CHAPTER 3 #3
“I believe, madam,” Elizabeth said, with steady civility, “that some matters are best borne with patience, until they demand otherwise.”
Mr. Bennet’s eyes rested on his daughter with quiet satisfaction.
Mr. Collins, however, grew visibly uneasy. “Your ladyship may depend upon it,” he said hastily, “that in all such considerations, your superior judgement will ever be our safest guide.”
Lady Catherine dismissed this with a slight motion of her hand. “We need not enlarge upon it. There are always arrangements to be made, and I expect them to be properly understood.”
As the conversation returned to safer subjects, Elizabeth felt more strongly the peculiar character of her hostess—a mixture of authority, habit, and unexamined certainty. Yet she was equally sensible that she must meet it with composure of her own.
Thus, though the splendour of Rosings and the consequence of its mistress might have imposed upon many, Elizabeth retained her self-possession; and, whatever trials their visit might yet produce, she resolved to observe them with that mixture of discernment and spirit which had seldom failed her before.
***
The tranquillity of the room was interrupted only by the discreet entrance of the butler, whose composed formality admitted of no uncertainty of purpose. At a slight inclination of Lady Catherine’s head, he announced, in a measured tone, that dinner was served.
The company rose and followed him to the dining room, where every arrangement spoke of order, consequence, and long-established authority.
Servants moved with practised exactness; chairs were placed without hesitation; and the table, already laid, reflected that mixture of splendour and regulation which left no doubt as to the habits of the house.
When they were seated, Lady Catherine, without preface and without delay, directed the attention of her guests as she chose.
“Mr. Bennet, Miss Bennet, you will permit me to present my daughter, Miss de Bourgh.”
Anne inclined her head with gentle civility. There was in her countenance a softness touched with fatigue; yet her smile, though faint, was sincere, and Elizabeth, struck by its quiet benevolence, returned it readily.
“And Mr. Wickham,” Lady Catherine continued, her tone unchanged, “who has lately undertaken the living at Hunsford.”
At the sound of his name, Mr. Wickham rose and bowed. His manner was easy, his address perfectly proper; yet there was a degree of measured restraint in both, as if nothing in his conduct were left to accident.
“I am honoured, sir—Miss Bennet,” Wickham said, with respectful composure.
Mr. Bennet inclined his head. “The obligation is ours, sir.”
Lady Catherine then proceeded, with the same unhesitating authority, to arrange her table.
“Mr. Bennet, you will sit between Mr. Collins and Mr. Wickham. Miss Bennet, you will take your place beside Miss de Bourgh.”
The arrangement admitted of no appeal. Lady Catherine herself retained her seat at the head of the table, from which she surveyed both company and service with attentive command.
The first course was served without confusion, and conversation followed; yet it did not proceed at random. If one spoke, it was with a sense of being heard; if another replied, it was with an awareness—however slight—of being observed.
Elizabeth, though attentive to her hostess, could not but examine the company more particularly.
Miss de Bourgh spoke little; yet her silence was not wholly unexpressive, and more than once Elizabeth thought she perceived in her a look of anxious reserve, quickly suppressed.
Once, as Mr. Wickham spoke across the table, Anne’s hand—resting lightly upon her glass—trembled almost imperceptibly, and she withdrew it at once, as though conscious of having betrayed more feeling than she intended.
Mr. Wickham, meanwhile, accommodated himself with apparent ease to the tone of the table.
If he spoke, it was with propriety; if he listened, it was with attention.
Yet Elizabeth observed that, before replying, he seemed, however slightly, to attend to Lady Catherine—as though her approbation, though unspoken, were not indifferent to him.
Mr. Collins, on the other hand, appeared divided between admiration and effort. The consciousness of his situation, joined to the presence of one who had supplanted him, gave an unusual stiffness to his manners, though he laboured to conceal it beneath expressions of satisfaction.
At length, Wickham addressed Elizabeth with measured politeness. “The neighbourhood of Hunsford, Miss Bennet, though modest in extent, affords, I believe, some agreeable prospects. Should you have any inclination to see more of it, I should be happy to be of use.”
“Your offer is very obliging, sir,” Elizabeth said, with a slight smile, attentive rather than decided, “and we shall hope to profit from your knowledge of the place.”
“Also, my first service will be held tomorrow,” Wickham continued. “It would give me great satisfaction if you and Mr. Bennet were present. It is always a comfort to begin among those disposed to judge kindly—though one must endeavour, of course, to deserve it.”
Mr. Bennet regarded him for a moment with quiet interest. “A fortunate beginning, sir,” he said. “Though I imagine kindness is most safely relied upon where it has not been previously engaged.”
There was the slightest pause, in which Wickham’s composure did not fail, though it appeared, for an instant, more carefully maintained than before.
“We shall consider it with pleasure,” Mr. Bennet added, as if nothing further had been intended.
There was a short silence, during which Mr. Collins seemed to collect himself with visible effort. At length, as if compelled alike by propriety and by his own sense of consequence, he spoke.
“Mr. Wickham,” Mr. Collins said, with studied composure, “I congratulate you upon your appointment.”
Wickham inclined his head. “You are very good, sir.”
The civility was correct; yet it admitted of no extension.
“I have always held,” Mr. Collins continued, with an earnestness which betrayed more exertion than ease, “that her ladyship’s judgement must be regarded with the highest deference; and whatever her decisions, they are undoubtedly guided by the most proper considerations.
I esteem myself fortunate in being received at Rosings under such distinguished patronage. ”
He concluded with a slight bow toward Lady Catherine, whose expression, for a moment, softened into something nearly resembling satisfaction.
“So we are entirely understood, Mr. Collins?” Wickham said, with calm attention.
“Perfectly so, sir,” Mr. Collins replied. “I harbour no resentment. A less reasonable man might have been otherwise disposed; but I am fully sensible of the honour of this occasion, and grateful for the reception afforded me here.”
He raised his glass slightly, in acknowledgment rather than display.
Throughout this exchange, Elizabeth could not avoid remarking that Mr. Wickham’s composure, though outwardly unbroken, was not entirely without vigilance; for more than once his attention returned, with quiet exactness, to Lady Catherine, as though her silence were itself a species of direction.
Lady Catherine, however, appeared satisfied that the proprieties had been observed.
Without comment, she resumed the regulation of the table; and under her authority, the forms of dinner proceeded with unbroken regularity, though not, perhaps, without a degree of restraint perceptible only to those inclined to remark it.
Elizabeth, who had listened more than she had spoken, found her attention less engaged by what was said than by what was implied.
There was, in the manner of Mr. Wickham, a composure too assured for mere recent success, and in that of Lady Catherine, a species of indulgence which seemed less the effect of caprice than of prior understanding.
More than once, she observed that his eye, however freely it moved, returned, with quiet exactness, to her ladyship—as though her approval were not to be presumed, yet already secured.
Miss de Bourgh, on the contrary, betrayed a sensibility which she did not command; for if her silence was habitual, there was now in it an uneasiness bordering upon shame, and her countenance, though gentle, wanted that tranquillity which belongs to unquestioned arrangements.
The removal of Mrs. Jenkinson, the sudden establishment of Mr. Wickham, and the undisguised composure with which he sustained his situation, could not, in Elizabeth’s judgement, be wholly accidental.
Without presuming to determine particulars, she could not but suspect that influence had been exerted where fairness had not been consulted; and though his manners continued to recommend him, they did so under a disadvantage which no elegance could entirely remove.
Her expectations, once favourable, were not yet relinquished—but they were no longer unexamined.
In this first evening at Rosings, nothing was declared, and yet much was revealed; for though the forms of civility remained unbroken, Elizabeth perceived that beneath them lay a disturbance not easily reconciled with the order the house professed to maintain.