“Exactly! Now make that hardened young manresponsiblefor the family legacy; toughen him up by sending him to boy’s schools which are notoriously brutal; separate him from his parents by the curtain of death at a very young age; then throw him into the marriage mart as the most eligible bachelor in the ton.”
Mary thought a moment. “Perhaps add in a bit of awkwardness, or even shyness.”
“Hard to believe, but I shall concede the possibility. I can attest to awkwardness, but shyness might be a bridge too far.”
“Now throw him into a crowded assembly, where everyone knows his income within minutes, and he can hear our mother from the next county boasting about how her handsome daughter looks so well with his friend.”
Elizabeth sighed in remembrance, and nodded with a frown.
“You cededawkward, so put that man into the position of just trying to survive the assembly with our mother blathering in one ear and Miss Bingley the other; when a small, yapping cur takes hold of his trousers.”
“He was not wearing trousers, but I will go along. You would try to dislodge him without damaging the dog, annoying as it is, but with force enough to make it desist, at least for the rest of the evening.”
“Aha!” Mary shouted gleefully. “May we assert that telling the dog that his proposed partner wasnot handsome enough to tempt himmight dislodge it for the rest of the evening?Hmmm!”
Elizabeth paused, taken aback. “You are a genius, and Mr Occam is satisfied. That is a reasonable explanation.”
Mary pressed on. “Now let us suppose that, over the next month, he decided youwerehandsome enough to tempt him. Charlotte and Jane both said he looked at you a great deal, and you said yourself he listened to your conversations, so your assertion that he looked to find fault wounds poor Mr Occam to the quick. Let us try a calculation.”
“All right,” Elizabeth said, not enamoured with having her own weapons turned against her.
“Estimate all the reasons a man might stare at a woman, then what percentage of those are admiration and which disdain.”
Elizabeth sighed, “You suggest the disdain hypothesis is a low probability.”
“I state it outright.”
“I concede the point,” Elizabeth grumbled.
“Let us take this man, who has been taught all his life that his duty—the cost of his privilege—is to marry well, forge alliances, and leave the family stronger in the next generation. He has a decade in society; convinced he understands how it works in all particulars.”
Elizabeth considered that deeply. The discomfort rivalled one of her mother’s tirades, but she forced herself to review everything that had happened in Hertfordshire, from the assembly to the Netherfield ball.What had she done the entire time?
She gasped and sat forward. “I teased and taunted him the entire time. Now, let us… let us suppose that you, Charlotte, Jane, and your friend Occam are correct. He stared at me because he admired me—not that I am admitting any such thing—but I will entertain thepossibility.”
“One step at a time, Lizzy.”
“Now suppose that he, like me, also took the intellectually lazy route.”
“How so?”
“Suppose he thought I wasflirtingwith him. Most men think the acorn does not fall far from the tree.”
Mary stared and reviewed her observations from Hertfordshire. As usual, she had observed more than anybody expected; one benefit of being effectively invisible. She nodded through it all and finally sighed.
“It makes sense. Mama openly boasted ofcapturingMr Bingley. Suppose he admired you and concluded you were flirting. What would he do?”
“Miss Bingley flirted with him day in and day out, and he swatted her away like a fly, though I would bet a year’s allowance he kept his chambers locked.”
“I would.”
“But if he thought I was flirting with him, andhe felt himself vulnerable—”
For a few minutes she was silent. “He would remove himself from the temptation. After all, he is the stout oak, responsible for the Darcy namecenturies hence. Regardless of his feelings, he would leave and find a more suitable wife.”
Why did the revelation sadden her? Was it just the knock on her pride for being pre-emptively rejected?She had detested the man a fortnight earlier, and only recently and begrudgingly decided he might not be as bad as she thought. She had even entertained the thought of a friendship, though such things between people of marriageable age were uncommon.
“I believe we solved the mystery. It is entirely possible he admired me a little, and mistakenly thought I returned the sentiment for a time. Now… now… well, he does not have to run.He leaves in two days’ time, and I believe he is merely storing up a few conversations. It is not that difficult to beat Lady Catherine in an interestingness contest.”
