Chapter XXII
The letter trembled slightly in his hand.
Mr. Darcy,
I hardly know whether I ought to write to you at all. Pride, propriety, shame – all tell me I should remain silent. Yet after what I discovered this evening, silence itself has begun to feel almost dishonest.
I found your letter to my father.
I learnt only today that you wrote after our departure from Lambton, and that your offer of assistance was never answered.
I cannot express the pain this knowledge has occasioned me.
That you should have written at all, after the abruptness of our leaving, after every circumstance which might naturally have encouraged you to withdraw yourself entirely from any concern connected with us, has affected me more deeply than I can properly say.
You were treated with neglect where you deserved gratitude.
I cannot bear that you should believe your kindness unnoticed merely because it was unanswered.
You once told me, at Hunsford, that had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner, I would have felt differently towards you. At the time, I believed myself entirely just in condemning you. I thought your pride the greatest fault between us.
I know now how little I understood – not only of you, but of myself.
You warned me against Mr. Wickham long before I was willing to hear you fairly.
Even after your letter, though I believed you, I still lacked the courage to speak openly when perhaps I ought to have done so.
I thought only of avoiding pain, avoiding scandal, avoiding difficult truths.
And now the consequences stand before us all.
The sad state of affairs is that my youngest sister has left her friends while sojourning in Brighton with the Forsters (the militia’s colonel stationed in Meryton, if you recall) and gone away with Mr. Wickham.
At first, it was believed they had intended marriage; we have since learnt there was little reason for such hope.
They travelled towards London and have not yet been discovered.
I cannot describe to you what this knowledge has inflicted upon us all. The shame of the connection alone would have been painful enough, but the uncertainty – the dreadful uncertainty of where my sister is, if she is harmed – renders every hour almost intolerable.
I do not know whether Lydia may yet be found.
I do not know whether any part of our family’s reputation can still be preserved.
At times, the disgrace appears so complete that I cannot breathe beneath it.
My poor father is broken by self-reproach; Jane struggles to hope where there is almost no hope left; my mother alternates between tears and nerves; and I, who once imagined myself sensible, can think only of all I failed to prevent.
But then I learnt that you wrote… that you thought of me kindly still – even after everything.
I cannot tell you what comfort there has been in that knowledge, though perhaps I ought not confess it. It has seemed to me almost undeserved. Indeed, I know it is undeserved.
When I remember the manner in which I spoke to you at Hunsford – the harshness of my accusations, the blindness of my prejudice, the readiness with which I believed evil of you and goodness of another merely because it suited my vanity to do so – I hardly know how you can still regard me with sufficient generosity to wish us well at all.
Yet you did.
And because you did, I find I cannot remain silent now.
I do not write to solicit your assistance.
Indeed, every feeling of delicacy ought perhaps to prevent me from writing at all.
Were I governed only by propriety, this letter would never leave my desk.
But after all that has passed between us – after your first letter, after Lambton, after the kindness and consideration you showed both to my relations and to myself – it seemed wrong that gratitude should remain unspoken merely because circumstances have become painful.
I thank you.
Not only for your offer of help, though that alone was generous beyond what my family had any right to expect, but for the manner in which you made it: without reproach, without superiority, without reminding us – or me – how fully justified you might have been in withdrawing your good opinion forever.
I once accused you of pride. If pride still belongs to you, it is at least joined now with a degree of goodness and generosity which I was too prejudiced to perceive before.
I think with shame of how often I misunderstood you.
You were not wrong in observing it at Netherfield, though at the time I had little inclination to acknowledge the justice of your observation.
Unfortunately, because of a remark you made at the Meryton assembly about me being only ‘tolerable,’ I did not want to understand you.
And perhaps with even greater shame at how long it has taken me to acknowledge that misunderstanding fully.
When we met again in Derbyshire, I did not know what to expect from you.
I believed I had forfeited forever any claim to your esteem.
Yet your conduct there – your kindness to my aunt and uncle, your attentiveness to every comfort of mine, the gentleness with which you encouraged your sister to know me – altered something within me which I had long believed fixed beyond change.
I do not know whether I ought to say this, but I cannot regret that we met again.
Even now – now, when every hope which might once foolishly have arisen appears more impossible than ever – I cannot wish those hours at Lambton undone.
Indeed, they have become almost painful in recollection precisely because they were so happy.
I often think of our last conversation at the inn. Of your expression when you spoke. Of the manner in which you listened to me as though my thoughts truly mattered to you. Such recollections perhaps ought only to increase my mortification now, and yet selfishly, I treasure them.
If this letter causes you discomfort, I beg you to forgive it and attribute it only to agitation and gratitude. I could not endure that you should think your concern unwelcome or forgotten.
Whatever becomes of my family now, I shall always remember your conduct during this unhappy period with feelings which no future circumstance can lessen.
I am sorry I saw you too late.
God bless you, too.
Yours,
Elizabeth Bennet
For several minutes after reaching the end, Darcy remained seated at his desk, the letter still open before him.
His eyes rested upon the final lines, yet he was no longer reading them.
The words had become inseparable from the thoughts now crowding his mind, returning one after another with a persistence that made it impossible to consider anything else.
After some time, he rose and crossed to the cabinet beside the bookcase.
The movement was less the result of any conscious decision than a need to break the stillness into which he had fallen.
He poured himself a measure of brandy and carried it to the window, though when he arrived there, he scarcely noticed the darkened street beyond the glass.
London lay spread before him beneath the night sky, but it might as well have been Derbyshire or Kent for all the attention he paid it.
He had expected many things after Lambton. Regret, certainly. Embarrassment. Perhaps even kindness. He had not expected this.
Again, his thoughts returned to particular passages.
Not the gratitude, though that alone had moved him more deeply than Elizabeth could ever have intended.
Nor her apology, for he had ceased requiring one long ago.
It was something quieter that lingered. The admission that his letter had comforted her.
The confession that she had thought of him kindly.
The acknowledgement that his conduct in Derbyshire had altered something she had once believed beyond change.
No gentleman alive could misunderstand such words.
Darcy closed his eyes briefly and let out a slow breath.
How many times had he imagined what might have happened had Lydia Bennet never run away?
How often had he returned in memory to Lambton, only to force himself away from the recollection before it could become painful?
He had persuaded himself that those few hours had been an illusion of sorts – a brief happiness granted only to be withdrawn.
Miss Elizabeth had treated him with warmth and consideration, but warmth was not affection, and consideration was not love. Whatever hopes he had once permitted himself had been buried the moment she left the inn.
Yet she remembered those days as he did.
More than that, she had written of them.
I cannot regret that we met again.
The sentence returned to him with particular force.
There was no ambiguity in it. Elizabeth Bennet was too honest a woman to write such words lightly, particularly in a letter she had plainly struggled to send.
Indeed, the entire letter bore evidence of that struggle.
He could almost see her seated at her desk at Longbourn, pausing over certain lines, setting down her pen, taking it up again.
More than once, she had admitted she ought perhaps not to write at all, and yet she had continued.
Pride, propriety, shame – she had named them all in the opening sentence and then ignored them one by one.
A faint smile touched his mouth despite himself. It was, he reflected, a very Elizabeth thing to do.
The smile faded as another thought occurred to him. He lowered the glass and turned from the window.
The letter had been written some weeks ago.
Not yesterday. Not after their meeting at Gracechurch Street. Weeks ago.
He stood perfectly still.
She had sent it. Naturally, she must have believed he had received it. The realisation altered the entire character of the afternoon.
Darcy walked slowly back towards the desk and looked down at the pages again.
He saw now what he had entirely failed to understand only hours before.
The searching glances, the hesitation. The curious disappointment that had appeared and vanished so quickly that he had scarcely had time to notice it.
Even her gratitude now seemed different.
Elizabeth had stood before him, believing him already in possession of every sentiment contained within these pages.
And he had given her nothing.
Not through indifference. Not through caution. Through complete ignorance.
He remembered her studying his face whilst thanking him for Lydia.
At the time, he had attributed it to anxiety and exhaustion.
Now he was no longer so certain. She had been looking for some acknowledgement, however slight.
Some indication that he understood what she had written. That he… still cared.
Instead, he had spoken to her as though the letter did not exist.
A mixture of amusement and mortification stole over him. Fitzwilliam Darcy was not often accused of being oblivious. Yet, on this occasion, he had conducted an entire conversation whilst remaining ignorant of information that would have transformed every word exchanged between them.
His gaze drifted once more to the signature.
Elizabeth Bennet.
The name alone seemed capable of stilling every other thought.
Near the end of the letter, the handwriting had become less steady. He noticed it now in a way he had not upon first reading. Whether the change was the result of fatigue, emotion, or simple uncertainty, he could not know. Yet it affected him unexpectedly.
I am sorry I saw you too late.
He read the line again. And again.
Not because he doubted its meaning, but because he found himself unwilling to leave it behind.
For months, he had believed himself alone in regretting what might have been. Now he knew he had been mistaken.
The knowledge ought perhaps to have filled him with triumph.
Instead, it left him humbled. Miss Elizabeth had written those words at what she believed to be the worst moment of her life.
She had believed her family ruined, Lydia lost, and every possibility between them extinguished forever.
Yet even then, she had found room to think of him.
Darcy sat down once more and carefully folded the letter.
The difficulties before them remained exactly as they had been an hour earlier. Lydia was still unmarried. The scandal had not vanished. Society would not become kinder merely because Elizabeth Bennet had written a letter.
And yet it was impossible to persuade himself that nothing had changed.
Tomorrow she would come.
For the first time since Lambton, Fitzwilliam Darcy found himself looking forward to the morrow with something dangerously close to hope.