Darcy read the letter through to the end, then returned at once to the beginning.
Sir,
I trust you will pardon me for taking the liberty of writing to you. I should not have done so if I were not persuaded that the occasion must justify it.
Some weeks have passed since you favoured mewith information on a subject where I had before been much in error. Reflection has only increased my sense of the obligation, though circumstances have prevented my expressing it more openly. I have since become certain that the apprehensions then communicated were not without foundation.
Further inquiry has unfortunately confirmed enough to justify serious concern. I will not venture to state more plainly what cannot be proved to the satisfaction of the world; yet I do not doubt that the gentleman of whom I speak continues in habits which may render him dangerous to those who do not know his true nature.
It is this consideration which must be my excuse for troubling you further. My own conviction, and that of those whose judgement I most value, has not been sufficient to produce any effect where results are most needed. Reports unsupported by consequence are too easily dismissed, and there are many disposed to think well of one whose address makes him acceptable in every company. The matter is beyond my powers — but not, I think, beyond yours.
If, therefore, you should judge that any representation from a quarter entitled to greater weight than mine might properly be made to those who have authority over him, I believe it could not fail of usefulness. Forgive my presumption in asking you to do yet more when you have already exerted yourself beyond what anyone could have considered your obligations. I ask only out ofthe deepest conviction that what might be done by yourself could not be achieved by anyone else.
With deepest sincerity,
Bennet of Longbourn
Reading that careful, clever letter, Darcy could not help but smile. He had rarely seen a more careful dance between propriety and risk, nor one more elegantly perfect.
She had risked no name. No familiarity. No phrase that a curious servant, an officious companion, or even her own family might seize on with justice. Had the letter been intercepted, no scandal could have resulted. Every word was designed less to persuade him than to protect them both from any improper notice. She had concealed everything she ought to conceal, and trusted him to understand the rest.
He understood it perfectly.
The choice of “Bennet of Longbourn” alone was almost enough. Mr Bennet could not have been the author, because no man would have written so. No man would have taken such pains to say only what might safely be said, while leaving the true sense clear to the single reader intended to receive it. No man, above all, would have acknowledged gratitude in precisely that guarded way: enough for him, nothing for anyone else. On that thought, Darcy lowered the letter, but he did not set it aside.
She believed him. She trusted him.
The knowledge was not entirely new. In her countenance and in her manner during that extraordinary walk at Longbourn, he had seen that she was persuaded by what he told her. He had trusted her from the first to preserve Georgiana’s reputation with inviolable discretion, and on that point she had not disappointed him. Yet this was something more. She had not only believed him in the moment; she had acted on that belief. She had investigated. She had observed. She had risked enough to become certain that the danger remained. And having done all that could be done within her own power, she had at last asked for his help.
It had not been done lightly. Of that, he had no doubt. Lost in thought, Darcy rose and crossed slowly to the window, the letter still in his hand.
The square below was alive with the ordinary motions of a London morning: a tradesman’s cart trundling along, a nursemaid shepherding a child along the pavement, two gentlemen passing one another with the mutual indifference of strangers. He saw none of it with any real attention, for his mind had already left the room.
It was impossible not to retrace the course by which this letter had come into being. He remembered her expression when he had spoken Wickham’s name at Longbourn and seen her whole countenance harden with anger. He remembered, too,the speed with which indignation had given place to intelligent understanding once he began to state the facts. There had been no affectation in her horror on Georgiana’s account, no morbid curiosity, no attempt to force from him what he had not chosen to tell. Her questions had been few, pointed, and just. Even now he could hear her ask, with that mixture of spirit and seriousness entirely her own, why he had told her rather than her father. He had answered honestly that he trusted her judgment more. It had been a risk, but not one he regretted.
Indeed, he had not regretted it for a single hour. Yet what she now requested was no small consequence.
Darcy had long disdained acting openly against Wickham, and for good reason. To pursue him publicly was to renew a history connected with his father’s misplaced favour and his sister’s greatest danger. It was to enter a sphere of sordid detail and vulgar explanation from which every instinct recoiled. He had preferred to withdraw any expectation of patronage or favour and permit the man’s own conduct to do the rest. That it had not done the rest, and might never do so while charm and good looks continued to serve in place of principle, was a conclusion he was finding increasingly difficult to resist.
Elizabeth Bennet was not timid or fanciful. She was not prone to alarm, nor inclined to magnifyevery discomfort into danger. If she had brought herself to write such a letter at all, after the care it must have cost her, the matter was serious indeed.
And she had not written in selfishness. More than anything else, that fixed his attention. There was not a word in the letter that pleaded for herself. No complaint. No appeal to personal uneasiness. No attempt to move him by describing her fears or her family’s mortification. She spoke only of danger where it was “most readily welcomed,” of authority, of effect, of what was or was not useful. She had written like a woman thinking first of others and only afterward of her own situation.
He read the letter again and was struck anew by the phrase:my own conviction, and that of those whose judgement I most value…
The sentence admitted much in very little space. She had not been acting alone. Jane Bennet, then, almost certainly knew something of the matter, though not all. Perhaps Mary Bennet as well; he recalled enough of that young lady’s grave, observant manner to suppose her capable of becoming a valuable ally. Elizabeth had not surrendered herself to solitary anxiety. She had consulted, examined, and concluded. The decision to write was therefore not the impulse of a frightened moment, but the end of deliberation.
Darcy folded the letter once, precisely, then unfolded it again.
He was honoured by her trust. The admission came uninvited, and having once presented itself, could not be denied. She had every reason, not many weeks before, to think poorly of him. He had offended her by his pride, allowed her to misinterpret his reserve as contempt, and suffered Wickham to poison her opinion of him with shocking success. That she now wrote as she did, carefully and gravely, yet with evident confidence that he would understand and weigh her request fairly, was no small thing. It was, in its own restrained way, an act of esteem.
The thought was not unwelcome. It stirred in him an emotion too complex to be called only gratitude. Respect was in it. Relief was in it. There was also, he could not deny, a warmth which had less to do with Wickham than with the hand that had written the page and the mind that had directed every line of it.
He checked himself almost immediately. This was not the time to indulge feeling. The subject was serious. Her confidence deserved something better than self-congratulation.
He returned to the breakfast table and set the letter beside his plate just as the door opened and Georgiana entered with Mrs Annesley.
Georgiana’s expression brightened at the sight of him. “Brother, I hope I am not very late.”
