Chapter 22
Even under the best of circumstances, visitors to Rosings Park seldom regretted their departure. With Darcy out of spirits and Lady Catherine at once triumphant and impatient to secure his engagement to Anne, circumstances were very little short of their worst.
It did not seem to have occurred to his aunt that having succeeded in proving the weakness of one potential wife would hardly incline Darcy to immediately seek another, but perhaps this was not surprising.
Lady Catherine had spent many years carefully ignoring her daughter’s disinterest in a marriage of cousins.
Why not ignore Darcy’s inclinations as well?
In any case, Lady Catherine was troubled with no such reflections, and her manner, more self-satisfied than ever, showed it.
The return to London brought general satisfaction.
Colonel Fitzwilliam departed for his regiment with as much relief as if he were escaping battle, not going toward it.
Though Georgiana had borne the trial of her aunt’s judgement with full credit, she was obviously much relieved to be free of it.
Even the servants seemed relieved to resume their routines.
Darcy alone found no relief in the change.
He had once imagined that distance might correct the disorder of his thoughts, or at least reduce what had passed to something bearable.
Instead, he found that absence had sharpened everything.
What had seemed capable of explanation while he remained near Rosings, exposed daily to his aunt’s interference and the immediate confusion of Elizabeth’s departure, now returned to him stripped of all circumstance but the essential facts.
Elizabeth, gone without a word. Elizabeth, having given him up when she was told that the advantage of his connections would not be hers upon their marriage, and having taken his aunt’s money to do it.
He would have called it impossible if it were not true.
Darcy resumed his ordinary occupations because he must, not because they held him.
Correspondence was brought to him and answered in due course, and business papers were laid before him and considered with sufficient attention to fulfil his responsibilities.
Accounts were reviewed, decisions were made, directions were given.
To any external observer, nothing in his conduct might have seemed materially altered.
Yet each task demanded a steadiness of mind he no longer commanded.
He would read the same paragraph twice and find that its meaning did not remain with him.
He would begin a letter and discover he had no recollection of what he intended to say.
Even when he succeeded in finishing what lay before him, there was no satisfaction in it.
He set one thing aside only to take up another with the same inability to care.
Darcy House had once offered him peace and solace.
Now it offered him none. He could not remain long in any one room.
He moved from the library to the drawing room, from the drawing room to his study, from his study to the breakfast parlour, pausing only where some immediate matter required his presence.
The order of the place, once so agreeable, now served only to make the disorder he carried inside him more clear.
Inevitably, his thoughts returned to Elizabeth.
He did not accuse her. He could not. Whatever else might be uncertain, his opinion of her character had not been so lightly formed as to be overthrown by one unexplained event.
He knew her too well to suppose her capable of artifice or calculation.
Darcy could accuse her only of weakness.
He must have been mistaken in his estimation of her strength.
Lady Catherine must have worked on her. The explanation felt wrong, but not as wrong as suspecting her of design.
Yet did he know her at all? Perhaps she had never truly loved him.
The thought wounded him as soon as it arose, for it implied what he most wished not to believe.
He had thought himself understood. He had allowed himself to believe that what had passed between them at Hunsford had amounted to something neither could mistake.
He had believed her manner altered toward him, and her confidence in him real.
Darcy knew he loved her. He had believed that he was loved in return.
Now he was forced to consider that his own wishes might have given too much consequence to every look, every conversation, every mark of distinction which her natural openness and generosity might equally have given to any other less interested than himself.
He did not dwell on the thought because he could not bear it long, yet he could not escape it.
Georgiana, who had watched him since their return with a concern too affectionate to be silent, found him one morning in the smaller drawing room, standing at one of the tall windows with a paper open in his hand and his attention nowhere upon it.
“You have not been yourself since we came back from Kent,” she said gently.
He turned at the sound of her voice, folded the paper, and set it aside. “I am very well.”
She came farther into the room and sat down, not with the timid reserve that might once have governed her in speaking to him, but with the quiet courage his affection for her had gradually encouraged. “You say so only because you do not wish me to ask again.”
Darcy smiled at that for a moment. “And will that prevent you?”
“No. It has never prevented me where you are concerned.” She looked up at him with steady gentleness.
“I was very sorry that Elizabeth left so suddenly. It seemed most extraordinary. I have wished several times to ask about it, and each time thought you would tell me if you chose. Since you have not, I must conclude that I am to begin the subject myself.”
Darcy drew a chair nearer but did not sit immediately. “There is little to tell that is not already known.”
“Known by you, perhaps. Not by me.” She watched him for a moment before adding, “Why did she leave?”
He met her gaze then. “She was persuaded to go.”
A quick expression of surprise crossed her face. “By my aunt?”
“Yes.”
“For what reason?”
He sat down at last, restlessly. “Because our aunt believed Miss Bennet’s presence at Hunsford improper. She had observed enough to suspect my attachment, and instead of trusting me to govern myself, chose to interfere.”
Georgiana’s colour rose. “She has no right.”
“I must agree with you, but our aunt did not. She sent Miss Bennet home that day, in her own carriage.”
Georgiana’s colour rose with emotion. “How humiliating it must have been for her.”
Darcy said nothing.
She studied him more closely. “Then why do you look as though you blame her?”
“I do not blame her.”
“But you doubt her.”
The directness of it made evasion useless. He looked away for a moment, then back again. “I do not know what I think.”
Georgiana cocked her head to the side and said nothing, only waited.
“Our aunt acted wrongly,” Darcy said. “I know she must have brought great pressure to bear on Miss Bennet. That cannot have been easy for a young woman. But in the end, she did go.”
“And you think that must mean something against you.”
He rose then and crossed a few paces before answering. To answer without the relief of movement would have been unbearable. “I think it must mean something. If she had wished to preserve an understanding between us, she might have found some means to do so.”
“Might she?”
He turned. “You do not think so?”
“I think Elizabeth, in such a situation, may have had more to bear than you allow,” Georgiana said softly.
Her defence of Elizabeth, offered with such quiet conviction, touched him more than he wished to show. “I have not forgotten what she must have suffered.”
“No. But you have begun to imagine what she did not feel.” Georgiana’s tone remained gentle, but it no longer yielded. “That is not the same thing.”
He stood still for a moment, looking at her. “Our aunt has given me another explanation.”
Georgiana’s expression changed at once. “What explanation?”
He hesitated only because to repeat it was to give it substance.
“She claims that upon being told that marrying me would mean being shunned by the rest of our connection, being unable to use our family’s consequence, she thought the better of it.
That to sweeten the deal, Elizabeth was offered an inducement to remove herself from my notice, and she accepted it. ”
For the first time, Georgiana’s composure gave way to visible indignation. “That is impossible.”
“I told her so.”
“And yet you have repeated it yourself.”
He did not deny it.
Georgiana rose now, the quiet gravity of her manner sharpened by feeling. “You cannot believe that of her. Not after all you have said. Not after all I have seen.”
“I do not wish to believe it.”
“That is not enough. Do you believe it?”
He answered with difficulty. “No. Not wholly. But I cannot explain what has happened in any other way.”
“You cannot explain it because you do not know enough, not because our aunt is right.”
He looked at her, and for a moment, there was something almost painful in the steadiness of her regard.
“Fitz, my dear brother,” Georgiana said. “I think you ought to have more faith in Elizabeth. Not to mention more faith in yourself.”
Darcy looked away. “I only wish I could,” he said.
When he could bring himself to look back at her, Georgiana was watching him sorrowfully. Her eyes searched his, as though she were looking for the answer to a difficult question.
When she did not find it, she gave him an understanding smile and a gentle touch on the arm, and went away. Some minutes later, he heard the sounds of the pianoforte, as Georgiana attempted to find the answers he could not give her.
∞∞∞
A few days later, the Bingleys came to dine.