Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 10

The day passed much as the day be­fore had done. Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bin­gley had spent some hours of the morn­ing with the in­valid, who con­tin­ued, though slow­ly, to mend; and in the evening Eliz­abeth joined their par­ty in the draw­ing-​room. The loo-​ta­ble, how­ev­er, did not ap­pear. Mr. Dar­cy was writ­ing, and Miss Bin­gley, seat­ed near him, was watch­ing the progress of his let­ter and re­peat­ed­ly call­ing off his at­ten­tion by mes­sages to his sis­ter. Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bin­gley were at pi­quet, and Mrs. Hurst was ob­serv­ing their game.

Eliz­abeth took up some needle­work, and was suf­fi­cient­ly amused in at­tend­ing to what passed be­tween Dar­cy and his com­pan­ion. The per­pet­ual com­men­da­tions of the la­dy, ei­ther on his hand­writ­ing, or on the even­ness of his lines, or on the length of his let­ter, with the per­fect un­con­cern with which her prais­es were re­ceived, formed a cu­ri­ous di­alogue, and was ex­act­ly in union with her opin­ion of each.

“How de­light­ed Miss Dar­cy will be to re­ceive such a let­ter!”

He made no an­swer.

“You write un­com­mon­ly fast.”

“You are mis­tak­en. I write rather slow­ly.”

“How many let­ters you must have oc­ca­sion to write in the course of a year! Let­ters of busi­ness, too! How odi­ous I should think them!”

“It is for­tu­nate, then, that they fall to my lot in­stead of yours.”

“Pray tell your sis­ter that I long to see her.”

“I have al­ready told her so once, by your de­sire.”

“I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend pens re­mark­ably well.”

“Thank you–but I al­ways mend my own.”

“How can you con­trive to write so even?”

He was silent.

“Tell your sis­ter I am de­light­ed to hear of her im­prove­ment on the harp; and pray let her know that I am quite in rap­tures with her beau­ti­ful lit­tle de­sign for a ta­ble, and I think it in­finite­ly su­pe­ri­or to Miss Grant­ley’s.”

“Will you give me leave to de­fer your rap­tures till I write again? At present I have not room to do them jus­tice.”

“Oh! it is of no con­se­quence. I shall see her in Jan­uary. But do you al­ways write such charm­ing long let­ters to her, Mr. Dar­cy?”

“They are gen­er­al­ly long; but whether al­ways charm­ing it is not for me to de­ter­mine.”

“It is a rule with me, that a per­son who can write a long let­ter with ease, can­not write ill.”

“That will not do for a com­pli­ment to Dar­cy, Car­oline,” cried her broth­er, “be­cause he does NOT write with ease. He stud­ies too much for words of four syl­la­bles. Do not you, Dar­cy?”

“My style of writ­ing is very dif­fer­ent from yours.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Bin­gley, “Charles writes in the most care­less way imag­in­able. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest.”

“My ideas flow so rapid­ly that I have not time to ex­press them–by which means my let­ters some­times con­vey no ideas at all to my cor­re­spon­dents.”

“Your hu­mil­ity, Mr. Bin­gley,” said Eliz­abeth, “must dis­arm re­proof.”

“Noth­ing is more de­ceit­ful,” said Dar­cy, “than the ap­pear­ance of hu­mil­ity. It is of­ten on­ly care­less­ness of opin­ion, and some­times an in­di­rect boast.”

“And which of the two do you call MY lit­tle re­cent piece of mod­esty?”

“The in­di­rect boast; for you are re­al­ly proud of your de­fects in writ­ing, be­cause you con­sid­er them as pro­ceed­ing from a ra­pid­ity of thought and care­less­ness of ex­ecu­tion, which, if not es­timable, you think at least high­ly in­ter­est­ing. The pow­er of do­ing any­thing with quick­ness is al­ways prized much by the pos­ses­sor, and of­ten with­out any at­ten­tion to the im­per­fec­tion of the per­for­mance. When you told Mrs. Ben­net this morn­ing that if you ev­er re­solved up­on quit­ting Nether­field you should be gone in five min­utes, you meant it to be a sort of pan­egyric, of com­pli­ment to your­self–and yet what is there so very laud­able in a pre­cip­itance which must leave very nec­es­sary busi­ness un­done, and can be of no re­al ad­van­tage to your­self or any­one else?”

“Nay,” cried Bin­gley, “this is too much, to re­mem­ber at night all the fool­ish things that were said in the morn­ing. And yet, up­on my hon­our, I be­lieve what I said of my­self to be true, and I be­lieve it at this mo­ment. At least, there­fore, I did not as­sume the char­ac­ter of need­less pre­cip­itance mere­ly to show off be­fore the ladies.”

“I dare say you be­lieved it; but I am by no means con­vinced that you would be gone with such celer­ity. Your con­duct would be quite as de­pen­dent on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you were mount­ing your horse, a friend were to say, ‘Bin­gley, you had bet­ter stay till next week,’ you would prob­ably do it, you would prob­ably not go–and at an­oth­er word, might stay a month.”

“You have on­ly proved by this,” cried Eliz­abeth, “that Mr. Bin­gley did not do jus­tice to his own dis­po­si­tion. You have shown him off now much more than he did him­self.”

“I am ex­ceed­ing­ly grat­ified,” said Bin­gley, “by your con­vert­ing what my friend says in­to a com­pli­ment on the sweet­ness of my tem­per. But I am afraid you are giv­ing it a turn which that gen­tle­man did by no means in­tend; for he would cer­tain­ly think bet­ter of me, if un­der such a cir­cum­stance I were to give a flat de­nial, and ride off as fast as I could.”

“Would Mr. Dar­cy then con­sid­er the rash­ness of your orig­inal in­ten­tions as atoned for by your ob­sti­na­cy in ad­her­ing to it?”

“Up­on my word, I can­not ex­act­ly ex­plain the mat­ter; Dar­cy must speak for him­self.”

“You ex­pect me to ac­count for opin­ions which you choose to call mine, but which I have nev­er ac­knowl­edged. Al­low­ing the case, how­ev­er, to stand ac­cord­ing to your rep­re­sen­ta­tion, you must re­mem­ber, Miss Ben­net, that the friend who is sup­posed to de­sire his re­turn to the house, and the de­lay of his plan, has mere­ly de­sired it, asked it with­out of­fer­ing one ar­gu­ment in favour of its pro­pri­ety.”

“To yield read­ily–eas­ily–to the PER­SUA­SION of a friend is no mer­it with you.”

“To yield with­out con­vic­tion is no com­pli­ment to the un­der­stand­ing of ei­ther.”

“You ap­pear to me, Mr. Dar­cy, to al­low noth­ing for the in­flu­ence of friend­ship and af­fec­tion. A re­gard for the re­quester would of­ten make one read­ily yield to a re­quest, with­out wait­ing for ar­gu­ments to rea­son one in­to it. I am not par­tic­ular­ly speak­ing of such a case as you have sup­posed about Mr. Bin­gley. We may as well wait, per­haps, till the cir­cum­stance oc­curs be­fore we dis­cuss the dis­cre­tion of his be­haviour there­upon. But in gen­er­al and or­di­nary cas­es be­tween friend and friend, where one of them is de­sired by the oth­er to change a res­olu­tion of no very great mo­ment, should you think ill of that per­son for com­ply­ing with the de­sire, with­out wait­ing to be ar­gued in­to it?”

“Will it not be ad­vis­able, be­fore we pro­ceed on this sub­ject, to ar­range with rather more pre­ci­sion the de­gree of im­por­tance which is to ap­per­tain to this re­quest, as well as the de­gree of in­ti­ma­cy sub­sist­ing be­tween the par­ties?”

“By all means,” cried Bin­gley; “let us hear all the par­tic­ulars, not for­get­ting their com­par­ative height and size; for that will have more weight in the ar­gu­ment, Miss Ben­net, than you may be aware of. I as­sure you, that if Dar­cy were not such a great tall fel­low, in com­par­ison with my­self, I should not pay him half so much def­er­ence. I de­clare I do not know a more aw­ful ob­ject than Dar­cy, on par­tic­ular oc­ca­sions, and in par­tic­ular places; at his own house es­pe­cial­ly, and of a Sun­day evening, when he has noth­ing to do.”

Mr. Dar­cy smiled; but Eliz­abeth thought she could per­ceive that he was rather of­fend­ed, and there­fore checked her laugh. Miss Bin­gley warm­ly re­sent­ed the in­dig­ni­ty he had re­ceived, in an ex­pos­tu­la­tion with her broth­er for talk­ing such non­sense.

“I see your de­sign, Bin­gley,” said his friend. “You dis­like an ar­gu­ment, and want to si­lence this.”

“Per­haps I do. Ar­gu­ments are too much like dis­putes. If you and Miss Ben­net will de­fer yours till I am out of the room, I shall be very thank­ful; and then you may say what­ev­er you like of me.”

“What you ask,” said Eliz­abeth, “is no sac­ri­fice on my side; and Mr. Dar­cy had much bet­ter fin­ish his let­ter.”

Mr. Dar­cy took her ad­vice, and did fin­ish his let­ter.

When that busi­ness was over, he ap­plied to Miss Bin­gley and Eliz­abeth for an in­dul­gence of some mu­sic. Miss Bin­gley moved with some alacrity to the pi­anoforte; and, af­ter a po­lite re­quest that Eliz­abeth would lead the way which the oth­er as po­lite­ly and more earnest­ly neg­atived, she seat­ed her­self.

Mrs. Hurst sang with her sis­ter, and while they were thus em­ployed, Eliz­abeth could not help ob­serv­ing, as she turned over some mu­sic-​books that lay on the in­stru­ment, how fre­quent­ly Mr. Dar­cy’s eyes were fixed on her. She hard­ly knew how to sup­pose that she could be an ob­ject of ad­mi­ra­tion to so great a man; and yet that he should look at her be­cause he dis­liked her, was still more strange. She could on­ly imag­ine, how­ev­er, at last that she drew his no­tice be­cause there was some­thing more wrong and rep­re­hen­si­ble, ac­cord­ing to his ideas of right, than in any oth­er per­son present. The sup­po­si­tion did not pain her. She liked him too lit­tle to care for his ap­pro­ba­tion.

Af­ter play­ing some Ital­ian songs, Miss Bin­gley var­ied the charm by a live­ly Scotch air; and soon af­ter­wards Mr. Dar­cy, draw­ing near Eliz­abeth, said to her:

“Do not you feel a great in­cli­na­tion, Miss Ben­net, to seize such an op­por­tu­ni­ty of danc­ing a reel?”

She smiled, but made no an­swer. He re­peat­ed the ques­tion, with some sur­prise at her si­lence.

“Oh!” said she, “I heard you be­fore, but I could not im­me­di­ate­ly de­ter­mine what to say in re­ply. You want­ed me, I know, to say ‘Yes,’ that you might have the plea­sure of de­spis­ing my taste; but I al­ways de­light in over­throw­ing those kind of schemes, and cheat­ing a per­son of their pre­med­itat­ed con­tempt. I have, there­fore, made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all–and now de­spise me if you dare.”

“In­deed I do not dare.”

Eliz­abeth, hav­ing rather ex­pect­ed to af­front him, was amazed at his gal­lantry; but there was a mix­ture of sweet­ness and arch­ness in her man­ner which made it dif­fi­cult for her to af­front any­body; and Dar­cy had nev­er been so be­witched by any wom­an as he was by her. He re­al­ly be­lieved, that were it not for the in­fe­ri­or­ity of her con­nec­tions, he should be in some dan­ger.

Miss Bin­gley saw, or sus­pect­ed enough to be jeal­ous; and her great anx­iety for the re­cov­ery of her dear friend Jane re­ceived some as­sis­tance from her de­sire of get­ting rid of Eliz­abeth.

She of­ten tried to pro­voke Dar­cy in­to dis­lik­ing her guest, by talk­ing of their sup­posed mar­riage, and plan­ning his hap­pi­ness in such an al­liance.

“I hope,” said she, as they were walk­ing to­geth­er in the shrub­bery the next day, “you will give your moth­er-​in-​law a few hints, when this de­sir­able event takes place, as to the ad­van­tage of hold­ing her tongue; and if you can com­pass it, do sure the younger girls of run­ning af­ter of­fi­cers. And, if I may men­tion so del­icate a sub­ject, en­deav­our to check that lit­tle some­thing, bor­der­ing on con­ceit and im­per­ti­nence, which your la­dy pos­sess­es.”

“Have you any­thing else to pro­pose for my do­mes­tic fe­lic­ity?”

“Oh! yes. Do let the por­traits of your un­cle and aunt Phillips be placed in the gallery at Pem­ber­ley. Put them next to your great-​un­cle the judge. They are in the same pro­fes­sion, you know, on­ly in dif­fer­ent lines. As for your Eliz­abeth’s pic­ture, you must not have it tak­en, for what painter could do jus­tice to those beau­ti­ful eyes?”

“It would not be easy, in­deed, to catch their ex­pres­sion, but their colour and shape, and the eye­lash­es, so re­mark­ably fine, might be copied.”

At that mo­ment they were met from an­oth­er walk by Mrs. Hurst and Eliz­abeth her­self.

“I did not know that you in­tend­ed to walk,” said Miss Bin­gley, in some con­fu­sion, lest they had been over­heard.

“You used us abom­inably ill,” an­swered Mrs. Hurst, “run­ning away with­out telling us that you were com­ing out.”

Then tak­ing the dis­en­gaged arm of Mr. Dar­cy, she left Eliz­abeth to walk by her­self. The path just ad­mit­ted three. Mr. Dar­cy felt their rude­ness, and im­me­di­ate­ly said:

“This walk is not wide enough for our par­ty. We had bet­ter go in­to the av­enue.”

But Eliz­abeth, who had not the least in­cli­na­tion to re­main with them, laugh­ing­ly an­swered:

“No, no; stay where you are. You are charm­ing­ly grouped, and ap­pear to un­com­mon ad­van­tage. The pic­turesque would be spoilt by ad­mit­ting a fourth. Good-​bye.”

She then ran gai­ly off, re­joic­ing as she ram­bled about, in the hope of be­ing at home again in a day or two. Jane was al­ready so much re­cov­ered as to in­tend leav­ing her room for a cou­ple of hours that evening.