A/N: Here's the second chapter. Sorry to have been so slow, lots going on.
The Resurrection at Rosings
Book One: The Trees Don't Grow Into the Sky
Chapter Two: The Last Man
Darcy
Darcy had never visited Longbourn. No foot (or any other appendage) through the door.
The thought of putting himself at the domestic mercy of Mrs. Bennet filled him with revulsion.
And terror.
He knew where Longbourne was, of course, and he knew a path to arrive there — reversing the path Miss Elizabeth had followed the day she arrived at Netherfield on foot, intent on caring for Miss Bennet.
Normally, Darcy would have ridden from Netherfield to Longbourn; riding was one of the durable, satisfying pleasures in a life of surprisingly few pleasures, few acts of pure inclination. His days were largely a tight weave of countless duties. Almost no one knew how ascetic his life was, how rarely interrupted by significant pleasure or indulgence. Despite his fine clothes and riches, he lived the life of a desert father, and all too often Pemberley seemed a massive pillar, a stylite, with Darcy seated, trapped, atop it.
Even at Netherfield, far south of Derbyshire, he was working to help Bingley and working (from a distance, by mail) to run the vast enterprise of Pemberley.
But he had forgone his horse, foregone that pleasure, hoping that arriving on foot might make him seem more human, more humble. Approachable. The more he thought about the undertones of his interactions with Miss Elizabeth, the more he realized that she thought him proud.
It stung him to be accused of pride; he lived and regulated himself to be above such. As an accusation, pride was a vice, not a virtue, and believing that Miss Elizabeth thought he suffered from a vice wounded him.
He shook his head and reoriented, pondering the path of his feet. Vexing woman!
If you believe you are not proud, you are very proud indeed.
So Darcy's uncle — a distant cousin of his father's but the two had been personally close — had told him often when he was a boy. Uncle Darcy, the judge. He had never been sure why the judge insisted on the reminder.
No such reminder was necessary. Darcy's father and mother had taught him good principles. Nay, the best principles. I can quote them from memory. I will never forget them.
The path he followed appealed to him too because Miss Elizabeth had walked it. Walking it himself seemed to establish a slightly dizzying communion with her, as if he were dancing with her but in absentia.
Dancing. Hard to imagine himself pleased by dancing, even in imagination. But he was.
More than anything else, though, he was happy, buoyantly expectant. Such feelings were almost new to him. Happiness was hard for him, a challenge, and he typically expected only the worst. Expectations normally sank him; they did not buoy him. His parents' deaths, his premature ascension to the role of Master of Pemberley, his sister's youth and neediness, and then, suddenly, last summer: Ramsgate. (Wickham again. Always, Wickham again.) Hard, in the face of all of that, to manage even a checkered happiness.
He rolled his shoulders and shook his hands. His blood had congealed, felt as if it stopped circulating. He would not, not today, allow himself to ponder Wickham.
Or the deaths that still haunted him. Mama, Papa.
No.
He smiled to himself with pleasant resolve, half smiling, half gritting his teeth. He would not be the superfine stoic he normally was. Pleasant, I will be pleasant. Miss Elizabeth rated him proud and he would need to convince her that she was wrong about that — but he was sure, sure, that her conviction of his pride would not keep her from responding favorably to his decision to court her. Or, rather, his decision to ask for a courtship.
That was why he wanted to seem human, and approachable. He knew that his height and broad shoulders, his preference for black clothing (other than his always snowy cravat), and his unfortunate birthright, his inexpressiveness — all combined to make him seem distant and inhuman.
He had inherited his father's stone face.
But he would smile today, smile for Miss Elizabeth.
The stone would crack.
He was a man, not a sculpture. And today was slated to be a good day. A. Good. Day.
When Darcy arrived at the gateway to the Longbourne gardens (unguarded, no angel with a flaming sword to keep me out), he was unsure which path to take. The shrubbery stood tall and shaggy, inelegant, not at all the surgically maintained shrubbery of Pemberley.
Someone should have a sharp word with the gardener.
After a moment's pause, he chose the lefthandmost path, guessing that it would not matter much, that the paths would all converge at or near the house.
All roads lead to Rome — or to Miss Elizabeth.
Darcy was giddy enough, at least by his standards, to find that funny.
She would be surprised to see him, but surely not shocked. His request to dance with her must have suggested to her that he was interested — despite their disagreement about Wickham.
After all, he had danced in Hertfordshire with no locals except Miss Elizabeth. She is exceptional.
And she must surely have known that his dances with Bingley's sisters were pro forma. Duty, not inclination.
Who would freely choose to dance with Miss Bingley? He repressed a shudder.
Repression was his typical response to his responses. That does not bear thinking about.
Miss Bingley.
No matter how fashionably garbed, the woman always seemed the specter at the feast.
He shifted his mind back to the woman he was hoping to court, expecting to court. Miss Elizabeth. The woman he would be courting soon.
No doubt her inherent modesty, and the excusably nearby horizons of the world she inhabited, would keep her from any expectation of interest from a man like Darcy but she was too clever to be wholly unaware of his intentions. Even if it had taken him a twisting, sleepless night of recollected dancing and fine eyes to resolve on his present course.
Annoyingly, the lefthandmost pathway did not lead Darcy to Longbourn.
It led him to nothing, nothingness — an abrupt ending, shrubbery along the sides of the path and shrubbery ending it. No pathway ahead, only return. He stood for a moment, staring at shrubbery in consternation, daring to despise the mindless plants. They seemed intent on his frustration, although he knew that was a mad thought.
Darcy turned, intent on retracing his steps and taking a new path, but as he did he heard a voice. From the other side of the shrubbery.
"I mention this so that you will…understand that my affection for you is not low-born, some physical…hunger, but is instead a most just and righteous feeling, high-minded, originating in a disinterested impulse to obey the best of women."
Darcy stopped. The parson? Collins? Who does he address?
"And besides, as Scripture says, it is better to marry than to burn."
Collins went on. He was offering a proposal! Not just addressing someone, addressing someone. The parson's nonsense continued, although, for a moment, Darcy lost the thread of it in the copious ridiculousness of the man's words.
"I am sensitive to the honor your proposal does me, Mr. Collins, and I thank you for thinking so highly of me. But I fear my answer can only be no. I will not marry you. We would not suit."
The cool, rebuking words were spoken by Miss Elizabeth. Good God! The parson is proposing to Miss Elizabeth.
Darcy almost dove into the shrubbery, prepared to force himself through them to stop what was happening on the opposite side. But he did not. Miss Elizabeth refused the proposal.
She is saying no.
Collins did not want to take no for an answer. They continued talking, Collins pressing his suit and Miss Elizabeth resisting it.
Darcy was both amused and annoyed. And then he heard Miss Elizabeth say, finality in her voice, irrevocable judgment: "Mr. Collins, I am not toying with you. I am innocent of any ploy, of all arts and all allurements. While I cannot say that you are the last man I would ever marry, I do believe you are next-to-last."
That surprised Darcy. Who could rank lower than Collins, who groveled so spinelessly there was no room beneath him?
Collins shared Darcy's curiosity and asked Miss Elizabeth for a name. Darcy felt a moment of sharp suspense, clueless as to the name she might supply.
"Mr. Darcy."
Collins grunted. Darcy felt a swell of disappointment so deep and overwhelming that he was immediately nauseated and dizzy.
He heard Miss Elizabeth take her leave of Collins, then heard Collins grunt once more. Then he heard Collins leave too.
Darcy stood still, absently pulling leaves from the shrubbery, trying to comprehend what he had heard. Not just the words, the meaning.
The last man.
Dropping the leaves to the ground, he retraced his steps to the gateway of the garden.
He left with shadows on his eyes. Blinded. The gate should have been guarded; I now know things I do not want to know.
So ends our brief Book One. Next time, we begin the story proper, shifting our scene from Longbourn to Rosings.