Sitting

Sitting

Darcy seemed startled by her assertion they could eventually become Mr and Mrs Bennet.

Elizabeth gave him a minute to respond, but when he continued to think, she finally said, “I see I have you flummoxed.”

“Not necessarily… but I would like to know exactly what you mean.”

“Of course,” she said, then stared at the ground for a minute or two. “Let me put it this way. Which of my sisters would you suppose most resembles my mother in her youth?”

Darcy thought about it a moment before replying as if handling a live snake. “It sounds like a trick question, but I suppose I will blunder into your trap. Based on my personal observations, I would assume Miss Lydia.”

She nodded. “Most would agree… emphatically… but they would be wrong.”

“Who then?” he asked in real curiosity.

“She was Jane.”

That answer seemed to startle the man, who apparently had nothing to add.

“In her youth, my mother was universally acknowledged as the most eligible debutant in Meryton. She was lively and lovely; bright and pretty; personable and funny. She was the daughter of a solicitor, so she did not grow up on an estate, but she looked like Jane. She had a happy, lively personality, and everyone loved her. My father took her to wife with all the pride you might imagine of a man snatching up the brightest jewel of the county.”

“What happened?” he asked with some confusion.

She sighed resignedly. “My father’s disappointment happened. Most people would agree she is a woman of mean understanding and uncertain temper . You witnessed it yourself. However, she was not always thus. Let me ask you this—what would Lady Catherine say about a woman raising five daughters without a governess?”

“I am not certain she would survive the shock,” he said with a chuckle, not liking the dark turn of her countenance.

“And yet, she raised five of us, and three of the five do not really qualify as what my father calls the silliest girls in England. She must have done something more right than your experience might indicate.”

“As you said earlier… please elaborate.”

“Jane was five and I was three when Mary was born, so I have to speak of those times based on my grandmother and uncle’s recollections. My father obviously did not spend all his time in his book room back then. He actually played with us as children, educated me as he would a son, and made some effort with Jane and Mary. Mother was proud and happy to have produced three fine children, and they assumed a son would come along in good time. After all, producing four girls in a row is very-very unlikely.”

Darcy nodded, being unable to come up with a single example of even four, let alone five.

“When Kitty was born, and then Lydia did enough damage to make further children impossible… she started to… despair. She and my father had quite optimistically never curbed their spending, always assuming a son would come along to break the entail. When it did not, my mother let her perceived failure start making her shrill and nervous. My father eventually concluded he had married imprudently.”

“You sound like you disagree.”

“I disagree emphatically! He was estate raised, Oxford educated, and proud of his intellect. He married a woman clearly similar to other women in his sphere, but he never made any effort to teach her to fulfil her role. He made no effort to save for us, or to insure we were marriageable, or to raise the estate’s income, or… well, anything, to be honest. When Lydia was born, it was as if they both just gave up and quit trying. ”

Darcy grunted. “To be honest, I think my father did the same thing when my mother died. I always tried to honour him, as if their love was so strong he could not survive its loss, but I eventually took it as a sign of weakness. Georgiana was young and needed her father, but he was… just… not there. As you would say, he was a particular idiot. ”

Elizabeth giggled, much to his surprise and pleasure.

“I suppose, we both want to ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of our parents. That brings me back to my basic fear.”

“Can you explain it?” he asked, still looking perplexed.

Elizabeth stared at him, wondering if he just assumed Fitzwilliam Darcy could overcome any and all obstacles.

“My parents’ marriage was very uneven, and they spent twenty-five years exacerbating their differences. My father apparently thought a seventeen-year-old-solicitor’s-daughter should be able to debate like an Oxford don, and my mother obviously thought a handsome estate owner should be able to do the manly things involved in keeping them prosperous. There followed decades of disappointment, and they both took their regrets out on each other.”

“And you are afraid we might do the same?”

“As they say, ‘the apple does not fall far from the tree.’ If we marry, you will be ridiculed by your family and friends for taking in an unknown penniless adventuress. Our names will be bandied about the tittle-tattle sheets. Society will punish me for reaching above my sphere. I will likely resent you at times, and you will have a hard time not repaying that resentment with your own. The difference is they will disparage me to my face, and you behind your back, but disparage us, they will.”

Darcy started to speak several times, apparently attempting to dispute the assertion, but eventually seemed to accept her thoughts had a logic of their own. Worse yet, her thoughts eerily matched his own thoughts on the match since leaving Hertfordshire.

Elizabeth said gently, “I am not stupid, sir. I know what I am getting into. If I marry Mr Colins, I will elevate him. Everyone who ever meets us for more than five minutes will praise him as the luckiest man alive to have won the affections of the only sensible woman in England who could tolerate him. I will be the gentlewoman who raised his consequence above that of a parson and improved his manner. For the rest of my life, everyone I know of any sense will understand I was the best thing that ever happened to him, and I will be respected. With you, on the other hand…”

Darcy nodded, not needing her to spell it out.

He thought a few minutes, and finally said, “I suppose you must make a leap of faith. You know what Mr Colins is, and aside from your original mission of learning about my aunt, you have a reasonable idea of how your life would proceed. With me, you have to presume that I am better than every single interaction we have had would lead you to believe. You will have to give more credence to the past hour, with me on my best behaviour, than the six weeks we spent in company in the autumn.”

“Exactly!” she said with some finality.

They sat for some time, and then she stood up and pulled him back into motion, needing to be walking to think.

They walked on in peace and quiet for quite some distance. They had been out over an hour but had yet to cover a mile so neither was in any particular distress. Darcy was obviously thinking furiously since Elizabeth had to pull him back onto the path several times, or risk having a testy valet to deal with on their return.

In an apparent flash of brilliance, he snapped his fingers and blurted out. “What if we toss the bear some fish?”