“Believe me, I am perhaps the person best able to understand what you endure—”
He paused abruptly, even if he had lost both father and mother, and tragedies might easily be compared; Elizabeth had lost her home together with her father, and he knew he was far from comprehending the depth of her suffering.
“Yes, I know you lost your mother almost in the same manner as we lost Papa. I am certain you understand. Papa was the centre of my whole world.”
“As my mother was of mine. For months, I scarcely left the house, as though I expected her to return—”
Darcy broke off again, terrified now of saying anything which might distress her further, since the comparisons applied only to part of their histories.
“You wonder how I manage to appear so composed.”
“No!” he cried, rising at once. He poured himself a glass of cognac and looked towards her, as though asking whether she would have some also. Elizabeth shook her head with slight amusement. Before her stood another man, one she had never known before. Somehow fearful, deeply moved, and unquestionably compassionate, yet in so human and familiar a manner that she did not feel wounded by his compassion. The Fitzwilliam Darcy who now looked at her was another man entirely. She had known him in so many ways; there had even been times when her feelings towards him had been far more favourable than those of that day at Parsonage. Yet it was the first occasion on which she felt him warm, anxious, all his reserve forgotten, or at least hidden very deeply.
“No, I am glad to see you capable of living after such a tragedy. Good God! How dreadful my jest must have sounded.I saw that you were displeased, and I thought…it was the old history between us. I believe that is why I reacted so. I attempt to excuse myself, yet I find no excuse.”
“Do not seek one any longer.”
“Thank you,” said he, looking into her eyes. He drank from his glass, set it down, then took it up again.
“Yes, we lost Longbourn,” murmured Elizabeth, certain that was what he wished to know, though he did not know how to ask it.
A sigh escaped him, so deeply felt that tears rose to her eyes as well. She did not permit them to fall, yet her beautiful eyes grew clouded.
“How, when?” he asked at last.
“As the entail prescribed, Papa attempted to obtain six months for us to remove, but Mr Collins would consent only to the three months already established.”
“What a scoundrel, what a contemptible creature!”
“For the entail itself, he is not truly to blame. The fault belongs to a direct ancestor of mine, a Bennet. He is the true villain. Yet Mr Collins is indeed a very small man. Though, in truth, it no longer mattered. We might have departed within a month. Time ceased to signify, because our leaving was inevitable, and Mamma directed everything impeccably. She emptied the house of our possessions, and suddenly, there no longer seemed any reason to remain.”
“And then?” he asked feverishly, recalling all the dreadful things he had once said of her family, which now proved itself so united and courageous.
“I did not come to get a book, but to see this room again,” she said, then paused, looking about her with great affection.
“Papa had in his library a bookcase exactly like these here.”
“Extraordinary!” he exclaimed, though he paused at once, understanding the shock she must have felt upon first entering the room.
“Yes, I came to look at books and, for a few moments, to imagine myself again in his room. I preserved everything, absolutely everything from his library. One day I shall restore it exactly as it was.”
“I am certain of it,” said he with confidence. The young woman before him seemed capable of any noble undertaking.
“There is something I wish to ask you,” she said suddenly.
“Anything!”
“What would you do if you had only daughters?”
“One of them, most likely the eldest, would inherit Pemberley,” said he rather hesitantly. “I think as I speak, I have never truly considered it before. One thing is certain: no proprietor wishes to see his estate divided or sold. If one seeks a justification for entails, perhaps that is it; the entail prevents division or sale. Yet to specify that only the male line may inherit is odious, wholly devoid of love for one’s family.”
“Yes, my ancestor loved his land more than his family. Mr Collins is very distantly related to us.”
“A sort of tacit entail exists among us as well. I had with my father the very conversation he must once have had with his own. It is considered a matter of honour to preserve the estate in its entirety. Yet if I had only daughters, the eldest would inherit. She would be blood of my blood, no less than a son, and I should have with her the same conversation.”
“When we met in Derby—” said Elizabeth, then paused, looking at a book she had taken from a small table, perhaps the volume one of the family had lately been reading.
“Yes?” he urged gently.