Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 8

At five o’clock the two ladies re­tired to dress, and at half-​past six Eliz­abeth was sum­moned to din­ner. To the civ­il in­quiries which then poured in, and amongst which she had the plea­sure of dis­tin­guish­ing the much su­pe­ri­or so­lic­itude of Mr. Bin­gley’s, she could not make a very favourable an­swer. Jane was by no means bet­ter. The sis­ters, on hear­ing this, re­peat­ed three or four times how much they were grieved, how shock­ing it was to have a bad cold, and how ex­ces­sive­ly they dis­liked be­ing ill them­selves; and then thought no more of the mat­ter: and their in­dif­fer­ence to­wards Jane when not im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore them re­stored Eliz­abeth to the en­joy­ment of all her for­mer dis­like.

Their broth­er, in­deed, was the on­ly one of the par­ty whom she could re­gard with any com­pla­cen­cy. His anx­iety for Jane was ev­ident, and his at­ten­tions to her­self most pleas­ing, and they pre­vent­ed her feel­ing her­self so much an in­trud­er as she be­lieved she was con­sid­ered by the oth­ers. She had very lit­tle no­tice from any but him. Miss Bin­gley was en­grossed by Mr. Dar­cy, her sis­ter scarce­ly less so; and as for Mr. Hurst, by whom Eliz­abeth sat, he was an in­do­lent man, who lived on­ly to eat, drink, and play at cards; who, when he found her to pre­fer a plain dish to a ragout, had noth­ing to say to her.

When din­ner was over, she re­turned di­rect­ly to Jane, and Miss Bin­gley be­gan abus­ing her as soon as she was out of the room. Her man­ners were pro­nounced to be very bad in­deed, a mix­ture of pride and im­per­ti­nence; she had no con­ver­sa­tion, no style, no beau­ty. Mrs. Hurst thought the same, and added:

“She has noth­ing, in short, to rec­om­mend her, but be­ing an ex­cel­lent walk­er. I shall nev­er for­get her ap­pear­ance this morn­ing. She re­al­ly looked al­most wild.”

“She did, in­deed, Louisa. I could hard­ly keep my coun­te­nance. Very non­sen­si­cal to come at all! Why must SHE be scam­per­ing about the coun­try, be­cause her sis­ter had a cold? Her hair, so un­tidy, so blowsy!”

“Yes, and her pet­ti­coat; I hope you saw her pet­ti­coat, six inch­es deep in mud, I am ab­so­lute­ly cer­tain; and the gown which had been let down to hide it not do­ing its of­fice.”

“Your pic­ture may be very ex­act, Louisa,” said Bin­gley; “but this was all lost up­on me. I thought Miss Eliz­abeth Ben­net looked re­mark­ably well when she came in­to the room this morn­ing. Her dirty pet­ti­coat quite es­caped my no­tice.”

“YOU ob­served it, Mr. Dar­cy, I am sure,” said Miss Bin­gley; “and I am in­clined to think that you would not wish to see YOUR sis­ter make such an ex­hi­bi­tion.”

“Cer­tain­ly not.”

“To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or what­ev­er it is, above her an­kles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abom­inable sort of con­ceit­ed in­de­pen­dence, a most coun­try-​town in­dif­fer­ence to deco­rum.”

“It shows an af­fec­tion for her sis­ter that is very pleas­ing,” said Bin­gley.

“I am afraid, Mr. Dar­cy,” ob­served Miss Bin­gley in a half whis­per, “that this ad­ven­ture has rather af­fect­ed your ad­mi­ra­tion of her fine eyes.”

“Not at all,” he replied; “they were bright­ened by the ex­er­cise.” A short pause fol­lowed this speech, and Mrs. Hurst be­gan again:

“I have a ex­ces­sive re­gard for Miss Jane Ben­net, she is re­al­ly a very sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well set­tled. But with such a fa­ther and moth­er, and such low con­nec­tions, I am afraid there is no chance of it.”

“I think I have heard you say that their un­cle is an at­tor­ney on Mery­ton.”

“Yes; and they have an­oth­er, who lives some­where near Cheap­side.”

“That is cap­ital,” added her sis­ter, and they both laughed hearti­ly.

“If they had un­cles enough to fill ALL Cheap­side,” cried Bin­gley, “it would not make them one jot less agree­able.”

“But it must very ma­te­ri­al­ly lessen their chance of mar­ry­ing men of any con­sid­er­ation in the world,” replied Dar­cy.

To this speech Bin­gley made no an­swer; but his sis­ters gave it their hearty as­sent, and in­dulged their mirth for some time at the ex­pense of their dear friend’s vul­gar re­la­tions.

With a re­new­al of ten­der­ness, how­ev­er, they re­turned to her room on leav­ing the din­ing-​par­lour, and sat with her till sum­moned to cof­fee. She was still very poor­ly, and Eliz­abeth would not quit her at all, till late in the evening, when she had the com­fort of see­ing her sleep, and when it seemed to her rather right than pleas­ant that she should go down­stairs her­self. On en­ter­ing the draw­ing-​room she found the whole par­ty at loo, and was im­me­di­ate­ly in­vit­ed to join them; but sus­pect­ing them to be play­ing high she de­clined it, and mak­ing her sis­ter the ex­cuse, said she would amuse her­self for the short time she could stay be­low, with a book. Mr. Hurst looked at her with as­ton­ish­ment.

“Do you pre­fer read­ing to cards?” said he; “that is rather sin­gu­lar.”

“Miss Eliza Ben­net,” said Miss Bin­gley, “de­spis­es cards. She is a great read­er, and has no plea­sure in any­thing else.”

“I de­serve nei­ther such praise nor such cen­sure,” cried Eliz­abeth; “I am NOT a great read­er, and I have plea­sure in many things.”

“In nurs­ing your sis­ter I am sure you have plea­sure,” said Bin­gley; “and I hope it will be soon in­creased by see­ing her quite well.”

Eliz­abeth thanked him from her heart, and then walked to­wards the ta­ble where a few books were ly­ing. He im­me­di­ate­ly of­fered to fetch her oth­ers–all that his li­brary af­ford­ed.

“And I wish my col­lec­tion were larg­er for your ben­efit and my own cred­it; but I am an idle fel­low, and though I have not many, I have more than I ev­er looked in­to.”

Eliz­abeth as­sured him that she could suit her­self per­fect­ly with those in the room.

“I am as­ton­ished,” said Miss Bin­gley, “that my fa­ther should have left so small a col­lec­tion of books. What a de­light­ful li­brary you have at Pem­ber­ley, Mr. Dar­cy!”

“It ought to be good,” he replied, “it has been the work of many gen­er­ations.”

“And then you have added so much to it your­self, you are al­ways buy­ing books.”

“I can­not com­pre­hend the ne­glect of a fam­ily li­brary in such days as these.”

“Ne­glect! I am sure you ne­glect noth­ing that can add to the beau­ties of that no­ble place. Charles, when you build YOUR house, I wish it may be half as de­light­ful as Pem­ber­ley.”

“I wish it may.”

“But I would re­al­ly ad­vise you to make your pur­chase in that neigh­bour­hood, and take Pem­ber­ley for a kind of mod­el. There is not a fin­er coun­ty in Eng­land than Der­byshire.”

“With all my heart; I will buy Pem­ber­ley it­self if Dar­cy will sell it.”

“I am talk­ing of pos­si­bil­ities, Charles.”

“Up­on my word, Car­oline, I should think it more pos­si­ble to get Pem­ber­ley by pur­chase than by im­ita­tion.”

Eliz­abeth was so much caught with what passed, as to leave her very lit­tle at­ten­tion for her book; and soon lay­ing it whol­ly aside, she drew near the card-​ta­ble, and sta­tioned her­self be­tween Mr. Bin­gley and his el­dest sis­ter, to ob­serve the game.

“Is Miss Dar­cy much grown since the spring?” said Miss Bin­gley; “will she be as tall as I am?”

“I think she will. She is now about Miss Eliz­abeth Ben­net’s height, or rather taller.”

“How I long to see her again! I nev­er met with any­body who de­light­ed me so much. Such a coun­te­nance, such man­ners! And so ex­treme­ly ac­com­plished for her age! Her per­for­mance on the pi­anoforte is exquisite.”

“It is amaz­ing to me,” said Bin­gley, “how young ladies can have pa­tience to be so very ac­com­plished as they all are.”

“All young ladies ac­com­plished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?”

“Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint ta­bles, cov­er screens, and net purs­es. I scarce­ly know any­one who can­not do all this, and I am sure I nev­er heard a young la­dy spo­ken of for the first time, with­out be­ing in­formed that she was very ac­com­plished.”

“Your list of the com­mon ex­tent of ac­com­plish­ments,” said Dar­cy, “has too much truth. The word is ap­plied to many a wom­an who de­serves it no oth­er­wise than by net­ting a purse or cov­er­ing a screen. But I am very far from agree­ing with you in your es­ti­ma­tion of ladies in gen­er­al. I can­not boast of know­ing more than half-​a-​dozen, in the whole range of my ac­quain­tance, that are re­al­ly ac­com­plished.”

“Nor I, I am sure,” said Miss Bin­gley.

“Then,” ob­served Eliz­abeth, “you must com­pre­hend a great deal in your idea of an ac­com­plished wom­an.”

“Yes, I do com­pre­hend a great deal in it.”

“Oh! cer­tain­ly,” cried his faith­ful as­sis­tant, “no one can be re­al­ly es­teemed ac­com­plished who does not great­ly sur­pass what is usu­al­ly met with. A wom­an must have a thor­ough knowl­edge of mu­sic, singing, draw­ing, danc­ing, and the mod­ern lan­guages, to de­serve the word; and be­sides all this, she must pos­sess a cer­tain some­thing in her air and man­ner of walk­ing, the tone of her voice, her ad­dress and ex­pres­sions, or the word will be but half-​de­served.”

“All this she must pos­sess,” added Dar­cy, “and to all this she must yet add some­thing more sub­stan­tial, in the im­prove­ment of her mind by ex­ten­sive read­ing.”

“I am no longer sur­prised at your know­ing ON­LY six ac­com­plished wom­en. I rather won­der now at your know­ing ANY.”

“Are you so se­vere up­on your own sex as to doubt the pos­si­bil­ity of all this?”

“I nev­er saw such a wom­an. I nev­er saw such ca­pac­ity, and taste, and ap­pli­ca­tion, and el­egance, as you de­scribe unit­ed.”

Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bin­gley both cried out against the in­jus­tice of her im­plied doubt, and were both protest­ing that they knew many wom­en who an­swered this de­scrip­tion, when Mr. Hurst called them to or­der, with bit­ter com­plaints of their inat­ten­tion to what was go­ing for­ward. As all con­ver­sa­tion was there­by at an end, Eliz­abeth soon af­ter­wards left the room.

“Eliz­abeth Ben­net,” said Miss Bin­gley, when the door was closed on her, “is one of those young ladies who seek to rec­om­mend them­selves to the oth­er sex by un­der­valu­ing their own; and with many men, I dare say, it suc­ceeds. But, in my opin­ion, it is a pal­try de­vice, a very mean art.”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly,” replied Dar­cy, to whom this re­mark was chiefly ad­dressed, “there is a mean­ness in ALL the arts which ladies some­times con­de­scend to em­ploy for cap­ti­va­tion. What­ev­er bears affin­ity to cun­ning is de­spi­ca­ble.”

Miss Bin­gley was not so en­tire­ly sat­is­fied with this re­ply as to con­tin­ue the sub­ject.

Eliz­abeth joined them again on­ly to say that her sis­ter was worse, and that she could not leave her. Bin­gley urged Mr. Jones be­ing sent for im­me­di­ate­ly; while his sis­ters, con­vinced that no coun­try ad­vice could be of any ser­vice, rec­om­mend­ed an ex­press to town for one of the most em­inent physi­cians. This she would not hear of; but she was not so un­will­ing to com­ply with their broth­er’s pro­pos­al; and it was set­tled that Mr. Jones should be sent for ear­ly in the morn­ing, if Miss Ben­net were not de­cid­ed­ly bet­ter. Bin­gley was quite un­com­fort­able; his sis­ters de­clared that they were mis­er­able. They so­laced their wretched­ness, how­ev­er, by duets af­ter sup­per, while he could find no bet­ter re­lief to his feel­ings than by giv­ing his house­keep­er di­rec­tions that ev­ery at­ten­tion might be paid to the sick la­dy and her sis­ter.