The thought left her ill, and she longed to escape the room, yet her limbs felt leaden. She feared that she might crumple to the floor before she reached the door.
At last, she passed from the drawing room into the darkened hall. She clutched at the wall until she recovered herself enough to flee and then hurried blindly up the stairs to her room.
She rang the bell and began working at the buttons of her gown. When the maid entered, Elizabeth said, “I require your help to change my dress.”
After she was dressed in a simple walking gown, she packed a portmanteau with her hairbrushes and her nightdress. Then she turned to the maid, “Please send for the gig. I am returning to Longbourn. You may pack the remainder of my things in the morning and notify my sister that I wish to have my trunk delivered to my home.”
The maid looked surprised. “At this hour, miss? It is near one in the morning.”
“Yes. Pray call for the gig. If it is not available, I shall walk.”
“No, miss. I shall have them bring the gig around.”
Elizabeth slipped into her pelisse and gloves, then hurried down the servants’ stairs that the maid had just used. When shereached the front entrance, she said to the footman, “I shall wait outside. Please inform Mrs. Bingley that I have returned to Longbourn with the headache.”
The gig drew up shortly, and Elizabeth fled from Netherfield and from Mr. Darcy.
The cool Autumn air made her shiver, but nothing served to distract her mind from his cutting words. Her throat remained so tight that she could scarcely breathe, and the sobs she held back seemed to choke her.
It had all been a sham, a fiction. Or worse still, perhaps he had been working on her so that she would eventually agree to become his mistress. She understood then how a respectable woman might be persuaded to accept such an arrangement.
At last, the gig reached Longbourn, and she alighted in haste, hurrying down the path. The door was locked. She seized the knocker and struck it, scarcely able to wait.
Mr. Hill opened the door, and Mrs. Hill stood behind him.
Elizabeth fell against her neck and cried, “Hill, I am undone.”
The tears she had restrained could no longer be held. They poured forth as she clutched her beloved servant. At last, she made her way to the foot of the stairs, sank down upon a step, and buried her face in her hands. Her heart was breaking.
Mr. Bennet came from his study. “Lizzy, what has happened? Has someone harmed you? Did a man assault you?”
Elizabeth shook her head and said between sobs, “No, Papa. I am safe. Nothing of that sort has occurred.”
“Come, Lizzy. Come to my study and tell me what has befallen you. Has Mr. Darcy made an indecent proposal to you?”
Elizabeth shook her head and said, “Not quite.”
He led her into his study, and they sat together upon the couch. For a time, she could not speak. She leaned against his shoulder and wept. It seemed that all the tears of the past year, which had never been shed, found their release that night.
At length, she recovered herself sufficiently to speak of the scene with Mr. Darcy.
“He has been ill-tempered throughout the day, though it was nothing beyond what I have seen in the weeks I have resided at Netherfield. But not an hour ago, he was denigrating our family and me to his London friends. He spoke of our connections to professional men who must earn their living and of our inconsequential estate.”
She looked at her father. “It was humiliating, and in every way horrible. My heart aches, Papa.”
She dried her eyes and blew her nose. “We are nothing to him. I already knew it, of course. I had not set my heart upon him, for I understood he moved in a sphere far above my own. Yet to hear from his own lips what he thinks of us. We are dirt beneath his feet. We are worse than strangers, for he must acknowledge us if he should meet us at the theater or in some other place.”
She sobbed into her handkerchief before continuing. “When we first met in London, he had been so friendly, so attentive. Yet he says that a man and a woman can never be friends, for they will either become lovers, a man and his mistress, or husband and wife. And he declared that a Bennet is too lowly for one such as he or Mr. Allen.”
She bent forward with her face buried in her hands and began to weep again.
Bennet handed her his handkerchief, then placed his arm about her shoulders in comfort. Tears stood in his own eyes. Hill stood just outside the door with her handkerchief pressed to her face. The darkened house lay wrapped in grief.
Back at Netherfield, Georgiana remained fixed to the place where she had heard her brother’s ill-judged speech. She stared at him in astonishment, unable to believe what her own ears had heard.
Then anger overtook her.
She rushed at him and struck her fists against his chest.
