Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 12

In con­se­quence of an agree­ment be­tween the sis­ters, Eliz­abeth wrote the next morn­ing to their moth­er, to beg that the car­riage might be sent for them in the course of the day. But Mrs. Ben­net, who had cal­cu­lat­ed on her daugh­ters re­main­ing at Nether­field till the fol­low­ing Tues­day, which would ex­act­ly fin­ish Jane’s week, could not bring her­self to re­ceive them with plea­sure be­fore. Her an­swer, there­fore, was not pro­pi­tious, at least not to Eliz­abeth’s wish­es, for she was im­pa­tient to get home. Mrs. Ben­net sent them word that they could not pos­si­bly have the car­riage be­fore Tues­day; and in her postscript it was added, that if Mr. Bin­gley and his sis­ter pressed them to stay longer, she could spare them very well. Against stay­ing longer, how­ev­er, Eliz­abeth was pos­itive­ly re­solved–nor did she much ex­pect it would be asked; and fear­ful, on the con­trary, as be­ing con­sid­ered as in­trud­ing them­selves need­less­ly long, she urged Jane to bor­row Mr. Bin­gley’s car­riage im­me­di­ate­ly, and at length it was set­tled that their orig­inal de­sign of leav­ing Nether­field that morn­ing should be men­tioned, and the re­quest made.

The com­mu­ni­ca­tion ex­cit­ed many pro­fes­sions of con­cern; and enough was said of wish­ing them to stay at least till the fol­low­ing day to work on Jane; and till the mor­row their go­ing was de­ferred. Miss Bin­gley was then sor­ry that she had pro­posed the de­lay, for her jeal­ousy and dis­like of one sis­ter much ex­ceed­ed her af­fec­tion for the oth­er.

The mas­ter of the house heard with re­al sor­row that they were to go so soon, and re­peat­ed­ly tried to per­suade Miss Ben­net that it would not be safe for her–that she was not enough re­cov­ered; but Jane was firm where she felt her­self to be right.

To Mr. Dar­cy it was wel­come in­tel­li­gence–Eliz­abeth had been at Nether­field long enough. She at­tract­ed him more than he liked–and Miss Bin­gley was un­civ­il to HER, and more teas­ing than usu­al to him­self. He wise­ly re­solved to be par­tic­ular­ly care­ful that no sign of ad­mi­ra­tion should NOW es­cape him, noth­ing that could el­evate her with the hope of in­flu­enc­ing his fe­lic­ity; sen­si­ble that if such an idea had been sug­gest­ed, his be­haviour dur­ing the last day must have ma­te­ri­al weight in con­firm­ing or crush­ing it. Steady to his pur­pose, he scarce­ly spoke ten words to her through the whole of Sat­ur­day, and though they were at one time left by them­selves for half-​an-​hour, he ad­hered most con­sci­en­tious­ly to his book, and would not even look at her.

On Sun­day, af­ter morn­ing ser­vice, the sep­ara­tion, so agree­able to al­most all, took place. Miss Bin­gley’s ci­vil­ity to Eliz­abeth in­creased at last very rapid­ly, as well as her af­fec­tion for Jane; and when they part­ed, af­ter as­sur­ing the lat­ter of the plea­sure it would al­ways give her to see her ei­ther at Long­bourn or Nether­field, and em­brac­ing her most ten­der­ly, she even shook hands with the for­mer. Eliz­abeth took leave of the whole par­ty in the liveli­est of spir­its.

They were not wel­comed home very cor­dial­ly by their moth­er. Mrs. Ben­net won­dered at their com­ing, and thought them very wrong to give so much trou­ble, and was sure Jane would have caught cold again. But their fa­ther, though very la­con­ic in his ex­pres­sions of plea­sure, was re­al­ly glad to see them; he had felt their im­por­tance in the fam­ily cir­cle. The evening con­ver­sa­tion, when they were all as­sem­bled, had lost much of its an­ima­tion, and al­most all its sense by the ab­sence of Jane and Eliz­abeth.

They found Mary, as usu­al, deep in the study of thor­ough-​bass and hu­man na­ture; and had some ex­tracts to ad­mire, and some new ob­ser­va­tions of thread­bare moral­ity to lis­ten to. Cather­ine and Ly­dia had in­for­ma­tion for them of a dif­fer­ent sort. Much had been done and much had been said in the reg­iment since the pre­ced­ing Wednes­day; sev­er­al of the of­fi­cers had dined late­ly with their un­cle, a pri­vate had been flogged, and it had ac­tu­al­ly been hint­ed that Colonel Forster was go­ing to be mar­ried.