Page 35 of Knowing Mr. Darcy
It didn’t make any sense.
She couldn’t even cry.
She shook and read it fourmoretimes.
Then she went up to her room, shut the door, and lay down on the bed very carefully and stared at the ceiling.
Jane came up sometime later. “We have only Miss Bingley’s word that this is true, and she does not see things clearly. She thought that Mr. Darcy was in love with her, after all. And I have heard from Mr. Wickham that Mr. Darcy is actually engaged to be married to his cousin, Miss Anne de Bourgh.”
Elizabeth laughed. “Mr. Darcy is related to Lady Catherine de Bourgh? Mr. Collins’s Lady Catherine?”
“Oh, you didn’t know this? You should have seen Mr. Collins at the ball. He spoke to Mr. Darcy without an introduction.”
“Well, he had seen him in Meryton on that one occasion,” said Elizabeth. “I suppose that’s why he was jostling to speak, then, because he knew the connection between them.”
“Anyway, all I am saying is that Caroline Bingley can’t know what her brother intends,” said Jane.
“No, I destroyed everything,” said Elizabeth. “I spoke that gossip about Mr. Darcy to Mr. Bingley, and now he isdone with me. He rebuked me for it, and I came back at him with sarcasm. Admittedly, he thought to insult me by calling me a woman!” She scoffed.
“What?” said Jane, lying down next to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth’s lower lip trembled. “Before I said it, he was speaking of how quickly he would hurry back to me. He was speaking of bringing back two copies of a book, so that we might read at the same time. He… oh, Lord, Jane, I have ruined us all. You would have married Mr. Collins, but I interfered—”
“It was you who put the idea that Mr. Darcy was interested in me in Mama’s head, then? Oh, Lizzy, why would yousaysuch a thing? He is engaged to hiscousin.”
At this, Elizabeth burst into tears.
“Apologies,” whispered Jane. “I should not have censured you. I can only imagine what you must be feeling now.”
“If only you had not—” Elizabeth’s voice broke with fresh tears. “Sprained your ankle that night. Mr. Bingley would have danced withyou, and all would be well.”
Jane didn’t say anything.
Elizabeth tried vainly to get her tears under control.
“I don’t even like Mr. Bingley,” said Jane in a strangled voice. “I’m sure that… that wouldn’t have mattered.” She pulled Elizabeth into her arms. “No point in trying to rewrite the past, is there? What’s done is done.”
Elizabeth sobbed into her sister’s dress, sobbed until she had cried herself out.
THE FOLLOWING WEEKSwere dreary, not least because Mr. Collins—having indicated in his first letter that he would only be staying a week—seemed to have decided to stay indefinitely, such was the violence of his affection for Charlotte.
If Elizabeth had not been in such a state of self-reproach,she might have had more to say to her friend about the match, for she felt sure that Charlotte would be miserable with that man, but she was too dulled by her own inner recriminations to say much other than that she hoped Charlotte would be happy in her choices.
Charlotte said only once, “I hope you are not feeling as though I have stolen something from you, Lizzy.”
Elizabeth only let out a long, bitter laugh at that. “Oh, Charlotte,” she said, “you and I shall never quarrel over a man. Never. Let us put that entire idea to rest.”
Eventually, in mid-December, Mr. Collins finally left, and Elizabeth was quite relieved not to have to listen to the man’s droning voice. The household was easier without the added pressure of a guest all of the time.
Jane had seemed in easier spirits as soon as Mr. Bingley was gone, and she was always trying to cheer Elizabeth, who was not in the mood to be cheered, though everyone seemed to think she was making too much of the matter. Her father declared jocularly that it was high time Lizzy had been jilted by somebody or other. “One must weather having one’s heart broken. Builds character!” he crowed.
When Elizabeth rejoined that she was single-handedly responsible for having destroyed the family’s future, he responded that that responsibility was his, for he had not managed to get a boy-child on Mrs. Bennet. He winked at their mother and said slyly, “Not for lack of trying.”
Elizabeth found this entirely disgusting. As much as she disliked her parents arguing, which there was much of, it was even worse when her father said things likethat.
The only bright spot anything at all was the news that her aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, were planning to come for Christmas, along with their children. Elizabeth and Jane were quite close with their aunt, having often been allowed to stay with them when the younger sisters were kept at home.
Indeed, upon arriving, her aunt spent some time alone with Elizabeth, having heard all about what had transpired, and she offered an immediate solution.
