Chapter 5: Letter Analysis

Lizzie Bennet had spent the past couple of days trying not to dwell on Darcy's letter. For a woman who published her own diary on the internet in regular installments, she had found it rather difficult to read someone else's confessional. Part of the problem, of course, was that Darcy's inner thoughts seemed to be mostly focused on herself and had forced her to inspect her own feelings.

The man she'd publicly called Snobby Mr. Douchey had seen her videos and instead of responding like the arrogant ass she'd come to expect, he had written her a long, detailed response. She hadn't wanted to believe his version of Wickham's story, but he'd included actual evidence that he'd turned over a sum that would have been more than enough to cover four years of tuition into Wickham's control. She desperately didn't want to believe his account of Wickham's relationship with his sister, but there was again evidence of a financial transaction to corroborate it. And even an arrogant obnoxious snob wouldn't make up a story like that about his own sister.

She'd only had time to skim his letter when George had walked in, but it had already affected her opinion of him. George was charming and sweet and handsome, but even after only skimming Darcy's letter, she couldn't conjure up justifications to defend him as easily as before. He had stood her up then disappeared for a couple of days. In fact, he kept disappearing with little notice and he'd come to her room that day to disappear again. So with her own convictions waning on George's trustworthiness, Lizzie could no longer dismiss Darcy's claims about the man. He had even tried to warn her about him at Bing's party, but Lizzie had noticed only the delivery and not the content of his warning.

As for Jane and Bing, Darcy freely admitted that he'd convinced his friend to leave town. It took several read-throughs for Lizzie to feel anything but livid at this. But after her sixth perusal, she had to admit that if Darcy had seen Jane kiss another man, his motivations in separating the couple were probably borne from a desire of protecting Bing. If Lizzie had seen Bing kissing someone else, she'd have probably done the same.

The kicker, though, was the rest of the letter. He'd watched fourty-eight episodes of her vlog and most of those included at least one jibe at Darcy. But he didn't yell, or admonish, or litigate as she'd expected he would. Nope. he called her prolific, her videos were illuminating. Apparently he had admired her fine eyes and been thoroughly teased by Caroline for it. He didn't hate her, quite the opposite. What does that even mean? Was Darcy saying... no, that was not a declaration of love from William the robot Darcy.

But his letter also made it obvious that he wasn't a robot. He owned to being excessively shy and that he sometimes has difficulty explaining himself in person. While his voice might be cold and clipped and his body language awkward, his letter was warm and intimate. He'd even apologized for his insulting words at the Gibson wedding and for making her visit at Netherfield awkward or unplesent in any way.

She'd been surprised to find that Darcy had feelings and she'd hurt them. What she'd been hung up on for days now was that when Darcy hurt her feelings that first night she'd internalized it and allowed it to color her impressions of him for the rest of their acquaintance. When she'd hurt his feelings he'd written her a short novel apologizing for his own errors, protecting her from shady characters, and telling her how pretty her eyes were. So who's "Snobby Miss Petty" now?

In spite of all of this background turmoil, Lizzie now sat smiling at her camera, actively talking around the Darcy shaped elephant in the room. She was going on about her stagnant life while everyone else moved on when Lydia rushed in, dumped an armload of chocolate, tissues, and sappy movies in her lap, and hugged her while talking about heartache and revenge.

"Why do I need to plot revenge?" Lizzie asked, legitimately confused.

"Ugh, what are you forty? This has been on twitter for the last ten minutes," she said she said and shoved her phone into my hand.

"Uh, George made it to Meryton ... what?"

"What!? Look at his tweets!"

"'Makin' a splash in Meryton' 'Hangin' with the Meryton Marines' 'Feelin' very welcome at the side of the pool.'" Lizzie could summon no interest in these revelations. "He lost his ability to use a 'g' at the end of a present participle?"

"He is clearly in Meryton with other girls! Swimmer girls!" Lydia exclaimed, exasperated.

"And?"

"And you're ok with that?" Lydia looked at her as if she was about to burst into tears.

"To be honest, yes."

Lydia shoved her face into Lizzie's and looked intently into her eyes from an inch or two away. "Oh, my God! You are! You were dating! Lizzie Bennet does not do casual."

"Ok, there was a time that I liked him, but he kept disappearing at odd times, and there's a lot we didn't know about him."

Lydia looked at her skeptically, "Is this about that letter from Darceface?"

Lizzie gave a pained smaile and said, "letter, what letter?"

"OMG what did it say? Did George like steal his girlfriends and total his car? Is he some sort of ax murderer? Oh! Or did Darcy like totes profess his undying love for you?" This was all said with heightening speed and energy. Lizzie looked away, Lydia was uncomfortably close to Lizzie's suspicions on that last point.

"WTF, he did! What did it say? Please, please, please!" Lydia whined.

"I can't tell you." Lizzie said as firmly as she was able

"You can't hold out on us! Think about all of your loyal viewers!" Lydia pleaded, turning to the camera as if looking for support.

At Lydia's scrunch faced glare, Lizzie added soberly, "I can't it was too personal."

"Whatevs," Lydia rolled her eyes and jumped up, snatching Lizzie's diary off of the bookshelf behind her. Before Lizzie had time to register what she was doing, Lydia had grabbed the letter from her diary and ran into her own room, slamming and locking the door behind her. Lizzie bolted after her and pounded on the door. After several minutes of banging on the door, pleading, and rationalizing with her sister, Lydia had agreed that they couldn't read the letter on the videos.

Ten minutes later, Lizzie was seated again in front of her camera. She would edit most of that pleading and rationalizing out before she posted. Instead, her viewers would get a cut jump to this rather cryptic statement. "I know this goes against all the previously established principles of these videos where I tell you guys every embarrassing little thing, but, the problem is, the contents of the letter are not mine to share. Some of it involves people I've never met and I don't want to spill secrets that could potentially hurt someone. I know, that was very cryptic and I apologize. But I can tell you that Darcy admitted to splitting Bing and Jane up ... and apologizing for an 'error of judgment' in not realizing Jane's feelings is not the same as apologizing for meddling in people's affairs because you think you know better than they do. And Darcy's still not big on my family, my mom, my little sister. So at least my opinion of him is justified there. But other parts of the letter, let's just say other parts of the letter make me think that maybe I was a little harsh on Darcy. And it makes me rethink my once good opinion of someone with whom I'm glad to say I no longer associate. This is definitely messing with my worldview. It's like I don't know myself anymore."

After she turned off the camera, she sat quietly in her room for a few minutes feeling at sea. Eventually, she checked her phone and saw that she had missed a call from Charlotte at some point during her squabble with Lydia. Talking with Charlotte soothed her after weeks of estrangement from her bestie. They made their peace and caught each other up on recent events. While Charlotte's logical approach to digging information out of Lizzie about the letter was more persuasive than Lydia's whining and speculation, Lizzie kept most of it private. By the end of the call, Charlotte declared that Lizzie needed a change of scenery and invited her to come stay with her for a while. Lizzie quite agreed and gratefully accepted. She was looking forward to putting all of this drama behind her for a bit.