Chapter 15 #2
“Cease saying that! You cannot justly claim any regard for me and, in the same breath, prevail upon me to betray my husband! And while I carry his child!”
“I would love the child as my own, you must not concern yourself in that regard.”
“Upon my word, you are speaking of incest and child abduction! I think my concerns perfectly justified!”
“When you put it like that, I grant you it is not an ideal situation, but it is the only chance we are ever likely to have.”
“What is?” This most welcome interruption came from Mrs Sinclair. She bustled into the room and perched with decided purpose on a sofa.
“He says he loves me!” Elizabeth cried.
“Indeed,” Mrs Sinclair replied, fixing Bingley with a dubious look. “Although I cannot presently think of any good way of declaring such a thing, I am quite convinced that chasing Mrs Darcy through the house, bellowing at her for the whole world to hear, was a dreadful one.”
“I know!” he said, running his hands through his hair. He turned to Elizabeth. “Forgive me! I have no excuse but that I love you.”
“But I do not love you!”
Bingley stared at her, evidently astonished, and she growled with vexation. “I shall not pretend to be surprised that the possibility of my indifference never occurred to you. I have come to expect that men will presume they can command a woman’s affections at will.”
“But everything in your manner has—”
“Nay do not blame my manner, sir! I shall not have the blame for this!”
“But you are always pleased with my company!”
“I am pleased with many people’s company. It does not mean I am in love with them.”
“But have we not shown these past few days how well we do together?”
Elizabeth felt nauseous. “Yes, I have ever thought of us as dear friends. But if you have been imagining yourself my lover every time I so much as laughed at one of your jokes, then I can no longer think of our acquaintance with anything but abhorrence.”
“But you asked that I stay.”
“And you imagined I did so because I desired that we have a criminal conversation?”
He had the wherewithal to look abashed, but he did not deny it.
“I suggested that you stay because you seemed hesitant about leaving.”
He stepped towards her, a disconcertingly intense look on his face. “I did not wish to leave you.”
“Your obduracy in this matter is most alarming, Mr Bingley,” said Mrs Sinclair. “Might I suggest a return to the caprice for which you are renowned and allow Lizzy to disabuse you of your fascination before any further damage is done?”
“If I have misunderstood your feelings, I am sorrier than I can express,” Bingley continued, heedless of her warning.
“Yet, I beg you would not squander this opportunity for a want of the deepest love. We have been friends, I am certain of it, and I would be willing to live as such. Surely, you could tolerate the arrangement if it meant escaping Darcy’s disesteem? ”
Elizabeth could not immediately think how to respond, for so much in what he said offended her. “You will have to explain your meaning,” she said at length.
“I have seen how he treats you. You need not protect him on my account.”
She gaped at him, her cheeks burning hot and her indignation hotter. “I have no need to protect him on anybody’s account. He is the best man I have ever known.”
That appeared to confuse him greatly. “But he abandoned you to go to Kent!”
“His aunt is dying!”
“I would not have gone.”
“I can well believe that! It would require too much in the way of consideration for other people!”
“Oh yes, Darcy is all consideration. He considers every duty under the sun more important than you.”
“I have the deepest respect for his sense of duty.”
“Even though he spends more time jaunting about the country fulfilling it than paying any attention to you? Why do you continue to defend him? I know you have been made miserable. I have seen it.”
“When?”
“Not ten minutes ago, for a start, when you admitted to weeping over whatever he wrote, or did not write, in that letter,” he said, pointing to her pocket.
Incredulous, Elizabeth withdrew the note Darcy had sent her from the very first stop on his journey to London. It read only—
Elizabeth,
I adore you,
Fitzwilliam
—but it meant more to her than a thousand words. “This? Aye, it made me cry—because I miss him!”
Her objection observably gave Bingley pause, but it did not deter him for long. “No. I know you have been distressed by his aloofness. I have seen him brush off the touch of your hand. I have heard him forbid you from speaking. I have seen you feign a headache to escape his company.”
She shook her head, which only encouraged him to oppose her more vehemently.
“What then of his pride, of his regret for marrying outside his precious sphere? Though you claim to have resolved the matter, I have not forgotten how he blamed you for all the rumours we heard at the theatre last year. Would that were the only occasion I had seen him punish you for your lesser consequence, but I have heard him lament it too many times.”
Elizabeth could offer no better response than incredulous silence.
“Truly, Mr Bingley, your persistence is verging on the deranged,” Mrs Sinclair voiced for her.
“Very well,” he said to Elizabeth, “I shall not go on listing all the ways in which he disesteems you, for you know better than I how little he respects you. You, who said to me that there is nothing more wretched than being unable to respect one’s partner in life!”
Disbelief and affront drew a wordless cry from her lips. He seemed in absolute earnest yet spoke of his oldest friend as though he were a stranger. “I was referring to my mother and father when I said that, not myself!”
“Need I remind you,” said Mrs Sinclair, “that Mrs Darcy is with child? I must insist you stop this before she becomes any more distressed.”
“Her condition has not prevented Darcy from quarrelling with her nigh-on constantly! I have never heard you object to his conduct!”
“I am old, not senile. What is your excuse?”
“Tabitha has no need to object to Darcy’s conduct, for there is naught objectionable in it!
” Elizabeth cried. “I shall not pretend that we never disagree, but it is seldom and never without swift resolution. You have mistaken teasing and debate for discord. You have wilfully misunderstood everything you have seen to justify your treacherous feelings.”
“But it was you who said when I arrived at Pemberley that we could comfort each other now that I was come.”
“I meant we might comfort each other for having been ill-used by Jane, not Darcy! I love my husband in a way you are unlikely ever to comprehend. But I am under no obligation to justify my happiness to you. Rather, it is you who must justify your betrayal. How could you? He has been the very best of friends to you. He has lent you his counsel, his time, his companionship, his houses, even his reputation, from which you and your sisters have squeezed all conceivable profit. He trusted you. How could you contemplate stealing his wife and child?”
A flush of something that ought to have been shame, but which she thought was more likely petulance, reddened his countenance.
“I did not plot and scheme to steal his wife and child. The notion was but an impulse of the moment. Indeed, my design was to leave. I have passage booked on a ship sailing on the fifteenth of this month.”
Despite her experience of having her impressions of people completely overturned in the course of one conversation, this volte-face was proving particularly difficult to countenance.
She had always considered Bingley such a kind and amiable man.
The discovery of such profound selfishness was excessively painful.
“You were simply going to leave without telling anybody? What about Jane? Do you feel no scruple in abandoning her?”
“She will not care! She has loathed every moment of being married to me. I wonder that she went to so much trouble to bring it about.” He shook his head and almost sneered. “How she will repent if ever she discovers you would not have had me anyway.”
“What?”
“She only threw herself at me to prevent me from offering for you.”
Elizabeth’s babe kicked and writhed, mayhap stirred by the rushing of blood in her veins, loud to her own ears and doubtless thunderous to his. “You did not mention that when you arrived here, spinning us your tales of woe,” she said coldly.
He paled but said nothing, though Elizabeth supposed there was little he could say in defence of such duplicity.
“She has known all this time that you loved me?”
“Er…well…it would seem so, yes.”
“Oh, Jane!” she whispered, sick to her heart.
Bingley squirmed and looked miserable and offered no excuse.
“You have stolen my sister from me! You, who knew how heartbroken I was at our estrangement, have stood by and pretended to be puzzled by her bitterness and jealousy, all the while knowing the cause!”
“That is not true! I was not aware she knew of my feelings until we argued just before I left Netherfield. How would I have suspected? What woman in her right mind would trick a man she knows does not love her into marriage?”
His obstinate ignorance brought tears to Elizabeth’s eyes. “One who loves him very, very much.”
“She did?”
“I daresay she still does. Else she would not care that you do not.” She took a deep breath and swiped away a tear, determined not to weep on his account. “How could you? You have betrayed us all.”
He could not have looked more wretched, but she could summon no pity for him. “Get out of my sight, Mr Bingley. Better yet, get out of my house.”
She really thought he might begin to weep when he mumbled a pitiful query as to where he ought to go.
“I have long been an advocate of your leaving the country,” Mrs Sinclair opined. “The idea has had few supporters as I understand it, but I suspect exile is presently the safest option available to you.”
Bingley nodded glumly. “I shall leave England as planned in two weeks.”