Page 16 of A Selfish Disdain

Elizabeth, for her part, observing Darcy's continued gravity, told herself it was proof of exactly what she had already concluded, that the diversion had run its course, and that whatever she had permitted herself to imagine beneath the sparring had been, from the beginning, a great deal more than the sparring itself had ever actually promised.

However, Jane, who observed a great deal more than either of them supposed, confided to her husband one evening, when they were alone, that she did not know when she had seen two people go to such trouble to make each other, and themselves, so entirely miserable.

"I had thought them halfway to an understanding a month ago," said Bingley, frowning. "What in the world could have happened?"

"I do not know," said Jane, "though I begin to suspect that whatever it is, neither of them has the least notion of how to mend it, nor even, perhaps, that there is anything to mend."

"Should we say something?" He asked, wondering if Jane felt one way or the other.

After a moment’s consideration, Jane said, "I think that we had much better not. I do not believe either of them would thank us for it, and I have found, upon the whole, that these things generally right themselves better without an audience than with one; though I confess I do not know how long I can watch it go on before my patience is past bearing."

Mr. Bingley agreed, as he generally did in matters that wife spoke, and drew her against him, her head finding its familiar place beneath his chin, content, for the moment, to let the fire and the quiet of the room answer for them both, and to leave Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet to whatever slow, stubborn reckoning still lay ahead of them.

CHAPTER 9

A letter arrived at Netherfield on a Tuesday morning, carried by an express rider whose haste in delivering it threw the whole breakfast table into an anxious silence before a single word of its contents had been read aloud.

It was soon discovered that the letter came from Mrs. Gardiner, and it was as short and as it was distressing. She explained that Mr. Gardiner had been taken suddenly and seriously ill; a fever of the kind the physician advised that the family be gathered and that Mrs. Gardiner not be left, in the present circumstance, to manage alone with four young children and a household.

She did not ask for Elizabeth by name; she had been too distracted in the writing, it seemed, to ask for anything so particular. But Elizabeth, reading the letter through herself for a second time, knew in her heart, which felt like it was in her throat, that she must go at once.

"I will write to say I am coming directly," Elizabeth said, already rising from the table. "My aunt has no one else she can properly call upon. Papa cannot leave Mama in the state this news will put her in, and you, Jane…"

"I cannot travel," said Jane, quietly, and the look that passed between the sisters said the rest of it without either needing to speak the words aloud, that Jane, not yet three months gone with her first child, had been advised by the physician against any exertion more strenuous than a turn about the garden, and that a hard day's journey to London in uncertain weather was entirely out of the question.

"Of course not; I will go alone," said Elizabeth, "and think no more about it. My aunt wants help, and I can offer it, even if I am obliged to travel."

However, Mr. Bennet's own carriage, sent for by express the moment the news arrived, was found, upon inquiry, to want a wheel that would not be mended before the following afternoon at the earliest. It was a delay Elizabeth could not be brought to accept, as her aunt's letter made it plain that a delay of even a single day might be one day too many.

Unfortunately, Bingley's carriage stood ready enough, but Bingley himself could not be spared from Netherfield, the harvest being at its most pressing stage and a full third of his tenants dependent upon decisions he was presently equipped to make; nor could Jane's condition, whatever the vehicle, permit her to undertake the journey as companion and chaperone both.

"I will go on the stagecoach" Elizabeth said again, with particular firmness. "I do not think the roads to London so very dangerous that a woman travelling for a few hours in a public carriage need fear for anything beyond a little discomfort."

It was Darcy who spoke next, and he spoke with his own confident assertion. "You will not go alone, Miss Bennet."

She turned to him, wearing a frown, "I beg your pardon, sir?"

"I say you will not go alone, because it is neither safe nor proper, whatever your own confidence in the roads, and because I am, as it happens, obliged to travel to town myself within the week upon business of my own that will not keep much longer. I can as easily undertake it today as next Tuesday, and I would be glad to place my carriage, and my escort, at your service, if you will permit it."

The offer was made as if it were an immediate decision, and it left very little room for any sort of polite refusal of Elizabeth's pride. Instead, she looked at him for a long moment, searching, she could not have said precisely for what, before she shook her head. "I could not ask so much of you, Mr. Darcy."

"You have not asked for it,” he listed his shoulders, and continued, “But, I have offered it, and you need not be obligated to show any gratitude for it. Let us go, so I may attend to my business and you yours.."

She was quick to respond. "But, sir, it is a full day's journey, and more besides if the weather turns. I do not think you have considered."

Dacy cut her sentence off, holding his hand up. "I have considered a great deal more than you give me credit for, Miss Bennet, in the two minutes since your father's carriage was found wanting. I have a coachman I trust, horses fit for the distance, and no engagement so pressing that a day's delay in London would signify in the least. What I have not considered, and do not care to, is the alternative, that you should undertake such a journey alone, with your uncle gravely ill and your aunt in genuine distress, when a perfectly serviceable remedy stands ready in my own stable-yard."

Jane, who had been watching this exchange with attentiveness, laid a hand upon her sister's arm. "Lizzy, you must let him. There is no sense refusing a kindness merely because it is inconvenient to accept it gracefully, and I would rest a great deal easier knowing you did not travel that road alone."

Elizabeth looked once more at Darcy, and found herself unable to summon the further objection she felt she ought, by every principle of the coolness she had maintained toward him this fortnight, to have ready. "Very well, sir. I accept your kindness, and thank you for it.”

"You need not thank me," said Darcy, with something in his voice that was not quite his usual gravity. "You need only be ready within the hour. I will send word ahead to break the journey at Dunstable, if the weather holds, and we should reach your aunt's house in Gracechurch Street by tonight at the latest."

Hence, the hour that followed passed in the particular hurried confusion that attends any departure undertaken with more urgency than preparation generally allows. Elizabeth's trunk was packed by Jane's own hands, over Elizabeth's protests that she required nothing so elaborate for a sickroom; Mrs. Bennet, informed by express of the whole business, sent back a letter so thoroughly overwrought with alarm on every possible subject, her brother's health, her daughter's journey, and her immense gratitude to Mr. Darcy.

Darcy, for his part, gave his instructions to his coachman with briskness. And, in that whole hour, allowed himself exactly one private reflection, as he watched Elizabeth's trunk being secured to the carriage, that whatever resolution he had made in that same drawing-room a fortnight before had not survived the first genuine test put to it. He had not paused, even for the length of a breath, before offering himself for the journey.

Darcy understood, watching her come down the steps with her bonnet hastily tied and her countenance drawn with a worry she was making every effort to master, that he would have offered the same without troubling to consult his principles at all.