“I assure you there is quite as much of that going on in the country as in Town.”
Darcy stared at her, incredulous that he should be the object of such a person’s insupportable manners and open animosity. His glance flickered to Elizabeth. The look of apprehension mixed with mortification was returning to her face. He swallowed the stinging setdown that clamored to be set loose, clamped his lips together in a grim line, and turned silently away.
Conversation resumed as he slowly walked about the room. Although he gave the appearance of disinterest — now gazing out the window, then withdrawing into the perusal of a book — he was careful to remain within hearing of Elizabeth. His subterfuge was little rewarded; Mrs. Bennet, once in command of the conversation, would not relinquish its control. She waxed eloquent now on the attention Jane had received from a London gentleman when she was but fifteen years old. “He wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were,” she concluded grandly.
“And so ended his affection,” Elizabeth hurried to interject. Darcy stopped his perambulations and looked at her curiously. “There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way,” she continued in a strained voice. “I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!”
“Driving love away, Miss Elizabeth? Curious! I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love, not its executioner!” Her head came up at his contradiction, and he saw with complacence the gleam his words of challenge had returned to her eyes.
“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may,” she shot back at him. “Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.”
Truly, he could not prevent the answering smile that o’erspread his face, even if the whole room was looking at them. A few moments of silence passed. Then Mrs. Bennet turned to offer her thanks for the kind attention Netherfield had extended to her poor, sick Jane, and she rose to take her leave. Darcy observed her with some trepidation, wondering anew what had been decided about Jane’s nursing.
“Mr. Bingley,” spoke up the fidgety one, “you promised us a ball at Netherfield, if you will remember, sir. Everyone is expecting it! It would be the most shameful thing in the world if you do not keep your promise!”
“I am perfectly ready, I assure you, to keep my engagement,” responded Bingley, to Darcy’s complete despair. “And when your sister is recovered, you shall, if you please, name the very day of the ball. But you would not wish to be dancing while she is ill.”
“Some of us would not wish to be dancing whether she is ill or no,” Darcy murmured to Bingley as Lydia Bennet went into transports over his friend’s amiability. Bingley shot him a quelling look, which he received with resignation. The very last thing he desired was society on the scale of a ball, be it in the country or in Town. His peace would be cut up entirely in the hustle-bustle of preparations, not to mention the daunting prospect of doing his duty by the ladies of Hertfordshire during the event itself. His only consolation, and bright it did suddenly appear, was the opportunity it would afford him to claim the dance he had been denied at Sir William’s.
Mrs. Bennet clucked at her chicks and brought them into line as she made her curtsy to the Bingleys and lastly to himself. He inclined his head at her salute but straightened to see only the back of her bonnet as she hurried all the girls through the door. The desire to know whether Elizabeth would remain overcame Darcy’s caution. He stepped into the doorway in time to witness her place a dutiful kiss upon her mama’s cheek and see the lady turn away with a last admonition before the door was firmly shut behind her.
Elizabeth stood perfectly still there in the light of the entry hall, looking out at the retreating figures of her mother and sisters. Darcy could not guess her emotions, as she faced away from him, but the slow, determined manner in which she squared her small shoulders told him that his delightful antagonist was not quitting Netherfield or their battle of wits. As she turned and walked slowly toward the stairs, Darcy stepped back into the breakfast room and shut the door. His thoughts on the morning’s events so thoroughly commanded his attention that the sly remarks of Miss Bingley concerning the shocking behavior of their visitors were quite lost on him.
11 November 1811
Netherfield Hall
Meryton, Hertfordshire
Dearest Georgiana,
I received your letter of the —— th with great pleasure, perusing its lines sufficient times to allow me to quote it at length whenever I wish to assure myself once again of your newfound contentment. Since you have done me the honor of writing so particularly, I will reply in the same vein and confess that I have been greatly concerned for you since we returned from Ramsgate and for these several months thereafter. That you have recognized the evils of the melancholy under which you had sunk and suffer their afflictions no longer, I thank God. You write that they have made you a “stronger vessel,” and I should like to know more of this, but I can only regret the circumstance that precipitated such a lesson and that you should have been so cast down these last months. For the fault was never yours. If there is fault to be laid at anyone’s door for what happened last summer, the greater weight of it falls to me. Do not protest, dearest, for it is so, as I have told you before. I should have taken more care. The pain my negligence has caused you hangs heavily on my heart.
Do you remember — it is a vast number of years ago! — when you were very little and I had the totty-headed notion that leaping upon you unawares was great sport? After I had resisted all our estimable father’s appeals to my sense of justice, you will recall that with great sorrow he made short work of me with his cane. But it was your tears at my well-deserved strokes that reduced my proud boy’s heart to rubble. And so it has ever been, even to the present day.
(I pause here to execute a request pressed upon me by Miss Caroline Bingley, in whose company I am attempting to compose this missive. It is her earnest desire that I recall her to your remembrance and apprise you of her intense longing to see you once more. My duty in this is now discharged, and you may receive her sentiments as you wish.)
To continue: If I have done well in sending Mrs. Annesley to you, it is a balm to my conscience, and I receive your assurances with a heart of gratitude to the mercy of God. She seemed a quite worthy woman, coming to me with the most excellent references and testimonies I have ever seen. That her influence has been instrumental in your recovery and has encouraged a maturation of your spirit confirm her in my estimation. She must, indeed, be a remarkable person, and I look forward to knowing her better when I join you at Pemberley for Christmas.
(I beg your forgiveness for the disjointed nature of this letter. Miss Bingley has again importuned me with compliments. Suffice it to say that she regards all that the Darcys do as done to perfection.)
Miss Bingley is not the only person present as I write. Charles, of course, is here, as well as his other sister, Mrs. Hurst, and her husband. Two others are temporarily part of our small party: Miss Jane Bennet and her sister Miss Elizabeth. Miss Bennet came for dinner with Charles’s sisters several evenings ago but fell very ill. Her sister Miss Elizabeth has come to nurse her until she is well enough to return home.
Pray, excuse me again, as I take up this letter once more after an interruption. I was drawn into a discussion, quite against my better judgment, with Charles and Miss Elizabeth. I will not relate all the particulars, but I fear that, were you present, you would sweetly take me to task on my supreme lack of social grace. My instructors in philosophy at university, on the other hand, would be quite proud of my performance. As you well know, Charles has often borne the brunt of my logic and suffers me, in his good-natured way, to tear his ill-considered opinions to pieces with no untoward effects on our friendship. But in this instance, he had an unexpected champion, the aforementioned Miss Elizabeth Bennet, who entered the lists armed with the shield Sensibility, against which the lance Logic is ever seen as a scurrilous, unworthy weapon. Nevertheless, burnishing Logic with confidence, I sallied forth, only to have it shatter into the veriest splinter against that unanswerable defense. Now, I must discover a means of reinstating myself into Miss Elizabeth’s good graces. A simple matter for most of my sex, but a Gordian knot in my own case. I fear she regards me at this moment as an unfeeling, prosy fellow and has just dismissed me with the recommendation that I “had much better finish [my] letter.” This advice I have taken, as even Logic agrees to its wisdom.
I will finish with information that Charles has well established himself here among the local
