Gay Pride and Prejudice (42 page)

“You may depend on it,” replied the other, “for Mrs. Nicholls was in Meryton last night; I saw her passing by, and went out myself on purpose to know the truth of it; and she told me that it was certain true. He comes down on Thursday at the latest, very likely on Wednesday. She was going to the butcher’s, she told me, on purpose to order in some meat on Wednesday, and she has got three couple of ducks just fit to be killed.”

Miss Bennet had not been able to hear of his coming without changing colour. It was many months since she had mentioned his name to Elizabeth; but now, as soon as they were alone together, she said: “I saw you look at me today, Lizzy, when my aunt told us of the present report; and I know I appeared distressed. But don’t imagine it was from any silly cause. I was only confused for the moment because I felt that I should be looked at. I do assure you that the news does not affect me either with pleasure or pain.”

Elizabeth did not know what to make of it. Had she not seen him in Derbyshire, she might have supposed him capable of coming there with no other view than what was acknowledged; but she still thought him partial to Jane, and she wavered as to the greater probability of his coming there
with
his friend’s permission, or being bold enough to come without it. The one question she longed to ask, of course, was whether he would come alone, or be accompanied by his sister.

“Yet it is hard,” she sometimes thought, “that this poor man cannot come to a house which he has legally hired, without raising all this speculation! I will leave him to himself.”

Despite this resolution, the idea that she might soon see Caroline Bingley caused her sentiments more than their share of perturbation. And in spite of what her sister declared, and really believed to be her feelings in the expectation of Bingley’s arrival, Elizabeth could easily perceive that her spirits were affected by it, too. They were more disturbed, more unequal, than she had often seen them.

The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their parents the previous winter was now brought forward again.

“As soon as ever Mr. Bingley comes, my dear,” said Mrs. Bennet, “you will wait on him of course.”

“No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and promised, if I went to see him, he should marry one of my daughters. But it ended in nothing; I will not be sent on a fool’s errand again.”

His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an attention would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his returning to Netherfield.

“‘Tis an etiquette I despise,” said he. “If he wants our society, let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not spend my hours in running after my neighbours every time they go away and come back again.”

“Well, all I know is that it will be abominably rude if you do not wait on him. But, however, that shan’t prevent my asking him to dine here, I am determined. We must have Mrs. Long and the Gouldings soon. That will make thirteen with ourselves, so there will be just room at table for him.”

Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear her husband’s incivility; though it was very mortifying to know that her neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence of it, before
they
did.

As the day of his arrival drew near, Jane said to her sister: “I begin to be sorry that he comes at all. It would be nothing; I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well; but she does not know, no one can know, how much I suffer from what she says. Happy shall I be, when his stay at Netherfield is over!”

“I wish I could say something to comfort you,” replied Elizabeth, who had been unable to uncover any intelligence regarding Caroline’s accompaniment; “but it is wholly out of my power. You must feel it; and the usual satisfaction of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have always so much.”

Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side might be as long as it could. She counted the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent; hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in Hertfordshire, she saw him, from her dressing-room window, enter the paddock and guide his chaise towards the house.

Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane resolutely kept her place at the table; but Elizabeth, to satisfy her mother, went to the window—she looked—she saw Miss Bingley and Mr. Darcy with him, and quickly went to sit down again by her sister. Caroline Bingley was here, now, at Longbourn. What could it mean?

“His sister is with him, Mamma,” said Kitty, “and a gentleman, too; who can it be?”

“Good gracious! Mr. Darcy! Well, any friend of Mr. Bingley’s will always be welcome here, to be sure; but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him.”

Jane looked at Elizabeth with surprise and concern. She knew but little of her sister’s stay in Derbyshire, and therefore felt for the awkwardness which must attend Elizabeth in seeing Caroline almost for the first time since receiving her explanatory letter. Both sisters were uncomfortable enough. Each felt for the other, and of course for themselves; and their mother talked on, of her dislike of Mr. Darcy and Miss Bingley alike, and her resolution to be civil to them only as Mr. Bingley’s friends, without being heard by either of them. But Elizabeth had sources of uneasiness which could not be suspected by Jane, to whom she had never yet had courage to show Mrs. Gardiner’s letter, or to relate her own change of sentiment towards Caroline. To Jane, Miss Bingley could be only a woman whose love Elizabeth had rejected, and whose merit she had undervalued; but to her own more extensive information, Caroline was the woman whom she regarded herself with an interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just as what Jane felt for Bingley. Her astonishment at her coming—to Netherfield, to Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again, was almost equal to what she had known on first witnessing her altered behaviour in Derbyshire.

The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for half a minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added luster to her eyes, as she thought for that space of time that the lady’s affection and wishes must still be unshaken. But she would not be secure.

“Let me first see how she behaves,” said she; “it will then be early enough for expectation.”

She sat intently at work, striving to be composed, and without daring to lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them to the face of her sister as the servant was approaching the door. Jane looked a little paler than usual, but more sedate than Elizabeth had expected. On the gentlemen and lady’s appearing, her colour increased; yet she received them with tolerable ease, and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any symptom of resentment or any unnecessary complaisance.

Elizabeth said as little to the guests as civility would allow, and sat down again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not often command. She had ventured only one glance at Caroline. She looked calm, as usual; and, she thought, more as she had been used to look in Hertfordshire, than as she had seemed at Pemberley. For Darcy, the same was true. But perhaps they could not either be as easy in her mother’s presence as they were with her uncle and aunt. It was a painful, but not improbable, conjecture.

Bingley, she had likewise seen for an instant, and in that short period saw him looking both pleased and embarrassed. He was received by Mrs. Bennet with a degree of civility which made her two daughters ashamed, especially when contrasted with the cold and ceremonious politeness of her curtsey and address to his friends. Elizabeth, particularly, who knew that her mother owed to Darcy and Caroline the preservation of her favourite daughter from irremediable infamy, was hurt and distressed to a most painful degree by a distinction so ill-applied.

Darcy, after inquiring of Mrs. Bennet how Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner did, a question which she could not answer without confusion, said scarcely anything. Caroline was not seated beside her, but near Jane, to whom she spoke with cautious affection, as if mindful of Jane’s disappointment the last time they had met. Jane responded as warmly as ever, and when Elizabeth occasionally, unable to resist the impulse of curiosity, raised her eyes to Caroline’s face, she more often found their guest looking at Jane than at herself. More thoughtfulness and less anxiety to please than when they last met were plainly expressed in Caroline’s countenance. Elizabeth found she was disappointed, and was immediately angry with herself for being so.

“Could I expect it to be otherwise!” said she. “Yet why did she come?”

She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but Caroline, who she longed to thank for her part in Lydia’s retrieval; yet to her she had not nearly enough courage to speak.

“It is a long time, Mr. Bingley, since you went away,” said Mrs. Bennet.

He readily agreed to it.

“I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People
did
say you meant to quit the place entirely at Michaelmas; but, however, I hope it is not true. A great many changes have happened in the neighbourhood, since you went away. Miss Lucas is married and settled. And one of my own daughters. I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have seen it in the papers. It was in The Times and The Courier, I know; though it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, ‘Lately, George Wickham, Esq. to Miss Lydia Bennet,’ without there being a syllable said of her father, or the place where she lived, or anything. It was my brother Gardiner’s drawing up, too, and I wonder how he came to make such an awkward business of it. Did you see it?”

Bingley replied that he had, and made his congratulations. Elizabeth dared not lift up her eyes. How Caroline or Mr. Darcy looked, therefore, she could not tell.

“It is a delightful thing, to be sure, to have a daughter well married,” continued her mother, “but at the same time, Mr. Bingley, it is very hard to have her taken such a way from me. They are gone to Newcastle, a place quite northward, it seems, and there they are to stay I do not know how long. His regiment is there; for I suppose you have heard of his leaving the ——shire, and of his being gone into the regulars. Thank Heaven he has
some
friends, though perhaps not so many as he deserves.”

Elizabeth, who knew this to be leveled at Mr. Darcy, was in such misery of shame, that she could hardly keep her seat. It drew from her, however, the exertion of speaking, which nothing else had so effectually done before; and she asked Bingley whether he meant to make any stay in the country at present, keeping her eyes carefully fixed on his visage rather than that of his sister’s. A few weeks, he believed.

“When you have killed all your own birds, Mr. Bingley,” said her mother, “I beg you will come here, and shoot as many as you please on Mr. Bennet’s manor. I am sure he will be vastly happy to oblige you, and will save all the best of the covies for you.”

Elizabeth’s misery increased at such unnecessary, such officious attention! Were the same fair prospect to arise at present as had flattered them a year ago, everything, she was persuaded, would be hastening to the same vexatious conclusion. At that instant, she felt that years of happiness could not make Jane or herself amends for moments of such painful confusion.

“The first wish of my heart,” said she to herself, “is never more to be in company with any of our visitors. Their society can afford no pleasure that will atone for such wretchedness as this!”

Yet the misery, for which years of happiness were to offer no compensation, received soon afterwards material relief, from observing how much the beauty of her sister rekindled the admiration of her former lover. When first he came in, he had spoken to her but little; but every five minutes seemed to be giving her more of his attention. He found her as handsome as she had been last year; as good-natured, and as unaffected, though not quite so chatty. Jane was anxious that no difference should be perceived in her at all, and was really persuaded that she talked as much as ever. But her mind was so busily engaged, that she did not always know when she was silent.

For her part, Caroline was struggling to prevent herself from following the example set by her smitten-anew brother. She had told herself that she would see how Miss Bennet seemed, and allow her to establish the tenor of their interaction. But other than a heightened complexion, Caroline could not see that her presence had any impact on the lady at all. Elizabeth was so focused on her needlework that she seemed quite unaware of Caroline’s presence in her drawing-room.

When their guests rose to go, Mrs. Bennet was mindful of her intended civility, and invited the trio to dine at Longbourn in a few days time.

“You are quite a visit in my debt, Mr. Bingley,” she added, “for when you went to town last winter, you promised to take a family dinner with us, as soon as you returned. I have not forgot, you see; and I assure you, I was very much disappointed that you did not come back and keep your engagement.”

Bingley looked a little silly at this reflection, and said something of his concern at having been prevented by business. Miss Bingley glanced at Elizabeth, whose attention remained steadfastly at her work, even as her blush increased at her mother’s lack of manners. The visitors then made their farewells and went away.

Mrs. Bennet had been strongly inclined to ask them to stay and dine there that day; but, though she always kept a very good table, she did not think anything less than two courses could be good enough for a man on whom she had such anxious designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride of one who had ten thousand a year.

Chapter Fifty-Four

A
S SOON AS THEY WERE GONE,
Elizabeth walked out to recover her spirits; or in other words, to dwell without interruption on those subjects that must deaden them more. Miss Bingley’s behaviour astonished and vexed her.