A Selfish Disdain (Pride and Prejudice Variation)

CHAPTER 1

"From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry. "

—Jane Austen

It is a truth insufficiently acknowledged that the friendships of young men are frequently more consequential to the fortunes of young women than any design of their own contriving.

And yet, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, in the spring of which this is written, knew nothing whatsoever of a Mr. Darcy, and would have professed, had the name been mentioned to her would have only heard it as a stranger of no particular interest.

Mr. Darcy, for his part, was equally ignorant of a Miss Elizabeth Bennet, and had he been told that his happiness must one day depend upon a lady of that name, resident in a corner of Hertfordshire he had never troubled himself to visit, he would have received the intelligence with the same polite incredulity he extended to most predictions concerning himself.

Being a man who generally preferred to arrive at his own conclusions in his own time, and held a settled distrust of any conclusion, however confidently pronounced, that had not first been submitted to his own particular scrutiny.

Nor had either party any notion that the friend each held dearest, she, her sister Jane; he, his companion Mr. Bingley, was at that very hour engaged in securing an acquaintance in London entirely unconnected to either of them, and yet destined, by the ordinary and unremarkable business to draw them both into a single neighbourhood, and, in time, a connection neither Elizzbeth Bennet nor Fitzwilliam Darcy could have anticipated.

And yet, such is the way of these things.

The persons most nearly concerned are generally the last to know of them.

Word of her sister and his friend’s romance reached them both, in time, though by very different roads, and was received in a manner each would have recognised, had they only been present to observe the other, as entirely characteristic, and entirely opposite.

Elizabeth had it from Jane's own pen, in a letter so full of joy and disbelief that it wanted three readings before its subject could be properly credited, and she gave herself up at once to a delight unclouded by so much as a moment's reservation.

Elizabeth laughed aloud at the swiftness of it, declared her sister the most deserving creature in England, and pronounced the whole affair, the chance dinner, the month's acquaintance, the sudden proposal to be exactly the sort of romance she had always privately suspected the world capable of producing, whatever her more cautious relations might say to the contrary.

Darcy had it from Bingley, in a letter considerably shorter and considerably less coherent, and read it twice before permitting any opinion at all. His first sentiment, once formed, was one of caution.

A month's acquaintance; a lady met at a tradesman's table; a family of whom nothing whatsoever was known beyond an uncle in trade? This wanted looking into, Darcy thought soberly, before it wanted congratulating.

Such a rash decision, he reflected, and yet it was one he could only have expected of Bingley, whose heart had ever been a good deal more decided than his judgment, and who fell in love, in Darcy's private estimation, with the same unguarded enthusiasm with which other men fell down stairs.

It was always suddenly, completely, and with very little opportunity taken beforehand to consider whether the ground was sound.

Darcy wrote back with all the warmth of true friendship and rather more than his customary advice. He had penned, in fact three full pages of it, on a lady he had not yet met and a family he knew only by report.

Thus, he was mildly put out to receive, a fortnight later by return of post, a reply of scarcely half a page, informing him that the thing was already settled, the lady already beloved beyond argument, his advice however well intended already too late to be of the smallest use, and his good opinion, whenever he should trouble himself to form one, warmly solicited but no longer, strictly speaking, required.

It did not occur to either Elizabeth or Mr. Darcy that, in the fortnight that followed, they had responded to precisely the same intelligence, the same sudden romance, the same swift understanding, the same defiance of prudent acquaintance, in precisely opposite ways.

One was delighted by what the other distrusted, the one trusting to feeling what the other deferred to judgment.

Nor could either have guessed how much, in the months to come, they should each be obliged to learn the other's habit of mind before they could be brought to any tolerable agreement upon their own.

Nor did either of them spare a thought, in the midst of their own private verdicts upon Jane and Bingley's felicity, for the third party who had been quietly at work upon the same happy pair some weeks prior.

This party was a lady, a Mrs. Gardiner to be exact, who had seen her opportunity early, and was rather better placed and considerably less inclined, by temperament or design, to leave the matter to chance.

***

A London romance is just the thing, thought Mrs. Gardiner.

She had long held the opinion that her niece Jane possessed a loveliness of countenance and temper too rarely admired by the limited society of Hertfordshire, and it was with no small satisfaction that she found herself, in the third week of Jane's visit, able to bring that loveliness before eyes more discerning than any Meryton had yet produced.

The occasion of Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley’s meeting was unremarkable in itself, a dinner hosted by Mr. Gardiner in honour of a business connection newly arrived from the north, a Mr. Robert Hamilton.

Mr. Hamilton, brought along with him a Mr. Charles Bingley, whose family fortune, made in trade, had lately been converted into the more genteel ambition of a landed estate.

Mr. Gardiner spoke well of Mr. Hamilton beforehand, describing a young man of stern business facilities; however, it was his friend, Mr. Bingley who charmed the family with his open manners and opener purse, easy to like and easier still to do business with.

However, even Mr. Bingley himself could not have anticipated, when he accepted the invitation, vis-a-vis Mr. Hamilton, that he was arranging anything beyond a pleasant evening's acquaintance.

That evening, Jane came down to dinner in a gown of pale blue, her hair dressed simply, and if she thought of the occasion at all, it was only as one more evening to be got through with the quiet good humour, which was her preferred manner in company.

Jane herself had no notion of appearing to advantage, as it was not in her nature to contrive such things. She had only to enter a room, and Mr. Bingley saw her, and then, the thing was done without her knowledge.

Mr. Bingley, for his part, was seated almost directly opposite Jane at table, and it was observed by Mrs. Gardiner, who observed a good deal more than she permitted herself to remark upon, that he addressed scarcely three sentences to any other lady in the room for the whole of the first course.

"Miss Bennet," said he started, "your uncle tells me you are lately come from Hertfordshire. I confess I know little of that county, beyond what appears in the sporting papers."

Jane, smiling upon hearing Mr. Bingley asked of her beloved Hertfordshire, was happy to oblige him. "There is little enough to know, sir, beyond good hedgerows and better neighbours. We are not much visited by anything so interesting as sport."

"Then perhaps the county wants only a sportsman to recommend it." He said this with such evident good nature, and so little of the practised gallantry she had learned to expect from strangers, that Jane found herself answering more readily than she was accustomed to do.

She replied ceremoniously, "Perhaps it wants nothing at all, sir, and does very well as it is."

"There, now I stand corrected," said Bingley, laughing, "and shall not presume to improve upon Hertfordshire until I have seen it for myself."

It was a small exchange, and neither of them could have called it remarkable; and yet Mrs. Gardiner, watching from her end of the table, thought she had rarely seen two countenances so entirely at ease with one another upon a first meeting.

***

What began at that table did not end with it.

Mr. Bingley called in Gracechurch Street within the week, professing a business question with Mr. Gardiner that occupied perhaps a quarter of an hour, and the remainder of a very long morning call in conversation with the ladies of the house.

He called again before the week was out, and again after that, until Mrs. Gardiner ceased to feign surprise at his knock and began instead to order an extra cup with the tea things as a matter of course.

Jane, who had been disappointed before, and who had learned, through one brief and painful acquaintance the autumn previous, to guard her heart, found herself unable, this time, to summon the caution she knew she ought to feel.

There is nothing in Mr. Bingley's manner, she decided, that asks for guarding against.

Jane felt that Mr. Bingley was open where the general run of gentlemen were guarded, warm where they were merely polite, and if his admiration was frequently declared, it was never once insincere.