Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 11

When the ladies re­moved af­ter din­ner, Eliz­abeth ran up to her sis­ter, and see­ing her well guard­ed from cold, at­tend­ed her in­to the draw­ing-​room, where she was wel­comed by her two friends with many pro­fes­sions of plea­sure; and Eliz­abeth had nev­er seen them so agree­able as they were dur­ing the hour which passed be­fore the gen­tle­men ap­peared. Their pow­ers of con­ver­sa­tion were con­sid­er­able. They could de­scribe an en­ter­tain­ment with ac­cu­ra­cy, re­late an anec­dote with hu­mour, and laugh at their ac­quain­tance with spir­it.

But when the gen­tle­men en­tered, Jane was no longer the first ob­ject; Miss Bin­gley’s eyes were in­stant­ly turned to­ward Dar­cy, and she had some­thing to say to him be­fore he had ad­vanced many steps. He ad­dressed him­self to Miss Ben­net, with a po­lite con­grat­ula­tion; Mr. Hurst al­so made her a slight bow, and said he was “very glad;” but dif­fuse­ness and warmth re­mained for Bin­gley’s salu­ta­tion. He was full of joy and at­ten­tion. The first half-​hour was spent in pil­ing up the fire, lest she should suf­fer from the change of room; and she re­moved at his de­sire to the oth­er side of the fire­place, that she might be fur­ther from the door. He then sat down by her, and talked scarce­ly to any­one else. Eliz­abeth, at work in the op­po­site cor­ner, saw it all with great de­light.

When tea was over, Mr. Hurst re­mind­ed his sis­ter-​in-​law of the card-​ta­ble–but in vain. She had ob­tained pri­vate in­tel­li­gence that Mr. Dar­cy did not wish for cards; and Mr. Hurst soon found even his open pe­ti­tion re­ject­ed. She as­sured him that no one in­tend­ed to play, and the si­lence of the whole par­ty on the sub­ject seemed to jus­ti­fy her. Mr. Hurst had there­fore noth­ing to do, but to stretch him­self on one of the so­fas and go to sleep. Dar­cy took up a book; Miss Bin­gley did the same; and Mrs. Hurst, prin­ci­pal­ly oc­cu­pied in play­ing with her bracelets and rings, joined now and then in her broth­er’s con­ver­sa­tion with Miss Ben­net.

Miss Bin­gley’s at­ten­tion was quite as much en­gaged in watch­ing Mr. Dar­cy’s progress through HIS book, as in read­ing her own; and she was per­pet­ual­ly ei­ther mak­ing some in­quiry, or look­ing at his page. She could not win him, how­ev­er, to any con­ver­sa­tion; he mere­ly an­swered her ques­tion, and read on. At length, quite ex­haust­ed by the at­tempt to be amused with her own book, which she had on­ly cho­sen be­cause it was the sec­ond vol­ume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, “How pleas­ant it is to spend an evening in this way! I de­clare af­ter all there is no en­joy­ment like read­ing! How much soon­er one tires of any­thing than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be mis­er­able if I have not an ex­cel­lent li­brary.”

No one made any re­ply. She then yawned again, threw aside her book, and cast her eyes round the room in quest for some amuse­ment; when hear­ing her broth­er men­tion­ing a ball to Miss Ben­net, she turned sud­den­ly to­wards him and said:

“By the bye, Charles, are you re­al­ly se­ri­ous in med­itat­ing a dance at Nether­field? I would ad­vise you, be­fore you de­ter­mine on it, to con­sult the wish­es of the present par­ty; I am much mis­tak­en if there are not some among us to whom a ball would be rather a pun­ish­ment than a plea­sure.”

“If you mean Dar­cy,” cried her broth­er, “he may go to bed, if he choos­es, be­fore it be­gins–but as for the ball, it is quite a set­tled thing; and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup enough, I shall send round my cards.”

“I should like balls in­finite­ly bet­ter,” she replied, “if they were car­ried on in a dif­fer­ent man­ner; but there is some­thing in­suf­fer­ably te­dious in the usu­al pro­cess of such a meet­ing. It would sure­ly be much more ra­tio­nal if con­ver­sa­tion in­stead of danc­ing were made the or­der of the day.”

“Much more ra­tio­nal, my dear Car­oline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball.”

Miss Bin­gley made no an­swer, and soon af­ter­wards she got up and walked about the room. Her fig­ure was el­egant, and she walked well; but Dar­cy, at whom it was all aimed, was still in­flex­ibly stu­dious. In the des­per­ation of her feel­ings, she re­solved on one ef­fort more, and, turn­ing to Eliz­abeth, said:

“Miss Eliza Ben­net, let me per­suade you to fol­low my ex­am­ple, and take a turn about the room. I as­sure you it is very re­fresh­ing af­ter sit­ting so long in one at­ti­tude.”

Eliz­abeth was sur­prised, but agreed to it im­me­di­ate­ly. Miss Bin­gley suc­ceed­ed no less in the re­al ob­ject of her ci­vil­ity; Mr. Dar­cy looked up. He was as much awake to the nov­el­ty of at­ten­tion in that quar­ter as Eliz­abeth her­self could be, and un­con­scious­ly closed his book. He was di­rect­ly in­vit­ed to join their par­ty, but he de­clined it, ob­serv­ing that he could imag­ine but two mo­tives for their choos­ing to walk up and down the room to­geth­er, with ei­ther of which mo­tives his join­ing them would in­ter­fere. “What could he mean? She was dy­ing to know what could be his mean­ing?”–and asked Eliz­abeth whether she could at all un­der­stand him?

“Not at all,” was her an­swer; “but de­pend up­on it, he means to be se­vere on us, and our surest way of dis­ap­point­ing him will be to ask noth­ing about it.”

Miss Bin­gley, how­ev­er, was in­ca­pable of dis­ap­point­ing Mr. Dar­cy in any­thing, and per­se­vered there­fore in re­quir­ing an ex­pla­na­tion of his two mo­tives.

“I have not the small­est ob­jec­tion to ex­plain­ing them,” said he, as soon as she al­lowed him to speak. “You ei­ther choose this method of pass­ing the evening be­cause you are in each oth­er’s con­fi­dence, and have se­cret af­fairs to dis­cuss, or be­cause you are con­scious that your fig­ures ap­pear to the great­est ad­van­tage in walk­ing; if the first, I would be com­plete­ly in your way, and if the sec­ond, I can ad­mire you much bet­ter as I sit by the fire.”

“Oh! shock­ing!” cried Miss Bin­gley. “I nev­er heard any­thing so abom­inable. How shall we pun­ish him for such a speech?”

“Noth­ing so easy, if you have but the in­cli­na­tion,” said Eliz­abeth. “We can all plague and pun­ish one an­oth­er. Tease him–laugh at him. In­ti­mate as you are, you must know how it is to be done.”

“But up­on my hon­our, I do NOT. I do as­sure you that my in­ti­ma­cy has not yet taught me THAT. Tease calm­ness of man­ner and pres­ence of mind! No, no–feel he may de­fy us there. And as to laugh­ter, we will not ex­pose our­selves, if you please, by at­tempt­ing to laugh with­out a sub­ject. Mr. Dar­cy may hug him­self.”

“Mr. Dar­cy is not to be laughed at!” cried Eliz­abeth. “That is an un­com­mon ad­van­tage, and un­com­mon I hope it will con­tin­ue, for it would be a great loss to ME to have many such ac­quain­tances. I dear­ly love a laugh.”

“Miss Bin­gley,” said he, “has giv­en me more cred­it than can be. The wis­est and the best of men–nay, the wis­est and best of their ac­tions–may be ren­dered ridicu­lous by a per­son whose first ob­ject in life is a joke.”

“Cer­tain­ly,” replied Eliz­abeth–“there are such peo­ple, but I hope I am not one of THEM. I hope I nev­er ridicule what is wise and good. Fol­lies and non­sense, whims and in­con­sis­ten­cies, DO di­vert me, I own, and I laugh at them when­ev­er I can. But these, I sup­pose, are pre­cise­ly what you are with­out.”

“Per­haps that is not pos­si­ble for any­one. But it has been the study of my life to avoid those weak­ness­es which of­ten ex­pose a strong un­der­stand­ing to ridicule.”

“Such as van­ity and pride.”

“Yes, van­ity is a weak­ness in­deed. But pride–where there is a re­al su­pe­ri­or­ity of mind, pride will be al­ways un­der good reg­ula­tion.”

Eliz­abeth turned away to hide a smile.

“Your ex­am­ina­tion of Mr. Dar­cy is over, I pre­sume,” said Miss Bin­gley; “and pray what is the re­sult?”

“I am per­fect­ly con­vinced by it that Mr. Dar­cy has no de­fect. He owns it him­self with­out dis­guise.”

“No,” said Dar­cy, “I have made no such pre­ten­sion. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of un­der­stand­ing. My tem­per I dare not vouch for. It is, I be­lieve, too lit­tle yield­ing–cer­tain­ly too lit­tle for the con­ve­nience of the world. I can­not for­get the fol­lies and vices of oth­er so soon as I ought, nor their of­fens­es against my­self. My feel­ings are not puffed about with ev­ery at­tempt to move them. My tem­per would per­haps be called re­sent­ful. My good opin­ion once lost, is lost for­ev­er.”

“THAT is a fail­ing in­deed!” cried Eliz­abeth. “Im­pla­ca­ble re­sent­ment IS a shade in a char­ac­ter. But you have cho­sen your fault well. I re­al­ly can­not LAUGH at it. You are safe from me.”

“There is, I be­lieve, in ev­ery dis­po­si­tion a ten­den­cy to some par­tic­ular evil–a nat­ural de­fect, which not even the best ed­uca­tion can over­come.”

“And YOUR de­fect is to hate ev­ery­body.”

“And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is will­ful­ly to mis­un­der­stand them.”

“Do let us have a lit­tle mu­sic,” cried Miss Bin­gley, tired of a con­ver­sa­tion in which she had no share. “Louisa, you will not mind my wak­ing Mr. Hurst?”

Her sis­ter had not the small­est ob­jec­tion, and the pi­anoforte was opened; and Dar­cy, af­ter a few mo­ments’ rec­ol­lec­tion, was not sor­ry for it. He be­gan to feel the dan­ger of pay­ing Eliz­abeth too much at­ten­tion.