At first I drank my tea with my aunt, my cousins and Mr and Mrs Collins, but all the time my thoughts were on Elizabeth. Was she suffering? Was she really ill? Could I do anything to help her?
At last I could contain myself no longer. Whilst the others talked of the parish, I declared I needed some fresh air and expressed my intention of taking a walk. I scarce know whether I meant to visit the parsonage or not when I left Rosings. My heart drove me on but my reason urged me back, and all the while my feet carried on walking until at last I found myself outside the parsonage door.
On enquiring if Miss Bennet was in I was shown into the parlour, where she looked up in surprise as she saw me enter. I was surprised myself.
I began rationally enough. I asked after her health, and she replied that she was not too poorly. I sat down. I stood up. I walked about the room. At last I could contain it no longer.
‘In vain have I struggled.’ The words were out before I could stop them. ‘It will not do,’ I went on. ‘My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’
There. It was out. The secret I had carried so long had found voice, and pushed its way into the light of day.
She stared, she coloured, and was silent. How could she not be? There was nothing for her to say. She had only to listen to my declaration and then accept me. Knowing that I had fallen beneath her spell, she knew full well that the door of Pemberley would be open to her, and the world of society would be hers.
‘I do not pretend to be ignorant of the low nature of your connections, of their inferiority and lack of worth,’ I said, scarcely believing that I had allowed my love for her to overcome such natural feelings, but driven onwards by emotions that were impossible to control. ‘Having spent many weeks in Hertfordshire, it would be folly to pretend that it would not be a degradation to ally myself to such a family, and only the force of my passion has allowed me to put such feelings aside.’
As I spoke, a picture of the Bennets rose before my eyes, and I found that I was not so much speaking to Elizabeth as to myself, thinking aloud all the thoughts that had plagued me over the last few weeks and months.
‘Your mother, with her vulgarity and prattling tongue; your father with his wilful refusal to curb the wild excesses of your younger sisters. To be joined to such girls!’ I said, as I recalled Mary Bennet singing at the assembly. ‘The best of them a dull, plodding girl with neither taste nor sense, and the worst of them silly, spoilt and selfish, finding nothing better to do with their time than to run after officers,’ I continued, as I remembered Lydia and Kitty at the Netherfield ball. ‘One uncle an attorney and another living in Cheapside,’ I went on, my feelings pouring forth with a torrent. ‘I have felt all the impossibility of such a match these many weeks. My reason revolts against it, nay, my very nature revolts against it. I know that I am lowering myself in making such an offer. I am wounding both family connections and family pride. That I should entertain such feelings for someone so far beneath me is a weakness I despise, and yet I cannot conquer my feelings. I took myself to London and immersed myself in both business and pleasure, but none of it would remove the memory of you from my mind,’ I said, turning to look at her and letting my eyes linger on her face. ‘My attachment has outlived all my reasoned arguments, it has outlived a lengthy separation, which, instead of curing it, has only made it stronger, and it has resisted my determination to root it out. No matter what my more rational feelings, it will not be denied. It is so strong that I am prepared to overlook the faults of your family, the lowness of your connections, and the pain I know I must inflict on my friends and family, by asking you to marry me. I only hope my struggles will now be rewarded,’ I said. ‘Relieve me from my apprehension. Still my anxieties. Tell me, Elizabeth, that you will be my wife.’
My speech had been impassioned. I had done what I had never done for any other human being; I had bared my soul. I had shown her all my fears and anxieties, my arguments and wrestlings, and now I waited for her answer. It could not be long in coming. She had been waiting for my declaration; expecting it; I was sure of it. She could not be unaware of my attraction, and any woman would be elated to have won the hand of Fitzwilliam Darcy. It only remained for her to say the word that would unite us and the thing would be done.
And yet, to my amazement, the smile I had expected to see on her face did not appear. She did not say: ‘You do me too much honour, Mr Darcy. I am flattered, nay gratified by your professions, and I am grateful to you for your condescension. My relatives’ situation in life, their follies and vices, cannot be expected to bring you pleasure, and I am sensible of the honour you do me in overlooking their inadequacies in order to ask me to be your wife. It is therefore with a humble sense of obligation that I accept your hand.’
She did not even say a simple ‘Yes.’
Instead, the colour rose to her cheeks, and in the most indignant voice possible she said: ‘In cases such as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot. I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgement of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.’
I looked at her in astonishment. She had refused me! Never once had I imagined she might do so. Not once in all those nights when I had lain awake, telling myself how impossible such a union would be, had I pictured this outcome.
This was to be the end of all my struggles? To be rejected? And in such a manner! I! A Darcy! To be answered as though I was a fortune-hunter or an undesirable suitor. My astonishment quickly gave way to resentment. So resentful did I feel that I would not open my lips until I believed I had mastered my emotion.
‘And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting!’ I said at last. ‘I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavour at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.’
‘I might as well enquire,’ replied she heatedly, ‘why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I was uncivil? But I have other provocations. You know I have. Had not my own feelings decided against you, had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?’
I felt myself change colour. So she had heard of that. I hoped she had not. It could not be expected to make her think well of me. But I had nothing to be ashamed of. I had acted in the best interests of my friend.
‘I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there,’ she went on.
I felt my expression hardening. Unjust? Ungenerous? No indeed.
‘You dare not, you cannot deny that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other, of exposing one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.’
I could not believe what I was hearing. Caprice and instability? Who would judge Bingley capricious for removing to London when he had business to attend to?
Derision for disappointed hopes? Miss Bennet had had no hopes, unless they had been planted in her mind by her mother, who could see no further than Bingley’s five thousand pounds a year.
Misery of the acutest kind? Yes, that was what Bingley would have suffered if he had voiced his feelings.
He would have been joined to a woman who was beneath him.
‘I have no wish to deny that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards him I have been kinder than towards myself.’
Elizabeth ignored my remark and said, ‘But it is not merely this affair on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? Or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?’
Wickham! She could not have found a name more calculated to wound and, at the same time, disgust me.
‘You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns,’ I remarked in agitation.
I regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. What was it to me if she showed an interest in George Wickham? After her refusal of my hand, nothing about Elizabeth had any right to interest me ever again.
And yet the mortification I felt intensified, and I found a new emotion in my breast, a most unwelcome one. Jealousy. I found it intolerable that she should prefer George Wickham to me! That she should be unable to see through his smiling exterior to the black heart beneath.
‘Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?’
‘His misfortunes!’ I repeated. What tale had he been spinning her? Wickham, who had had everything. Who had been spoilt and petted in childhood and, despite that, had turned into one of the most dissolute, profligate young men of my acquaintance.
As I thought of the money my father had lavished on him, the opportunities he had had, and the help I myself had given him, I could not help my lip’s curling. ‘Yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.’
‘And of your infliction, she said angrily. ‘You have reduced him to his present state of poverty, comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages, which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life, of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this! And yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule.’
‘And this,’ I cried, as, goaded beyond endurance, I began to pace the room, ‘is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps these offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. I am not ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?’
She was growing as angry as I was, yet she controlled her temper sufficiently to reply.
‘You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.’
I felt an intense shock. If I had behaved in a more gentleman-like manner? When had I ever been anything but a gentleman?
‘You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it,’ she said.
I could not believe it. She could never have accepted my hand? Never accept a connection with the Darcy family? Never accept all the benefits that would accrue to her as my wife? It was madness. And to blame it, not on my manner, but on my person! I looked at her with open incredulity. I, who had been courted in drawing-rooms the length and breadth of the land!
But she had not finished.
‘From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.’
I felt incredulity give way to anger, and anger to humiliation. My mortification was now complete.
‘You have said quite enough, madam,’ I told her curtly. ‘I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time’ – and to prove that I was, even now after such base insults, a gentleman, I added: ‘and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.’
Then, having delivered myself of my final proud utterance I left the room.
I returned to Rosings, walking blindly, seeing nothing of my surroundings, seeing only Elizabeth. Elizabeth telling me I had ruined her sister’s happiness. Elizabeth telling me I had ruined George Wickham’s hopes. Elizabeth telling me I had not behaved like a gentleman. Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth.
I said not a word at dinner. I saw nothing, heard nothing, tasted nothing. I thought only of her.
Try as I might, I could not put her accusations out of my mind. The charge that I had ruined her sister’s happiness might have some merit, though I had acted for the best. The accusation that I had ruined Wickham’s hopes was of another order. It impugned my honour, and I could not let it rest.
‘A game of billiards, Darcy?’ asked Colonel Fitzwilliam, when Lady Catherine and Anne retired for the night.
‘No. Thank you. I have a letter to write.’
He looked at me curiously but said nothing. I retired to my room and took up my quill. I had to exonerate myself. I had to answer her accusation. I had to show her she was wrong. And yet how?
My dear Miss Bennet
I scored through the lines as soon as I had written them. She was not my dear Miss Bennet. I had not the right to call her dear.
I crushed my piece of paper and threw it away.
Miss Bennet
The name conjured up an image of her sister. It would not do.
I threw away a second sheet of paper.
Miss Elizabeth Bennet
No.
I tried again.
Madam, you have charged me with
She will not read it.
Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers which were last night so disgusting to you.
Better.
I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling myself by dwelling on wishes which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten.
Yes. The manner was formal but, I prided myself, not stiff. It should relieve her immediate concerns and persuade her to read on. But what to write next? How to put into words what I had to say?
I threw down my quill and walked over to the window. I looked out over the parkland as I gathered my thoughts. The night was still. There were no clouds, and the moon could be seen glistening in the sky. Beneath that same moon, within the parsonage, was Elizabeth.
What was she thinking? Was she thinking about me? About my proposal? About my sins?
My sins! I had no sins. I returned to my desk and read over what I had written. I picked up my quill and continued. My words flowed easily.
Two offences of a very different nature, and by no means of equal magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first mentioned was that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr Bingley from your sister: and the other, that I had, in defiance of various claims, in defiance of honour and humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity and blasted the prospects of Mr Wickham.
Blasted the prospects of that scoundrel! I had given him every benefit, and he had repaid me by seeking to ruin my sister. But the first charge must be answered first.
I thought back to the autumn, when I had first arrived in Hertfordshire. It was a few months ago only, and yet it seemed a lifetime away.
I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common with others, that Bingley preferred your eldest sister, to any other young woman in the country. I observed my friend’s behaviour attentively; and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss Bennet was beyond what I had ever witnessed in him.
Let there be no deception. I had done with deceit. I had seen a partiality in Bingley, and I did not disguise it.
Your sister I also watched. Her look and manners were open, cheerful, and engaging as ever, but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I remained convinced from the evening’s scrutiny, that though she received his attentions with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of sentiment. If you have not been mistaken here, I must have been in an error. Your superior knowledge of your sister must make the latter probable. If it be so, if I have been misled by such error, to inflict pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable.
I was charitable, allowing Elizabeth her feelings, and her natural defensiveness on behalf of her sister, but I must also be charitable to myself.
… the want of connection could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me. But there were other causes of repugnance.
I hesitated. I had expressed these feelings before, in person. Elizabeth’s words came back to me. ‘Had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.’ Was it ungentleman-like to list her family’s failings? My anger stirred. No, it was nothing but the truth. And I would tell the truth. I had already given her a disgust of me. I had nothing left to fear.
These causes must be stated, though briefly. The situation of your mother’s family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison of that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father. Pardon me. It pains me to offend you.
Mr. Darcy's Diary Page 11
