4. To a Man
To a Man
Jane looked back wistfully at Netherfield Park’s gates before turning to Elizabeth. “Lizzy, I know you have missed Longbourn, but you have seemed so displeased these past few days. Are you unhappy with me?”
“Unhappy with you? Never. I simply anticipate returning to the noisy, less-ordered confines of our own home. I am better able to manage Lydia and Kitty’s arguments than the Bingley sisters’ compliments.”
Or their insincere smiles.
Elizabeth breathed in the crisp November air.
Relief swept through her. She had got Jane out of Netherfield and away from the Bingleys without any suspicion from Mr Bingley that he had exposed his secret to her.
Nor, of course, did Jane have any hint of his true character.
It had been terrible to see the moon-eyed look he directed at Jane as he helped her into the carriage.
If her sister was to be swayed from a man unfit for her admiration, it must be done while they were not under the same roof.
“I know Miss Bingley is not your favourite,” said Jane. “Mama suspects she is suffering some unhappiness as she approaches her third Season, and I believe she might have felt some envy of the notice Mr Darcy has given you.” She gave Elizabeth a knowing look.
“Notice? He left rooms when I entered them or adhered to his book.”
“Much as he has elsewhere, he watched you during coffee last evening.”
Elizabeth bit back a joking reply about Jane discerning anything but Mr Bingley.
Encouraging her sister’s feelings, feelings she concealed under a serene expression, would have been unwise.
“If Mr Darcy looked at me, it was only to find fault,” she replied, thinking that, in this way, he was rather like Miss Bingley.
He tolerates his friend’s indiscretions and his hostess’s incivility yet watches me as if I have warts and speak in tongues!
Mr Darcy was not her concern, particularly once they had returned to Longbourn, where she discovered that Mr Bingley was only one of the troublesome men admiring Jane. Mr Collins, their cousin and the heir to Longbourn, had arrived.
While Elizabeth did her best to tolerate and elude her share of the attentions of the unctuous Mr Collins, she was equally careful to censor herself near Jane.
Her beloved sister was delicate in her feelings, still reluctant to reveal her heart to anyone, but oh, how well she thought of the wicked Mr Bingley!
Distressing as it was to Elizabeth, her mother’s loud boasts of Mr Bingley’s interest in Jane proved useful in thwarting Mr Collins’s ambitions for Longbourn’s prettiest daughter.
Having his cloying attentions transferred to herself was the price to pay for peace of mind.
Elizabeth was willing to suffer her cousin’s ingratiating compliments and inane comments to protect Jane from him, but how was she to protect her from Mr Bingley?
Fortunately, the Netherfield party was too occupied with preparations for their forthcoming ball and other social obligations to call at Longbourn.
The two households were made to suffer only a brief encounter two days later on Meryton’s High Street, during which Mr Bingley was the spokesman and Jane his principal object.
He spoke charmingly, grinned, and was all things agreeable as he told them he had been on his way to Longbourn to enquire after her health.
He was, if Elizabeth were perfectly honest, quite comparable in manner to their new acquaintance, Mr Wickham, a lieutenant in the local militia, who stood quietly and amiably as Mr Bingley rattled on.
Both men appeared completely charming and could claim a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address, as well as a happy readiness of conversation.
The painful truth was known to Elizabeth alone.
She had only just met Mr Wickham and, based on those few minutes of acquaintance, thought him a good sort of man.
Of course, she had been similarly impressed with Mr Bingley and, chastened, would set aside her judgment on the lieutenant until further interactions.
How is one to distinguish a good, honourable man from one of weak character?
As the group conversed, something—she could not say what it was—caused her to look at Mr Darcy.
She found him staring darkly at Mr Wickham, who swallowed and touched his hat.
It was a salutation Mr Darcy barely deigned to return before turning away.
No one else appeared to notice the odd exchange.
Mr Darcy’s confusing manners vexed her. He is friendly to one man I can no longer respect and almost threatening to one I scarcely know.
The following evening, the Bennets gathered with their neighbours in the comfortable confines of her aunt Philips’s parlour.
A smile from Mr Wickham induced her to begin a friendly conversation with him.
When the lieutenant almost immediately raised Mr Darcy’s name and asked after their acquaintance, Elizabeth was as curious as she was wary.
“I know him as well as I ever wish to,” she said. “When my sister was ill, I spent four days in the same house with him and found him very disagreeable.”
Mr Wickham could not have been more eager to pursue this avenue of conversation and quickly began to tell her of the slights and grievances Mr Darcy had caused him since childhood.
The portrait he painted of a spoilt villain was grim, yet Mr Wickham presented himself as resolute and cheerful despite the injustices Mr Darcy continued to inflict on him.
By the time he reached what Elizabeth hoped was the end of his sorry tale, her head was full of him, although not in the happy way a lady given the full attention of a handsome young man might wish.
Instead, she thought of the quickness and ease with which Mr Wickham spoke of the injuries he had suffered at the hand of Mr Darcy moments after he had called him a good brother to his younger sister and assured her that he would never disrespect the memory of the elder Mr Darcy.
“Some time or other, Darcy’s actions will be made known, but it will not be by me.
Till I can forget his father, I can never defy or expose him.
” He looked at her with beseeching eyes that only days ago she would have found warm and wistful.
Now his expression resembled Lydia’s when she wheedled her mother for a new bonnet.
Elizabeth was as untouched by his complaints as she was by her sister’s pleadings.
Duplicity, not to mention gossiping to a near stranger, was as great a sin as those of which he accused Mr Darcy.
Amongst the man’s many crimes, Mr Wickham had made no mention of him ravishing the servants.
She supposed a lady’s ears were too delicate for such tales.
Elizabeth did not especially like or respect Mr Darcy, but he was not cavorting with a maidservant in a house where the lady to whom he had been paying favour lay ill, nor was he maligning former friends to those he had just met.
She could not like that he condoned Mr Bingley’s ‘arrangement’ with a maid or that he was proud and ill-humoured. But when confined to Netherfield with Miss Bingley and her schemes, could she not apply the latter description to herself?
Tilting her head as if in deep thought, Elizabeth arranged her hands in her lap and smiled prettily at Mr Wickham. “By this you mean fully expose him, as opposed to your whispers to me here?”
He appeared startled, then in a ghastly alteration, his expression turned angry. She suspected he was as relieved as she by the laughing arrival of Miss Long and her brothers to their company, which gave him the opportunity to move away and find a more sympathetic friend.
Her mood worsened as she considered the four men she had met in the past weeks.
Meryton had a dearth of eligible young men equal to or higher than the Bennets’ standing.
Now four had arrived in less than two months, and not a one could be admired.
Mr Collins was a fool, Mr Wickham was a telltale, Mr Bingley was a scoundrel, and Mr Darcy was—
What is he? Certainly he was no favourite of Mr Wickham’s, but was he an accomplice to Mr Bingley’s villainy?
Much as she did not like the man, she thought him too staid to support his capricious friend in such unsavouriness.
After all, if Mr Darcy thought himself above the company of gentlefolk, he would not deign to speak to a servant with such warm familiarity, let alone dally with one.
But to overlook his friend’s sordid behaviour? Disgusting!
The following day, when Mr Bingley and his sisters called at Longbourn to deliver an invitation to the ball, Elizabeth sat apart from the conversation.
Miss Bingley’s health was fully canvassed, as was Jane’s, and it was determined all was well with lungs, stomachs, heads, and feet.
Nothing could stand in the way of the ball and the happiness some expected to deepen as its result.
Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst might bemoan the possible attachment between their brother and her sister nearly as much as Elizabeth did, but Mr Bingley’s attentions to Jane continued to vex Mr Collins.
When the repellent man was not bestowing his fawning attentions on Elizabeth, he was communicating his disappointed hopes for Longbourn’s prettiest daughter through loud sighs and wistful glances at Jane.
Although besieged, Elizabeth would hold her tongue until the ball was over and continue to protect her sister from their cousin and Mr Bingley.
She did all she could to keep the would-be lovers occupied in public conversation.
She was aided in her scheme by Miss Bingley, whose support of Elizabeth’s insistence that everyone—even the pedantic Mary—express an opinion on any topic was met by Mr Bennet’s quizzical glances.
Only the mud and the possibility that Jane could injure herself kept Mrs Bennet from insisting the couple walk out to gain some privacy.
The visit was thankfully brief, and Elizabeth was left again to parry Mr Collins’s attentions. If her cousin was too obtuse about the fairer sex to understand the disinterest and contempt in Elizabeth’s discourse, her father appeared intrigued by her verbal manoeuvres and shifting moods.
“Lizzy,” Mr Bennet called from his book-room after she had returned from a brisk solitary walk to the stream that formed the boundary between Longbourn and Netherfield. “Cease this endless rambling about the country and tell your papa what is the matter.”
She looked at the man she had long held as the exemplar of intelligence and good humour, who understood her thoughts better even than Jane at times.
He was not a perfect man—impatient with his wife, biting in his teasing of his family, and mostly disinterested in the business of running an estate.
But he did read philosophy, and he knew the world a bit, so she ventured a question.
“Are all men foolish? Can any be trusted?”
He looked less surprised than she had expected.
“If you refer to Mr Collins, he is not shy about exhibiting his foibles. In that you may trust, Lizzy.” He chuckled at her expression.
“And do trust your papa. No matter what your mother may wish, I will not part with you or Jane to such a ridiculous nodcock.”
Although hardly surprised by his assurance, her gratitude kept her from further enquiries. She would not speak to him about Mr Bingley and let her father be satisfied with his advice.