Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 28

Ev­ery ob­ject in the next day’s jour­ney was new and in­ter­est­ing to Eliz­abeth; and her spir­its were in a state of en­joy­ment; for she had seen her sis­ter look­ing so well as to ban­ish all fear for her health, and the prospect of her north­ern tour was a con­stant source of de­light.

When they left the high road for the lane to Hunsford, ev­ery eye was in search of the Par­son­age, and ev­ery turn­ing ex­pect­ed to bring it in view. The pal­ings of Ros­ings Park was their bound­ary on one side. Eliz­abeth smiled at the rec­ol­lec­tion of all that she had heard of its in­hab­itants.

At length the Par­son­age was dis­cernible. The gar­den slop­ing to the road, the house stand­ing in it, the green pales, and the lau­rel hedge, ev­ery­thing de­clared they were ar­riv­ing. Mr. Collins and Char­lotte ap­peared at the door, and the car­riage stopped at the small gate which led by a short grav­el walk to the house, amidst the nods and smiles of the whole par­ty. In a mo­ment they were all out of the chaise, re­joic­ing at the sight of each oth­er. Mrs. Collins wel­comed her friend with the liveli­est plea­sure, and Eliz­abeth was more and more sat­is­fied with com­ing when she found her­self so af­fec­tion­ate­ly re­ceived. She saw in­stant­ly that her cousin’s man­ners were not al­tered by his mar­riage; his for­mal ci­vil­ity was just what it had been, and he de­tained her some min­utes at the gate to hear and sat­is­fy his in­quiries af­ter all her fam­ily. They were then, with no oth­er de­lay than his point­ing out the neat­ness of the en­trance, tak­en in­to the house; and as soon as they were in the par­lour, he wel­comed them a sec­ond time, with os­ten­ta­tious for­mal­ity to his hum­ble abode, and punc­tu­al­ly re­peat­ed all his wife’s of­fers of re­fresh­ment.

Eliz­abeth was pre­pared to see him in his glo­ry; and she could not help in fan­cy­ing that in dis­play­ing the good pro­por­tion of the room, its as­pect and its fur­ni­ture, he ad­dressed him­self par­tic­ular­ly to her, as if wish­ing to make her feel what she had lost in re­fus­ing him. But though ev­ery­thing seemed neat and com­fort­able, she was not able to grat­ify him by any sigh of re­pen­tance, and rather looked with won­der at her friend that she could have so cheer­ful an air with such a com­pan­ion. When Mr. Collins said any­thing of which his wife might rea­son­ably be ashamed, which cer­tain­ly was not un­sel­dom, she in­vol­un­tar­ily turned her eye on Char­lotte. Once or twice she could dis­cern a faint blush; but in gen­er­al Char­lotte wise­ly did not hear. Af­ter sit­ting long enough to ad­mire ev­ery ar­ti­cle of fur­ni­ture in the room, from the side­board to the fend­er, to give an ac­count of their jour­ney, and of all that had hap­pened in Lon­don, Mr. Collins in­vit­ed them to take a stroll in the gar­den, which was large and well laid out, and to the cul­ti­va­tion of which he at­tend­ed him­self. To work in this gar­den was one of his most re­spectable plea­sures; and Eliz­abeth ad­mired the com­mand of coun­te­nance with which Char­lotte talked of the health­ful­ness of the ex­er­cise, and owned she en­cour­aged it as much as pos­si­ble. Here, lead­ing the way through ev­ery walk and cross walk, and scarce­ly al­low­ing them an in­ter­val to ut­ter the prais­es he asked for, ev­ery view was point­ed out with a minute­ness which left beau­ty en­tire­ly be­hind. He could num­ber the fields in ev­ery di­rec­tion, and could tell how many tress there were in the most dis­tant clump. But of all the views which his gar­den, or which the coun­try or king­dom could boast, none were to be com­pared with the prospect of Ros­ings, af­ford­ed by an open­ing in the trees that bor­dered the park near­ly op­po­site the front of his house. It was a hand­some mod­ern build­ing, well sit­uat­ed on ris­ing ground.

From his gar­den, Mr. Collins would have led them round his two mead­ows; but the ladies, not hav­ing shoes to en­counter the re­mains of a white frost, turned back; and while Sir William ac­com­pa­nied him, Char­lotte took her sis­ter and friend over the house, ex­treme­ly well pleased, prob­ably, to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty of show­ing it with­out her hus­band’s help. It was rather small, but well built and con­ve­nient; and ev­ery­thing was fit­ted up and ar­ranged with a neat­ness and con­sis­ten­cy of which Eliz­abeth gave Char­lotte all the cred­it. When Mr. Collins could be for­got­ten, there was re­al­ly an air of great com­fort through­out, and by Char­lotte’s ev­ident en­joy­ment of it, Eliz­abeth sup­posed he must be of­ten for­got­ten.

She had al­ready learnt that La­dy Cather­ine was still in the coun­try. It was spo­ken of again while they were at din­ner, when Mr. Collins join­ing in, ob­served:

“Yes, Miss Eliz­abeth, you will have the hon­our of see­ing La­dy Cather­ine de Bourgh on the en­su­ing Sun­day at church, and I need not say you will be de­light­ed with her. She is all af­fa­bil­ity and con­de­scen­sion, and I doubt not but you will be hon­oured with some por­tion of her no­tice when ser­vice is over. I have scarce­ly any hes­ita­tion in say­ing she will in­clude you and my sis­ter Maria in ev­ery in­vi­ta­tion with which she hon­ours us dur­ing your stay here. Her be­haviour to my dear Char­lotte is charm­ing. We dine at Ros­ings twice ev­ery week, and are nev­er al­lowed to walk home. Her la­dy­ship’s car­riage is reg­ular­ly or­dered for us. I SHOULD say, one of her la­dy­ship’s car­riages, for she has sev­er­al.”

“La­dy Cather­ine is a very re­spectable, sen­si­ble wom­an in­deed,” added Char­lotte, “and a most at­ten­tive neigh­bour.”

“Very true, my dear, that is ex­act­ly what I say. She is the sort of wom­an whom one can­not re­gard with too much def­er­ence.”

The evening was spent chiefly in talk­ing over Hert­ford­shire news, and telling again what had al­ready been writ­ten; and when it closed, Eliz­abeth, in the soli­tude of her cham­ber, had to med­itate up­on Char­lotte’s de­gree of con­tent­ment, to un­der­stand her ad­dress in guid­ing, and com­po­sure in bear­ing with, her hus­band, and to ac­knowl­edge that it was all done very well. She had al­so to an­tic­ipate how her vis­it would pass, the qui­et tenor of their usu­al em­ploy­ments, the vex­atious in­ter­rup­tions of Mr. Collins, and the gai­eties of their in­ter­course with Ros­ings. A live­ly imag­ina­tion soon set­tled it all.

About the mid­dle of the next day, as she was in her room get­ting ready for a walk, a sud­den noise be­low seemed to speak the whole house in con­fu­sion; and, af­ter lis­ten­ing a mo­ment, she heard some­body run­ning up­stairs in a vi­olent hur­ry, and call­ing loud­ly af­ter her. She opened the door and met Maria in the land­ing place, who, breath­less with ag­ita­tion, cried out–

“Oh, my dear Eliza! pray make haste and come in­to the din­ing-​room, for there is such a sight to be seen! I will not tell you what it is. Make haste, and come down this mo­ment.”

Eliz­abeth asked ques­tions in vain; Maria would tell her noth­ing more, and down they ran in­to the din­ing-​room, which front­ed the lane, in quest of this won­der; It was two ladies stop­ping in a low phaeton at the gar­den gate.

“And is this all?” cried Eliz­abeth. “I ex­pect­ed at least that the pigs were got in­to the gar­den, and here is noth­ing but La­dy Cather­ine and her daugh­ter.”

“La! my dear,” said Maria, quite shocked at the mis­take, “it is not La­dy Cather­ine. The old la­dy is Mrs. Jenk­in­son, who lives with them; the oth­er is Miss de Bourgh. On­ly look at her. She is quite a lit­tle crea­ture. Who would have thought that she could be so thin and small?”

“She is abom­inably rude to keep Char­lotte out of doors in all this wind. Why does she not come in?”

“Oh, Char­lotte says she hard­ly ev­er does. It is the great­est of favours when Miss de Bourgh comes in.”

“I like her ap­pear­ance,” said Eliz­abeth, struck with oth­er ideas. “She looks sick­ly and cross. Yes, she will do for him very well. She will make him a very prop­er wife.”

Mr. Collins and Char­lotte were both stand­ing at the gate in con­ver­sa­tion with the ladies; and Sir William, to Eliz­abeth’s high di­ver­sion, was sta­tioned in the door­way, in earnest con­tem­pla­tion of the great­ness be­fore him, and con­stant­ly bow­ing when­ev­er Miss de Bourgh looked that way.

At length there was noth­ing more to be said; the ladies drove on, and the oth­ers re­turned in­to the house. Mr. Collins no soon­er saw the two girls than he be­gan to con­grat­ulate them on their good for­tune, which Char­lotte ex­plained by let­ting them know that the whole par­ty was asked to dine at Ros­ings the next day.