Page 4 of Why I Kissed You (Pride and Prejudice Variation)

He went on to say that his objections to the marriage of Bingley and Jane were not merely those which he had last night acknowledged to have required the utmost force of passion to put aside in his own case; the want of connexion could not be so great an evil to Bingley as to himself.

No, there were other causes of repugnance; causes which—though still existing, and existing to an equal degree in both instances—he had endeavoured to forget, because they were not immediately before him.

These causes must be stated, he insisted, “though briefly.” Elizabeth listened with a growing mixture of vexation and embarrassment to his assertion that the situation of her mother’s family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison of that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by Mrs. Bennet, her three younger daughters, and occasionally even by Mr. Bennet.

“Pardon me, it pains me to offend you,” said Darcy in a low voice, no doubt in response to her increasing color.

“But amidst your concern for the defects of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider that to have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like censure is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your eldest sister than it is honourable to the sense and disposition of both. I will only say, farther, that from what passed that evening my opinion of all parties was confirmed, and every inducement heightened, which could have led me before to preserve my friend from what I esteemed a most unhappy connexion.”

Pain again lanced her beneath her breast, and Elizabeth fought the sting of embarrassed tears as she wrapped her arms about herself.

Her long hours of reflection after their row had already given her much uneasiness, having been forced to accept that he had some justification for his caution.

Her mother and sisters were too often vulgar and uncouth in their behaviour, and in finding too much pleasure in the folly of his wife and daughters to check them, her father only showed the world how little respect or feeling he had for either.

Darcy next spoke of Bingley’s leaving Netherfield for London the day after the ball.

Elizabeth recalled his having spoken of his intention to return soon.

But his sisters’ uneasiness matching Darcy’s own was soon discovered; and, believing no time was to be lost in detaching their brother, they shortly resolved on joining him directly in London.

There the three readily engaged in the office of pointing out to Bingley the certain evils of his choice.

Darcy had enforced his belief with assurances of Jane being indifferent to him.

Bingley had before believed her to return his affection with sincere, if not with equal, regard.

But his friend had great natural modesty, Darcy assured her, with a stronger dependence on the latter’s judgment than on his own.

To convince Bingley that he had deceived himself was no very difficult point.

To persuade him against returning into Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been given, was scarcely the work of a moment.

“I cannot blame myself for having done this much. There is but one part of my conduct, in the whole affair, on which I do not reflect with satisfaction; it is that I condescended to conceal from him your sister’s being in town.

I knew it myself, as it was known to Miss Bingley; but her brother is even yet ignorant of it.

That they might have met without ill consequence is, perhaps, probable; but his regard did not appear to me enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger.

Perhaps this concealment, this disguise, was beneath me.

It is done, however, and it was done for the best. If I have wounded your sister’s feelings, it was unknowingly done; and though the motives which governed me may to you very naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn them. ”

Elizabeth’s emotions were again stirred into fury.

“Oh, of course you have not,” she said. “You still think your judgment the superior because your position in society is of greater consequence, which only serves to prove my point that you do not care at all about how other people feel—only what you feel is right.”

From the corner of her eye, she noted Darcy reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He was vexed with her, she was fairly certain, though she was still too much put out with him to care.

They had come to a point on the road where a grassy lane—more a footpath, really—lead off into that favorite walk which Elizabeth had earlier avoided.

She decided to turn that way in the hope of still finding some measure of peace in her exercise.

Darcy could surely have nothing further to say to her—he’d explained his reasons for interfering with Bingley and Jane, but not at all to her satisfaction.

Indeed, there were no words he could have said to dispel her anger there.

Not even the recollection of Charlotte having once observed that Jane might want to show more than she felt—which admittedly stung a little in light of Darcy’s similar judgment of her sister’s behaviour—could make her believe that Jane had done anything wrong.

“Will you hear me further?” Darcy asked her.

“Have I any choice in the matter?” Elizabeth retorted.

“You do,” he replied evenly. “However, I asked that you allow me to address the two offences of which I was accused. I have done with one but not the other.”

“Oh yes—your cruelty to Mr. Wickham,” said she, glancing sidelong at him. “Pray make as poor an attempt to justify how you wronged him as you have wronged my sister and Mr. Bingley.”

Darcy sighed … and then launched into a narrative which stunned Elizabeth to her core.

That Wickham had grown up on the Pemberley estate as the son of old Mr. Darcy’s steward, that he had been Mr. Darcy’s godson and supported with a gentleman’s education at Cambridge, she had heard from Wickham himself.

The first difference in their stories to give her pause was in the handling of the living.

Darcy explained that his father had hoped Mr. Wickham would make the church his profession, for his manners were even then so engaging as to give the elder man the highest opinion of him and so had intended to provide him a living.

“As for myself, it is many, many years since I first began to think of him in a very different manner,” said Darcy in a bitter voice.

“The vicious propensities, the want of principle, which he was careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with himself, and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments, which my father could not have. Here again I shall give you pain—to what degree you only can tell. But whatever may be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham has created, a suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from unfolding his real character. It adds even another motive.”

The living, which Wickham had told Elizabeth he was promised, was to be his only if he took orders.

Darcy told her that, about six months after the death of both their fathers some five years before, Wickham had written to say he had resolved against taking orders and instead wished to study the law.

Knowing that Wickham ought not to be a clergyman, he thus hoped rather than believed the declaration to be sincere.

Wickham’s letter said he hoped Darcy should not think it unreasonable for him to expect some more immediate pecuniary advantage in lieu of the preferment, as the interest of a legacy of one thousand pounds, left to him by old Mr. Darcy, would be insufficient to support the pursuit of that career.

“Wickham resigned all claim to assistance in the church,” Darcy continued, “were it possible that he could ever be in a situation to receive it and accepted in return three thousand pounds.”

Elizabeth could not stifle the soft gasp that erupted from her. Four thousand pounds, a combination of his legacy and compensation, was no trifle!

Her companion went on without acknowledging her surprise.

“All connexion between us seemed now dissolved. I thought too ill of him to invite him to Pemberley or admit his society in town. In town, I believe, he chiefly lived, but his studying the law was a mere pretense; and being now free from all restraint, his life was a life of idleness and dissipation. For about three years I heard little of him; but on the decease of the incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, when his dissolute style of living had rendered his circumstances desperate, he applied to me again by letter for the presentation.”

“But… You said he willingly gave it up in exchange for money,” Elizabeth remarked.

“I… I will admit to being rather surprised he ever thought that you would be of a mind to grant him that over which he had no longer had any semblance of rights to claim, even if you had no other person to provide for.”

She cleared her throat and, now feeling the first stirrings of shame, looked down at her feet as she said in a lower voice, “He told me you had denied him the living out of spite and jealousy, against the wishes of your father.”