Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 19

The next day opened a new scene at Long­bourn. Mr. Collins made his dec­la­ra­tion in form. Hav­ing re­solved to do it with­out loss of time, as his leave of ab­sence ex­tend­ed on­ly to the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day, and hav­ing no feel­ings of dif­fi­dence to make it dis­tress­ing to him­self even at the mo­ment, he set about it in a very or­der­ly man­ner, with all the ob­ser­vances, which he sup­posed a reg­ular part of the busi­ness. On find­ing Mrs. Ben­net, Eliz­abeth, and one of the younger girls to­geth­er, soon af­ter break­fast, he ad­dressed the moth­er in these words:

“May I hope, madam, for your in­ter­est with your fair daugh­ter Eliz­abeth, when I so­lic­it for the hon­our of a pri­vate au­di­ence with her in the course of this morn­ing?”

Be­fore Eliz­abeth had time for any­thing but a blush of sur­prise, Mrs. Ben­net an­swered in­stant­ly, “Oh dear!–yes–cer­tain­ly. I am sure Lizzy will be very hap­py–I am sure she can have no ob­jec­tion. Come, Kit­ty, I want you up­stairs.” And, gath­er­ing her work to­geth­er, she was has­ten­ing away, when Eliz­abeth called out:

“Dear madam, do not go. I beg you will not go. Mr. Collins must ex­cuse me. He can have noth­ing to say to me that any­body need not hear. I am go­ing away my­self.”

“No, no, non­sense, Lizzy. I de­sire you to stay where you are.” And up­on Eliz­abeth’s seem­ing re­al­ly, with vexed and em­bar­rassed looks, about to es­cape, she added: “Lizzy, I IN­SIST up­on your stay­ing and hear­ing Mr. Collins.”

Eliz­abeth would not op­pose such an in­junc­tion–and a mo­ment’s con­sid­er­ation mak­ing her al­so sen­si­ble that it would be wis­est to get it over as soon and as qui­et­ly as pos­si­ble, she sat down again and tried to con­ceal, by in­ces­sant em­ploy­ment the feel­ings which were di­vid­ed be­tween dis­tress and di­ver­sion. Mrs. Ben­net and Kit­ty walked off, and as soon as they were gone, Mr. Collins be­gan.

“Be­lieve me, my dear Miss Eliz­abeth, that your mod­esty, so far from do­ing you any dis­ser­vice, rather adds to your oth­er per­fec­tions. You would have been less ami­able in my eyes had there NOT been this lit­tle un­will­ing­ness; but al­low me to as­sure you, that I have your re­spect­ed moth­er’s per­mis­sion for this ad­dress. You can hard­ly doubt the pur­port of my dis­course, how­ev­er your nat­ural del­ica­cy may lead you to dis­sem­ble; my at­ten­tions have been too marked to be mis­tak­en. Al­most as soon as I en­tered the house, I sin­gled you out as the com­pan­ion of my fu­ture life. But be­fore I am run away with by my feel­ings on this sub­ject, per­haps it would be ad­vis­able for me to state my rea­sons for mar­ry­ing–and, more­over, for com­ing in­to Hert­ford­shire with the de­sign of se­lect­ing a wife, as I cer­tain­ly did.”

The idea of Mr. Collins, with all his solemn com­po­sure, be­ing run away with by his feel­ings, made Eliz­abeth so near laugh­ing, that she could not use the short pause he al­lowed in any at­tempt to stop him fur­ther, and he con­tin­ued:

“My rea­sons for mar­ry­ing are, first, that I think it a right thing for ev­ery cler­gy­man in easy cir­cum­stances (like my­self) to set the ex­am­ple of mat­ri­mo­ny in his parish; sec­ond­ly, that I am con­vinced that it will add very great­ly to my hap­pi­ness; and third­ly–which per­haps I ought to have men­tioned ear­li­er, that it is the par­tic­ular ad­vice and rec­om­men­da­tion of the very no­ble la­dy whom I have the hon­our of call­ing pa­troness. Twice has she con­de­scend­ed to give me her opin­ion (unasked too!) on this sub­ject; and it was but the very Sat­ur­day night be­fore I left Hunsford–be­tween our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenk­in­son was ar­rang­ing Miss de Bourgh’s foot­stool, that she said, ‘Mr. Collins, you must mar­ry. A cler­gy­man like you must mar­ry. Choose prop­er­ly, choose a gen­tle­wom­an for MY sake; and for your OWN, let her be an ac­tive, use­ful sort of per­son, not brought up high, but able to make a small in­come go a good way. This is my ad­vice. Find such a wom­an as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will vis­it her.’ Al­low me, by the way, to ob­serve, my fair cousin, that I do not reck­on the no­tice and kind­ness of La­dy Cather­ine de Bourgh as among the least of the ad­van­tages in my pow­er to of­fer. You will find her man­ners be­yond any­thing I can de­scribe; and your wit and vi­vac­ity, I think, must be ac­cept­able to her, es­pe­cial­ly when tem­pered with the si­lence and re­spect which her rank will in­evitably ex­cite. Thus much for my gen­er­al in­ten­tion in favour of mat­ri­mo­ny; it re­mains to be told why my views were di­rect­ed to­wards Long­bourn in­stead of my own neigh­bour­hood, where I can as­sure you there are many ami­able young wom­en. But the fact is, that be­ing, as I am, to in­her­it this es­tate af­ter the death of your hon­oured fa­ther (who, how­ev­er, may live many years longer), I could not sat­is­fy my­self with­out re­solv­ing to choose a wife from among his daugh­ters, that the loss to them might be as lit­tle as pos­si­ble, when the melan­choly event takes place–which, how­ev­er, as I have al­ready said, may not be for sev­er­al years. This has been my mo­tive, my fair cousin, and I flat­ter my­self it will not sink me in your es­teem. And now noth­ing re­mains but for me but to as­sure you in the most an­imat­ed lan­guage of the vi­olence of my af­fec­tion. To for­tune I am per­fect­ly in­dif­fer­ent, and shall make no de­mand of that na­ture on your fa­ther, since I am well aware that it could not be com­plied with; and that one thou­sand pounds in the four per cents, which will not be yours till af­ter your moth­er’s de­cease, is all that you may ev­er be en­ti­tled to. On that head, there­fore, I shall be uni­form­ly silent; and you may as­sure your­self that no un­gen­er­ous re­proach shall ev­er pass my lips when we are mar­ried.”

It was ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary to in­ter­rupt him now.

“You are too hasty, sir,” she cried. “You for­get that I have made no an­swer. Let me do it with­out fur­ther loss of time. Ac­cept my thanks for the com­pli­ment you are pay­ing me. I am very sen­si­ble of the hon­our of your pro­pos­als, but it is im­pos­si­ble for me to do oth­er­wise than to de­cline them.”

“I am not now to learn,” replied Mr. Collins, with a for­mal wave of the hand, “that it is usu­al with young ladies to re­ject the ad­dress­es of the man whom they se­cret­ly mean to ac­cept, when he first ap­plies for their favour; and that some­times the re­fusal is re­peat­ed a sec­ond, or even a third time. I am there­fore by no means dis­cour­aged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the al­tar ere long.”

“Up­on my word, sir,” cried Eliz­abeth, “your hope is a rather ex­traor­di­nary one af­ter my dec­la­ra­tion. I do as­sure you that I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so dar­ing as to risk their hap­pi­ness on the chance of be­ing asked a sec­ond time. I am per­fect­ly se­ri­ous in my re­fusal. You could not make ME hap­py, and I am con­vinced that I am the last wom­an in the world who could make you so. Nay, were your friend La­dy Cather­ine to know me, I am per­suad­ed she would find me in ev­ery re­spect ill qual­ified for the sit­ua­tion.”

“Were it cer­tain that La­dy Cather­ine would think so,” said Mr. Collins very grave­ly–“but I can­not imag­ine that her la­dy­ship would at all dis­ap­prove of you. And you may be cer­tain when I have the hon­our of see­ing her again, I shall speak in the very high­est terms of your mod­esty, econ­omy, and oth­er ami­able qual­ifi­ca­tion.”

“In­deed, Mr. Collins, all praise of me will be un­nec­es­sary. You must give me leave to judge for my­self, and pay me the com­pli­ment of be­liev­ing what I say. I wish you very hap­py and very rich, and by re­fus­ing you hand, do all in my pow­er to pre­vent your be­ing oth­er­wise. In mak­ing me the of­fer, you must have sat­is­fied the del­ica­cy of your feel­ings with re­gard to my fam­ily, and may take pos­ses­sion of Long­bourn es­tate when­ev­er it falls, with­out any self-​re­proach. This mat­ter may be con­sid­ered, there­fore, as fi­nal­ly set­tled.” And ris­ing as she thus spoke, she would have quit­ted the room, had Mr. Collins not thus ad­dressed her:

“When I do my­self the hon­our of speak­ing to you next on the sub­ject, I shall hope to re­ceive a more favourable an­swer than you have now giv­en me; though I am far from ac­cus­ing you of cru­el­ty at present, be­cause I know it to be the es­tab­lished cus­tom of your sex to re­ject a man on the first ap­pli­ca­tion, and per­haps you have even now said as much to en­cour­age my suit as would be con­sis­tent with the true del­ica­cy of the fe­male char­ac­ter.”

“Re­al­ly, Mr. Collins,” cried Eliz­abeth with some warmth, “you puz­zle me ex­ceed­ing­ly. If what I have hith­er­to said can ap­pear to you in the form of en­cour­age­ment, I know not how to ex­press my re­fusal in such a way as to con­vince you of its be­ing one.”

“You must give me leave to flat­ter my­self, my dear cousin, that your re­fusal of my ad­dress­es is mere­ly words of course. My rea­sons for be­liev­ing it are briefly these: It does not ap­pear to me that my hand is un­wor­thy your ac­cep­tance, or that the es­tab­lish­ment I can of­fer would be any oth­er than high­ly de­sir­able. My sit­ua­tion in life, my con­nec­tions with the fam­ily of de Bourgh, and my re­la­tion­ship to your own, are cir­cum­stances high­ly in my favour; and you should take it in­to fur­ther con­sid­er­ation, that in spite of your man­ifold at­trac­tions, it is by no means cer­tain that an­oth­er of­fer of mar­riage may ev­er be made you. Your por­tion is un­hap­pi­ly so small that it will in all like­li­hood un­do the ef­fects of your love­li­ness and ami­able qual­ifi­ca­tions. As I must there­fore con­clude that you are not se­ri­ous in your re­jec­tion of me, I shall choose to at­tribute it to your wish of in­creas­ing my love by sus­pense, ac­cord­ing to the usu­al prac­tice of el­egant fe­males.”

“I do as­sure you, sir, that I have no pre­ten­sions what­ev­er to that kind of el­egance which con­sists in tor­ment­ing a re­spectable man. I would rather be paid the com­pli­ment of be­ing be­lieved sin­cere. I thank you again and again for the hon­our you have done me in your pro­pos­als, but to ac­cept them is ab­so­lute­ly im­pos­si­ble. My feel­ings in ev­ery re­spect for­bid it. Can I speak plain­er? Do not con­sid­er me now as an el­egant fe­male, in­tend­ing to plague you, but as a ra­tio­nal crea­ture, speak­ing the truth from her heart.”

“You are uni­form­ly charm­ing!” cried he, with an air of awk­ward gal­lantry; “and I am per­suad­ed that when sanc­tioned by the ex­press au­thor­ity of both your ex­cel­lent par­ents, my pro­pos­als will not fail of be­ing ac­cept­able.”

To such per­se­ver­ance in wil­ful self-​de­cep­tion Eliz­abeth would make no re­ply, and im­me­di­ate­ly and in si­lence with­drew; de­ter­mined, if he per­sist­ed in con­sid­er­ing her re­peat­ed re­fusals as flat­ter­ing en­cour­age­ment, to ap­ply to her fa­ther, whose neg­ative might be ut­tered in such a man­ner as to be de­ci­sive, and whose be­hav­ior at least could not be mis­tak­en for the af­fec­ta­tion and co­quetry of an el­egant fe­male.