That is a fine quality indeed.
“And rarer than one might expect. Fortunately, it is not the sole measure of a good character, otherwise I should be perpetually disappointed.”
He desperately wished to know who had disappointed her. Her friend, for marrying a fool? Bingley, for abandoning her sister? Him, for encouraging it? He was too cowardly to enquire and wrote, instead,
What else then? What other virtues are good enough to earn the good opinion of the discerning Miss Elizabeth Bennet?
It would have been the height of vanity to ask the question in the hope of her answering with a list of qualities to match his own, and he assured himself that was not his design. Still, when she began by talking about her mother, he assumed her purpose was to chastise him by praising she whom he had unreservedly disparaged. Great was his chagrin as it dawned on him her answer had nothing in the slightest to do with him, no matter from which angle he viewed it.
Elizabeth spoke of Mrs Bennet in terms that had neveroccurred to Darcy. He had often seen her blush for her mother’s behaviour and had never thought of the older woman in any other terms than as a source of embarrassment to the rest of her family. It was edifying, in a way that reflected very poorly on him, to hear Elizabeth speak proudly and tenderly of her mother’s devotion to her family, her well-meant endeavours to do well by a husband and five children, each of vastly different temperaments, with limited means and an even more limited imagination at her disposal. Worldliness, refinement, intelligence—none of these things mattered to Elizabeth half as much as affection and goodness. Qualities the ostensibly unsophisticated Mrs Bennet apparently possessed in abundance.
It may not have been her object to humble him, but Darcy was nonetheless shamed. Why was it that every conversation with Elizabeth led to another facet of him being undone?
I must make an apology. I have grossly underestimated your mother if it is from her that you have learnt your remarkable compassion.
She looked taken aback and even blushed a little. “Do not all mothers teach love and affection, by dint of loving us?”
He was not sure. His mother had given him good principles but spoilt him, he supposed, in not directing him more stringently on how he ought to follow them.
Elizabeth looked at him intently and bit off two attempts to speak before finally venturing, “Will you tell me about yours?”
Darcy baulked. He rarely talked about his mother.
My mother is dead.
Of course, his bluntness did not deter Elizabeth as it would most people—as it had been intended to do.
“I know that, sir,” she replied softly. “She was still your mother.”
He shifted in his seat, ignoring the way it pulled at the healing flesh upon his neck.
She has been dead a very long time.
“May I ask how long?” she enquired gently.
He opened and closed all five fingers of one hand three times to indicate that she had been dead these past fifteen years.
“So young.”
Darcy knew not whether she referred to him or his mother so gave no response.
“She died birthing your sister?”
He replied in the negative with an extended finger and wrote,
A fever, unrelated. We never discovered the cause.
“And your sister an infant still?”
He touched the back of one hand with a finger of the other to confirm it.
“I am sorry. I imagine it was a dreadful time—for you and your father.”
My father was away and unable to return in time. I held my mother's hand until she was gone. And for a day and a half afterwards.
He stared at the words, not knowing why he had writtenthem. The only people who knew that tale were his housekeeper, Mrs Reynolds, and the long-deceased Mr Wickham Senior, Pemberley’s steward at the time. It had been necessary for the latter to forcibly remove him from his mother’s chamber, for he had refused to leave of his own accord. He dared not look up, for the admission made him feel intolerably exposed. He did not need to lift his eyes to see Elizabeth lean forward to take the pen from his fingers and write beneath his last line,
That tells me all I could ever wish to know about your mother. Thank you.
