We Shall Have to be Philosophers

The banns were read, the settlement signed and in due course, the enchanting creature on his arm would be his wife. All of his former doubts were gone, scattered to the wind, as insignificant as grains of sand. Necessary for a time, yes, but discarded when the ink was dry. Once, he had been wet and apt to smear; acting rashly and ruining his chances for happiness. But now the ink was dry and the words that would stay told the tale of a gentlemen worthy of her respect and affection.

She plainly struggled to say so. She was so well-spoken, so witty, so apt to phrase anything delightfully that her struggles in this caught him quite by surprise. Perhaps the reversal would be characteristic of their marriage — he, normally so reticent, found himself moved to say too much to her. She, normally so ebullient, found herself embarrassed into silence.

A man who felt less or suffered less might have seen this as cause to doubt his good fortune. Fitzwilliam Darcy, however, felt no desire to doubt the delicate hand on his arm, the delightful curl of lips that smiled at him or the pull of that same mouth, when it dared him to kiss her.

He was so secure, in fact, in her promises and stilted proclamations of the deepest affection, that he indulged himself in wonderments that were decidedly less whimsical than her own. She wondered how it could be he should love her. He wondered:

"On what episode was your former dislike of me originally founded? I had much to answer for, but what was the beginning?"

The topic was perhaps too serious for a leisurely walk in her father's park, but once he admitted curiosity to himself, he could not help but appeal to her for an answer.

"I forgot," Elizabeth replied airily. "A good memory for such things will hardly promote marital felicity."

"It is very kind of you to say so," Darcy said, "but I know it cannot actually be so. Our felicity, I should hope, will rely more upon the actions we take in the future than whether we pretend to forget past events or not. I refuse to be so conceited as to convince myself you shall always be happy with me. Marriage will not teach me ease, nor you obedience. I think it best to know, and discuss it now, when we can laugh about it, than for me to learn during an argument a year or more hence."

"I assure you," Elizabeth protested, "regardless of whatever may come between us in the future, I have no intention of throwing entirely unrelated offenses at you to better cast myself as a victim."

"I mean no offense to you, personally," Darcy replied. "Anger can make the best of us behave irrationally. Things may be said in the heat of the moment. I would prefer as few surprises as possible"

Skeptically, she confessed, "It was very silly."

"Yet I gather it mattered to you a great deal at the time."

"Yes," Elizabeth owned, "but it does not matter any longer."

"I would like to know."

Her siege on his curiosity continued unabated. "You will think less of me for being so affected by this."

"Impossible."

Elizabeth added, "I thought less of myself when I realized how susceptible my vanity had made me."

It was an odd thought — his Elizabeth, vain. She shared a lady's maid with her sisters, had no qualms about demonstrating her lack of musical proficiency and had once arrived at Netherfield in a mud-soaked gown that was years out of date. She laughed. She ran. Sometimes, both at once! If pressed, he would be unable to name a woman less concerned with how others perceived her.

Prepared to disagree with her prediction, Darcy said, "I am forewarned."

She sighed. "You made some comment or another," Elizabeth huffed, "about my not being handsome, and I was mortified."

The truth was, he had made many comments to that effect. When he first made her acquaintance, Darcy not found her athletic build or dark features at all appealing. He had not been hesitant to say so, either. But those comments had been directed to Bingley or one of his sisters. As early as Elizabeth's walk to Netherfield, Darcy had been enamored of her intelligent eyes and daring laughter. Admiration of her eyes and mouth lead to an overall approval of her face. He could only term what followed as a perfectly rational appreciation for her body. How it should happen that she overheard one of his prior remarks quite baffled him.

"You do know," he said, rather uncomfortable at being caught out, "that I consider you to be among the handsomest women of my acquaintance."

Elizabeth beamed. "It only bothered me so much because you are so handsome," she said, petting his arm.

Her compliments were rare. Later, he would attribute his stupidity to the heady euphoria that followed Elizabeth's fluently praising him.

"I am heartily ashamed that you heard any such comment leave my mouth," Darcy said. "Though I do find myself wondering when this incident occurred."

Beside him, Elizabeth stiffened. "You looked me in the eye before you said it."

Darcy had always known that Elizabeth was the lesser attractive sister of Miss Bennet that Bingley tried to cajole him to dance with. He had never confused the girl sitting alone at the assembly with Mary, perhaps, or Kitty. But somehow, the emotional resonance of how he thought of Lizzy before he loved her and how he thought of her after had always remained detached from that incident. As if, it had not really been her, wearing gown that had been washed too many times. It had not really been his Elizabeth, who could not find a man to stand up with her. Never Elizabeth, tapping her foot to the music and wishing she was dancing. It had been some specter of her, a pre-Elizabeth. An entirely separate creature sent to prepare him for arrival of Elizabeth.

"You meant for me to hear it."

Her conjecture pained him because it was true.

A glance was sufficient for him to decide her beneath him, so he insulted her. He had not even the grace to insult her quietly. No wonder she thought him not a gentleman!

He was too honest a person to pretend he had not meant it. "Elizabeth, dearest, my own, tell me — how can I be absolved of such a crime?"

Contrition instead of false innocence was the right choice. She tittered. "Oh, dear. I am afraid you have already paid for that comment many times."

He frowned.

"Firstly, you should know I spread that story all over Meryton, only I took very special care to portray you as a fool. Your consequence is such that I am sure you have never felt the effects of being thought a fool, but your neighbors have been laughing at you behind their hands."

Until that moment, Darcy had been entirely assured he had never cared what anyone in Meryton thought of him. To be proven wrong in such a shocking and underhanded manner was beyond the pale. He was sick with humiliation and betrayal.

"Secondly, the dislike of you that was founded at that moment surely made me susceptible to Mr. Wickham in ways I would have not been had I liked you, or even been indifferent. The pain you felt when I accused you of doing him wrong was, I am sure, far greater than the pain your comment caused me.

"So, you see, you have paid in full, and I see from the look on your face it is as I thought it would be — you think less of me now."

"No," he mumbled, "it was a shock to be sure, but nothing more." His trust was shaken, but the actions she had taken to revenge herself — they had happened long before he had any desire to trust her. He could not claim she was without justifiable cause, either. Elizabeth's belief that his consequence had protected him was also true. There were people in Meryton who treated him with less respect than his due, but that was out of ignorance and foolishness. Some of Elizabeth's friends wanted for propriety, but he could not accuse them of malice. Even at his most eager to think meanly of them all, Darcy knew he could not attribute Mr. Collins or Mrs. Long's attempts to converse with him to intentional disrespect.

Viciously, Elizabeth kicked a rock in her path. "I knew these things were best forgot!" She turned to him and said desperately, "Please, Mr. Darcy, I have no wish to cause you pain. You must allow me to make amends."

"It was my own doing," he said. "My treatment of you was appalling."

"I am surely worse!" she cried. "You never belittled me to others — aside from Mr. Bingley, I suppose." She looked hopefully into his face and read something in his countenance that dashed the sparkle in her eyes. "You never belittled me to anyone outside of the Netherfield party?" Elizabeth revised cautiously. "In any case," she said bravely, "I no longer feel your insult. You think me pretty enough now, and I am satisfied. But this, you shall always feel."

"You think me a fool."

"Heavens, no! I never thought you a fool, and that, sir, you can rely on, for if I had, you would have known it long before to-day."

Darcy bowed his head in acquiescence. Reluctant to share her opinions, she was not.

"But I fear every time we are come into Hertfordshire, you will remember how intemperate I was." She scrubbed her face with her palms. "I speak too freely," she railed. "If you found that appealing once, it can not be the case now. How are you to trust me?"

He shrugged. "I could ask you the same, I suppose."

Elizabeth frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I consider deceit abhorrent, yet I have sought to conceal the truth from you, or even bid you to conceal the truth for me."

"I hardly think that comparable! You hid your involvement with Lydia's marriage to spare me unease. You asked me to remain silent about Mr. Wickham to protect Miss Darcy. Even when," she added grudgingly, "you concealed Jane being in Town from Mr. Bingley, you thought you were acting in his best interest. I was spiteful. It is not at all the same."

"In other respects, I would hope it is," he replied. "I would hope that you have learned not to act with spite in the future, as I have learned to alter my own behavior."

She nodded slowly. "And," Elizabeth added, "I should fix what I have done, and ensure that all the gossips of Meryton know you are not a fool."

"You agreed to marry me," he reminded her. "If they did not conclude from that that you do not consider me a fool, it is a hopeless case."

"Perhaps," she answered. Her eyes sparkled again and her lips curled into a mischievous smile. "Or," Elizabeth suggested, "I could simply explain to them that Mr. Darcy does not care to dance nor converse with strangers. And if he is to suffer through both at once, the young lady must be exceptionally handsome."

"There is a fatal flaw in that plan, Elizabeth," he observed.

"Oh?" she asked, sly.

"Indeed," Darcy explained, "for your countrymen are not soon to forget that the lady in question was yourself, and you are by all accounts an exceptional beauty."

Elizabeth blushed. "Sir, I fear your reputation cannot be saved."

"Then I must engage your honor as a gentleman's daughter and pray you will do the right thing."

She turned her face up to his, let him kiss her. Her lips were as soft and yielding as they had ever been, his pleasure in kissing her as great as it had ever been. That he could love her less was impossible. Yet, he understood better now, how dangerous these lips could be. Her wit was not made only for harmless teasing; he would do well not to cross her.

When he drew away from her, Elizabeth was not appeased. "Tell me you have forgiven me," she murmured.

"I loved you first for your wit," he said instead, "and then your beauty. In your pride, I have always found you worthy of respect. Should these attributes I hold so dearly make you more formidable than I previously knew, so be it."

The compliments were pretty enough, but not what she had hoped to hear. "Am I to take this as a refusal to forgive me or an inability to do so?"

"That is a question I cannot answer," he confessed, "for I do not know myself. I would refuse you nothing, yet I do not feel absolution within my power."

"It was never my wish to cause you pain," she reiterated. "If I had considered my actions would do so — could do so! — you must know I would not have done any of it. As for the future, I should never let anyone think ill of you if I could help it. You are so good."

"I do not doubt you," he said.

"I shall tell all of my friends what a blind fool I was," she promised. "If they must laugh at someone, let it be me. I do not care."

"Elizabeth, it is not that I care so much for the opinions of your friends," Darcy broke in. "In six months' time, I am sure you will wish to relate news of life-long companions and I shall be unable to put names to faces."

"So you do not know Harriet from Penelope," she protested, "It does not follow that you cannot be embarrassed to know they have made sport of you."

"I would not suggest otherwise," Darcy agreed. "I am distressed by your confession. What I question is the justice of that distress. You were not mine then. You owed me no allegiance. How can I feel betrayed by a person who owed me nothing?"

So softly, she told him, "I think if you feel a thing, that itself makes it valid. Perhaps the emotions are not as neat or sensible as you would like, but that alone does not lessen them." She bit her lip. "I do not," Elizabeth added haltingly, "wish to enter the marriage state with you feeling this way towards me. It would hardly be an auspicious start."

"You are not crying off." Darcy knew it sounded like a command as the words left him. If his manner caused her offense, there was nothing to be done for it. The betrayal he had felt at her story was nothing to the panic and terror that welled up at the very idea of her breaking their engagement. The park was not steady under his feet anymore. He knew his skin had taken on a pallor because all of his blood had deserted him.

But she said, "No! No! That is not what I meant at all." Elizabeth gripped his jacket, and he was able to find precarious balance. "Only that I hope to find some resolution to our present difficulties as quick as may be. I do not want the joy of our wedding to be clouded by anything."

Elizabeth did not offer her mouth, but he sought it anyway. He kissed her perhaps more desperately than was his usual custom, his grip on her arms perhaps more tight than could be considered correct. When he drew away, she gaped at him with swollen lips.

"Nothing," he murmured, "will cloud the joy of our wedding, my dear. If this episode was, as you say, rather silly, then we shall think on it no more."

"If that is your wish," she replied, voice low and uncertain. "And," Elizabeth added, "if the words, 'I forgive you' are truly that difficult."

"This," Darcy said, taking her hand and pulling it through the crook of his arm, "from a woman who claims to remember none of it."

"I believe you begin to understand the worth of my philosophy a little better."

This story was written in response to the Jan. and Feb. Playground challenge at A Happy Assembly, "Groveling and Making Amends."