The Longbourn Chaos
Elizabeth felt herself completely taken in.
She had fully proposed being engaged by Mr Wickham for those very dances; and to have Mr Collins instead!
Her liveliness had never been worse timed.
There was no help for it, however. Mr Wickham’s happiness and her own were perforce delayed a little longer, and Mr Collins’s proposal accepted with as good a grace as she could.
She was not the better pleased with his gallantry from the idea it suggested of something more.
It now first struck her, that she was selected from among her sisters as worthy of being mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors.
The idea soon reached to conviction, as she observed his increasing civilities toward herself, and heard his frequent attempt at a compliment on her wit and vivacity; and though more astonished than gratified herself by this effect of her charms, it was not long before her mother gave her to understand that the probability of their marriage was extremely agreeable to her.
Elizabeth, however, did not choose to take the hint, being well aware that a serious dispute must be the consequence of any reply.
Mr Collins might never make the offer, and till he did, it was useless to quarrel about him.
~
Elizabeth Bennet was frustrated beyond all measure.
The general silliness she endured before a local assembly was as nothing compared to what Longbourn suffered while preparing for a private ball.
Given how much Miss Bingley felt her superiority, the entertainment would either be the greatest triumph in decades or the most abject failure.
Ordinariness was not something she could abide.
The frustrations were doubled and trebled by the attentions of her odious cousin, Mr Collins.
It now seemed clear that Mrs Bennet claimed Jane was unavailable by prematurely predicting a match with Mr Bingley, or using some other excuse to imply that, heir or not, he was not worthy of her most beautiful daughter; but on the other hand, her most disobliging and annoying offspring had no such encumbrance.
The not-particularly-bright clergyman—under orders from the great-and-wonderful-and-benevolent Lady Catherine de Bourgh, to wed one of his cousins chosen at random within a fortnight—set his course accordingly.
He thought Elizabeth his for the asking, whilst she desperately tried to work out a way to politely let him know he had another think coming.
Having six ladies and two gentlemen stuffed into the Bennet coach was far from ideal; and that was even before her rather churlish assessment that a more accurate description would be two ladies, two women, two men, and two spoilt children.
If Mr Collins were a gentleman, he would have volunteered to ride.
Given his equestrian skills, that would likely have ended in an early solution to the problem of entail.
At the very least, any gentleman worth his salt would have sat with the coachman.
Alas, the cleric was not a man to pass up the chance to be stuffed in a coach cheek by jowl with such a bevy of beauties.
Things progressed about as one would expect for the first mile; Lydia, Kitty, and Mrs Bennet ceaselessly complaining, Mary moralising, Jane alternating between smiling complacently and looking agitatedly at her sister stuck next to their odious cousin, Mr Bennet looking on in amusement, and Elizabeth seething.
As they passed Meryton, things took a decidedly unpleasant turn, and Elizabeth was having none of it.
“Mr Collins! Remove your hand forthwith!” she snapped, and when he did not remove said appendage from her knee with sufficient alacrity, she smacked it sharply with her fan, lamenting its lack of sharp edges or protruding nails.
He cried out like a baby, while she seethed. “I expect better of a clergyman, and I strongly doubt Lady Catherine would approve of you manhandling a woman. You might eventually be a gentleman, so you should start behaving like one! Keep your hands to yourself!”
“My apologies, cousin,” he replied in the oily voice she had grown to detest, “my hand slipped.”
“If it slips again, I shall not be responsible for your fingers,” she snapped.
“Once again, I apologise; but, given our future, perhaps it is not quite so objectionable. Mayhap the lady doth protest too much.”
Jane gasped at his effrontery, while Lydia laughed aloud, and Kitty followed as usual. “La, Lizzy, that should be exciting.”
Elizabeth seethed and spoke emphatically while brandishing her fan like a club. “We have no potential future, save that of distant cousins!”
“Oh, I doubt that. I am fully convinced otherwise,” he blathered on, unaware of the impropriety of the topic, let alone his entirely baseless assertions.
“Do not doubt it!” she snapped. “You are, at this very moment, the closest you will ever be to me, and your hand will never touch my person again without damage.”
“Your modesty is most becoming,” he sneered with a sickening laugh.
She looked to her father, who viewed the altercation with obvious amusement.
“Do you plan to say something about this raging impropriety, sir?” she seethed.
“Do not be so missish, Miss Lizzy Bennet,” Mrs Bennet chimed in before Mr Bennet could speak. “Mr Collins has paid you particular attention, and I demand that you treat him with the proper courtesy and respect. You are lucky to have his approbation!”
“I am giving him all the courtesy and respect he has earned! In fact, my forbearance to date has been legendary, but it has limits.”
Moving her intense focus to the patriarch, she snapped, “Father—have you nothing to add, or is this just another amusing incident to you?”
“I agree with your mother for once, Elizabeth. This is no time to be missish. I doubt his movement was deliberate, and he has done naught but state his aspirations, which have not been all that subtle anyway.”
“And you encourage this?” she squeaked in extreme agitation.
“I feel no compulsion to interfere with every interaction between my grown daughters and their beaus,” he replied nonchalantly.
“In a gaggle like this I should spend all my time doing nothing else. Let the man do his wooing and make his application, then we shall see. I perceive no benefit to acting precipitously, since he may well turn his attentions on Lydia tomorrow.”
“Precipitously?” she squeaked. “The man accosted me in full view of my family! He has not even had the grace to apologise, and you call my reaction precipitous? How dare you!”
Her father gave her the first hard stare of her life, which she did not much care for.
“How dare I? I am your father. I have raised you from nothing. Everything you have comes from me. Mr Collins is simply engaged in the behaviour typical of a courting man, and I can assure you that I have seen worse. If he manages to work up his nerve to propose, I shall decide at the time how to answer.”
“It is more a matter of when than if, sir,” Mr Collins blathered.
“It might be difficult for a young lady—her mind weakened by her sex and shielded from the experience or knowledge of the world—to appreciate her luck. A young woman in such an unenviable position could never hope for such fortune as to be recognized by someone as illustrious as Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and there is no surprise she should be shocked! I give you leave to take your time coming to an understanding, Miss Elizabeth.”
Mrs Bennet could not resist such easy bait and chimed in right on schedule. “Yes, Mr Collins, all will be well. Lizzy will know her mind when the time comes, of that I assure you.”
Elizabeth looked back and forth between them, and Jane tried a sally.
“Mama, you must see that someone of Lizzy’s lively nature is not a good match for Mr Collins, or the life of a country parson. Not only that, but I doubt very much Lady Catherine would approve of her at all. He would be better satisfied to look elsewhere.”
“Are you volunteering?” Mr Bennet asked with a laugh.
Jane turned pale, but Elizabeth was in no humour to allow such nonsense to go unchallenged.
All her previous good feelings for her father had been wounded over the previous week, but they were dead and buried after the latest altercation; had she ever known him at all?
She had never especially enjoyed being called ‘silly and ignorant like other girls’ but had accepted it as the price of having a father that at least allowed her to learn.
There was, of course, no teaching mind you, but he at least did not bar her from his library.
She answered snappishly. “Jane is not for Mr Collins any more than I am.”
“Ah, but that is where you are wrong, cousin. I understand your delicate sensibilities and limited understanding have not prepared you for such good fortune, but it has arrived. You can hardly doubt the purport of my discourse. My attentions have been too marked to be mistaken. Almost as soon as I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of my future life.”
“There are two kinds of luck, and you represent the latter—the bad kind. Whilst you have actually done naught but suggest your aspirations, they do not come within a league of mine. Allow me the knowledge of my own mind, heart, and character. I could never make you happy, and you could most certainly never satisfy me. I urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to look elsewhere. If you propose, I shall decline!”
“La, Lizzy, who would have thought you would get such an offer, from a clergyman no less, on the way to a ball,” Lydia laughed and snorted indecorously as Kitty giggled along.
Having kept her fan in her hands after Mr Collins’ last assault, Elizabeth smacked Lydia on the knee. “Hold your tongue, you abominable wretch! This is not your business.”
Collins grumbled alarmingly, “When we are wed, you shall not use such crude devices. Lady Catherine would never approve.”