Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 9

Eliz­abeth passed the chief of the night in her sis­ter’s room, and in the morn­ing had the plea­sure of be­ing able to send a tol­er­able an­swer to the in­quiries which she very ear­ly re­ceived from Mr. Bin­gley by a house­maid, and some time af­ter­wards from the two el­egant ladies who wait­ed on his sis­ters. In spite of this amend­ment, how­ev­er, she re­quest­ed to have a note sent to Long­bourn, de­sir­ing her moth­er to vis­it Jane, and form her own judge­ment of her sit­ua­tion. The note was im­me­di­ate­ly dis­patched, and its con­tents as quick­ly com­plied with. Mrs. Ben­net, ac­com­pa­nied by her two youngest girls, reached Nether­field soon af­ter the fam­ily break­fast.

Had she found Jane in any ap­par­ent dan­ger, Mrs. Ben­net would have been very mis­er­able; but be­ing sat­is­fied on see­ing her that her ill­ness was not alarm­ing, she had no wish of her re­cov­er­ing im­me­di­ate­ly, as her restora­tion to health would prob­ably re­move her from Nether­field. She would not lis­ten, there­fore, to her daugh­ter’s pro­pos­al of be­ing car­ried home; nei­ther did the apothe­cary, who ar­rived about the same time, think it at all ad­vis­able. Af­ter sit­ting a lit­tle while with Jane, on Miss Bin­gley’s ap­pear­ance and in­vi­ta­tion, the moth­er and three daugh­ter all at­tend­ed her in­to the break­fast par­lour. Bin­gley met them with hopes that Mrs. Ben­net had not found Miss Ben­net worse than she ex­pect­ed.

“In­deed I have, sir,” was her an­swer. “She is a great deal too ill to be moved. Mr. Jones says we must not think of mov­ing her. We must tres­pass a lit­tle longer on your kind­ness.”

“Re­moved!” cried Bin­gley. “It must not be thought of. My sis­ter, I am sure, will not hear of her re­moval.”

“You may de­pend up­on it, Madam,” said Miss Bin­gley, with cold ci­vil­ity, “that Miss Ben­net will re­ceive ev­ery pos­si­ble at­ten­tion while she re­mains with us.”

Mrs. Ben­net was pro­fuse in her ac­knowl­edg­ments.

“I am sure,” she added, “if it was not for such good friends I do not know what would be­come of her, for she is very ill in­deed, and suf­fers a vast deal, though with the great­est pa­tience in the world, which is al­ways the way with her, for she has, with­out ex­cep­tion, the sweet­est tem­per I have ev­er met with. I of­ten tell my oth­er girls they are noth­ing to HER. You have a sweet room here, Mr. Bin­gley, and a charm­ing prospect over the grav­el walk. I do not know a place in the coun­try that is equal to Nether­field. You will not think of quit­ting it in a hur­ry, I hope, though you have but a short lease.”

“What­ev­er I do is done in a hur­ry,” replied he; “and there­fore if I should re­solve to quit Nether­field, I should prob­ably be off in five min­utes. At present, how­ev­er, I con­sid­er my­self as quite fixed here.”

“That is ex­act­ly what I should have sup­posed of you,” said Eliz­abeth.

“You be­gin to com­pre­hend me, do you?” cried he, turn­ing to­wards her.

“Oh! yes–I un­der­stand you per­fect­ly.”

“I wish I might take this for a com­pli­ment; but to be so eas­ily seen through I am afraid is piti­ful.”

“That is as it hap­pens. It does not fol­low that a deep, in­tri­cate char­ac­ter is more or less es­timable than such a one as yours.”

“Lizzy,” cried her moth­er, “re­mem­ber where you are, and do not run on in the wild man­ner that you are suf­fered to do at home.”

“I did not know be­fore,” con­tin­ued Bin­gley im­me­di­ate­ly, “that your were a studi­er of char­ac­ter. It must be an amus­ing study.”

“Yes, but in­tri­cate char­ac­ters are the MOST amus­ing. They have at least that ad­van­tage.”

“The coun­try,” said Dar­cy, “can in gen­er­al sup­ply but a few sub­jects for such a study. In a coun­try neigh­bour­hood you move in a very con­fined and un­vary­ing so­ci­ety.”

“But peo­ple them­selves al­ter so much, that there is some­thing new to be ob­served in them for ev­er.”

“Yes, in­deed,” cried Mrs. Ben­net, of­fend­ed by his man­ner of men­tion­ing a coun­try neigh­bour­hood. “I as­sure you there is quite as much of THAT go­ing on in the coun­try as in town.”

Ev­ery­body was sur­prised, and Dar­cy, af­ter look­ing at her for a mo­ment, turned silent­ly away. Mrs. Ben­net, who fan­cied she had gained a com­plete vic­to­ry over him, con­tin­ued her tri­umph.

“I can­not see that Lon­don has any great ad­van­tage over the coun­try, for my part, ex­cept the shops and pub­lic places. The coun­try is a vast deal pleas­an­ter, is it not, Mr. Bin­gley?”

“When I am in the coun­try,” he replied, “I nev­er wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pret­ty much the same. They have each their ad­van­tages, and I can be equal­ly hap­py in ei­ther.”

“Aye–that is be­cause you have the right dis­po­si­tion. But that gen­tle­man,” look­ing at Dar­cy, “seemed to think the coun­try was noth­ing at all.”

“In­deed, Mam­ma, you are mis­tak­en,” said Eliz­abeth, blush­ing for her moth­er. “You quite mis­took Mr. Dar­cy. He on­ly meant that there was not such a va­ri­ety of peo­ple to be met with in the coun­try as in the town, which you must ac­knowl­edge to be true.”

“Cer­tain­ly, my dear, no­body said there were; but as to not meet­ing with many peo­ple in this neigh­bour­hood, I be­lieve there are few neigh­bour­hoods larg­er. I know we dine with four-​and-​twen­ty fam­ilies.”

Noth­ing but con­cern for Eliz­abeth could en­able Bin­gley to keep his coun­te­nance. His sis­ter was less del­icate, and di­rect­ed her eyes to­wards Mr. Dar­cy with a very ex­pres­sive smile. Eliz­abeth, for the sake of say­ing some­thing that might turn her moth­er’s thoughts, now asked her if Char­lotte Lu­cas had been at Long­bourn since HER com­ing away.

“Yes, she called yes­ter­day with her fa­ther. What an agree­able man Sir William is, Mr. Bin­gley, is not he? So much the man of fash­ion! So gen­teel and easy! He had al­ways some­thing to say to ev­ery­body. THAT is my idea of good breed­ing; and those per­sons who fan­cy them­selves very im­por­tant, and nev­er open their mouths, quite mis­take the mat­ter.”

“Did Char­lotte dine with you?”

“No, she would go home. I fan­cy she was want­ed about the mince-​pies. For my part, Mr. Bin­gley, I al­ways keep ser­vants that can do their own work; MY daugh­ters are brought up very dif­fer­ent­ly. But ev­ery­body is to judge for them­selves, and the Lu­cas­es are a very good sort of girls, I as­sure you. It is a pity they are not hand­some! Not that I think Char­lotte so VERY plain–but then she is our par­tic­ular friend.”

“She seems a very pleas­ant young wom­an.”

“Oh! dear, yes; but you must own she is very plain. La­dy Lu­cas her­self has of­ten said so, and en­vied me Jane’s beau­ty. I do not like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Jane–one does not of­ten see any­body bet­ter look­ing. It is what ev­ery­body says. I do not trust my own par­tial­ity. When she was on­ly fif­teen, there was a man at my broth­er Gar­diner’s in town so much in love with her that my sis­ter-​in-​law was sure he would make her an of­fer be­fore we came away. But, how­ev­er, he did not. Per­haps he thought her too young. How­ev­er, he wrote some vers­es on her, and very pret­ty they were.”

“And so end­ed his af­fec­tion,” said Eliz­abeth im­pa­tient­ly. “There has been many a one, I fan­cy, over­come in the same way. I won­der who first dis­cov­ered the ef­fi­ca­cy of po­et­ry in driv­ing away love!”

“I have been used to con­sid­er po­et­ry as the FOOD of love,” said Dar­cy.

“Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Ev­ery­thing nour­ish­es what is strong al­ready. But if it be on­ly a slight, thin sort of in­cli­na­tion, I am con­vinced that one good son­net will starve it en­tire­ly away.”

Dar­cy on­ly smiled; and the gen­er­al pause which en­sued made Eliz­abeth trem­ble lest her moth­er should be ex­pos­ing her­self again. She longed to speak, but could think of noth­ing to say; and af­ter a short si­lence Mrs. Ben­net be­gan re­peat­ing her thanks to Mr. Bin­gley for his kind­ness to Jane, with an apol­ogy for trou­bling him al­so with Lizzy. Mr. Bin­gley was un­af­fect­ed­ly civ­il in his an­swer, and forced his younger sis­ter to be civ­il al­so, and say what the oc­ca­sion re­quired. She per­formed her part in­deed with­out much gra­cious­ness, but Mrs. Ben­net was sat­is­fied, and soon af­ter­wards or­dered her car­riage. Up­on this sig­nal, the youngest of her daugh­ters put her­self for­ward. The two girls had been whis­per­ing to each oth­er dur­ing the whole vis­it, and the re­sult of it was, that the youngest should tax Mr. Bin­gley with hav­ing promised on his first com­ing in­to the coun­try to give a ball at Nether­field.

Ly­dia was a stout, well-​grown girl of fif­teen, with a fine com­plex­ion and good-​hu­moured coun­te­nance; a favourite with her moth­er, whose af­fec­tion had brought her in­to pub­lic at an ear­ly age. She had high an­imal spir­its, and a sort of nat­ural self-​con­se­quence, which the at­ten­tion of the of­fi­cers, to whom her un­cle’s good din­ners, and her own easy man­ners rec­om­mend­ed her, had in­creased in­to as­sur­ance. She was very equal, there­fore, to ad­dress Mr. Bin­gley on the sub­ject of the ball, and abrupt­ly re­mind­ed him of his promise; adding, that it would be the most shame­ful thing in the world if he did not keep it. His an­swer to this sud­den at­tack was de­light­ful to their moth­er’s ear:

“I am per­fect­ly ready, I as­sure you, to keep my en­gage­ment; and when your sis­ter is re­cov­ered, you shall, if you please, name the very day of the ball. But you would not wish to be danc­ing when she is ill.”

Ly­dia de­clared her­self sat­is­fied. “Oh! yes–it would be much bet­ter to wait till Jane was well, and by that time most like­ly Cap­tain Carter would be at Mery­ton again. And when you have giv­en YOUR ball,” she added, “I shall in­sist on their giv­ing one al­so. I shall tell Colonel Forster it will be quite a shame if he does not.”

Mrs. Ben­net and her daugh­ters then de­part­ed, and Eliz­abeth re­turned in­stant­ly to Jane, leav­ing her own and her re­la­tions’ be­haviour to the re­marks of the two ladies and Mr. Dar­cy; the lat­ter of whom, how­ev­er, could not be pre­vailed on to join in their cen­sure of HER, in spite of all Miss Bin­gley’s wit­ti­cisms on FINE EYES.