The music in the ballroom had stopped, and amongst the giant crowd of faces staring at the white-faced Caroline from the hallway was the harelipped violinist.
“Why did you do it?” Papa asked Caroline.
She was shaking. She stared at her hands. “No, no, no.”
“Well!”
“I don’t know!” Her eyes were painfully white, her face blank and helpless. “I don’t know — no, no, no.”
The way Caroline wrung her hands recalled Lady Macbeth:Out damned spot!Out I say!
Elizabeth wanted to embrace her friend, even though she had attempted evil.
Papa however said to Caroline, “God. By God. By—” He could not speak, choking on his anger for a minute. “Jove. If your father, if poor Thomas had seen such a thing — seen what you had become. I have only one consolation, and it is that my dear friend is already dead and cannot know what sort of deceitful, deluded, damned creature his daughter became — Lizzy, let us leave. Good day, Miss Bingley. Good day.”
He then grabbed Elizabeth’s arm, and she did not resist her father as he dragged her out, but she looked back at Caroline.
Caroline paid no attention to the crowd that wildly chattered at her, shouting insults, accusations, laughing, despising, scorning.
Caroline stared at her hands, confused, shocked, opening and closing her fingers.
Out, damned spot! out, I say!
Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him.
Chapter Fourteen
The next day Charlie arrived at Longbourn early in the afternoon.
He looked tired.
Jane had sat near the window the whole of the morning, and upon seeing his horse coming up, she went down to greet him. Elizabeth thought of following, but it seemed an affectation to godownto greet Charlie, when he was about to come up himself to the drawing room.
In any case she had little motivation.
Had the previous night really happened?
Mr. Darcy’s offer of marriage.
Those intent eyes, the way they filled briefly with tears. She had said,I cannot marry you, because of the feelings of another.
Did she now regret refusing him for Caroline’s sake?
Elizabeth did not believe so.
At least she hadn’t had to make a second refusal. Mr. Collins had announced to her that morning that he was convinced that she had been too close to the sinful woman, and as such he was not entirely certain if Lady Catherine would accept her as the partner of his future life, and as a result he was incapable of making an offer of his hand until such time as he had spoken to his patroness.
Elizabeth had nearly screamed at him over the coffee and rolls.
She did not believe that she regretted her refusal of Mr. Darcy… merely she regretted the opportunity to have learned if she might have wanted to marry him.
There was a very intimate look to the way Charlie took Jane’s hand when she ran out to him, and in the way they smiled at each other. The two of them stood and talked for several minutes, ignoring the blowsy wind that tried to catch and drag away Bingley’s black beaver hat and Jane’s blue silk bonnet.
The two of them after a while came in and up to the drawing room.
Elizabeth had wrapped her arms around her legs, and she looked at them, sick in her stomach. “Charlie, is Caroline — what has she said? Is she terribly angry with me? What is—”
