Chapter Twenty-Two
Darcy received Elizabeth's letter at breakfast, and read it through twice, the second reading considerably slower than the first, as the full weight of what he had done settled over him with a clarity that felt, in the moment of its arrival, like a physical blow.
He had believed Caroline Bingley. Not fully, not without some private doubt that he had been too weary and too battered by weeks of accumulated crisis to properly examine, but enough to withdraw from Elizabeth entirely rather than seek the single, obvious remedy that had been available to him from the first moment of his doubt: asking her directly.
He set the letter down and sat a long while in a silence so complete that Georgiana, entering the breakfast room some minutes later and finding him still and pale over an untouched plate, stopped in the doorway with evident alarm.
"Fitzwilliam? What has happened?"
"I have been a fool, Georgiana. A considerably greater fool than I was even at Hunsford, for at Hunsford I had at least the excuse of not yet knowing my own failings. I have no such excuse now."
She came and sat beside him, and he found himself, in the face of her evident concern, unable to spare her the truth as he had spared her so many uncomfortable particulars before.
"I believed an account of Miss Bennet's conduct, delivered to me by a person I know from long experience to bear her no goodwill, without troubling myself to ask Miss Bennet whether the account was true.
I withdrew from her, in consequence, without a word of explanation, and left her to learn the cause of my withdrawal not from myself but from Fitzwilliam, who discovered the whole business through his own inquiry and was kind enough to attempt some remedy where I had offered none. "
Georgiana was quiet a moment, and when she spoke, her voice carried a firmness that surprised him, coming from a sister he still, some part of him insisted on believing, required his protection rather than his instruction.
"You taught me, Fitzwilliam, after Ramsgate, that the worst thing a person can do, when they have been wronged or deceived, is to hide from the truth of it rather than face it plainly, however painful the facing proves.
You said it to me a dozen times, in a dozen different ways, in the months after, when I could not bring myself to speak of what had nearly happened.
And now I find you have done precisely the thing you taught me never to do, hidden from a truth you feared to face, and let a woman you claim to love suffer for your hiding. "
Darcy felt the words land with a force considerably sharper than any accusation Elizabeth's own letter had contained, precisely because they came from Georgiana, whose good opinion he had spent years working, in every particular of his conduct, to deserve.
"You are right," he said, quietly. "You are entirely right, and I do not know that I have ever been more ashamed to hear myself so plainly described by anyone, including myself in my own private reckonings these past weeks."
"Then go to her, Fitzwilliam. Not with a letter this time, letters have clearly done as much harm as good in this whole miserable business, but in person, and tell her the truth plainly: that you doubted her unjustly, that you are sorry for it, and that whatever fear made you retreat rather than ask her directly, you will not permit that fear to govern you again.
" Georgiana's eyes, when she looked at him, carried a conviction he had rarely seen in her before, the particular certainty of a girl who had watched her brother teach her courage and now, in this moment, found herself teaching it back to him.
"You have spent this whole business trying to protect her from the consequences of your past failures.
Do not let your present fear become another failure she must forgive. "
Darcy rose from the table, and crossed to where his sister sat, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head with a gratitude he did not entirely know how to put into words.
"When did you become so wise, Georgiana?"
"I learned it from watching you, Fitzwilliam, however imperfectly you have managed to practice it yourself these past several days. Now go. I do not think Miss Bennet's patience, however considerable it has proven itself to be, is a resource you ought to test any further than you already have."