Different Stories, Parallel Tracks

Perhaps opposite sides of the same coin

Sometimes, we get lost in the differences between Darcy and Elizabeth. One is filled with pride in his position, which informs his prejudices, while the other suffers from injured pride after a single insult uttered by another person. She sets her face against the author of her discomfort, but, in the process, becomes susceptible to the serpentine whispering of a third party.

One pride is that of the speaker; the other is that of the listener. Ultimately, we come to realize how ill-informed and fragile pride can be. Is it any wonder that the Greeks used pride to motivate so many of their classic tragedies?

Pride—and the struggle to overcome the barriers it throws up—is the top layer in the book. If a reader takes no other lesson from Pride and Prejudice, it is that First Impressions are not always the best basis upon which to base a final sketch. If I were to be the forgiving sort, I would suggest that whatever one sees or hears at the very beginning is nothing more than the first draft of the sketch.

Is there more to Austen without becoming entirely academic? During the 250th birth anniversary, can we delve deeper for an even more rewarding experience?

Last year, as I was writing In Westminster’s Halls, I found what I believe Austen has been pointing me toward all along—that these two people were not only equals in their gentility but also in their inner awareness. I cued that with their antipathy toward and abhorrence of the slave trade, which both had inherited from their sires.

Within that, I pointed my readers to other, more traditional framings that Austen used to ask her readers quietly: Are they really that different? Get past the question of wealth and the station it confers. In what ways are they equals?

Both were easily angered, although they tended to regulate themselves through either stoic suppression or vigorous exercise. Both tended to judge quickly: Darcy through preconceived notions that prevented him from weighing an individual’s behavior, and Elizabeth, using youthful naivete, to indict and convict without knowing any context that might further explain. Both thirsted for love but had never found an equal match.

Elizabeth and Darcy were portrayed as being from such thoroughly different planets that, to Austen’s first readers, there was no reasonable way this country mouse and city cat could ever be seen as coming together. This was the plot twist Austen had set up her readers to encounter. And if they walked away from their reading of P&P, this would have been a satisfying authorial outing. The pairing between a man with ten thousand a year and a woman with nothing but a penurious fifty was as foreign to them as the Regent offering Princess Caroline to one of Napoleon’s brothers to end the War over the altar.

Remind me to tell you sometime about the 1859 dynastic marriage between the young and incredibly popular Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy and Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte. It's something about her letter to her father, vowing to do her duty. The ink had run in so many places that it was nearly unreadable. HMMMM.

Looking deeper, we see that what made Darcy and Elizabeth an ideal couple was that one’s sockets accepted the other’s knobs and vice versa. Despite surface differences, they were ultimately complementary once they overcame mutual misunderstandings.

Consider this: would it have been remotely possible for either of the other two marriageable females (we can all agree that Jane was destined for Bingley), Caroline Bingley and Charlotte Lucas, to have fit with Darcy?

Inconceivable! Caroline was driven by avarice, seeking money for the power it would bring her in society. She was Austen’s cautionary tale about women of the ton and was used to develop the nuances in Elizabeth’s character that cried out her uniqueness. Charlotte was Austen’s commentary on a woman’s usual lot: being forced to sacrifice dreams of affection for the safety of a man’s last name and prospects.

ODC balances one another. However, as I mentioned a moment ago, they were far more alike than either realized. Their lives had shaped them to be the other’s ideal in many ways.

Darcy was an intelligent boy and young man, wounded by the early loss of his mother’s love and then the distance of his grieving father. He needed earnest, if somewhat teasing, love to heal his heart.

Elizabeth had, perforce, been required to grow up as a free-range child. Yes, we can infer that Mr. Bennet liked her best, but was that more that he took her presence on sufferance where his other daughters were judged to be more bothers than they were worth? Bennet was never a true father, and Mrs. Bennet was frequently prostrated by fear.

Both Darcy and Elizabeth are orphans in different ways. They needed each other, much like two pieces in a puzzle must be joined to complete the picture.

And, dear friends, finding that second—or third—layer makes reading Austen so much fun. I always try to emulate her practice in my writing.

***

Please enjoy this excerpt of my current Work-In-Progress, Ghost Flight: A World War II Pride and Prejudice Variation. I assure you that I am one chapter away from composing the Epilogue (of Sorts). I thought the title of this article suited the excerpt selected.

This excerpt is ©2025 by Donald P. Jacobson. All rights reserved, including fair use. Reproduction in any form—electronic or mechanical—is prohibited.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Paris-Straßburg-Mulhouse train, Monday evening

The late train to Strasbourg—although the spelling had been rendered in German since 1940, Elizabeth could only think of it in French—had been an express with two stops in Metz, the other in Nancy. She recalled the train and its route because Papa once had bundled the entire family on board for a weekend trip across the Rhine into the Black Forest. While Thomas Bennet acceded to his wife’s demands that they ‘simply must see more of the Continent than the Sorbonne,’ his idea of a vacation took on the nature of a school field trip—once it was the Alpine foothills along the Swiss border; another time it was a barge trip through the Rhineland. After the latter, Fanny Bennet professed nervous prostration resulting from her efforts to keep five rambunctious girls from drowning. No, her father did not make his children stand for exams when they returned, but Elizabeth sensed that every trek had a purpose beyond seeing Germany’s sights.[i]

In 1944, the journey across Lorraine into Alsace was barely better than a local on a sideline, slowed by redirections thanks to damaged tracks, either because of the Resistance or the Allies. At best, timetables were historical documents, more hope than reality. No longer departing from Paris-Nord but rather Paris-Est, the coaches were pulled by a weary SNCF locomotive through a zigzag of intermediate stops generally aimed at the bridgehead over the Rhine 250 miles away.[ii]

Although their agents’ antennae were alert for any indication that the alarm had been raised, their confident manner helped them breeze through the station after their return from Reims. As predicted, the weary Wehrmacht guard waved them through without a second glance. Hurrying across town to Gare de l’Est to purchase their tickets toward Switzerland, Darcy’s liberal application of Reichsmarks and their honeymoon story secured a private sleeping compartment in the train’s one superannuated CIWL sleeper. Soon enough, the intercity rattled east on the first leg of their venture toward their haven in the Alps, gleaming brightly behind a distant horizon.[iii]

***

Before the war, European rail travel traversed time and space, whisking passengers through a fantastic world liberally sprinkled with hulking castles, dark woods, and smoky cities. Like a flipbook in a child’s hands, this magic carpet was filled with flickering images flashing past; the instant one was understood, it vanished to be replaced with another.

Now, sound was divorced from light: wheels still clattered over joints and uneven trackage, but through an invisible world. Blackout shades drawn, a sense of unreality pervaded the berth.

Unable to immerse herself in the scenery, Elizabeth focused on her companion, the frequently inscrutable man called Monsieur Fitzgerald. Unfinished business demanded her attention.

This will be bitter medicine, or maybe it is crow, but I must swallow it for it will be the cure, I pray, for the ache I feel every time I look at Darcy. I cannot let this stand between us. I acted like a silly adolescent after I saw him with Aline. His declaration to me was muted, but my heart heard it.

Since Saturday, he has been a gentleman, never acknowledging my jealous, catty spitting, although it was impossible to miss. Mayhap he has stopped caring, thinking that one little baggage has become more bother than she is worth.

However, I am hard pressed to imagine that Darcy would disengage so completely when, a few days ago, he caressed my hand over dinner.

No. He is a sensitive man who feels that I have pulled away. He is sheltering his heart with a professional demeanor.

Her eyes turned outward. His stare, intense and dark, stopped her. “What?”

Darcy blushed. “Have you considered the implications of our situation, ma chérie? We spent last night in the same room. However, it was about five times the size of this monk’s cell. The Great Divide separated the bed and couch like the Walls of Jericho.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Well, Monsieur Fitzgerald, we have two bench seats. You can keep to your corner and I will keep to mine.”

He looked at the closed door, raised his eyebrows, and shook his head. “That will be impossible, Heloise. We are newlyweds and must be seen to act like that.

“When the Milice come through checking papers, if they see us fully dressed, they will smell last week’s fish. We must make for the bed and leave the impression—perhaps several—that we have been occupied exploring the joys of married life.

“I will step out to the club car to allow you privacy to change into your nightclothes.”

Practicalities first. Apologies later.

Elizabeth’s snort shook the blackout blinds. “I hadn’t thought about that.

“Seriously, my dear husband, we are soldiers and this is war. Small sacrifices for appearance’s sake must be borne. I doubt if you have eyes in the back of your head. Turn around so I can undress and put on my gown and robe.”

She waggled her right index finger in a circle; Darcy did a dutiful about-face. Snapping open the latches on her case, Elizabeth rummaged about finding her nightwear before disrobing. As she unbuttoned her dress, shyness nudged her mentalité. Her clothes made slithering sounds—abnormally loud in the small compartment—as she shuffled about, trying to avoid his broad back.

Elizabeth winced slightly when she put herself in Darcy’s place as he listened to a young woman undressing. What must he be thinking? Like most women of her generation, the war had freed her from Mama’s Edwardian virgin vault, but this smacked of such intimacy that her chest glowed. She observed the crimson flood spreading across her skin when pulling her night gown over her head.

Standing barefoot on the dingy carpet showing years of neglect, an incongruous thought flashed. I did not pack any slippers, although that doesn’t matter. While they aren’t flattering, Gaby gave me a pair of her hand-knitted wool socks made from an unraveled jumper.

Closing the case clasps, Elizabeth teased Darcy to relieve the tension that filled the tiny stateroom. “Now, wasn’t that show worth the penny you paid? No, sir, do not object. Even though you grew up on A Boy’s Own, you were surrounded by young gentlemen trying to discern life’s mysteries with nothing more than fertile imaginations.”

“Perhaps I helped feed that.” She did a pirouette, her robe flaring away from her shins.

“Now, I am ready for my performance. Call the porter to make up our bed.”

***

Imagination is far more potent than reality’s bright light.

As he listened to Elizabeth change, images rose in his brain, new ones coming with every different sound, that became torture of the sweetest type, roses rubbing across bare skin, a single thorn catching in his tangled chest hair. Although self-blindered, Darcy was no novice regarding the female form. However, as he stood with his back to Elizabeth, new and unseen images came to him, not her face imposed on another known figure. To avoid temptation, Darcy screwed his eyes more tightly shut.

The darkened world behind his lids was no longer dim; instead, images of Elizabeth filled it, newly made as if by a third eye opened and drinking in her essence. Her petite figure was perfectly proportioned, lean and muscular, but softened as a woman’s body ought to be, even one of the most athletic persuasion.

Her modesty of movement, as if she had become suddenly shy, was endearing. Elizabeth could never be a blushing bride, unknowing of the mysteries of the marriage bed: not now, not after five years of war. A healthy young woman who voluntarily left England’s relative safety for France’s manifest danger would never be reluctant to seek out the comfort of a partner’s body.

Yet, in his mind’s eye, she stood demure, face averted like one of Mâitre Degas’s ballerinas caught in an intimate moment, dimples in her lower back defining the flare of her hips. The scar searing her calf, far from an imperfection, was a vein in a block of marble, making her even more interesting.

A line from the Marriage Sacrament flashed across his mind’s firmament. With my body I thee worship. I wish for nothing but to commune in the cathedral of Elizabeth’s heart, for she is so much more than her inarguable beauty.

I am standing here before you, in the middle of falling in love, no, completely gone is more apt, but there is a wall between us, thrown up over the past few days. I can only hope and wait—a doleful word—for thawing of your lost laughter’s frozen waterfall.

The snap of latches pulled him from his reverie. She perched, a delicate bird, on the cushion’s edge. She tipped her head slightly, a nuance sending shivers through him. “Now you, dear sir. If we are to succumb to our love’s passions, ought you not be prepared? At least remove your jacket and tie, perhaps unbutton your shirt.”

Darcy unwound. “Ah, a goose and gander situation, as it were. All right, Mrs. Fitzgerald, I will join in the spirit of our little scene.”

He collected Elizabeth’s dress and hung it in the closet. His jacket and tie soon followed. But Elizabeth’s surprised squeal made him smile when he playacted dropping his braces. “Ah, there is a limit to what we’ll sacrifice, is there?”

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, and her nostrils flared. “Sometimes a great performance hinges not on revelation but rather intimation. I doubt if you want to stand in the passage showing your bare shanks while the porter makes up our bed. Best you keep your trousers on and summon him lest we be forced to spend the night facing each other, arms and legs akimbo.”

There was something, perhaps a crack, in the glacier that had buried them for several days.

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[i] See the Appendix for a brief mention of Thomas Bennet’s intelligence activities.

[ii] Société nationale des chemins de fer is the French national rail company (est. 1938).

[iii] The Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (CIWL) was the European equivalent of the Pullman Company.