Pemberley fic, Ch 5
Jul. 3rd, 2019 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraine... four months later. Oh, well.
title: tolerably well acquainted (5/?)
verse: Comforts and Consequences
characters: Elizabeth Bennet, (in absentia) Fitzwilliam Darcy; Mr Gardiner, Mrs Gardiner, OCs—Mr Bromley, Mrs Bromley, Thomas Bromley, Miss Bromley; Darcy/Elizabeth
stuff that happens: Elizabeth and the Gardiners meet their Lambton friends, and discover more about Darcy—now deliberately.
previous sections: one, two, three, four
Elizabeth knew the Gardiners must have questions about the scene which had just taken place. She had them. Nevertheless, her uncle and aunt spoke of the introductions in only in the most general terms as they all prepared to leave, then quietly led the way to the Bromleys’ house.
Mr and Mrs Bromley, along with their three daughters and a son of about seventeen, received them with the utmost friendliness, although they had only met the previous day. This alone would have sparked Elizabeth’s interest and approval on any other occasion. As it was, her feelings rose to relief; little, it seemed, would be required of her.
She expected to pass the time much as she had yesterday—struggling to direct her attention from those at Pemberley to those around her. This morning, however, she found no difficulty, though she gave herself no credit for it. That must go to the Gardiners.
As they all sat down to breakfast, Mrs Bromley politely asked after their plans. Mr and Mrs Gardiner exchanged a brief glance, and then Mrs Gardiner said,
“I think that Lizzy and I must call on Miss Darcy.”
The Bromleys looked all astonishment—so much so, and in such perfect concert, that Elizabeth would normally have repressed a smile.
“Miss Darcy?” repeated Mr Bromley. “Are you much acquainted with the family, madam?”
“My wife and I only met them yesterday,” said Mr Gardiner. “My niece, however, has known Mr Darcy for—it must be a year now, is it not, Lizzy?”
“Almost a year,” she said, doing her best to regard him with something other than open suspicion.
“His friend, Mr Bingley, rented an estate near my brother-in-law’s, and he stayed there for several months,” Mr Gardiner went on, in his easiest manner. “The rest of our family became acquainted with him that way.”
“I see,” Mrs Bromley said, her expression clearing.
Elizabeth wondered just how often they would be repeating that explanation before they left Derbyshire. It always sounded so much more agreeable than it had really been: rather as Jane might describe it.
“Miss Darcy, it seems, developed some curiosity about us all, so he brought her to meet us this morning,” said Mrs Gardiner. “It was very civil of her to come so soon—and I think must be returned, Lizzy.”
She was not wrong, but Elizabeth seriously doubted her motives in making such a performance out of it.
“Very civil indeed!” said Mrs Bromley, smiling. “I did not even hear that she had returned, and she never calls on anyone around Lambton.—They are far too proud for that.”
“So we have heard,” Mrs Gardiner replied. “Is there any place they do go, while they are in residence here? We should not like to miss them.”
The assorted Bromleys considered this, then shook their heads.
“Nowhere except Kympton,” said Mr Bromley.
Elizabeth had never heard of such a place, as far as she could recall. But Mrs Gardiner said,
“Oh, yes. The church there is very fine, is it not?”
“Nothing but the best for the Darcys,” said young Thomas Bromley.
His mother favoured him with an unimpressed look. “Mr Darcy had the Kympton living in his gift, I believe, and the parson is some sort of relation. It is perfectly natural that they would go there.”
“I suppose,” said young Bromley. “They do it every week that they are here.”
“They are not at all irreligious, to be sure,” agreed Mrs Bromley. “Well, Miss Bennet, their visit to you was a great compliment.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. She had no desire to interrupt the flow of talk, though nothing she had heard so far added to her knowledge of the man or the family. Kympton, perhaps, was the living that Mr Wickham had woven his tales around; it could hardly matter now. As far as Darcy’s religious practices went, she had known and noted those for months; he had attended services without exception in both Hertfordshire and Kent, listening to Mr Spencer’s sermons with every appearance of close attention, and to Mr Collins’s with as much as could be expected of any rational human being.
“Can you tell us anything more of them?” pressed Mrs Gardiner. “It was one thing to receive them at the inn, but I confess, I do feel a little nervous about appearing at Pemberley. It must be done, however; she was really very kind.”
Everyone assured her that she had nothing to fear; that they had all been to Pemberley, though as tourists rather than guests, without so much as a patronizing glance from a servant; and that the Darcys, though proud, were a very good sort of people.
“I am glad to hear it,” said Mr Gardiner, “for Mr Darcy invited me to fish in his stream tomorrow, and I hoped to take him up on it.”
“He has never invited me,” Thomas said.
The eldest Miss Bromley laughed outright. “He has never met you, Tom.”
“Then he must have quite the good impression of you as well as your niece, sir,” said Mr Bromley. “I would feel no concern were I you.”
Mrs Bromley gave an emphatic nod. “He does not invite just anyone to Pemberley, but you need not be overawed by the honour. Everyone says he is very generous and hospitable to his acquaintances.”
Elizabeth, who had never known her uncle to be overawed by anything, took a quick sip from her cup.
“We had heard something of that,” said Mrs Gardiner, “from the housekeeper. She seems quite devoted.”
“Not many would keep her on at her age,” Mr Bromley said in his stolid way. “He is a liberal man, however, and I hear does much good among the poor.”
Mr and Mrs Gardiner both smiled, with what seemed more than politeness to Elizabeth’s anxious eyes.
“Great families do not always make for good neighbours,” Mr Gardiner remarked. “It must be pleasant to have such amiable ones, despite their pride.”
“Yes, rather,” said Mrs Bromley. “I have heard of fine lords and gentlemen who make a misery of everyone around them. Mr Darcy is quite different. He lets us alone, except on very particular occasions.”
“Oh?” Mrs Gardiner said.
Elizabeth braced herself. She wished to know more of Darcy, but—astonishingly, to the Elizabeth of a few months ago—she also wished to think well of him. Now, she found herself hoping to hear only that which would satisfy both desires.
Thomas and his sisters looked puzzled.
“Which occasions, Mama?” said Miss Bromley.
“Oh, you were all with my sister Plympton at the time,” Mrs Bromley told her, then turned to her guests with a distinct appearance of enjoyment. “There was a certain young man, a protégé of the previous Mr Darcy, who returned to Derbyshire some time after his death.”
“Mr Darcy’s death, that is,” Mr Bromley said.
“Yes, my dear, Mr Wickham was not resurrected from the dead,” returned Mrs Bromley.
Wickham! Elizabeth could not imagine what worse she might hear of him. She dared not expose what she did know, and kept her expression neutral, but appreciated the open surprise on her aunt’s face.
“Mr Wickham!” Mrs Gardiner exclaimed. “Why, he is an acquaintance of ours. We met him in Hertfordshire, as well.”
“How remarkable,” said Mrs Bromley. “I cannot imagine that either of them enjoyed coming so near to each other. Well, I hope none of you trusted him with any credit.”
“We were not on such terms,” Mrs Gardiner said.
Mrs Bromley gave a satisfied nod. “We do not pretend to know their principal concern together, but everyone has heard that Mr Wickham left on poor terms with Mr Darcy, and with debts to all the tradesmen around these parts.”
Even Mr Gardiner seemed shocked.
“Good heavens,” he said. “I would never have imagined it of him.”
“That is how he manages it, I’d wager,” Mr Bromley said. “The young wastrel did here, in any case. He disappeared, and affairs might have gone poorly indeed for many of us, had young Mr Darcy not come and discharged the debts.”
Of course he had.
After the last two days, Elizabeth felt that no revelation about Darcy could now surprise her. At the same time, the Bromleys’ account affirmed the substance of Mrs Reynolds’s description, without her excessive partiality. It did not erase his conduct in Hertfordshire and Kent any more than Mrs Reynolds herself had done, but obscured it in a peculiar way. He might have passed out of Elizabeth’s life forever, leaving only the memory of a few complex interchanges and his part in revealing her character to herself. Here, he was a constant presence for half the year and a constant authority for all of it.
However affected the two of them might have been by their acquaintance, it could not compare to that. Elizabeth’s injured emotions, though not nothing, mattered less—far less—than the mass of lives winding out in the shadow of Pemberley. The singleness of her existence felt almost small next to that; yet at the same time, she felt herself all the more significant, in standing as judge to such a man.
For, maybe, once in her life, she had yet to reach judgment. He was at all times Mr Darcy of Pemberley, but Mr Darcy at Pemberley seemed so entirely distinct from Mr Darcy everywhere else that she scarcely knew what to think. Instead, the same thoughts coursed through her mind without resolution, returning over and over again with no answers.
She dwelt on them nevertheless, her habits of courtesy carrying her through the Bromleys’ conversation as it shifted to other subjects. All the while, she wondered how a single person could contain so many contradictions, and seem so wholly unaware of it himself. His manners had been so altered, though; the man who spoke to her mother’s brother and the one who had (rarely) spoken to her mother herself might have been different creatures altogether. Perhaps he had realized—perhaps he had listened—
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Throughout the day and early evening, the Gardiners managed to weave the same sorts of questions about Darcy and Wickham into the same sorts of conversations with their new acquaintances. They met with the same answers they had received from the Bromleys, and more generally on the day before; Darcy was proud but kind, and Wickham a disgrace whose debts had been paid by Darcy.
Elizabeth’s aunt and uncle did not fool her. Their manoeuvres gave her further anxiety over the whole matter; but those same manoeuvres also provided the information she longed for, or as much of it as could be acquired from reputation alone. For the present, she chose to accept her circumstances as the best that could be rationally expected from the situation, and extract what good she could from them.
Despite her resolution, the day seemed very long, and the evening longer. She spent hours concealing uncertainty and discomposure behind very unnatural reserve, reserve which must appear suspicious to the Gardiners. She could only imagine what they thought now. Well, whatever their conclusions, she would sooner or later be forced to declare them without foundation. That much was a certainty, unless—
Unless they were not without foundation, after all. Unless her feelings had changed.
Oh, of course they had! For months, she had hated Darcy. For months after, she had felt ashamed of that same hatred. Now, she—she did not know what she felt, but she knew it was different. The question was not whether her feelings had changed, but how much.
She pored over her own mind as closely as she could, but found no answer throughout the day or by the time they arrived at the inn, that evening.
“I have been thinking of Miss Darcy’s visit again,” said Mrs Gardiner.
Elizabeth’s polite attention to her aunt sharpened into something very near alarm, though she concealed it as well as she could. “What about it, aunt?”
“It truly was an extraordinary display of politeness,” she said. “I gather that she had only arrived in time for a late breakfast before coming to see us.”
“I believe so,” Elizabeth replied, relieved for her own sake, and genuinely curious as to whether the occasion had sprung from any real enthusiasm on Miss Darcy’s part, or only acquiescence in Mr Darcy’s. At the thought, Elizabeth felt herself colour; she could only hope that the dim light would protect her.
“We cannot equal it, but we can imitate it,” said Mrs Gardiner. “We should make some exertion, at the least. Shall we call on her at Pemberley tomorrow morning?”
Despite everything, Elizabeth felt a burst of real pleasure. Why? Well—she liked Miss Darcy—and—
No further explanation befriended her.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I look forward to it.”
A few more pleasant nothings passed before Elizabeth claimed exhaustion and retired. It was not a falsehood. Tiredly, she made her way to her bedchamber; tiredly, she climbed into her bed; but she did not sleep.
Darcy still filled her mind. He had often done so, in a way—but an altogether different way than this. Even the day before, he had occupied her thoughts less than now. She could not help but imagine him at Pemberley, not five miles away, perhaps resting, perhaps as wearily alert as Elizabeth herself. He certainly had reason for it.
He loved her. Elizabeth had not, since his proposal, doubted it, but it weighed differently with her tonight. And what did she feel?
She scrutinized herself as closely as she could, even more closely than throughout the long day, now that she had nothing to distract her. She did not hate him; she regretted having hated him as much as almost anything in her life. It had already been some time since she was disgusted at her own respect for his good qualities, and now that she knew they made up most of his character, she felt something more than respect: something, though she had denied it only yesterday, like friendship.
She felt a still stronger emotion, too, difficult to exactly identify. Gratitude, Elizabeth thought.
Yes, that was it. Above all else, she felt grateful to him, both for loving her before, and for ignoring the petulant manner of her rejection and unjust accusations enough to love her still.
He had neither pursued her in the face of her rejection, nor treated her with the antipathy she felt she at least half-deserved, upon meeting her by accident. He had made his continued affection clear to her, honoured her in his treatment of the Gardiners and introduction to his sister, without any gesture that might make her uncomfortable, and without any trace of incivility. Indeed she had seen nothing short of good-tempered cordiality from him. However ignorant she might have been of some of his virtues, this much extended even beyond that, to real change.
Yes, he had listened to her. It must have been painful to remember her words, but he had done so nevertheless, and altered himself in response: not to please her, when he never expected to see her again, but out of the utmost respect and love for her. No one could ask for more, least of all in a man as proud and certain of himself as Darcy had always been. This was what it meant to love someone.
Elizabeth was pleased, pleased beyond her ability to define the borders of her own feelings. But she did respect him, and like him, and feel grateful to him, and—and she wanted him to be happy. What a thought! But she did, with all her heart.
Did she wish that happiness to include her, though? He would propose again, if she encouraged him—Elizabeth felt sure of that. Did she wish for it? Might her regard extend that far?
She could not say.
title: tolerably well acquainted (5/?)
verse: Comforts and Consequences
characters: Elizabeth Bennet, (in absentia) Fitzwilliam Darcy; Mr Gardiner, Mrs Gardiner, OCs—Mr Bromley, Mrs Bromley, Thomas Bromley, Miss Bromley; Darcy/Elizabeth
stuff that happens: Elizabeth and the Gardiners meet their Lambton friends, and discover more about Darcy—now deliberately.
previous sections: one, two, three, four
She spent hours concealing uncertainty and discomposure behind very unnatural reserve, reserve which must appear suspicious to the Gardiners. She could only imagine what they thought now. Well, whatever their conclusions, she would sooner or later be forced to declare them without foundation. That much was a certainty, unless—
Unless they were not without foundation, after all. Unless her feelings had changed.
Unless they were not without foundation, after all. Unless her feelings had changed.
Elizabeth knew the Gardiners must have questions about the scene which had just taken place. She had them. Nevertheless, her uncle and aunt spoke of the introductions in only in the most general terms as they all prepared to leave, then quietly led the way to the Bromleys’ house.
Mr and Mrs Bromley, along with their three daughters and a son of about seventeen, received them with the utmost friendliness, although they had only met the previous day. This alone would have sparked Elizabeth’s interest and approval on any other occasion. As it was, her feelings rose to relief; little, it seemed, would be required of her.
She expected to pass the time much as she had yesterday—struggling to direct her attention from those at Pemberley to those around her. This morning, however, she found no difficulty, though she gave herself no credit for it. That must go to the Gardiners.
As they all sat down to breakfast, Mrs Bromley politely asked after their plans. Mr and Mrs Gardiner exchanged a brief glance, and then Mrs Gardiner said,
“I think that Lizzy and I must call on Miss Darcy.”
The Bromleys looked all astonishment—so much so, and in such perfect concert, that Elizabeth would normally have repressed a smile.
“Miss Darcy?” repeated Mr Bromley. “Are you much acquainted with the family, madam?”
“My wife and I only met them yesterday,” said Mr Gardiner. “My niece, however, has known Mr Darcy for—it must be a year now, is it not, Lizzy?”
“Almost a year,” she said, doing her best to regard him with something other than open suspicion.
“His friend, Mr Bingley, rented an estate near my brother-in-law’s, and he stayed there for several months,” Mr Gardiner went on, in his easiest manner. “The rest of our family became acquainted with him that way.”
“I see,” Mrs Bromley said, her expression clearing.
Elizabeth wondered just how often they would be repeating that explanation before they left Derbyshire. It always sounded so much more agreeable than it had really been: rather as Jane might describe it.
“Miss Darcy, it seems, developed some curiosity about us all, so he brought her to meet us this morning,” said Mrs Gardiner. “It was very civil of her to come so soon—and I think must be returned, Lizzy.”
She was not wrong, but Elizabeth seriously doubted her motives in making such a performance out of it.
“Very civil indeed!” said Mrs Bromley, smiling. “I did not even hear that she had returned, and she never calls on anyone around Lambton.—They are far too proud for that.”
“So we have heard,” Mrs Gardiner replied. “Is there any place they do go, while they are in residence here? We should not like to miss them.”
The assorted Bromleys considered this, then shook their heads.
“Nowhere except Kympton,” said Mr Bromley.
Elizabeth had never heard of such a place, as far as she could recall. But Mrs Gardiner said,
“Oh, yes. The church there is very fine, is it not?”
“Nothing but the best for the Darcys,” said young Thomas Bromley.
His mother favoured him with an unimpressed look. “Mr Darcy had the Kympton living in his gift, I believe, and the parson is some sort of relation. It is perfectly natural that they would go there.”
“I suppose,” said young Bromley. “They do it every week that they are here.”
“They are not at all irreligious, to be sure,” agreed Mrs Bromley. “Well, Miss Bennet, their visit to you was a great compliment.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said. She had no desire to interrupt the flow of talk, though nothing she had heard so far added to her knowledge of the man or the family. Kympton, perhaps, was the living that Mr Wickham had woven his tales around; it could hardly matter now. As far as Darcy’s religious practices went, she had known and noted those for months; he had attended services without exception in both Hertfordshire and Kent, listening to Mr Spencer’s sermons with every appearance of close attention, and to Mr Collins’s with as much as could be expected of any rational human being.
“Can you tell us anything more of them?” pressed Mrs Gardiner. “It was one thing to receive them at the inn, but I confess, I do feel a little nervous about appearing at Pemberley. It must be done, however; she was really very kind.”
Everyone assured her that she had nothing to fear; that they had all been to Pemberley, though as tourists rather than guests, without so much as a patronizing glance from a servant; and that the Darcys, though proud, were a very good sort of people.
“I am glad to hear it,” said Mr Gardiner, “for Mr Darcy invited me to fish in his stream tomorrow, and I hoped to take him up on it.”
“He has never invited me,” Thomas said.
The eldest Miss Bromley laughed outright. “He has never met you, Tom.”
“Then he must have quite the good impression of you as well as your niece, sir,” said Mr Bromley. “I would feel no concern were I you.”
Mrs Bromley gave an emphatic nod. “He does not invite just anyone to Pemberley, but you need not be overawed by the honour. Everyone says he is very generous and hospitable to his acquaintances.”
Elizabeth, who had never known her uncle to be overawed by anything, took a quick sip from her cup.
“We had heard something of that,” said Mrs Gardiner, “from the housekeeper. She seems quite devoted.”
“Not many would keep her on at her age,” Mr Bromley said in his stolid way. “He is a liberal man, however, and I hear does much good among the poor.”
Mr and Mrs Gardiner both smiled, with what seemed more than politeness to Elizabeth’s anxious eyes.
“Great families do not always make for good neighbours,” Mr Gardiner remarked. “It must be pleasant to have such amiable ones, despite their pride.”
“Yes, rather,” said Mrs Bromley. “I have heard of fine lords and gentlemen who make a misery of everyone around them. Mr Darcy is quite different. He lets us alone, except on very particular occasions.”
“Oh?” Mrs Gardiner said.
Elizabeth braced herself. She wished to know more of Darcy, but—astonishingly, to the Elizabeth of a few months ago—she also wished to think well of him. Now, she found herself hoping to hear only that which would satisfy both desires.
Thomas and his sisters looked puzzled.
“Which occasions, Mama?” said Miss Bromley.
“Oh, you were all with my sister Plympton at the time,” Mrs Bromley told her, then turned to her guests with a distinct appearance of enjoyment. “There was a certain young man, a protégé of the previous Mr Darcy, who returned to Derbyshire some time after his death.”
“Mr Darcy’s death, that is,” Mr Bromley said.
“Yes, my dear, Mr Wickham was not resurrected from the dead,” returned Mrs Bromley.
Wickham! Elizabeth could not imagine what worse she might hear of him. She dared not expose what she did know, and kept her expression neutral, but appreciated the open surprise on her aunt’s face.
“Mr Wickham!” Mrs Gardiner exclaimed. “Why, he is an acquaintance of ours. We met him in Hertfordshire, as well.”
“How remarkable,” said Mrs Bromley. “I cannot imagine that either of them enjoyed coming so near to each other. Well, I hope none of you trusted him with any credit.”
“We were not on such terms,” Mrs Gardiner said.
Mrs Bromley gave a satisfied nod. “We do not pretend to know their principal concern together, but everyone has heard that Mr Wickham left on poor terms with Mr Darcy, and with debts to all the tradesmen around these parts.”
Even Mr Gardiner seemed shocked.
“Good heavens,” he said. “I would never have imagined it of him.”
“That is how he manages it, I’d wager,” Mr Bromley said. “The young wastrel did here, in any case. He disappeared, and affairs might have gone poorly indeed for many of us, had young Mr Darcy not come and discharged the debts.”
Of course he had.
After the last two days, Elizabeth felt that no revelation about Darcy could now surprise her. At the same time, the Bromleys’ account affirmed the substance of Mrs Reynolds’s description, without her excessive partiality. It did not erase his conduct in Hertfordshire and Kent any more than Mrs Reynolds herself had done, but obscured it in a peculiar way. He might have passed out of Elizabeth’s life forever, leaving only the memory of a few complex interchanges and his part in revealing her character to herself. Here, he was a constant presence for half the year and a constant authority for all of it.
However affected the two of them might have been by their acquaintance, it could not compare to that. Elizabeth’s injured emotions, though not nothing, mattered less—far less—than the mass of lives winding out in the shadow of Pemberley. The singleness of her existence felt almost small next to that; yet at the same time, she felt herself all the more significant, in standing as judge to such a man.
For, maybe, once in her life, she had yet to reach judgment. He was at all times Mr Darcy of Pemberley, but Mr Darcy at Pemberley seemed so entirely distinct from Mr Darcy everywhere else that she scarcely knew what to think. Instead, the same thoughts coursed through her mind without resolution, returning over and over again with no answers.
She dwelt on them nevertheless, her habits of courtesy carrying her through the Bromleys’ conversation as it shifted to other subjects. All the while, she wondered how a single person could contain so many contradictions, and seem so wholly unaware of it himself. His manners had been so altered, though; the man who spoke to her mother’s brother and the one who had (rarely) spoken to her mother herself might have been different creatures altogether. Perhaps he had realized—perhaps he had listened—
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Throughout the day and early evening, the Gardiners managed to weave the same sorts of questions about Darcy and Wickham into the same sorts of conversations with their new acquaintances. They met with the same answers they had received from the Bromleys, and more generally on the day before; Darcy was proud but kind, and Wickham a disgrace whose debts had been paid by Darcy.
Elizabeth’s aunt and uncle did not fool her. Their manoeuvres gave her further anxiety over the whole matter; but those same manoeuvres also provided the information she longed for, or as much of it as could be acquired from reputation alone. For the present, she chose to accept her circumstances as the best that could be rationally expected from the situation, and extract what good she could from them.
Despite her resolution, the day seemed very long, and the evening longer. She spent hours concealing uncertainty and discomposure behind very unnatural reserve, reserve which must appear suspicious to the Gardiners. She could only imagine what they thought now. Well, whatever their conclusions, she would sooner or later be forced to declare them without foundation. That much was a certainty, unless—
Unless they were not without foundation, after all. Unless her feelings had changed.
Oh, of course they had! For months, she had hated Darcy. For months after, she had felt ashamed of that same hatred. Now, she—she did not know what she felt, but she knew it was different. The question was not whether her feelings had changed, but how much.
She pored over her own mind as closely as she could, but found no answer throughout the day or by the time they arrived at the inn, that evening.
“I have been thinking of Miss Darcy’s visit again,” said Mrs Gardiner.
Elizabeth’s polite attention to her aunt sharpened into something very near alarm, though she concealed it as well as she could. “What about it, aunt?”
“It truly was an extraordinary display of politeness,” she said. “I gather that she had only arrived in time for a late breakfast before coming to see us.”
“I believe so,” Elizabeth replied, relieved for her own sake, and genuinely curious as to whether the occasion had sprung from any real enthusiasm on Miss Darcy’s part, or only acquiescence in Mr Darcy’s. At the thought, Elizabeth felt herself colour; she could only hope that the dim light would protect her.
“We cannot equal it, but we can imitate it,” said Mrs Gardiner. “We should make some exertion, at the least. Shall we call on her at Pemberley tomorrow morning?”
Despite everything, Elizabeth felt a burst of real pleasure. Why? Well—she liked Miss Darcy—and—
No further explanation befriended her.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I look forward to it.”
A few more pleasant nothings passed before Elizabeth claimed exhaustion and retired. It was not a falsehood. Tiredly, she made her way to her bedchamber; tiredly, she climbed into her bed; but she did not sleep.
Darcy still filled her mind. He had often done so, in a way—but an altogether different way than this. Even the day before, he had occupied her thoughts less than now. She could not help but imagine him at Pemberley, not five miles away, perhaps resting, perhaps as wearily alert as Elizabeth herself. He certainly had reason for it.
He loved her. Elizabeth had not, since his proposal, doubted it, but it weighed differently with her tonight. And what did she feel?
She scrutinized herself as closely as she could, even more closely than throughout the long day, now that she had nothing to distract her. She did not hate him; she regretted having hated him as much as almost anything in her life. It had already been some time since she was disgusted at her own respect for his good qualities, and now that she knew they made up most of his character, she felt something more than respect: something, though she had denied it only yesterday, like friendship.
She felt a still stronger emotion, too, difficult to exactly identify. Gratitude, Elizabeth thought.
Yes, that was it. Above all else, she felt grateful to him, both for loving her before, and for ignoring the petulant manner of her rejection and unjust accusations enough to love her still.
He had neither pursued her in the face of her rejection, nor treated her with the antipathy she felt she at least half-deserved, upon meeting her by accident. He had made his continued affection clear to her, honoured her in his treatment of the Gardiners and introduction to his sister, without any gesture that might make her uncomfortable, and without any trace of incivility. Indeed she had seen nothing short of good-tempered cordiality from him. However ignorant she might have been of some of his virtues, this much extended even beyond that, to real change.
Yes, he had listened to her. It must have been painful to remember her words, but he had done so nevertheless, and altered himself in response: not to please her, when he never expected to see her again, but out of the utmost respect and love for her. No one could ask for more, least of all in a man as proud and certain of himself as Darcy had always been. This was what it meant to love someone.
Elizabeth was pleased, pleased beyond her ability to define the borders of her own feelings. But she did respect him, and like him, and feel grateful to him, and—and she wanted him to be happy. What a thought! But she did, with all her heart.
Did she wish that happiness to include her, though? He would propose again, if she encouraged him—Elizabeth felt sure of that. Did she wish for it? Might her regard extend that far?
She could not say.