Disability and Determination

E-Books will be delivered via a download link in an email from our delivery partner Bookfunnel.

Make sure you check your promotions and spam folders if you do not receive an email within a minute.

You will be able to read this on any Ebook Reader (Kindle, Nook or Kobo) and on your computer, tablet or phone. The email from Bookfunnel with the download link will include easy to follow instructions for entering the book into e-reader libaries.

Digital Products have a 30 day refund window. I really don't want to keep your money if you don't think that I gave you something worthwhile. If you hate what you are reading, use the contact form to send me a message, including your name and order number and add a sentence or two about why you disliked the books, and I'll send you your money back. 

Despite being a cripple with a blighted life, Fitzwilliam Darcy was a fine looking man, excessively tall, with an intelligent look, a noble mien and haughty but refined manners. Such at least was the judgement pronounced upon him by the loquacious wisdom of the Meryton Assembly. Merged with those virtues was the certain rumor that his estate cleared ten thousand a year.
A terrible pity about his legs though.
A few of the mothers, aunts, brothers-in-law, and interested parties of marriageable girls made an effort to speak with him in hopes that they might offer up their daughter, niece, unwanted sister-in-law, or female person of interest to him as an affectionate caretaker for his crippled state.
Unfortunately, a few of these young women recoiled at being hawked like fish at market to be the comforting companion of a crippled man in his countrified retirement.
Most of the women were willing enough — the loss of his legs did not undo the handsomeness of Mr. Darcy’s face, the width of his broad shoulders, or the size of his rumored estate.
However Mr. Darcy seemed wholly unappreciative of the charitable willingness with which the females of Meryton were willing to tie themselves selflessly to an extremely wealthy invalid. That gentleman showed not the slightest inclination to engage in conversation beyond the smallest atom required for bare politeness. And when that infinitesimal forced him to speak, he inclined his head and mouthed polite nothings before escaping to another corner of the room with surprising agility and speed on his crutches.
A dispute therefore arose amongst the good people of the neighborhood: Was he acting in a reserved and becoming manner that reflected his unavoidable sadness at his inability to dance, as he must be longing to? Or was he arrogant, proud, and above being pleased?
Most chose to pity Darcy, rather than despise him. And pity became the only permissible attitude when Jane Bennet let slip to a particular friend that Mr. Bingley told her during their dance that this was the first occasion in which Mr. Darcy had been present in a ballroom since the illness which robbed him of the use of his legs.
Darcy had walked one circuit around the ballroom, the dexterous use of his crutches giving him four limbs rather like a mutilated spider, and then he sat down in a corner and watched the proceedings, silent except for occasional conversations with the members of his own party when they sat out a dance.
Such a sad man, mourning his blighted, crippled state.
He must have loved the dance! One could almost see tears gather in the wet corners of his eyes, but as he was a stoic gentleman, the best sort, educated at Eton, he could not permit them to fall.
Fortuitously for the Meryton Assembly the other rich young man in the room — the one who was to live amongst them — was the most personable young fellow anyone had ever seen. Mr. Bingley had been in the room a scant few handfuls of minutes before he was acquainted with all of the principal persons of the neighborhood and had made a friendly bow to all of their daughters. He danced every dance, he laughed happily, and when the ball ended, he decried loudest amongst everyone it ending so soon.
For her part, the more Elizabeth Bennet observed him, the more she inclined towards Mr. Darcy being haughty and above being pleased.
It was there in the tall way he settled himself on his crutches when she first set eyes on him, the quick and expert motions with which he had moved about the room, the way his finely tailored wool coat could not disguise the athleticism of his upper body, and the way his piercing eyes had once caught hers. Mr. Darcy had a general air of command that made it impossible for Elizabeth to consider him as an unfortunate cripple, no matter how much he met the plain definition of the word.
Thus she was also not inclined to excuse him for his silent and sit-offish behavior — he sat far more than he stood — due to the mere irrelevant circumstance that he was unable to walk without the assistance of some sort of bracing hidden under his pants and two additional wooden legs.
Elizabeth, her mother, Jane, and Charlotte Lucas discussed the matter near the middle of the evening. Elizabeth had glanced over to Mr. Darcy, who studied the dance floor with the sort of haughty frown that a king would reserve for those whose heads they had determined to have ceremoniously chopped off and set on a pike.
“Implacable man!” Elizabeth said laughingly, her feet tapping from side to side to the dancing rhythm of the music, “I fear that he’ll hire a band of brigands to burn the assembly hall to the ground before permitting Mr. Bingley to drag him here again.”
Her mother replied, “Poor man! Poor blighted man! He is longing to dance himself, but he cannot. Depend upon it. That crippled man needs a dutiful wife to nurse him. Mary would do splendidly.”
Mrs. Bennet at this point abandoned the conversation and went to talk to Mary who repeatedly shook her head vigorously no.
Elizabeth said to Charlotte and Jane, “‘Poor man! I agree — not for that reason which prompts everyone else to say it. I would abhor being treated simultaneously as the object of pity and avarice.”
“He is a ‘poor man’,” Charlotte replied, “because he is an object deserving our pity. And yet he cannot be a ‘poor man’, for he owns half of Derbyshire.”
“A man is many things,” Elizabeth replied, “and a man who cannot walk is still a man.”
“But he is a more pitiable man than a man who can walk.”
“Yes. But if Mr. Darcy is at present time more pitiable than he was before this illness of his, it does not follow that he is in fact pitiable. I do not think his state has sunk so far that pity is the proper emotion.”
“I think,” Jane said, “that the chief point is that we ought to be compassionate and kindly towards all — we should strive to treat Mr. Darcy as he wishes to be treated.”
“Then we agree wholly,” Elizabeth said to her sister. “My notion of compassion and kindliness suggests that I ought to endeavor to think of Mr. Darcy as I would if he could walk. So I say: He does not speak nearly as much as he ought in company. It is almost rude.”
Charlotte added with a smirk, “And he dances far less often than a gentleman ought.”
Elizabeth pointedly looked at Charlotte and pursed her lips in mock disapproval.
Charlotte smiled brightly back. “You say you shall think of Mr. Darcy as you would if he could walk. If he can walk, he can dance, and if he can dance, he ought to dance. Especially when more than one young lady lacks a partner.”
“Argued with a syllogism!” Elizabeth laughed. “I’ll also judge him then for dancing less often than he ought.”
Shortly after this conversation, Mr. Darcy offended Miss Elizabeth’s vanity more pointedly and personally. But in an odd twist of fate, this proved fortuitous, for had he not done so, it is likely that the two of them never would have become acquainted in any significant fashion.
Elizabeth was obliged by the scarcity of gentlemen to sit out a set.
Rather than seeking a conversation with some other friend suffering from the same tragic and miserable state, Elizabeth determined to comfort herself with philosophical meditations upon the impossibility of having a perfect evening, unless one was Jane. Elizabeth chose for this task — and the author must confess this was not by coincidence — a chair near the one that Mr. Darcy was at present ensconced in, his long legs stretched to his front, and his even longer mahogany crutches leaning against the wall adjacent to him.
Elizabeth Bennet would freely confess to anyone who asked that she considered herself to be an excellent judge of character — the sort of woman who saw deeper, more clearly and with more amused eyes than others. Everyone was so fascinating. Little contradictions, oddities, and inconsistencies made every person unique and worth understanding. Often people said at one moment something that quite contradicted what they would say in another.
And they just didn’t notice!
That was the most fascinating aspect of the human character — its endless capacity for not noticing itself.
This Mr. Darcy, with his aristocratic pose, his wide shoulders and his inability to stand under his own power was an odder contradiction than most. It was as though the mental contradictions that she saw in all around her had been turned into a physical contradiction.
Elizabeth hoped an opportunity would arise for a conversation with Mr. Darcy so she might assess him and discover if in mental points he also differed from the ordinary — if his mind would fascinate her as much as his person did.
While Elizabeth sat pressed against the wall, Mr. Bingley went during the brief break between the two dances of the set which, happily, was the second that he was dancing with Jane, to approach Mr. Darcy. “Come, Darcy, you must converse with someone. I hate to see you sit about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better speak. This is an assembly!”
“I certainly shall not. You know how I hate to converse with those who I am in no way acquainted with.”
“I would not be so fastidious as you are,” cried Bingley, “for a kingdom! It need not be some matron, or one of the men too old to dance. Upon my honor, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see uncommonly pretty.”
“You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room,” said Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet, giving a salute that pleased Elizabeth, who was too close to do more than pretend to not hear their conversation.
“Oh! the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! One of her sisters is sitting down just behind you. Very pretty. I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.”
“Which do you mean?” And turning round, he looked at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. Return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”
Elizabeth shortly after arose, grimaced at him, and left that corner of the room with no very cordial feelings towards Mr. Darcy.
She approached Charlotte and Jane during the break between dances, and drew them to the side by a small corridor leading to the rooms set aside for men and women to withdraw to when it was necessary to relieve themselves. “I have become determined to not like this Mr. Darcy,” she said.
“Oh?” Charlotte raised an eyebrow.
Elizabeth relayed the story to them, and added, “I confess my vanity has been offended by him, which naturally predisposes me to think the worst of him. He has determined to use his lameness to justify every ill mood and ill remark that he might ever make. Were he a proper gentleman no consideration would make him speak so rudely to a woman wholly unknown to him. I had not thrust myself forward into his attention — a remark most ungentlemanlike!”
At this juncture a sound coming from the door revealed to them Mr. Darcy himself, returning upon his crutches to the ballroom.
The severe expression upon Mr. Darcy’s face convinced Elizabeth he had heard some part of her speech. He bowed his head stiffly, and with a surprisingly fast gait on his crutches worked his way around and past them.
Tap, tap, tap. The sound of his steps.
The three girls looked at each other. Elizabeth flushed, and pressing her hands against her red face laughed. “For such a cause as this all philosophers condemn gossip.”