Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 30

Sir William stayed on­ly a week at Hunsford, but his vis­it was long enough to con­vince him of his daugh­ter’s be­ing most com­fort­ably set­tled, and of her pos­sess­ing such a hus­band and such a neigh­bour as were not of­ten met with. While Sir William was with them, Mr. Collins de­vot­ed his morn­ing to driv­ing him out in his gig, and show­ing him the coun­try; but when he went away, the whole fam­ily re­turned to their usu­al em­ploy­ments, and Eliz­abeth was thank­ful to find that they did not see more of her cousin by the al­ter­ation, for the chief of the time be­tween break­fast and din­ner was now passed by him ei­ther at work in the gar­den or in read­ing and writ­ing, and look­ing out of the win­dow in his own book-​room, which front­ed the road. The room in which the ladies sat was back­wards. Eliz­abeth had at first rather won­dered that Char­lotte should not pre­fer the din­ing-​par­lour for com­mon use; it was a bet­ter sized room, and had a more pleas­ant as­pect; but she soon saw that her friend had an ex­cel­lent rea­son for what she did, for Mr. Collins would un­doubt­ed­ly have been much less in his own apart­ment, had they sat in one equal­ly live­ly; and she gave Char­lotte cred­it for the ar­range­ment.

From the draw­ing-​room they could dis­tin­guish noth­ing in the lane, and were in­debt­ed to Mr. Collins for the knowl­edge of what car­riages went along, and how of­ten es­pe­cial­ly Miss de Bourgh drove by in her phaeton, which he nev­er failed com­ing to in­form them of, though it hap­pened al­most ev­ery day. She not un­fre­quent­ly stopped at the Par­son­age, and had a few min­utes’ con­ver­sa­tion with Char­lotte, but was scarce­ly ev­er pre­vailed up­on to get out.

Very few days passed in which Mr. Collins did not walk to Ros­ings, and not many in which his wife did not think it nec­es­sary to go like­wise; and till Eliz­abeth rec­ol­lect­ed that there might be oth­er fam­ily liv­ings to be dis­posed of, she could not un­der­stand the sac­ri­fice of so many hours. Now and then they were hon­oured with a call from her la­dy­ship, and noth­ing es­caped her ob­ser­va­tion that was pass­ing in the room dur­ing these vis­its. She ex­am­ined in­to their em­ploy­ments, looked at their work, and ad­vised them to do it dif­fer­ent­ly; found fault with the ar­range­ment of the fur­ni­ture; or de­tect­ed the house­maid in neg­li­gence; and if she ac­cept­ed any re­fresh­ment, seemed to do it on­ly for the sake of find­ing out that Mrs. Collins’s joints of meat were too large for her fam­ily.

Eliz­abeth soon per­ceived, that though this great la­dy was not in com­mis­sion of the peace of the coun­ty, she was a most ac­tive mag­is­trate in her own parish, the min­utest con­cerns of which were car­ried to her by Mr. Collins; and when­ev­er any of the cot­tagers were dis­posed to be quar­rel­some, dis­con­tent­ed, or too poor, she sal­lied forth in­to the vil­lage to set­tle their dif­fer­ences, si­lence their com­plaints, and scold them in­to har­mo­ny and plen­ty.

The en­ter­tain­ment of din­ing at Ros­ings was re­peat­ed about twice a week; and, al­low­ing for the loss of Sir William, and there be­ing on­ly one card-​ta­ble in the evening, ev­ery such en­ter­tain­ment was the coun­ter­part of the first. Their oth­er en­gage­ments were few, as the style of liv­ing in the neigh­bour­hood in gen­er­al was be­yond Mr. Collins’s reach. This, how­ev­er, was no evil to Eliz­abeth, and up­on the whole she spent her time com­fort­ably enough; there were half-​hours of pleas­ant con­ver­sa­tion with Char­lotte, and the weath­er was so fine for the time of year that she had of­ten great en­joy­ment out of doors. Her favourite walk, and where she fre­quent­ly went while the oth­ers were call­ing on La­dy Cather­ine, was along the open grove which edged that side of the park, where there was a nice shel­tered path, which no one seemed to val­ue but her­self, and where she felt be­yond the reach of La­dy Cather­ine’s cu­rios­ity.

In this qui­et way, the first fort­night of her vis­it soon passed away. East­er was ap­proach­ing, and the week pre­ced­ing it was to bring an ad­di­tion to the fam­ily at Ros­ings, which in so small a cir­cle must be im­por­tant. Eliz­abeth had heard soon af­ter her ar­rival that Mr. Dar­cy was ex­pect­ed there in the course of a few weeks, and though there were not many of her ac­quain­tances whom she did not pre­fer, his com­ing would fur­nish one com­par­ative­ly new to look at in their Ros­ings par­ties, and she might be amused in see­ing how hope­less Miss Bin­gley’s de­signs on him were, by his be­haviour to his cousin, for whom he was ev­ident­ly des­tined by La­dy Cather­ine, who talked of his com­ing with the great­est sat­is­fac­tion, spoke of him in terms of the high­est ad­mi­ra­tion, and seemed al­most an­gry to find that he had al­ready been fre­quent­ly seen by Miss Lu­cas and her­self.

His ar­rival was soon known at the Par­son­age; for Mr. Collins was walk­ing the whole morn­ing with­in view of the lodges open­ing in­to Hunsford Lane, in or­der to have the ear­li­est as­sur­ance of it, and af­ter mak­ing his bow as the car­riage turned in­to the Park, hur­ried home with the great in­tel­li­gence. On the fol­low­ing morn­ing he has­tened to Ros­ings to pay his re­spects. There were two nephews of La­dy Cather­ine to re­quire them, for Mr. Dar­cy had brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, the younger son of his un­cle Lord —-, and, to the great sur­prise of all the par­ty, when Mr. Collins re­turned, the gen­tle­man ac­com­pa­nied him. Char­lotte had seen them from her hus­band’s room, cross­ing the road, and im­me­di­ate­ly run­ning in­to the oth­er, told the girls what an hon­our they might ex­pect, adding:

“I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of ci­vil­ity. Mr. Dar­cy would nev­er have come so soon to wait up­on me.”

Eliz­abeth had scarce­ly time to dis­claim all right to the com­pli­ment, be­fore their ap­proach was an­nounced by the door-​bell, and short­ly af­ter­wards the three gen­tle­men en­tered the room. Colonel Fitzwilliam, who led the way, was about thir­ty, not hand­some, but in per­son and ad­dress most tru­ly the gen­tle­man. Mr. Dar­cy looked just as he had been used to look in Hert­ford­shire–paid his com­pli­ments, with his usu­al re­serve, to Mrs. Collins, and what­ev­er might be his feel­ings to­ward her friend, met her with ev­ery ap­pear­ance of com­po­sure. Eliz­abeth mere­ly curt­seyed to him with­out say­ing a word.

Colonel Fitzwilliam en­tered in­to con­ver­sa­tion di­rect­ly with the readi­ness and ease of a well-​bred man, and talked very pleas­ant­ly; but his cousin, af­ter hav­ing ad­dressed a slight ob­ser­va­tion on the house and gar­den to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time with­out speak­ing to any­body. At length, how­ev­er, his ci­vil­ity was so far awak­ened as to in­quire of Eliz­abeth af­ter the health of her fam­ily. She an­swered him in the usu­al way, and af­ter a mo­ment’s pause, added:

“My el­dest sis­ter has been in town these three months. Have you nev­er hap­pened to see her there?”

She was per­fect­ly sen­si­ble that he nev­er had; but she wished to see whether he would be­tray any con­scious­ness of what had passed be­tween the Bin­gleys and Jane, and she thought he looked a lit­tle con­fused as he an­swered that he had nev­er been so for­tu­nate as to meet Miss Ben­net. The sub­ject was pur­sued no far­ther, and the gen­tle­men soon af­ter­wards went away.