Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 35

Eliz­abeth awoke the next morn­ing to the same thoughts and med­ita­tions which had at length closed her eyes. She could not yet re­cov­er from the sur­prise of what had hap­pened; it was im­pos­si­ble to think of any­thing else; and, to­tal­ly in­dis­posed for em­ploy­ment, she re­solved, soon af­ter break­fast, to in­dulge her­self in air and ex­er­cise. She was pro­ceed­ing di­rect­ly to her favourite walk, when the rec­ol­lec­tion of Mr. Dar­cy’s some­times com­ing there stopped her, and in­stead of en­ter­ing the park, she turned up the lane, which led far­ther from the turn­pike-​road. The park pal­ing was still the bound­ary on one side, and she soon passed one of the gates in­to the ground.

Af­ter walk­ing two or three times along that part of the lane, she was tempt­ed, by the pleas­ant­ness of the morn­ing, to stop at the gates and look in­to the park. The five weeks which she had now passed in Kent had made a great dif­fer­ence in the coun­try, and ev­ery day was adding to the ver­dure of the ear­ly trees. She was on the point of con­tin­uing her walk, when she caught a glimpse of a gen­tle­man with­in the sort of grove which edged the park; he was mov­ing that way; and, fear­ful of its be­ing Mr. Dar­cy, she was di­rect­ly re­treat­ing. But the per­son who ad­vanced was now near enough to see her, and step­ping for­ward with ea­ger­ness, pro­nounced her name. She had turned away; but on hear­ing her­self called, though in a voice which proved it to be Mr. Dar­cy, she moved again to­wards the gate. He had by that time reached it al­so, and, hold­ing out a let­ter, which she in­stinc­tive­ly took, said, with a look of haughty com­po­sure, “I have been walk­ing in the grove some time in the hope of meet­ing you. Will you do me the hon­our of read­ing that let­ter?” And then, with a slight bow, turned again in­to the plan­ta­tion, and was soon out of sight.

With no ex­pec­ta­tion of plea­sure, but with the strongest cu­rios­ity, Eliz­abeth opened the let­ter, and, to her still in­creas­ing won­der, per­ceived an en­ve­lope con­tain­ing two sheets of let­ter-​pa­per, writ­ten quite through, in a very close hand. The en­ve­lope it­self was like­wise full. Pur­su­ing her way along the lane, she then be­gan it. It was dat­ed from Ros­ings, at eight o’clock in the morn­ing, and was as fol­lows:–

“Be not alarmed, madam, on re­ceiv­ing this let­ter, by the ap­pre­hen­sion of its con­tain­ing any rep­eti­tion of those sen­ti­ments or re­new­al of those of­fers which were last night so dis­gust­ing to you. I write with­out any in­ten­tion of pain­ing you, or hum­bling my­self, by dwelling on wish­es which, for the hap­pi­ness of both, can­not be too soon for­got­ten; and the ef­fort which the for­ma­tion and the pe­rusal of this let­ter must oc­ca­sion, should have been spared, had not my char­ac­ter re­quired it to be writ­ten and read. You must, there­fore, par­don the free­dom with which I de­mand your at­ten­tion; your feel­ings, I know, will be­stow it un­will­ing­ly, but I de­mand it of your jus­tice.

“Two of­fens­es of a very dif­fer­ent na­ture, and by no means of equal mag­ni­tude, you last night laid to my charge. The first men­tioned was, that, re­gard­less of the sen­ti­ments of ei­ther, I had de­tached Mr. Bin­gley from your sis­ter, and the oth­er, that I had, in de­fi­ance of var­ious claims, in de­fi­ance of hon­our and hu­man­ity, ru­ined the im­me­di­ate pros­per­ity and blast­ed the prospects of Mr. Wick­ham. Wil­ful­ly and wan­ton­ly to have thrown off the com­pan­ion of my youth, the ac­knowl­edged favourite of my fa­ther, a young man who had scarce­ly any oth­er de­pen­dence than on our pa­tron­age, and who had been brought up to ex­pect its ex­er­tion, would be a de­prav­ity, to which the sep­ara­tion of two young per­sons, whose af­fec­tion could be the growth of on­ly a few weeks, could bear no com­par­ison. But from the sever­ity of that blame which was last night so lib­er­al­ly be­stowed, re­spect­ing each cir­cum­stance, I shall hope to be in the fu­ture se­cured, when the fol­low­ing ac­count of my ac­tions and their mo­tives has been read. If, in the ex­pla­na­tion of them, which is due to my­self, I am un­der the ne­ces­si­ty of re­lat­ing feel­ings which may be of­fen­sive to yours, I can on­ly say that I am sor­ry. The ne­ces­si­ty must be obeyed, and fur­ther apol­ogy would be ab­surd.

“I had not been long in Hert­ford­shire, be­fore I saw, in com­mon with oth­ers, that Bin­gley pre­ferred your el­der sis­ter to any oth­er young wom­an in the coun­try. But it was not till the evening of the dance at Nether­field that I had any ap­pre­hen­sion of his feel­ing a se­ri­ous at­tach­ment. I had of­ten seen him in love be­fore. At that ball, while I had the hon­our of danc­ing with you, I was first made ac­quaint­ed, by Sir William Lu­cas’s ac­ci­den­tal in­for­ma­tion, that Bin­gley’s at­ten­tions to your sis­ter had giv­en rise to a gen­er­al ex­pec­ta­tion of their mar­riage. He spoke of it as a cer­tain event, of which the time alone could be un­de­cid­ed. From that mo­ment I ob­served my friend’s be­haviour at­ten­tive­ly; and I could then per­ceive that his par­tial­ity for Miss Ben­net was be­yond what I had ev­er wit­nessed in him. Your sis­ter I al­so watched. Her look and man­ners were open, cheer­ful, and en­gag­ing as ev­er, but with­out any symp­tom of pe­cu­liar re­gard, and I re­mained con­vinced from the evening’s scruti­ny, that though she re­ceived his at­ten­tions with plea­sure, she did not in­vite them by any par­tic­ipa­tion of sen­ti­ment. If YOU have not been mis­tak­en here, _I_ must have been in er­ror. Your su­pe­ri­or knowl­edge of your sis­ter must make the lat­ter prob­able. If it be so, if I have been mis­led by such er­ror to in­flict pain on her, your re­sent­ment has not been un­rea­son­able. But I shall not scru­ple to as­sert, that the seren­ity of your sis­ter’s coun­te­nance and air was such as might have giv­en the most acute ob­serv­er a con­vic­tion that, how­ev­er ami­able her tem­per, her heart was not like­ly to be eas­ily touched. That I was de­sirous of be­liev­ing her in­dif­fer­ent is cer­tain–but I will ven­ture to say that my in­ves­ti­ga­tion and de­ci­sions are not usu­al­ly in­flu­enced by my hopes or fears. I did not be­lieve her to be in­dif­fer­ent be­cause I wished it; I be­lieved it on im­par­tial con­vic­tion, as tru­ly as I wished it in rea­son. My ob­jec­tions to the mar­riage were not mere­ly those which I last night ac­knowl­edged to have the ut­most force of pas­sion to put aside, in my own case; the want of con­nec­tion could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me. But there were oth­er caus­es of re­pug­nance; caus­es which, though still ex­ist­ing, and ex­ist­ing to an equal de­gree in both in­stances, I had my­self en­deav­oured to for­get, be­cause they were not im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore me. These caus­es must be stat­ed, though briefly. The sit­ua­tion of your moth­er’s fam­ily, though ob­jec­tion­able, was noth­ing in com­par­ison to that to­tal want of pro­pri­ety so fre­quent­ly, so al­most uni­form­ly be­trayed by her­self, by your three younger sis­ters, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly even by your fa­ther. Par­don me. It pains me to of­fend you. But amidst your con­cern for the de­fects of your near­est re­la­tions, and your dis­plea­sure at this rep­re­sen­ta­tion of them, let it give you con­so­la­tion to con­sid­er that, to have con­duct­ed your­selves so as to avoid any share of the like cen­sure, is praise no less gen­er­al­ly be­stowed on you and your el­der sis­ter, than it is hon­ourable to the sense and dis­po­si­tion of both. I will on­ly say far­ther that from what passed that evening, my opin­ion of all par­ties was con­firmed, and ev­ery in­duce­ment height­ened which could have led me be­fore, to pre­serve my friend from what I es­teemed a most un­hap­py con­nec­tion. He left Nether­field for Lon­don, on the day fol­low­ing, as you, I am cer­tain, re­mem­ber, with the de­sign of soon re­turn­ing.

“The part which I act­ed is now to be ex­plained. His sis­ters’ un­easi­ness had been equal­ly ex­cit­ed with my own; our co­in­ci­dence of feel­ing was soon dis­cov­ered, and, alike sen­si­ble that no time was to be lost in de­tach­ing their broth­er, we short­ly re­solved on join­ing him di­rect­ly in Lon­don. We ac­cord­ing­ly went–and there I read­ily en­gaged in the of­fice of point­ing out to my friend the cer­tain evils of such a choice. I de­scribed, and en­forced them earnest­ly. But, how­ev­er this re­mon­strance might have stag­gered or de­layed his de­ter­mi­na­tion, I do not sup­pose that it would ul­ti­mate­ly have pre­vent­ed the mar­riage, had it not been sec­ond­ed by the as­sur­ance that I hes­itat­ed not in giv­ing, of your sis­ter’s in­dif­fer­ence. He had be­fore be­lieved her to re­turn his af­fec­tion with sin­cere, if not with equal re­gard. But Bin­gley has great nat­ural mod­esty, with a stronger de­pen­dence on my judge­ment than on his own. To con­vince him, there­fore, that he had de­ceived him­self, was no very dif­fi­cult point. To per­suade him against re­turn­ing in­to Hert­ford­shire, when that con­vic­tion had been giv­en, was scarce­ly the work of a mo­ment. I can­not blame my­self for hav­ing done thus much. There is but one part of my con­duct in the whole af­fair on which I do not re­flect with sat­is­fac­tion; it is that I con­de­scend­ed to adopt the mea­sures of art so far as to con­ceal from him your sis­ter’s be­ing in town. I knew it my­self, as it was known to Miss Bin­gley; but her broth­er is even yet ig­no­rant of it. That they might have met with­out ill con­se­quence is per­haps prob­able; but his re­gard did not ap­pear to me enough ex­tin­guished for him to see her with­out some dan­ger. Per­haps this con­ceal­ment, this dis­guise was be­neath me; it is done, how­ev­er, and it was done for the best. On this sub­ject I have noth­ing more to say, no oth­er apol­ogy to of­fer. If I have wound­ed your sis­ter’s feel­ings, it was un­know­ing­ly done and though the mo­tives which gov­erned me may to you very nat­ural­ly ap­pear in­suf­fi­cient, I have not yet learnt to con­demn them.

“With re­spect to that oth­er, more weighty ac­cu­sa­tion, of hav­ing in­jured Mr. Wick­ham, I can on­ly re­fute it by lay­ing be­fore you the whole of his con­nec­tion with my fam­ily. Of what he has PAR­TIC­ULAR­LY ac­cused me I am ig­no­rant; but of the truth of what I shall re­late, I can sum­mon more than one wit­ness of un­doubt­ed ve­rac­ity.

“Mr. Wick­ham is the son of a very re­spectable man, who had for many years the man­age­ment of all the Pem­ber­ley es­tates, and whose good con­duct in the dis­charge of his trust nat­ural­ly in­clined my fa­ther to be of ser­vice to him; and on George Wick­ham, who was his god­son, his kind­ness was there­fore lib­er­al­ly be­stowed. My fa­ther sup­port­ed him at school, and af­ter­wards at Cam­bridge–most im­por­tant as­sis­tance, as his own fa­ther, al­ways poor from the ex­trav­agance of his wife, would have been un­able to give him a gen­tle­man’s ed­uca­tion. My fa­ther was not on­ly fond of this young man’s so­ci­ety, whose man­ner were al­ways en­gag­ing; he had al­so the high­est opin­ion of him, and hop­ing the church would be his pro­fes­sion, in­tend­ed to pro­vide for him in it. As for my­self, it is many, many years since I first be­gan to think of him in a very dif­fer­ent man­ner. The vi­cious propen­si­ties–the want of prin­ci­ple, which he was care­ful to guard from the knowl­edge of his best friend, could not es­cape the ob­ser­va­tion of a young man of near­ly the same age with him­self, and who had op­por­tu­ni­ties of see­ing him in un­guard­ed mo­ments, which Mr. Dar­cy could not have. Here again shall give you pain–to what de­gree you on­ly can tell. But what­ev­er may be the sen­ti­ments which Mr. Wick­ham has cre­at­ed, a sus­pi­cion of their na­ture shall not pre­vent me from un­fold­ing his re­al char­ac­ter–it adds even an­oth­er mo­tive.

“My ex­cel­lent fa­ther died about five years ago; and his at­tach­ment to Mr. Wick­ham was to the last so steady, that in his will he par­tic­ular­ly rec­om­mend­ed it to me, to pro­mote his ad­vance­ment in the best man­ner that his pro­fes­sion might al­low–and if he took or­ders, de­sired that a valu­able fam­ily liv­ing might be his as soon as it be­came va­cant. There was al­so a lega­cy of one thou­sand pounds. His own fa­ther did not long sur­vive mine, and with­in half a year from these events, Mr. Wick­ham wrote to in­form me that, hav­ing fi­nal­ly re­solved against tak­ing or­ders, he hoped I should not think it un­rea­son­able for him to ex­pect some more im­me­di­ate pe­cu­niary ad­van­tage, in lieu of the prefer­ment, by which he could not be ben­efit­ed. He had some in­ten­tion, he added, of study­ing law, and I must be aware that the in­ter­est of one thou­sand pounds would be a very in­suf­fi­cient sup­port there­in. I rather wished, than be­lieved him to be sin­cere; but, at any rate, was per­fect­ly ready to ac­cede to his pro­pos­al. I knew that Mr. Wick­ham ought not to be a cler­gy­man; the busi­ness was there­fore soon set­tled–he re­signed all claim to as­sis­tance in the church, were it pos­si­ble that he could ev­er be in a sit­ua­tion to re­ceive it, and ac­cept­ed in re­turn three thou­sand pounds. All con­nec­tion be­tween us seemed now dis­solved. I thought too ill of him to in­vite him to Pem­ber­ley, or ad­mit his so­ci­ety in town. In town I be­lieve he chiefly lived, but his study­ing the law was a mere pre­tence, and be­ing now free from all re­straint, his life was a life of idle­ness and dis­si­pa­tion. For about three years I heard lit­tle of him; but on the de­cease of the in­cum­bent of the liv­ing which had been de­signed for him, he ap­plied to me again by let­ter for the pre­sen­ta­tion. His cir­cum­stances, he as­sured me, and I had no dif­fi­cul­ty in be­liev­ing it, were ex­ceed­ing­ly bad. He had found the law a most un­prof­itable study, and was now ab­so­lute­ly re­solved on be­ing or­dained, if I would present him to the liv­ing in ques­tion–of which he trust­ed there could be lit­tle doubt, as he was well as­sured that I had no oth­er per­son to pro­vide for, and I could not have for­got­ten my revered fa­ther’s in­ten­tions. You will hard­ly blame me for re­fus­ing to com­ply with this en­treaty, or for re­sist­ing ev­ery rep­eti­tion to it. His re­sent­ment was in pro­por­tion to the dis­tress of his cir­cum­stances–and he was doubt­less as vi­olent in his abuse of me to oth­ers as in his re­proach­es to my­self. Af­ter this pe­ri­od ev­ery ap­pear­ance of ac­quain­tance was dropped. How he lived I know not. But last sum­mer he was again most painful­ly ob­trud­ed on my no­tice.

“I must now men­tion a cir­cum­stance which I would wish to for­get my­self, and which no obli­ga­tion less than the present should in­duce me to un­fold to any hu­man be­ing. Hav­ing said thus much, I feel no doubt of your se­cre­cy. My sis­ter, who is more than ten years my ju­nior, was left to the guardian­ship of my moth­er’s nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and my­self. About a year ago, she was tak­en from school, and an es­tab­lish­ment formed for her in Lon­don; and last sum­mer she went with the la­dy who presid­ed over it, to Rams­gate; and thith­er al­so went Mr. Wick­ham, un­doubt­ed­ly by de­sign; for there proved to have been a pri­or ac­quain­tance be­tween him and Mrs. Younge, in whose char­ac­ter we were most un­hap­pi­ly de­ceived; and by her con­nivance and aid, he so far rec­om­mend­ed him­self to Geor­giana, whose af­fec­tion­ate heart re­tained a strong im­pres­sion of his kind­ness to her as a child, that she was per­suad­ed to be­lieve her­self in love, and to con­sent to an elope­ment. She was then but fif­teen, which must be her ex­cuse; and af­ter stat­ing her im­pru­dence, I am hap­py to add, that I owed the knowl­edge of it to her­self. I joined them un­ex­pect­ed­ly a day or two be­fore the in­tend­ed elope­ment, and then Geor­giana, un­able to sup­port the idea of griev­ing and of­fend­ing a broth­er whom she al­most looked up to as a fa­ther, ac­knowl­edged the whole to me. You may imag­ine what I felt and how I act­ed. Re­gard for my sis­ter’s cred­it and feel­ings pre­vent­ed any pub­lic ex­po­sure; but I wrote to Mr. Wick­ham, who left the place im­me­di­ate­ly, and Mrs. Younge was of course re­moved from her charge. Mr. Wick­ham’s chief ob­ject was un­ques­tion­ably my sis­ter’s for­tune, which is thir­ty thou­sand pounds; but I can­not help sup­pos­ing that the hope of re­veng­ing him­self on me was a strong in­duce­ment. His re­venge would have been com­plete in­deed.

“This, madam, is a faith­ful nar­ra­tive of ev­ery event in which we have been con­cerned to­geth­er; and if you do not ab­so­lute­ly re­ject it as false, you will, I hope, ac­quit me hence­forth of cru­el­ty to­wards Mr. Wick­ham. I know not in what man­ner, un­der what form of false­hood he had im­posed on you; but his suc­cess is not per­haps to be won­dered at. Ig­no­rant as you pre­vi­ous­ly were of ev­ery­thing con­cern­ing ei­ther, de­tec­tion could not be in your pow­er, and sus­pi­cion cer­tain­ly not in your in­cli­na­tion.

“You may pos­si­bly won­der why all this was not told you last night; but I was not then mas­ter enough of my­self to know what could or ought to be re­vealed. For the truth of ev­ery­thing here re­lat­ed, I can ap­peal more par­tic­ular­ly to the tes­ti­mo­ny of Colonel Fitzwilliam, who, from our near re­la­tion­ship and con­stant in­ti­ma­cy, and, still more, as one of the ex­ecu­tors of my fa­ther’s will, has been un­avoid­ably ac­quaint­ed with ev­ery par­tic­ular of these trans­ac­tions. If your ab­hor­rence of ME should make MY as­ser­tions val­ue­less, you can­not be pre­vent­ed by the same cause from con­fid­ing in my cousin; and that there may be the pos­si­bil­ity of con­sult­ing him, I shall en­deav­our to find some op­por­tu­ni­ty of putting this let­ter in your hands in the course of the morn­ing. I will on­ly add, God bless you.

“FITZWILLIAM DAR­CY”