Darcy's Diary (12 page)

This
was to be the end of all my struggles? To be rejected? And in such a manner! I! A Darcy! To be answered as though I was a fortune-hunter or an undesirable suitor. My astonishment quickly gave way to resentment. So resentful did I feel that I would not open my lips until I believed I had mastered my emotion.

‘And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting!' I said at last. ‘I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little
endeavour
at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.'

‘I might as well enquire,' replied she heatedly, ‘why with so evident a
design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I
was
uncivil? But I have other provocations. You know I have. Had not my own feelings decided against you, had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?'

I felt myself change colour. So she had heard of that. I hoped she had not. It could not be expected to make her think well of me. But I had nothing to be ashamed of. I had acted in the best interests of my friend.

‘I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted
there
,' she went on.

I felt my expression hardening. Unjust? Ungenerous? No indeed.

‘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.'

I could not believe what I was hearing. Caprice and instability? Who would judge Bingley capricious for removing to London when he had business to attend to?

Derision for disappointed hopes? Miss Bennet had had no hopes, unless they had been planted in her mind by her mother, who could see no further than Bingley's five thousand pounds a year.

Misery of the acutest kind? Yes, that was what Bingley would have suffered if he had voiced his feelings. He would have been joined to a woman who was beneath him.

‘I have no wish to deny 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.'

Elizabeth ignored my remark and said, ‘But it is not merely this affair 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 which 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? Or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?'

Wickham! She could not have found a name more calculated to wound and, at the same time, disgust me.

‘You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns,' I remarked in agitation.

I regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. What was it to me if she showed an interest in George Wickham? After her refusal of my hand, nothing about Elizabeth had any right to interest me ever again.

And yet the mortification I felt intensified, and I found a new emotion in my breast, a most unwelcome one. Jealousy. I found it intolerable that she should prefer George Wickham to me! That she should be unable to see through his smiling exterior to the black heart beneath.

‘Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?'

‘His misfortunes!' I repeated. What tale had he been spinning her? Wickham, who had had everything. Who had been spoilt and petted in childhood and, despite that, had turned into one of the most dissolute, profligate young men of my acquaintance.

As I thought of the money my father had lavished on him, the opportunities he had had, and the help I myself had given him, I could not help my lip's curling. ‘Yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.'

‘And of your infliction, she said angrily. ‘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 desert. You have done all this! And yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule.'

‘And this,' I cried, as, goaded beyond endurance, I began to pace the room, ‘is your opinion of me! 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! 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. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. I am not 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?'

She was growing as angry as I was, yet she controlled her temper sufficiently to reply.

‘You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, 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 gentleman-like manner.'

I felt an intense shock.
If I had behaved in a more gentleman-like
manner?
When had I ever been anything but a gentleman?

‘You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it,' she said.

I could not believe it. She could never have accepted my hand? Never accept a connection with the Darcy family? Never accept all the benefits that would accrue to her as my wife? It was madness. And to blame it, not on my manner, but on my person! I looked at her with open incredulity. I, who had been courted in drawing-rooms the length and breadth of the land!

But she had not finished.

‘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 ground-work 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.'

I felt incredulity give way to anger, and anger to humiliation. My mortification was now complete.

‘You have said quite enough, madam,' I told her curtly. ‘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 to prove that I was, even now after such base insults, a gentleman, I added: ‘and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.'

Then, having delivered myself of my final proud utterance I left the room.

I returned to Rosings, walking blindly, seeing nothing of my surroundings, seeing only Elizabeth. Elizabeth telling me I had ruined her sister's happiness. Elizabeth telling me I had ruined George Wickham's hopes. Elizabeth telling me I had not behaved like a gentleman. Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Elizabeth.

I said not a word at dinner. I saw nothing, heard nothing, tasted nothing. I thought only of her.

Try as I might, I could not put her accusations out of my mind. The charge that I had ruined her sister's happiness might have some merit, though I had acted for the best. The accusation that I had ruined Wickham's hopes was of another order. It impugned my honour, and I could not let it rest.

‘A game of billiards, Darcy?' asked Colonel Fitzwilliam, when Lady Catherine and Anne retired for the night.

‘No. Thank you. I have a letter to write.'

He looked at me curiously but said nothing. I retired to my room and took up my quill. I had to exonerate myself. I had to answer her accusation. I had to show her she was wrong. And yet how?

I scored through the lines as soon as I had written them. She was not my dear Miss Bennet. I had not the right to call her dear.

I crushed my piece of paper and threw it away.

The name conjured up an image of her sister. It would not do.

I threw away a second sheet of paper.

No.

I tried again.

She will not read it.

Better.

Yes. The manner was formal but, I prided myself, not stiff. It should relieve her immediate concerns and persuade her to read on. But what to write next? How to put into words what I had to say?

I threw down my quill and walked over to the window. I looked out over the parkland as I gathered my thoughts. The night was still. There were no clouds, and the moon could be seen glistening in the sky. Beneath that same moon, within the parsonage, was Elizabeth.

What was she thinking? Was she thinking about me? About my proposal? About my sins?

My sins! I had no sins. I returned to my desk and read over what I had written. I picked up my quill and continued. My words flowed easily.

Blasted the prospects of that scoundrel! I had given him every benefit, and he had repaid me by seeking to ruin my sister. But the first charge must be answered first.

I thought back to the autumn, when I had first arrived in Hertfordshire. It was a few months ago only, and yet it seemed a lifetime away.

Let there be no deception. I had done with deceit. I
had
seen a partiality in Bingley, and I did not disguise it.

I was charitable, allowing Elizabeth her feelings, and her natural defensiveness on behalf of her sister, but I must also be charitable to myself.

I hesitated. I had expressed these feelings before, in person. Elizabeth's words came back to me. ‘Had you behaved in a more
gentleman
-like manner.' Was it ungentleman-like to list her family's failings? My anger stirred. No, it was nothing but the truth. And I would tell the truth. I had already given her a disgust of me. I had nothing left to fear.

Ungentleman-like? I thought, as I wrote the words. I had begged her pardon. What could be more gentleman-like than that?

Not only gentleman-like but magnanimous, I thought, well pleased.

I paused for a moment. Here my conscience troubled me. I had behaved in an underhand manner. It had worried me at the time, for deceit is repugnant to me, and yet I had done it.

I paused again. But the letter must be written, and the night was drawing on.