Chapter 7
Private Revisions
Sunday
Elizabeth had been awake for some time before the house stirred.
The light was already creeping through the curtains, pale and resolute, and she lay for several minutes without rising, her thoughts moving with purpose even if she did not care for it.
It had occurred to her – quietly, almost inconveniently – that she had been mistaken.
Not in fact, but in what she had chosen to make of it.
She had never, until Wickham spoke, thought Mr. Darcy unjust. Proud, certainly. Reserved to the point of rudeness, often. Disposed to think well of himself and ill of others. All this she had believed without hesitation. But not unjust. Not ungenerous in principle.
And yet she had accepted, with little resistance, a picture of him as capable of deliberate meanness.
Why?
The question admitted of no comfortable answer.
Wickham had been wrong – not once only, but repeatedly.
The first was not so bad. He thought Mr. Darcy would marry his cousin.
When Mr. Darcy denied it most vehemently and was affronted, it showed that uniting the estates and thereby gaining another estate meant nothing to him.
Mr. Wickham was certainly wrong about that.
For one, it showed that he did not really know Mr. Darcy as much as he suggested.
Then why insist on something like that when it reflected poorly on Mr. Darcy?
Did he want her to think negatively about him – well, more so than she had admitted?
She sat up and reshaped her pillows with unusual force.
The misrepresentation of a gentle young lady was more troublesome.
What motive could lead him to besmirch her?
Nothing could motivate a man to say the things he said about her.
And she never questioned it. That was what upset her the most. What would make a girl of fifteen or sixteen arrogant and cold?
Even in Hertfordshire, such faults were rarely the invention of childhood.
He either did not know her at all and just made it up, but even then, why negative things?
Or he actually wanted to harm the girl in her eyes. But why?
Impatiently, she left her bed. She went to the window and opened it.
She took two deep breaths but then closed it quickly; it was almost freezing outside, which she should have known if she had paid any attention to the ice flowers on the glass.
She hurried to the fireplace and, with practised hands, relit the fire.
She put more wood on and took the blanket from her bed.
She sat in her armchair and made herself comfortable under the blanket.
Money.
He had received money. He did not deny it when Mr. Darcy brought it up. She could scarcely believe what she had heard after dinner. How she had believed him; how readily he had made her outraged on his behalf.
It was difficult to let her impressions go. There had been something in his manner – something open, something engaging – which still resisted condemnation. That such ease might be assumed without foundation was difficult to reconcile. Yet another possibility forced itself upon her.
Had he laughed at her eagerness to hear such things of Mr. Darcy?
He told Mr. Darcy that he wanted to study the law.
But then he chose not to. He never explained his reasons when her father asked him.
So, no profession had been pursued just to end up in the militia.
What did he do then for the interim years?
How foolishly she had surrendered to the pleasure of being charmed.
She had been full of Wickham after that evening; she had even imagined dancing with him.
She was satisfied with his smiles, his damning information.
None of the improprieties had troubled her then.
She had been content to allow it all to wash over her.
What he had given her was not information, but motive.
He had supplied intention where she had not previously required one.
She did not like the conclusion pressing upon her.
She did not like it at all. It suggested not that she had been deceived but that she had been willing.
Willing to believe ill, because it explained what she already disliked.
That was not an error she could attribute to youth or ignorance.
It was an error of judgement, pure and simple.
She recalled the stern look on Mr. Darcy’s face when she accused him of mistaking ease for insincerity when it came to Mr. Wickham.
He answered without blinking, saying he had mistaken nothing.
She felt he wanted her to take his words seriously.
She dressed with more gravity than usual, and when at last she took up her book, she read not a word of it.
***
The family gathered with their usual variety of spirits. Mrs Bennet was already animated, Lydia and Kitty restless, Mr. Collins solemnly attentive to his plate.
Elizabeth took her seat quietly.
“You will want to be punctual today,” Mrs. Bennet declared. “I will not have us arriving after the Netherfield party. Nothing looks so careless.”
Mr. Bennet folded his paper. “Carelessness is sometimes only punctuality viewed from the wrong angle.”
No one attended to him, which suited him very well.
Mrs. Bennet declared the previous evening a triumph.
She could not say enough of the pleasures of it.
She did mention that she could have sworn she had placed Mr. Darcy next to Mr. Bennet, but that it all turned out better.
“We discussed it with Lady Lucas that he behaved above expectation. He understood the trials of mothers.” She sighed.
“He is a bachelor, yet it is too bad he is unavailable for the likes of us.”
Lydia spoke of the coming ball. Kitty spoke of dancing. Mr. Collins spoke of propriety.
Elizabeth listened.
At one point, Mr. Bennet remarked, without looking up, “The militia seems to attract an astonishing number of men who discover, rather late, that they are fond of discipline.”
Lydia laughed. Kitty echoed her. The remark passed on.
Elizabeth did not laugh. She found that she could not. The remark had struck too near the truth to admit of amusement.
By half past ten, they were ready. Cloaks were fetched, gloves adjusted; the bustle of departure lent importance to even the smallest motions.
As it was rather cold that morning, Mr. Bennet had the carriage ready. Elizabeth and the two younger sisters chose to briskly walk. Jane was not allowed that freedom; her mother wanted her at the church when Mr. Bingley arrived.
***
Mr. Darcy did not sleep late.
When he rose, the house was still, the quiet of Sunday morning pressing more insistently than that of any other day.
Bingley was right, he thought. He really did not like Sundays and their obligations – and, of course, the required idleness of them.
He dressed with his usual care, though his thoughts were not fixed upon the routine.
They returned, with persistence, to the previous evening.
His valet adjusted to his distant mood and quietly executed the morning steps.
It was her eyes he sought first upon arriving. Since first noticing her, he had fallen into the habit – though he was scarcely aware of it.
Then Miss Elizabeth Bennet crossed the room with unmistakable purpose.
Mr. Collins had been on the brink of making himself insufferable.
Darcy recalled it clearly now – the swelling confidence with which he had prepared to address the company, the officious tone already forming, the danger of embarrassment extending well beyond the bounds of mere absurdity.
It had not been Darcy’s concern; such displays were not uncommon in his experience.
What had concerned Miss Elizabeth was something else entirely.
The dignity of her family.
She had acted to prevent a public impropriety. For a fleeting instant, he wondered whether she had acted to spare him – but he knew better. She had intervened because the moment required it, and she had done so with such natural authority that the foolish man never realised he was corrected.
Darcy could not but acknowledge the propriety of her actions – though he would have preferred that they had not been necessary.
There had been, moreover, a composure in her manner that carried a quiet authority – a quality he was not accustomed to encounter, and which he found more striking than he chose to admit.
He could not recall many occasions on which he had witnessed good sense so efficiently applied and without any desire for admiration.
He could not dismiss, either, the absurdity that had been so publicly advanced.
That his aunt might speak of such a plan within the family was nothing new; she had long been accustomed to arranging the future according to her own convenience.
But that the notion should be repeated beyond that circle – and with such confidence – was a liberty he could not approve.
It must be corrected, and decisively, if it were to spread further.
Yet even as he resolved upon it, he was aware that this was not the source of his greatest irritation.
That the matter had been brought forward before Miss Elizabeth – that she should hear it, weigh it, perhaps even believe him already engaged – was what he found most difficult to endure.
He had no wish to be thought attached where he was not, and still less to appear indifferent to how such an impression might be received by Miss Elizabeth.
That it should signify so much to him – and so particularly in her estimation – was a circumstance he did not examine, though he was far from indifferent to it.
Their conversation afterwards, however, troubled him even more. Wickham. Always Wickham. A raw impulse returned: he wished – not for the first time – that he had not stopped after striking him once at Ramsgate. But Georgiana, misled and terrified, had cried out for him to stop – and he did.