A/N: We begin the second part of the story with a quiet chapter.
Darcy's Struggle
Chapter 6: Rainfall and Pride
Thursday, November 21, 1811
Darcy sat alone next to a window, watching the succession of rain, watching in agitation and suspense and dreadful bitterness of spirit.
It had started raining hard just after he walked back to Netherfield Tuesday evening, just after he had encountered Miss Elizabeth and Wickham — along with the two younger Bennet sisters. It had continued to rain without stopping, even without variation, since that time.
A hard, cold steady rain. Not a deluge, — but Darcy was willing to reserve that word for his feelings as the rain fell. A deluge of sad dismay.
He had drawn a chair to the window of the bedroom Miss Elizabeth stayed in at Netherfield. The room was damp and chilly. Darcy had not wanted to draw attention to himself in the room, so he had asked for no fire. The door to the room he had left slightly open, not hoping to be found but, if he were, not wanting to seem to be hiding.
A trace of Miss Elizabeth's lavender scent remained in the room. He had noticed the scent often when she had been at Netherfield. Darcy would have stretched out on the bed if he dared; the trace of scent was strongest there.
He had repeatedly told the others that he was suffering from a headache, but if he kept giving that excuse, he would have to face the apothecary. Bingley would insist.
But the excuse was partly true.
Darcy ached, but not with a headache — with heartache. It was a feeling previously unknown to him in this form, although he had felt something similar in Ramsgate. But that had been sibling heartache, an accession of brotherly love for Georgiana. What he felt for Miss Elizabeth was not brotherly love; it was an accession of a different love altogether, passionate and romantic.
Her unforgettable eyes had been full of admiration for Wickham, and Darcy's inability to stop seeing them in memory threatened to send him to Bedlam.
He felt disordered, unhinged. Concern and fear for her mingled with an abysmal jealousy.
His mind whirled round as he weighed probabilities.
All that kept him from running madly through Netherfield was his conviction, aided by careful and repeated recollection, that he had seen neither tenderness nor affection in her eyes.
At one time, before he knew her, that would have been a greater comfort to him. Before he met her; before Miss Elizabeth and Christopher Marlowe had taught him that he could love at first sight. But if Darcy could love at first sight — a man such as he knew himself to be, closed, reserved, disdainful — then how much more might Miss Elizabeth love at first sight, or soon, open, easy, and unsuspicious as she was?
But — he had not seen tenderness or affection in her eyes.
And she had glanced back at Darcy.
Of course, there had been no tenderness or affection for him in that backward glance, he admitted, no admiration either. If anything, there had been only a repetition of the unsureness he had seen in her eyes first when he apologized and later when he had stared at her in church.
Miss Elizabeth and Wickham had talked about him before the encounter. Her self-conscious manner would have betrayed it if her comment about Darcy and Wickham knowing each other had not. God, Wickham had been quick! He had met her early in the day, while not in uniform, and then visited Longbourn that afternoon, in his regimentals, his red coat.
A red coat Miss Elizabeth seemed to find admirable, along with the man in it.
But there was no tenderness, no affection! — Still, it might appear at any moment! Maybe Miss Elizabeth was fated to care for Wickham.
Darcy folded his arms, hugging himself for warmth, warring despair.
He cursed the rain for adding to his misery but blessed it for keeping the militia in its quarters. The Netherfield servants had carried word that the militia had scheduled training for the week, and that the men were being kept in camp in case the rain would stop and the training start. As a result, the regiment had not been abroad in Meryton since Tuesday, neither on the streets nor paying visits. And the rain had almost certainly kept the Bennet sisters from Meryton. It was likely, indeed, almost certain, that Miss Elizabeth had not been again in company with Wickham.
But it will not rain forever!
One fact about Wickham tempered Darcy's fear and concern and jealousy: enriching himself by marriage was Wickham's dearest wish, his most decided ambition. He would marry a woman of fortune, and achieve by charm what he could not inherit or would not achieve through work.
Georgiana had been the perfect victim because she had a fortune, a great fortune — and because eloping with her would have injured Darcy deeply and irreparably.
But Miss Elizabeth had no fortune.
She might — like Cordelia in King Lear — be herself a dowry, but she would not bring cash to any union. And ultimately, other than himself, Wickham loved only cash.
So, it was unlikely that Wickham's purpose in quickly insinuating himself into Longbourn and Miss Elizabeth's admiration was matrimony.
But that meant he had some other, darker purpose, some fell purpose. It could only be her person, her lovely self. Damnation!
And if Wickham learned that his purpose would destroy Darcy as well as Miss Elizabeth…
Thank God it still rains! — But now she is trapped in Longbourn with that priest, Collins, who plans to marry her! Foes without and foes within!
"Darcy, is that you?"
Bingley had pushed open the door — it creaked softly — and entered the room. "What are you doing here?"
Darcy uncrossed his arms. It was a genuine question. Bingley seemed not to suspect Darcy's presence there had anything to do with Miss Elizabeth. Darcy quickly stood.
"I was watching the beech trees shed the final leaves in this relentless rain."
Bingley stared at him, puzzled. "And that is easing your headache? Will you not join us? You have been too much by yourself the last few days. We're all in the library. The company might brighten the day." He paused. "Caroline sent me to find you. I had to keep her from looking for you herself, finding you in private." He gave Darcy a look.
Darcy nodded, tugging on his sleeves, ignoring Bingley's first question about his headache and answering the second. "Yes, I will join you."
As Darcy started toward him, Bingley held up a hand for Darcy to stop, an unusual and commanding gesture from Darcy's diffident friend. "This is about Wickham, isn't it? You've not been the same since I told you he was in Meryton."
Darcy stopped, obeying. "I cannot deny it."
With a sigh, Bingley shook his head. "'...But time and chance happeneth to them all.'"
Darcy's jaw fell. "You, Bingley, quoting Scripture? Ecclesiastes?"
"I may not have learned a lot from sitting through homilies all these years, but I have learned a little."
"So it seems. — Yes, time and chance happen to all. Wickham's presence here is chance, a contingency; it cannot be the result of any deep policy of his own. It is my misfortune, and not in any way your fault, my friend."
"Thank you, but I admit I feel responsible somehow, as if the very fervency of my hope to help you forget Ramsgate somehow led us straight to Wickham, or him straight to us." Bingley's face pinched and he swallowed. "I say, Darcy, you're not debating about doing something…rash?"
"Rash?" Does he guess?
"A challenge, a duel? I've always wondered why you…did not do that in Ramsgate." No, he does not.
"Because," Darcy frowned, "Wickham has no honor, and thus will not set foot upon a field of honor. He told me so before he vanished from Ramsgate, refusing me satisfaction even if I were to demand it. But I would not risk Georgiana in such a way; I am all she has."
"And this honorless man is now in the militia? I did not mention to you that he is a lieutenant."
Darcy shrugged but nodded. "He must have bargained his education into an officer's appointment. He has no land, no property. With matters as they stand abroad, the militia is no longer discriminating."
"Say, Darcy, your man Steele told me that there is a guest at Longbourn, a priest?"
"Mr. Collins, yes. He is a relative; in fact, it is upon him that the estate is entailed. He will inherit when Mr. Bennet passes."
"Oh. Isn't it…strange…for him to be there ahead of such an event?"
Darcy laughed darkly. "Yes, very strange. But he is there under orders."
"What does that mean? Has the Lord spoken to him?"
"Very nearly. His patroness is my aunt, Lady Catherine, and she sent him to Longbourn."
Bingley shuddered. He had once accompanied Darcy on an Easter visit to Rosings and had never fully recovered from a two-week exposure to the grand lady. "How horrid! But why would she send him to Longbourn? Surely she has no interest in the entail?"
"No, but she has an interest in seeing her rector married, I'm guessing, you know how dictatorial she is, and she has decided he should choose from among the Bennet girls, thus ensuring that Mr. Collins' wife will succeed to her mother's place, to Mrs. Bennet's place."
Bingley looked out the window as he listened but then his face fell, and he turned to Darcy. "Which daughter is he to choose?" Bingley asked anxiously.
Darcy put a hand on Bingley's shoulder. "According to Steele, he is not choosing Miss Bennet. Mrs. Bennet has kindly explained to Mr. Collins that she is almost married."
"To whom?" Bingley asked, his eyes suddenly large and pained. "I did not know she had a suitor."
Darcy did not answer, and a moment later Bingley understood. "Oh."
"Yes, I believe Mrs. Bennet believes — and is spreading her belief through Hertfordshire — that you are about to propose marriage to her eldest daughter. — Is this so, Charles?" Darcy asked, his voice becoming solemn.
Bingley opened his mouth and then closed it, swallowing his first response. After a silence, he spoke. "I will not deny I have been considering it. I intended to discuss it with you before the ball. She is the most beautiful, the sweetest woman I have ever met. But I hope to know her better, and her family better, before I make up my mind. And, she is so…otherworldly…that I am unsure of her feelings for me. How can one determine if an angel is in love? And I must say that her mother's behavior in sending Jane here exposed to the rain, and then when she came here to visit Jane, has concerned me."
Darcy understood better than Bingley knew. A lack of fortune and low connections were not the only drawbacks to marrying one of the woman's daughters; Mrs. Bennet was herself, along with her younger daughters, a more serious drawback. Who would voluntarily take on such a woman as a mother?
Bingley waited for Darcy to respond.
"You are right to be concerned. A man owes it to any woman he addresses to have thoroughly considered what they are doing, and what its consequences will be, for him and her. It is a duty. To marry and then to be disagreeably surprised by foreseeable consequences is sheer imprudence. No woman could fault a man for being prudent, or for sharing the course of his thinking on such topics. It would be the simplest honesty. The last proper place for falsehood or omission would be in a proposal. A man should consider his proposal rationally, and then, if he decides to make it, to make it rationally."
Bingley glanced away and then back. He responded but with reluctance. "But should not a proposal be full of love and the language of love — at least so long as the marriage proposed is not acknowledged to be a marriage of convenience, of practicality? A marriage such as I desire would, I hope, answer to prudence, but I would want it to speak with passion."
Darcy felt the rebuke. He waved his hand. "I did not mean that lover-like language should not be part of the address, but it should not be all. Passion and reason should share the office."
Bingley looked doubtful and shifted the subject back to particulars. "But if the priest is not to marry Miss Bennet, which sister will it be?"
"Miss Elizabeth." Darcy exerted himself to keep his face and voice composed.
"Miss Elizabeth! Will she accept him?" Bingley's face showed a sudden realization. "If she does, and if I were to…then he would be my brother, the husband of my wife's dearest sister. We would be in close company often. I might have to visit Rosings again!" Bingley shivered.
Darcy smiled. "And you might need to memorize more of Ecclesiastes — to aid conversation."
Darcy then became serious again. "Steele's description of Collins reveals him to be a fool. And no one is a better judge of character than Steele unless it is Miss Elizabeth. I have a difficult time imagining Miss Elizabeth accepting a fool."
Bingley smiled at that. "True, but still…the entail, her lack of fortune, her low connections, and her immediate family." The smile became faint. "Might she choose Mr. Collins out of necessity? His patroness is Lady Catherine, he is her rector. He will inherit Longbourn. No woman, not even the two eldest Miss Bennets, can presume a succession of proposals. Collins' offer might be the only offer Miss Elizabeth ever receives. Would she refuse that security to hope for a love match?"
Darcy closed his eyes and saw Miss Elizabeth looking at Wickham. Admiration.
He could not bring himself to tell the story of the encounter to Bingley, however. The telling would confess Darcy's love for her; he would not be able to tell it any other way. He was not willing to share his feelings with his friend. Not yet. Not while he felt so unsettled about what to do.
Darcy did not think she would accept Collins, but what if she refused him only because she was hoping for Wickham?
"Come, let's join the others."
"Yes, Caroline is in a mood. Not only are you playing hermit, but the rain has delayed preparations for the ball." Bingley glanced out the window again. "It can't rain forever."
Darcy looked out too. I can hope.
He left Miss Elizabeth's room with proposals still on his mind.
Sunday, November 24, 1811
And still, it rained.
And it rained.
Darcy spent time with the others but he did not make much conversation. Miss Bingley assumed her litany of Miss Elizabeth's faults had angered him and she seemed in no hurry to prompt him into any further declaration of his admiration of Miss Elizabeth's eyes. He could see that she feared that he might feel even more for Miss Elizabeth than his comment about her eyes had revealed, and her pride and jealousy would not allow her to approach the topic.
Bingley had become silent and thoughtful too. The Hursts bickered quietly when Mr. Hurst was awake. Mrs. Hurst sewed when he snored.
Preparations for the ball — all those that could be accomplished by the staff and resources of Netherfield — were underway. This kept Miss Bingley busy; Darcy did not have to abide many lengthy, frowning silences from her.
Seated in the empty Netherfield library, Darcy had been weighing various courses of action against Wickham.
He could speak to the militia commander, Colonel Forster, and reveal Wickham's history of debts. But to do that effectively, he would need to write to request documents from Pemberley. Even with the documents, there was no certainty that Forster would do anything. It was all history — and Forster might feel he needed all the men he had. Wickham had somehow been awarded a lieutenancy. And he had not had time yet to run up debts in Meryton, although he no doubt would — Wickham was a creature of habit, bad habits, vices — but so long as he was quartered in Meryton, he could claim that he intended to pay the debts…
Darcy could also speak to Mr. Bennet, and at least warn him, and allow him to protect his daughters. But that would require Mr. Bennet to believe Darcy. And it would certainly make Mr. Bennet wonder what had prompted Darcy to such concern for his daughters in particular…
Pride.
Darcy did not want to have to admit how entangled with Wickham his life was. That even in Hertfordshire he could not free himself of the man.
Pride. It all came back to pride.
It all came back to pride at Cambridge too. When Wickham told lies about him, Darcy had been too proud to fight the lies, and instead of resenting Wickham alone and working to reclaim his friends, Darcy instead resented his former friends too.
His father had told him many times that a gentleman's character speaks above his words and deeds, interpreting them. When Darcy's friends believed Wickham, they had chosen to make Wickham the interpreter of Darcy's words and deeds, and Darcy had not been able to forgive them for it. They should have understood him better, and he would not stoop to correct them or argue with them. Instead, he abandoned them and let them abandon him.
Wickham won.
Ramsgate. Darcy should have worried about Georgiana, worried about sending her to Ramsgate without him, but she was a Darcy and so immune to Wickham's manipulation. She was such an obvious target for Wickham's villainy but Darcy had refused to recognize it, to acknowledge that her name, his name, was no ward against temptation, error. No name was a shield against Wickham.
Her name was a lure.
Even Wickham's vanishment from Ramsgate was the fault of Darcy's pride. Wickham would not meet him on a field of honor, and so Darcy should have thrashed him, drubbed him into a bruised and bloody mess, but Darcy would not do it, would not reduce himself to a common brawl. Even as a boy, he had refused to fight with Wickham. And so in Ramsgate, he had let Wickham slip away. Once Darcy found Wickham gone, he had then sent men to make the rounds in Ramsgate, searching out shops and taverns, paying Wickham's debts, hoping to keep anyone from questions that might by chance lead back to Georgiana Darcy. He protected her and protected the family's pride, his pride — and so Wickham used that pride against him.
Wickham escaped, unpunished.
Wickham always pitted Darcy against himself, two against one. He knew Darcy's horror of derision, ridicule, and scandal, how much he coveted privacy.
Darcy understood Wickham to use people's virtues against them, and Wickham did.
But in Darcy's case, Wickham had used Darcy's vice against him, Darcy's improper, vicious pride. Darcy had effectively conspired with Wickham against himself.
Maybe it was time to take another path. Maybe it was time to humble himself, to make different choices, ones Wickham could not anticipate or manipulate successfully once they had been made.
Darcy needed to break his bad habit.
But how to break a bad habit?
He pondered the question. Maybe he required building a new habit, a good one, developing a virtue he lacked. And maybe he had to recognize that his father, the good man that he was, had not uniformly been a source of wisdom, and had perhaps taught him good principles without creating the appropriate feelings necessary to follow and apply them. Too much head and too little heart.
He stood. For the first time in several days, he believed he could see a way forward. But to take it, he would have to overcome his past, a lifetime of teaching, of previous choices and attitudes.
The library was strangely quiet. It was only then he realized that the rain had stopped.
Time and chance happeneth to them all — even to Darcys.
A/N: If you've been reading without comment, I'd love to hear from you. — Next time, the Netherfield ball.