Chapter 17
BLIND, PARTIAL, PREJUDICED, AND ABSURD
Jane and Elizabeth prepared for bed that night in silence, the only sounds between them being the gentle thud of shoes removed or the quiet swish of evening gowns folded while nightgowns were pulled over heads.
It suited Elizabeth well, for her thoughts were too full.
Mr Darcy had not asked her to dance. She thought he might have, but then Sir James came up and the moment was lost. For the rest of the night—which was not very long—he had seemed to avoid her.
Then again, perhaps he was avoiding Sir James, for that gentleman could scarcely be dislodged from her side for a moment.
As Elizabeth sat at the dressing table to begin plaiting her hair, Jane spoke.
“Please just say it, Lizzy.”
“What shall I say?”
“That you do not approve of me allowing Mr Bingley’s attentions again.”
Viewed through the mirror behind her, Elizabeth perceived an odd defiance in her sister’s countenance.
“He did apologise, you know.”
“If you are satisfied with it, then I suppose I must be, too.” Elizabeth offered a mild smile. “Do you feel you can trust him?”
Hair only half-down, Jane sank on her bed. Elizabeth watched her in the mirror and waited for her to continue.
“I do still love him, and I do believe he loves me. I believe he regrets leaving as he did.”
Elizabeth waited, her hands finishing her plait before she turned on the small stool to look at her sister directly.
Jane sighed. “I simply do not believe he would not do it again.”
“You do not trust him?”
“No,” her sister confirmed. “Not for anything.”
Elizabeth rose and gestured for Jane to take her place at the table. She began to remove the remaining pins from her sister’s hair. “It is early days,” she said eventually. “Trust takes longer to build than this.”
“I have spent too many months feeling as if a millstone was hung round my neck. I could not go through it again.”
“Nor would I wish you to,” Elizabeth said. She removed the pins and began to brush, taking occasional small peeks at her sister’s troubled countenance.
“What if Mr Darcy tells him to…to enlist in the army? Or perhaps move to America?”
Elizabeth laughed. “There is good reason for his reliance on his friend’s opinion,” she said, then told Jane of what Mr Darcy had said regarding the earlier days of their friendship.
“But how shall it be? Will he do as Mr Darcy says for the rest of his life, merely because he helped him at school?”
“Perhaps this matter has taught him he must not.”
“Possibly,” Jane agreed weakly.
The two ladies got into bed and put out the lamp.
Elizabeth, seeing that her sister appeared to be settling into sleep, did likewise.
Her thoughts would not yet rest, however.
Mr Darcy would remain in her thoughts, or more specifically her treatment of him.
For while an improved acquaintance had shown her that he was a better person than she had believed, it had also taught her that she was not.
In fact, her own opinion of herself had diminished considerably with every bit of evidence showing her how wrong she had been.
She had not been kind to him, not at the assembly and not in the entire course of their acquaintance.
She had shown herself to be a gossip, speaking of his personal affairs with Mr Wickham; a bit shrewish, taking him to task for his errors; indiscreet, in sharing so freely with his cousin her own personal affairs; and, a poor judge of character.
If she really wanted to be honest with herself, she would have to say she had never behaved as poorly as she had in the time she had known Mr Darcy.
I have been blind, partial, prejudiced, and absurd. How despicably have I acted! Till this moment, I never knew myself. A small groan escaped her. What must he think of me?
“Lizzy?” Jane’s voice floated towards her from the other side of the room. “Are you well?”
“I am. I was just thinking of how terrible I must seem to Mr Darcy.”
“Terrible? Indeed you are not! Why do you say so?”
“I cannot be satisfied with my conduct since last autumn,” Elizabeth replied. “I am embarrassed by the things I have said and done. I do not wonder that he thinks me a country savage, for I have surely behaved like one.”
She reviewed all her offences against the man to Jane: how she had gossiped and antagonised and argued. “And the worst of it all,” she concluded, “is that I suspect it all came from the fact that he first insulted me. My vanity could not allow it; I was determined to dislike him from that moment.”
Jane laughed sleepily. “I cannot deny that much is true. But why should it signify now?”
“I suppose it does not,” Elizabeth said while ignoring that it felt very much like it did.