Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 39

It was the sec­ond week in May, in which the three young ladies set out to­geth­er from Gracechurch Street for the town of —-, in Hert­ford­shire; and, as they drew near the ap­point­ed inn where Mr. Ben­net’s car­riage was to meet them, they quick­ly per­ceived, in to­ken of the coach­man’s punc­tu­al­ity, both Kit­ty and Ly­dia look­ing out of a din­ing-​room up­stairs. These two girls had been above an hour in the place, hap­pi­ly em­ployed in vis­it­ing an op­po­site milliner, watch­ing the sen­tinel on guard, and dress­ing a sal­ad and cu­cum­ber.

Af­ter wel­com­ing their sis­ters, they tri­umphant­ly dis­played a ta­ble set out with such cold meat as an inn larder usu­al­ly af­fords, ex­claim­ing, “Is not this nice? Is not this an agree­able sur­prise?”

“And we mean to treat you all,” added Ly­dia, “but you must lend us the mon­ey, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there.” Then, show­ing her pur­chas­es–“Look here, I have bought this bon­net. I do not think it is very pret­ty; but I thought I might as well buy it as not. I shall pull it to pieces as soon as I get home, and see if I can make it up any bet­ter.”

And when her sis­ters abused it as ug­ly, she added, with per­fect un­con­cern, “Oh! but there were two or three much ugli­er in the shop; and when I have bought some pret­ti­er-​coloured satin to trim it with fresh, I think it will be very tol­er­able. Be­sides, it will not much sig­ni­fy what one wears this sum­mer, af­ter the —-shire have left Mery­ton, and they are go­ing in a fort­night.”

“Are they in­deed!” cried Eliz­abeth, with the great­est sat­is­fac­tion.

“They are go­ing to be en­camped near Brighton; and I do so want pa­pa to take us all there for the sum­mer! It would be such a de­li­cious scheme; and I dare say would hard­ly cost any­thing at all. Mam­ma would like to go too of all things! On­ly think what a mis­er­able sum­mer else we shall have!”

“Yes,” thought Eliz­abeth, “THAT would be a de­light­ful scheme in­deed, and com­plete­ly do for us at once. Good Heav­en! Brighton, and a whole camp­ful of sol­diers, to us, who have been over­set al­ready by one poor reg­iment of mili­tia, and the month­ly balls of Mery­ton!”

“Now I have got some news for you,” said Ly­dia, as they sat down at ta­ble. “What do you think? It is ex­cel­lent news–cap­ital news–and about a cer­tain per­son we all like!”

Jane and Eliz­abeth looked at each oth­er, and the wait­er was told he need not stay. Ly­dia laughed, and said:

“Aye, that is just like your for­mal­ity and dis­cre­tion. You thought the wait­er must not hear, as if he cared! I dare say he of­ten hears worse things said than I am go­ing to say. But he is an ug­ly fel­low! I am glad he is gone. I nev­er saw such a long chin in my life. Well, but now for my news; it is about dear Wick­ham; too good for the wait­er, is it not? There is no dan­ger of Wick­ham’s mar­ry­ing Mary King. There’s for you! She is gone down to her un­cle at Liv­er­pool: gone to stay. Wick­ham is safe.”

“And Mary King is safe!” added Eliz­abeth; “safe from a con­nec­tion im­pru­dent as to for­tune.”

“She is a great fool for go­ing away, if she liked him.”

“But I hope there is no strong at­tach­ment on ei­ther side,” said Jane.

“I am sure there is not on HIS. I will an­swer for it, he nev­er cared three straws about her–who could about such a nasty lit­tle freck­led thing?”

Eliz­abeth was shocked to think that, how­ev­er in­ca­pable of such coarse­ness of EX­PRES­SION her­self, the coarse­ness of the SEN­TI­MENT was lit­tle oth­er than her own breast had har­boured and fan­cied lib­er­al!

As soon as all had ate, and the el­der ones paid, the car­riage was or­dered; and af­ter some con­trivance, the whole par­ty, with all their box­es, work-​bags, and parcels, and the un­wel­come ad­di­tion of Kit­ty’s and Ly­dia’s pur­chas­es, were seat­ed in it.

“How nice­ly we are all crammed in,” cried Ly­dia. “I am glad I bought my bon­net, if it is on­ly for the fun of hav­ing an­oth­er band­box! Well, now let us be quite com­fort­able and snug, and talk and laugh all the way home. And in the first place, let us hear what has hap­pened to you all since you went away. Have you seen any pleas­ant men? Have you had any flirt­ing? I was in great hopes that one of you would have got a hus­band be­fore you came back. Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I de­clare. She is al­most three-​and-​twen­ty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not be­ing mar­ried be­fore three-​and-​twen­ty! My aunt Phillips wants you so to get hus­bands, you can’t think. She says Lizzy had bet­ter have tak­en Mr. Collins; but _I_ do not think there would have been any fun in it. Lord! how I should like to be mar­ried be­fore any of you; and then I would chap­er­on you about to all the balls. Dear me! we had such a good piece of fun the oth­er day at Colonel Forster’s. Kit­ty and me were to spend the day there, and Mrs. Forster promised to have a lit­tle dance in the evening; (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me are SUCH friends!) and so she asked the two Har­ring­tons to come, but Har­ri­et was ill, and so Pen was forced to come by her­self; and then, what do you think we did? We dressed up Cham­ber­layne in wom­an’s clothes on pur­pose to pass for a la­dy, on­ly think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Colonel and Mrs. Forster, and Kit­ty and me, ex­cept my aunt, for we were forced to bor­row one of her gowns; and you can­not imag­ine how well he looked! When Den­ny, and Wick­ham, and Pratt, and two or three more of the men came in, they did not know him in the least. Lord! how I laughed! and so did Mrs. Forster. I thought I should have died. And THAT made the men sus­pect some­thing, and then they soon found out what was the mat­ter.”

With such kinds of his­to­ries of their par­ties and good jokes, did Ly­dia, as­sist­ed by Kit­ty’s hints and ad­di­tions, en­deav­our to amuse her com­pan­ions all the way to Long­bourn. Eliz­abeth lis­tened as lit­tle as she could, but there was no es­cap­ing the fre­quent men­tion of Wick­ham’s name.

Their re­cep­tion at home was most kind. Mrs. Ben­net re­joiced to see Jane in undi­min­ished beau­ty; and more than once dur­ing din­ner did Mr. Ben­net say vol­un­tar­ily to Eliz­abeth:

“I am glad you are come back, Lizzy.”

Their par­ty in the din­ing-​room was large, for al­most all the Lu­cas­es came to meet Maria and hear the news; and var­ious were the sub­jects that oc­cu­pied them: La­dy Lu­cas was in­quir­ing of Maria, af­ter the wel­fare and poul­try of her el­dest daugh­ter; Mrs. Ben­net was dou­bly en­gaged, on one hand col­lect­ing an ac­count of the present fash­ions from Jane, who sat some way be­low her, and, on the oth­er, re­tail­ing them all to the younger Lu­cas­es; and Ly­dia, in a voice rather loud­er than any oth­er per­son’s, was enu­mer­at­ing the var­ious plea­sures of the morn­ing to any­body who would hear her.

“Oh! Mary,” said she, “I wish you had gone with us, for we had such fun! As we went along, Kit­ty and I drew up the blinds, and pre­tend­ed there was no­body in the coach; and I should have gone so all the way, if Kit­ty had not been sick; and when we got to the George, I do think we be­haved very hand­some­ly, for we treat­ed the oth­er three with the nicest cold lun­cheon in the world, and if you would have gone, we would have treat­ed you too. And then when we came away it was such fun! I thought we nev­er should have got in­to the coach. I was ready to die of laugh­ter. And then we were so mer­ry all the way home! we talked and laughed so loud, that any­body might have heard us ten miles off!”

To this Mary very grave­ly replied, “Far be it from me, my dear sis­ter, to de­pre­ci­ate such plea­sures! They would doubt­less be con­ge­nial with the gen­er­al­ity of fe­male minds. But I con­fess they would have no charms for ME–I should in­finite­ly pre­fer a book.”

But of this an­swer Ly­dia heard not a word. She sel­dom lis­tened to any­body for more than half a minute, and nev­er at­tend­ed to Mary at all.

In the af­ter­noon Ly­dia was ur­gent with the rest of the girls to walk to Mery­ton, and to see how ev­ery­body went on; but Eliz­abeth steadi­ly op­posed the scheme. It should not be said that the Miss Ben­nets could not be at home half a day be­fore they were in pur­suit of the of­fi­cers. There was an­oth­er rea­son too for her op­po­si­tion. She dread­ed see­ing Mr. Wick­ham again, and was re­solved to avoid it as long as pos­si­ble. The com­fort to HER of the reg­iment’s ap­proach­ing re­moval was in­deed be­yond ex­pres­sion. In a fort­night they were to go–and once gone, she hoped there could be noth­ing more to plague her on his ac­count.

She had not been many hours at home be­fore she found that the Brighton scheme, of which Ly­dia had giv­en them a hint at the inn, was un­der fre­quent dis­cus­sion be­tween her par­ents. Eliz­abeth saw di­rect­ly that her fa­ther had not the small­est in­ten­tion of yield­ing; but his an­swers were at the same time so vague and equiv­ocal, that her moth­er, though of­ten dis­heart­ened, had nev­er yet de­spaired of suc­ceed­ing at last.