“She is a fool who no wise person listens to.”
“Fitzwilliam, why is it important I don’t marry a tradesman? Surelyyouwould not be hurt more by such a connection than you are by the presence of me and Anne in your house.”
“I do not care how it affectsme. You will not marry a man in trade.”
She looked down and bit her lips. Then Georgiana quietly whispered something to herself. Darcy could almost swear she whispered, “What would Lizzy do?” Georgiana placed her palms on the table. “You are not being rational. Pride is a passion as much as anything else. You are not being reasonable.”
“How is it possiblyreasonableto marry a tradesman?”
Georgiana sat straighter. She tilted her head and crossed her legs. She was consciously adopting Elizabeth’s posture when she argued with her father or Darcy. “We disagree on this; I think I am being reasonable by wishing to marry Mr. Peake. You must say something more than simply repeating that itisunreasonable. What makes it so?”
“This is not a matter of logic. This is not a matter of argument. You are my sister, and I am your guardian, and I expect you to obey me in this matter.”
“Did you tell Lizzy that?”
“If your graven figurine cannot bear to be opposed, it does not matter to me.”
“I shall not leave you alone until you give me a satisfactory explanation — I shall not make a brilliant marriage, no matter what. You know that. And I have no interest in participation in grand society. And I have money sufficient to live well, and Mr. Peake has excellent character—”
“Heworksfor a living — you certainly have not enough to live as you have at Pemberley. Costs in London are so high, and once he has sucked the capital of your dowry dry, and wasted it in a business venture that ends in bankruptcy — many ventures do, even if the tradesman is of the greatest skill and diligence, temperamental luck often plays a decisive role when one depends upon the vagaries of prices and customers rather than land for income.”
“You cannot possibly fear that you would need to support us again, enough would be set aside in settlement to support us decently, besidesyouhave no need for money.”
“You are the daughter of one of the grandest families of Derbyshire. Hundreds of years of history exist behind our name. We have dwelt in the hills of Derbyshire, master of all we could see, since the time of the Stuarts. Our family name goes back to the men who supported Bolingbroke against the hunchback. We are the Darcys. And not in solitude is the line of your father grand. By your mother’s name, you are a Fitzwilliam. A newer creation than the Darcys but with a higher title, created to ennoble the blood of a descendent of Charles II. Illegitimacy did not robthatblood of its great status. The blood which flows through your limbs flowed also through the veins of a king, and that a king of England, a hundred and fifty years past. Such lines — they shall not be commingled with the blood of a man who makes his living by moving goods about and convincing fools to pay a higher price for them than what he paid in the first place.”
Georgiana clutched her arms around her body. Her cheeks burned and she studied the weave of the tablecloth. Tonelessly she said, “Merchants provide a valuable service by allowing the flow of trade to function — the merchants add as much benefit to society as growing corn and delving for coal or lead—”
“The deuce! Georgiana Darcy, I care not in the slightest what Mr. Peake quoted from Ricardo, or Smith, or whichever economist is popular amongst the Cits to justify his profession unto you. He is not worthy to be husband for a woman of your blood.”
“You cannot be reasoned with. Your pride demands that your sister should not marry outside of the ranks of the gentry.”
“My pride?Yourpride — whatoughtto be your pride. Thisoughtto have been Elizabeth’s pride also. I care not for myself. The world can despise me, or it can adore me. I am indifferent. I act foryoursake. Foryourown sake, you shall not marry him. You will perceive one day your rank again as you ought, one day you will wake to what you owe the name, the grand name: Darcy. You will thank me, on that day. For your own sake you will thank me. You will thank me for protecting you from such a blunder.”
Georgiana rubbed at her eyes and did not look up. She appeared to be on the verge of tears. Darcy reached forward to touch her arm in comfort, but she pulled her wrist away from him.
It had not rained at all for the past hour, and through the window it appeared the sky had less grey than before. When Georgiana made no further motion, Darcy rose and looked out the window. “I shall ask whether there is news about the state of the road. I believe we shall be able to set off soon.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Upon his return to Pemberley, Darcy had to accomplish the unpleasant chore of following his engagement letters with his jilting letters.
Darcy found it a task of some difficulty. The first draft he produced was written in a fit of anger against Elizabeth. It described in detail the scene — her petulant demands that he throw hissisterto the clutches of her relations; the way that she threw a gunpowder tantrum when he did not meet her demands; how her reason had been enfeebled by female learning and philosophers; and finally how she had taken his ring and hurled it against the ground. Whereeverdid the ring fly? He had been too… angry to look for it or ask for it before he left. Darcy had an image of one of Bingley’s servants leaving his service possessed of a substantial windfall when the maid who found the ring managed to sell it off to a gypsy camp.
Upon rereading what he had written, Darcy crumpled it up, placed it in the stove in his office, lit the close written page, and stirred the ashes to ensure none of it could be reconstructed.
Holding his hands against his burning anger to keep them warm, Darcy hardened his face. He was a gentleman with a gentleman’s pride. He would not descend to Elizabeth’s — Miss Bennet’s — low station. He was too gentlemanly to hold an unmanly grudge, to engage in petty revenges. As a man of honor he had no right to in any way tarnish Elizabeth’s reputation.
He did the right thing. He wrote the letters to his family and friends which simply announced that the engagement betwixt him and Elizabeth Bennet had been terminated by mutual agreement, and that she had done nothing which could smudge her reputation or give him just cause to end matters between them. He knew that few people would imagine that a woman would voluntarily end an engagement with a man of his consequence, so they would assume that he had ended it.
Some shame would settle on Elizabeth, as men suspected he had discovered a proper cause to end matters between them, which he did not choose to share with the world out of a gentlemanly discretion. Others though would believehehad been the dishonorable one, deciding in the end, once he had come to his senses, that her modest dowry and connections to trade were not worthy of the Darcy name.
Such was the response Darcy received at the earliest possible moment from his aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh:
To my estranged nephew,
Your scheme to lead me to change my mind and allow the marriage planned by your mother and me to proceed shall not succeed. Not so long as thatstainupon the names of Fitzwilliam and Darcy and her low bornspawnstill resides with you. The very shades of Pemberley are polluted by the presence of G. The ancestralshades. Such pollution I will not allow. My Anne is of a delicate constitution, and the diseases thatcreaturereceived from your father’spetwould sicken her and be the death of my Anne. The moral pollution would destroy the fiber of her children — your children.
So long assheis present at Pemberley, Anne will never live there.Never!
