Upon her first glimpse of their new neighbour's guest, Elizabeth's heart jumped. He was handsome, tall, smoothly shaven, elegantly dressed, with a noble bearing, sad eyes, and a black armband wrapped around his sombre blue coat. The marker of loss gave Elizabeth a sense of connection.
She stared at the gentleman who'd followed Mr. Bingley into the assembly hall for ten seconds.
He glanced in her direction, and Elizabeth flushed and looked down. When she looked back up, to her mild disappointment, he did not look towards her.
After this Elizabeth made a point of trying to not think about him.
It was not so difficult.
Her mind was chiefly filled with a deep melancholy.
This was the first ball since Papa's death five months previous. Elizabeth and all her sisters, except Jane who was in Kent with her new husband, Mr. Collins, had dressed in drab dim colours. Mama had at least not permitted them to wear bombazine and crepe to a ball.
They'd received a few raised eyebrows upon their decision to attend, as it was not strictly proper for the girls to go out to a scene of gaiety like this sooner than a full six months after the death of their father. However, Mama was insistent that her girls would attend the first ball that Mr. Bingley was present at, so that they could have their "fair shot at him".
"My girls," she insisted to Lady Lucas, "have just as much a right to a handsome future as your children do." Left silent until Lady Lucas left was Mama's implied view that her children had more of a right.
After her friend had left Longbourn, Mama said to Elizabeth, "Lady Lucas just does not wish to see her Charlotte overshadowed by you. Charlotte is such a plain creature though, but it is not her fault. All my girls, even Mary, are prettier by far."
This evening her mother had been in her ordinary nervous flutter. She had insisted strongly that the girls must pay attention to the dancing, and to not be ashamed by the fact that they would be wearing older dresses, arriving on foot, and that they would lack a footman to be sent off from the servant's shack if they had any necessary errands.
Mama was the most insistent of all that they must feel no shame about the lack of the fine hair styles that a real lady's maid would have produced.
One might suspect, if they were not Elizabeth, that Mama's lengthy discourse on the number of matters that they need not be ashamed of due to their constrained financial situation following Mr. Bennet's death reflected her own shame.
Elizabeth need not suspect, as she had heard her mother more than once rant and rail to her, to Elizabeth's sisters, to her mother's sister, and to the few remaining servants, upon how shameful it was that Mr. Collins did not permit them the use of a carriage. He expected Mama to make do with her own funds for clothing, food, and everything beyond the bare necessities required to keep the house in good order.
The ball was too soon. The room oppressed her.
Harsh violins, raucous tilting cellos, the trumpet and drums. Everyone sounded an octave off key. There was something in the scent of the assembly hall that Elizabeth did not like, and that she had never noticed. Everyone's conversation was happy, and half drunk. The wine was terrible.
Elizabeth's feet wished to stumble, not dance.
And Mama glared at her, because she did not act happy and flirted with no one.
A part of Elizabeth wished to flirt and use her womanly wiles to find an escape from present circumstances.
Elizabeth was not quite sure what she wished to escape from.
It was not the loss of status and comforts. It was not the frustration of being subject to the small and fool minded will of Mr. Collins. Even though Mr. Collins had sold off all the novels present in the house when he took possession, and then proclaimed that none would be read within his house — this following the advice of his patroness.
Well, she did wish to be free of Mr. Collins's influence.
But it was not chiefly that. Elizabeth felt alone.
Papa died and Jane was thrown by circumstance and choice into her harsh exile in Kent, with Collins as the jailor. Charlotte's simple approval of Jane's marriage had almost created a rupture in their friendship, and… Elizabeth was now fully aware that their minds were not alike in matters of greatest importance. After the argument they had about Jane's marriage to Mr. Collins, things simply could not be the same.
At least Kitty and Lydia were happy at the ball. They behaved like colts that had been kept in the barn too long, and who were finally given a chance to run. They drank, laughed, danced, flirted, and acted as though they had not a lone care in the world.
Despite her melancholy, after a dance with Charlotte's brother, Mr. Lucas, Elizabeth found herself unable to not be strongly interested in the intelligence Mr. Harris offered to a group of the ladies of the neighbourhood about Mr. Darcy.
"Oh yes," Mr. Harris said, "A widower. His wife died in the spring a year past. The tragedy Eve brought upon all her daughters. His wife was a great heiress. I was told that the windows alone cost ten thousand pounds on the house she inherited! Ten thousand pounds! For windows!"
"And yet," Mrs. Long said, "all that wealth helped her not at all when the grim angel came."
"They say," Mr. Harris added, "that he is devoted to his wife's memory, and you can see that he has not left half mourning after all of this time."
"Look at his eyes," Miss Gold fluttered. "You can see the ghosts of his dead in them."
Elizabeth looked towards Mr. Darcy, who frowned at them, as though he were aware that he was the subject of their conversation. He turned determinedly away. She saw no female ghosts in his eyes, though those eyes were as deep as a sea.
"Did the child survive?" Mrs. Long asked practically. "And was it a boy or a girl?"
"I believe the child survived." Mr. Harris then stammered before adding, "I cannot recall whether it was a female or a male child. But Mr. Darcy is very wealthy. He is originally from Derbyshire."
"We were already aware of that," Mrs. Long replied. "But in precise figures and sums how wealthy is 'very'?"
Elizabeth did not consider Mrs. Long's sharp reply to be wholly justified. Elizabeth at least had not been aware that he hailed from Derbyshire. That was of rather less importance to everyone of sense than the size of the fortune owned by the gentleman present with them.
Later in conversation Elizabeth heard from another guest the definite information that Darcy's own estate of Pemberley was worth more than ten thousand a year, and that his infant daughter owned an estate outright in Kent that was worth nearly as much again.
Mr. Darcy's standoffish manners did not destroy the fascination which he held for the inhabitants of the ballroom. A fascination particularly felt by the younger and more unmarried females. You could see in the twist of his mouth how he could not stand to witness the joys of the dance. Without a doubt the joyfulness of the crowds in this room reminded him of happier days spent lightly dancing with his beloved.
But O the heavy change now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone, and never must return!
Or perhaps one day his heart might heal, warmed by the love of a maiden honest, fair and true, who could devote herself to making the handsome and wealthy gentleman forget the terrible losses he suffered under… and also to tolerating the brat.
Such was the attitude of the room.
Beyond a doubt Mr. Darcy was more fascinating than Mr. Bingley. Mr. Bingley's brother-in-law Mr. Hurst was particularly unworthy of remark as he was neither wealthy nor a bachelor.
But even had he been both, a man with his rotund figure and sottish love of wine could not have fascinated the romantic female.
The interest Elizabeth had in Mr. Darcy was to a great extent reduced by the general fascination he held for her sex — there was that in her which wished to be contrary whenever opportunity arose. Her immediate sensibility of him had reflected no unique perspicacity, but instead was an ordinary liking that any woman might, and would, develop.
Elizabeth began to suspect, as wended the evening course, that Mr. Darcy was in fact a rude gentleman, disinclined to mingle in the mirthful merrymaking out of a haughty belief in his superiority to those around him, and that he refused to dance with anyone who was not a member of his own party out of a disdain for the beauties of Hertfordshire, and not due to the tragic memory of that last happy dance he'd danced with his dead wife.
Midway through the night, Elizabeth suffered the disappointment of not having acquired a partner. She settled into a chair not so far from where Mr. Darcy stood, examining in minute detail a portrait of his Majesty, King George III.
She leaned back and studied the glittering chandelier. The evening had not been near so bad as she'd feared. After the early part, she had begun to even enjoy herself. Papa would have wished for her to do so.
And she had danced once with Mr. Bingley — unfortunately, though he was charming, personable, and friendly, there was no affinity of mind between them.
Elizabeth felt an aching absence. This need. She wanted someone with whom she could simply talk, someone who she could be truly herself when in the presence of.
She knew by instinct that Mr. Bingley never could be that person. Even less likely was the hope that his supercilious silken and laced sisters would meet the criteria.
A pleasant enough evening.
The music had a friendly sound. A pretty Irish jig, a tune Elizabeth knew and liked. Her foot absently tapped along. Relaxation filled her.
"Must have you dance." A loud cheerful voice to her side drew Elizabeth's eye to Mr. Bingley. He stood next to Darcy, while Kitty, who was his partner for this dance, stood behind him, watching helplessly. Bingley continued, "I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance."
Darcy's reply was spoken firmly, but quietly enough that Elizabeth could not catch any word from it but punishment.
Bingley replied quietly, but with a rising tone. His first words were inaudible, but he ended with shouting, "As you for a kingdom! Upon my honour."
Elizabeth did not catch the rest of Bingley's sentence, but Mr. Darcy's reply of "There is not a single handsome girl in the room" was sufficient to establish his character wholly and completely.
He was the rude person she'd imagined him to be, not the heartbroken and romantic widower that was imagined by the rest of the room.
"Oh, my current partner is perfectly pretty, and one of her sisters sits just behind you, who is also very pretty, and I dare say, very agreeable. Do let me and my partner introduce you."
"Which do you mean?" Mr. Darcy then turned around and looked directly at her.
Their eyes caught, and Elizabeth felt something jump in her chest.
He withdrew his eyes and coldly said, in a voice that she could distinctly hear, "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me."
The rest of the speech was lost to Elizabeth's ears.
She felt a cold flush of hurt, this followed by a roaring anger in her ears, and then she began to laugh at both herself and Mr. Darcy.
Before this speech, she had deduced that Mr. Darcy was an awful, vain, rude man. Intolerably proud. And now Bingley had pushed him to dance with her — contrary to his clear and general will?
Nothing else could have been anticipated.
Elizabeth only rather wished that Kitty had not also clearly been able to hear. Both her sister and Bingley had returned to their dance. And Mama would be sure to hear about the story, and she'd not hear the end of it for two weeks at least.
Despite this, Elizabeth's own hurt and sense of seething resentment towards him was ridiculous — though the ridiculousness was no reason not to cultivate it. She would happily swear to despise him forever.
The gentleman himself was of course absurd.
What sort of man would say such a thing to a woman he had never been introduced to? Or to one after he had been introduced? And yet Mr. Darcy clearly believed himself to be the greatest exemplar of good breeding.
She rose from her seat to find Charlotte to share the tale. Perhaps when she returned home, she could—
Papa was not at home to tell the story to.
Papa never would be home again.