CHAPTER 1 #2
"You will think me very easily pleased," he told her one afternoon, as they walked with Mrs. Gardiner some little distance behind, "and I do not deny it.
I have been called changeable, and worse.
But I have never yet changed my mind about a thing I was certain of, and I find myself growing more certain by the day," he paused for a moment, “of you, Miss Bennet.”
Jane began colouring, and she demurely professed not to know his meaning, though she knew it very well; and if she did not encourage him further in that moment, it was only because her heart had not yet caught up to the swiftness of her good fortune to find such a delightful gentleman, and wanted a little time to believe in it.
She did not want long. Within a month of that first dinner, which was a month that Jane would afterward look back upon as the happiest and most bewildering of her life, Mr. Bingley waited upon Mr. Gardiner one morning with a gravity of purpose that made that gentleman set aside his correspondence at once, and came away from the interview to find Jane in the small back parlour, alone, and looking as though she had been crying, though she was smiling besides.
"Miss Bennet," he began, and then, abandoning whatever speech he had planned, said only, "Jane. I think you must know why I am here."
She did know; and being asked, she found she could give but one answer, and gave it without the smallest hesitation she might once have thought proper to affect.
“Yes, Mr. Bingley, I will marry you,” she replied, at first plainly, and then a smile suddenly adorned her face, unguarded in its brightness, and in that moment, Bingley understood himself to be the happiest man in England.
***
The news travelled to Longbourn by express, and threw the household into a species of uproar that only Mrs. Bennet, of all the persons then living, could be trusted to produce upon so short a notice.
She was, by turns, weeping, laughing, and demanding smelling salts she did not in the least require, declaring to anyone within hearing, and a good many who were not.
A rich young man, five thousand a year at the very least!
This sum was by her estimation alone, and she would not be persuaded it was a farthing less.
And, by my own Jane! My most deserving girl, secured before the season was half over, she thought triumphantly, before sharing the same speech out to all the household.
Mrs. Bennet then took to her sofa in transports of joy that lasted the better part of two days, interrupted only by fresh new details of the courtship that were recalled to her in letters from Jane and Mrs. Gardiner, and by a steady stream of instructions, dispatched by post, as to Jane’s new trousseau.
Mr. Bennet, on the other hand, received the intelligence with more composure, remarking to Elizabeth, his second daughter and the only member of the family whose judgment he generally trusted above his own, that he was glad of it, and gladder still that it had happened at such a comfortable distance, so that he had been spared the spectacle of the courtship and might enjoy only the relief of its conclusion.
And then, he asked Elizabeth in a dry tone, "Do you suppose he is a sensible man, this Mr. Bingley? Or only a rich one?"
"I cannot say, Papa, having never met him," retired Elizabeth, "though I have it on good authority from Mrs. Gardiner that he is very much in love, which your daughter Jane assures me is of all its own sense."
Mr. Bennet lifted his eyebrows slightly, in his own teasing way. "Then I shall reserve judgment until I have seen whether it survives an acquaintance with your mother."
Elizabeth smiled keenly, knowing the teasing nature of her father, and said simply, “Very well, Papa.”
Not a day later, and much to the delight of Mrs. Bennet, it was settled, in the correspondence that followed, that Mr. Bingley should take Netherfield Park, a lease he would have, for they would marry in Meryton, and reside in the country forthwith, so that Jane might be married from her own home, among her own family, as she wished, and that the new Mrs. Bingley might begin her married life within an easy distance of Longbourn and all she held dear.
Jane wrote to Elizabeth herself, eager to share the good news with her beloved sister:
My dearest Lizzy,
I can hardly believe my own happiness, and would not credit it in another, had I not proof of it every hour. He is everything good and amiable, and asks nothing of me but that I be as happy as he means to make me, which I think must be a very easy thing to be.
Mr. Bingley is to lease Netherfield Park again, so that I may be near Longbourn and my own dear family, and need not be parted from you all. Is it not very good of him? Oh, Lizzy, I am so happy I hardly know a sensible thing to say.
I only wish you were here to see it, and to tell me it is not a dream.
With all my love,
Jane
Elizabeth read Jane's letter by the parlour fire, and found she had rather more difficulty than she expected in keeping her countenance composed, for there was something in the sight of her sister's happiness, set down in Jane's own hand, that caught at her more than she had been prepared for, and she was obliged to read the last paragraph twice, her eyes not to betray her further than a simple smile ought.
She could tell Jane was in raptures, and she loved her sister better than any other creature living; and she knew that whatever awaited her at Netherfield now that Bingley meant to take it up, whatever society, whatever company, whatever consequence it might bring in its train, it could hold nothing so precious to her as the sight of Jane, at last, secure in a happiness so entirely her due.