Chapter Five#2

“Truly?” Elizabeth said with a shocked voice.

“You knew that you should not read such books. I will have Mr. Morris informed that you will not be permitted to read any of his books again. Cousin Elizabeth,” Mr. Collins sighed dolefully, “I expected better of you.”

“It was paid for from my own money. I will not—"

“Elizabeth!”

Mr. Collins slammed his hand on the breakfast table.

Quiet.

A taste of anger on the back of Elizabeth’s mouth, and an awareness that she had to control it.

“You live inside the beneficence of my estate,” Mr. Collins said sharply. “You will show obedience to that authority I am endowed with by the Almighty. I am a clergyman, and I am the paterfamilias . Do you understand?”

Elizabeth’s teeth ground together. She knew what she had to say. But she simply could not.

“Say that you promise to read no more novels, and we may end this conversation.”

There was a red tightness in her chest. And resentment on behalf of her father whose place had been taken by Mr. Collins. She hated him.

The two stared at each other.

Mr. Collins seemed stymied, clearly not knowing quite what to do when Elizabeth refused to agree with him.

“You must understand,” he said in a wheedling voice. “I am a man of the cloth, and what is more, I am the beneficiary of the beneficence of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. I must do my duty. I must protect the souls of all who are in my flock. I cannot let you travel upon that primrose path that leads to perdition.” He stood suddenly and said, “I shall speak further with your mother upon this matter, and I shall ask Lady Catherine to advise me when I return to Rosings, but I assure you, Cousin Elizabeth, that I will not forget your obstreperousness.”

When he left, leaving Elizabeth for the time as the victor in possession of the breakfast table, she slumped back into her chair. A tension, a readiness to fight slowly drained from her, but the anger did not leave.

Plans that she’d had flit through her mind for a long time, of seeking to become a governess — the real reason she had put effort into the improvement of her drawing, piano, and Italian of late — or throwing herself as an unwanted dependent on the mercy of her aunt and uncle came back.

In the carriage, sandwiched between Lydia and Mary, and feeling far too crowded, Elizabeth made a point of not meeting the eyes of her mother, or Mr. Collins. Jane looked quite sick, and Elizabeth had been with her when she cast up her accounts into the chamber pot once more this morning, before having a hearty meal of dry toast and exceedingly thin tea.

It was not nice, Elizabeth thought, to pack so many people into the carriage, but Mr. Collins had determined it would be best to make the call with the whole of the family.

She contemplated the whole way the question of whether to ask Uncle Gardiner to stay with him, or to seek her own way as a governess. Obviously staying with Uncle Gardiner would be superior from the standpoint of her own comforts and station.

But the great advantage of finding a dependent position in employment was that everyone would know about how the sister of Mr. Collins’s wife, and what was more, his own second cousin, was in employment. That would shame him.

What would Lady Catherine say?

Imagining it nearly made Elizabeth chortle in delight.

When they arrived at Netherfield, all of them got out, and they were greeted by the butler.

Jane was quite weak and stumbly, and it was on Elizabeth’s shoulder that she supported herself, rather than that of her husband, as she exited the carriage.

Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy both came out of the house to greet their guests.

Darcy held Emily, and he smiled at seeing her.

Elizabeth noted, as they stepped up to greet them, how Mr. Bingley stared at Jane before greeting Mr. Collins who bowed to them both. Mr. Collins extravagantly thanked them both for coming out, and he then made a long speech to Mr. Darcy about Lady Catherine and his happiness in being able to give Darcy the news that the woman he must respect even more than the memory of his own mother, as he was doubly tied to her, was in excellent health, as of two days ago.

Her understanding of Mr. Darcy’s character was sufficient that Elizabeth could tell that the gentleman stared at her cousin with distaste. He shifted himself so that he kept Emily further from Mr. Collins and stepped away when Mr. Collins tried to touch the girl while saying, “Hello, my little great heiress.”

Mr. Collins blocked the doorway to Netherfield, preventing the rest of the group from entering the house to escape from the autumnal chill. Elizabeth turned from watching the scene to check on Jane, to see how she did. There was a bit more colour in her cheeks, and she studied Mr. Bingley, but then looked down when she noticed that gentleman looking back at her.

Mr. Darcy, with only a moderate display of rudeness, turned his back on Mr. Collins and marched to the drawing room. Collins followed him, not breaking in his speech, and all of them were free at last to enter.

Mr. Bingley begged an introduction to Jane when they reached the drawing room, the duty of which fell upon her mother, as Mr. Collins was too occupied lecturing Mr. Darcy upon the importance of caring properly for Emily, and how he ought to have never exposed the girl to such chill air as they had just stood in.

Elizabeth sat near Mr. Darcy and Emily, and she managed to catch his eye and draw a smile from him, as she gestured with her head towards Mr. Collins.

Miss Bingley hung about, standing where Darcy’s gaze would naturally fall upon her. She took a striking pose, her bosom upthrust, and the hands held in a posture that Elizabeth was quite sure must have been taught in that fine seminary that the Bingley girls had attended.

Politeness prevented Miss Bingley from interrupting Mr. Collins’s endless stream of inanity, just as much as it controlled Mr. Darcy. However, Miss Bingley’s eyes showed that she only paid attention so that she might find a chance to break into the conversation. No doubt she wished to exclaim loudly once again about the perfections of Darcy’s paternal instincts, the perfections of little Emily, and to subtly imply that she would be happy to provide Miss Darcy a mother. That Darcy frequently insisted that he was not in the market for such a personage was of no matter to her .

Little Emily insistently hid about her father for a long while, though when Elizabeth found a ball to toss towards her, she tossed it back with a shout of glee. Emily then ran about the carpet in a half circle that ended when she tumbled to the ground happily.

“Oh, no, no. Mr. Darcy,” Mr. Collins said, “do you not realize that, as your august aunt always says, that children are to be seen and not heard? You should strive, above all, to encourage Miss Darcy to control her manners and show a ladylike face to the world.”

“I would thank Lady Catherine if she kindly kept her advice for your parishioners and spared me.”

Mr. Collins laughed hollowly, as though that was a joke. “It is impossible for any gentleman to have been the beneficiary of her conversation, and for them to not then deeply respect her wisdom—” Mr. Collins put his hand on Emily’s head when she shouted again at being handed the ball once more by Elizabeth. “Miss Darcy, be—”

His hand was removed by Mr. Darcy.

The gentleman had stood from his seat suddenly. He’d moved almost too fast for Elizabeth to see. He gripped Mr. Collins wrist with a dangerous glare. “Mr. Collins, do not advise my child directly. I manage her welfare, and I will not have you touch her.”

“Sir, as a clergyman you must see that my prerogatives touch upon, as the Holy Book says, even the least of these. The children were suffered to come unto him, and—”

“Mr. Collins, you are not my clergyman. And I will not suffer you anything. Go tell Lady Catherine that I do not concern myself with her advice. Not even when it is conveyed via the means of a clergyman. I care no more for what you say to me than I concern myself with my aunt’s advice when it is sent by letter or given to me direct.”

Darcy glared at Mr. Collins, who swallowed. Tension filled the room.

Mr. Darcy could be intimidating. There was a look about him of a man who would shoot to kill on a duelling field. Anyone who fell under his care would be kept safe.

The sun lit up his jawline, and his noble mien.

Elizabeth swallowed. He was beautiful.

Then Darcy picked up Emily, saying, “Em-Em, let’s take our walk. Do you want a walk?”

“Uh-uh,” the girl agreed, and Darcy left the room without any further apologies to anyone.

Mr. Bingley sat next to Jane, and had a wide smile as he spoke to her. He looked up and laughed as his friend left the room. “Collins, you rather offended Mr. Darcy. Excellent father, but he is particular about Emily.”

“He is not,” Mr. Collins replied. “And I have heard Lady Catherine advise at least three different members of the parish to never suffer their children of such a young age as Miss Darcy to run about in the cold air. She will surely catch her death, and then Lady Catherine will rightly place the blame upon me, for not having forced Mr. Darcy to take my advice.”

The clergyman rubbed his hands together nervously.

“Eh.” Bingley laughed. “Not much that anyone can force Mr. Darcy to do. Not when he is not of a mind to be forced to it — Mrs. Collins, fine man my friend, though I dare say half the awe we all hold him in is that he is twice as tall as anyone else.”

Now that Darcy had left the room, Miss Bingley deflated, let out a long breath, plopped herself on the sofa on the far end of the drawing room, staying safely away from the conversation. After a minute she stood back up and went to the shelves to find entertainment in the scanty selection of books.

Mr. Collins devoted himself to the boredom of Mrs. Hurst — Mr. Hurst seemed to listen, but Elizabeth rather thought from his expression that his mind was still on breakfast. Mrs. Long called with her nieces after ten more minutes and Mama and Elizabeth’s other sisters spoke to them. Jane and Mr. Bingley continued to speak and smile together. Elizabeth perceived that even though the ordinary time for a call was coming near to its end, none of them showed any plan to arise and leave.

She stood, bowed to everyone, and excused herself briefly from the room, saying that she wished to admire the gardens.

A quick walk around the grounds left Elizabeth disappointed. She was about to turn back into the house and return to the boredom of the drawing room. But then she smiled widely as she heard Mr. Darcy’s voice coming faintly from a grove of trees. “That is a fine ladybird. No, no, do not crush it. Yes softly, softly back down.”

She walked up behind Mr. Darcy, finding him squatting low next to Emily as he held her hands firmly. Emily grinned and ran up to Elizabeth, but when Elizabeth stretched down to pick her up, she changed directions, and immediately ran back to her father.

“Why do you not show Miss Bennet that fine rock you collected earlier?” was Darcy’s advice unto his descendent, so said while he removed a perfectly ordinary rock from his coat pocket and offered it to the girl.

Emily immediately took the stone and ran up to Elizabeth holding it up high for her to examine. Elizabeth lowered herself to seriously study it, and then said, “An excellent specimen of the rock genus.”

The girl shoved it repeatedly in her face.

“Should I take it?”

“Uh-uh.” There was that little nod and grunt that seemed to mean yes for Miss Emily. Elizabeth took the stone, slightly concerned that it might cause the child to burst into tears, but instead the girl was satisfied by the action. She ran off ten feet into the underbrush, and then sat down picking through stones, grass, and dirt.

Darcy stood closer to her. The two were silent for a minute. Elizabeth said, “I must apologize for my cousin’s appalling rudeness to you.”

He seemed startled. “Oh yes, he is also your family. That must be a terrible trial. I had considered the whole as being from Lady Catherine .”

“Mr. Collins is chiefly a trial to my sister,” Elizabeth replied bitterly. “Though I believe him to be mostly harmless.” Elizabeth grimaced at her memory of the conflict of this morning, one that was unfinished.

“You cannot be unhappy that he is settled in Kent rather than in Longbourn.”

“It was your aunt’s advice that led him to settle there. She had suggested he remain in the parsonage, where he might live splendidly with the income of Longbourn, and yet save money as he was not expected to keep up the same sort of consequence as he would be as one of the chief members of the neighbourhood.”

Darcy grunted.

“I must be grateful to your aunt for having given Mr. Collins this advice. We all are much more comfortable in this way, even though there surely would be a carriage and additional footmen if he was resident.”

“Likely my aunt,” Darcy said sardonically, “chiefly wished to save herself the trouble of finding a new man to take the role. Especially after she had found a person she was fully pleased with — she wrote once that she had found a treasure in him.”

Elizabeth laughed. “The thought that her advice tended towards making her life the easiest had occurred to me as well, but I’ll not judge her for that.”

“No. You save your judgement for those who you are personally acquainted with.”

The two were quiet. Emily was fully engaged with the dirt.

“I like how you do not care how filthy her clothes become.”

Darcy laughed. It was a sound that gave her a glow in her heart. She really liked him very much indeed.

After a little Darcy said, looking at her with a deep frown, “It is fortunate that it was your sister’s place to marry that man. I cannot imagine you married to such an… excellent speaker. It would have been wrong.”

“I never would have married him.”

Darcy frowned to hear that, and he sat down on a tree stump. “Your family’s situation, as I understand it, is such that without his marriage to one of you, the situation would have become exceedingly difficult.”

“I would rather face the worst sort of dependency and difficulty than enter a marriage such as that, with no love, and where I knew , beyond any doubt, that I could never love, nor even like, nor even respect the man I had married. Only a fool would enter such a marriage.”

His eyes studied her. “You mean that. I admire that.”

The statement of his admiration made Elizabeth’s heart feel light. “I told Jane, again and again, to not marry him. There was money enough for us, and… better a small income than… that . Do you see how he ignores her? She lost her stomach as soon as she arrived from the long carriage ride, and rather than comforting Jane, Mr. Collins stepped around cheerfully assuring us that it was of no importance.”

“You dislike him very much.”

“Perhaps… I can imagine myself, maybe when I was fifteen, and I hardly understood either myself, or those feelings that attraction to a man can cause, or what was meant by marriage… Perhaps then I could have convinced myself to make that sacrifice, but at my age… I do not like him, and my poor sister cannot like him, no matter how content she insists herself to be.”

“I feel for your sister. You are right, one ought not marry when the proper feelings are not there. But it is hard.” Darcy bent down, picked up a stone, and tossed it to the side. “It is hard to know whether the considerations demanding such a marriage are of greater significance than the ones counselling against it.”

“No one should marry without love. I would prefer dependency, slender income, even employment and loss of station to such a marriage.”

“That is bravely said, but when I look at you, I believe that you are one who would stick to such a principle when put to the test.”

“I know I shall be fit for the test.” Elizabeth frowned, thinking of Mr. Collins’s friend who was to arrive the next day. “I only hope to avoid the unpleasantness that might follow.”

Mr. Darcy looked at her quizzically.

She suddenly wanted to explain a little to him. “Only it seems that Mr. Collins has invited a friend to visit, who will be a possible suitor for me. I know that if he does pursue such a suit, when I refuse him — I cannot imagine liking a gentleman described by Mr. Collins as extremely charming and personable — Mama and Mr. Collins will be quite unhappy with me.”

There was a frown on his face. He studied her. “I see. But…” He took a long breath in and let it out. “Perhaps this will be a gentleman who catches your fancy. Or at least who you like a little.” Pause.

Darcy looked away from her, at his daughter. His lips were pressed together tightly. He made his hand into a tight fist, and he looked discomposed. “You ought, for your own sake, and your family’s, make an effort to see if you might like him.” Darcy looked up at her with a weak smile. “If he truly is a gentleman who you cannot like, then your choice is clear. But I think you might be unduly prejudiced against such a match, simply because it is favoured by your family.”

Elizabeth could not help but laugh uncomfortably. “I confess to being of a contrary nature.”

So much for any hope that she might arouse his jealousy by telling him that there would be a new suitor. That had not been why she spoke, but Elizabeth realized that she had hoped he would show signs of jealousy, rather than the sort of advice Charlotte would give, but couched in a way that made it clear that he thought the key question was whether she liked the gentleman in the end, and not whether it would be beneficial to her to marry him.

The two watched Emily for another minute, not looking at each other.

There was a constriction in Elizabeth’s throat, and she knew where it had come from. But at least she did not think this would bring her to tears.

“Do you resent your father?” He’d spoken without looking at her, instead studying his happily playing child as she tore at the grass.

“Good heavens, no! Why would I ever?”

“He did not set aside sufficient money for you to have independence, or an attractive dowry. You would not need to worry about marrying without inclination if he had. And your sister would have had no need to marry that toad-eater.”

Seeing Elizabeth’s frown, he hurriedly added, “That was not a polite question. You make me forget myself. I only…”

“You were thinking about the duties of a father towards his daughter,” Elizabeth replied, thinking she understood him. “As you often do.”

“That… and about my own marriage.” He hesitated. “I beg you to tell me… Do you resent your parents for pressing you and your sisters to marry against your inclinations?”

“What about your own marriage?” Elizabeth asked. She felt something odd and hollow in her stomach, at realizing that an assumption she’d made about Darcy’s own marriage, that it was a love match, might have been mistaken. She’d always assumed that he had loved his wife dearly, from how he spoke of her with the highest respect, and due to the black armband, that he wore right now .

She gave him the smallest touch on his shoulder. “Please, you might tell me. I’ll say nothing to anyone.”

Darcy did not answer. He frowned at the ground.

“Then I’ll speak.” Elizabeth paused to collect her thoughts. Her heart felt odd. Speaking about this subject at all felt wrong. “No… he could have done more. But it… I simply do not blame Papa for my poverty… the estate was entailed, and while it would have been wise to save a sum of money, we all enjoyed the use of the estate’s income on clothes, entertainment, and the rest.”

“And then your sister married Mr. Collins, the heir? The economy proved unnecessary in the end.” Darcy’s voice was sardonic. His look was bleak.

He suddenly stood up, walked over to Emily, pulled the stone she’d been sucking on out of her mouth, and said in a soft voice, “Do not eat that, dear.”

He picked the girl up and moved her to a spot ten feet away from where she had been before returning to sit next to Elizabeth.

“No, no — Collins proves the opposite. But it also would have been useless for my father to have made the attempt to save enough money to protect Jane from Collins. In the whole course of his life, he could not have put aside enough to keep Mama from terror at the loss of position that followed his death — I mean with reasonable economies. I do not imagine a situation where we lived without more than two servants and with no carriage for the entirety of my life. Even had Papa set aside five or ten thousand additional pounds over the years, Jane would have dutifully obeyed Mama’s demands.”

“A dutiful daughter…” Darcy was silent for a while. He looked back at Emily, who seeing him looking at her ran back to her father and was picked up by him and swung around.

He put her on his arm and said, “I do not want Emily to be so dutiful that she would do anything I insist. I was raised to respect my parents when they made demands in the most serious and private of situations, and that proved to not be good.”

“Did you…” Elizabeth felt quite nervous as she asked the question. “Did you marry your wife from family duty?”

“The situations are not the same.” Mr. Darcy sighed. “Mr. Collins is a man who chose to remain my aunt’s servant, her lackey, when there was no harsh necessity driving him. It does not speak well for his character.”

“We have already established that neither you nor I like him.”

Emily squirmed and Darcy set her down again. She ran over to Elizabeth and pulled on Elizabeth’s dress.

Elizabeth picked her up, and then Emily pointed in a direction, and with a glance over at Darcy the two of them started walking in accordance with Emily’s instructions.

“She wants us to go to the pond, to watch me skip rocks,” Darcy said with a soft smile. Then the thundercloud returned to his face. “Lady Catherine made Anne’s life miserable. I am glad she was not there when the birth came. It would have been… awkward to exclude her from the birthing room if she had wished to be there, but I would have. My aunt is a woman who means well, in some ways… I had always thought well of Anne’s character. I always… respected her. So, you see, that is wholly different from Mr. Collins. And it was to Anne’s benefit that I marry her, not my own.”

“But you did not love her?”

Darcy pressed his hand against his mouth. He shook his head. He looked rather sick.

They reached the pond, and Emily was set down. She grabbed a flat stone and pressed it into Darcy’s hand. He took it and tossed it so that it skipped three times, without seeming to look at anything.

In a slow voice Darcy said, “Anne was a small person. She had been ill for much of her life, and she did not have the clear healthy skin and stride that… you have. I did not… I never admired her person. Not even when I came to wish that I could. It had been the wish of my mother, when she was dying, that I marry Anne. I believe… I believe my mother’s motivation was that she liked to imagine the estates being united, and the two branches of the Fitzwilliam blood growing back together. Afterwards… I made a firm determination to never make another deathbed oath to comfort the dying.”

Elizabeth put her hand on Darcy’s arm and pressed it against the fine weave of his wool coat, a squeeze.

Darcy nodded

Emily splashed a bit in the water with her hands, and then she gave Darcy another stone. He returned it to her saying, “This one is too rounded, see, it will not skip well. Perhaps that one. Can you give it to me?”

Elizabeth asked what was suddenly foremost on her mind. “If you did not love her, why is it that you are determined not to marry again?”

Darcy’s face flattened and changed. He pressed his lips together. Then he said, “She was an excellent woman. Kind, loving. Always smiling, even when very ill. She delighted in caring for small animals, in seeing to it that orphans were cared for and schooled. She… she so wanted a child. I wish… She loved me. She admired me… as a man would wish to be admired by his beloved wife. She… she deserved a husband who could love her for the goodness of her character without caring for anything else.”

Elizabeth wondered what it could have been like for such a woman, married to a man who she must truly have loved dearly — any woman would have no choice but to fall in love with a man such as Mr. Darcy. And then to know, for a woman would know, that he did not feel so strongly for her. Not in the same way. “But you never could look at her and see beauty.”

“I would see other women, and lust after them in my heart. I am a man who takes my duties seriously. A violation of my marital oaths was impossible, but… I apologize for speaking of such matters with you, but the words are from the Holy Bible: Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. I was such a man.”

“I am no theologian,” Elizabeth said slowly. “But I had thought the purpose of that passage, which as I recall ended with ‘be ye perfect as your father in heaven also is perfect’, was to emphasize the impossibility of being so Holy as to deserve the kindness of the Almighty.”

Darcy waved that reply away.

“Is it not a matter of grace, and not just desserts, in which we must hope?”

“I failed my duty.”

“And you decided,” Elizabeth asked, “to not marry after she died, because you did not deserve to be happy? Because you had committed adultery in your heart.”

“I am happy. My care of Emily makes me happier than I ever have been in the whole of my previous life.”

Elizabeth twisted her lips. His reasoning. It was… foolish. “She could not possibly have wished you to behave in such a way. Not if she was as good as you say she was.”

“I know exactly what she wished,” Darcy replied sharply. “I do this act of respect for her out of my own sense of rightness. Not because it reflects her wishes. Do not blame her for that. She tried… when she realized she was dying she tried to make me promise to marry again, to make myself happy. That was one of the last things she said. And… then she said that I had made her happy, and that she had seen I was not so happy with her, and that she wished for me to find a happiness like she’d had. You see her goodness? As she was dying, she wanted me to be happy… and… a disgusting, rank, vile, evil, terrible part of my mind had thought before, while we waited to see the consequences of her child labour, that if she did die in pregnancy, I would be free to marry as I wanted. Do you not understand?”

“And so, you decided you hated yourself?”

“No, you misunderstand me. I only…” Darcy looked at his hands.

He raised them before his face, and looked rather like the actor when she’d seen Macbeth in London: Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood, Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.

The thought almost made Elizabeth smile, but the matter was too tragic for her to be really amused.

“You only determined not to marry again. It is not a matter of self-hatred, or so you claim to yourself.”

“Yes.” He looked at her, made a small stiff smile. “You do not approve.”

“I respect the memory of Mrs. Darcy too much to disagree with her advice.”

All was quiet.

Birds hopped from branch to branch. A few remaining leaves fell from the oak trees and drifted to the ground. Emily played around in the leaves and found a beetle that she pointed out to them.

Elizabeth wondered at the time. She must have been long since missed, and she hoped that there was not too much worry. Darcy’s aspect was grim. He looked more at the pond than his daughter, though it was clear that part of his attention always tracked where she went, and whether she seemed safe.

A cold breeze blew through Elizabeth’s pelisse, though it did not bother Emily, bundled as she was, and happily making small noises to herself.

“I do not think,” Elizabeth said hesitatingly, without daring to look at Darcy, “we imagine our reason and our minds to be sovereign. But… a human is made of many parts.” She looked at him and then said with a smile, expecting him to catch her reference, “We are of three parts a charioteer and two horses, one good and one bad. The bad horse is part of you. It will urge you onto unhappy deeds. It will be there, just like it is present in every man. That is what a human is. But I know this much of you, you have always given short rein to the urgings of that bad horse, the one that pulls towards the lower passions, and given long rein to the good horse, the one that drives you towards heaven.”

Darcy looked at her. His intense eyes.

“That is what is important.” She felt warm and cold all over as their eyes held, and neither looked away from the other until Emily ran up to Darcy and started pulling at his leg.

He bent and picked Emily up, and said, “I imagine that you have been missed and the time for your call to end has long since passed.” He looked at Elizabeth again.

There was something she could not understand in the intensity of his gaze.

Then he said, reluctantly, “You ought to return to the house.”

“Yes,” she nodded.

But she could not go.

They stared at each other for a long time. Elizabeth tried to memorize the way his face looked.

He then said, “Thank you.”

She nodded, and then turned and fled up the way and back to the house, filled with an intense feeling towards Mr. Darcy, whose meaning she did not wish to name to herself, because she knew it would bring her deep grief.