Classic Canon has Darcy’s head so high in the clouds of his status that he barely condescends to see those clustered around his feet. Canon also has Elizabeth reacting with impertinence and asperity against the man’s haughty nature and arrogance. That dynamic tension has been present for 200 years.
When I ventured to write my first novel, Elizabeth/Darcy-centric, I resolved to create a work that would offer readers a fresh approach to the Eternal Binary quandary. I am convinced that one of the reasons that I avoided ODC novels (in spite of Lory Lilian and Joana Starnes urging me to do otherwise) was that I was unwilling to compose another story that relied on plot devices used a dozen times over in JAFF.
Then, sometime in the middle of 2019, something clicked as I wrote The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion. It may have been Lydia Wickham acting contrary to her nature, Canonically memorialized as well as scorched across the pages of a thousand variations pushed out since about 2010. That sense of our core characters acting differently, assuming new guises, sent a glimmer into the darker corners of my mind where it muttered through the end of the Lydia book and the composition of my North and South story, Cinders and Smoke.
In early October, I turned to the idea that was to become In Plain Sight. Making the Lydia alterations my starting point, I asked myself, ‘What must Darcy do to lose his pride and begin to appreciate the people around him if Elizabeth’s Hunsford rejection was not the cause?’ After considerable mulling, my search for a satisfying plot path hit a brick wall. I could not see a way that Fitzwilliam Darcy, master of Pemberley, could set aside his pride and become a fully dimensional person. And, there it was—right in the center of my problem. He could not as long as he was master of Pemberley. That man could only respond to the Hunsford disaster, where his most cherished wish was denied. I needed to have him become another, an inversion of the character with whom we are so familiar, to allow him to grow in the manner I would like to write.
Now, I am not a particularly religious man. Even though my books are replete with Christian and Eastern mystic references, these are artifacts of a Swedish Lutheran childhood. That said, our Nineteenth Century characters are people of faith and not Nietzsche’s children; thus, allusions to religion and faith are relevant.
As I began to look at inverting Darcy, I was reminded of the story of the Prodigal Son. By the time of George Darcy’s death, Fitzwilliam Darcy has risen to the top of the heap. He was in possession of his birthright at the age of twenty-three. How could this man learn what he needed to learn in order to become worthy of Elizabeth’s love? If Darcy was at the pinnacle, who would be at the absolute (white man’s) social nadir? Like the biblical young man, he would have to lose it all, to be stripped down to his barest essentials.
He would be convicted and relegated to toil, hidden in plain sight, from all of those who would have condescended to know him before.
Once I hit upon that solution, much more moved into position. Now that Darcy was invisible to everybody except the men he was chained to, how could he interact with Elizabeth? That forced me to consider the person of Miss Elizabeth Rose Bennet. As a gentleman’s daughter, what did she know, and who did she see? Canonical readers and fans of Austenesque works tend to pigeonhole Elizabeth as somewhat saintly and most certain without fault—except for her nasty proclivity to mimic certain Derbyshire gents in jumping to conclusions.
Yet, would not the daughter of Longbourn be equally susceptible to classism? While she is not of the first circles, are we to assume that those attitudes of superiority did not percolate downward toward the sparrows from the eagles? This gave me a mobilizer for Elizabeth and Smith’s relationship. In her own and society’s eyes, she was so far above the convict as the master of Pemberley was above the second daughter of a modest country gentleman.
Now, Elizabeth had to learn that labels do not make the man. Does Collins become an exemplar of saintly rectitude simply because he is ordained? Much as Lydia discovered that the color of the uniform does not define the valor of the man wearing it, so too will Lizzy Bennet find that checkered shirts and canvas pantaloons do not determine the inner qualities of the person before her.
In Plain Sight is, I believe, an honest work. It offers up our hero and heroine in a new light. It moves them through an unfamiliar word growing from the whole cloth of the great work. The novel tells the love story in a way that will be seen as unusual and stepping beyond the norm.
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This excerpt of “In Plain Sight” is ©2020 by Donald P. Jacobson. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without the rights holder’s permission is prohibited.
Chapter Thirty-one
Smith had given up fighting the ennui plaguing him after he had shared a bowl of stew and some of Mrs. Hill’s fresh-baked bread with Annie and James. The conversation around the Dower House’s kitchen table was somewhat desultory as Smith’s attention wandered. Both servants knew he was preoccupied with Miss Elizabeth being off at the Harvest Ball. While the maid and the footman were young, they were not blind. They could see that the brightening and darkening of Smith’s star matched the lady’s arrivals and departures from the confines of the parlor.
With bowls pushed into the table’s center, William abandoned his companions and took his mug of steaming cider into the rear garden. There he could look beyond the hedge snaking across the rolling fields and demarking the end of Longbourn and the beginning of Mr. Bingley’s leasehold. The waxing moon threw the oaks peppering the hillsides into a silvery relief. Inky shadows kept their secrets for another night. If he were a man prone to depression—had he not been one such all those years ago—he would have focused on those voids. Instead, he looked up.
Blooming above the ridgeline, the yellowish glow of Netherfield’s torches inexorably drew his heart. Inside that golden globe, she danced and spun and laughed, casting a luminosity rivaling anything pitch and straw could throw. He yearned to be by her side. He mourned that he was condemned to stand alone forever outside her world.
The night deepened, and the autumnal chill took hold, yet Smith did not retreat into the warming fog thrown by the parlor’s coal fire. James finally stepped into the yard and handed Smith a stiff canvas jacket. Shrugging into the coat, William, almost from habit now rather than actual sensation, winced as the unforgiving cloth scraped across the new skin between the scared ridges that laced his back.
As the night aged and the constellations began to dip beneath the Chilterns behind him, Smith felt a disturbance in that invisible bond forged almost a month ago on the banks of the stream intended to be his grave. He had become attuned to Miss Elizabeth’s moods, and this one, he realized, was unfamiliar in the depth of its desperation. Even when he had been struggling to return from the watery depths of his insensibility, he had never felt anything from her but a calm resolve.
Now, rather than the crystalline purity of her impertinent joie de vivre, Smith could feel—almost smell—the brown murkiness of sadness and loneliness. Even though she was clearly with her kin—the feathery wisps of their loving touches were so readily apparent—his Elizabeth was grieving a loss. Yet, the glimmer of Netherfield’s light remained undiminished.
He had started toward the hedgerow in his blind need to comfort her when subliminal thumps caused him to freeze. The sound eventually resolved into the rhythmic drumming of hooves along a hardened track.
Smith spun and returned inside the Dower House.
***
“Mr. Fitzwilliam…” James began to announce before nearly being bowled over by a gentleman charging through the door.
Richard threw a look over his shoulder. “My apologies, man, but there is no time to waste. Leave us now.”
A confused footman left the parlor.
Fitzwilliam turned and addressed the room’s sole occupant. “Darcy…”
Smith rounded on him and roared, “Never, ever, call me that. I have not yet earned the right to use that blessed name.
“And, cousin, you have picked a fine time to reappear. I have missed your pleasant countenance and cultured discourse these past three sennights. You went to ground when I was lying here, back torn to red rags. Are you so proud that you cannot bear to be around a lowly convict? Have the halls of Pemberley turned your head that much? Has Pemberley’s purse turned you into one a town wastrel?”
“I shall ignore that last,” Richard said in a low voice, cold and dripping with contempt. “If I had wanted your estate, I could have turned your sorry carcass over to the constables as soon as Miss Elizabeth helped you onto Impy’s back. Then I could have made Georgiana my wife—she is of marriageable age—and had control of Pemberley for the next twenty years. So, do not take that tack with me.
“You know bloody well that nobody in the family could contact you. The judge would have instantly clapped you in irons and shipped you to Botany Bay. I have been keeping my head down for reasons having little to do with you and everything to do with Pemberley. Trust me, you have not met Caroline Bingley. She has been in my tailcoat pocket since I arrived. If she were to draw out our little secret, all of us would be in the fire!
“Besides, Campbell kept me appraised of your progress. I was here meeting with him the day that fool parson stumbled on you and Miss Elizabeth. You know he is one of our aunt’s creatures and bears every hallmark of one who calls her Patroness.
“You have spent nearly five years surviving by the strength of your back. Luckily for you, Soames wanted brawn because your brain is sorely lacking. You can be such a snob on top of all else. Blessed name, my foot. It is a moniker and nothing more. Whether they call you Smith—something so ridiculously transparent—or Da…”—he hesitated and bowed his head in the face of Smith’s glare—“you are the same man.”
“No, Richard,” Smith insisted, “I am not, and not just in the visible essentials.” He shrugged his shoulders and grimaced. “I have changed inside.
“Recall when we would listen to the calls of the tradesmen in Lambton and snicker at their effusive efforts? Little did we realize how frightened those seemingly grasping men were. They were racing to beat the arrival of one of the Four Horsemen—in this case, Hunger—at their door.
“Why? Because many of them had been born into homes where parents served their children before themselves from a communal trencher of thin soup.
“Their greatest fear, I am now convinced, grew from teetering on the brink of starvation. They would fight and scrabble, work long hours, or take extra employment to prevent their offspring from knowing the want they had experienced.
“Yet you, an earl’s second son whose only dining question was whether to eat one sweet or two, and I, the scion of a house with antecedents stretching back to the Conqueror and to whom pounds were but pocket change, laughed at men who would sacrifice their health for that of their family. We had been schooled from childhood that we were God’s fortunate ones, and these men and their kin were beneath our notice.
“What we did not, could not, see were their virtues and dreams, those treasured nuggets that were hidden from us although in plain sight. All we saw were their vices.”
Fitzwilliam, unwilling to continue the debate, cut short Smith’s diatribe. “As much as I would wish to explore the new and better angels who have taken up roost in your soul, we have more urgent—imminent, in fact—matters at hand.”
Smith stood motionless, a chill settling into the pit of his stomach. “What has happened? Is it Miss Elizabeth? Her family?”
In a series of terse sentences, Fitzwilliam unwound the past few hours. As he related the story, Smith’s countenance fell while his glower became darker. By the time his cousin had reached the end of the Netherfield library meeting, the exile had balled his fists by his side.
Smith needed to hit something, to demolish those who made his lady weep. Fitzwilliam denied him that satisfaction. “I know what you feel, man. You cannot break cover. Soames has painted a target on your back…and hers. We need to get both of you away from Meryton. And we have precious little time to do it.”