CHAPTER 5 #2
When Mrs. Bennet, emboldened by her daughter's engagement into a generalised goodwill toward the whole of Mr. Bingley's connexions, attempted some pleasantry about how they must soon look to have Mr. Darcy settled too, he replied that he could not imagine himself being so settled, and said it in such a cold manner that Mrs. Bennet found nothing further to say to him for the remainder of the evening.
Elizabeth, watching this from across the room, thought, there it is. There is the man who considers himself above his company, and can find nothing to please him in any of it, save Bingley and the friends Bingley had brought with him.
She mentioned Darcy’s rude and aloof behavior to Charlotte, some days later, when her friend called at Longbourn. They walked together in the front garden, and Elizabeth was quick to share her observations about Mr. Darcy’s manner.
“You will be diverted, I think, Charlotte, to hear that Mr. Darcy is exactly what he ever was, grave and evidently persuaded that the whole of Hertfordshire owes its existence to his forbearance in visiting it.”
Charlotte questioned whether Elizabeth had read him rightly. Although, Elizabeth was ready with her answer, pointing out that his pride, his aloofness, and his air of being always above his company. “He wears,” Elizabeth added, “a look of settled displeasure whenever he comes to Longbourn at all.”
The ladies spoke by turns of his behavior, before the subject, as such subjects will, gave way to others.
***
On Thursday, Netherfield Park held a small dinner itself, ostensibly to allow Miss Bingley the pleasure of receiving her brother's future family under her own roof. Though Elizabeth privately suspected the pleasure ran a good deal thinner than the invitation implied.
Nevertheless, the Bennet family accepted the invitation, and after a rather stifling dinner, Elizabeth decided to go out onto the terrace for air. She had not been there above a few minutes before Mr. Darcy came out also, by the same door.
He gave off every appearance of a man who had not known she was there. He stopped, and she noticed a small, unmistakable hesitation; his half-turn suggested he considered retreating, but after a moment decided to abandon the thought, and stepped more fully onto the terrace.
"Good evening, Miss Elizabeth.” He offered a curt bow.
Elizabeth replied with a mere nod, “You need not stay on my account, Mr. Darcy," she said. "I know the terrace is not commonly thought large enough for two persons who may have very little to say to one another."
She cringed somewhat, feeling that her statement was far sharper than she had meant it; she saw it land, and his eyes narrowed immediately.
For one strange, suspended moment she thought he meant to answer her in kind, or perhaps not in kind at all.
Instead, he simply bowed, and went back into the house, without another word.
Elizabeth remained alone on the terrace some minutes after, considerably more disturbed than the exchange had warranted.
She could not quite figure out what disturbed her.
It was not his coldness, for she had grown almost used to it.
Rather, it was a flicker, a half-second of something that looked like the man was in pain.
She went back, in her mind, to the conversation she had with Charlotte about Mr. Darcy. He is proud and cold, and always so, and my own vanity could not put up with such behavior.
What Elizabeth did not know, could not know that Mr. Darcy had gone back into the drawing-room that evening and stood for above an hour near a window, answering what was said to him and initiating nothing, in a silence his hostess privately attributed to disdain for the company, his friend attributed to nothing at all, being too happy himself to remark much upon the moods of others, and that only Darcy himself understood to be the direct and entire consequence of having very nearly, on a terrace, said a thing to Elizabeth Bennet that he had sworn never to permit himself to say at all.
Darcy had come out onto the terrace to remove himself from a room in which Caroline's voice had been raised half a note louder than usual.
She had been speaking of the weather, remarking that Mr. Darcy had been so occupied with drains and ditches and other matters of great moment, that he was not likely to notice it.
She had said it lightly, without any evident wish that he answer, but he understood exactly the tone.
"You mistake me," he said, before he had properly decided to speak at all. "I have looked out of doors a good deal, and I have found the weather quite fair.”
And then, he bowed and opened the terrace door to escape a lady whose malice had begun to wear on him past bearing, and found Elizabeth there before him.
Seeing her alone, he meant to withdraw at once, some better judgment urged it, but he stood a moment too long deciding it, and in that moment she spoke to him with a light, jesting contempt.
But something in him had very nearly answered her honestly.
He did not know, himself, what he would have said, had he said it.
He knew only that the saying of it had felt, for one full second, something he wanted more than anything.
But reason reasserted itself, and drove him back into the very room he had come out to escape, Elizabeth, he had found, being a great deal more dangerous than Miss Bingley.
Not long after, Elizabeth, came back into the drawing-room, and found Mr. Darcy to be in a low conversation with Mr. Hurst upon some matter of no evident interest to either party. Mr. Darcy’s countenance was stern, and his attention blank, and she wondered if it was boredom or irritation.
Nevertheless, Elizabeth decided not to think more of the cold gentleman, and went to sit by Jane.
She did not think of the terrace again that night, though she found, on retiring, that she remembered the particular grey of his eyes in that half-second of hesitation, and slept rather worse than the evening's small unpleasantness seemed to call for, wondering at the strange look he gave her before he abandoned the terrace altogether.