Chapter 2 #2
“I did it in service of a friend,” he said softly.
“Bingley has been my protégé for some time, and I have been watching for his interests. He is new to wealth and an easy victim for fortune hunters of all types, male and female. I started at Cambridge teaching him to watch out for aristocrats trying to take advantage of his na?veté. I have helped to guide him into society, and in exchange, his liveliness has helped me at least partially overcome my debilitating shyness, which even now comes off as reserve and haughtiness. I could never see him in a loveless and unequal marriage, and I believed your sister did not hold him in particular regard. Her countenance is serene when speaking with him, but it is the same when speaking with anyone else, and shows no signs of particular regard. That, coupled with a complete lack of propriety from your mother, your three younger sisters, and even at times your father, led me to believe it would be a disadvantageous match. Your mother was particularly flagrant in her obvious mercenary ambitions, speaking long and loudly about Bingley’s five thousand a year and about how he would throw the rest of the girls in the path of other rich men.
Of course, I must exclude you and your eldest sister from such censure, as your behaviour was beyond reproach—and I was even impressed by your obvious mortification at the behaviour of the rest of your family and your valiant although unsuccessful attempts to check them.
Your family’s connections, as I mentioned earlier, might be troublesome, but they would not be as troublesome for Bingley as for me.
He is from trade so marrying a gentleman’s daughter, regardless of her wealth or connections, would actually increase his position in society.
However, I could not countenance sending him to a marriage of unequal affections.
His sisters seek a marriage of advantage, but I just want him to be happy. “
Elizabeth now found it her turn to be mortified.
She very well remembered the Netherfield ball, where her family had seemed to have a contest to see who could appear the most ridiculous or the most injurious.
Her mother’s incessant, clearly mercenary talk about catching Bingley was done well within Mr Darcy’s hearing—nay, it was well within everyone’s hearing—and it was no wonder he could not see his friend attaching himself to any such family.
She could well understand and possibly even approve his blocking the match for reasons of ill-matched fortunes, or even because of her mother’s clearly mercenary tactics—would she not do the same for Jane?
But how could he claim to know of her affections?
“I can understand trying to remove him from our family because of our impropriety or our fortunes—truly I can. I was excessively mortified at the Netherfield ball myself. However, you did not put that is your primary reason. How could you possibly know of Jane’s affections?”
“I watched her carefully during the Netherfield ball and paid particular attention. I did not believe her to be indifferent because I wished it—I believed it on impartial conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason. However, I must also shamefully admit that at the time, I was trying to fight a growing attraction to you, and I may have allowed my desire to escape your company to influence my observations with Bingley. I did not believe so at the time, but it now seems possible.”
As much as she wished to deny it, his opinion agreed with Charlotte, who said Jane did not show enough of her affections.
She would leave the question of why he was trying to escape her for another day, if ever.
That her mother’s egregious bad manners were also unfavourable required no further explanation or debate.
However, she really wished him to understand the error he had made.
If she could convince him to release Bingley back to Jane, and Bingley’s affections were still constant, she might salvage something from this catastrophe.
At the very least, Mr Bingley owed Jane an explanation so that she might move past his affections and allow her heart to be touched by someone else.
It would eradicate her uncertainty, which now seemed almost as hurtful as the rejection itself.
“Mr Darcy—William. If you can tolerate it, sir, might I give you one more circle, although in this case, I must base it on some speculation rather than observable fact?”
“Of course—I am at your service.”
“You are undeniably a handsome object—possibly the handsomest of my acquaintance, and have been so for some time. You have been importuned mercilessly by matchmaking mamas who would spare no effort to see you married to the advantage of one daughter’s family, or do their best to prevent your marriage to the advantage of a rival.
You also have other thoroughly unsuitable and perhaps even repugnant suitors, who would attach themselves to you using any tactic due to your wealth, position, or handsomeness.
You have no doubt had to listen to such machinations, and avoid such compromises on an almost daily basis since before you were of marriageable age.
To protect yourself, you seem to have created an impenetrable mask that hides what you think and feel.
You have also created a set of stratagems to avoid the most flagrant of those machinations and protect your heart that you might have a chance of one day marrying for true love—or at the very least avoiding being forced or compromised into a loveless union, created for the benefit of others. Does this seem a fair rendering?”
“Yes, as I would expect of you that is an extremely accurate sketch. It is exactly as my life has proceeded to date.”
“That is interesting. Very interesting indeed.
I was not describing you—I was describing Jane.
It seems like you are part of her circle as well—in fact, she may very well be the one person I know who most reminds me of you.
How can you be surprised that such a beauty as Jane, with a mother such as mine, would have to develop her own protections?
The rules of propriety are a poor and weak protection for the females of our time, but they are all we have.
Jane learnt to act demurely and with grace and propriety, regardless of provocation.
You cannot possibly imagine what it is like for her to live with our mother.
It is now seven years since she came out, yet despite her beauty, she remains unattached, and our mother laments this fact loudly at every opportunity, to any who will listen and many who will not.
She has quietly, with my assistance, rejected two suitors without informing my mother, and you can rest assured my mother will never know of what happened here tonight either.
Imagine yourself irrevocably tied to Lady Catherine every day of your life, instead of one fortnight a year, and I believe you may start to understand—or perhaps your cousin Anne would be able to help you comprehend, since she seems to be in an even more precarious position than Jane.
“Now if you will, imagine yourself showing particular interest in me—even so obvious as to make me aware of it—” She offered a small, sad smile, trying to take out some of the sting and lighten the discussion.
“Now imagine, if I paid very particular and almost constant attention to you for several weeks, apparently deliberately making every effort to engage your affection, and was quite successful at it—as I appear to have been unconsciously. Then I left without a word, note, or gesture, because Charlotte Collins assured me you showed no signs of returning my regard during a single ball, and your aunt is a frightening and unpleasant harridan of a woman without any sense of decorum or propriety. How would you feel then? It pains me to say it, but your aunt and my mother could be sisters, and the most intent and careful scrutiny of your countenance over many weeks would be unable to detect your particular regard for me. Perhaps your cousins could detect it, but I certainly could not.”
Fitzwilliam Darcy was seldom completely surprised by anything—in fact, this happened almost never—except in the presence of Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
It had never occurred to him that all the twittering ladies of his acquaintance might have their own point of view completely unknown to him and might have their own pressures being brought to bear by their matchmaking mamas or mercenary fathers.
Their plight was considerably worse than his, because he could avoid the marriage market almost indefinitely.
No one would ever call him on the shelf, or a spinster.
When he was forty or even sixty, he could perfectly well get nearly any wife he wanted (except apparently Elizabeth Bennet) with his nearly infinite wealth and power.
The pressure on these young ladies must be enormous, and they were given very few tools to work with.
They spent their time learning accomplishments, which mostly served to help them acquire husbands, while holding no practical value.
They were instructed in all the arts and allurements necessary to capture a husband, because in their society that was the only way to avoid genteel poverty.
Women in his society were placed in a poor position indeed, and he had never given it a second thought in his entire life.
As a man, this would be bad enough, but as guardian for a young sister, it was unconscionable.
It must have required an inordinate amount of courage for Elizabeth to turn down not one but two eligible suitors—one the heir to her father’s estate, and one who was the most eligible she was ever likely to meet—yet against immense pressure, reject them she had.