Chapter Thirty-One
Elizabeth awoke the next morning to the same thoughts and meditations which had at length closed her eyes.
She could not yet recover from the surprise of what had happened; it was impossible to think of any thing else, and totally indisposed for employment, she resolved soon after breakfast to indulge herself in air and exercise.
She was proceeding directly to her favorite walk, when the recollection of Mr. Darcy's sometimes coming there stopped her, and instead of entering the park, she turned up the lane which led her farther from the turnpike road.
The park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she soon passed one of the gates into the ground.
After walking two or three times along that part of the lane, she was tempted, by the pleasantness of the morning, to stop at the gates and look into the park.
The five weeks which she had now passed in Kent had made a great difference in the country, and every day was adding to the verdure of the early trees.
She was on the point of continuing her walk, when she caught a glimpse of a gentleman within the sort of grove which edged the park; he was moving that way; and fearful of its being Mr. Darcy, she was directly retreating.
But the person who advanced, was now near enough to see her, and stepping forward with eagerness, pronounced her name.
She had turned away, but on hearing herself called, though in a voice which proved it to be Mr. Darcy, she moved again toward the gate.
He had by that time reached it also, and holding out a letter, which she instinctively took, said with a look of haughty composure,
"I have been walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honor of reading that letter?"
And then, with a slight bow, turned again into the plantation, and was soon out of sight.
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With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest curiosity, Elizabeth opened the letter, and to her still increasing wonder, perceived an envelope containing two sheets of letter paper, written quite through in a very close hand, and a third folded separately and sealed.
The envelope itself was likewise full.
Pursuing her way along the lane, she then began it. It was dated from Rosings, at eight o'clock in the morning, and was as follows:
Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you.
I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes, which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten; and the effort which the formation and the perusal of this letter must occasion, should have been spared, had not my character required it to be written and read.
You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I demand it of your justice.
Two offenses of a very different nature, and by no means of equal magnitude, you last night laid to my charge.
The first mentioned was, that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr. Bingley from your sister, — and the other, that I had, in defiance of various claims, in defiance of honor and humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity and blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham.
You also asked me a third thing, which was not an accusation, and which I shall answer last and at greater length than either.
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The Bingley part of it she read three times, standing still in the lane, and then walking, and then standing still again.
He set it out in order, as he set everything out.
He had not, he said, been long in Hertfordshire before he perceived that Bingley preferred her eldest sister to any other young woman in the country; but it was not till the evening of the ball at Netherfield that he had apprehended a serious attachment.
Your sister I also watched. Her look and manners were open, cheerful and engaging as ever, but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I remained convinced from the evening's scrutiny, that though she received his attentions with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of sentiment.
If you have not been mistaken here, I must have been in an error.
Your superior knowledge of your sister must make the latter probable.
— If it be so, if I have been misled by such error, to inflict pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable.
But I shall not scruple to assert, that the serenity of your sister's countenance and air was such, as might have given the most acute observer, a conviction that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be easily touched.
Elizabeth read that paragraph, and put the letter down against the top rail of the gate, and stood with her hands over her mouth.
He had watched Jane on the evening of the ball.
Not on the Tuesday of the week she was ill — the one evening in three-and-twenty years when everything Jane Bennet felt had been written on Jane Bennet's face, when Bingley had sat by her for three hours and gone away the happiest man in Hertfordshire and could never afterwards say why.
Elizabeth had stood at the side of that room and thought, look at her now, and go on looking, she will be well by Thursday.
Mr. Darcy had not been in that room. He had come in late, and gone to the window, and spoken to nobody.
And so he had watched Jane on every other occasion in the whole of his acquaintance with her — at the ball, at Longbourn, at dinner, at church — and had seen, with perfect accuracy, exactly and only what Jane's gift permits the world to see; and he had reported it honestly; and he had been wrong; and there was not one sentence in his account that Elizabeth could contradict, because she had watched the same woman for two-and-twenty years and had needed to be told by Charlotte Lucas, in a field, in October, what it was that she was looking at.
Her heart was not likely to be easily touched.
"Oh, Jane," said Elizabeth, out loud, in an empty lane in Kent.
The rest of that part she read with a cooler head, and found in it what she had expected and worse: the total want of propriety betrayed by her mother, by her three younger sisters, and occasionally even by her father.
It gave her pain. She could not deny the justice of it, and it was not to be denied; and the compliment to herself and Jane, which she read twice, did not much mend it.
He wrote that he had joined with Bingley's sisters in pointing out to him the evils of the choice; that he had concealed from him Jane's being in town; and that in this concealment he had been wrong.
There is but one part of my conduct, in the whole affair, on which I do not reflect with satisfaction; it was that I condescended to adopt the measures of art so far as to conceal from him your sister's being in town.
I knew it myself, as it was known to Miss Bingley; but her brother is even yet ignorant of it.
That they might have met without ill consequence, is perhaps probable; but his regard did not appear to me enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger.
Perhaps this concealment, this disguise, was beneath me.
It is done, however, and it was done for the best. On this subject I have nothing more to say, no other apology to offer.
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The second part began at the top of the second sheet, and it did not begin with Wickham.
You asked me, last night, what is unhealthy in Hertfordshire. I could not answer you, and you were pleased to understand me perfectly, and you were wrong; and this is the part of the letter which I have been three hours writing, and which you will believe or not as you see fit.
There is a strip of ground running out of the north-east corner of the field which your neighbors call Barrett's, down to the water and up toward the Meryton road.
You have crossed it. I know that you have crossed it, because you crossed it on foot at eight in the morning on the twelfth of November, alone, when your sister was ill at Netherfield; and I walked it myself at eleven the same day, having spent the intervening three hours attempting to find a reason why a gentleman might follow a young woman's route across four fields without giving offense, and having failed to find one.
The grass in that strip is the wrong color.
It is not blighted; it is ordinary. That is precisely what is wrong with it.
Under sound old ground the grass runs a little pale and a little cold, and every countryman in England knows it and no countryman in England thinks about it, any more than he thinks about the sky being up.
In that strip there is nothing. It is not thin. It is not weak. There is nothing there at all, and there is more of it now than there was in November.
I measured it twice. On the twelfth of November it was one-and-thirty yards.
On the fourth of December it was rather above a hundred.
I do not know what it is now. I have reason to believe it is moving uphill, toward the town, at something in the region of nine yards in the week, and if that is so — and I beg you will do this arithmetic yourself, and not take it from me — then it reached the Meryton road at about the turn of the year and it is now somewhere in the fields behind the church.
Elizabeth stood in the lane with the paper shaking, and did the arithmetic, and got the same answer.
I wrote in November to a Mr. Tarrant of the Society of Antiquaries, who is the only man living whose learning on this subject I would trust across a room. I asked him what bargains the old courts made in Hertfordshire, and with whom.