TO ADMIRE A GAINSBOROUGH PART 8
"So, then you left."
"So, then I left."
Elizabeth slammed the sketchbook shut and pushed it aside with more force than necessary, and the towers of seen and unseen books she had constructed fell apart.
"And you took Mr. Bingley with you," she said. "Miss Bingley wrote that he was not coming back and it nearly broke Jane's heart."
Mr. Darcy took a moment to arrange the sketchbooks on the table in two neat piles, one higher than the other. Elizabeth was not sure but she thought that the books were in chronological order again.
"Bingley was going to London anyway but he would have come back if the rest of us had not followed him. He was quite smitten with your sister but Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst insisted that her heart was not affected. But that being without a dowry she would marry him anyway for mercenary reasons because he would be the best she could do, with her lack of other prospects."
"And what did you say?"
"I told him I had heard Mrs. Bennet crowing about Jane's rich conquest several times at the ball, that the neighbourhood already had expectations, and that if he was at all undecided when he returned to Hertfordshire Mrs. Bennet might make sure the matter would very soon be decided for him."
"That is harsh and unfair," Elizabeth said. "For all her faults, my mother has never forced a gentleman to marry any of her daughters."
"No, I suppose not."
"Thus we are all spinsters in the making save Jane."
"That is not true," he said.
"Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley were quite right. Without dowries we have no great prospects and cannot expect to marry well."
"Well, that hurt," he said. "I may not be a great matrimonial prize but I am not a troll from under the bridge."
She laughed in surprise. It seemed that Mr. Darcy had a dry sense of humour and a lovely lop-sided smile that she had largely missed during their initial encounters.
But the smile disappeared as soon as it appeared. None of this was a laughing matter to Mr. Darcy.
"If you end up a spinster it will be by your own choice," he said seriously. "I have made you a counteroffer that would prevent such outcome, and your dowry does not enter into it at all."
"Do you not think we ought to address the obvious financial disparity between us some time?"
"I have decided that it is irrelevant to me," he said. "I have enough to support you and any children that we might be blessed with. And Bingley and I would be easily able to lease a home for your mother and sisters if they should ever find themselves in straitened circumstances."
"Thank you," she said faintly.
"Not that I would wish you to marry me for such a reason," he said. "But I will take what I can get."
"It means a lot to know that you would be willing to help them."
"Of course, they are your family," he said. "And they would become mine as well."
"But if I was just looking for financial security I would be Mrs. Collins by now," she said.
"I thank my lucky stars every day that you are not."
"However, I am sure that your family expects you to marry someone richer and better connected than me."
"They did, and I could have," he said. "I did not."
There was nothing she could say to that, so she picked up a sketchbook again. Most of the covers of recent ones looked exactly the same to her and she was not sure how he could tell them apart but he had arranged them so the smaller pile on the right held all the books she had not looked at yet.
There were several portraits of Georgiana Darcy who appeared to be a little happier, and those of her companion, drawn as if Mr. Darcy had been looking for signs of deception in her.
"She seems perfectly respectable to me," Elizabeth said. "As far as I can tell from the pictures."
"She is, I think," he said. "It is just difficult to trust her completely without reservations after what happened with the previous companion."
"Understandable," she said.
"I am usually wary with new people but it gets easier once I have had time to study them and learn what their expressions look like."
"I dare say you must know mine by now."
"Would that I would know them even better," he said. "If you let me."
He had drawn several portraits of Mr. Bingley, looking pensive, distracted, or sad.
"He was not his usual self at the time?"
"No," he said.
In London, Mr. Darcy had thrown himself into business affairs and high society with a vengeance.
"Trying to keep busy," he said.
He had visited a horse auction, taken notes of the animals and ruled out a few because the owner seemed shifty.
He had planned to order a new carriage, and listed his options. He had drawn incredibly detailed models and recorded all the specifications. "The carriage maker: Thompson. Interior details: Blue fabric and cherrywood. Drawn by four horses."
"I am sorry but I think you are lying," Elizabeth said. "Look at all the precise details. There is no way that horses could have drawn this."
He had to process that for a moment before he understood and burst into startled laughter.
He had drawn potential investments, attorneys, and his butler in London who was of an age to retire but as yet unwilling to do so. He had sketched musical soirees, balls, the bookshop owner, and the opera.
But the painting in the attorney's office looked like Elizabeth might look at seventy, and in all the events, he had drawn an empty chair somewhere. One of the sketches was just the chair, and the caption said, "She was not there."
"I still do not understand," she said. "I can see you thought of me a lot. But it was you who decided to leave, you who decided not to pursue me. I had no idea, because you chose not to tell me. Why did you change your mind?"
"My aunt wrote to me that her rector had married in Hertfordshire, and I thought it was you," he said. "When I arrived at Rosings I was bracing myself so I could bear seeing you as that sycophant's wife. Mr. Collins only spoke of dear Mrs. Collins, and you may imagine my confusion when my cousin and I came to the parsonage and he introduced the former Miss Lucas as Mrs. Collins and you were still Miss Elizabeth Bennet."
"You did not say much that day," she said.
"I had a speech memorized," he said. "It was a really nice speech, you would have been proud of me. I was to congratulate you, to wish you all the happiness that family can bring, and to tell you that I knew you would be an asset to his parishioners. But once it was not you I was too disoriented to know which parts I could use to congratulate the real Mrs. Collins and still make sense. Thankfully my cousin was there to say all the normal things."
"I recall it was a rather strange visit," she said. "Did you draw it?"
"No, I went riding and missed dinner." He exhaled. "My aunt was not pleased with me."
"But we did not see you much at the parsonage afterwards."
"I had to clear my head first." He shook himself as if dispelling a cloud of dust. "I had found out where you liked to walk in the mornings so if you had stayed longer I probably would have attempted to join you on your promenades."
"Would you have said anything to me?"
He smiled ruefully. "I suppose we will never know now."
"Initially I was planning to stay longer," Elizabeth said. "But my mother wanted my help with the wedding arrangements."
"Oh, yes, Bingley and your sister got married," he said. "I am sorry I missed the wedding, I was needed at Pemberley."
"Do you know how it came about?" she asked. "Jane said they met accidentally in the park near the Gardiner home. But it seems like a very odd place for Mr. Bingley to randomly loiter in. It is not near where he lives in London."
"Coincidences do happen occasionally," he offered. But it sounded more like a question than a statement.
"Yes, he might have had some business, or some acquaintance in the area," Elizabeth said. "But he does not, so Jane thinks it was fate. Was it?"
"Well, actually…" Mr. Darcy quieted.
"Well, actually, what?" Elizabeth looked at him sternly. "You cannot leave it at that, I can see you know something."
"I know something but Bingley does not want Jane to know."
"I am not Jane. Tell me."
"It is true she met him accidentally," Mr. Darcy said. "But Bingley did not. He had spent three days in the park hoping for just that to happen. He says some of the mothers and nursemaids who brought children there were starting to eye him very suspiciously."
"Why? Why did he not just knock on the door and visit?"
"I am afraid that it was my fault," Mr. Darcy said. "I had spoken of my study of schooled expressions and spontaneous ones, and he thought he would be more likely to catch an unguarded one if he was not announced as a visitor."
"I do not understand," she said. "How did you come to have such a discussion?"
"Bingley had been rather forlorn for months."
"Had he...?"
"He missed your sister, and wondered if he had made a mistake leaving Hertfordshire without speaking to her."
"Oh, dear me, did I do the right thing, jilting the girl everyone thought I was courting?" she scoffed. "Yes, I can see how a gentleman might be confused."
"Right, but he had been led to believe that your sister did not particularly desire to be courted by him," he said. "His sisters claimed to have her confidence."
"Then what?"
"He came to my house one day and caught me painting Georgiana. And he remembered the sketch of Wickham that we showed in the shops in Meryton."
"Yes…?"
"So he thought that Georgiana's likeness was excellent and said he had not known I was so good with faces. I said I pay a lot of attention to expressions because it can be a clue to what they are really thinking. Then he started talking about your sister, and how he had thought he had seen love in her smile, and whether he could have been so mistaken."
"And what did you say?"
"That fortune hunters and mercenary charmers smile a lot too but if we happen to come across them unexpectedly we might perceive the momentary switch between an honest reaction and a schooled attitude."
"Interesting."
"He asked me if I had seen Miss Bennet while they were talking or dancing at the ball, and whether I could draw her for him."
"You had several sketches of Jane."
"Yes but I could not show that book to anyone but you, so I started a new sketch, on a loose leaf."
"He started speaking of returning to Hertfordshire to see for himself. That he should go to Longbourn before his arrival was common knowledge in the village. I said his sisters told me they visited Miss Bennet in Gracechurch Street, and he was both happy that his coachman would know the address and angry at me for not telling him before."
"You argued?"
"It was more that he railed at me and vowed never to speak to me again."
"Oh!"
"By then I had finished my sketch, and whatever he saw in her expression seemed to make him happy because he clapped me on the back, gave me a vigorous handshake in both of his and was off like a shot."
"I guess we know what followed," she said. "Has he broken his vow not to speak with you again?"
"Technically no," he said. "We have exchanged several letters and I believe he has forgiven me but I have not seen him since. I left for Kent and then he was in Hertfordshire, and I had to go to Derbyshire. Earlier in the year we had planned that he should visit Pemberley around this time of the summer but obviously his schedule changed due to his wedding and honeymoon."
"Yes, their honeymoon…" Elizabeth was thoughtful. "I was all set to be angry at you for convincing him that Jane was a fortune hunter. But I suppose there is no point now. Jane is finally happy, and it was mostly his own fault for believing you and his scheming sisters anyway."
"Bingley seems over the moon now, so it ended well for him too."
"Yes, after some detours."
"Exactly," he said, while riffling through a small notebook.
Elizabeth took a look at it but the notebook was blank.
"I took some detours too," he said after a while. "But I have chosen a path now, and I am hoping to get a similar happy outcome."
"You can't always get what you want."
"I know," he said. "But what if I could?"