Chapter Seventeen
Darcy was out before the house had properly woken. A thick mist had rolled in from the sea during the night and settled itself over Lyme with stubborn determination. It swallowed the harbour and reduced the town to damp stone and the occasional indistinct figure emerging unexpectedly from the grey.
He walked without any particular destination in mind, though this was not unusual.
Darcy had always walked when troubled. The difference was that he generally preferred to persuade himself there was some practical purpose behind it.
This morning there was none. He had asked Elizabeth Bennet to marry him.
She had refused. Worse still, she had refused him after a succession of actions which appeared increasingly indefensible the longer he considered them.
The proposal itself had been poorly managed.
There was no gentler way of describing it.
He had inferred an obligation, acted as a rake, demanding it of her in the middle of the night.
He had presented himself outside her chamber like the villain in a melodrama and then felt wounded when she refused to receive his declarations with enthusiasm.
Yet even that had not been the worst of it. There had been the field, which became more inappropriate every time he remembered it. Inappropriate and yet so entirely glorious he could not bring himself to regret it.
He increased his pace, though unfortunately one cannot outwalk one's own conduct.
The path climbed steadily above the town.
Somewhere below him lay the sea, though the mist concealed it completely.
The world seemed reduced to a few yards of damp earth and pale air, which suited his mood tolerably well.
He had spent most of his life believing himself a rational man.
Rational men did not repeatedly kiss women who had not accepted their proposals.
Rational men certainly did not seek them out at midnight.
Rational men, having been refused, generally retired with dignity and attempted to preserve what remained of their self-respect.
Yet every sensible instinct he possessed appeared to desert him entirely in Elizabeth Bennet's company.
The most aggravating aspect of the situation was that she had not refused him because she disliked him. She had done so because he had behaved badly and spoken of her as if she were a brood-mare.
By the time he descended again towards the town the mist had begun to thin.
Shopkeepers were opening shutters. A cart laden with fish barrels rattled towards the harbour.
A pair of children were attempting to persuade a reluctant dog to accompany them somewhere it clearly had no desire to go.
Ordinary life continued with remarkable indifference to personal catastrophe.
He found Bingley in the square.
This was not surprising. Bingley possessed a peculiar gift for appearing wherever other people happened to be. Left alone in an unfamiliar town, he would somehow acquire three acquaintances and a favourite baker before luncheon.
"Darcy!" he exclaimed, waving cheerfully despite standing no more than twenty feet away. "Excellent. I had hoped I might encounter you."
"Had you?"
"Yes, although I had not settled upon what I intended to do once I succeeded. Still, it seemed a worthwhile objective."
They fell into step together. For some time Bingley respected the silence.
He admired the market stalls, greeted two strangers with complete sincerity and devoted himself with visible effort to not asking whatever question was occupying his thoughts.
Darcy, who knew him very well indeed, watched this struggle with detached interest. It was rather like observing a man attempting not to sneeze.
Eventually curiosity prevailed.
"I do not wish to pry," said Bingley, in precisely the tone of a man preparing to pry, "and indeed I have spent the last quarter of an hour congratulating myself on my restraint.
Nevertheless, I cannot help observing that you look rather like a man who has either misplaced a fortune or been crossed in love. "
Darcy glanced at him.
"The latter."
Bingley stopped walking so abruptly that an elderly woman carrying a basket was obliged to step around him.
"You and Miss Elizabeth?"
"I proposed in the most foolish way imaginable."
"To Miss Elizabeth?"
"Unless there is another lady in Lyme with whom I have somehow become unexpectedly involved."
Bingley resumed walking. "And she refused?"
"She did."
For several moments he said nothing, which was sufficiently remarkable to deserve notice.
Charles Bingley was not a silent man by nature.
His thoughts generally travelled from his mind to his mouth by the most direct route available.
Yet he continued beside Darcy for almost half a minute without speaking.
"Good God," he said at last.
"Yes."
"No, I mean it. Good God."
Darcy might have smiled under different circumstances.
Bingley cast him a sidelong glance. "That is not all of it."
"It is."
"It is plainly not."
"It is the essential part."
Darcy sighed. "She refused me. Then I behaved very badly afterwards."
Bingley absorbed this information with admirable seriousness.
"How badly?"
"Badly enough."
"That is not a useful measure."
Bingley considered the matter for some distance. "You know," he said eventually, "if Miss Bennet refused me tomorrow, I should be entirely wretched."
"I do not doubt it."
"I should wander about looking tragic. I should neglect my correspondence. I might even lose interest in dinner."
"I do doubt that."
"Perhaps not dinner," Bingley conceded. "But certainly luncheon."
Darcy shook his head.
"My point is that I should still wish to see her the following day."
"That sounds suspiciously like persistence."
"No. Persistence is attempting to alter somebody's mind. I should merely wish to be in the same room."
Bingley shoved his hands into his pockets and continued.
"You make everything into a question of success or failure.
As though human beings were contracts to be negotiated.
She refused your proposal. Very well. That is unfortunate.
But unless she also requested that you leave Dorset immediately and never return, there remains a great deal of territory between those two positions. "
Darcy looked at him. "You are absurd."
"I am optimistic."
"You are meddling."
"I am your friend."
Unfortunately there was no sensible response to that.
By the time they reached the other end of town, Bingley appeared convinced the situation remained entirely recoverable. Darcy remained equally convinced that it did not. Neither succeeded in altering the other's opinion.
???
At the guesthouse, breakfast was already underway.
Mrs Bennet was holding forth on curtains.
This was not, in itself, remarkable. Mrs Bennet had always possessed strong opinions on domestic matters.
What struck Elizabeth, seated beside Jane with her coffee growing cold in front of her, was the animation with which those opinions were now delivered.
Her mother had one hand wrapped around a teacup and the other moving expressively through the air as she explained to Georgiana the fundamental difficulties of decorating with green.
"The trouble," she was saying, "is that people become uncertain. They cannot decide whether they wish to be green or beige and end up acquiring the disadvantages of both. If a thing is to be green it ought to commit itself properly."
Mrs Makepeace nodded approvingly from the sideboard. "Mr Makepeace, God rest him, once painted an entire room mustard yellow because he believed it looked cheerful. We lived with the consequences for seven years."
Jane laughed softly.
Elizabeth found herself smiling despite the persistent confusion that had occupied her thoughts since the previous evening. Darcy was absent. His absence ought to have been a relief. Instead she found herself glancing occasionally towards the door and becoming annoyed every time it failed to open.
After breakfast Miss Darcy drifted into the passage with a letter in her hands. Elizabeth followed a few minutes later and found her standing by the window.
"Miss Darcy."
She looked up.
"Oh. Good morning."
"I wished to speak with you," Elizabeth said. "Properly this time. I have a strong suspicion that my previous apology was more concerned with making myself feel better than making you feel better, which I now realise was entirely insufficient."
To her relief, Miss Darcy smiled.
"My brother says things like that. And please call me Georgiana."
"Thanks you, and I am sorry to hear it. You must call me Elizabeth."
"He can be exhausting."
Elizabeth laughed.
The awkwardness disappeared almost immediately.
???
They collected their outerwear and left the house together, walking slowly towards the promenade. The morning had brightened considerably. The sea was reappearing in fragments beyond the dissolving mist, and the town seemed to be waking around them.
"I know you were sorry," Georgiana said after a while. "I never doubted it. The difficulty was never really what you said."
Elizabeth waited. "It was remembering a situation in which I behaved very stupidly."
Elizabeth tried to waft the comment away but Georgiana stilled her hand and continued.
"I think what embarrassed me most afterwards was not even that I had been deceived. It was discovering how thoroughly I had deceived myself. I thought I was in love. I thought I understood everything. Then suddenly I realised I understood nothing at all."
There was such honesty in the confession that Elizabeth felt protective of her instantly. "That must have been very painful."
"It was humiliating."
The word hung between them.
After a moment Georgiana added, "Your mother understands."
Elizabeth smiled.
"I never intended to tell her anything. And yet somehow I did."
"That sounds exactly like Mama."
Georgiana laughed and they continued walking.
After a while Georgiana said quietly, "My brother is not usually like this."
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "You may have to be more specific. I have discovered a remarkable variety of ways in which Mr Darcy can be difficult."
To her satisfaction Georgiana laughed again.
"Yes. I realise it is not a useful description.
What I mean is that he is usually very certain.
He thinks about everything. Too much, probably.
But generally all that thinking leads somewhere.
Lately it seems only to be making him unhappy, which is unfortunate because he dislikes being unhappy so much that he becomes rather difficult for everybody around him. "
"That does sound familiar."
"I do not mean to excuse him."
"No."
"He would be horrified if he thought he had hurt you."
Elizabeth looked out towards the water. "I believe that."
They walked in silence for a time before Georgiana spoke again.
"May I ask you something?"
"You may."
"Do you think very ill of him?"
Elizabeth considered the question carefully. "No," she said at last. "I think he is a very good man who occasionally becomes the worst version of himself in my company."
Georgiana looked thoughtful. Then she shook her head. "I am not entirely certain that is how it works."
Before Elizabeth could ask what she meant, Mrs Bennet's voice floated towards them from some distance behind.
"There you both are! If Mr Bingley explains drainage to Jane for one moment longer, I shall be obliged to develop opinions on drainage myself, and I consider that an unreasonable burden for any woman."
Georgiana laughed and Elizabeth found herself laughing too.
But as they turned back towards the house she felt no clearer than before.
If anything, she was considerably less so.
Darcy remained absent, his proposal remained refused, and her heart remained determinedly unwilling to behave in a sensible manner.
Which, she reflected, was becoming an increasingly common problem in Lyme.