CHAPTER II: FRIENDSHIP

I post this having just got home from a party which I found overwhelming, where I spoke to no one I wasn't related to and spent the majority of my time sitting in a corner writing fanfiction on my phone. Life imitates art, and art imitates life.

There are a number of ways that people have attempted to sum up the call to friendship. That 'like attracts like', or 'birds of a feather flock together', and thus close friends tend to be similar to one another. On the other hand, that 'opposites attract', and people tend to befriend those who are different from themselves, so that the group itself is well-rounded. Either or both might hold its kernel of truth, but a meal of just one kernel would starve a rat.

It would be very easy to say that the friendship between Elizabeth Bennet and Charlotte Lucas was an example of the first model. Two gentlewomen with sharp minds and sardonic worldviews, neither one rich enough to live without fear, neither one the kind of pretty that was drawn in fashion plates, both having grown up in the same area and around the same people.

But to say that would be to ignore the same crucial distinction that they ignored — the way they thought about the future. For Elizabeth, marriage was preferable to becoming a governess — particularly as she had never had one and was thus unlikely to be much good at it — but it was a comfort she was willing to discard, if her heart demanded it. For Charlotte, it was a business transaction that would buy her stability, and as there was no man in the world whose company was preferable to her solitude (or, particularly, her solitude with Elizabeth) her heart was not to be consulted on the matter.

It would perhaps be even easier to call the friendship of Wilhelmina Darcy and Charles Bingley a combination of opposites. A cynic and an optimist. One a generation out of nobility, the other a generation out of trade. One utterly focused on duty, the other a chronic procrastinator. The coldest and most distant person observers ever met, and by far one of the friendliest. Their distinction in sex helped, if anything, to obscure these more important differences, because it made them more difficult to compare.

There is some merit in that view, but it is simplistic and all about appearances. It assumes that what a vague acquaintance might define a person by is the same as what they see most clearly in themself. That is rarely true — an action, its reason, and its consequence are three very different things. An actor sees mostly the latter, and an observer sees mostly the last. It is not nearly so easy to determine what a person values from the appearance of their behaviour as it is often so easy to think.

Darcy, for instance, liked Bingley because he had a way of looking at people as people — even when he knew nothing about them at all, even when they were just visiting him because he was new in town and they were supposed to, he was thinking of them as a full human being it was possible for him to know. He always tried to understand, and if he couldn't he was always kind anyway. He was kind, and approachable, and inclined to forgive even those statements that were easiest to interpret as insults, and she liked and appreciated all those things.

Bingley liked Darcy on the one hand because she was interesting — because she thought of things he didn't and read things he got bored of and explained them in entertaining ways — but in a larger part because of how very obviously she cared, once you knew what to look for. She was very rarely verbally effusive, but he'd mentioned having some trouble with how to purchase an estate in one sentence of one paragraph of a letter he'd mostly written because it was raining and he was bored, and her response to tell him she was on her way had been only a matter of hours ahead of her. The last time one of his grand romances had turned back into an objectively quite pretty woman who he kind of knew, she had given him a cup of tea and not teased him about it until a few hours after he'd stopped crying. She had even ended their brief engagement in a way that made him feel cared about.

On the morning after the Meryton Assembly, both these pairs conferred over both their breakfast tables.

Bingley rather dominated the Netherfield party's conversation. Darcy never had much to say about parties, Mr Hurst never had much to say about anything, John hadn't done much other than be kind of annoying at this one, and as Mrs Hurst was no longer in the market for a husband (and could hardly have found one in Meryton, if she had been) she had found it rather boring.

But Mr Bingley had danced with a good portion of the young ladies present, and insisted on saying something complimentary about each and every one of them. Even Miss Darcy, who was right there, had danced with him who knew how many times before, and was principally interested in perfecting the amount of jam on her toast. But primarily — for ten minutes straight, refusing to be stopped by any number of his siblings' eyerolls or his friend's comment about how suspiciously often she smiled — he rambled on about Jane Bennet, an utterly foolish-looking smile on his face.

At Longbourne the conversation was more even. Everyone had something to say about something. Mrs Bennet was pretending not to be reading into the two sets Mr Bingley had danced with her Jane; Jane was trying to get her mother to drop the subject; Charlotte was pretending not to notice she was being repeatedly insulted; Pip (named Phillip) Lucas was going on about spending his hypothetical money on copious amounts of alcohol; Lydia boasted about having successfully played off deliberately stepping on Miss Darcy's foot (because Lizzy had looked upset after they were introduced, and no amount of fanciness gave people the right to hurt Lydia's sisters without facing consequences for it); Mr Bennet was trying quite gamely to get everyone to shut up so he could eat his eggs; Mary was trying to make some memorised lecture heard over the din; Maria was in rather deep discussion with Kitty about how nice Mr John's legs were; and Lizzy herself was content to listen to as many of these disjointed conversations as she could and contribute the odd quip to all.

Eventually, though, breakfast ended. Elizabeth and Charlotte were obliged to stop lightly kicking one another's feet, and the Lucas family returned to their own house.

For their own part, the group at Netherfield were presently living together, but they nonetheless parted to separate things. Darcy had a tablecloth to embroider, John had to stand at her shoulder and compliment her stitching every two seconds, Mr Hurst was asleep again, Mrs Hurst intended to explore a few more of Netherfield's rooms, and Bingley was going to check if sitting in the garden helped him pay attention to the book Darcy had recommended. It was a recent novel — called Sense and Sensibility — which she insisted was very good, and her description had been interesting enough that he had determined to give it a go.

A/N: For my own part, I've yet to actually read Sense and Sensibility. It'll be the next Austen I read (I'm presently working through Mansfield Park, and Pride and Prejudice is the only one I've read all of so far) and not having read it is the main force stopping me writing another one of the Pride and Prejudice fanfics I'm working on, in which it's rather important. Still, I think having characters read other works by their authors is funny, and it's the only one of Austen's that was actually out before Pride and Prejudice.

Hopefully next chapter will actually have some dialogue! There was a segment I wrote for this one, which had some dialogue and which I quite liked, but I couldn't figure out where to go with it and it didn't wind up fitting with the chapter theme I picked. Still, I think it was a good segment, so deleted scene time!

"Conversations and debriefings naturally took place, both around Netherfield's fireplace and the Longbourne dining table. And, of course, in some dozen other houses, where things were discussed of great importance to their speakers and very little to us.

Perhaps the only relevant one of this latest group was Mrs Long's complaints to her husband — as she had been complaining to everybody — how very difficult it had been to engage Miss Darcy in conversation, and how frustrated she had seemed in answering.

Miss Darcy herself remembered the situation quite differently. She had been passing the time by counting in French in her head, and had just reached deux-mille-quatre-cent-soixante-dix when suddenly someone was talking to her. Had seemed irritated, also, which made no sense because Darcy hadn't said anything and thus could not possibly have given offence.

It was impolite to ask people to repeat themselves, because that implied that she had not been listening. So, what had been said? How was she liking Netherfield? Alright. "It is a perfectly acceptable building," she could not stammer, she could not stammer, no one would ever respect her if they heard her stammer, "though I confess I will be glad to return home."

She genuinely had no idea how her brows had furrowed with the effort of it, only that her sentence came out unbroken, and that shortly thereafter a Mr Long had showed up to dance a set with his wife and leave Miss Darcy to her counting."

IDK, I quite like that, maybe I should have figured out a way to work it in. Still, I'm generally happy with this chapter. I ought to get a beta, though — none of the friends I usually send fics to have read Pride and Prejudice, and I'm not sure I want to send my attempts at writing romance to my mother.