Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty
When they were gone, Elizabeth, as if intending to exasperate herself as much as possible against Mr. Darcy, chose for her employment the examination of all the letters which Jane had written to her since her being in Kent.
They contained no actual complaint, nor was there any revival of past occurrences, or any communication of present suffering.
But in all, and in almost every line of each, there was a want of that cheerfulness which had been used to characterize her style, and which, proceeding from the serenity of a mind at ease with itself, and kindly disposed toward every one, had been scarcely ever clouded.
Elizabeth noticed every sentence conveying the idea of uneasiness, with an attention which it had hardly received on the first perusal. Mr. Darcy's shameful boast of what misery he had been able to inflict, gave her a keener sense of her sister's sufferings.
She was roused from her seat, and her reflections, by some one's ringing the bell; and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once before called late in the evening, and might now come to inquire particularly after her.
But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the room.
In an hurried manner he immediately began an inquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better.
She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up, walked about the room.
Elizabeth was surprised, but said not a word.
After a silence of several minutes, he came toward her in an agitated manner, and thus began,
"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."
Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, colored, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her, immediately followed.
He spoke well; but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride.
His sense of her inferiority — of its being a degradation — of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.
And then he came to the offer itself, and he made it as a man of eight hundred years makes such an offer, which is to say as a matter of business, plainly, so that there should be no misunderstanding afterwards.
"You will forgive me if I speak without ceremony, since it is not a thing that can be hinted at.
Longbourn is entailed to the heirs male and there are none.
On your father's death the Accord severs, and it does not merely pass — it is extinguished in your blood and in your sisters'.
There is no remedy for it in law and none in money.
Your mother is aware of it; your father has been aware of it for twenty years; and nobody in that house has ever, so far as I could discover in nine weeks, said the thing aloud in a room with all five of you in it.
"I am offering you Pemberley.
"I do not mean the house, and I do not mean the ten thousand a year, though you will have both and you may do as you like with them.
I mean the line. It is the fourth oldest in England and it has never in eight hundred years been braided outside eleven families.
Braided to yours, it does not die with your father.
It holds. Your sisters are yours by blood and what is yours is reachable through you, and there is no house in this kingdom that would put out a Bennet after that, and no clergyman in Kent who would think it worth his while to try a door at Longbourn again.
"I am aware of what I am offering. I am aware that no woman in your situation has ever been offered anything approaching it, and that a great many women of far better family would take it out of my hand without waiting to hear the end of the sentence, and that you will be told so by everybody you ever confide in.
"I have been unable to reason myself out of it since the twelfth of November. In vain I have struggled. I ask you to be my wife."
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He had not sat down. He stood in the middle of Mr. Collins's parlor with his hands behind him, and he had gone through the whole of it without once looking away from her, and when he had done he waited with an expression of perfect composure and a color that had risen to the roots of his hair.
He had no doubt of a favorable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security.
Elizabeth stood up.
"In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned.
It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you.
But I cannot — I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly.
I am sorry to have occasioned pain to any one.
It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration.
The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation. "
Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantle-piece with his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than surprise.
His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature.
He was struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not open his lips, till he believed himself to have attained it.
The pause was to Elizabeth's feelings dreadful.
At length, in a voice of forced calmness, he said,
"And this is all the reply which I am to have the honor of expecting! I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavor at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance."
"I might as well inquire," replied she, "why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?
Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil?
But I have other provocations. You know I have.
Had not my own feelings decided against you, had they been indifferent, or had they even been favorable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man, who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister? "
As she pronounced these words, Mr. Darcy changed color; but the emotion was short, and he listened without attempting to interrupt her while she continued.
"I have every reason in the world to think ill of you.
No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there.
You dare not, you cannot deny that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other — of exposing one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind. "
She paused, and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse. He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity.
"Can you deny that you have done it?" she repeated.
With assumed tranquillity he then replied, "I have no wish of denying that I did every thing in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Toward him I have been kinder than toward myself."
Elizabeth disdained the appearance of noticing this civil reflection, but its meaning did not escape, nor was it likely to conciliate her.
"But it is not merely this affair," she continued, "on which my dislike is founded.
Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided.
Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham.
On this subject, what can you have to say?
In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself?
or under what misrepresentation, can you here impose upon others? "
"You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns," said Darcy in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened color.
"Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?"
"His misfortunes!" repeated Darcy contemptuously — "yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed."
"And of your infliction," cried Elizabeth with energy.
"You have reduced him to his present state of poverty — comparative poverty.
You have withheld the advantages, which you must know to have been designed for him.
You have deprived the best years of his life, of that independence which was no less his due than his desert.
You have done all this! and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule. "