Consequences (3 page)

Is this to be the transgression that divides us forever?
he thought in dismay.
Can she not see why I acted as I did? Is she so oblivious to the improprieties of her family, especially her mother, who would have forced her sister to accept an offer of marriage from Bingley? An offer that surely would have been forthcoming had I not acted. What would she have done if the positions were reversed, if her sister had a fortune and Bingley were as bereft of fortune as
. . .
as Wickham? Especially if Bingley had a grasping mother who acted as Mrs. Bennet did at Bingley’s ball!

He wrenched his mind away from such divergent thoughts as Miss Bennet continued. “I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted there. You dare not, you cannot deny that you have been the principal, if not the only, means of dividing them from each other—of exposing one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.”

Miss Bennet paused, looking intently as if searching for something in his expression, but he had found his self-control at last. He could not repress the thin smile of grim amusement in feeling a sense of accomplishment at some miniscule victory in the midst of bleak catastrophe.

“Can you deny that you have done it?” she asked sharply.

Master under good regulation once more, Darcy felt able to reply, “I have no wish of denying that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards him I have been kinder than towards myself.”

Miss Bennet reacted to this plain assertion of fact as if she had been slapped, and her face paled in anger. At another time, Darcy might have regretted such a blunt formulation, but he was past caring. Clearly, he disastrously erred in believing Miss Bennet detected his attentions and awaited his addresses; she instead possessed the opposite opinion of him and was insensible of his admiration.

“But it is not merely this affair,” she said, clearly struggling to contain her own anger, “on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? Under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?”

If Darcy had been stunned before, it was nothing to the soul-consuming fury surging in him now, and had his control been less fixed, he knew he would have responded intemperately or stormed from the room.

“You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns,” Darcy finally managed through gritted teeth. He could feel the heat in his cheeks at this unbelievable charge, and he thought,
How could this
. . .
this lady, succumb to Wickham’s lies and blandishments?
Had she no wit at all?

“Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?” she responded sharply.

“His misfortunes!” said Darcy incredulously, his contempt twisting his lip in derision. “Yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.”

“And of your infliction!” Miss Bennet charged hotly. “You have reduced him to his present state of poverty—comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages, which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence which was no less his due than his dessert. You have done all this! And yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule.”

“And this is your opinion of me!” raged Darcy, stimulated into motion by the anger and misery surging through him. “This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed!”

Darcy stopped pacing and faced Miss Bennet squarely. Though he towered over her, she met him courageously in return as he said, “But perhaps these offences might have been overlooked had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination: by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”

Miss Bennet’s eyes flashed at this declaration, and Darcy was perversely pleased that she struggled to regain her own composure before she spoke.

“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy,” she said finally, “if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”

Darcy started at this last allegation, stung to his very soul. He considered himself an honourable man and was justly proud of his gentlemanly behaviour. To have such a charge thrown in his face was . . . was . . .

“You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it,” she continued, breaking into his thoughts.

This affront was almost as mortal a wound as the previous, and Darcy was again rocked with mortification and incredulity. But even then, she was not finished as she persisted relentlessly. “From the very beginning, from the first moment, I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners—impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others—were such as to form that groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike, and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

This final blow to all his hopes and wishes was at last more than Darcy could bear, and he snapped furiously, “You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.”

He turned sharply on his heel, and it took all of what little control he still maintained to retrieve his hat and gloves and exit the house without slamming the front door. He managed to pass through the gate, his wrath near to blinding him as he made his way into the Park. But, once he was certain he was unobserved, his restraint abandoned him, and he reeled in his tracks as despair swept away his anger. He spied a tree stump on which he might sit and collect himself, but now his motion was a jerky, loose-jointed gait more resembling a drunkard or a veritable babe than his normal, athletic stride. He had unconsciously managed to jam his hat on his head, after a fashion, but ignored his gloves. Those essential articles of a gentleman’s attire were carried in his left hand and dangled lifelessly at his side. When he reached the stump, he collapsed upon it as if the cosmic strings holding him upright had been cut.

She refused me!
he thought, and that solitary concept reverberated through his head, bouncing and rebounding inside the sphere of his consciousness.

But if that thought was solitary, the emotions that accompanied it were both numerous and conflicting. Certainly, he seethed at the unfairness of the accusations she flung in his teeth, especially those regarding Wickham. Nevertheless, matched against his ire was at least the beginning of mortification at how he treated her sister. Despite his response to Miss Bennet in the Parsonage, reasons seeming so clear and straightforward in Hertfordshire and London were beginning to look less rational and more sordid. She accused him of selfish disdain for the feelings of others, and this allegation pierced his composure cruelly when he remembered how he had thought more of his need to separate himself from Miss Bennet’s fine eyes than of the impact on her sister or possibly even on Bingley. And, though his pride was affronted at being so cavalierly dismissed and of being accused of behaviour unfitting a gentleman, there existed in his befuddled mind a feeling of confusion so extreme he could not rationally consider all he had just experienced.

Simplify, simplify!
he commanded himself, remembering lessons learned in rhetoric at Cambridge.

The matter of Wickham was the only one of her charges amenable to be so considered since it was clearly and factually false. On that, at least, he could defend himself! He seized that thought and clung to it, and his concentration allowed him to regain his feet and set off for Rosings.

Darcy knew he could not make any defence to her in person. Discussions of that sort would have to be made in private, and such intimacy was no longer possible. He had already violated some measure of propriety in some of his previous visits, but he knew she would never again allow herself to be alone with him for even an instant. For his part, such a meeting would require a level of composure he knew he no longer possessed. No, he would have to meet her in the Park, if she did not determine to remain indoors until he and Fitzwilliam left on Saturday. And, since he knew a verbal account was beyond his powers, he determined he must make his defence on paper. He could then hope to meet her while she walked and put the letter in her hands.

And what shall I do then?
he asked himself in despair.

He did not know, but he knew he would never see her again after tomorrow. There could be no real possibility of their meeting by accident, and certainly neither of them would ever pursue such an event. Her disapprobation was such that time could never heal it, and on his part, he could envisage nothing more mortifying to his shattered pride than to be reminded of such devastating events. He must devote himself completely to Georgiana and the affairs of his estate. In time, of course, he would be able to find a suitable partner for marriage; a Darcy heir was an essential duty. Eventually, time would blur the sharp angles and crystal clarity of this cataclysmic day. He knew it would come to pass.

He wished he could believe it.

***

Friday, April 10, 1812

Sitting in the solitude of her room, Elizabeth Bennet was again reading the astonishing—nay, astounding—letter Mr. Darcy had handed her earlier that morning. Her eyes followed the precisely written words, which she was close to knowing by heart, despite having the note in her possession little more than a pair of hours. She woke early, with all the recollections of the previous evening immediately flooding through her consciousness, and her mind was awhirl with a multitude of thoughts. Her disconcertment was so extreme that she thought to settle her anxieties by indulging in fresh air and exercise.

However, she also remembered how often she chanced upon Mr. Darcy in the Rosings Park in the previous weeks, and she therefore determined to avoid her favourite paths in fear of a chance meeting. Her precautions came to naught as a fateful mischance brought them together despite her efforts. She made as if to turn away when she first spied his tall figure in a grove of trees just inside the Park; however, after hearing him call her name, she reluctantly turned back to him as he approached her.

They met by one of the gates to the Park, she on the outside and he on the inside, and with a look of haughty composure, he handed her a folded, sealed square of paper and said, “Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?” She said not a word, merely accepted it, and with a slight bow, Mr. Darcy immediately departed.

She read his letter the first time with a mixture of emotions that changed as she read further, and even when she finished it, she was completely at sea. For almost two hours, she wandered through the Park, re-reading the missive and dwelling with complete concentration on its contents, and only fatigue reminded her of her long absence, prompting her return to the Parsonage. Before entering the house, she determined to appear as cheerful as possible, but she was not able to maintain the façade for long and departed to her room as soon as she was able.

Her eyes followed the now-familiar words of Mr. Darcy’s letter, unable to stop dwelling on the information contained therein.

Rosings, 8:00 of the morning, April 10, 1812

Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments or renewal of those offers which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any intention of paining you or humbling myself by dwelling on wishes which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten, and the effort which the formation and the perusal of this letter must occasion should have been spared had not my character required it to be written and read. You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I demand it of your justice.

Elizabeth shook her head in complete perplexity, remembering her initial astonishment that Mr. Darcy could have the effrontery to believe he could justify his actions and any apology was possible. She almost stopped reading at that point, and the impulse to simply destroy the letter was nigh overwhelming. But her curiosity prevailed, and she continued.