‘This seems a very comfortable house,’ I said.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘It must be agreeable for Mrs Collins to be settled within so easy a distance of her own family and friends.’
‘An easy distance do you call it?’ she asked in surprise. ‘It is nearly fifty miles.’
‘And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day’s journey.’
‘I should never have considered the distance as one of the advantages of the match,’ cried Elizabeth.
‘It is a proof of your own attachment for Hertfordshire. Anything beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far,’ I said.
‘I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family.’
Ah. She knew the evils of her relations and would not be sorry to escape them. When she married, she would leave them behind.
‘But I am persuaded my friend would not call herself near her family under less than half the present distance,’ she continued.
‘You cannot have a right to such very strong local attachments,’ I said, pulling my chair forward a little as I spoke, for I felt an overwhelming urge to be near her. ‘You cannot have always been at Longbourn.’
She looked surprised, and I was halted. I had almost been carried away by admiration and tempted into saying that she could have no objection to living at Pemberley, but I had gone too quickly and I was thankful for it. Her look of surprise saved me from committing myself to a course of action I would surely regret. I drew my chair back, and picking up a newspaper, I glanced over it.
‘Are you pleased with Kent?’ I asked, with enough coolness to depress any hope she might have been entertaining from my ill-judged manner.
‘It is very pleasant,’ she said, looking at me in perplexity.
I embarked on a discussion of its attractions, until we were saved from the need of further conversation by the return of Mrs Collins and Maria. They were surprised to see me there, but explaining my mistake I stayed only a few minutes longer and then returned to Rosings.
Tuesday 15th April
Elizabeth has bewitched me. I am in far more danger here than I ever was in Hertfordshire. There, I had her family constantly before me, reminding me how impossible a match between us would be. Here, I have only her. Her liveliness, her gaiety, her good humour, all tempt me to abandon self-restraint and declare myself; but I must not do it. I do not only have myself to consider. I have my sister.
To expose Georgiana to the vulgarity of Mrs Bennet would be an act of cruelty no brotherly devotion could allow. And to present to Georgiana, as sisters, Mary, Kitty and Lydia Bennet would be repulsive. To have her influenced by them, to force her into company with them – for it could not be otherwise if I were to make Elizabeth my wife – would be unforgivable. Worse still, she might be forced to hear of George Wickham, who is a favourite of the younger girls. No. I cannot do it. I will not do it.
I must beware, then, lest I let slip a word in Elizabeth’s company. I must not let her know how I feel. She suspects my partiality I am sure. Indeed, by her lively nature she has encouraged it, and no doubt she is waiting for me to speak. If she married me she would be lifted out of her sphere and elevated to mine. She would be joined in matrimony to a man of superior character and understanding, and she would be the mistress of Pemberley. A man of my character and reputation, wealth and position would tempt any woman. But it must never be.
Thursday 17th April
I do not know what has come over me. I should be avoiding Elizabeth, but every day when Colonel Fitzwilliam goes to the parsonage, I go with him. I cannot deny myself the pleasure of looking at her. Her face is not beautiful but it haunts me.
I have had enough resolution to say nothing, for fear of saying too much, but my silence has begun to be noticed.
‘Why are you silent when we go to the parsonage?’ asked Colonel Fitzwilliam as we returned home today. ‘It is not like you, Darcy.’
‘I have nothing to say.’
‘Come now! I have seen you talk to bishops and ploughmen. You can always think of something to say to them, however much you protest you find it difficult to converse with strangers. And yet when you go to the parsonage, you do not open your mouth. It is most uncivil of you. The least you could do is ask after Mrs Collins’s chickens, and ask Mr Collins how his sermons are coming along, and if you cannot think of anything to say to the young ladies, you can always fall back on the weather.’
‘I will endeavour to do better next time.’
But as I said it, I realized I must not go to the parsonage again. If I talk to Elizabeth, there is no telling where it will lead. She looks at me archly sometimes, and I am sure she is expecting me to declare myself.
Would a marriage between us really be so impossible? I ask myself, but even as I wonder, an image of her family rises up before me, and I know it would. And so I am determined to remain silent, for if I give in to a moment of weakness, I will regret it for the rest of my life.
Saturday 19th April
I have remained true to my resolve not to visit the parsonage, but my good intentions have been thwarted by my tendency to walk in the park, and three times now I have come upon Elizabeth. The first time was by chance; the second and third times, I seemed to find myself there whether I would or not. From doing nothing more than doffing my hat and asking after her health on the first occasion, I have come to say more, and this morning I betrayed my thoughts to an alarming degree.
‘You are enjoying your stay at Hunsford, I hope?’ I asked her when I met her.
It was an innocent question.
‘Yes, I am, thank you.’
‘You find Mr and Mrs Collins in good health?’
‘I do.’
‘And happy, I trust?’
‘I believe so.’
‘Rosings is a fine house.’
‘It is, though it is difficult to find my way about. I have become lost on one or two occasions. When I tried to find the library, I walked into the parlour instead.’
‘It is not to be expected that you would find your way round it all at once. Next time you visit Kent you will have a better opportunity to become acquainted with it.’
She looked astonished at this, and I berated myself inwardly. I had almost betrayed my feelings, which in that incautious sentence had suggested the idea that the next time she visited Kent she would be staying at Rosings, and how could she do that unless she was my wife? But indeed, it grows harder and harder to be circumspect. I ought to leave at once, and put myself out of harm’s way. But if I do, it will arouse comment, so I must endure a little while longer. Colonel Fitzwilliam and I will be leaving soon, and then I will be safe.
Tuesday 22nd April
I am in torment. After all my promises to myself. After all my resolutions, this – this! – is the result.
I cannot believe the events of the last few hours. If only I could put them down to a fever of the brain, but there is no doubt they happened. I have offered my hand to Elizabeth Bennet.
I should not have gone to see her. I had no need to do it, merely because she did not join us for tea. She had a headache. What lady does not suffer from headaches?
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 wrestling, 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 intere
st 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?’
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