Chapter Fifty-Two
Everyone at Netherfield Park, from Mr. Bingley to the scullery lad, breathed a sigh of relief when Miss Bingley and Nancy departed. The very building seemed to rest easier on its foundation when her carriage vanished from sight.
“Well,” Mr. Bingley said, to no one in particular. “That is over.”
“Yes,” Mr. Darcy agreed. “And with surprisingly little effort.”
“Say, Darcy,” Mr. Bingley went on. “Caroline does not disapprove of my marrying Miss Bennet!”
“So is today the day?” Mr. Darcy asked.
“It is, yes!”
“I wish you well, then.”
“You will not accompany me?”
“To watch you propose to Miss Bennet? I think not!”
“I thought perhaps you and Miss Elizabeth could walk out with us, and then you could hang back a bit…” Mr. Bingley trailed off, his eyebrows raised hopefully at his friend.
Mr. Darcy immediately saw his opportunity to have that walk with Miss Elizabeth. “Ah, I understand you. I will be happy to help.”
***
The two gentlemen sat for about a quarter of an hour in the parlour before Mr. Bingley asked Miss Bennet if she would care for a walk. “It is not overly cold today, Miss Bennet, so I hoped – that is, I thought –“
Mr. Darcy helped him out, adding, “Yes, and I thought perhaps I might stroll with Miss Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth’s first thought was to refuse; she had no wish to walk with Mr. Darcy.
But she saw him catch her eye and then jerk his chin a bit towards Mr. Bingley.
Oh, Mr. Bingley wanted to propose to Jane!
She nodded, vigorously, and said, “Just let me get my pelisse, and I will join you at once. Jane, I will fetch yours while I am upstairs, so just wait here.”
She returned just a few minutes later, her arms filled with garments, and the four set off. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy walked rather faster than Mr. Bingley and Jane, and so Mr. Darcy whispered into Elizabeth’s ear, “Hang back a bit, Miss Elizabeth.”
“Oh!” she whispered back, and then said aloud, “I must fix my lace! Do go on, Jane!” She bent down to her boot to lend her comment verisimilitude, and waited until the two were nearly out of sight.
“Excellent,” Mr. Darcy said, smiling. He offered her a hand to help her up; she hesitated for a moment, and then took it.
As she rose, Mr. Darcy’s smile faded and he stared at her for a minute. “You dislike me enough to not want me to help you up? Miss Elizabeth…” he trailed off, and looked away, shaking his head.
“Oh, Mr. Darcy, I am sorry! No, it is not that at all.” She felt remorseful at once; after all, what had he ever done but be kind to her?
“What is it then?’ he asked, in a low tone. “I remind you of your father, and that is, quite evidently, a bad thing. I am sorry, Miss Elizabeth, truly sorry, but I can only be who and what I am.” His voice caught.
Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Mr. Darcy, may I tell you a rather long and dreary story?”
“Of course.” Mr. Darcy could not imagine her saying anything that he would find dreary, but he did not say so.
“Thank you.” She hesitated, and then went on. “When I was twelve years old, I inadvertently pointed out to my father that if he did not save money for our dowries, my sisters and I would have to live on the income of my mother’s four thousand pounds.”
“Because of the entail?”
“Yes.”
“Go on, please.”
“I had no intention of doing anything but showing my mother that it was possible to do so. We would not have meat, gowns, or servants, but it was indeed possible to live on the interest of her dowry. I was showing off my mathematics, I suppose, but the result was that my father was furious with me. Without another word, he picked out some of his more valuable books and went to London to sell them; he invested that money, and then began to pay attention to the estate so that it earned more money. He invested that extra money as well, so that Jane and I now have respectable, though by no means large, dowries. The younger girls have dowries as well.” She paused.
“Wait; I am not certain that I understand. He was angry at you for this?”
“Yes; I suppose I had shamed him into taking action that he should have taken on his own long ago.”
“But this must have been a decade ago!” Mr. Darcy was astonished. He had not thought Mr. Bennet capable of such behaviour.
“Yes, near enough.”
“I can certainly understand why you are unhappy with him.” Mr. Darcy spoke calmly, but his heart was breaking for her.
“I believe he has finally understood that it was not my intent to hurt him – heavens, I was just a child! – but I cannot forget that until that time, he was content to allow my sisters and I to live in poverty after his death.” Her voice shook.
Mr. Darcy was silent, trying to imagine how it would feel to be a child in that situation.
She went on. “What you must understand is that before this, I was his favourite child. It was he who taught me Greek and Latin, French and Italian. He taught me how to read and understand poetry. He taught me the mathematics that made it possible for me to work out the amount of interest my mother’s monies would earn.
I thought he loved me, until it became all too clear that he did not. ” Her voice sounded defeated and sad.
He took her hands in his and looked into her eyes. “And he never apologised to you? Never tried to explain?”
“He started to apologise just a few days ago, but..” she whispered. “Perhaps it has been too long for true forgiveness.”
At this moment, Mr. Darcy wished for nothing more than to march back to Longbourn and smack Mr. Bennet on the head. Instead, he murmured to Elizabeth, “He was entirely wrong, Miss Elizabeth. You must know that.”
“I do, of course!” she sniffled back her tears. “But how can I ever trust him with my heart again?”
Ah, there it was, he thought. She cannot trust her father with her heart, and if she sees similarities between us, she cannot trust me, either.
“Elizabeth,” he said, using her Christian name without realising it.
“I cannot pretend to know what your father was thinking, but I would never do such a thing. I understand my responsibilities to my family, my tenants, my estate, and those responsibilities will always take precedence over any sort of personal pleasure.”
“Your library –“
“Yes, there are literally thousands of volumes. It is the work of several generations. But if it came to a choice between Georgiana’s welfare and those books, I would let the books go without a second thought.”
She did not reply.
“Your father is now doing everything he can to protect your family, even though he is uneasy about the means of doing so.”
“That is true enough.” She looked up at him then, and her eyes had brightened.
“I believe, most sincerely, that he has learnt a valuable lesson. You were hurt in the process, and for that I cannot forgive him, but at least he has shown that he cares enough to take action now. It would be easy enough for him to shrug and say that what comes after his death is not his concern, but he has not done so.”
“No; and even though Mr. Collins wished very much to marry one of us, my father would not permit it!” Her voice rang with hope.
He shuddered at the idea of Elizabeth – his Elizabeth – married to Mr. Collins. “There! You see? He knows better now. Elizabeth – I apologise, Miss Elizabeth – might I now tell you a long and rather dreary story?”
“Go on.”
Mr. Darcy took a deep breath. “When I was at Oxford, I shared a room with a fellow named Richard Barnes. He was brilliant, and a great academic future was predicted for him. He had already been offered a teaching position, though he had not yet graduated. Then came word that his elder brother had died, and he was required to go home to learn to manage the family’s estate. ”
“Oh! How terrible!”
Mr. Darcy nodded. “Yes; he was devastated. First, that his brother had died, of course; but also because the life he had envisioned for himself, that of spending his days and nights in study and contemplation, of sharing ideas with like-minded men, had vanished in an instant. Now he would be forced to turn his mind, his marvelously agile and brilliant mind, to problems of drainage and planting, storms and droughts. Before he left the college, he confessed to me that he had thought of doing away with himself, and it was only the knowledge that he was the only son left and his family depended on him, kept him from such a terrible action.”
By the time Mr. Darcy had finished, Elizabeth’s eyes were wide and her hands were clasped to her chest. “That must have been how Papa felt,” she whispered. “His father and his brother died, and he was forced to return to Longbourn. I never thought about what that must have been like for him.”
“And no one is saying that it was your business to do so,” Mr. Darcy said, softly. “You were a child and he was an adult, and it was up to him to manage the situation.”
She hardly heard him. “So selling those books must have been a grim reminder that his life had changed utterly,” she murmured. “No wonder he still regrets them.”
At that moment, Jane and Mr. Bingley returned back down the path, their faces wreathed in smiles. “She said yes!” Mr. Bingley called out.
Elizabeth quickly wiped the tears from her face as she went to congratulate her sister and the man who would soon be her brother.