Chapter 1
Elizabeth took her seat with real pleasure in her aunt’s small private parlour—only the two of them, their cups of tea, and the comfort of being alone.
“I feel quite guilty to slip away here and not call for Jane,” said Elizabeth.
“Only this evening,” her aunt assured her.
“From what you wrote, very briefly,” she added, with a faintly reproving smile, “there are matters better kept from Jane for the present. The composure she shows is far from the truth. In her heart, she is as grieved as ever, and the conduct of Mr Bingley’s sisters has revealed in others what she was always inclined to overlook.
She believed ill-nature and pride might be met with smiles and gentle words. ”
“Alas,” murmured Elizabeth. The sisters loved one another deeply, but they were entirely different.
Never before had Elizabeth failed to tell Jane all that concerned her, nor had she kept anything from her by design, but throughout the journey from Hunsford to London, she had turned over all that had passed and resolved to speak first with her aunt and only afterwards with her sister.
With some hesitation, and more than one return to her subject, she gave Mrs Gardiner an account of all that had occurred in Kent, from the dinners at Rosings to that morning at Hunsford, when Mr Darcy, quite unexpectedly, had offered her marriage.
“And you had no suspicion that he admired you?”
It was a question Elizabeth herself had considered in the days before she left Kent. How had it been possible that nothing had prepared her for Mr Darcy’s partiality?
“On the contrary. If there were moments in Hertfordshire, or even at the beginning in Kent, when I thought I discerned some admiration in his manner, within a few days of his arrival at Rosings, his former hauteur gave way to a certain plainness.”
“Plainness?” exclaimed Mrs Gardiner, laughing, delighted by the conversation and by the way her niece related events, giving them a turn in which irony was never absent.
“Exactly so. We spoke of nothing but the weather and of distances between towns. How was I to suppose he admired me so much as to wish to marry me? His cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, made several attempts to draw him away from such discourse, but all in vain. He was determined, quite determined in fact, to be dull.”
Aunt and niece laughed together over their tea, which Mrs Gardiner alone knew how to prepare to perfection. At Longbourn, where everything was done in haste and for many, tea was more often a warm draught than a pleasure.
“When you wrote that Mr Darcy had proposed to you, I could scarcely command myself before Jane, so great was my surprise. But it was not news I could yet share with her.”
Elizabeth nodded, relieved to have Mrs Gardiner to whom she might confide everything, and from whom she might also receive advice. After all, she had spent more than three months observing Jane’s sorrow.
“Do you think I ought to have accepted?” Elizabeth asked in a low voice, half question, half reflection.
She wished to know her aunt’s opinion, and found, at the same time, that she knew nothing of the circumstances in which Mrs Gardiner had accepted her uncle’s offer.
She perceived, too, a slight hesitation in the delay of her answer.
“It is strange,” said her aunt at last, “that no more than twelve years have passed since I married, and yet it seems almost another age. In this newer world, some of the settled habits in which we were brought up appear already less fixed—”
“You mean marriage.”
“Yes, particularly marriage. In my day, if I may say so, no young lady would have refused an offer. Though perhaps that is not entirely true because generally, the offer was made first to the parents.”
“Was it so in your case?”
The silence that followed alarmed Elizabeth, and she immediately added, “Forgive me, I did not mean to be indiscreet.”
But Mrs Gardiner made a gentle motion with her hand, as though to reassure her, and, smiling slightly as she looked at her, spoke only then.
“Not at all, there is no indiscretion in it. Of late, I have come to consider you my closest friend, though a decade stands between us. I believe, rather, that you have set me thinking. Yes, my father judged Mr Gardiner to be a serious suitor, and encouraged him to visit us several times, that we might become acquainted.”
“Then your father did not think so very differently from mine.”
“Far from that, he belonged to that stricter tradition in which parents determine their children’s marriages.
It was, rather, a fortunate circumstance.
Your uncle had come to Derby on business and took our house there, the one in which my sister Agnes now resides.
As he intended to remain more than a month, my father likely wished to observe him. ”
Mrs Gardiner looked at Elizabeth with attention and smiled, guessing the question that occupied her.
“I was not drawn to him at first…not as you understand love. But you must know that affection came after our marriage and I have never once regretted a decision that was, in truth, entirely my parents’. ”
“How glad I am!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “When you first came into our family, we were somewhat intimidated—we were only children, and you were already a woman. We did not know what to expect, but you won us over at once.”
“You were the ones who won me,” she replied, “but I was deeply struck by the atmosphere in your home—by Mr Bennet, who is by far the most progressive gentleman I have ever known. I could have spent hours in the library with you when he spoke. Do you remember how Mrs Bennet would sometimes have me drawn away, quite forcibly, because she believed my place to be in the drawing room with the other ladies? And I wished only to remain and join your discussions. Later, as you grew older, my surprise increased still more, seeing how your father encouraged your independence. To marry for affection was an ideal I had never supposed might belong to real life—it seemed rather the invention of novels.”
“Poor father!” exclaimed Elizabeth, and her heart tightened.
“Poor? Why poor?”
“Because he gave us that independence in complete contradiction to our circumstances, which could never support such hopes. Marriage was our only means of securing a decent life, and he knew it, even as he urged us to independence. That Mr Collins did not marry one of us is, in truth, a misfortune for our family…though for Jane and me, it is a blessing.”
Mrs Gardiner sighed deeply; she knew too well the difficulties of the Bennet family.
“I hope most sincerely that you will all be happily and securely married long before any unhappy event.”
Elizabeth nodded, though without conviction. “Might I have been wrong to refuse Mr Darcy—”
“Lizzy! How can you say so? A proud, disdainful man, who holds such an opinion of your family, cannot be your husband!”
“It is true. Yet that day I saw only his faults, in every direction, without considering that we, too, might possess defects seen as such from without.”
Mrs Gardiner said nothing, allowing her to continue, and Elizabeth, looking at her steadily, spoke with a faint irony softened by sadness. “A perfect family is also an ideal of books, and we had only believed ourselves to be one.”
“And what has changed?”
“Nothing in what we are—only in how I now see us. Mr Darcy’s disdain shocked me, and I answered him with violence, but his letter brought me to reflection and urged me to do what my father has always required of me—to think before I form my opinions, especially when I am angry or hurt.
“We are not perfect. My mother’s impatience contributed to Jane’s unhappiness. Lydia and Kitty behave very ill in society, and even Jane—”
“Jane? What fault could Jane have?” asked Mrs Gardiner, in sincere surprise.
“Jane, with her reserve, appeared not to care for Mr Bingley, and all, combined with my mother’s talk of a certain engagement, made it seem as though Jane valued only his fortune.”
“Oh! There may be some truth in your sister’s timidity. Though I would not say Mr Darcy showed his own feelings very clearly before the proposal.”
“There was no reserve in him. He struggled against his affection for me and hoped to resist a marriage with a woman from such a family.”
“I hear more sorrow than resentment in what you say.”
“I am filled with both, in equal measure. I do not regret refusing him. I regret only the severity and unkindness with which I spoke.
“I am ashamed that I preserved not the smallest degree of objectivity in what concerned us, and that I erred so greatly in my judgement of a man such as Mr Wickham.”
She had told her aunt only that a passage from Mr Darcy’s letter had entirely altered her opinion of that gentleman—a libertine and a gambler, deserving of contempt rather than admiration.
Elizabeth looked with affection about the room she knew so well.
The fire played cheerfully in the small grate, casting shifting shadows over the light and elegant furnishings; the subdued colours and the fine fabric of the sofa and chairs told the story of Mrs Gardiner, who, since coming to London, had cultivated a taste for beauty, while preserving the wish to create a home for her family, not merely an elegant setting.
“I am not satisfied with myself. As his daughter, whatever my father may have taught us, I ought to have reflected on the situation of my family. Mr Darcy is clearly not Mr Collins—and I do not speak of fortune, but of character. To accept a man such as he might not have been impossible, had I been given time to know him, and to remember how much my family depends upon me—upon any of us. I must own that to marry Mr Darcy would have been the very salvation my family awaits. Yet I found it impossible to think of them.”
“When in truth all your anger, and your firm refusal, arose from them, from the arrogance with which he presumed to declare his dislike of them.”
“Exactly so. I wonder whether, in other circumstances, I might at least have asked for time to consider.”
Mrs Gardiner said nothing and even turned her eyes toward the fire, avoiding Elizabeth’s.
“I ought to have seen the situation in its true light—that is what you think, and I cannot blame you,” Elizabeth murmured, conscious that, however much Mrs Gardiner might have changed, she remained, in essence, the young lady who had married the man her father chose.
“But now that I am calm, I perceive other faults in his proposal. Beyond the disdain he showed for my family, there was something very strange in it. At no moment was it about me. He did not ask whether I liked him; he would have made me his wife without caring whether I had any feelings for him. And I cannot but declare that, in the kind of marriage I value, man and wife must feel alike—”
“Love!”
“Yes, love, admiration, respect.”
Mrs Gardiner nodded in silence with genuine admiration.
“I shall keep this proposal in secret.”
“From everyone?”
Elizabeth did not hesitate to reply, “For the present, yes!” She looked at her aunt with sudden attention and asked, “Do you think it is a wise decision?”
“There are no decisions wholly wise or wholly unwise. You must act exactly as you feel.”
“I believe I shall speak with my father. He alone would see the matter divested of passion and might offer something truly useful. Jane still suffers, and we would rather she begin to forget Mr Bingley than have him brought again before her.”
“On the other hand,” Elizabeth added in a lower tone, “however strange it may appear, I have been asked to marry.”
Long after Elizabeth had withdrawn for the night, Mrs Gardiner remained in the same place, reflecting upon their conversation.
Her thoughts lingered less upon what had been said, for the events themselves were clear.
They returned instead to all that had remained unspoken: the wandering glances, the half-formed expressions, the curious reserve that made her wonder what might occur should Elizabeth meet again with Fitzwilliam Darcy; after all, London was not so vast a place.
She did not like to keep secrets from her husband, but, for once, she resolved to say nothing to him, who might judge Elizabeth’s decision as deeply unwise and selfish in light of her family’s situation.
It was, after all, Elizabeth’s secret—and, at the same time, it was well known how little men understand of love.
She was likewise certain that Elizabeth would, in the end, speak sincerely to her father.