Chapter 3
There were proposals, Elizabeth supposed, that opened like flowers.
Mr. Darcy's opened like a charge read aloud.
He spoke of admiration, but with the air of confessing to a dangerous fever.
He spoke of affection, but as if affection had trespassed where judgment had forbidden it to go.
He spoke of struggling against it, resisting it, reasoning with it, and finding all efforts useless.
By the time he admitted that he loved her, Elizabeth felt less beloved than accused of entering where she had no right.
"My feelings will not be repressed," he said, with that grave intensity which might have moved her had it not been surrounded by so much evidence of repression attempted. "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."
Must, Elizabeth thought.
Even his surrender arrived as an instruction.
She said nothing. Any interruption would have been taken for encouragement, and she had no wish to assist him in his own prosecution.
Darcy continued. His words came faster now, warmed by feeling and sharpened by resentment at having felt it.
He did not disguise the struggle. Indeed, he seemed to think the struggle proof of love's magnitude.
Her inferiority, the degradation of alliance, the obstacles of family, the objections that judgment had laid before him - all were named.
Not brutally. That would have been easier.
They were named with anguish, as though every insult cost him and therefore ought to count in his favor.
Elizabeth listened in astonishment so complete it became calm.
So this was his generosity.
He had examined her family, found them wanting, injured her sister, repeated his contempt where it could travel, battled the inconvenience of liking her, and now stood before her expecting gratitude because desire had defeated disgust.
At last he stopped. The silence after such a speech should have been delicate. It was not. Birds continued outside the garden wall with offensive indifference. Somewhere in the house, Mr. Collins dropped something and apologized to it.
Darcy looked at Elizabeth with expectation barely restrained by dignity.
"In such cases as this," she said, "it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned."
His face changed at once.
She almost regretted the pain, except that he had brought so much of it with him and set it down between them.
"It would be dishonest in me," she continued, "to say I feel gratitude. I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly."
"Miss Elizabeth -"
"You chose to tell me that you loved me against your reason, your character, and every objection my family could provide. I cannot accept such a compliment, though I admire its efficiency. Few men can combine a proposal and a family condemnation without pausing for breath."
Darcy stared. Color rose along his cheekbones, then faded.
"I had hoped," he said stiffly, "that your generosity might overlook the frankness with which I spoke of unavoidable difficulties."
"Unavoidable? Were they?"
"Your family -"
"Ah. We arrive at them again. They must be exhausted from being dragged into rooms where they were not invited."
His jaw tightened. "You cannot be unaware that your mother's behavior, your younger sisters' want of discipline, your father's neglect -"
"And my uncle's address?"
He stopped.
"Do include Cheapside, Mr. Darcy. It would be a pity to grow delicate halfway through the inventory."
"I did not come to insult you."
"No. That is the remarkable part. You came to offer marriage and could not help bringing the insults as attendants."
He took a step back, as if struck by the vulgarity of being understood.
"You have said enough," Elizabeth told him. "More than enough. But since you have spoken with such candor, allow me the same economy."
His eyes flashed. "Economy?"
"Yes. I will not take as long to refuse as you took to condescend."
There. It was unkind. It was also accurate, and accuracy had become her only luxury.
Darcy bowed slightly. "Say what you must."
"You ask for my hand after insulting my family in public and private.
You ask for gratitude after separating Mr. Bingley from my sister, whose heart you misread because her manners were gentler than your pride could interpret.
You ask me to admire the strength of your attachment when you have spent more words on its inconvenience than its honor.
You have injured those I love, then presented your desire as proof that I should forgive the injury. "
"You know nothing of Bingley."
"I know my sister."
"I believed her indifferent."
"You preferred to believe her indifferent. It made your interference cleaner."
He recoiled. "That is unjust."
"Is it? Then answer me plainly. Did you tell Mr. Bingley that Jane did not love him?"
Darcy's silence was the answer before he spoke.
"I told him I had observed no serious attachment on her side."
"And my family?"
"I warned him of imprudence."
"Because my mother is loud?"
"Because the connection would expose him to -"
"To us," Elizabeth said. "Use the shorter word. It is less genteel, but more honest."
He looked away.
For one moment, she saw him not as the master of Pemberley, not as the proud man of Meryton, but as a gentleman trapped inside the rules that had always served him. He did not know how to be wrong without ceasing to be himself. The discovery might have softened her on another day.
Not this one.
"You have reduced my sister's heart to evidence," she said. "My family's follies to contamination. My own worth to an exception you are generous enough to make. And now you are astonished that I am not grateful."
"I am astonished," he said, voice low, "by your anger."
"Then you have not been listening to your proposal."
The color came back to his face. "I have never meant to wound you."
"Intentions are poor servants. They always arrive after the damage asking to be praised for the journey."
He looked at her then with something sharper than pain. "And Wickham? I suppose his misfortunes are added to my crimes."
"You have not denied them."
"Mr. Wickham is not what he appears."
"Few people are. You, for instance, appeared to be proposing."
His mouth tightened. "You take pleasure in despising me."
Elizabeth felt the words hit because they were almost true. Not pleasure. Relief. Despising him was easier than remembering that she had once looked forward to his attention against her will.
"I take no pleasure in any of this," she said.
"You have made me ashamed of the attention I thought I imagined, ashamed of the pleasure I took in crossing your pride, ashamed that for even a moment I wondered whether you saw me clearly.
You did not. You saw me through objections and called it love. "
Darcy's expression altered. Not softened. Stripped, for the space of a breath, of defense.
Then he bowed. It was a beautiful bow. Even wounded, the man could arrange dignity as if trained by marble.
"You have said quite enough, madam. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time."
"Gladly," Elizabeth said, because she was too angry to be merciful and too hurt to be wise.
He turned and left the garden.
She remained where she was until the gate closed behind him.
Then, inconveniently, her knees decided that moral victory had been overrated. She sat on the nearest bench before they could betray her completely.
The flowers Charlotte had cut lay in their basket by the path. One had fallen out, its stem bent. Elizabeth picked it up because her hands needed employment. She expected triumph. She had refused him. She had said what ought to be said. She had defended Jane, Longbourn, herself.
Instead she felt as if she had been standing too near a fire and only now noticed her sleeve had caught.
Charlotte found her ten minutes later.
"Well?" she asked gently.
Elizabeth held up the bent flower. "Mr. Darcy has asked me to marry him."
Charlotte, to her credit, did not drop the basket she carried. "And?"
"I declined the honor of being loved as if I were a difficulty overcome."
Charlotte sat beside her. "Was he very bad?"
Elizabeth stared toward the gate. "He was sincere."
"Ah."
"That was the worst of it."
Charlotte said nothing. There were silences only a friend could give, and this was one of them: not empty, not demanding, merely present.
After a while Elizabeth said, "I told him he injured Jane."
"Good."
"I told him he insulted my family."
"Also good."
"I may have told him his proposal was a family condemnation with matrimonial decorations."
Charlotte's lips trembled.
"Do not laugh," Elizabeth warned.
"I am trying to be a respectable married woman."
"Then try elsewhere. I cannot survive respectability at present."
Charlotte did laugh, softly, and after a moment Elizabeth joined her. The laughter did not heal anything. It merely proved they were still themselves.
That night, alone, Elizabeth took out her list. She read the five offenses, then added a sixth.
6. Proposed as if love excused contempt.
She looked at the sentence for a long time.
Then beneath it she wrote:
Question: What would repair require?
She did not know why she wrote it. She did not intend forgiveness. She did not intend to think of him beyond the necessity of anger. But the question stood on the page, stubborn and unwelcome.
Elizabeth closed the little book.
Outside, the parsonage slept. At Rosings, perhaps, Mr. Darcy did not. She hoped he suffered. Then she was ashamed of hoping it. Then she was annoyed at being ashamed, because he had begun the whole thing.
It was exhausting, being proposed to by a man one despised almost enough.