Chapter 8
When the party from the Parsonage arrived, Darcy was watching keenly. He saw the buffoon of a parson enter, bowing every two steps, his mortified wife following him, and Miss Lucas behind them. Where was Elizabeth?
As impatient as he was to discover where the lady he intended to honour with his proposal of marriage was, Darcy waited until Richard introduced the three guests to his parents and brother. For once in his life, Darcy was grateful for his Aunt Catherine’s officious ways.
“Where is Miss Bennet? Why is she tardy?” Lady Catherine demanded.
Charlotte knew her husband was about to launch into a nonsensical soliloquy. She spoke before he could. “My friend is not well, and as she respects that you forbid anyone who is ill from entering your house, Miss Elizabeth remained at the parsonage to recover. She conveys her apologies to all.”
‘Elizabeth ill! I must go see that she is well,’ Darcy told himself silently.
“She is to be commended for following my instructions,” Lady Catherine allowed.
Collins’s patroness’s statement froze whatever words of censure aimed at his disobliging cousin he was about to deliver. He realised that by following his Charlotte’s advice and not his own inclinations, he had avoided Lady Catherine’s displeasure.
“There is something I must see to,” Darcy said. He bowed and was gone from the room before any of his relatives could ask him anything.
“Well! I never!” Lady Catherine exclaimed.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
As soon as Elizabeth heard the door close, and her cousin’s voluble voice fade from hearing, she made her way down the stairs to take a seat in Charlotte’s back parlour. She kicked off her slippers and folded her legs under her as she sat.
She opened her copy of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. She had read the book three times before, but the travel and crossing the sea to unknown lands caught her imagination.
She would love to travel but so far, she had only been to London to visit the Gardiners and now into Kent. Elizabeth was keenly looking forward to summer this year when she was to travel to the Lake District with Aunt Maddie and Uncle Edward.
How she hoped they would go to Grasmere and have the honour of meeting Mr William Wordsworth. If she was so fortunate, she would beg his indulgence and ask if he would agree to write a message to her father in his latest volume of poetry.
Her thoughts of the Lake District and Mr Wordsworth were interrupted by the ringing of the bell attached to the front door.
Elizabeth did not bestir herself because she knew the maid would answer the door.
As she listened, there was the rumbling of a deep baritone voice.
Elizabeth saw the door open, and in walked none other than Mr Darcy.
Why was the last man she wanted to see here?
“Miss Bennet, you look improved. I needed to see you were not too ill when Mrs Collins told my aunt you were infirm this evening,” Darcy stated. He was happy he was reasonably articulate in her company. “Is there anything I may bring you to alleviate your suffering?”
“I was suffering from a megrim, but it has improved enough for me to come downstairs,” Elizabeth responded.
‘What was Mr Darcy about? He cared not a whit for her health!’ She watched as he placed his beaver and gloves on the small table between two armchairs.
Then, Mr Darcy proceeded to pace back and forth.
Every now and again, he would stop and face her looking like he was about to speak.
Rather than do so, he then commenced his pacing again.
Darcy was trying to calm his nerves by pacing, but it was having the opposite effect. He stopped and faced Elizabeth, determined to speak. “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. She did not want this dishonourable man to love her, if he even knew what love was. He was engaged to Miss de Bourgh after all!
He took her silence as an invitation to continue speaking.
“Against my will and reason, I have fallen in love with you, one who is so far below my station.
That I am willing to overlook the inferiority of your social position is a great condescension on my part.
Your mother was not gently born, you have an uncle who is a country solicitor, and another who is active in trade.
The behaviour of your family, with the exception of you and your older sister, is atrocious and your parents and younger three sisters would never be accepted in polite society.
It is why we would keep our distance from them, except for Miss Bennet, that is.
“In making you my wife, I will be going against my nature, my reason, my character, the expectations of my family, my heritage as a proud Darcy, and all my late parents’ aspirations for me.
I fought against these unjust feelings for a long time, but seeing you here in Kent has overwhelmed me and caused me to deny my duty.
That I have overcome these scruples should demonstrate the depth of my love for you.
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet, will you marry me?”
With Elizabeth’s deeply rooted dislike, she saw no compliment in this man’s supposed affection.
She knew that she was about to occasion him pain, and she could not be sorry for that.
If she had felt any compassion for him, the words of his so-called proposal washed that possibility away in anger.
She tried, however, to compose herself to reply with civility; even though it had been sorely lacking from his speech.
What angered Elizabeth the most, was that as he had asked for her hand, she could see that he had not considered a refusal was at all likely.
Even though he made as if he had some apprehension, it was obvious that in his arrogance he thought she would fall at his feet and thank him for his condescension.
He was far more like Lady Catherine than Elizabeth had first thought. Her cheeks burnt red with anger.
Seeing the colour of her cheeks, Darcy was charmed that his proposal caused her to blush in that way. Elizabeth was the woman he already believed to be his betrothed as he was certain her positive reply was a foregone conclusion.
“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. If it were any man other than you, it would have been natural to feel some obligation to express gratitude. I would have thanked another man, but not you. I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. Other than to you, I would be sorry to occasion pain to anyone. If you feel disappointment, it is all by your own hand. And besides, the feelings which you tell me you long fought to overcome, will I am sure, fade soon enough.”
Darcy, who by now was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to hear her words with as much resentment as surprise.
His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature.
He was struggling to calm himself and would not speak until he had succeeded to a certain degree.
Elizabeth stared back at Mr Darcy with no remorse for rejecting him out of hand.
“And this is all the reply which I am to receive after having honoured you in such a way? Why, with so little endeavour to be civil, am I rejected so impolitely?”
“I might as well inquire why with so evident a desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Did not your manner of address give me license to respond in kind? It seems you enjoy slighting me. The very first time I saw you, you insulted me when I, like other ladies, was sitting out at the assembly in Meryton to allow other young ladies the opportunity to dance due to many of the men being away at war. But I have other reasons—many of them. You are too intelligent to not know I have. Had not my feelings already been so firmly decided against you, or perhaps had it only been indifference, or by some miracle favourable, do you think for one second that I would ever align myself with the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?”
As Elizabeth—no, after this rejection she was Miss Bennet—said what she did, Darcy changed colour. He could not fathom how she knew. The thoughts were interrupted when she continued speaking.
“Even before my suspicions of your role in harming my sister were confirmed, I already had every reason in the world to think poorly of you. No excuse will pardon you of the despicable part you had in that. You dare not, you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other—of exposing 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.” Elizabeth paused and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse.
He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity.
“Can you deny that you have done it?” Elizabeth demanded.
With tranquillity Darcy did not feel, he faced her. “I have no wish of denying that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards him, I have been kinder than towards myself.”