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CHAPTER FOUR

Elizabeth

I did not see Mr Darcy for two weeks together.

Mr Bingley called regularly, and though he seemed amenable, he had yet to be wrangled into sitting down for a family dinner by my mother.

She was, therefore, thoroughly frustrated by his refusal to promptly engage himself to Jane, and I do believe she would have planned desperate measures were it not for the arrival of another marriageable prospect—Mr William Collins.

Mr Collins is my father’s heir. We had never met him, but he arrived cloaked in dignity, having sent a letter to Papa saying he is a rector, that he held a tidy living under the patronage of a grand lady called Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and that he intended to marry one of us to negate the injury of the entail which he held through no fault of his own.

I would have been much inclined to like him because such a gesture is the mark of a man who at least had some sort of conscience, but in fact, Mr Collins is a dolt.

The man was a simpering idiot! That he could read scriptures and deliver a homily struck me as a conundrum until we learnt that his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, told him what to say.

And what should be his pleasure with regards to his future but to marry me?

I was slightly amused and thoroughly appalled.

Jane would likely have been his first choice, but Mama put him off with hints that she would soon be engaged to Mr Bingley.

This was an exaggeration, but I was glad Jane would be spared Mr Collins’s attentions.

I thought Mary might willingly have our cousin because she was too pious to notice his stupidity.

But given a few years, she would see that her husband was a dogmatic imbecile.

No, I could not wish him on any one of us.

Reduced to hiding in my own home, I took to escaping out the kitchen door in all kinds of weather to avoid the dreadful man’s attentions.

The day before the Netherfield ball, a vexatious source of upheaval in itself, I ducked out of the hall and marched away before I could be caught by Mama and chained to my needlework.

I left with only my cloak and put my hood up to keep from getting drenched, but soon enough, though it was only drizzling, I was wet to the skin.

I headed to my aunt Philips’s house, and there I met Mr George Wickham.

I arrived in a dampened state, and after a hasty adjustment in front of the hallway mirror, I styled my hair in the simplest knot, and yet Mr Wickham managed, in the space of a moment, to make me feel as though I were the most beautiful woman in the room.

What a charmer! My mind, having lately been filled with the idiocy of Mr Collins and the arrogance of Mr Darcy, could not help but compare my new acquaintance with them.

Intelligently conversant, polished and subtle in the delivery of compliments, Mr Wickham was a welcome antidote to Mr William Collins who soon appeared with his umbrella and my younger sisters in tow.

Mr Collins, by following me around like a dog, showed he had come to find me.

My sisters, by bursting into the room in romping high spirits, showed they had come to find officers.

Aunt Philips’s house was open every afternoon for card parties, and on a drizzly day, there was no other entertainment on offer in Meryton.

Thus, we were all assembled quite by accident.

Mr Wickham, being perceptive, soon came to my aid and did what he could to thwart the attentions of my cousin.

If I sat on the settee, Mr Wickham appeared instantly to fill the seat next to me, leaving Mr Collins in the position of pacing in front of me and expounding on the merits of his situation and religious views.

My aunt proved helpful by corralling the man towards a card game where he played so poorly he disgusted everybody.

Meanwhile, the newly commissioned officer I was quickly coming to esteem engaged me in conversation.

His manners continued to be gentle. He showed himself to be agreeable, determined to be pleasant, and thus Mr Wickham appeared to me to be the antithesis of Mr Darcy.

Having just thought of that man, I was quite astonished when Mr Wickham mentioned he had grown up at Pemberley.

“You know Mr Darcy, then?” I asked in surprise.

He related that they had grown up and were educated together, and as the son of old Mr Darcy’s steward, he was favoured and singled out for distinction.

As this titbit unravelled, my curiosity grew by leaps and bounds.

I cajoled and encouraged Mr Wickham, who demonstrated appropriate reluctance, to say more.

Of Mr Darcy, I noted, he would not speak without a hesitant sort of care.

He glanced sideways at me as though trying to determine my opinion of the man before he could be candid. Eventually, he asked, “Is Mr Darcy well thought of in this neighbourhood, Miss Bennet?”

“He is certainly thought of,” I said with a vicious twinkle, for I thought of him almost constantly! “But the general opinion is that he is above his company. Do you find him otherwise?” I asked demurely.

“I wish I could say Mr Darcy is the most agreeable man of my acquaintance, but in truth, he is fastidious and proud and at times a most hardened character.”

“Hardened?” I exclaimed. Certainly, Mr Darcy enjoyed crossing swords with me, and that was hardly the mode of a gentleman, and I had seen him struggle against his annoyance and disgust when forced to be in our country society.

“I have seen his pride, and the arrogance natural to a rich, powerful man, but you hint at a shade in his character I have not seen. What has he done to give you such an opinion of him?”

Mr Wickham smiled at me, an expression ingenious for its sympathy for my naiveté, and clear in his intention to allow me the comfort of my delusions.

“Let us talk of pleasanter things, Miss Elizabeth,” he replied lightly.

But I would not allow it. In the space of five minutes, I had the whole of his story. I believed him. Of course I believed him! How could I not when the details were all neatly in place?

The late Mr Darcy had favoured the young man, and in his will, set out to provide him with a valuable living and even engaged to educate him for the church.

But before this happy plan could be enacted, the old man died unexpectedly, and his heir, the Mr Darcy of the penetrating stare and blunt assessments, had denied Mr Wickham his due.

“But I do not repine,” Mr Wickham said sweetly.

He was a master at looking the picture of a disappointed man determined to be cheerful, and it was this that caused me the first inkling of unease.

“I have my new career,” he went on soulfully, “and I mean to do well at it. And, with society such as this, new friends and acquaintances so very agreeable, I count myself fortunate indeed.”

This was all very shocking, and I hardly knew what to think, but there was something slightly chafing about Mr Wickham’s story.

Indeed, after my first inclination to swallow his tale whole, I classed it as a story rather than the absolute truth, and I would have picked at him very gently to unravel his assertions if Mr Collins at that moment had not looked to be standing up from the card table.

Quick as a flash, I absconded, and expecting to be hunted down by my odious cousin, I went home the long way around, through Mrs Long’s garden, across fallow fields, over stiles, and through a dry creek bed.

Triumph and cleverness came with a consequence, however, for when I happened to glance behind me, who would I see but Mr Collins in the distance, waving and struggling to reach me.

I dashed ahead and crossed over the road to Netherfield to cut through a hedge, but in my haste, I stepped on a loose stone and fell in a flash of pain. I had twisted an ankle!

I sat on the edge of the road in a dishevelled mound of dampened cloak and dusty hems, clutching my throbbing ankle, when Mr Darcy appeared atop a great tall horse over the rise of a hill.

He dismounted instantly and came to me. “Miss Bennet, what has happened? Are you well?”

The full impact of the impression I made fell on me.

With what humiliation I underwent his interrogation and his unapologetic examination of my ankle.

I blushed at the condition of my walking boots—scuffed and now muddy—with dull, tarnished brass buckles holding tight my well-worn straps.

Blushing and stammering, I sought to make him go away, insisting I would be well enough to continue in a minute.

But no! He would stand there and continue to wonder what had happened.

“Indeed, sir. It was nothing. I only slipped on a loose stone.”

“But I have seen you walking, and I cannot believe you would not be able to catch yourself from falling. A more sure-footed girl I have never met.”

I looked obliquely behind him. My cousin was now within hailing distance and would soon bear down upon me.

Mr Darcy, quick to notice everything, followed my gaze. “Who is that? Is that man following you? Were you running from him?”

Looking up into my interlocutor’s eyes, I smiled a bit grimly. “ That sir, is the man my mother intends me to marry.”

“What? But who is this person?” he demanded.

“He is none other than my cousin, the man who will inherit Longbourn. And, having been incapacitated on the road here, I begin to know what a wounded animal must feel as the hunter approaches.”

By this time, Mr Collins was upon us, red faced, gasping for air, irritated, and astounded to find me down in the dirt.

“Cousin, you should not be walking out alone. I forbid it!” he roared. “Did you not hear me calling you to return to me? And you, sir,” he cried upon noticing I was not alone, “who are you?”