“I scarcely understand myself,” Darcy said while his cousin took the first shot.
“You think too much.”
“Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, but he gave no guarantee that an examined life would bear up to its examination!”
“Stuff that!” Colonel Fitzwilliam slammed his hand on the side of the table, making the balls jump. “I’ve no patience for that! There are a great many, a great deal of a great many… many… many—”
“Great?”
“Great men who haven’t given a single thought to their own lives in the whole of their whole lives that were… uh, lived. But they live lifes worth living.”
“You did drink more than I.” Darcy tilted his head. “Lifes, you mean lives.”
“What?”
“It is lives, not lifes. Lifes aren’t a thing.”
“Of course they are. We’re living our lifes right now.”
“It’s irregular,” Darcy replied.
“That’s what comes from too much Latin,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied. “Do you examineyourown life?”
“All the time.”
“And is it worth living?”
That question hung in the air for a long time.
“Come, man! Come!” Colonel Fitzwilliam suddenly sounded halfway sober. “That was a rhetorical question! Your life is worth living. Damned man like you, I do not usually say this, but a month in the works round a besieged city. Orbetter yet, inside the besieged city would do you good. They should make you starve to the point where you are delighted to find moldy bread and roast rat. Cure you of this nonsense. Examining your life for its worth, and not finding it. Of course, your life is worth living. Here’s where you keep the alcohol in the billiard room. Now drink another glass.”
Darcy did so. He then drank another glass. And another.
He was well on his way to being as inebriated as he had been during that horrible ball. At least he was safe at home, and he determined for his own safety that no matter how drunk he became, no matter what Colonel Fitzwilliam said, he would not take any suggestion to leave his house.
“She said I had a selfish disdain for the feelings of others,” Darcy said tearily, “and she was right.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam thought about that for a while. “It’s really not so bad. I mean a little. But everyone does. You are often kind.”
Darcy woke the next morning with a blinding headache, and a memory that Colonel Fitzwilliam had grabbed one of his rooms to sleep in for the night.
He dressed more quickly than his pounding headache liked. Without the inducement of seeing his cousin at the breakfast table, he would have simply remained in bed.
Colonel Fitzwilliam sat at the breakfast table, Darcy’s copy ofThe Timesspread wide before him, a full mug of coffee in his hand, and a plate of eggs and a curry with a thick smell of those Indian spices that had become popular in England due to soldiers and EIC officials bringing them back.
“Hullo, Darcy. Great day, eh?”
The man sounded as chipper as an old campaigner after a forced march. Which is what Darcy supposed he was.
In lieu of reply Darcy poured himself a cup of coffee. He added no sugar or milk, finding he preferred it was black withhis hangover, and then he delicately maneuvered himself into a chair, after helping himself to bread rolls, ham, and butter from the platter prepared by Mrs. North.
“What are you eating?”
“It’s a curry.”
“I can smell that. I didn’t know we had any of those spices.”
“Not to your taste, eh?” Colonel Fitzwilliam grinned at him. “Not at least with all the peppers added? Too strong for your refined, aristocratic taste.”
