Since meeting you here I have come to believe I may have been in error. You said nothing explicit, but I am far less convinced than I was.”
As he appeared to expect a rebuke, she stared at him for several seconds, waiting until he was thoroughly discomposed—then she burst out laughing.
Once she started, she could not stop for quite some time.
In the end, he tried to join her, but since he had no idea what she found so amusing, he gave up and waited for her to finish.
She sighed with one last chuckle.
“Oh, Mr Darcy… you are too funny… hilarious, in fact. I could almost kiss you right now!”
He looked more confused than happy or alarmed, and finally said, “Explain!”
She chuckled. “Well, you did in fact completely misjudge Jane. She was very much in love with the man—for months. However, once we thought better of the whole issue, we concluded she was saved by providence from a feckless weasel. If you wish to call on her at my uncle’s house, she will thank you personally, so long as you do not bring that man with you. ”
“I do not understand. She was in love, but is now… ah… content?”
“Yes sir. You must congratulate yourself on having lately saved my sister from the inconvenience of a most imprudent marriage.
Can you imagine Jane spending her years enduring his sisters' endless sniping? They would have children and she would spend her life raising not one, but two generations of quarrelsome children, with the elder being beyond reformation. Yes, she will most certainly thank you if you ever meet again.”
He looked startled. “Well… that was… unexpected. I suppose it went better than I had hoped.”
“You shall not escape unscathed!” she snapped with her sternest demeanour.
“It was terribly, obnoxiously officious, and if you wish to improve your character, I suggest you refrain from such low tricks in future. You were fortunate this time, but if Mr Bingley were a better man, you could just as easily have exposed one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, and the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, involving them both in misery of the acutest kind. As it was, Jane had to endure the gossip of the neighbourhood and the cries of our mother for months. Mr Bingley could have avoided that in any one of a hundred ways.”
“It was my first and last foray into the dark arts,” he asserted definitively, and Elizabeth nodded.
“Very well, let us have done with that. I believe we are ready for secret number two,” she prompted, glancing at the clock and worrying slightly about how long they had been alone together.
The door was open, so it was no more improper than the library had been at Netherfield, but they were tempting fortune.
He sighed and gave her to understand that a rumour had spread through town, claiming Caroline Bingley was observed leaving his bedchamber, improperly dressed, probably enceinte.
Darcy continued to outline the rumours, while Elizabeth tried her best to look shocked, scandalised, demure, embarrassed, and most important of all: surprised.
She judged her performance barely adequate.
When he had done, she excitedly asked if he had been damaged by the rumours.
He immediately perceived that she could care less how Miss Bingley was affected and was touched by her concern—mostly unaware that she was driven much more by curiosity on Jane’s behalf than any worry about his welfare.
“I was implicated for a time. Men can get away with most anything, but my sister would be harmed if I had been known to abandon a nominal lady, and of course, Miss Bingley would be ruined, so I suppressed it.”
This was something new that she had not heard a whisper of from Jane.
She slid forward in her chair, eager for the details. “How exactly did you manage that.”
He chuckled but then made a big point of looking around for lethal weapons.
“I sent Bingley to our club for an hour at the busiest time of day to take his lumps and get the crowd worked up. Then I joined him and let the wolves tear at me for a while.”
She nodded for him to get on with it, though she had to admit he was showing more of his sense of humour, and she did not hate it.
“I arranged for Sir John Wolton, the most famous oculist in London, to be present. I asked him to perform an eye examination there and then. He went along, dragged out a collection of obscure instruments, shone light in my eyes while staring with a glass, had me read a page from farther and farther away, then eventually asserted that I had the eyes of a hawk.”
Elizabeth giggled, wondering where he was going.
“Then I asked another fellow who happened to be there who specialised in the treatment of the mad. I asked him if he would mind assessing my sanity. He worked the audience to a frenzy with all sorts of questions until a half-hour later the room was packed.”
“And?”
“He pronounced me fit and sane.”
“Pray continue,” she said, more than a little fascinated.
“Then I administered the coup de grace. I asked the assembled crowd for any man to raise his hand if he truly believed a man in full possession of his faculties and his eyesight would choose Caroline Bingley of all people in a town where even Bingley said, 'Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see uncommonly pretty.’”
Elizabeth gasped, and Darcy looked contrite. “Now that I think of that night, I realise I never apologised for my abominable words.”
“We are past that—pray continue,” she said breathlessly, not wishing to be distracted with trivialities from half a year ago.
He chuckled, feeling like he had narrowly escaped disaster.
“Have you ever heard the expression ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’?”
“I have but never understood it.”
“It means that revenge is more satisfying or effective when exacted in a calculated and deliberate manner rather than in hot anger.”
“Meaning?”
“I went on to tell them that Miss Bingley turned the servants out without wages or reference. Not only did she not pay them for the quarter they were due, but she did not even pay them for the time they worked. The rumour was almost certainly some group of servants’ well-deserved revenge, and since gossip was one of Miss Bingley’s favourite weapons, it seemed fitting it should be used for revenge upon her—reaping and sowing and so forth. ”
She chewed her lip in confusion, trying to pretend she did not already know that. “I suppose that restored your reputation?”
“Mostly—many still question my sense in staying in a house with her as mistress in the first place, but it all subsided. My reputation is untouched, and hers went from that of a fallen woman to simply an unpleasant shrew,” he said, and gestured as a tutor might when asking a pupil to answer a simple question.
“… and her reputation is probably only marginally worse than it started, since that was probably how she was already seen.”
“No, it is materially worse, but it should not kill her marriage prospects entirely.”
“Pity,” she said with a sigh.