Chapter 21
Perverse Chance
“Of course not,” Elizabeth laughed. “I am not a simpleton. Even if I took the lazy path of believing it, I have evidence to the contrary.”
The ladies sat in Mary’s parlour while William worked on his sermon. The front parlour gave a pleasant view of the lane, so Mary and her husband spent a good deal of time there.
Elizabeth liked the room and everything else about the parsonage very much.
It was a home. She doubted it would have succeeded had she accepted William’s proposal.
Mary saw something in the man long before anybody else, and her acceptance had brought it into the light.
In the unlikely event Elizabeth had accepted his awful proposal or been forced into it; she would have started in acrimony, which would have exacerbated his worst traits, while Mary started from affection, promoting his best. In the end, it all worked out as it should.
Mary was well accustomed to her sister occasionally staring into space, lost in thought, and took another sip of tea.
“Evidence?” Mary finally asked.
Elizabeth dragged her attention back.
“Rudimentary cartography; nothing to boast of. The three paths I usually take converge at a junction, so I used a map to find a point where it could be observed by the folly, and timed how long it took to get to the divergence point. I noted the time between my crossing the junction and Mr Darcy’s appearance, and it was consistent with his waiting until he saw me pass and hurrying to overtake me. Elementary.”
Mary laughed. “Would it not be simpler to ask?”
“It would be improper to meet alone by design, so if we acknowledged the subterfuge, we could not. He would be unable to speak to me alone without a formal arrangement; clearly not in the cards.”
“You persist in your belief that he is indifferent to you.”
Elizabeth had spent many hours contemplating the confusing man and already knew her mind.
“Not indifferent, per se. I think he might be interested, but I do not see any signs of particular regard. He talks to me as he might a sibling. I surmise he enjoys talking to an intelligent woman who clearly has no expectations whatsoever.”
“I think there is a lovely spot in the orchard where we can bury our poor departed Mr Occam. I shall ask William to make a proper eulogy to our long-lost master of simple explanations.”
Elizabeth laughed along, but it was a confused sound rather than true mirth.
“The man is confusing, but I believe, understandable. You know our relative situations. It was only the purest of good luck that William decided to offer for one of us, and double-triple fortune he turned out to be a good and well-suited husband. He could have used his future inheritance to get a much better-dowered or connected bride, yet he did not.”
Mary smiled, as she did any time her husband was praised. “I agree. We have been blessed.”
Elizabeth pensively continued, “I admit to you, and you alone, that sometimes I think there might be some scant affection for me, but when I think rationally, I wonder if we should expect lightning to strike our family thrice.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our dowries, such as they are, remain secret and depend on the financial solvency of whichever rich collector made the arrangement. Mr Darcy, if he thinks about it at all, believes I have nothing but my meagre charms to recommend me, and the lack of propriety among our relations is legendary. It is one thing to be a gentleman’s daughter, which we can claim; quite another to be a poor gentleman’s daughter, with several shrill relatives—and a bluestocking on top.
Could we expect him to rejoice in the inferiority of our connections?
To congratulate himself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath his own? ”
Mary took her hand. “That sounds like you just made up words the man in Netherfield would have said to support your thesis. Do you really believe this one—the Rosings Darcy—whom you have been meeting would say that?”
“Of course not, unless provoked. I have never seen him angry, but I suspect a row between us might end civilization as we know it. Given the right provocation he would say all that and more; but that is not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“He will not say such an ungentlemanly thing, but he does think it. Let us try a scenario.”
“Proceed.”
Mary's tea had grown cold, so she prepared fresh cups for both as Elizabeth continued.
“Families do not prosper for centuries by being weak. They either become tough as oak or die out.”
“Common sense.”
“Suppose you are patriarch of such a family with an heir and no spare. What do you do with him?”
“You harden him. Teach him his duty above all, and ensure you test his mettle until he is capable.”
“Exactly! Now make that hardened young man responsible for the family legacy; toughen him up by sending him to boy’s schools which are notoriously brutal; separate him from his parents by the curtain of death at a very young age; then throw him into the marriage mart as the most eligible bachelor in the ton. ”
Mary thought a moment. “Perhaps add in a bit of awkwardness, or even shyness.”
“Hard to believe, but I shall concede the possibility. I can attest to awkwardness, but shyness might be a bridge too far.”
“Now throw him into a crowded assembly, where everyone knows his income within minutes, and he can hear our mother from the next county boasting about how her handsome daughter looks so well with his friend.”
Elizabeth sighed in remembrance, and nodded with a frown.
“You ceded awkward, so put that man into the position of just trying to survive the assembly with our mother blathering in one ear and Miss Bingley the other; when a small, yapping cur takes hold of his trousers.”
“He was not wearing trousers, but I will go along. You would try to dislodge him without damaging the dog, annoying as it is, but with force enough to make it desist, at least for the rest of the evening.”
“Aha!” Mary shouted gleefully. “May we assert that telling the dog that his proposed partner was not handsome enough to tempt him might dislodge it for the rest of the evening? Hmmm!”
Elizabeth paused, taken aback. “You are a genius, and Mr Occam is satisfied. That is a reasonable explanation.”
Mary pressed on. “Now let us suppose that, over the next month, he decided you were handsome enough to tempt him. Charlotte and Jane both said he looked at you a great deal, and you said yourself he listened to your conversations, so your assertion that he looked to find fault wounds poor Mr Occam to the quick. Let us try a calculation.”
“All right,” Elizabeth said, not enamoured with having her own weapons turned against her.
“Estimate all the reasons a man might stare at a woman, then what percentage of those are admiration and which disdain.”
Elizabeth sighed, “You suggest the disdain hypothesis is a low probability.”
“I state it outright.”
“I concede the point,” Elizabeth grumbled.
“Let us take this man, who has been taught all his life that his duty—the cost of his privilege—is to marry well, forge alliances, and leave the family stronger in the next generation. He has a decade in society; convinced he understands how it works in all particulars.”
Elizabeth considered that deeply. The discomfort rivalled one of her mother’s tirades, but she forced herself to review everything that had happened in Hertfordshire, from the assembly to the Netherfield ball. What had she done the entire time?
She gasped and sat forward. “I teased and taunted him the entire time. Now, let us… let us suppose that you, Charlotte, Jane, and your friend Occam are correct. He stared at me because he admired me—not that I am admitting any such thing—but I will entertain the possibility.”
“One step at a time, Lizzy.”
“Now suppose that he, like me, also took the intellectually lazy route.”
“How so?”
“Suppose he thought I was flirting with him. Most men think the acorn does not fall far from the tree.”
Mary stared and reviewed her observations from Hertfordshire. As usual, she had observed more than anybody expected; one benefit of being effectively invisible. She nodded through it all and finally sighed.
“It makes sense. Mama openly boasted of capturing Mr Bingley. Suppose he admired you and concluded you were flirting. What would he do?”
“Miss Bingley flirted with him day in and day out, and he swatted her away like a fly, though I would bet a year’s allowance he kept his chambers locked.”
“I would.”
“But if he thought I was flirting with him, and he felt himself vulnerable—”
For a few minutes she was silent. “He would remove himself from the temptation. After all, he is the stout oak, responsible for the Darcy name centuries hence. Regardless of his feelings, he would leave and find a more suitable wife.”
Why did the revelation sadden her? Was it just the knock on her pride for being pre-emptively rejected?
She had detested the man a fortnight earlier, and only recently and begrudgingly decided he might not be as bad as she thought.
She had even entertained the thought of a friendship, though such things between people of marriageable age were uncommon.
“I believe we solved the mystery. It is entirely possible he admired me a little, and mistakenly thought I returned the sentiment for a time. Now… now… well, he does not have to run. He leaves in two days’ time, and I believe he is merely storing up a few conversations.
It is not that difficult to beat Lady Catherine in an interestingness contest.”
“And are you… bothered?”
“It is one thing for me to reject him. His rejecting me is not so agreeable, but beyond that, I am content to understand it. Not happy, mind you, but content.”
“I suppose,” Mary grumbled. “Either way, he will be gone, so it does not matter all that much.”
“It does not matter at all.”