Page 60 of Inventing Mr Darcy

“Perfectly.” And it’s mostly not a lie. Yes, my impulsiveness has gotten me into trouble in the past, but how can this go wrong?

When the screen appears, he watches over my shoulder as I type:

Title: Pride and Prejudice

Authorship: anonymous [“By a Lady”]

Date: ?1817

“Why 1817?” he asks.

“It seems like a decent approximation,” I tell him. “Plus, it’s the number of this room.”

While the document loads, I finish my first glass and let Geoff refill it. Once the whole text is there, I scroll all the way to the end.

With the Gardiners they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.

After Austen’s final word, I add my tag, [EB98], and click upload.

“Wait,” he says, scanning the screen. “Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy end up together?”

“Not very realistic, is it?” I remark wryly as I watch the little hourglass marking progress.

“No. Unlikely such a clever, free-spirited woman would fancy she’d found lasting happiness with someone so self-important and snobbish.”

I suspect he’s not only talking about Austen’s characters.

“In the real world,” I say, “they’d probably wind up like Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, two people who don’t understand each other, trapped in a loveless marriage.”

He laughs darkly. “Is there any other kind?” I think of Cassie and Bill as Geoff tips his drink toward mine; the cups meet with a soft tick of plastic against plastic. “Congrats, Elle! I predict this discovery is really going to make a splash.”

THREE-AND-TWENTY

Back in Grantham, I want nothing more than to stay in my no-longer-frigid-but-still-Cassie-less apartment with a pillow over my head. But I have to visit Fisher’s house at least once to retrieve my things, including Bing Bong and Mrs. Merriweather’s Christmas tree. I keep his Yale sweatshirt because I guess I want to torture myself. And I leave his diploma on the mantelpiece with the twinkle lights, because some awful part of me wants to torture him.

I would like to be able to reassure myself that all hope is not lost for our relationship. After all, Elizabeth and Darcy eventually work things out. She forgives him for the (actually not inaccurate but still kind of awful) things he says about her family, and he loves her enough to track down and pay off his mortal enemy to save her and her sisters. He swallows his pride, she conquers her prejudice, and they live happily ever after, or so we’re led to believe.

But unlike Fitzwilliam Darcy, who is fictional, Fisher Davis has a mind—and a heart—of his own. He’s under no obligation to follow the plot, and he can’t really be expected to bow to the tropes he doesn’t even know exist.

Plus, I basically told him not to call.

And, yeah, I know I could reach out to him; communication is a two-way street, blah blah blah. But I’m wounded by his distrust and angry at my own impulsivity and paralyzed by fear of rejection and—honestly?—maybe just a tiny bit relieved. Because, let’s face it. We all knew it couldn’t last, right? Not in his world. Not in the real world. I’ve been bracing myself for this pain since finding out he’s Fisher Davis III, and now?

Now I finally know exactly how much it hurts.

When I leave his house, I lock the front door and push the spare key through the mail slot, so I can’t be tempted to come back.

I also stop looking at Wordstitch, because it’s abundantly clear I don’t know anything about happy endings.

Somehow, though, I manage to redirect my anger and grief and guilt, turn them into the energy I need to write my dissertation, abandoning my old topic to lose myself in an entirely new one: the idea of happiness in Pride and Prejudice.

Yeah, yeah. I know. Irony is a bitch.

In some ways the work is easier than it should be, because everything I know (or once heard or read) about the novel now qualifies as insightful and original. All those ideas aren’t uniquely mine, of course, which presents a certain ethical dilemma: I want to give credit where credit is due, but they aren’t anyone else’s ideas either. Not anymore. In the end, I make myself plow ahead in spite of my misgivings, because the sooner it’s done, the sooner I can get the hell out of Grantham—even if I don’t know where I’m going when I leave. When the new semester begins, I am determined to present Professor Pedersen with something close to a fait accompli.

Fully expecting to find him in his office preparing syllabi on the Monday before classes begin, I show up with three chapters—seventy-eight printed pages—in my bag. (I’m assuming that Julian prefers to read on paper, as Julia did.) It’s not a completed dissertation, by any means, but it’s too much for him to reject out of hand.

The door to 319 Arden Hall is barely ajar, the universal professor signal for “I’m here, but only disturb me if it’s really important.” I’m pretty sure this qualifies. I pull off my mitten to rap on the doorframe even as I push the door open with my other hand and poke my head into his office. “Professor Pedersen?”