Chapter Two #2
Yes, that was the difference.
Bingley spent money.
I tried not to.
Money was meant to be accumulated, not let go of. Spending money was not the way of getting more, I had always thought.
But Bingley and his ilk, they had ideas about that, and they were proving us wrong.
Spending money did indeed lead to getting more, it seemed, but only if one knew how to spend it.
I’d not been schooled that way. I’d been schooled in ancient ways of doing things, but the world was changing. Anyone with eyes could see that.
Was that why I was here?
Perhaps.
Caroline was not satisfied with my silence, and she sought to draw me out, she began speaking to me about Georgiana. Was she much grown since they had seen her last?
But I did not wish to speak about Georgiana, truly.
I wonder if Caroline could sense this. Perhaps she could see that Georgiana was my weak point, and she liked to use that to her advantage.
I could not say. But whatever the case, Caroline pushed and pushed, and I pushed back, and then, somehow, we were in a conversation about how it was we should define accomplishment amongst ladies.
I disagreed with Bingley just to disagree with him. I did this often. He was a good sport about it, I thought.
We were friends, but our friendship had little shards in it somewhere. Maybe he was annoyed because I would never accept his transactional offers, would never take in return what he wished to pay for the services I rendered him? But if so, he bore it with smiles and shrugs, sunny and unaffected.
He seemed to accept the idea that he had befriended a man who was rarely in a good temper, who would say all manner of sardonic things that weren’t entirely complimentary, who would agree with whatever came out of his bratty youngest sister Caroline’s mouth, especially if it seemed to rile him up, and that this was a small price to pay for whatever social currency I would give him to spend.
I did not understand that about him, I must say.
Perhaps I pushed at him all the harder because of it.
So, at this point, I made the pronouncement, and I made it precisely to contradict Bingley, who had said something about how all young ladies were accomplished, and that they were all doing all manner of things, painting, drawing, singing, composing dramatic poetry, et cetera.
And I said, “The problem is that, since everyone is considered accomplished, the word has lost all its meaning. If all women are accomplished, none are. In all truth, I can think of no more than a half dozen ladies of my personal acquaintance who are truly accomplished.”
Elizabeth Bennet made a noise of disbelief in her throat.
I turned to look at her, having sort of forgotten she was even there. The look on her face rather startled me as I became aware of something that turned my insides to ice.
She was gazing at me with the kind of contempt women reserve only for men who they feel are the worst specimens of the species. It was really something to behold. “Then you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.”
This woman does not like me, I realized. “Yes,” I said carefully, “I do comprehend a great deal in it.”
Caroline was babbling some kind of agreement with me. She was all excitement, but I was looking at Elizabeth, who was practically sneering at me.
This woman despises me, I realized. What had I done to her that she felt that way? Now, I wondered if this was why she’d refused to dance with me at the Lucas dinner. How strange. I had not ever experienced this.
Well, obviously, people had hated me before. Wickham hated me, after all, but a woman, a young woman, a woman I found attractive, hating me? It smote me, I must say. I didn’t like it. I did not know how to interact with it.
Caroline finished speaking and looked to me.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “All of that is entirely what a woman should possess.”
Elizabeth’s sneer deepened.
“And,” I said, nodding at Elizabeth’s book, “she must add something more substantial, the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”
Elizabeth scoffed, looking away, shaking her head in disbelief. “I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder at your knowing any.”
What had Caroline even said? What had her list been?
I glanced at her for help, but she was just smiling widely, as if setting Elizabeth and me at odds had been the best thing that she could have imagined happening, and perhaps it was.
I grimaced. “Oh, come now, madam, you must not be severe upon your entire sex. You can’t think that women can’t be accomplished. ”
“I never saw such a woman,” she said with a shrug. “I think it’s an imagination in your mind. I think, Mr. Darcy, that you may have standards so high that they may never be filled.”
“I think, Mr. Darcy,” spoke up Mr. Hurst, “that we are neglecting the game. It is your turn.”
I looked back to the loo table.
“As it happens,” said Elizabeth, “I must see to my sister.” She got up and left the room.
I felt as if the breath had been knocked out of me. I played a very stupid card, and I could see that I should soon lose the game if I didn’t find some way to fix things.
“Eliza Bennet,” said Caroline stoutly, “is the sort of woman who puts down all women in the hopes of making men feel flattered, I think. It is a paltry device, a very mean art, and I think it only succeeds with a certain type of man.”
“I don’t think so,” I said faintly.
She glared at me.
“Well, I don’t think she has any art of any kind,” I said, coughing. “Or that she is trying to flatter anybody.” Certainly not me. “But there is a meanness to such arts, of course, which ladies use to try to captivate men. Cunning is despicable, of course, as is manipulation.”
Caroline gave me an odd look, but I hadn’t actually meant it pointedly, I was only trying to get my bearings.
However, if I’d had any doubts now, they had quite been confirmed.
Caroline Bingley wanted me to marry her.
I paced about in my room that evening, wondering if she had gotten this idea on her own or if her brother had put it there.
It might make sense, I suppose, why he endured the combined punishment of myself and Caroline in conversation, especially when we took the side against him.
He was always so agreeable about it, rather like a trusty hunting dog eager to take whatever scraps that will be thrown to him from the table, grinning no matter what.
Was this because it had been his plan all along?
Oh, yes, he would like it, would he not? Our families tied together by marriage?
And this was to say nothing of the fact that I had considered marrying Georgiana to him.
Georgiana’s past coming out was a bit of a potential problem, that was all.
If a respectable man found out I had concealed what had passed between my sister and the son of our household’s steward, he’d be rightfully incensed.
But if Bingley found out, well, it would be different. He’d still be grateful.
So, I’d considered it.
For her sake as well as everyone else’s, of course, because if a man found out he’d been lied to about the relative purity of his bride—and my sister, so she claimed, was still entirely intact, so it was no worry on that score, but even so, it was the appearance of such things—he would take his ire out on his bride.
He would blame her. Perhaps he might also blame the man who made her impure, but he would have no access to that man.
Bingley would still be grateful. Even if he was angry, he would not harm my sister.
And he would not wish to anger me. He would still need me.
So, this was what I had become, I supposed, in the wake of that business this summer. I had become a schemer and a manipulator, a purveyor of those same mean arts I had just decried.
It was little wonder that I suspected everyone else around me of the same sort of behavior, I supposed. Little wonder indeed.
I had moments, really, moments wherein I thought that I was entirely wrong about Bingley.
He was so guileless, such a grinning dog of a man, that I wondered if there was any element of social climbing to our friendship at all.
Perhaps he was not trying to use me. Perhaps it wasn’t a transaction.
Perhaps it was a transaction from my end only.
I was intending to use this man to deal with my sister’s indiscretions and he was simply being used. I was the despicable one.
But I did not like to think such things and I often convinced myself otherwise. Bingley might be guileless, but he was not an idiot. Of course he was aware of the advantages he got from association with me. He must be motivated by that to at least some degree.
Did I think he’d cultivated this friendship with me in order to convince me to marry Caroline, however?
Ultimately, no.
I did not.
I thought this was Caroline’s own idea, and that Bingley himself had not had a hand in the execution of the scheme, but I was beginning to see that I had encouraged her. Oh, how I had encouraged her!
I felt guilty, indeed. Caroline would have thought I was interested.
Did I not faithfully join her side every time she censured her brother?
Did I not laugh whenever she poked fun at anything she did not find up to the standards of proper society?
Did I not add to what she said, bolstering her stance?
It wasn’t about her, though, but she would have no reason to understand that.
Damnation.
What was the best way to address such a thing? I suppose I could go to her and be very straightforward about it all, but she would only deny that she had ever thought anything of the sort, and then I should feel quite embarrassed for having brought it up, and it would all be difficult.
Best to simply be clearer in my behavior towards her going forward, I thought. She would see that she had been wrong in her assumptions, and she would eventually cease to behave the way she’d been behaving, and I would be free to pursue Elizabeth Bennet.
I actually laughed aloud.
What? I had no intention of pursuing Elizabeth Bennet, for one thing, and for another, I could be quite assured that Caroline would not leave me free to do such a thing.
She was jealous. She thought that my attention had been assured, that my affection for her was obvious, and seeing that I felt it elsewhere had shaken her.
If I went after Elizabeth now, it would make Caroline’s behavior worse.
Anyway, Elizabeth Bennet hated me.
Added to all of that, everything I had said about the girl’s lack of connections was accurate.
And it was also true that if Elizabeth Bennet had come marching into the breakfast parlor at either of my aunt’s houses with her hair a tangle of overflowing curls glinting in the sunlight and her hem mud-stained, they would have been scandalized.
That was not the sort of woman a man like me married.
I knew that.