Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 60

Eliz­abeth’s spir­its soon ris­ing to play­ful­ness again, she want­ed Mr. Dar­cy to ac­count for his hav­ing ev­er fall­en in love with her. “How could you be­gin?” said she. “I can com­pre­hend your go­ing on charm­ing­ly, when you had once made a be­gin­ning; but what could set you off in the first place?”

“I can­not fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foun­da­tion. It is too long ago. I was in the mid­dle be­fore I knew that I HAD be­gun.”

“My beau­ty you had ear­ly with­stood, and as for my man­ners–my be­haviour to YOU was at least al­ways bor­der­ing on the un­civ­il, and I nev­er spoke to you with­out rather wish­ing to give you pain than not. Now be sin­cere; did you ad­mire me for my im­per­ti­nence?”

“For the live­li­ness of your mind, I did.”

“You may as well call it im­per­ti­nence at once. It was very lit­tle less. The fact is, that you were sick of ci­vil­ity, of def­er­ence, of of­fi­cious at­ten­tion. You were dis­gust­ed with the wom­en who were al­ways speak­ing, and look­ing, and think­ing for YOUR ap­pro­ba­tion alone. I roused, and in­ter­est­ed you, be­cause I was so un­like THEM. Had you not been re­al­ly ami­able, you would have hat­ed me for it; but in spite of the pains you took to dis­guise your­self, your feel­ings were al­ways no­ble and just; and in your heart, you thor­ough­ly de­spised the per­sons who so as­sid­uous­ly court­ed you. There–I have saved you the trou­ble of ac­count­ing for it; and re­al­ly, all things con­sid­ered, I be­gin to think it per­fect­ly rea­son­able. To be sure, you knew no ac­tu­al good of me–but no­body thinks of THAT when they fall in love.”

“Was there no good in your af­fec­tion­ate be­haviour to Jane while she was ill at Nether­field?”

“Dear­est Jane! who could have done less for her? But make a virtue of it by all means. My good qual­ities are un­der your pro­tec­tion, and you are to ex­ag­ger­ate them as much as pos­si­ble; and, in re­turn, it be­longs to me to find oc­ca­sions for teas­ing and quar­relling with you as of­ten as may be; and I shall be­gin di­rect­ly by ask­ing you what made you so un­will­ing to come to the point at last. What made you so shy of me, when you first called, and af­ter­wards dined here? Why, es­pe­cial­ly, when you called, did you look as if you did not care about me?”

“Be­cause you were grave and silent, and gave me no en­cour­age­ment.”

“But I was em­bar­rassed.”

“And so was I.”

“You might have talked to me more when you came to din­ner.”

“A man who had felt less, might.”

“How un­lucky that you should have a rea­son­able an­swer to give, and that I should be so rea­son­able as to ad­mit it! But I won­der how long you WOULD have gone on, if you had been left to your­self. I won­der when you WOULD have spo­ken, if I had not asked you! My res­olu­tion of thank­ing you for your kind­ness to Ly­dia had cer­tain­ly great ef­fect. TOO MUCH, I am afraid; for what be­comes of the moral, if our com­fort springs from a breach of promise? for I ought not to have men­tioned the sub­ject. This will nev­er do.”

“You need not dis­tress your­self. The moral will be per­fect­ly fair. La­dy Cather­ine’s un­jus­ti­fi­able en­deav­ours to sep­arate us were the means of re­mov­ing all my doubts. I am not in­debt­ed for my present hap­pi­ness to your ea­ger de­sire of ex­press­ing your grat­itude. I was not in a hu­mour to wait for any open­ing of your’s. My aunt’s in­tel­li­gence had giv­en me hope, and I was de­ter­mined at once to know ev­ery thing.”

“La­dy Cather­ine has been of in­fi­nite use, which ought to make her hap­py, for she loves to be of use. But tell me, what did you come down to Nether­field for? Was it mere­ly to ride to Long­bourn and be em­bar­rassed? or had you in­tend­ed any more se­ri­ous con­se­quence?”

“My re­al pur­pose was to see YOU, and to judge, if I could, whether I might ev­er hope to make you love me. My avowed one, or what I avowed to my­self, was to see whether your sis­ter were still par­tial to Bin­gley, and if she were, to make the con­fes­sion to him which I have since made.”

“Shall you ev­er have courage to an­nounce to La­dy Cather­ine what is to be­fall her?”

“I am more like­ly to want more time than courage, Eliz­abeth. But it ought to done, and if you will give me a sheet of pa­per, it shall be done di­rect­ly.”

“And if I had not a let­ter to write my­self, I might sit by you and ad­mire the even­ness of your writ­ing, as an­oth­er young la­dy once did. But I have an aunt, too, who must not be longer ne­glect­ed.”

From an un­will­ing­ness to con­fess how much her in­ti­ma­cy with Mr. Dar­cy had been over-​rat­ed, Eliz­abeth had nev­er yet an­swered Mrs. Gar­diner’s long let­ter; but now, hav­ing THAT to com­mu­ni­cate which she knew would be most wel­come, she was al­most ashamed to find that her un­cle and aunt had al­ready lost three days of hap­pi­ness, and im­me­di­ate­ly wrote as fol­lows:

“I would have thanked you be­fore, my dear aunt, as I ought to have done, for your long, kind, sat­is­fac­to­ry, de­tail of par­tic­ulars; but to say the truth, I was too cross to write. You sup­posed more than re­al­ly ex­ist­ed. But NOW sup­pose as much as you choose; give a loose rein to your fan­cy, in­dulge your imag­ina­tion in ev­ery pos­si­ble flight which the sub­ject will af­ford, and un­less you be­lieve me ac­tu­al­ly mar­ried, you can­not great­ly err. You must write again very soon, and praise him a great deal more than you did in your last. I thank you, again and again, for not go­ing to the Lakes. How could I be so sil­ly as to wish it! Your idea of the ponies is de­light­ful. We will go round the Park ev­ery day. I am the hap­pi­est crea­ture in the world. Per­haps oth­er peo­ple have said so be­fore, but not one with such jus­tice. I am hap­pi­er even than Jane; she on­ly smiles, I laugh. Mr. Dar­cy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pem­ber­ley at Christ­mas. Yours, etc.”

Mr. Dar­cy’s let­ter to La­dy Cather­ine was in a dif­fer­ent style; and still dif­fer­ent from ei­ther was what Mr. Ben­net sent to Mr. Collins, in re­ply to his last.

“DEAR SIR,

“I must trou­ble you once more for con­grat­ula­tions. Eliz­abeth will soon be the wife of Mr. Dar­cy. Con­sole La­dy Cather­ine as well as you can. But, if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give.

“Yours sin­cere­ly, etc.”

Miss Bin­gley’s con­grat­ula­tions to her broth­er, on his ap­proach­ing mar­riage, were all that was af­fec­tion­ate and in­sin­cere. She wrote even to Jane on the oc­ca­sion, to ex­press her de­light, and re­peat all her for­mer pro­fes­sions of re­gard. Jane was not de­ceived, but she was af­fect­ed; and though feel­ing no re­liance on her, could not help writ­ing her a much kinder an­swer than she knew was de­served.

The joy which Miss Dar­cy ex­pressed on re­ceiv­ing sim­ilar in­for­ma­tion, was as sin­cere as her broth­er’s in send­ing it. Four sides of pa­per were in­suf­fi­cient to con­tain all her de­light, and all her earnest de­sire of be­ing loved by her sis­ter.

Be­fore any an­swer could ar­rive from Mr. Collins, or any con­grat­ula­tions to Eliz­abeth from his wife, the Long­bourn fam­ily heard that the Collins­es were come them­selves to Lu­cas Lodge. The rea­son of this sud­den re­moval was soon ev­ident. La­dy Cather­ine had been ren­dered so ex­ceed­ing­ly an­gry by the con­tents of her nephew’s let­ter, that Char­lotte, re­al­ly re­joic­ing in the match, was anx­ious to get away till the storm was blown over. At such a mo­ment, the ar­rival of her friend was a sin­cere plea­sure to Eliz­abeth, though in the course of their meet­ings she must some­times think the plea­sure dear­ly bought, when she saw Mr. Dar­cy ex­posed to all the parad­ing and ob­se­quious ci­vil­ity of her hus­band. He bore it, how­ev­er, with ad­mirable calm­ness. He could even lis­ten to Sir William Lu­cas, when he com­pli­ment­ed him on car­ry­ing away the bright­est jew­el of the coun­try, and ex­pressed his hopes of their all meet­ing fre­quent­ly at St. James’s, with very de­cent com­po­sure. If he did shrug his shoul­ders, it was not till Sir William was out of sight.

Mrs. Phillips’s vul­gar­ity was an­oth­er, and per­haps a greater, tax on his for­bear­ance; and though Mrs. Phillips, as well as her sis­ter, stood in too much awe of him to speak with the fa­mil­iar­ity which Bin­gley’s good hu­mour en­cour­aged, yet, when­ev­er she DID speak, she must be vul­gar. Nor was her re­spect for him, though it made her more qui­et, at all like­ly to make her more el­egant. Eliz­abeth did all she could to shield him from the fre­quent no­tice of ei­ther, and was ev­er anx­ious to keep him to her­self, and to those of her fam­ily with whom he might con­verse with­out mor­ti­fi­ca­tion; and though the un­com­fort­able feel­ings aris­ing from all this took from the sea­son of courtship much of its plea­sure, it added to the hope of the fu­ture; and she looked for­ward with de­light to the time when they should be re­moved from so­ci­ety so lit­tle pleas­ing to ei­ther, to all the com­fort and el­egance of their fam­ily par­ty at Pem­ber­ley.