During the day after Elizabeth arrived at Netherfield to care for Jane, her sister remained quite sick and feverish, and she was unable to settle into an easy rest. Elizabeth spent the time dabbing her forehead, reading to her, helping her to sit up to drink the healing teas recommended by Mr. Jones, and twice she shooed off the maid so that she could help Jane herself to climb out of bed and stumble over to the chamber pot.
However miserable she was, her sister was by no means so sick that the expedient of using a bed pan had any appeal to her. Elizabeth stayed with Jane continuously through three in the afternoon, at which point she reluctantly determined that the time had come to leave and return home.
However, a piteous moan from Jane when Miss Bingley made the offer of her carriage to convey Elizabeth hence, forced Miss Bingley to convert her eagerly polite offer of a carriage into a hesitatingly polite offer of a room.
When the time for dinner came Jane was napping, and Elizabeth took particular care to dress herself in the sparse selection of clothes retrieved by the footman who'd informed her family of her stay at Netherfield. She felt a flutter of anticipation as she went down the stairs.
More Mr. Darcy. How would he behave after that peculiar and intense conversation? She half expected that he'd be too embarrassed to say anything at all to her. But he'd look at her with his seeking eyes.
Darcy had in fact gone straight to London this morning upon a matter of business, leaving less than an hour after she'd arrived.
Despite having a strong notion that the letter from his sister had prompted Darcy's sudden removal, Elizabeth felt a sudden and ridiculous leaden weight in her gut upon hearing that he was gone.
She hoped that her smile and manner at hearing of his absence showed nothing of her feelings.
After informing her that he was gone, Bingley added, with a warm smile and a pat on the arm, "We won't be bereft for long — he said he'll return tomorrow afternoon, or perhaps the morning after. Before our dear Miss Bennet is well enough to be sent home for certainty."
There was something in how Bingley said that, as though whether Darcy was present or not was supposed to be of more interest to her than to his host. It made her heart flutter with anticipation. A sudden image of the two of them engaged in a romantic or intimate interlude as they walked about the fine grounds of Netherfield, admiring the deep piles of leaves, walking over rustic bridges, or settling on one of the benches beneath a bower for another peculiar and intense conversation.
"I do hope Jane recovers quickly," Elizabeth replied, after waiting a trifle too long to offer her response.
"Yes, of course—" Bingley replied with a tone as though that would disappoint him. "Oh, I must not forget. Mr. Darcy specifically instructed us to give his apologies to you that he would not be able to give you any parting words when you left the house—"
"Oh." Elizabeth was sure that her face was reddening. But she felt a sort of warmth in her stomach that was dissolving that bit of unhappiness which had arisen at finding Darcy not present downstairs.
"Now that will not be a problem," Bingley replied cheerfully. "Sad as I am to see Jane — Miss Bennet — sick, it's a deuced happy thing to host both of you as guests. I hope we'll do it again. And many times."
"I hope so as well."
Elizabeth perceived over the course of the dinner a coldness towards herself from Bingley's sisters. Further she did not enjoy their conversation. They mainly spoke gossip about their dear friend Lord Such and Such, or Lady This or That. Elizabeth gained the impression that they wished to impress upon her the sense of her social inferiority. They also showed a tendency to a cruel glee in the suffering of those who had somehow made a display of themselves.
As soon as politeness permitted, Elizabeth excused herself and returned to her sister's room. She felt quite that once she absented herself, the sharp witticisms of the two sisters turned upon herself.
In fact, had she stayed longer than necessary at the dinner, she would have treated them with a form of inhumane cruelty by delaying whatever mocking comments they wished to make upon her petticoats six inches deep in the mud, the easily deducible schemes of her mother, and the generally low Cheapside and country lawyer connections of the Bennets.
In this supposition, Elizabeth was in fact correct, though she never directly learned the fact.
During the second day of Elizabeth's stay at Netherfield Mr. Darcy returned late in the evening, when dinner was already half done. His usual upright posture seemed slumped, and there was an almost confused air to him when he entered the dining room after washing the dust of the road from his hands and face. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and he moved slowly. As soon as he saw her in the room, his eyes stuck on her.
Elizabeth felt a thrill pass through her chest as their eyes met.
"Sit down, sit down," Bingley said. "You appear tired."
There was a pause before Darcy looked away from Elizabeth and over to his friend. He then shook his head a little.
"Mr. Darcy, you must sit down. Please do," Miss Bingley said. "You must be hungry. And please do join us. We make a small little party."
Darcy looked at Elizabeth again.
As though it was her duty to explain, Elizabeth said, "Jane wished me to keep her company as she recovers. She presently is napping."
"Ah." He studied her with an intense gaze that would have been slightly improper if not for the obvious exhaustion that filled him and gave Darcy the excuse that perhaps he stared at her out of absentmindedness.
Elizabeth did not believe that.
He looked so unhappy.
She wanted to stand up, take his hand. Embrace him. Do something to bring a smile back to him.
"Really, Mr. Darcy," Miss Bingley insisted again. "Do sit. Here, next to me." She signaled to the footman with a snap of her fingers. "Another chair, and inform the cook to—"
"No. I need… rest from the road." Darcy shook his head sharply and stepped further back away from the table and them all. "But Miss Elizabeth," he smiled weakly at her in a way that pierced her deeply, "I do hope your sister is not giving you any cause to worry."
"No. No, not at all. She is merely a little miserable from the flu."
"Merely a little miserable? How good that sounds."
He then bowed deeply from the waist and left the room.
The next morning Elizabeth half hopped down the stairs to breakfast. She was cheerful both because she could expect to see much more of Mr. Darcy during the day, and because Jane's fever had begun to break. Jane had woken drenched in sweat during the middle of the night.
This despite an awareness that she could expect Mr. Darcy's mood to be particularly unhappy, and that she should expect nothing from him, since it seemed clear to Elizabeth that his meeting with his sister had not had a favorable conclusion — though of course it was still nothing but an assumption on Elizabeth's part that his business had anything to do with his sister.
Mr. Darcy had a quiet and subdued air at breakfast — quiet, she thought, even for him.
He hardly ate, and his eyes wandered around the room, and while Elizabeth noted that he often looked at her, she attributed that to absence of mind, or some similar cause as much as any attraction her person might hold for the great gentleman. Still, she smiled back at him encouragingly.
Each time their eyes met she felt a flutter in her stomach.
It amused her to see how Miss Bingley poured him coffee, loudly and elaborately making a claim to know his preferences in the morning. Elizabeth also had a stab of jealousy at watching the interaction. Especially when she saw their fingers brush as Miss Bingley handed the cup of coffee over. Elizabeth knew that careless brief touch was no accidental gesture, but a matter of careful planning by Miss Bingley.
In his preoccupation, Mr. Darcy seemed wholly insensible to the compliment that the sister of his friend paid him with unmistakable readiness to join her fortune and her person to him.
Elizabeth had been given letters for her and Jane from Netherfield, and she occupied much of the day reading them to her sister. They had particular fun laughing and smiling over the half-misspelled letter from Beth Gardiner, their oldest niece, and a girl who had determined the last time they had all visited that Elizabeth would be her favorite aunt. A great part of their letter from Mrs. Gardiner revolved around the question of whether to take on a governess for Beth, now that she had reached the proper age for one, or to put her in a school.
That afternoon when Jane slept Elizabeth descended to the mostly bare library of Netherfield to pick out a book and sit in a sunnier room with a different smell to the air than the sick room for an hour or so.
Darcy was already in the room, with a book in his hand at which he stared at intently.
Upon Elizabeth's entry into the room, he glanced up with a half-annoyed expression, but then upon seeing it was her, he smiled and rose. "Miss Elizabeth, come to find something to read?"
"Yes, though as the baronet left with most of his library when he let out Netherfield, and it seems that Bingley's own has not arrived, the pickings are slim."
Darcy smiled at her. "I must disabuse you of one notion — despite his virtues, Mr. Bingley has no great library waiting to be unloaded. He is not much of a reader — you see here, what I myself have been reduced to." Darcy lifted the book he'd been reading, and displayed to her the cover on which was embossed in gold lettering: A Survey of the Agriculture of Hertfordshire, Volume II.
Elizabeth laughed, and she grabbed from the shelf a thick volume, and flipped it open to the title page. "Ah, Shakespeare — wait, it is Bowdler's Family Shakespeare." She frowned and put it back on the shelf.
"You do not approve of the modifications he made to the text?"
"Hardly! Papa and I read all over and through Shakespeare twice together, the first time when I was not more than twelve years — the Bard is too precious to me."
"Twelve years old! He surely should have used Bowdler's version rather than expose you to every conceit in Shakespeare. All of life is presented in the Bard, but not all of life is proper for the ears of an impressionable young girl."
"I would have had it no other way," Elizabeth replied firmly. "And I think the notion that it is so important to protect 'impressionable young girls' is wholly wrongheaded — they will receive impressions whether you will or no, that is what the 'impressionable' implies. It is better to manage in some respect what those impressions shall be."
"I… I do not think we disagree in the broad picture," Darcy said with a frown. "But in the details. Surely you cannot think that… Lady Macbeth's speech for example, about how she would dash a babe's brains out, or how she wished ministers of evil to fill her with wickedness — no young girl should be allowed to read that."
"You ought to have heard my father's voice when he performed Lady Macbeth," Elizabeth replied dreamily. "The chills and thrills that he sent down my back! Better than the most Gothic of Ann Radcliffe's novels."
"I would not permit a girl to read those either."
"What then would you permit her to read?" Elizabeth replied sharply. She felt rather unsettled by this criticism that he levelled, which touched her directly.
"Matters of history and sober philosophy. Stories carefully written to be appropriate for the minds of young women. The Family Shakespeare itself. I gave my sister a copy of it after making comparisons upon the text of several of the less proper plays. Milton. The Bible."
"History and sober philosophy? Though you'll need to excise Henry the Eighth, his tale might teach the child the delights of adultery and spouse murder. And then you shall need to remove any notion of matters current, since the simple telling of the Prince Regent's name will throw this hothouse flower into ecstasies of lascivious behavior. Oh, and let us not forget that we must not permit her to touch the sober philosophy in Plato, lest she deduce something about how children are produced from his scheme to have the guardians share their wives in common. And there are ample stories in the Holy Book more shocking than anywhere else."
Darcy frowned heavily at her. "And the alternative? To allow such a child to read whatever they wish, as your father seems to have done? The end of that will not be good."
"I am the end of that," Elizabeth replied. She felt a sudden need to convince Darcy. It was the romantic fantasies that she had of him. They did not include in them his absolute refusal to allow her to share a Shakespeare with their daughter. Of course, the fantasies were foolish, but they had filled her head for days. "I desperately hope you do not mean to say that I am the proof of the deficiencies of such an education?"
"No — but that proves nothing. There are some robust characters that will turn out well no matter in what soil they are planted." Darcy's eyes clouded over somberly. He pressed his hand into his mouth and spoke in a quiet voice. "There are others that will prove rotten and spoilt no matter how carefully they are tended."
Part of Elizabeth noticed that the sadness which had characterized him at breakfast was returning. But the rest of her was intent on the argument. "I am not a robust character of the sort you imagine. I am a product of the soil I was planted in — I do not understand this notion that you can hide the truth of the world from women. You may rob a girl of the language and previous knowledge of the desires and feelings that arise in her as she becomes a woman, but she will feel them, nonetheless. They will drive her nonetheless. Perhaps they will drive her stronger, for she cannot explain to herself the mystery of what they are and what they point to."
Darcy's face became cold and desolate. The light in his eyes faded and was replaced by a bleak emptiness. His jaw tightened and his brow creased. "So now another theory of how I failed! My sister was too coddled by my father and I. One type of moralist would tell me that I must have allowed her to be exposed to some poor example — and you tell me that it is because I did not make her read sufficient tales of adultery, venery, and syphilitic desires — and my own notion, I refuse to believe it. The fault is in me, it is not in her. She is not some rotten apple, doomed to mold no matter how she was cared for."
"Oh!" Elizabeth felt a deep shame and a tight painful squeezing in her chest. "I did not think… I did not mean to—"
"Miss Elizabeth, I say again. You have nothing to apologize for."
Darcy sighed, and he sat down, plopping deep into his armchair.
Elizabeth sat next to him on another chair, lightly on the edge of the seat. "I truly did not think upon how my words might serve as a criticism of your guardianship."
"Nothing to apologize for. I began by criticizing your father. That the criticism returned to me is only right. Judge not, lest ye be judged."
"You saw your sister in London. And the visit did not go favorably."
"No." Darcy pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Matters did not progress as I would have wished — you advised me to be aware of my anger so that I might manage it better, and perhaps that helped me a little — I run it over and over in my mind. Every moment of that meeting. I confess I do not know what I could have done. Worse, I can think of nothing I might do now to recover them from the state into which they have fallen."
"I am sorry to hear this."
"Do not be — I tell you truly, the thought of your conversation with me about my sister was of great help to me."
"Then I must be glad, but only for that. What happened? How does she fare? — I apologize if I ask too frankly."
"But you ask and inquire nonetheless?" Darcy replied wryly. "You are a curious creature."
"I can be nothing but what I am." Elizabeth frowned. Then she shrugged. "I really cannot."
"No, none of us can. And they say breeding will show true—" He closely studied her. "But I desperately wish to speak to another about how I feel, and somehow this is easier to say to you than to Mr. Bingley: I am scared, worried, and filled with guilt—" He then glared out the window. "This deuced sun. It is so bright and cheerful. Why is the sun sometimes so cheerful when we are miserable?"
"I presume that it is cheerful at such times for the sakes of other persons who are happy."
"Nonsense." Darcy shook his head. "No, nonsense. I recall the last time I was happy — completely happy. It was gloomy from Monday to Thursday, not one show of blue sky the whole time."
Elizabeth replied in a serious tone. "Perhaps your mood is so contrary as to be improved by gloom? — it strikes me as very much like your character to be contrary."
"Do you mean to cheer me?" Mr. Darcy gave a smile in response to her which made her heart skip and her stomach leap. "You seem to see me with quite clear eyes."
Elizabeth flushed at the way he looked at her, and she looked down, aware that he was studying her person, and aware of the feel of her velvet armchair pressing against the thin fabric of her dress. "Maybe the weather just does not care about our moods, and we do not really care about the weather?"
"My opinion," he replied with a small smile in his voice, "is that you still hope I shall speak further about my sister."
Elizabeth giggled a little. Then she frowned at herself, and said, "I do not think it is wrong to be amused by a matter that surrounds an awful thing — the thing is still awful."
"I agree," Darcy said. "That was something my father told me the first time one of us made a joke after my mother died."
The two smiled at each other.
Darcy then sighed. He looked at his hands. "I am in a position where I can do nothing to help my sister, and once again it was by her choice."
"She is of an age to make choices."
"No! She is not. Too young. She looked older, but she is just as much a fool — she does not know what she is about. She cannot. And…" Darcy pressed his hand against his mouth. The humor that had earlier been in his eyes was now gone. "She angered him, she has left Mr. Wickham enraged with her — I am tempted still to find a way to give him the money I had suggested… but she is not under my guardianship anymore. I wish — oh, how I wish."
"You offered Mr. Wickham money? I thought you'd said that you did not need to give him anything from her fortune but the income."
"I had decided to give him a sum out of my own funds, and he would sign a settlement upon her fortune afterwards. He came complaining of debts. The chief debt he owes is to Mrs. Younge, Georgiana's former companion, and her husband. I surmise that in exchange for being given access to Georgiana, Mrs. Younge was promised a third of Georgiana's fortune should Mr. Wickham's scheme prove successful."
"A powerful incentive."
"And one Mr. Wickham is unable to give her, as he has no access to the capital." Darcy frowned, not seeming at all pleased by this fact. "I want… I want her to be safe. To be happy. And for her to — I suppose I simply wish that she had never married such a man."
Elizabeth placed a comforting hand on his wrist. She could feel the warmth of his hand. He flipped his hand over and squeezed her hand tightly before letting go.
"In hopes of settling us into an amicable relationship, I offered Mr. Wickham enough money to pay Mrs. Younge out of my own fortune." Darcy made a wry grimace. "Georgiana does not deserve to have what belongs to her diminished because I hired such a woman to be her companion. But I do deserve to suffer some substantial and material loss."
"You do not."
"Do I not? — Georgiana agreed with you. As soon as I explained my offer, Georgiana stood and said that she would not permit me to give her husband money which he would then give to Mrs. Younge." Darcy sighed. "I fear for her. She showed… she still has pride, and an integrity to her. I was both terrified, but also… proud of her. In a way that hurt. Here." He pressed his hand against his chest. "In the end they went off, and Wickham did not receive more than the fee for the hackney carriage that brought them to my house."
"But—" Anxiety twisted and turned in Elizabeth's stomach. "Mr. Wickham must have been furious — to have such a large sum of money promised him, and then for him to lose it — he must be…"
Darcy nodded.
He pressed his hand against his mouth. "I threatened him in such a manner…" Darcy rose and stared out the window. The sun lit up a bleak face. He clenched and unclenched his fist. There was a dangerous and violent feel to his manner. After a portent pause, Darcy sighed. "I do not believe that he shall harm her. I also had my man of business find some fellows who will take a room in a house near to where Wickham and Georgiana have their apartments. I shall know if anything untoward happens to my sister, and I have determined what I shall do in such a case."
"But what force can you use to provide leverage against such a man!"
The expression on Mr. Darcy's face was hard as that of a hawk. It made Elizabeth's heart run faster with fear.
"Poor girl," Darcy said again. He turned his back to the window and leaned against the sill. "Poor foolish girl. She has a strong notion that she deserves to suffer for having harmed me and the Darcy name in such a way. She thinks that I must hate her, and I do not know if I really convinced her that I do not."
"That is impossible. She would be insensible if she cannot see that you love her," Elizabeth replied.
"I have no right to keep a wife from her husband — certainly not against her will. Not even if it is only a Scottish marriage. Thus, nothing I can do that will truly protect my sister."
Elizabeth stood next to Darcy. "Sir, I am so sorry for you." With a half-conscious gesture that she could not stop, she placed her hand again briefly on his wrist and then pulled it back. She wanted to take some of Darcy's pain into her own heart, so that she might relieve him from it.
It was a mockingly bright day, as Darcy had said.
The wind outside their window gusted and shook the dying leaves from the heavy tree branches. The grasses in the park were forced side to side. A solitary rabbit rushed across the grass to nibble at something in a pile of leaves. The animal then hurried back, seeking the safety of a hole.
"It must have been such a shock to you," Elizabeth said. "To see your sister again, and then to be given such reason to worry for her."
"'I am a Wickham now. I am no longer a Darcy.' That is what she said. She is unhappy. She said it three times. While both of us. Mr. Wickham and I, whatever our differences, we both understand that no simple act, no simple marriage, can erase ties of blood."
"They often might. I have heard many stories of unhappy fathers and families who throw off their children after a marriage they disapprove of."
"I would never do that — not even though her husband is the steward's son. Perhaps it is a weakness in me. My father… I cannot decide how he would have behaved. But I love my sister, even though I hate her husband: I'd like to take a pound of flesh from near his heart. That is true. If you hurt me, will I not revenge? — see what happens when I take my model of behavior from Shakespeare."
"Then do not in this way. You are not a suffering Jew," Elizabeth replied with a smile. "Not with all your wealth and an earl for an uncle."
Darcy groaned. "Is that a matter of gossip? Not merely the size of my estates, but also my whole ancestry?"
"Oh, do not worry! We also talked about your fine, tall person, and the excellence of your noble mien — you were the chief subject of conversation for at least half the course of that first assembly."
There was a slight flush on Darcy's face, and he appeared pleased. It was hard for Elizabeth to look directly at him, so she looked out the window again. Clouds were rushing in to cover up the sunniness. "Did you always hate him?"
"Hmmmm." Darcy leaned against the window post, and they stood just a few feet apart, and Elizabeth was very aware of his closeness. "I am not sure. I did not hate him as a child. But I was jealous of him. Wickham was my father's godson, and my father took that relationship and responsibility seriously. He often had Wickham around, I believe even as a baby, though I can barely remember that far back. He was my father's favorite, always able to draw a laugh and smile from Papa."
The shadow came into Darcy's eyes again. "Papa always pushed me, he seldom smiled. 'Stand straight, you are a Darcy.' 'Do not cry, the servants are watching, and you are a Darcy.' 'You will attend to your studies; you are a Darcy.' He'd laugh and simply play with Wickham. While with me everything was intended to improve my character."
"You must have resented Wickham."
"I did, but — oh, that fool. Wickham said yesterday that he thought Papa would have preferred for him to be his son. That poor, poor man. There. Now I have something to stand against my hatred of Wickham: Pity. He never understood, just as I did not understand until I was older. Not till university."
"What did he not understand?"
"Papa could treat Wickham so kindly because he did not love him. Or not in the same way. Wickham's well-being and happiness in life, it did not really matter to Papa. Papa enjoyed his company, and he wished to do well for him, but I was an extension of Papa. I was part of him. I was the future that would continue after he died. I was to be the Darcy, just as he was. Pemberley, an ancient family name, a position of responsibility, honor, and respect. I must be worthy of it, and I must not become like the scions of so many other families who were a weak link in a dwindling chain."
"That is not…" Elizabeth gnawed on her knuckle. "That is not the way I have seen parental love be displayed. You were just a child — too young to have a weight like it was the whole world placed upon you. Too heavy."
"This made me who I am. I do not regret it."
"I would not like to be an instrument of my father's will. My father always made it clear that we were ends in ourselves. That was a favorite phrase of his, 'Treat every person always as an end and never merely as a means to an end.' He let us select what we would do and who we would become."
"That is no way to raise a child to greatness, nor to be worthy of great honor."
Elizabeth felt a weird urge to press her hand against her mouth. The way Mr. Darcy seemed to when there was something which made him unhappy. She said, "Would you seek to raise your own child in such a way?"
Darcy studied the landscape outside the window. The thick clouds were gathering in the distance. Thin white clouds high, high above were rushing across the view, and a strong gust rattled the windows and the roof tiles.
"I at least now see that I know nothing about the matter — I failed. That is why I despise myself — I do sometimes. I often despise myself for permitting Mr. Wickham to take my sister. Still. I would seek to push my sons, to make them become as strong as they might become. But…" He looked deep into the grey line of clouds that was bringing rain. "But I would not be so restrained when showing my affection. I'd…"
"Yes?" Elizabeth prompted him after a minute.
"This is something difficult to say." Darcy took in a deep breath. "I would wish to make sure that my children never had any doubt that I loved them."
His face had that bleak look again.
Elizabeth had a sudden urge to cry.
Their eyes studied each other.
"And what if you only had daughters?" Elizabeth did not want to admit to herself what prompted that question.
Darcy shrugged. "My estate is entailed, but there already is a great sum set aside in the funds which is not, and were I to only have daughters, they would certainly be well cared for."
"What of their souls. How would you care for them."
"With care." Darcy frowned at her. "Yes, with great care — and I vouchsafe that I would never trust them out of my sight until they were married, or had come of age, and thus of an age where their errors belonged to them as much as to me. Georgiana has taught me that caution at least."
"I mean to ask if you would not be deeply disappointed to not have a son to carry on the legacy?"
Such questions were clearly too intimate, too pointed, and perhaps they revealed to Mr. Darcy the secret feelings that Elizabeth was developing towards him — perhaps not even so secret to either of them. But at the same time, in this room, after the intimacy of their conversation, it was impossible for Elizabeth to not ask such questions as were in her heart.
Mr. Darcy spoke slowly, in a thoughtful tone, clearly considering each phrase before he spoke. "I hope to have a son. It would be strange to say otherwise. Yes, strange. But the matter will be in God's hands. I would not be so profane as to speak against His will. He chooses, we do not. Any child I have, I will cherish, with all my heart, all my soul — is this a matter that comes from your heart? Perhaps your father has taken so little care with your education, and not set aside sufficient funds for your support because he only would properly act for the care of a son who he could see as a continuation of himself?"
"No! That is not my father's — he has been an exemplary and affectionate father. At all times." Elizabeth felt an odd sense in her stomach. The conversation had suddenly, and without her being prepared for it, shifted into a place where she was the one judged, and judged wanting. Judge not lest ye be judged. "I do not feel that at all — but I know it can happen. That there are many girls who live life always feeling keenly that they are unwanted and a disappointment merely because they are not 'The Son'. Papa has kept us well cared for."
"Well cared for?" Darcy asked. He suddenly stepped away from her and paced towards the middle of the room. He nearly tripped over the claw of the large bear rug that dominated the floor in front of the fireplace. "Well cared for? When he did not give you an education that might impress a gentleman, nor a dowry that might make it wise to marry you?"
"At least," Elizabeth said in a brittle voice, "none of us need to worry about the fate which befell your sister. If Papa had set aside great dowries for us, we might be the targets for fortune hunters."
"Do not make a laugh of the subject. Though I know you dearly love to laugh, there is nothing amusing in this matter."
Elizabeth felt exposed and unsettled. And scared.
"And who would marry you with no dowry?" Darcy had ceased to look at her. He paced back and forth, stepping around and over the head of the bear again and again. It was as though he spoke to himself and not to her, and that the words came from some deep unsettled place in himself. "Your connections are to trade. Your mother is a woman who often shows indelicacy of feeling and expression. Your youngest sisters run wild — there is no money for you to live upon when you fail to marry. You will lose your station and cease to maintain your position as a gentlewoman."
"Mr. Darcy." Elizabeth made herself stand up straighter, and say in a light and mocking tone, as though it were a joke, "There are a thousand pounds in the funds settled on me after Mama dies."
"Bah! A thousand pounds? That is nothing. Not enough — hardly enough to maintain life. Nothing. To any man of substance that is a slender sum. And—"
"A man of substance," Elizabeth sharply replied, speaking in a way that matched Mr. Darcy's ranting manner, "would wish to marry a substantial wife more than a wealthy one. One with a character he admires."
"That is not how the world works."
Elizabeth ground her teeth together.
What. What had given him the right to speak to her in this manner? To speak to her in such a way. To insult her family with… true facts.
It was that she had already spoken too intimately with him, and then this was the curse that followed.
"Besides, you have no great accomplishments. How would a man look before his friends and family if he married such a girl?"
Suddenly, like being splashed with cold water, Elizabeth realized what must be the real reason Mr. Darcy spoke to her in such a way. Her stomach sank and her cheeks flared red.
He spoke so incautiously because she had unsettled him with the conversation about his sister. However, the source of the conversation was simple: He had thought of marrying her, and he had determined he could not for the reasons he listed now.
"Yes, yes," Darcy continued. "If a gentleman of substance married you, everyone would say that he had taken leave of his senses, and been made a fool of by a pretty face — and while you have greater virtues than are visible to the public, that accusation would—"
"Mr. Darcy, as we are friends, I beg you to never speak upon this subject again." Elizabeth's voice was cold and angry.
She was pale, trembling, and shaking. She wanted to lash out at him.
Darcy looked at her, and he suddenly seemed to realize how far his preoccupation had carried him from the polite norms of civilized discourse.
His face became stricken.
"Miss Elizabeth, I apologize, Madam, I did not mean to—"
"No other words!" Elizabeth pressed her hands against her cheeks. They were wet with tears. She breathed deeply. Once, twice, thrice. "You are right. I know that I cannot expect anything. I know my father is irresponsible. I know I am barely educated, and wholly undisciplined. I know my connections are atrocities — though I love them all dearly. But there is one thing I can say for my father that you cannot for yours: I have never once doubted, not once, that he loves me dearly."
Elizabeth fled the room without even looking at Darcy to see how he took that speech. She found a tiny out of the way room on the second floor where the servants stored brooms and mops and sobbed for half an hour.
Afterwards she quietly returned to Jane, who was still napping, and she stared at her sister until she woke.