“I would see other women, and lust after them in my heart. I am a man who takes my duties seriously. A violation of my marital oaths was impossible, but… I apologize for speaking of such matters with you, but the words are from the Holy Bible:Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.I was such a man.”
“I am no theologian,” Elizabeth said slowly. “But I had thought the purpose of that passage, which as I recall ended with ‘be ye perfect as your father in heaven also is perfect’, was to emphasize the impossibility of being so Holy as to deserve the kindness of the Almighty.”
Darcy waved that reply away.
“Is it not a matter of grace, and not just desserts, in which we must hope?”
“I failed my duty.”
“And you decided,” Elizabeth asked, “to not marry after she died, because you did not deserve to be happy? Because you had committed adultery in your heart.”
“I am happy. My care of Emily makes me happier than I ever have been in the whole of my previous life.”
Elizabeth twisted her lips. His reasoning. It was… foolish. “She could not possibly have wished you to behave in such a way. Not if she was as good as you say she was.”
“I know exactly what she wished,” Darcy replied sharply. “I do this act of respect for her out of my own sense of rightness. Not because it reflects her wishes. Do not blameherfor that. She tried… when she realized she was dying she tried to make me promise to marry again, to make myself happy. That was one of the last things she said. And… then she said that I had made her happy, and that she had seen I was not so happy with her, and that she wished for me to find a happiness like she’d had. You see her goodness? As she was dying, she wanted me to be happy… and… a disgusting, rank, vile, evil, terrible part of my mind had thought before, while we waited to see the consequences of her child labour, that if she did die in pregnancy, I would be free to marry as I wanted. Do you not understand?”
“And so, you decided you hated yourself?”
“No, you misunderstand me. I only…” Darcy looked at his hands.
He raised them before his face, and looked rather like the actor when she’d seen Macbeth in London:Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood, Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.
The thought almost made Elizabeth smile, but the matter was too tragic for her to be really amused.
“You only determined not to marry again. It is not a matter of self-hatred, or so you claim to yourself.”
“Yes.” He looked at her, made a small stiff smile. “You do not approve.”
“I respect the memory of Mrs. Darcy too much to disagree with her advice.”
All was quiet.
Birds hopped from branch to branch. A few remaining leaves fell from the oak trees and drifted to the ground. Emilyplayed around in the leaves and found a beetle that she pointed out to them.
Elizabeth wondered at the time. She must have been long since missed, and she hoped that there was not too much worry. Darcy’s aspect was grim. He looked more at the pond than his daughter, though it was clear that part of his attention always tracked where she went, and whether she seemed safe.
A cold breeze blew through Elizabeth’s pelisse, though it did not bother Emily, bundled as she was, and happily making small noises to herself.
“I do not think,” Elizabeth said hesitatingly, without daring to look at Darcy, “we imagine our reason and our minds to be sovereign. But… a human is made of many parts.” She looked at him and then said with a smile, expecting him to catch her reference, “We are of three parts a charioteer and two horses, one good and one bad. The bad horse is part of you. It will urge you onto unhappy deeds. It will be there, just like it is present in every man. That is what a human is. But I know this much of you, you have always given short rein to the urgings of that bad horse, the one that pulls towards the lower passions, and given long rein to the good horse, the one that drives you towards heaven.”
Darcy looked at her. His intense eyes.
“That is what is important.” She felt warm and cold all over as their eyes held, and neither looked away from the other until Emily ran up to Darcy and started pulling at his leg.
He bent and picked Emily up, and said, “I imagine that you have been missed and the time for your call to end has long since passed.” He looked at Elizabeth again.
There was something she could not understand in the intensity of his gaze.
Then he said, reluctantly, “You ought to return to the house.”
“Yes,” she nodded.
But she could not go.
They stared at each other for a long time. Elizabeth tried to memorize the way his face looked.
He then said, “Thank you.”
