Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 23

Eliz­abeth was sit­ting with her moth­er and sis­ters, re­flect­ing on what she had heard, and doubt­ing whether she was au­tho­rised to men­tion it, when Sir William Lu­cas him­self ap­peared, sent by his daugh­ter, to an­nounce her en­gage­ment to the fam­ily. With many com­pli­ments to them, and much self-​grat­ula­tion on the prospect of a con­nec­tion be­tween the hous­es, he un­fold­ed the mat­ter–to an au­di­ence not mere­ly won­der­ing, but in­cred­ulous; for Mrs. Ben­net, with more per­se­ver­ance than po­lite­ness, protest­ed he must be en­tire­ly mis­tak­en; and Ly­dia, al­ways un­guard­ed and of­ten un­civ­il, bois­ter­ous­ly ex­claimed:

“Good Lord! Sir William, how can you tell such a sto­ry? Do not you know that Mr. Collins wants to mar­ry Lizzy?”

Noth­ing less than the com­plai­sance of a courtier could have borne with­out anger such treat­ment; but Sir William’s good breed­ing car­ried him through it all; and though he begged leave to be pos­itive as to the truth of his in­for­ma­tion, he lis­tened to all their im­per­ti­nence with the most for­bear­ing cour­tesy.

Eliz­abeth, feel­ing it in­cum­bent on her to re­lieve him from so un­pleas­ant a sit­ua­tion, now put her­self for­ward to con­firm his ac­count, by men­tion­ing her pri­or knowl­edge of it from Char­lotte her­self; and en­deav­oured to put a stop to the ex­cla­ma­tions of her moth­er and sis­ters by the earnest­ness of her con­grat­ula­tions to Sir William, in which she was read­ily joined by Jane, and by mak­ing a va­ri­ety of re­marks on the hap­pi­ness that might be ex­pect­ed from the match, the ex­cel­lent char­ac­ter of Mr. Collins, and the con­ve­nient dis­tance of Hunsford from Lon­don.

Mrs. Ben­net was in fact too much over­pow­ered to say a great deal while Sir William re­mained; but no soon­er had he left them than her feel­ings found a rapid vent. In the first place, she per­sist­ed in dis­be­liev­ing the whole of the mat­ter; sec­ond­ly, she was very sure that Mr. Collins had been tak­en in; third­ly, she trust­ed that they would nev­er be hap­py to­geth­er; and fourth­ly, that the match might be bro­ken off. Two in­fer­ences, how­ev­er, were plain­ly de­duced from the whole: one, that Eliz­abeth was the re­al cause of the mis­chief; and the oth­er that she her­self had been bar­barous­ly mis­used by them all; and on these two points she prin­ci­pal­ly dwelt dur­ing the rest of the day. Noth­ing could con­sole and noth­ing could ap­pease her. Nor did that day wear out her re­sent­ment. A week elapsed be­fore she could see Eliz­abeth with­out scold­ing her, a month passed away be­fore she could speak to Sir William or La­dy Lu­cas with­out be­ing rude, and many months were gone be­fore she could at all for­give their daugh­ter.

Mr. Ben­net’s emo­tions were much more tran­quil on the oc­ca­sion, and such as he did ex­pe­ri­ence he pro­nounced to be of a most agree­able sort; for it grat­ified him, he said, to dis­cov­er that Char­lotte Lu­cas, whom he had been used to think tol­er­ably sen­si­ble, was as fool­ish as his wife, and more fool­ish than his daugh­ter!

Jane con­fessed her­self a lit­tle sur­prised at the match; but she said less of her as­ton­ish­ment than of her earnest de­sire for their hap­pi­ness; nor could Eliz­abeth per­suade her to con­sid­er it as im­prob­able. Kit­ty and Ly­dia were far from en­vy­ing Miss Lu­cas, for Mr. Collins was on­ly a cler­gy­man; and it af­fect­ed them in no oth­er way than as a piece of news to spread at Mery­ton.

La­dy Lu­cas could not be in­sen­si­ble of tri­umph on be­ing able to re­tort on Mrs. Ben­net the com­fort of hav­ing a daugh­ter well mar­ried; and she called at Long­bourn rather of­ten­er than usu­al to say how hap­py she was, though Mrs. Ben­net’s sour looks and ill-​na­tured re­marks might have been enough to drive hap­pi­ness away.

Be­tween Eliz­abeth and Char­lotte there was a re­straint which kept them mu­tu­al­ly silent on the sub­ject; and Eliz­abeth felt per­suad­ed that no re­al con­fi­dence could ev­er sub­sist be­tween them again. Her dis­ap­point­ment in Char­lotte made her turn with fonder re­gard to her sis­ter, of whose rec­ti­tude and del­ica­cy she was sure her opin­ion could nev­er be shak­en, and for whose hap­pi­ness she grew dai­ly more anx­ious, as Bin­gley had now been gone a week and noth­ing more was heard of his re­turn.

Jane had sent Car­oline an ear­ly an­swer to her let­ter, and was count­ing the days till she might rea­son­ably hope to hear again. The promised let­ter of thanks from Mr. Collins ar­rived on Tues­day, ad­dressed to their fa­ther, and writ­ten with all the solem­ni­ty of grat­itude which a twelve­month’s abode in the fam­ily might have prompt­ed. Af­ter dis­charg­ing his con­science on that head, he pro­ceed­ed to in­form them, with many rap­tur­ous ex­pres­sions, of his hap­pi­ness in hav­ing ob­tained the af­fec­tion of their ami­able neigh­bour, Miss Lu­cas, and then ex­plained that it was mere­ly with the view of en­joy­ing her so­ci­ety that he had been so ready to close with their kind wish of see­ing him again at Long­bourn, whith­er he hoped to be able to re­turn on Mon­day fort­night; for La­dy Cather­ine, he added, so hearti­ly ap­proved his mar­riage, that she wished it to take place as soon as pos­si­ble, which he trust­ed would be an unan­swer­able ar­gu­ment with his ami­able Char­lotte to name an ear­ly day for mak­ing him the hap­pi­est of men.

Mr. Collins’s re­turn in­to Hert­ford­shire was no longer a mat­ter of plea­sure to Mrs. Ben­net. On the con­trary, she was as much dis­posed to com­plain of it as her hus­band. It was very strange that he should come to Long­bourn in­stead of to Lu­cas Lodge; it was al­so very in­con­ve­nient and ex­ceed­ing­ly trou­ble­some. She hat­ed hav­ing vis­itors in the house while her health was so in­dif­fer­ent, and lovers were of all peo­ple the most dis­agree­able. Such were the gen­tle mur­murs of Mrs. Ben­net, and they gave way on­ly to the greater dis­tress of Mr. Bin­gley’s con­tin­ued ab­sence.

Nei­ther Jane nor Eliz­abeth were com­fort­able on this sub­ject. Day af­ter day passed away with­out bring­ing any oth­er tid­ings of him than the re­port which short­ly pre­vailed in Mery­ton of his com­ing no more to Nether­field the whole win­ter; a re­port which high­ly in­censed Mrs. Ben­net, and which she nev­er failed to con­tra­dict as a most scan­dalous false­hood.

Even Eliz­abeth be­gan to fear–not that Bin­gley was in­dif­fer­ent–but that his sis­ters would be suc­cess­ful in keep­ing him away. Un­will­ing as she was to ad­mit an idea so de­struc­tive of Jane’s hap­pi­ness, and so dis­hon­or­able to the sta­bil­ity of her lover, she could not pre­vent its fre­quent­ly oc­cur­ring. The unit­ed ef­forts of his two un­feel­ing sis­ters and of his over­pow­er­ing friend, as­sist­ed by the at­trac­tions of Miss Dar­cy and the amuse­ments of Lon­don might be too much, she feared, for the strength of his at­tach­ment.

As for Jane, HER anx­iety un­der this sus­pense was, of course, more painful than Eliz­abeth’s, but what­ev­er she felt she was de­sirous of con­ceal­ing, and be­tween her­self and Eliz­abeth, there­fore, the sub­ject was nev­er al­lud­ed to. But as no such del­ica­cy re­strained her moth­er, an hour sel­dom passed in which she did not talk of Bin­gley, ex­press her im­pa­tience for his ar­rival, or even re­quire Jane to con­fess that if he did not come back she would think her­self very ill used. It need­ed all Jane’s steady mild­ness to bear these at­tacks with tol­er­able tran­quil­li­ty.

Mr. Collins re­turned most punc­tu­al­ly on Mon­day fort­night, but his re­cep­tion at Long­bourn was not quite so gra­cious as it had been on his first in­tro­duc­tion. He was too hap­py, how­ev­er, to need much at­ten­tion; and luck­ily for the oth­ers, the busi­ness of love-​mak­ing re­lieved them from a great deal of his com­pa­ny. The chief of ev­ery day was spent by him at Lu­cas Lodge, and he some­times re­turned to Long­bourn on­ly in time to make an apol­ogy for his ab­sence be­fore the fam­ily went to bed.

Mrs. Ben­net was re­al­ly in a most pitiable state. The very men­tion of any­thing con­cern­ing the match threw her in­to an agony of ill-​hu­mour, and wher­ev­er she went she was sure of hear­ing it talked of. The sight of Miss Lu­cas was odi­ous to her. As her suc­ces­sor in that house, she re­gard­ed her with jeal­ous ab­hor­rence. When­ev­er Char­lotte came to see them, she con­clud­ed her to be an­tic­ipat­ing the hour of pos­ses­sion; and when­ev­er she spoke in a low voice to Mr. Collins, was con­vinced that they were talk­ing of the Long­bourn es­tate, and re­solv­ing to turn her­self and her daugh­ters out of the house, as soon as Mr. Ben­net were dead. She com­plained bit­ter­ly of all this to her hus­band.

“In­deed, Mr. Ben­net,” said she, “it is very hard to think that Char­lotte Lu­cas should ev­er be mis­tress of this house, that I should be forced to make way for HER, and live to see her take her place in it!”

“My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for bet­ter things. Let us flat­ter our­selves that I may be the sur­vivor.”

This was not very con­sol­ing to Mrs. Ben­net, and there­fore, in­stead of mak­ing any an­swer, she went on as be­fore.

“I can­not bear to think that they should have all this es­tate. If it was not for the en­tail, I should not mind it.”

“What should not you mind?”

“I should not mind any­thing at all.”

“Let us be thank­ful that you are pre­served from a state of such in­sen­si­bil­ity.”

“I nev­er can be thank­ful, Mr. Ben­net, for any­thing about the en­tail. How any­one could have the con­science to en­tail away an es­tate from one’s own daugh­ters, I can­not un­der­stand; and all for the sake of Mr. Collins too! Why should HE have it more than any­body else?”

“I leave it to your­self to de­ter­mine,” said Mr. Ben­net.