“I do apologise, Darcy,” his friend answered, contritely. His next comment, though, revealed the subject of his preoccupation: “Do you suppose she is going to be all right?”
Darcy shook his head at his friend. “Good Lord, man, she has a cold, not the pox. Country girls are hardy; she will recover admirably, I assure you.”
“But her fever—what if it should worsen? I feel I should be doing something more for her.”
This gave Darcy pause. His thoughts flew to Georgiana; he hadn’t had a letter from her in a month. “Sometimes the best a man can do is wait,” he said quietly. He drew himself up and studied his friend’s anxious face. “It is getting late,” he allowed. “Perhaps we should return?” Bingley agreed in a relieved manner and they rode back to the Hall.
They found, when they arrived, that Miss Elizabeth Bennet was not to return home that evening, for her sister’s fever had, in fact, worsened, and Miss Bennet had not wished her sister to leave her. This news heightened Bingley’s concerns, and he rushed off to “do something.” The news was also of interest to Darcy, although for different reasons, but his attention was quickly turned aside by the arrival of a footman with his post: in it was a letter from his sister.
Pemberley
November 10, —
Dearest Brother,
Please forgive me for not having written before. I know I am not the correspondent I should be, but please do not think me unappreciative of your letters. My spirits have been low and I have lacked the energy to write; but I have read and reread your last, for the comfort I find in it is my only support. I carry it with me; indeed, at times I cling to it as a drowning man clings to wreckage.
But you must not think me desperate, and thinking of doing myself an injury. No—I see well enough that those are childish, romantic notions, and I no longer feel myself a child. I have died once for love—it will not happen again. One who has truly known pain would never seek to inflict it on oneself.
Music is my distraction, and Mrs. Annesley recommends that I ride more; I am trying.
Please, dear Brother, write again soon.
Your sister,
Georgiana Darcy
This short missive created in Darcy an immediate need for a response: this being the first time she had actually written of her feelings, given him an inkling of what she suffered, it was the first opportunity she had given him to assist her in any way. He was greatly relieved that she had at last found the ability to give expression to her emotions; surely this was the first step towards recovery. He sat down immediately to compose his reply, sending Perkins down with his apologies to Bingley.
Netherfield Park, Herts.
November 13, —
My dearest Georgiana,
I promise I shall write to you every day, now I know you wish for my correspondence…
After two swift paragraphs he paused, uncertain how to go forward: did he offer counsel, did he simply reassure her of his own devotion and tell her to trust to time, or did he adhere to the mundane as a means of diverting her? The answer, he decided, was to do all three. He had always made a point of discussing matters with his sister, not merely issuing directives; she had rewarded his efforts by giving him her confidence, and had always deserved his, by virtue of her good sense. Although her senior by more than ten years, he had always thought of her more as equal than dependant, and had tried to maintain their relationship on that footing; since their parents’ deaths they had become very close. As her brother, he felt a deep desire to support her and help her to heal; as the guardian who had failed in his office, he felt it even more his duty to do every thing in his power to assist her. Commanding himself to neither evade the issues nor wander into the merely maudlin, he entered into the most important issue:
Though I have no experience with a betrayal as deep as the one you have suffered…
After much thought and effort he felt he arrived at the right tone for what was a most difficult piece of writing on the topic of her grief; it had cost him something even to broach the subject at all. But if one wishes to be truthful at all times, then one must be truthful when it is difficult; the greater difficulty was in being truthful without doing harm. At least in writing there was time for reflection, and one might choose one’s words carefully. He wished he had his mother’s guidance, or some lady on whose good will and good sense he could rely, with whom he might confer on this subject; he wanted help to navigate these waters, for they were dangerous. But that was his burden to bear; he brought his thoughts back to Georgiana, and the reassurances he owed her.
So, given time, you must heal. Not to the degree that you will ever be exactly the same…
When this part was finished he felt it perhaps a bit excessive, that he had expressed himself too openly; but he could not say less and still say what was in his heart. He would trust to her good will to excuse him for writing so feelingly. The rest was easy.
Now, let me tell you the news from here…
The final draft took him a great deal of time to complete, and there was just enough time to change before dinner. He entrusted his letter to Perkins to be posted, then went down to the drawing-room.
“Darcy…is all well?” Bingley enquired as he entered.
“Quite well, yes, I thank you,” he replied. “A letter from my sister, that is all, and I wished to answer it while it was fresh in my mind.”
“‘Fresh in your mind’? When would it cease to be ‘fresh in your mind’? You have taxed me with minutia from my letters a month and more later,” his friend berated him with good humour.
“Perhaps that is because your follies are more striking than most,” Darcy returned. After nearly two hours of sombre effort, he was ready to find pleasure and release in some affable contention with his friend. They continued their banter while they waited on the ladies to appear. The Bingley sisters and Mr. Hurst came down shortly, and Miss Elizabeth Bennet followed soon after; every one moved towards the dining-room on her entrance.
Elizabeth, Darcy noted, wore a gown of a becoming colour, favouring her eyes and her figure, and he could approve her taste in its simple elegance, even though her attire would never pass for fashionable. He spoke his compliments to her and hoped for some part of her attention, but his greeting was mingled with those from the rest of the party and she did not distinguish him in any way. Bingley, of course, wanted to hear immediately how Miss Bennet fared. “Is your sister at all better?” he asked hopefully, before she had even taken her seat. The ladies echoed his concerns and Darcy gave Elizabeth his polite attention, but she had no very favourable reply to offer. She reported that her sister remained in a very feverish condition, and her head ached so badly that she, Elizabeth, had been forced to keep the curtains drawn most of the afternoon to spare her sister’s eyes.
“Oh, I know, the poor dear,” cried Miss Bingley. “I despise a cold, and to have a headache and a fever as well!”
“Oh, yes!” echoed her sister. “A headache is a most distressing affliction. I cannot abide it, can I, Mr. Hurst?” Hurst glanced up for a moment without comment before returning to his soup. His lady did not seem to mind, or indeed, even to notice, his lack of reply: she went ahead without hesitation: “I become quite a baby. I won’t leave my bed until it is gone.”
“It grieves me more than I can say that she should have fallen ill after braving that storm on horseback just to be with us,” Miss Bingley said. A faint air of contempt for such a low form of transportation suggested itself in her comment.
“Yes, poor dear, she was quite soaked through,” put in Mrs. Hurst. Picking up her spoon she concluded, “It is such a shocking thing to have a cold.”
“Shocking is the very word,” agreed Miss Bingley. “An excessively shocking thing, it is.” They then dropt the subject and largely ignored Elizabeth, and her sister’s health, for the rest of the dinner.
Darcy listened with mild disgust as these repetitious nothings swirled about the table. He wished he could add something of more s
ubstance, but he had little opportunity, as Elizabeth was seated on the same side as he, and Miss Bingley was positioned most inconveniently between them. Elizabeth sat facing Hurst, and Darcy knew from experience that he would have little conversation to offer her.
Against the incivility of his sisters, whose regard for Miss Bennet evaporated the moment food touched their lips, Bingley’s continued enquiries stood out in marked contrast by their solicitude and obvious sincerity. Indeed, Darcy felt he was having to do too much, and would have taken some of the burden of polite concern off of his friend’s shoulders, except that each time he leaned forward to address Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Miss Bingley would lean forward as well with something to ask Mrs. Hurst, who sat across from Darcy. The second time this happened he felt the stirring of suspicion, but when it happened a third time, and even the fourth, he made sure she was acting wilfully to hamper any conversation between Elizabeth and himself. Piqued, he did his best to counteract her ploy, but her manœuvre, while simple, was effective at frustrating his attempts. He toyed with the idea of using one of the elaborate coils in her coiffure as a handle to hold her back in her chair so that he might have an unimpeded word with Elizabeth, but he forbore with a sigh, and ceded Miss Bingley her victory.
For her part, Elizabeth did her best to enter into the conversation, but seldom received more than a condescending nod from the sisters in reply. For want of better, she finally addressed Mr. Hurst. That gentleman, who rarely found himself called on to respond to any enquiry, fell back on one of the two topics over which he had any mastery, food and cards, and asked her how she enjoyed the ragout. He, being gourmand rather than gourmet, enjoyed those foods combining strong flavours and heavy texture. Elizabeth answered politely that she generally preferred a plain dish of perfect freshness and natural flavours to the “creations of man’s ingenuity.” Hurst looked at her as he might have done had she replied that she preferred adders’ tongues, and spoke no more to her.
Darcy was determined to speak with her after dinner, but she, perhaps as a result of the incivility she had met with, returned immediately up stairs to her sister. To Darcy’s annoyance, Bingley’s sisters began their attack on her as soon as her steps were heard upon the stairs.
“Louisa, have you ever seen such manners? She hardly spoke a word, and then only to contradict.”
“Indeed, Caroline, her manners are very bad. She combines an entirely baseless pride with impertinent opinions, and scruples not to inflict them on others.”
“My very thoughts; and her appearance! What was that garment she had on?”
“Oh! Quite,” Mrs. Hurst exclaimed, “I believe I saw one like it some ten years ago; but the poor woman who wore it disappeared from all polite society immediately after.”
“She has no style, no taste, no beauty…”
Her sister interrupted with a superior laugh: “She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an excellent walker. I shall never forget her appearance this morning. She really looked almost wild.”
“She did, indeed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my countenance. Very nonsensical to come at all! Why must she be scampering about the country, because her sister has a cold? Her hair, so untidy, so blowsy!” At this Darcy nearly lost his countenance; he had retained an altogether different impression of her appearance. He contented himself with directing a whimsical face, compounded of consternation and amazement, at his plate. It passed unnoticed by the two ladies.
“Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat,” said Louisa; “six inches deep in mud, I am absolutely certain; and the gown which had been let down to hide it not doing its office.” Here Darcy caught Bingley’s eye with a wry expression. Who could think of petticoats when such a singular picture of feminine loveliness was before one?
Bingley gave his agreement to Darcy with a glance and took his sister to task: “Your picture may be very exact, Louisa, but this was all lost upon me. I thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet looked remarkably well when she came into the room this morning. Her dirty petticoat quite escaped my notice.”
“You observed it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley; “and I am inclined to think that you would not wish to see your sister make such an exhibition.”
He did not wish to take Miss Bingley’s side on any point of this conversation, but he could not but agree with this. The thought of Georgiana wandering across the countryside by herself, at her age, exposing herself to Heaven knows what mischances, made him shake his head with disapprobation. “Certainly not,” he agreed shortly.
“To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most Country-Town indifference to decorum.”
Bingley lifted his eyes to the heavens and then admonished his sister, “It shows an affection for her sister that is very pleasing.”
“I am afraid, Mr. Darcy,” Miss Bingley said in an aside to him, “that this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes.”
This Darcy could easily contradict, and he did so willingly. “Not at all, they were brightened by the exercise.”
This reply brought Miss Bingley up short, as Darcy had hoped. Mrs. Hurst took up a new thread: “I have an excessive regard for Jane Bennet, she is really a very sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well settled. But with such a father and mother, and such low connections, I am afraid there is no chance of it.”
“I think I have heard you say that their uncle is an attorney in Meryton,” Darcy probed gently. He, of course, had had little opportunity to discover anything of the Bennet family, since he could hardly make such enquiries of Miss Elizabeth Bennet herself.
“Yes; and they have another, who lives somewhere near Cheapside,” Mrs. Hurst replied.
“That is capital!” her sister exclaimed, and they both laughed behind their hands. It was common for people of their circle to make fun of the name, although there were few who did not have some affairs there; as one of the chief centres of trade in London, most families of standing had interests there, although they generally did not attend to them in person. Darcy was familiar with it, as one of his storage houses was in the vicinity.
Nor did their brother share their amusement. “If they had uncles enough to fill all Cheapside,” cried he, “it would not make them one jot less agreeable.”
At this, Darcy, his thoughts perhaps having a personal application, observed sombrely: “But it must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any consideration in the world.” It escaped his notice that Bingley’s eyes clouded at this, for his own vision was fixed upon some distant point. After this the men had little to add to the conversation, but the ladies, without regard for their friends—either absent or present—continued their entertainment unchecked for some time.
At length the ladies began to rise, as they were going up stairs to visit the patient. While they walked from the room with expressions of concern for their dear friend and hope for her recovery, Darcy reflected on how wonderful it was that the two of them could in one breath be lacerating their friends, and in the next be all that was amiable. After the ladies’ departure, Hurst went to his rooms to take his accustomed postprandial nap, which he claimed sharpened his mind for cards later in the evening. Neither Bingley nor Darcy was so desirous of his company as to attempt to dissuade him, so they were left quietly by themselves to dawdle over their wine.
“Darcy, did you mean what you said before, about the Bennet girls being unable to marry well?”
Darcy glanced up at his friend, but Bingley was studying the play of light on the wine as he slowly twisted the stem of his glass. “I am afraid that I did,” he replied.
“But why should that be? Surely, in this day and age, two people can marry without all that feudal nonsense about misalliances.”
“If by ‘this day and age’ you are suggesting that we live in such egalit
arian times that standing, connections, and fortune no longer matter, I must have missed reading about that revolution in the papers. When did it occur, and how many died on the guillotine?”
Bingley gave an appreciative laugh, but persisted, “Seriously, Darcy—you cannot mean that you, yourself, would not consider offering for a girl unless she was in the first circles.”
“‘The first circles’? No, surely that is not a requirement. But marry a nobody? Who would countenance her? From what part of society could we form an acquaintance? I have often thought that King Cophetua’s beggar maid must have had rather a hard time, really. Would you expose the lady of your heart to scorn and disapprobation from your nearest relatives?”
“My nearest relatives are my sisters, and they would disapprove of the lady no matter what her rank and fortune; indeed, I cannot think who would escape their tongues.”
“In that, you are more fortunate than myself. I should have to face down my Uncle Jonathan, the Earl of Andover, although he’s a good sort; but my Aunt Catherine—marrying against her wishes would make our current relations with the French seem nothing more than a trifling diplomatic faux pas,” Darcy said with more seriousness than his words implied.
“Is she as bad as all that, then?” Bingley enquired. “I have heard Colonel Fitzwilliam make some rather amusing comments on her character.”
“Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a veritable Gorgon. It is almost incredible to me that she should be related to my mother.”
“But she is only your aunt, after all. Why should her wishes weigh so heavily?”
Darcy thought momentarily. “For three reasons, chiefly: firstly, because after my mother’s death she became the matriarch of that side of the family; secondly, because her own rank and circumstance is just slightly more important to her than life itself; and thirdly, because she is the most officious creature on Earth, and does not hesitate to thrust her opinions on every one within earshot. The only way I should be able to marry without her consent would be to break off with her completely.”
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