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- pride-and-prejudice
- text
- make thirteen with ourselves, so there will be just room at table for
him.”
Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear her
husband’s incivility; though it was very mortifying to know that her
neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence of it, before
_they_ did. As the day of his arrival drew near,--
“I begin to be sorry that he comes at all,” said Jane to her sister. “It
would be nothing; I could see him with perfect indifference; but I can
hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well;
but she does not know, no one can know, how much I suffer from what she
says. Happy shall I be when his stay at Netherfield is over!”
“I wish I could say anything to comfort you,” replied Elizabeth; “but it
is wholly out of my power. You must feel it; and the usual satisfaction
of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have
always so much.”
Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants,
contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety
and fretfulness on her side be as long as it could. She counted the days
that must intervene before their invitation could be sent--hopeless of
seeing him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in
Hertfordshire, she saw him from her dressing-room window enter the
paddock, and ride towards the house.
Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane resolutely
kept her place at the table; but Elizabeth, to satisfy her mother, went
to the window--she looked--she saw Mr. Darcy with him, and sat down
again by her sister.
“There is a gentleman with him, mamma,” said Kitty; “who can it be?”
“Some acquaintance or other, my dear, I suppose; I am sure I do not
know.”
“La!” replied Kitty, “it looks just like that man that used to be with
him before. Mr. what’s his name--that tall, proud man.”
“Good gracious! Mr. Darcy!--and so it does, I vow. Well, any friend of
Mr. Bingley’s will always be welcome here, to be sure; but else I must
say that I hate the very sight of him.”
Jane looked at Elizabeth with surprise and concern. She knew but little
of their meeting in Derbyshire, and therefore felt for the awkwardness
which must attend her sister, in seeing him almost for the first time
after receiving his explanatory letter. Both sisters were uncomfortable
enough. Each felt for the other, and of course for themselves; and their
mother talked on of her dislike of Mr. Darcy, and her resolution to be
civil to him only as Mr. Bingley’s friend, without being heard by either
of them. But Elizabeth had sources of uneasiness which could not yet be
suspected by Jane, to whom she had never yet had courage to show Mrs.
Gardiner’s letter, or to relate her own change of sentiment towards
him. To Jane, he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused,
and whose merits she had undervalued; but to her own more extensive
information, he was the person to whom the whole family were indebted
for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded herself with an
interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just, as
what Jane felt for Bingley. Her astonishment at his coming--at his
coming to Netherfield, to Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again,
was almost equal to what she had known on first witnessing his altered
behaviour in Derbyshire.
The colour which had been driven from her face returned for half a
minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added lustre to
her eyes, as she thought for that space of time that his affection and
wishes must still be unshaken; but she would not be secure.
“Let me first see how he behaves,” said she; “it will then be early
enough for expectation.”
She sat intently at work, striving to be composed, and without daring to
lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them to the face of her
sister as the servant was approaching the door. Jane looked a little
paler than usual, but more sedate than Elizabeth had expected. On the
gentlemen’s appearing, her colour increased; yet she received them with
tolerable ease, and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any
symptom of resentment, or any unnecessary complaisance.
Elizabeth said as little to either as civility would allow, and sat down
again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not often command. She
had ventured only one glance at Darcy. He looked serious as usual; and,
she thought, more as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire, than as
she had seen him at Pemberley. But, perhaps, he could not in her
mother’s presence be what he was before her uncle and aunt. It was a
painful, but not an improbable, conjecture.
Bingley she had likewise seen for an instant, and in that short period
saw him looking both pleased and embarrassed. He was received by Mrs.
Bennet with a degree of civility which made her two daughters ashamed,
especially when contrasted with the cold and ceremonious politeness of
her courtesy and address of his friend.
Elizabeth particularly, who knew that her mother owed to the latter the
preservation of her favourite daughter from irremediable infamy, was
hurt and distressed to a most painful degree by a distinction so ill
applied.
Darcy, after inquiring of her how Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner did--a question
which she could not answer without confusion--said scarcely anything. He
was not seated by her: perhaps that was the reason of his silence; but
it had not been so in Derbyshire. There he had talked to her friends
when he could not to herself. But now several minutes elapsed, without
bringing the sound of his voice; and when occasionally, unable to resist
the impulse of curiosity, she raised her eyes to his face, she as often
found him looking at Jane as at herself, and frequently on no object but
the ground. More thoughtfulness and less anxiety to please, than when
they last met, were plainly expressed. She was disappointed, and angry
with herself for being so.
“Could I expect it to be otherwise?” said she. “Yet why did he come?”
She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but himself; and to
him she had hardly courage to speak.
She inquired after his sister, but could do no more.
“It is a long time, Mr. Bingley, since you went away,” said Mrs. Bennet.
He readily agreed to it.
“I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People _did_ say,
you meant to quit the place entirely at Michaelmas; but, however, I hope
it is not true. A great many changes have happened in the neighbourhood
since you went away. Miss Lucas is married and settled: and one of my
own daughters. I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have
seen it in the papers. It was in the ‘Times’ and the ‘Courier,’ I know;
though it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, ‘Lately,
George Wickham, Esq., to Miss Lydia Bennet,’ without there being a
syllable said of her father, or the place where she lived, or anything.
It was my brother Gardiner’s drawing up, too, and I wonder how he came
to make such an awkward business of it. Did you see it?”
Bingley replied that he did, and made his congratulations. Elizabeth
dared not lift up her eyes. How Mr. Darcy looked, therefore, she could
not tell.
“It is a delightful thing, to be sure, to have a daughter well married,”
continued her mother; “but at the same time, Mr. Bingley, it is very
hard to have her taken away from me. They are gone down to Newcastle, a
place quite northward it seems, and there they are to stay, I do not
know how long. His regiment is there; for I suppose you have heard of
his leaving the ----shire, and of his being gone into the Regulars.
Thank heaven! he has _some_ friends, though, perhaps, not so many as he
deserves.”
Elizabeth, who knew this to be levelled at Mr. Darcy, was in such misery
of shame that she could hardly keep her seat.