Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 2

Mr. Ben­net was among the ear­li­est of those who wait­ed on Mr. Bin­gley. He had al­ways in­tend­ed to vis­it him, though to the last al­ways as­sur­ing his wife that he should not go; and till the evening af­ter the vis­it was paid she had no knowl­edge of it. It was then dis­closed in the fol­low­ing man­ner. Ob­serv­ing his sec­ond daugh­ter em­ployed in trim­ming a hat, he sud­den­ly ad­dressed her with:

“I hope Mr. Bin­gley will like it, Lizzy.”

“We are not in a way to know WHAT Mr. Bin­gley likes,” said her moth­er re­sent­ful­ly, “since we are not to vis­it.”

“But you for­get, mam­ma,” said Eliz­abeth, “that we shall meet him at the as­sem­blies, and that Mrs. Long promised to in­tro­duce him.”

“I do not be­lieve Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces of her own. She is a self­ish, hyp­ocrit­ical wom­an, and I have no opin­ion of her.”

“No more have I,” said Mr. Ben­net; “and I am glad to find that you do not de­pend on her serv­ing you.”

Mrs. Ben­net deigned not to make any re­ply, but, un­able to con­tain her­self, be­gan scold­ing one of her daugh­ters.

“Don’t keep cough­ing so, Kit­ty, for Heav­en’s sake! Have a lit­tle com­pas­sion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.”

“Kit­ty has no dis­cre­tion in her coughs,” said her fa­ther; “she times them ill.”

“I do not cough for my own amuse­ment,” replied Kit­ty fret­ful­ly. “When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?”

“To-​mor­row fort­night.”

“Aye, so it is,” cried her moth­er, “and Mrs. Long does not come back till the day be­fore; so it will be im­pos­si­ble for her to in­tro­duce him, for she will not know him her­self.”

“Then, my dear, you may have the ad­van­tage of your friend, and in­tro­duce Mr. Bin­gley to HER.”

“Im­pos­si­ble, Mr. Ben­net, im­pos­si­ble, when I am not ac­quaint­ed with him my­self; how can you be so teas­ing?”

“I hon­our your cir­cum­spec­tion. A fort­night’s ac­quain­tance is cer­tain­ly very lit­tle. One can­not know what a man re­al­ly is by the end of a fort­night. But if WE do not ven­ture some­body else will; and af­ter all, Mrs. Long and her daugh­ters must stand their chance; and, there­fore, as she will think it an act of kind­ness, if you de­cline the of­fice, I will take it on my­self.”

The girls stared at their fa­ther. Mrs. Ben­net said on­ly, “Non­sense, non­sense!”

“What can be the mean­ing of that em­phat­ic ex­cla­ma­tion?” cried he. “Do you con­sid­er the forms of in­tro­duc­tion, and the stress that is laid on them, as non­sense? I can­not quite agree with you THERE. What say you, Mary? For you are a young la­dy of deep re­flec­tion, I know, and read great books and make ex­tracts.”

Mary wished to say some­thing sen­si­ble, but knew not how.

“While Mary is ad­just­ing her ideas,” he con­tin­ued, “let us re­turn to Mr. Bin­gley.”

“I am sick of Mr. Bin­gley,” cried his wife.

“I am sor­ry to hear THAT; but why did not you tell me that be­fore? If I had known as much this morn­ing I cer­tain­ly would not have called on him. It is very un­lucky; but as I have ac­tu­al­ly paid the vis­it, we can­not es­cape the ac­quain­tance now.”

The as­ton­ish­ment of the ladies was just what he wished; that of Mrs. Ben­net per­haps sur­pass­ing the rest; though, when the first tu­mult of joy was over, she be­gan to de­clare that it was what she had ex­pect­ed all the while.

“How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Ben­net! But I knew I should per­suade you at last. I was sure you loved your girls too well to ne­glect such an ac­quain­tance. Well, how pleased I am! and it is such a good joke, too, that you should have gone this morn­ing and nev­er said a word about it till now.”

“Now, Kit­ty, you may cough as much as you choose,” said Mr. Ben­net; and, as he spoke, he left the room, fa­tigued with the rap­tures of his wife.

“What an ex­cel­lent fa­ther you have, girls!” said she, when the door was shut. “I do not know how you will ev­er make him amends for his kind­ness; or me, ei­ther, for that mat­ter. At our time of life it is not so pleas­ant, I can tell you, to be mak­ing new ac­quain­tances ev­ery day; but for your sakes, we would do any­thing. Ly­dia, my love, though you ARE the youngest, I dare say Mr. Bin­gley will dance with you at the next ball.”

“Oh!” said Ly­dia stout­ly, “I am not afraid; for though I AM the youngest, I’m the tallest.”

The rest of the evening was spent in con­jec­tur­ing how soon he would re­turn Mr. Ben­net’s vis­it, and de­ter­min­ing when they should ask him to din­ner.