Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 24

Miss Bin­gley’s let­ter ar­rived, and put an end to doubt. The very first sen­tence con­veyed the as­sur­ance of their be­ing all set­tled in Lon­don for the win­ter, and con­clud­ed with her broth­er’s re­gret at not hav­ing had time to pay his re­spects to his friends in Hert­ford­shire be­fore he left the coun­try.

Hope was over, en­tire­ly over; and when Jane could at­tend to the rest of the let­ter, she found lit­tle, ex­cept the pro­fessed af­fec­tion of the writ­er, that could give her any com­fort. Miss Dar­cy’s praise oc­cu­pied the chief of it. Her many at­trac­tions were again dwelt on, and Car­oline boast­ed joy­ful­ly of their in­creas­ing in­ti­ma­cy, and ven­tured to pre­dict the ac­com­plish­ment of the wish­es which had been un­fold­ed in her for­mer let­ter. She wrote al­so with great plea­sure of her broth­er’s be­ing an in­mate of Mr. Dar­cy’s house, and men­tioned with rap­tures some plans of the lat­ter with re­gard to new fur­ni­ture.

Eliz­abeth, to whom Jane very soon com­mu­ni­cat­ed the chief of all this, heard it in silent in­dig­na­tion. Her heart was di­vid­ed be­tween con­cern for her sis­ter, and re­sent­ment against all oth­ers. To Car­oline’s as­ser­tion of her broth­er’s be­ing par­tial to Miss Dar­cy she paid no cred­it. That he was re­al­ly fond of Jane, she doubt­ed no more than she had ev­er done; and much as she had al­ways been dis­posed to like him, she could not think with­out anger, hard­ly with­out con­tempt, on that eas­iness of tem­per, that want of prop­er res­olu­tion, which now made him the slave of his de­sign­ing friends, and led him to sac­ri­fice of his own hap­pi­ness to the caprice of their in­cli­na­tion. Had his own hap­pi­ness, how­ev­er, been the on­ly sac­ri­fice, he might have been al­lowed to sport with it in what­ev­er man­ner he thought best, but her sis­ter’s was in­volved in it, as she thought he must be sen­si­ble him­self. It was a sub­ject, in short, on which re­flec­tion would be long in­dulged, and must be un­avail­ing. She could think of noth­ing else; and yet whether Bin­gley’s re­gard had re­al­ly died away, or were sup­pressed by his friends’ in­ter­fer­ence; whether he had been aware of Jane’s at­tach­ment, or whether it had es­caped his ob­ser­va­tion; what­ev­er were the case, though her opin­ion of him must be ma­te­ri­al­ly af­fect­ed by the dif­fer­ence, her sis­ter’s sit­ua­tion re­mained the same, her peace equal­ly wound­ed.

A day or two passed be­fore Jane had courage to speak of her feel­ings to Eliz­abeth; but at last, on Mrs. Ben­net’s leav­ing them to­geth­er, af­ter a longer ir­ri­ta­tion than usu­al about Nether­field and its mas­ter, she could not help say­ing:

“Oh, that my dear moth­er had more com­mand over her­self! She can have no idea of the pain she gives me by her con­tin­ual re­flec­tions on him. But I will not re­pine. It can­not last long. He will be for­got, and we shall all be as we were be­fore.”

Eliz­abeth looked at her sis­ter with in­cred­ulous so­lic­itude, but said noth­ing.

“You doubt me,” cried Jane, slight­ly colour­ing; “in­deed, you have no rea­son. He may live in my mem­ory as the most ami­able man of my ac­quain­tance, but that is all. I have noth­ing ei­ther to hope or fear, and noth­ing to re­proach him with. Thank God! I have not THAT pain. A lit­tle time, there­fore–I shall cer­tain­ly try to get the bet­ter.”

With a stronger voice she soon added, “I have this com­fort im­me­di­ate­ly, that it has not been more than an er­ror of fan­cy on my side, and that it has done no harm to any­one but my­self.”

“My dear Jane!” ex­claimed Eliz­abeth, “you are too good. Your sweet­ness and dis­in­ter­est­ed­ness are re­al­ly an­gel­ic; I do not know what to say to you. I feel as if I had nev­er done you jus­tice, or loved you as you de­serve.”

Miss Ben­net ea­ger­ly dis­claimed all ex­traor­di­nary mer­it, and threw back the praise on her sis­ter’s warm af­fec­tion.

“Nay,” said Eliz­abeth, “this is not fair. YOU wish to think all the world re­spectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of any­body. I on­ly want to think YOU per­fect, and you set your­self against it. Do not be afraid of my run­ning in­to any ex­cess, of my en­croach­ing on your priv­ilege of uni­ver­sal good-​will. You need not. There are few peo­ple whom I re­al­ly love, and still few­er of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dis­sat­is­fied with it; and ev­ery day con­firms my be­lief of the in­con­sis­ten­cy of all hu­man char­ac­ters, and of the lit­tle de­pen­dence that can be placed on the ap­pear­ance of mer­it or sense. I have met with two in­stances late­ly, one I will not men­tion; the oth­er is Char­lotte’s mar­riage. It is un­ac­count­able! In ev­ery view it is un­ac­count­able!”

“My dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feel­ings as these. They will ru­in your hap­pi­ness. You do not make al­lowance enough for dif­fer­ence of sit­ua­tion and tem­per. Con­sid­er Mr. Collins’s re­spectabil­ity, and Char­lotte’s steady, pru­dent char­ac­ter. Re­mem­ber that she is one of a large fam­ily; that as to for­tune, it is a most el­igi­ble match; and be ready to be­lieve, for ev­ery­body’s sake, that she may feel some­thing like re­gard and es­teem for our cousin.”

“To oblige you, I would try to be­lieve al­most any­thing, but no one else could be ben­efit­ed by such a be­lief as this; for were I per­suad­ed that Char­lotte had any re­gard for him, I should on­ly think worse of her un­der­stand­ing than I now do of her heart. My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a con­ceit­ed, pompous, nar­row-​mind­ed, sil­ly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the wom­an who mar­ried him can­not have a prop­er way of think­ing. You shall not de­fend her, though it is Char­lotte Lu­cas. You shall not, for the sake of one in­di­vid­ual, change the mean­ing of prin­ci­ple and in­tegri­ty, nor en­deav­our to per­suade your­self or me, that self­ish­ness is pru­dence, and in­sen­si­bil­ity of dan­ger se­cu­ri­ty for hap­pi­ness.”

“I must think your lan­guage too strong in speak­ing of both,” replied Jane; “and I hope you will be con­vinced of it by see­ing them hap­py to­geth­er. But enough of this. You al­lud­ed to some­thing else. You men­tioned TWO in­stances. I can­not mis­un­der­stand you, but I en­treat you, dear Lizzy, not to pain me by think­ing THAT PER­SON to blame, and say­ing your opin­ion of him is sunk. We must not be so ready to fan­cy our­selves in­ten­tion­al­ly in­jured. We must not ex­pect a live­ly young man to be al­ways so guard­ed and cir­cum­spect. It is very of­ten noth­ing but our own van­ity that de­ceives us. Wom­en fan­cy ad­mi­ra­tion means more than it does.”

“And men take care that they should.”

“If it is de­signed­ly done, they can­not be jus­ti­fied; but I have no idea of there be­ing so much de­sign in the world as some per­sons imag­ine.”

“I am far from at­tribut­ing any part of Mr. Bin­gley’s con­duct to de­sign,” said Eliz­abeth; “but with­out schem­ing to do wrong, or to make oth­ers un­hap­py, there may be er­ror, and there may be mis­ery. Thought­less­ness, want of at­ten­tion to oth­er peo­ple’s feel­ings, and want of res­olu­tion, will do the busi­ness.”

“And do you im­pute it to ei­ther of those?”

“Yes; to the last. But if I go on, I shall dis­please you by say­ing what I think of per­sons you es­teem. Stop me whilst you can.”

“You per­sist, then, in sup­pos­ing his sis­ters in­flu­ence him?”

“Yes, in con­junc­tion with his friend.”

“I can­not be­lieve it. Why should they try to in­flu­ence him? They can on­ly wish his hap­pi­ness; and if he is at­tached to me, no oth­er wom­an can se­cure it.”

“Your first po­si­tion is false. They may wish many things be­sides his hap­pi­ness; they may wish his in­crease of wealth and con­se­quence; they may wish him to mar­ry a girl who has all the im­por­tance of mon­ey, great con­nec­tions, and pride.”

“Be­yond a doubt, they DO wish him to choose Miss Dar­cy,” replied Jane; “but this may be from bet­ter feel­ings than you are sup­pos­ing. They have known her much longer than they have known me; no won­der if they love her bet­ter. But, what­ev­er may be their own wish­es, it is very un­like­ly they should have op­posed their broth­er’s. What sis­ter would think her­self at lib­er­ty to do it, un­less there were some­thing very ob­jec­tion­able? If they be­lieved him at­tached to me, they would not try to part us; if he were so, they could not suc­ceed. By sup­pos­ing such an af­fec­tion, you make ev­ery­body act­ing un­nat­ural­ly and wrong, and me most un­hap­py. Do not dis­tress me by the idea. I am not ashamed of hav­ing been mis­tak­en–or, at least, it is light, it is noth­ing in com­par­ison of what I should feel in think­ing ill of him or his sis­ters. Let me take it in the best light, in the light in which it may be un­der­stood.”

Eliz­abeth could not op­pose such a wish; and from this time Mr. Bin­gley’s name was scarce­ly ev­er men­tioned be­tween them.

Mrs. Ben­net still con­tin­ued to won­der and re­pine at his re­turn­ing no more, and though a day sel­dom passed in which Eliz­abeth did not ac­count for it clear­ly, there was lit­tle chance of her ev­er con­sid­er­ing it with less per­plex­ity. Her daugh­ter en­deav­oured to con­vince her of what she did not be­lieve her­self, that his at­ten­tions to Jane had been mere­ly the ef­fect of a com­mon and tran­sient lik­ing, which ceased when he saw her no more; but though the prob­abil­ity of the state­ment was ad­mit­ted at the time, she had the same sto­ry to re­peat ev­ery day. Mrs. Ben­net’s best com­fort was that Mr. Bin­gley must be down again in the sum­mer.

Mr. Ben­net treat­ed the mat­ter dif­fer­ent­ly. “So, Lizzy,” said he one day, “your sis­ter is crossed in love, I find. I con­grat­ulate her. Next to be­ing mar­ried, a girl likes to be crossed a lit­tle in love now and then. It is some­thing to think of, and it gives her a sort of dis­tinc­tion among her com­pan­ions. When is your turn to come? You will hard­ly bear to be long out­done by Jane. Now is your time. Here are of­fi­cers enough in Mery­ton to dis­ap­point all the young ladies in the coun­try. Let Wick­ham be YOUR man. He is a pleas­ant fel­low, and would jilt you cred­itably.”

“Thank you, sir, but a less agree­able man would sat­is­fy me. We must not all ex­pect Jane’s good for­tune.”

“True,” said Mr. Ben­net, “but it is a com­fort to think that what­ev­er of that kind may be­fall you, you have an af­fec­tion­ate moth­er who will make the most of it.”

Mr. Wick­ham’s so­ci­ety was of ma­te­ri­al ser­vice in dis­pelling the gloom which the late per­verse oc­cur­rences had thrown on many of the Long­bourn fam­ily. They saw him of­ten, and to his oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions was now added that of gen­er­al un­re­serve. The whole of what Eliz­abeth had al­ready heard, his claims on Mr. Dar­cy, and all that he had suf­fered from him, was now open­ly ac­knowl­edged and pub­licly can­vassed; and ev­ery­body was pleased to know how much they had al­ways dis­liked Mr. Dar­cy be­fore they had known any­thing of the mat­ter.

Miss Ben­net was the on­ly crea­ture who could sup­pose there might be any ex­ten­uat­ing cir­cum­stances in the case, un­known to the so­ci­ety of Hert­ford­shire; her mild and steady can­dour al­ways plead­ed for al­lowances, and urged the pos­si­bil­ity of mis­takes–but by ev­ery­body else Mr. Dar­cy was con­demned as the worst of men.