Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 40

Eliz­abeth’s im­pa­tience to ac­quaint Jane with what had hap­pened could no longer be over­come; and at length, re­solv­ing to sup­press ev­ery par­tic­ular in which her sis­ter was con­cerned, and prepar­ing her to be sur­prised, she re­lat­ed to her the next morn­ing the chief of the scene be­tween Mr. Dar­cy and her­self.

Miss Ben­net’s as­ton­ish­ment was soon less­ened by the strong sis­ter­ly par­tial­ity which made any ad­mi­ra­tion of Eliz­abeth ap­pear per­fect­ly nat­ural; and all sur­prise was short­ly lost in oth­er feel­ings. She was sor­ry that Mr. Dar­cy should have de­liv­ered his sen­ti­ments in a man­ner so lit­tle suit­ed to rec­om­mend them; but still more was she grieved for the un­hap­pi­ness which her sis­ter’s re­fusal must have giv­en him.

“His be­ing so sure of suc­ceed­ing was wrong,” said she, “and cer­tain­ly ought not to have ap­peared; but con­sid­er how much it must in­crease his dis­ap­point­ment!”

“In­deed,” replied Eliz­abeth, “I am hearti­ly sor­ry for him; but he has oth­er feel­ings, which will prob­ably soon drive away his re­gard for me. You do not blame me, how­ev­er, for re­fus­ing him?”

“Blame you! Oh, no.”

“But you blame me for hav­ing spo­ken so warm­ly of Wick­ham?”

“No–I do not know that you were wrong in say­ing what you did.”

“But you WILL know it, when I tell you what hap­pened the very next day.”

She then spoke of the let­ter, re­peat­ing the whole of its con­tents as far as they con­cerned George Wick­ham. What a stroke was this for poor Jane! who would will­ing­ly have gone through the world with­out be­liev­ing that so much wicked­ness ex­ist­ed in the whole race of mankind, as was here col­lect­ed in one in­di­vid­ual. Nor was Dar­cy’s vin­di­ca­tion, though grate­ful to her feel­ings, ca­pa­ble of con­sol­ing her for such dis­cov­ery. Most earnest­ly did she labour to prove the prob­abil­ity of er­ror, and seek to clear the one with­out in­volv­ing the oth­er.

“This will not do,” said Eliz­abeth; “you nev­er will be able to make both of them good for any­thing. Take your choice, but you must be sat­is­fied with on­ly one. There is but such a quan­ti­ty of mer­it be­tween them; just enough to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shift­ing about pret­ty much. For my part, I am in­clined to be­lieve it all Dar­cy’s; but you shall do as you choose.”

It was some time, how­ev­er, be­fore a smile could be ex­tort­ed from Jane.

“I do not know when I have been more shocked,” said she. “Wick­ham so very bad! It is al­most past be­lief. And poor Mr. Dar­cy! Dear Lizzy, on­ly con­sid­er what he must have suf­fered. Such a dis­ap­point­ment! and with the knowl­edge of your ill opin­ion, too! and hav­ing to re­late such a thing of his sis­ter! It is re­al­ly too dis­tress­ing. I am sure you must feel it so.”

“Oh! no, my re­gret and com­pas­sion are all done away by see­ing you so full of both. I know you will do him such am­ple jus­tice, that I am grow­ing ev­ery mo­ment more un­con­cerned and in­dif­fer­ent. Your pro­fu­sion makes me sav­ing; and if you lament over him much longer, my heart will be as light as a feath­er.”

“Poor Wick­ham! there is such an ex­pres­sion of good­ness in his coun­te­nance! such an open­ness and gen­tle­ness in his man­ner!”

“There cer­tain­ly was some great mis­man­age­ment in the ed­uca­tion of those two young men. One has got all the good­ness, and the oth­er all the ap­pear­ance of it.”

“I nev­er thought Mr. Dar­cy so de­fi­cient in the AP­PEAR­ANCE of it as you used to do.”

“And yet I meant to be un­com­mon­ly clever in tak­ing so de­cid­ed a dis­like to him, with­out any rea­son. It is such a spur to one’s ge­nius, such an open­ing for wit, to have a dis­like of that kind. One may be con­tin­ual­ly abu­sive with­out say­ing any­thing just; but one can­not al­ways be laugh­ing at a man with­out now and then stum­bling on some­thing wit­ty.”

“Lizzy, when you first read that let­ter, I am sure you could not treat the mat­ter as you do now.”

“In­deed, I could not. I was un­com­fort­able enough, I may say un­hap­py. And with no one to speak to about what I felt, no Jane to com­fort me and say that I had not been so very weak and vain and non­sen­si­cal as I knew I had! Oh! how I want­ed you!”

“How un­for­tu­nate that you should have used such very strong ex­pres­sions in speak­ing of Wick­ham to Mr. Dar­cy, for now they DO ap­pear whol­ly un­de­served.”

“Cer­tain­ly. But the mis­for­tune of speak­ing with bit­ter­ness is a most nat­ural con­se­quence of the prej­udices I had been en­cour­ag­ing. There is one point on which I want your ad­vice. I want to be told whether I ought, or ought not, to make our ac­quain­tances in gen­er­al un­der­stand Wick­ham’s char­ac­ter.”

Miss Ben­net paused a lit­tle, and then replied, “Sure­ly there can be no oc­ca­sion for ex­pos­ing him so dread­ful­ly. What is your opin­ion?”

“That it ought not to be at­tempt­ed. Mr. Dar­cy has not au­tho­rised me to make his com­mu­ni­ca­tion pub­lic. On the con­trary, ev­ery par­tic­ular rel­ative to his sis­ter was meant to be kept as much as pos­si­ble to my­self; and if I en­deav­our to un­de­ceive peo­ple as to the rest of his con­duct, who will be­lieve me? The gen­er­al prej­udice against Mr. Dar­cy is so vi­olent, that it would be the death of half the good peo­ple in Mery­ton to at­tempt to place him in an ami­able light. I am not equal to it. Wick­ham will soon be gone; and there­fore it will not sig­ni­fy to any­one here what he re­al­ly is. Some time hence it will be all found out, and then we may laugh at their stu­pid­ity in not know­ing it be­fore. At present I will say noth­ing about it.”

“You are quite right. To have his er­rors made pub­lic might ru­in him for ev­er. He is now, per­haps, sor­ry for what he has done, and anx­ious to re-​es­tab­lish a char­ac­ter. We must not make him des­per­ate.”

The tu­mult of Eliz­abeth’s mind was al­layed by this con­ver­sa­tion. She had got rid of two of the se­crets which had weighed on her for a fort­night, and was cer­tain of a will­ing lis­ten­er in Jane, when­ev­er she might wish to talk again of ei­ther. But there was still some­thing lurk­ing be­hind, of which pru­dence for­bade the dis­clo­sure. She dared not re­late the oth­er half of Mr. Dar­cy’s let­ter, nor ex­plain to her sis­ter how sin­cere­ly she had been val­ued by her friend. Here was knowl­edge in which no one could par­take; and she was sen­si­ble that noth­ing less than a per­fect un­der­stand­ing be­tween the par­ties could jus­ti­fy her in throw­ing off this last en­cum­brance of mys­tery. “And then,” said she, “if that very im­prob­able event should ev­er take place, I shall mere­ly be able to tell what Bin­gley may tell in a much more agree­able man­ner him­self. The lib­er­ty of com­mu­ni­ca­tion can­not be mine till it has lost all its val­ue!”

She was now, on be­ing set­tled at home, at leisure to ob­serve the re­al state of her sis­ter’s spir­its. Jane was not hap­py. She still cher­ished a very ten­der af­fec­tion for Bin­gley. Hav­ing nev­er even fan­cied her­self in love be­fore, her re­gard had all the warmth of first at­tach­ment, and, from her age and dis­po­si­tion, greater steadi­ness than most first at­tach­ments of­ten boast; and so fer­vent­ly did she val­ue his re­mem­brance, and pre­fer him to ev­ery oth­er man, that all her good sense, and all her at­ten­tion to the feel­ings of her friends, were req­ui­site to check the in­dul­gence of those re­grets which must have been in­ju­ri­ous to her own health and their tran­quil­li­ty.

“Well, Lizzy,” said Mrs. Ben­net one day, “what is your opin­ion NOW of this sad busi­ness of Jane’s? For my part, I am de­ter­mined nev­er to speak of it again to any­body. I told my sis­ter Phillips so the oth­er day. But I can­not find out that Jane saw any­thing of him in Lon­don. Well, he is a very un­de­serv­ing young man–and I do not sup­pose there’s the least chance in the world of her ev­er get­ting him now. There is no talk of his com­ing to Nether­field again in the sum­mer; and I have in­quired of ev­ery­body, too, who is like­ly to know.”

“I do not be­lieve he will ev­er live at Nether­field any more.”

“Oh well! it is just as he choos­es. No­body wants him to come. Though I shall al­ways say he used my daugh­ter ex­treme­ly ill; and if I was her, I would not have put up with it. Well, my com­fort is, I am sure Jane will die of a bro­ken heart; and then he will be sor­ry for what he has done.”

But as Eliz­abeth could not re­ceive com­fort from any such ex­pec­ta­tion, she made no an­swer.

“Well, Lizzy,” con­tin­ued her moth­er, soon af­ter­wards, “and so the Collins­es live very com­fort­able, do they? Well, well, I on­ly hope it will last. And what sort of ta­ble do they keep? Char­lotte is an ex­cel­lent man­ag­er, I dare say. If she is half as sharp as her moth­er, she is sav­ing enough. There is noth­ing ex­trav­agant in THEIR house­keep­ing, I dare say.”

“No, noth­ing at all.”

“A great deal of good man­age­ment, de­pend up­on it. Yes, yes. THEY will take care not to out­run their in­come. THEY will nev­er be dis­tressed for mon­ey. Well, much good may it do them! And so, I sup­pose, they of­ten talk of hav­ing Long­bourn when your fa­ther is dead. They look up­on it as quite their own, I dare say, when­ev­er that hap­pens.”

“It was a sub­ject which they could not men­tion be­fore me.”

“No; it would have been strange if they had; but I make no doubt they of­ten talk of it be­tween them­selves. Well, if they can be easy with an es­tate that is not law­ful­ly their own, so much the bet­ter. I should be ashamed of hav­ing one that was on­ly en­tailed on me.”