Her spirits were badly bruised, but she was conscious of her duty not to spread demoralizing sentiments; with an effort she rallied herself to add, “I am sorry indeed to be the bearer of such news, but I will leaven it, if I may, by assuring you that hope is not lost; our forces have by and large escaped Bonaparte’s trap, and when we have regrouped, I have every confidence in our eventual victory. Which indeed,” she added, with a burst of resentment she could not contain, “might not have been so dreadfully forestalled, if only Admiral Roland’s advice had been heeded—but I must say no more. I fear, sir, that we have put you out.”
“As if any such concern should weigh with you, under these circumstances. You shall have everything it is in my power to provide; and I renew my offer, Miss—Captain Bennet,” Darcy corrected himself, not without an involuntary questioning note, which no power could have repressed entirely, “not merely for yourself but of course your—your officers, to quarter with me; I am certain shelter may be contrived for all your men.”
“I am afraid the greater difficulty will be in feeding the dragons,” Elizabeth said, as they came through the trees around the lake, and found Wollstonecraft sitting raptly on the shore with Pulchria and Astutatis, one of their Yellow Reapers, all of them gazing across the water at the enormous house with all its windows lit up brilliantly, the warm stone capturing the last rays of the sun and shining against the
deepening twilight behind it.
“Oh! Elizabeth!” the dragon said, swinging her head about. “Come and look with me. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? It might all be made of gold. What is that place?”
Mr. Darcy had long nursed, along with his memories of Elizabeth, a painful consciousness of what he considered the failure of his courage, when last confronted with a dragon. He had indeed deliberately come out to greet the aviators on this occasion from an intention to allow himself no such weakness, and was doubly glad in front of Miss Bennet to find himself equal to answering the monstrous creature, “That is my house, Pemberley.”
Wollstonecraft rolled one fiery orange eye towards him and exclaimed, “Why, that is Mr. Darcy,”
followed in a moment by, “Your house?” in tones of rising astonishment.
“ELIZABETH," WOLLSTONECRAFT said, a week later, “I have thought it over at great length, and I suppose I had better forgive Mr. Darcy after all.”
“I should hope so,” Elizabeth said. She had been surprised and gratefully so by the welcome which Darcy had extended to their formation: she had not looked for anything but the most unwilling and reluctant cooperation from any landowner on whom they had been summarily imposed, and from Darcy in particular would have expected every effort to avoid intercourse with the scandalous aviators settled upon his grounds. Instead he had thrown wide his house to all of them: he had even presented Elizabeth to his own sister, despite any attempts on her part to demur. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Darcy,” she had said,
“but I cannot get myself up in a dress when at any moment we may have to go aloft.”
“Captain Bennet,” he said, “I assure you that my sister will not censure your attire; no one could, when you wear it in the course of your duty.”
Elizabeth had been moved although unpersuaded, recalling Miss Bingley’s refinements upon Georgiana Darcy’s perfect deportment and exquisite manners. However, she could not refuse when so pressed, and the introduction being accomplished, had soon understood that Miss Darcy was taken aback only by painful shyness, and was in any case too much in awe of her older brother to disapprove of anyone whom he presented to her.
“Do you really ride a dragon?” Georgiana had dared to ask her, in little more than a whisper.
“There is nothing more delightful, if you have a head for it, and are dressed for the heights,”
Elizabeth had said, already easy enough with her company to be incautious, and added without thinking, “I should be happy to take you up of a morning, if you like, once the scouts have reported the roads clear.”
Almost at once she had recalled to herself the unsuitability of this suggestion. But even to this Mr.
Darcy had not objected. He had given her officers dinner every night, and she had been astonished to find him so affable and warm a host with them as to make all his guests easy, even though as aviators they were nearly all of them unaccustomed to polite society and a table of the sort which he laid before them.
He had not blinked to be addressed from five seats away, nor when the officers had handed around the dishes among themselves, while his unhappy footmen tried without success to dart in between and recapture them.
Most vitally, he had laid out from his own stores the oats that necessity now prescribed for the dragons’ meals, and had insisted they make free not only of his deer but his handsome herd of cattle. He had made a point of coming to the covert daily to hear the reports of the scouts, and to share what intelligence his own servants and tenants had brought him of the surrounding countryside. By his correspondence with other men of property, of his and his late father’s acquaintance, he had even arranged similar assistance for a half-dozen other formation companies and some two dozen couriers, to the material assistance of their communications and spying upon the French operations.
“I should hope so,” Elizabeth went on now, “when he has been so invaluable to us: I could wish some gentlemen of the Admiralty would behave half as well as he has.” She thought with approval of Darcy’s visit that morning; they had walked together through the covert, and he had spoken in a sensible way to Vindicatus, whose massive size might pardonably have given pause to any person not accustomed to dragons.
“I have flown over all his grounds, now, when we have not been patrolling,” Wollstonecraft said,
“and they are delightful in every particular. Do you know, Elizabeth, there is a ruined castle here, which I have been informed dates to the ninth century and is rumored to contain buried treasure, and atop that rise to the north where that little cage sits,” meaning by this an elegant folly large enough to entertain a party of six, “you will find a charming plaza built entirely of Italian marble, ideal for sunning oneself: it has a magnificent prospect over the entire countryside. As for the house, nothing more could be asked: if only I might go inside! But really I cannot imagine there is anything within to compare to the pleasure of looking upon it from without. I should not tire of the sight all my days. And I believe you once said he has ten thousand a year?”
“You mercenary creature. Are these the qualities which have won him your pardon?”
“Well, it is hard to imagine him such a paltry fellow, when he has so many beautiful things, and he has behaved so prettily since we came, that I am willing to grant he has learned his lesson. Perhaps he was only ill, when he spoke so slightingly of you before; he may have had some trouble with his eyesight at the time.”
Elizabeth only hummed idly in answer; she was preoccupied with her reports, which indicated that the French foragers were making grievous depredations against the countryside to the south, and so thought nothing more of this conversation; to her regret. For on the next occasion which offered, several days later, when Mr. Darcy had come to the covert to bring them several handsome bullocks from his herd, Wollstonecraft cornered the gentleman and demanded if this were not indeed the case.
“Wollstonecraft!” Elizabeth said, despairingly. “What Mr. Darcy will think of you,”—of us, she
privately thought, with a dismay sharper than she would have liked.
But Darcy stammeringly said, “I cannot claim to have been
ill at the time, madam; only gravely mistaken, for it is some time since I have considered Captain Bennet one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance,” and having delivered this astonishing speech, he at once colored, then bowed and very abruptly departed, leaving behind a deeply satisfied dragon and a deeply distressed captain, who said to the former, “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Wollstonecraft, pray stop prancing. Can you not see this is the most dreadful situation imaginable?”
CAPTAIN BENNET would have been glad to forget the incident entirely; that being beyond her power, she would have been satisfied only to pretend that it had never happened. She was not insensible to the compliment of Mr. Darcy’s admiration, nor could she fail, with such explicit proofs made her, to see that admiration working in all his exertions on behalf of herself and her formation. That it must have overcome all the sentiments which had, she knew, opposed him to his friend Bingley’s match with Jane, and to any close association with aviators, was only a further testament to its extent.
If her own feelings towards Mr. Darcy had remained unchanged, she might have been little troubled by knowing of his. But those feelings were wholly altered: disdain become respect, dislike become affection. She had come to consider him a man to be relied upon, and one whose company brought her pleasure. And she could not help but recognize that she had indulged in that pleasure, with the excuse of their circumstances, far past the bounds of propriety. Mr. Darcy had called upon her every day; she had welcomed his visits and encouraged them. She had been often alone in his company. He was not a fellow-officer, and their intercourse could not be defended as a matter of duty. It had only seemed so impossible that Mr. Darcy should love her, that she had never considered whether her behavior might be giving rise to sentiments which could never be answered.
“I do not see why not,” Wollstonecraft said, maddeningly. “Only think, Elizabeth, how splendid it should be to have you the mistress of Pemberley!”
“And what use do you suppose I should be to Pemberley or its master, when the Corps must send us to London, or station us in Dover after God willing we have chased Napoleon off our shores?” Elizabeth said. “Besides, you absurd creature, he may have fallen in love with me, but he cannot mean to marry me; I am a serving-officer, not a respectable gentlewoman.” She had never before counted her reputation any real cost. She still did not really regret it now, but was conscious of a faint pang which served to make her wary of her own feelings. It must be for the best that Mr. Darcy would never propose to her. She could only have given pain, in making him a necessary refusal. She hoped that he would say no more, and resolved to avoid being alone in his company henceforth, and to delegate to her officers the necessary discourse between the covert and the house.
These hopes were frustrated, the next day, when walking to the lakeshore after the morning’s patrol, as had become her custom, she accidentally encountered Mr. Darcy lingering in a small copse of trees along the path. She hesitated, and nearly turned back; but he caught sight of her and coming near held out a folded and sealed letter, which she received on instinct. “Captain Bennet, I hope you will do me the favor of reading that letter,” he said, and bowing took his leave.
Elizabeth wanted almost nothing less than to read the letter; she carried it back to her small bivouac as gingerly as an incendiary, and considered whether it ought not be put on the fire at once. But curiosity was too strong to be overcome. She opened the envelope and read, in a clear strong hand,
Captain Bennet:
I beg you not to fear, on opening this letter, that it should contain the further expression of sentiments, which if not grossly offensive, could nevertheless offer you neither pleasure nor satisfaction. The demands of honor alone could justify laying this missive before you, and it has been formed in no expectation of any reward save the comfort of having made a deserved apology to one on whom, I fear, I have inexcusably encroached. While I hardly claim to be owed your attention, I do sincerely request it, and hope that you will grant it from generosity of spirit.
That my behavior towards you has been such as to raise expectations in the eyes of the world, if not in your own breast, I have been unpardonably late to recognize. The dreadful circumstances attendant on your arrival at Pemberley, which must have been your own foremost concern, I cannot claim as an excuse.
Indeed, the fear that you may have been impelled by a sense of duty to endure unwanted attentions has formed no small part of my anxiety to deliver this letter to you. If this be the case, I must beg your pardon, while offering you my assurances that these shall never be renewed, and that those small efforts on my part which have only been my due, not to you but to our nation and our King, shall not slacken as a consequence.
My sense of your own character, however, and of your forthrightness and courage, has leavened this particular fear. I trust I have not been so insensible as to force my company upon you unwilling, and still more do I trust that you would have acted swiftly, had I indeed made myself disgusting to you. Yet this should not render me blameless—indeed, the opposite. The charge that I had attempted to insinuate myself into the affections of a lady the close connection of my nearest friend, and forced to remain in my sphere by the exigencies of war, should hardly be leavened by my having succeeded in that indefensible object.
Nor can I pretend to have given no thought to the obstacles which my family and position should lay in the way of my making the only honorable answer to having so grossly trespassed upon your feelings, should I have done so. You know too well, I think, that I was at pains to detach my friend Bingley from your sister. That want of connection, and the considerations of propriety, which he wisely refused to regard as an obstacle to his achieving the hand and heart of a lady worth winning, weighed too long and too heavily upon me. I have lately had cause to regret my folly in this regard, seeing in their happy union
that best and most desirable outcome which any man might hope for. —Or envy.
Only when I had exposed my feelings to you so outrageously, yesterday afternoon, was I forced to set aside the last of my selfish concerns. It seemed to me then that I had nothing more to do but decide upon the mode of a declaration whose substance was demanded by my honor. I am ashamed to say that it was only in attempting to form that declaration in accordance with the respect I feel for you, that I discovered the impossibility of doing so.
In my self-centered preoccupation, I had neglected to contemplate those obstacles which your position should place before your receiving with pleasure the addresses of any gentleman. Having at last done so, I was struck with their inescapable force. That you should desert your dragon in the hour of our country’s need, or worse yet remove her from the fray, must be unimaginable, an act very near treason, and even to propose that you should do so an insult which no person of spirit could easily endure.
I am well aware this explanation is a paltry one. It is little defense to say that pride and vanity have been my distraction. If I had sooner shown the proper consideration for your situation, I should not now find myself obliged to choose how to offend one whom I both esteem and admire. I can only say that I may justly be reproached for anything but a lack of sincere feeling. My folly has not been self-interested, and I hope I have injured no-one worse than myself in its commission. Only one answer can be made, and that is to assure you that if by any act now or henceforth I may make amends for my behavior, I shall be yours to command. I have nothing more to say but God bless you, and to hope you will pardon me for styling myself,
Your Most Obedient Servant,
FITZWILLIAM DARCY
CAPTAIN BENNET hardly knew what to make of her letter. That Mr. Darcy should have so far overcome his pride as to wish to pay his addresses to her, in spite of the material objections to the match which she
herself had viewed as an impassable bar, would alone have surprised her; that he should have refrained not for the sake of his reputation but for that of her own honor as an officer, was so astonishing as to nearly make her doubt her own understanding. The letter had to be read again. But the meaning did not alter on a second reading, or a third, except for the more inconceivable. Indeed Mr. Darcy had contrived, while not soliciting her hand, to offer his own; the conclusion could be understood in no other way.
It now remained only for Elizabeth to be gratified that she had inspired so fervent an emotion, and to be sorry for the pain she had unintentionally given. These must be the boundaries of her own feelings on the matter. Anything else was impossible. She knew it well. If she read the letter three times more, and folded it away into the inner pocket of her coat rather than burn it, that was only a gesture of sympathy.
Her mind dwelt on particular phrases only to extract their full meaning—a small vanity, nothing more.
One whom I both esteem and admire—there was an encomium indeed! Only the most insensible creature in the world could read those words without a stirring of emotion.
Elizabeth found she must stop herself from bringing the letter out again. “This will not do,” she said, and took out her dispatches from that morning, instead. But her mind refused to manage the ciphers properly, still bent upon the puzzle of another text. “I will go flying,” she said.
Wollstonecraft was nothing loath to accommodate her wish, but when they were once in the air, insisted on speaking to Captain Bennet only of the many beautiful features of the grounds and the good qualities of their master, all unaware of the pain she was giving. “There is that tower I believe I mentioned to you,” she added. “Mr. Darcy tells me it is a hunting lodge: I believe it is larger than many another person’s house. Look, there he is; we will go and say good-morning.”