Page 48 of A Quiet Affection

And it was clear to Darcy that Lizzy delighted in being the center of the conversation, in the way that a young woman, sure of her powers to please, ought to be.

He was very happy to see this. He was happy that despite her blindness she had become, at least in this way, what she always was destined to be. He was happy to see her happiness in the conversation.

Lizzy’s conversation was sharper, wittier, and she could tell jokes that even had his father laughing until he clutched at his side in pain.

“You remind me of Bennet,” Papa said to Lizzy. “More than ever before in recent weeks.”

“I remind you,” Lizzy replied laughingly, “of a man well advanced in years.Thatis what every woman hopes to hear.”

Papa laughed. “I expected you to turn the sentence in such a way. Bennet would have. But I am thinking of your father when we were young. He was only a few years older than you are presently when we met. I remember that day. We both stood in the college hall, and he said to me suddenly, ‘I shall always defend the name of Caesar from his detractors, for he was no dictator,’ and I replied, ‘he certainly was, and Brutus was right to kill him.’”

“What?” Darcy said in surprise. “That was the beginning of your friendship?”

“What had you thought would be the basis?”

“That is precisely what I predicted,” Lizzy said grinning widely. “Down to the intonation you gave both speeches. Mr. Darcy,nowI cannot be offended at the comparison, for it is clearly correct.”

Papa smiled at her; he told Lizzy to play and sing for them, which she indulged him.

That awareness of her returned.

It was difficult to not stare at her as she played. Her voice was beautiful, passionate, and thrilling, while her practiced fingers ran over the piano with grace and feeling.

The next days were filled with long conversations with Papa and Lizzy. Often, he’d sit in the study with Papa and Mr. Wickham for four hours at a time, hearing stories of the past.

Papa began to tell stories for the pleasure of the reminiscences. Before when Papa told stories about the past, or about his childhood, or when he met Mama, or his friendships, those stories always had a point to them, a moral. But now Papa told them for himself, to remember one last time before there would be no memory.

It made Darcy think of a line from Shakespeare, when Richard II gave up the crown: ‘No I, I no. For I must nothing be.’

Darcy was made to take a more active role in the management of the estate. As much as he would wish otherwise, his father could now only ride a mile or two before he was too weak to continue. A few days after Darcy returned, they made a call in a nearby town, and Papa could not mount the horse to return, and the carriage needed to be called to come from Pemberley to retrieve him.

And then Wickham and Jane returned and settled in the dower house, and they took Elizabeth away.

The change that followed this in the tenor of their party was great. Partly this was because there were far more people now in the drawing room every afternoon, since Jane and Wickham spent the whole day there, but it was not merely that.

While his childhood companion’s hostility was never overt, it was clear to Darcy that he had made, as he thought he would, an enemy in Wickham.

For her part, once sheobserved [GB3]them together in company, it was impossible for Elizabeth to not suspect, a little, that Fitzwilliam wasnotin love with Jane.

There was a great awkwardness when the couple first was presented to him, and they sat about.

Fitzwilliam said not a word.

Elizabeth felt keenly for what he must feel in such a situation.

And then when Wickham left the room, saying that he must look into a matter with one of the servants at the dower house, Fitzwilliam’s manner instantly became easier and he spoke with Jane without any affectation, awkwardness, or hesitation. In fact, he spoke to her the way that he always had, as a friend, but with nothing else but friendly feeling in his mind or heart.

But she could not see them. Perhaps Fitzwilliam stared chiefly at Jane, with intense glowing eyes whose meaningful gaze was worthy of a novel.

The truth is that he stared at Elizabeth frequently, and even with intense glowing eyes whose meaningful gaze was worthy of a novel, and he looked at Jane seldom. She was a beautiful woman, and of course he was aware of that. There was that extra interest in what she might say or do that every man will have when sitting near a particularly attractive member of the fair species. But he had no particular interest in her, or care for her, and his chief hope was to convince himself that shecouldbe happy once married to Wickham despite his deficiencies.

His father still assumed Fitzwilliam to unknowingly be in love with Jane, but he was happy to see his son’s effort at maintaining a studied indifference. His son was not overcome by the feeling. That the beginning of such a feeling—tempered as it was by his son’s awareness that Elizabeth was still too young to marry—hadbeen sparked in Fitzwilliam’s breast towards Mr. Bennet’s blind and scarred second daughter did not occur to him.

While Darcy’s attempt to convince his father to stop him from marrying Jane would have earned him Wickham’s enmity no matter what, that young man would not have borne such a grudge towards thick-stick-Fitz’s behavior if Darcy had notsucceededin denying Wickham the promised living.

Two days after Wickham had returned to Pemberley with his wife, he was called into the study with Mr. Darcy and his father.

“We have determined to give you Greenstead house, and the fields surrounding it,” Mr. Darcy told him. “They earn a little more than three hundred a year and the house itself is currently rented for fifty guineas. You’ll stay at the dower house until the present lease ends in six months. At that time, you can determine for yourself whether to rent Greenstead out again, to support your studies, or if you wish to settle there.”