Chapter 4
For the third time on his morning walk in Meryton, Darcy’s ears pricked up and tuned into the whispering that seemed to be everywhere that day.
Involuntarily, he glanced towards the latest speakers, a collection of middle-aged men and women in respectable, although not rich, dress, gathered together on the edge of the green.
“…heard it in London…”
“…not his father…”
“So they say, but hush now, look…”
Were they talking about him? Rationally, from the snatches of phrases he overheard, Darcy knew they could be speaking of anyone, or of several different people.
He could be sure of nothing, but it was impossible either to close his ears or to prevent his imagination from filling in the gaps.
Going closer to eavesdrop intentionally was entirely out of the question, and the whole walk was becoming intolerable.
Darcy had intended to walk further than this. There was little to see in a small town like Meryton, but he had wanted to stretch his legs after so much time indoors in rainy weather. Nor did the atmosphere at Netherfield Park presently suit his temper much better.
With Miss Jane Bennet in bed with a bad cold after foolishly riding there through the rain, Bingley’s sisters were enjoying playing at being gracious ladies nursing their new friend through her illness.
Darcy wondered whether they would lose interest in their game before Miss Bennet recovered, or whether they would try to prolong her indisposition to continue it.
Charles Bingley, meanwhile, appeared genuinely concerned for Miss Bennet and was taken up with frequent inquiries into her health and well-being.
Bingley was in Meryton too, consulting the local apothecary in person and hoping to bring back a prescription for the pretty patient.
Spotting the apothecary’s sign, Darcy marched across and saw his friend inside taking his leave at the counter, two brown-paper packets in his hand.
“I shall return to Netherfield with you, Bingley,” Darcy announced when Bingley emerged.
His friend looked surprised but pleased, and the two men fell in together.
“I shall welcome the company, Darcy, but I cannot believe those great long legs of yours are tired already. Are you bored of the paths around Meryton, or have you decided you’d rather take a ride?”
“Neither to any real extent,” Darcy said vaguely, weighing up in his head whether he might explain his troubles to Bingley.
The matter was presently too ill-defined, and Darcy remembered how Colonel Fitzwilliam had teased him and made light of the incidents in London.
If he was being ill-tempered and oversensitive, he ought to keep his crossness to himself and not burden his friends.
God forbid he should ever become like his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, querulous, intrusive, and demanding of attention.
They walked on in silence for a while until they were at the edge of Meryton and crossing the road to the footpath that led most directly to Netherfield Park across the fields.
There, Bingley began a conversation about the local hunt, which he carried on largely by himself with only occasional nods and grunts from Darcy.
“There is something on your mind, Darcy,” Bingley observed at last, as they walked up the last section of Netherfield Park’s drive. “I can tell when you are brooding. Out with it!”
His voice was cheerful despite the challenge, but then it usually was, even when expressing his own frustrations.
“Yes, there is something on my mind,” Darcy confessed, deciding that if he could not hide his ill-humour, he had better admit it rather than have it attributed to mistaken causes.
“There were some minor incidents in London that put me out of sorts, and I find they are still occupying far too much of my thoughts.”
“May I ask what occurred in London?” Bingley asked, pausing at the bottom of the steps before the front door.
After glancing around to ascertain that no one was close, Darcy told him of the youth on Piccadilly and then the incident with the club’s guest register.
“My cousin Richard was right,” Darcy concluded.
“It was the nature of the insult that rankled. Even now, it feels as though people are staring and whispering wherever I go, however absurd that may sound. I feel like someone’s maiden aunt, imagining that the world is talking about me and my affairs. ”
Bingley nodded and cleared his throat, his expression a little uncomfortable as they proceeded through the front door together.
“It is not absurd for you to feel these things at all,” he told Darcy. “In fact, I have already heard some of those scurrilous rumours myself. Naturally, I took a stern line with anyone who repeated them in my presence.”
“What rumours are those, Brother?” asked Caroline Bingley, coming across the hallway to greet them as they shed their coats and then accompanying them to the drawing room.
Darcy cursed himself for not cutting the exchange short outside. The situation was now insupportable. Much as he disliked stooping to deception, he had no desire to confide in Miss Bingley. And Bingley could not dissimulate convincingly at all, especially not to his sharp-minded younger sister.
“Oh, you know, Caroline. The ordinary kind of rumours,” Bingley said, squirming and moving to look out of the drawing room window so that he might more easily avert his eyes from her inquiry.
“What do you mean, Charles?” she pursued, following him to the window and seeming likely to probe further before bursting into sneering laughter as she followed his line of sight.
Curious as to the cause, Darcy joined the siblings and saw Miss Elizabeth Bennet coming up the muddy path towards Netherfield with an energetic tread and fixed expression.
“Let me guess, Mr Darcy, my brother was speaking of local rumours that say you will be captured by one or another of these Bennet ladies by Christmas. How crude and ridiculous people are in the countryside!”
Darcy frowned, remembering how Miss Bingley had informed him that Elizabeth Bennet was one of the first to whisper about him at the Meryton assembly rooms.
“If you ever do hear such rumours of me, you may assure the speaker that marriage could not be further from my mind at the present time,” he said shortly, his eyes following the progress of the chestnut-haired young woman now approaching the house.
How wild and determined Elizabeth Bennet looked… What could she want here? Ostensibly, she had likely come to ask after her sister’s health, but what was her ulterior motive? To foster an alliance between Bingley and her sister, perhaps. Or to glean more intelligence about Darcy himself?
Shown into the drawing room a few minutes later, Elizabeth Bennet gave no hint of either motivation.
“How does my sister fare today? I would rather see Jane in person than trouble your household with my notes,” she said immediately after the briefest of bows and greetings to Bingley, Miss Bingley and Darcy. “If someone could show me to her room, I will not inconvenience you further.”
“It is no inconvenience at all,” Bingley protested immediately. “I will ring to have you shown upstairs. My sisters have been keeping Miss Bennet company, and my housekeeper has brewed plenty of lemon and ginger tea.”
“You are very kind, Mr Bingley, Miss Bingley. I thank you.”
Although Darcy searched her expression with accusatory zeal for the kind of speculative, small-minded attention he had seen in Meryton, he found nothing of the kind.
He might as well not have existed for all the interest Elizabeth Bennet showed in him, and while her words to Bingley and his sister were polite, they were minimal, without any hint of scheming or flattering. Her hazel eyes were bright and frank.
Darcy had the impression that Elizabeth Bennet cared little for what any of them might think of her, so long as she saw her sister.
“It is no trouble at all to concern ourselves with Jane,” Miss Bingley remarked with a too-sweet smile. “Though we have known your sister but a short time yet, she is already very much our best friend in the neighbourhood.”
As Elizabeth Bennet followed a maid from the drawing room to be taken upstairs, Darcy saw Miss Bingley’s derisive eyes following their visitor.
“Did you see the sight of her?” Bingley’s sister sneered as soon as the footsteps had receded from the doorway. “Mud to her ankles and hair like a maenad. What can Elizabeth Bennet imagine she is doing, going about the countryside like that?”
“She only wishes to see her sister,” Bingley responded with a frown. “What could be more natural than that? I consider it very proper for her to concern herself with her sister’s health.”
“It’s only a cold, Charles,” his sister replied witheringly. “Do I insist that you wait on me every time I sneeze? No, I believe Miss Eliza Bennet came here to make a display of herself. It seems to run in that family, apart from dear Jane, of course.”
Grasping now that Caroline Bingley had taken a personal dislike to Elizabeth Bennet, Darcy wondered whether this might have led her to overstate or misinterpret whatever she and Mrs Hurst had seen in the assembly rooms.
“I agree with you, Bingley. Miss Elizabeth Bennet appears most solicitous of her sister’s health, and it does them both credit,” Darcy said, deciding it was best to ignore Miss Bingley’s venom. “Muddy or not, her appearance is no concern of ours.”
“How quickly you forgive and forget her gossiping about you at the Meryton dance, Mr Darcy,” Miss Bingley remarked in what could equally have been a reproach or a commendation, or even a distasteful attempt to recruit him against the other young woman.
“Ladies often gossip harmlessly at these events, and I doubt now that there was anything to forgive. I must have been tired and out of sorts to concern myself with such nonsense,” he told her.