It was in the marriage vows. Marriage was a “remedy against sin.”
The thinking of it, as he understood it, was sort of that people couldn’t stop themselves from doing this terribly terrible and uncouth sinful behavior, so God had decreed that they could just get married, and then you could do it, but not very often and only to get children and only ever with that one person.
The way marriage seemed to work was that you soon wanted to do it with that personleastof all other persons in the world, though, and this was probably according to God’s design, since temptation was so tempting and wrong and iniquitous and all of that.
Darcy would own, of course, this was not theonlyway that such things were interpreted.
For one thing, Darcy knew a number of educated men who didn’t seem to really believe the scriptures at all, viewing them as a kind of fairy story for people who were too stupid to handle the truth of the universe, which was that everything was sort of brutish and brief and nonsensical.
Sexual intercourse existed for the purpose of making children. It was better for children to be brought up with fathers than not, so marriage ensured that, for it made it clear the paternity of babes and it meant that men would protect theirwives and children. There was nothing in that about temptation or sin or not doing it very often, just a certain kind of practicality.
For another thing, there were people who pointed out that if God had told the human race in the Garden of Eden to be fruitful and multiply, he had probably meant it, and this would imply there was no reason to feel that marital sexual activity was sinful at all.
What did Darcy himself believe?
Well, this was shameful, but he’d settled much more firmly on the side of the fence that thought that sexual intercourse ought to be done sparingly and only during marriagebeforedeveloping this fascination with Elizabeth Bennet.
Mr. Darcy was, himself, a virgin, well, at least to the degree that he had never penetrated a womanthere. He’d kept company with women he met in taverns—actresses and the like—but he’d been very careful,abundantlycareful, never to get any of them with child. In case the practical way of thinking was the correct one, he supposed? He didn’t wish to have left bastards here and there in the streets of London.
But even with this sort of behavior, he hadn’t indulged very often, and he’d said no to these women more often than not, had thrust bawds off his lap and given them stern looks and ordered them to ply their trades on other men who were more amenable. He indulged when he was very drunk or very sad or very much in need of distraction from something unpleasant. Rarely, that was.
And he had never—never—pursued a woman of his class, a woman of gentle birth, because he had been thinking of her inthatway.
Even the idea of it seemed wrong in some way, as if it diminished a woman to turn her into something on par with a courtesan, as if it tarred her with a brush of wickedness.
So, he supposed he didn’t quite admit to himself that part of his fascination with Elizabeth Bennet was, erm, physical.
It wasn’t all that way, of course, because he found her dizzyingly intelligent and very self-possessed. She was quick-witted and she could be rather cutting. She did not defer to him, something that stirred him (although, perhaps that stirred him inthatway as well), and she had a quiet strength that emanated from her, a way about her that was nearly regal, truly.
To think, she hadrefusedhis marriage proposal owing to herprinciples.
And this when he knew that her family would have benefited from it, that she herself had little hope of a good marriage otherwise.
She could ill-afford to refuse him and yet she had.
This made her more appealing to him, not less.
But even then, he couldn’t say the feelings he had towards her were ruinous and irrevocable. It happened later, in the woods, in the rain, Wickham’s hands all over her, saying that she was going to be his wife.
There had been a moment when Wickham had told Elizabeth to tell Darcy that she liked it, and Elizabeth had stared off into the distance and woodenly said that she liked it, and Darcy had never felt such helpless rage in that moment.
He would like to say it was because he felt protectiveness towards her or that he knew she was lying when she said it and that he’d wished to punish Wickham for harming her, that sort of thing.
It wasn’t as if that wasn’t part of it, but there were other parts of it.
There was jealousy.
There was possessiveness.
There was anger with her, for wanting Wickham and not him.
It was a tangle of all sorts of emotions, very few of them to his credit.
And after that, it had been all over. It would just be her, then, only her, and no one else, and he was certain of that.
Shamefully, he still wished to bed her.
Not that he ever would, of course, because she was married to Richard, his cousin.
