“I might as well inquire why with so evident a desire 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? Did not your manner of address give me license to respond in kind? It seems you enjoy slighting me. The very first time I saw you, you insulted me when I, like other ladies, was sitting out at the assembly in Meryton to allow other young ladies the opportunity to dance due to many of the men being away at war. But I have other reasons—many of them. You are too intelligent to not know I have. Had not my feelings already been so firmly decided against you, or perhaps had it only been indifference, or by some miracle favourable, do you think for one second that I would ever align myself with the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?”
As Elizabeth—no, after this rejection she was Miss Bennet—said what she did, Darcy changed colour. He could not fathom how she knew. The thoughts were interrupted when she continued speaking.
“Even before my suspicions of your role in harming my sister were confirmed, I already had every reason in the world to think poorly of you. No excuse will pardon you of the despicablepart you had in that. 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, and the other to its derision for disappointed hopes; involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.” Elizabeth paused and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse.
He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity.
“Can you deny that you have done it?” Elizabeth demanded.
With tranquillity Darcy did not feel, he faced her. “I have no wish of denying 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.”
Seeing how cavalier he was about harming Jane removed the last vestiges of restraint Elizabeth felt. “Although what you did to Jane was terrible, it is only one of the many things which made me dislike you intensely. How can you, a supposed gentleman, propose to me when you are engaged to your cousin? You speak of my family’s faults yet it was my father who used one hundred and nine pounds of his own money to pay the staff and servants at Netherfield Park. This was because Miss Bingley ran away like a thief in the night without closing the house as it should be done, paying what was owed to those who served her, and without the thought of a character for any of them. How were those who were abandoned to seek alternate employment without anything from the previous employer? These are yourhonourablefriends?”
Darcy wanted to respond but Miss Bennet kept on speaking.
“Thanks to Miss Bingley’s letter, I know what your truemotivation for interfering between Mr Bingley and Jane was. You want him to continue courting your sister. I understand what a dishonourable man you are because your character was revealed to me many months ago by Mr Wickham. On these subjects, how can you defend yourself? From Colonel Fitzwilliam’s own mouth, I know you like to control everything and everyone. I, Mr Darcy, will never be under your control.”
The mention of Wickham caused Darcy to forget to first address the other point she had flung at him. “You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns,” he said in anger.
“Anyone who knows of the misfortunes you have inflicted on him, and is a good person, cannot but help feeling an interest in him!”
“His misfortunes!” repeated Darcy contemptuously; “Yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.”
“And of your infliction!” cried Elizabeth with energy. “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 he deserved. You have done all this and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and ridicule.”
“And this 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!” Darcy exclaimed. “Perhaps, much would have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented me from declaring myself. These bitter accusations might not have been mentioned had I hidden my struggles from you. If I had rather flattered you; allowed you to believe that I was driven by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.” As Darcy said the lasthis conscience screamed that he was not telling the truth. He ignored the voice and kept speaking. “Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? Should I have congratulated myself that I was to gain relations whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”
If she had felt anger before, now Elizabeth felt a building fury. She still attempted to speak calmly. “If you think that had you proposed to me without rude and insulting words would have in any way changed my response to you, then you are delusional. Had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner, I may have been kinder in my refusal.” Elizabeth saw Mr Darcy pull back as if she had slapped him, but he said nothing. She continued, “You could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”
Darcy could not believe what he was hearing. He looked at Miss Bennet with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification.
“From the very beginning of my acquaintance with you—from the first moment I saw you, as I mentioned your behaviour at the assembly—the way you acted demonstrated your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others. This formed the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike. That first time I met you, I decided that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.”
He was reeling. Fitzwilliam pummelling him at Gentleman Jack’s would not sting as much. “You have said quite enough, Madam. 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 accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.”
Darcy grabbed his hat and gloves and left the room as fast as his feet were able to carry him.
Elizabeth fell back into the chair and cried for half-an-hour. She knew that all the daggers she had flung at his door were justified, so her tears were not for that. They were for the pain he had caused Jane, Mr Bingley, Mr Wickham, and countless others she did not know. She was also upset that she had allowed Mr Darcy to provoke her to retaliate the way she had.
She felt very agitated—never picking her book up again—sitting unmoving until she heard the carriage in the drive. The last thing Elizabeth wanted was to be in company, not even Charlotte’s.
She grabbed her slippers and book and rushed up to her chamber, closing the door firmly before the front door was opened.
A little while later there was a soft knock on her door, but Elizabeth was not ready to speak to Charlotte yet. She knew it was cowardice, but she kept silent and soon her friend went away.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Darcy was halfway back to the mansion when he stopped and needed to lean against a tree as the shock of what had just occurred began to sink in. He slowly but surely remembered everything Miss Bennet had said, the things he had ignored after she mentioned Wickham.
Had he not seen one of his Aunt’s carriages on its way to the parsonage, he may have returned to defend himself. He was not articulate, as had been proved in his proposal which had been nothing like the one he planned to deliver. Hence, he would write her an epistle. She was correct about his insult of her, his behaviour in Hertfordshire, and that he had assisted in keeping Bingley from her older sister. However, ineverythingelse, she was very wrong.
With a renewed sense of purpose, he strode back to themanor house. He heard voices from the drawing room. As much as he wanted to make directly for his suite, Darcy knew that good manners dictated he greet his family.
“Darcy, how dare you disappear before dinner in that way?” Lady Catherine demanded.
As he looked at his Aunt Catherine, he realised that his family also had those who made cakes of themselves like he had abhorred in the Bennets. Was he a hypocrite? “I had some business that needed urgent attention, and now I need to go complete it. Aunt Catherine, Aunt Elaine, Uncle Reggie, Andrew, and Richard, I bid you a good night.” Darcy bowed and left the drawing room.
“Leave him be, Catherine,” Matlock instructed before his sister tried to call Darcy back. She had softened for a few days after he, his wife, and heir had arrived, but now, she was back to being her normal self. He knew Catherine was concerned for Anne, and even visited her now and again, but she still tried to make like all was well. Finding the heir would not be easy. The late Sir Lewis de Bourgh had left a letter with the late Robert Darcy telling them who Eloise de Bourgh married. Nothing had been sent to him. Anne had once mentioned a hidden place where she and Robert kept special documents. It was not in a safe, but Matlock could not for the life of him remember where it was.
