Chapter Six #2
“I assure you that gentlemen still look at her and appreciate her form and face. If your mother is so concerned, she ought to put Miss Bennet more often into company, rather than hiding her away from assemblies as though she were a shameful secret. I am confident she could marry well.”
“I shall suggest it to Mama.”
Mr. Darcy nodded.
“My mother frets about the future. Especially since Jane cannot see. And Papa always reminds Mama that it was her fault that Jane is blind. It is unkind, but Papa is right. And we must make sure that she is always cared for. It is my duty.”
“What is your duty?”
“To make sure that Jane is always cared for.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Darcy frowned at her.
Elizabeth’s face grew hot. His eyes were quite deep; it was hard to think when he looked at her in such a way.
Georgiana began a new sonata, and Mr. Darcy looked away. “I apologise for speaking so bluntly, but do you mean by marrying well?”
Elizabeth fidgeted with a ribbon on her gown. “I do not mean to marry without affection. Mama hopes for me to catch Mr. Bingley, but we would not suit. I find him…he is too easily pleased.”
Mr. Darcy laughed. It was the first time she had seen him do so openly without being prompted by Emily.
The card players looked towards them, and Mr. Bingley said, “Do not tell her all my faults so she may spread the tale to her sister.”
Elizabeth grinned and said, “No, no. The conversation goes in quite the opposite direction.”
“Ah, talking about my height. It is all women do.” Mr. Bingley laughed.
Mr. Hurst then insisted that his brother-in-law return his attention to the cards, which he did.
Elizabeth sighed. “Is it not perverse that I do not instinctively admire Mr. Bingley? Would not every sensible woman develop affection for him without trying?”
Mr. Darcy grinned at her. “It does not lower my opinion of your sense that you do not.”
That made Elizabeth giggle.
The conversation was more friendly than she had imagined Mr. Darcy being capable of offering.
“I suppose I am selfish,” Elizabeth added.
“Mama is right that if Papa dies suddenly before I marry, there will be no money for servants to help Jane. Therefore I ought to make every effort to marry as soon as I might, even though Papa is in good health and not much past fifty. But it would not be right. I must consider the gentleman’s interest. If I gave a man the impression that I feel more than I do, that would be a lie. That would be wrong.”
Mr. Darcy’s brows drew together.
“Now you may despise me for being mercenary,” Elizabeth said, looking down to hide her blush. Why had she said so much to him? He was easy and comforting to speak to. At least once they had begun to talk. She had a sense that if he judged her, it was in a different way from how everyone else would.
Mr. Darcy shook his head. “You have declared that you are not mercenary.”
“But I wonder…”
“About what?”
“It depends on me. I must—oh, but when I think of what I must do for Jane, I become angry with Mama. She never admits that it is her fault that Jane is in such a state.”
“It is not. You should not blame her for that.”
“Yes, it was a curse from the Almighty. No one can know what might have happened. Perhaps if Jane had received the inoculation, she would have suffered terribly from that. I know that one boy went blind after receiving the cowpox. But—”
“No. I do not mean the Almighty. The chief person to blame is your father.”
“My father!” Elizabeth exclaimed with some surprise. “He is the one who wished to have us given the cowpox and who succeeded in that with the rest of us.”
“He should have taken Miss Bennet to the physician as well.”
“But my mother would have…” Elizabeth frowned.
“What could she have done? The laws of England are such that in almost all cases the father’s choices in the rearing of his legitimate children have superiority over the wishes of the mother.
This is as it should be. The minds of many persons, and not only women, are frequently weak.
When we give them too much scope for their stupidities, tragedy is the likely result.
Your sister’s blindness is merely one example of many. ”
Elizabeth opened and closed her mouth several times.
“But it is not only that,” Mr. Darcy continued.
“It is not your place to secure the future well-being of your family. It is your father’s.
That you feel anxiety upon this matter is due to his failure.
As I understand it, he has been the master of his estate these twenty years, and what I have seen of Longbourn suggests that it is not an inconsiderable place.
Had he acted as he ought to have, he would have set aside an ample sum for your dowries and for the future well-being of any of your sisters who do not marry. ”
“According to this accounting, the failings of my father are severe. But do you have no judgment to also put upon my mother?”
“Had your father truly acted as a man ought, he would have done his duty to his children and seen them all given Jenner’s treatment.
As a well-read man of the world, he knew that it was efficacious and that the chances of an unhappy outcome were far less with the treatment than without it.
Your mother, while wrong about the facts of the case, sought to protect you as best she knew how.
She acted from anxiety, from love, and from proper maternal feelings.
I salute her concern, even though it produced the opposite of the intended result.
But your father? What was his reason for allowing Miss Bennet to go without protection from this deadly disease?
Laziness? A dislike of argument with his wife?
A misplaced sense of fairness? He should not have bent to the will of his wife. ”
“I imagine you never bent to Mrs. Darcy’s will,” Elizabeth replied heatedly. “Did that produce good results?”
What she said seemed to strike him like a blow. For a second, Elizabeth thought she had gone too far and offended him.
But he replied with a grim smile. “A reasonable question. I seldom bent to her will, though I never denied her the freedoms that are customary amongst married women. But too much indulgence was not my failing. Miss Elizabeth, I am a cold man. I am not formed to live with a woman in such a way as to make her happy. I have little of that softness, that frivolity, that joyous ability to banter that women need. I cannot enter into the concerns of their friends, I cannot pretend that the nonsense upon which they constantly prattle is important, and, above all, when a lack of principle and an indifference to religious duties is described as ‘feminine weakness’, I do not then cease to think that evil has been done to me.”
“I see,” Elizabeth said, still offended on her father’s behalf. “I imagine it will be an unhappy woman who becomes the second Mrs. Darcy.”
“I fear that as well.” Mr. Darcy’s expression was bleak.
“She saw me truly. I am too harsh, too unbending in my ways. It is my considered belief that every man has a profound flaw in their character that ought to make it impossible for them to approve of themselves. Your father should torment himself for his failures of rigor and foresight, while I must dislike myself for my too unyielding nature—yet I must marry again. I fear it. I fear that I shall make a second woman miserable. I dearly wish that when I do marry again, it is under such circumstances that my wife will have a life that is, on the whole, better than it would have been had she never met me. But I need an heir, and a man such as me has no business raising a child without a mother to soften his ways.”
“That is too much!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “You are excellent with Emily and with Miss Darcy! You should not torment yourself upon that point. What I see of your fathering is such as to leave me no concern for your daughter, whether you marry again or not.”
“You see my indulgence of her. But she must have some share of discipline else she will become spoiled. But I cannot at present bear to discipline her. Not when she has no mother. This is one matter in which I do not always do as I ought.”
“You wish to marry so you may have a good conscience when you whip her?” Elizabeth said, aghast. “Poor Emily! And she adores you so. You must not!”
“No, no—that is not what I mean…”
“Then what, Mr. Darcy, do you mean?”
The gentleman frowned for a while but did not reply, then Georgiana finished her piece and came to join them. The game of whist that had occupied Mr. Bingley, his sisters, and Mr. Hurst broke up, and the conversation became general.
Elizabeth managed with the help of a heavy cane to make her way to the bedroom on her own, but she missed being carried by Mr. Darcy.