Page 12 of A Selfish Disdain

On several occasions, Darcy resolved to shorten his stay at Netherfield, to remove himself from a temptation his own reason told him he ought never to have permitted to take root, and would discover, examining his correspondence for some plausible pretext, that he had invented three separate reasons why his departure must, after all, be delayed a little longer.

This will not do, he told himself standing at his bedroom window, holding a letter he had not the smallest intention of finishing.

This is precisely the situation I have always despised in other men, and I will not be made a fool because the lady in question happens to possess an understanding I have not encountered in the whole of my acquaintance, he told himself, firmly resolved.

But the resolution, however firmly made, had a way of dissolving the moment she entered a room; the moment her eyes met his with that particular light of challenge she seemed to reserve for him alone, as though she had already anticipated some objection he had not yet troubled to voice, and was prepared to demolish it before he could raise it.

Darcy had spent a good portion of his life believing himself a man governed entirely by reason, proof against the sort of ungoverned feeling he had observed, not without some private contempt, in weaker men; and he found it a humbling thing, at eight-and-twenty, to discover that reason, confronted with Elizabeth Bennet's good opinion, mounted a defence a good deal less formidable than he had always supposed it capable of.

He did not yet know what he meant to do about it. He knew only that the battle, which he had entered with every confidence of an easy victory, had begun to feel a good deal more evenly matched than he wanted to admit.

CHAPTER 7

It was not long before the wider neighbourhood took notice of what the household at Netherfield had already grown accustomed to, and began, with the particular relish a small society reserves for any entertainment not of its own making, to look forward to an evening in company with Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy.

"You must sit near them at dinner, if you can contrive it," Mrs. Long was heard to advise a visiting cousin, at a card party given by Sir William Lucas. "They will not disappoint you. I have not laughed so well at any dinner these two years as I did last month, hearing Miss Eliza tell Mr. Darcy his opinion of the militia wanted nothing but experience of an actual battle to recommend it."

"And Mr. Darcy?" asked the cousin. "Does he take it well?"

"He takes it very ill, my dear, which is the whole of the entertainment. He grows so grave, and argues back so earnestly, that you would think his honour depended upon it, and then Miss Eliza says something sharper still, and he grows graver yet, and so it goes, back and forth, until one hardly knows whether to laugh or to send for the surgeon."

This report, whatever its exaggerations, was not far from the general truth of the matter, as Elizabeth and Darcy had become, without any design on either side, the settled entertainment of every dinner, every card party, and every small evening gathering to which both happened to be invited, which was, by now, very nearly every one that Hertfordshire's limited society had to offer.

Their disputes ranged as widely as their company permitted, from the merits of Mr. Cowper's poetry against Mr. Pope's, whether a woman's understanding was improved or injured by too much reading, the proper conduct of a gentleman toward his tenants, and, upon one memorable evening at Lucas Lodge, the entire question of whether pride could ever be accounted a virtue, which occupied the better part of an hour and left half the room uncertain which of the two disputants had prevailed.

"I maintain," Darcy had said, upon that occasion, "that a proper pride is a just sense of what is due to oneself and one's family. There is no vice in it at all, but is the very foundation of good conduct."

"And I maintain, sir, that what you call a just sense of what is due to oneself is very often nothing more than vanity wearing a more respectable coat, and that the gentleman who prides himself upon his own correctness is generally the last person in the room to notice when he has been wrong."

"You accuse me of vanity, then?" He asked gravely.

Elizabeth, always quick to reply, said, "I accuse you of nothing, Mr. Darcy, beyond a fondness for winning arguments. Though, I will confess that I share that sentiment much more than I ought to admit in company."

This last remark, delivered with a smile Darcy had come to recognise and, though he would not have owned it, to watch for, drew a laugh from the surrounding company and a look from Darcy himself that was not entirely displeasure.

***

What the neighbourhood took for entertainment, however, Jane was certain was something rather more considered, and she was not alone in the observation. Charlotte Lucas, calling at Netherfield one afternoon while Elizabeth was occupied elsewhere in the house, remarked to Jane over their tea that she had never seen two people argue so constantly and so evidently enjoy it.

"I begin to think, Mrs. Bingley, that your sister and Mr. Darcy have found in argument what most people find in agreement. They cannot converse ten minutes together without disputing something. However, I have also never seen either of them leave the other's company looking anything but sorry that the conversation had ended."

"I have thought the very same thing," said Jane, "though Lizzy will not hear a word of it from me. She insists there is nothing beneath it but two people who cannot agree, and grows quite cross if I suggest otherwise."

Charlotte offered a ready and knowing smile and a dry reply. "That is generally how these things begin, I believe. A lady, like our Eliza, rarely admits to liking a gentleman until she has first exhausted every possible argument against him."

For his own part, Darcy had begun to observe that his opinion of Elizabeth Bennet had undergone yet another change, his motivation in speaking and debating with Elizabeth. He found that he did not merely enjoy disagreeing with her; he had come to value the disagreement itself, as a kind of testing-ground upon which he trusted his own opinions more, and not less, for having survived her scrutiny.

Elizabeth contradicted him, he began to understand, not from any wish to wound or to win, but from an honesty of mind that would not permit her to agree where she did not, and he found, upon further reflection, that he could not think of another person of his acquaintance, man or woman, whose disagreement he valued half so much, or whose good opinion, could he once be certain of winning it, he would value more.

He said as much to Bingley, one evening, as they enjoyed several liberal portions of port together, celebrating the successful completion of the new drainage system.

"I begin to think, Bingley, that Miss Elizabeth Bennet possesses the finest understanding of any woman I have met, though she exercises it chiefly in contradicting me."

"I could have told you that a month ago," said Bingley, "and, in fact, I begin to think I did, if you recall, though you did not thank me for it at the time."

Darcy reflected honestly. "I did not think it worth remarking upon, at the time.”

Bingley took a sip of brandy before asking, "And do you think it worth remarking upon now?"