Chapter 58

Elizabeth had half expected that Bingley would receive some such letter of excuse from his friend. But a few days after Lady Catherine's visit, Bingley was able to bring Darcy to Longbourn. The two gentlemen arrived early. Bingley wished to be alone with Jane, and so he proposed that they all walk out together. He did this before Mrs. Bennet could tell Darcy that she had met his aunt. Elizabeth had been dreading that every moment. Everyone agreed to the walk. Mrs. Bennet was not in the habit of walking, and Mary could not spare the time. The other five set out together. But Bingley and Jane soon let the others go on ahead of them. The two of them fell behind. Elizabeth, Kitty, and Darcy had to entertain one another. None of them said much. Kitty was too much afraid of Darcy to speak. Elizabeth was making a desperate resolution in her own mind. Perhaps he was making the same one.

Kitty wished to call on Maria. So they walked toward the Lucases' house. Elizabeth thought there was no need for all of them to join that visit. When Kitty left the two of them, Elizabeth took courage and walked on alone with Darcy. Now was the time to carry out her resolution. While her courage was still with her, she spoke at once.

"Mr. Darcy, I am a very selfish person. To give relief to my own feelings, I will not stop to think how deeply I may wound your feelings. I can no longer keep from thanking you for your very great kindness to my poor sister. Ever since I learned of it, I have been longing to tell you how grateful I have felt. If the rest of my family knew of it, I should not be offering my thanks alone."

Darcy answered in a voice of surprise and strong feeling. "I am sorry that you have been told of something which, if it is seen wrongly, might make you uneasy. I am very sorry indeed. I did not think Mrs. Gardiner was so little to be trusted with a secret."

"Do not blame my aunt. Lydia spoke without thinking, and that was how I first learned that you had been concerned in the matter. Of course I could not rest until I knew the whole of it. Let me thank you again and again, for all my family, for the generous heart that took so much trouble to find the two of them, and bore so much humiliation."

"If you must thank me," he replied, "let it be for yourself alone. I will not deny that the wish to make you happy added strength to the other reasons that moved me. But your family owes me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you."

Elizabeth was too confused to say a word. After a short pause he added. "You are too generous to play with my heart. If you feel now as you felt last April, tell me so now. My love and my hope have not changed. But if you speak one word, I will be silent about this forever."

Elizabeth knew that his position was far more awkward and anxious than her own. Now she had to force herself to speak. The words did not come easily. Still, she made him understand that her feelings had changed very greatly since the time he spoke of. She said at once as well that she received his present declaration with gratitude and pleasure. The happiness that this answer gave him was such as he had probably never felt before. He showed his heart as warmly and as sincerely as a man deeply in love could show it. If Elizabeth had been able to meet his eyes, she would have seen how well the true delight that filled his whole face suited him. She could not look at him. But she could listen. Darcy told her how much she meant to him, and what he felt in his heart. His affection grew more precious with every word she heard.

The two of them walked on without knowing which way they went. There was too much to think and to feel and to say. Nothing else could hold their attention. Elizabeth soon learned that Darcy's aunt had done her part in bringing them to this understanding of each other. Lady Catherine had indeed called on him as she passed through London. She had told him of her journey to Longbourn, of her reason for it, and of the main points of her conversation with Elizabeth. Lady Catherine had dwelt with force on every phrase which, in her view, showed Elizabeth's stubbornness and boldness. She believed that such an account would help her obtain from her nephew the promise she had failed to get. But unhappily for Lady Catherine, the effect was exactly the opposite.

He said. "You have given me a hope that before I had hardly dared to feel. I know your character well. If you had been firmly determined never to accept me, you would have said so to Lady Catherine, honestly and openly. Of that I felt sure."

Elizabeth blushed and laughed. "Yes, you know my frankness well enough to believe me capable of that. After I had blamed you so terribly to your face, I could have had no reason to hesitate to blame all your relations."

"Was there anything in what you said that I did not deserve? It is true that the grounds of your blame were wrong, and that they came from a mistaken idea. But the way I treated you at that time deserved the harshest rebuke. It was behavior that cannot be forgiven. I cannot think of it without disgust."

"Let us not argue about who took the larger share of the fault that night," said Elizabeth. "If we examine it strictly, the behavior of neither of us was free from fault. Still, I hope that since then we have both grown better in our manners."

"I cannot make peace with myself so easily. When I remember what I said and did that day, and my manner, and the words I used through the whole of that conversation, it pains me even now. It has pained me for many months. I shall never forget the rebuke you gave me, and you gave it so fittingly. 'If you had behaved in a more gentlemanly way.' Those were your words. You do not know how much those words have tormented me. You can hardly imagine it. But I confess that some time passed before I recovered enough sense to admit that they were just."

"I had no idea at all that it would stay in your mind like that. I never thought for a moment that you would take it in such a way."

"I can well believe it. You thought then that I had no proper feeling at all. I am sure you did. I shall never forget the look on your face when you said that no manner of proposal from me could have made you willing to accept."

"Oh, do not repeat what I said then. Those memories are not good at all. I promise you that I have been truly ashamed of it for a long time."

Darcy brought out the letter he had written. "Did that letter," he said, "make you think better of me? Did you believe any part of what it said as you read it?"

Elizabeth explained what effect the letter had had upon her. She told him as well how all her old prejudice had gradually gone away.

"I knew that what I wrote would give you pain. But it was necessary," he said. "I hope you have destroyed the letter. There is one part in particular that I dread your being able to read again. It is the beginning. I remember some expressions that might well make you hate me."

"If you think it truly necessary to burn the letter in order to keep my affection, I will certainly burn it. But neither of us has reason to believe that my opinion can never change at all. Still, I hope it does not change as easily as those words suggest."

Darcy replied. "When I wrote that letter, I believed myself perfectly calm and cool. But I understood later. It was a letter written with a very bitter heart."

"It may have begun in bitterness, but it did not end so. The farewell is nothing but kindness. But think no more of the letter. The feelings of the person who wrote it and of the person who received it are now so different from what they were then. Every unpleasant thing connected with it must be forgotten. You must learn a little of my philosophy as well. Think of the past only as far as it gives you pleasure to remember it."

"I cannot allow that you have such a philosophy. When you look back on what is past, you can have nothing to blame yourself for. The contentment that comes from that is not philosophy but something far better. It comes from knowing nothing. With me it is not so. Painful memories come in upon me. They cannot be driven away, and they should not be. In my principles I was not selfish, but in what I did I was selfish all my life. As a child I was taught what was right. But I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles. Yet no one guided me, and so I followed them in pride and conceit. Unhappily I was an only son, and for many years I was an only child. So I was spoiled by my parents. They were good people. My father in particular was a kind and gentle man. But they allowed me, and encouraged me, to become selfish and overbearing. They almost taught me to be so. They taught me to care for no one outside my own family, and to think little of everyone else. At the least, to think that their sense and their worth were below my own. From eight years old to twenty-eight I was such a man. Most lovable and most beautiful Elizabeth, if it had not been for you, I might be such a man still! You do not know how great a debt I owe you. You gave me a lesson that was very painful at first, but of the greatest use. Thanks to you, I became humble in the right way. I came to you with no doubt at all that I would be accepted. You showed me how far short I fell, with all that I had to offer, of pleasing a woman who deserved to be pleased."

"Did you really believe that I would accept you?"

"I did. What must you think of my vanity? I believed that you wished for my proposal and expected it."

"There must have been some fault in my manner as well. But I promise you it was never done on purpose. I never meant to deceive you. But my lively spirits may have led me to act wrongly now and then. How you must have hated me after that evening!"

"Hated you! I may have been angry at first. But my anger soon began to turn toward its proper object."

"I am almost afraid to ask what you thought of me when we met at Pemberley. Did you blame me for coming there?"

"No. I felt nothing except surprise."

"My own surprise was no less than yours. My conscience told me that I deserved no special courtesy. I confess that I did not expect to receive more than I deserved."

Darcy replied. "My intention then was to show you all the courtesy I was able to show. I wished to let you know that I was not so small a man as to hold a grudge for the past. I hoped to gain your forgiveness and to soften your poor opinion of me by showing that I had taken your rebuke to heart. How soon another wish came in, I can hardly say. I believe it was about half an hour after I saw you."

Then Darcy told her how glad Georgiana had been to become acquainted with Elizabeth. He spoke as well of her disappointment when the acquaintance was so suddenly broken off. That led naturally to the cause of the break. Elizabeth soon learned that he had made up his mind, before he left the inn, to follow her from Derbyshire in search of her own sister. What had seemed there to be gravity and deep thought in him came only from the struggle of carrying out that task.

Elizabeth thanked him again. But the subject was too painful to them both, and they did not speak of it long.

The two of them walked several miles at a slow pace. They were so taken up with their talk that they never noticed it. At last they looked at a watch and found that it was time to be at home.

"Where can Mr. Bingley and Jane have gone?" the two of them wondered. That question led them naturally to talk of the affairs of those two. Darcy was greatly pleased at their engagement. Bingley had given him the news before he gave it to anyone else.

Elizabeth said. "I must ask you whether you were surprised."

"Not at all. When I went away, I felt that it would soon happen."

"That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as much." Darcy protested at the word. But Elizabeth found that it had been very nearly the case.

He said. "On the evening before I went to London, I made a confession to Bingley that I ought to have made long before. I told him everything that had happened since, which showed how absurd and presumptuous my earlier meddling in his affairs had been. He was greatly astonished. He had never suspected it. I told him as well that I now believed I had been wrong in supposing that your sister felt nothing for him. I could easily see that he still loved her. So I had no doubt at all that the two of them would be happy together."

Elizabeth could not help smiling at the easy way in which he guided his friend.

"When you told him that my sister loved him," she said, "did you speak from what you had seen yourself? Or did you rely only on what I told you last spring?"

"It was my own observation. I watched your sister closely during my two recent visits here, and I became certain of her affection."

"And he believed it as soon as he heard that assurance, I suppose."

"He did. Bingley is modest and without any pretense. In a matter so important he had no confidence, and he could not trust his own judgment. But he trusted mine, and that made everything easy. There was one thing I had to confess. It made him angry for a while, and he had a right to be. I could not hide the fact that I had known your sister was in London for three months last winter, and that I had kept it from him on purpose. He was angry. But I am sure his anger lasted only while he still doubted your sister's feelings. He has now forgiven me from his heart."

Elizabeth wanted to say that Mr. Bingley was so wonderful a friend, and so easily led, that his value could not be measured. But she held herself back. Darcy had still to learn how to take being laughed at. She remembered as well that it was a little early to begin. Picturing to himself the happiness of Bingley, which was naturally the greatest after his own, he went on talking until they reached the house. The two of them parted in the hall.