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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Elizabeth

H aving heard Mr Collins talk endlessly of her, I had suspected Lady Catherine de Bourgh was a character straight from Rowlandson’s satirical pen.

In reality she was a flesh and blood caricature and while I held my own under the gale force of her self-consequence, a particle of my mind fell to considering the inevitability of the decline of the British peerage if this lady was any sort of example of its ranks.

She was worse than ridiculous. She was ignorant and awful.

Even Mr Darcy applied himself to protecting my sister and me from her scrutiny, and poor Sir William, who bore the brunt of her focus, looked perfectly wrung out by the time we took our leave.

Since Mr Collins’s house was run like any other parsonage, by ten o’clock that night we were shut up in our rooms. Mary and I shared a modest bed, and I was happy to have company, lest I commence thinking of how to make myself fall out of love.

My sister, however, decided we must speak of the one person I did not want to think about.

“What do you make of Mr Darcy, Lizzy?” she asked.

Handsome, horrid, attractive, enraging, powerful, difficult, interesting, bewildering, educated, fastidious—the list unfurled in my head and looked to be a scroll one mile long. I jumped out from under the covers to get a slip of paper and a pen.

“I do not know what to make of him. Let us craft an exercise of your question.”

Mary watched with curiosity as I tore the paper into eleven pieces. On each I wrote the names of all of us who drank tea at Rosings. Then I smoothed the blanket and placed the pieces in a line.

“Wait,” I said. I then made pieces of paper for our entire family, the Philipses and Gardiners included, and for good measure I made four more for the Bingleys and Hursts.

“Now,” I said, “let us make a study of our acquaintances, shall we? Of all these people, who would you put above the rest?”

“Jane.”

“Yes, of course. Shall we make a card for Mr Bromley? They should go together.”

Mary nodded. “Maria?”

“A babe. Sir William too in his way. They are innocents. Let us put them to the right of the angels, shall we?”

And so, we continued. Colonel Fitzwilliam had impressed Mary as a man of sense, and I could not disagree, so we put him to the left of the angels to designate a spot for the admirable mortals among us. I moved my uncle Edward to keep the colonel company. Mary put our aunt Madeline there as well.

“I do not know where to put Mrs Jenkinson,” I said.

“She and Charlotte must go together.”

“Ah. Because they are both only trying to survive?”

The game became more challenging and more engaging as we sorted our little cards.

“Miss de Bourgh?” Mary asked.

“I do not know where she falls. What an inconsequential acquaintance!”

“I would put her with Mr Hurst.”

“You are very right. And Uncle Philips. Their use is that of filling a chair. Let us put them over there.”

We were left with the more serious considerations and sat looking at the names before us in consternation. At last I said almost tentatively, “I hope you can forgive me, but I am afraid I must put Mama, our youngest sister Lydia, and Mr Collins in a pile of embarrassing relations.”

She held a knuckle tightly to her lips. “I feel guilty doing so, Lizzy.”

“As do I, but really, they are all of a piece.”

She nodded and spoke, also tentatively, “Should not Lady Catherine and Mr Bingley’s sisters be placed there as well?”

“Yes, along with Aunt Philips,” I said, putting them together in an ignoble position under the inconsequential. “Let us call them the poorly behaved? The irritants? The mortifying? Now, let us put Mr Bingley somewhere too.”

“He should go with our uncle Philips now that he has gone to London.”

“Inconsequential, yes.”

“Kitty?”

“I cannot put her with Mama just yet, Mary. There is something there that might be salvaged. Am I wrong?”

“If we could get her away from Lydia, I think she could find her way. She must have a place here, between the sensible and the inconsequential.”

“Yes. And now we must put Papa somewhere.” Mary looked perplexed, and so I made the decision. “He must go under the people of sense. He should be one of them, but he chooses to be contrary and to boast of his failures. He too must sit in a corner alone.”

“You and I?” Mary asked.

“Exempt,” I said forthrightly. “We are, after all, doing the exercise.”

This left a lone scrap. “Now, Mary, where do we put Mr Darcy?”

She thought for a moment. “He seems a man of sense.”

“True. But the way he burst in upon Charlotte today was unforgivable.”

“But he spoke to me this afternoon. Have you forgotten? He was very kind, I thought.”

“Have you forgotten how pompous and overbearing he was when he was in Meryton?”

“But he sent a carriage for Jane when Mama was going to make her ride in the rain to catch Mr Bingley,” she said. “And you cannot forget how he came to your aid when you twisted your ankle.”

“Well, there are few men who would leave a person fallen down on the road. You cannot deny the disturbing manner in which he paced in front of the window today when his aunt held court. I would not want to have him in my parlour acting the zoo animal.”

“Lizzy, attend me. Mr Darcy has nothing of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s polished warmth or Mr Bingley’s amicability.

There is no charm in any of his utterances, but one gets the sense that if he says something, he means it, and further, that his opinions are based on a foundation of intelligence, understanding, and education. ”

I thought she was finished, but she continued. “Think of it! If Mr Darcy were to tell you his opinion of Prime Minister Perceval, or of what should be done about the poor, or whether it was wiser to take this road or that when going to Bath, you would perforce listen to him.”

“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently flicking the card with his name with my index finger. “You want him in the pile of the sensible.”

“I think he belongs right where he is, Lizzy. In the middle, standing alone. Who would not rely on him when hard-pressed? None of us. He is in a category apart.”

“Do not tell me you are developing a fondness for him,” I teased.

“I respect him a great deal, but I would like a more amiable sort if I dared to have a say.”

“A Mr Bingley for you, Mary?”

She wrinkled her nose and blew out her candle, leaving me just enough light to put our little cards in a pile and take them to the small coal stove in our room. I burnt us all up, even Mr Darcy, though I shall admit he went in last of all.

Just as I blew out my candle and crawled into bed, Mary spoke in a sleepy drawl. “I think Colonel Fitzwilliam the ideal sort of man.”

I smiled, tucked this confidence away, and resolved to try not to tease my sister for having made it.

Morning came early in a parson’s home, and I awoke to a pouring rain. Mary slept on which allowed me to ponder my behaviour.

I am a ninny , I concluded. How could I have fallen so weakly, pathetically, into the habit of pining for a man whose duty and consequence render me an unthinkable mate? How silly to think I could be safely in love with Mr Darcy. I laid in bed in a tangle of confusion.

Are we not masters of our own feelings? Do our feelings make a right or left turn, swoop dizzyingly up and down hills, and take us willy-nilly into swamps and deserts without the slightest check from our rational minds?

Apparently.

The reality staggered me, and I rolled over in a bruised ache.

Why had no one warned me to beware the temptation to fall in love?

My father demeaned the king of emotions and teased me for being crossed in love.

My mother’s only notions of love have to do with securing a future.

Even my aunt Gardiner gave me no hint of the vicious danger to a person’s heart of wild, rampant yearnings.

She is secure in my uncle’s regard and he in hers.

Between them there is no painful disparity of feeling.

When my sister stirred, we lit our candles, such was the gloom of the day, and we dressed in a state of sobriety. Our morning looked to be deeply tedious.

“You will be missing your walk today,” Mary said.

“And we shall both be missing our practise. Did you bring the Mozart? We can look at it at least and hear it in our minds.”

“Lady Catherine has a pianoforte,” Mary said wistfully.

“Yes, and I would wager it was last used when King Charles visited right before they executed him. And even if we were invited to use it, which we shall never be, we cannot visit today, so we must brace ourselves for confinement in Mr Collins’s parlour—with Mr Collins.”

“Oh, I had not thought—I suppose he will not walk to the church today.”

He did not. Poor Charlotte wracked her brain for some means to keep her company entertained, but her husband decided we would enjoy a preview of his sermon upcoming.

By ten o’clock, I felt the day should rightly be over.

By the time tea was served, we fell on our refreshments with the voracity of beasts, simply for want of something to do.

With excitement we greeted the sound of a carriage at the door. Had the bailiffs, the beadle, or even the undertaker come, we would have rejoiced at the interruption. When the maid announced Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr Darcy, a chorus of joyful welcome broke out.

They could not stay, Colonel Fitzwilliam said as spokesperson.

Mr Darcy stood by him looking grave. They were only passing on their way to look at the bridge on the north side of their aunt’s property and wondered if Sir William might like to come along.

Word was the river was swelling dangerously, and they wished to decide for themselves if the structure was sound.