Chapter 5 #2
“Well, I suppose I must open these eventually,” Mr Bingley sighed after a time, reaching for his letters. “Will you excuse me, Miss Bennet? Darcy is setting me such an example over there that I feel a complete idler. Pemberley business never has to wait more than a day, you know.”
“Why put off what must be done?” Darcy commented, showing that he had perhaps been listening all along and was only too busy or disinterested to join in the conversation; likely both. “It only wastes time.”
“You see? Whether Darcy or my sisters, I can never quite match up,” added Mr Bingley with a smile that seemed equally composed of jest and resignation. “Still, I must try.”
“I will leave you gentlemen to your letters,” Elizabeth returned, adding a bookmark to her book and standing. “It is time that I checked on Jane’s progress again, in any case.”
As she strolled through the hallway towards the stairs, Elizabeth could not help overhearing a conversation between Louisa Hurst and Caroline Bingley.
While spoken in whispers at the far end of the hallway near the retiring room, the excitement in their voices made their words audible, and the whispering tone only carried them further and made them more interesting.
“Penelope says that it has been all over London, Caroline,” said Mrs Hurst. “There can be no mistake about that much.”
“But I cannot believe it, Louisa,” replied Miss Bingley. “Surely such a fact must have come to light earlier if it had any basis. He is eight-and-twenty.”
“Well, there is no proof, of course, but when so many people are saying the same thing, it does make you think, doesn’t it?”
“Mr Darcy does not look like, well, you know what I mean,” Miss Bingley added dubiously, apparently not wanting to believe whatever her sister was telling her, but struck enough to consider it. “He has such natural authority and intelligence.”
Shaking her head ruefully, Elizabeth continued quietly up the stairs. So, the rumours that the King family had picked up in London about Mr Darcy were still circulating and had now been shared with Mr Bingley’s sisters.
“Nevertheless, I feel we must consult all our friends in London and Derbyshire and ask as many as possible what they think of it all. I would not want you to put yourself in an awkward position in the future, Caroline.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Louisa,” Miss Bingley said with pretended innocence. “Still, you are right that we should make further inquiries and learn what we can. I shall write to Miss Eddington and Lady Stallworth this afternoon, if you will get in touch with the Carltons.”
Elizabeth laughed to herself at Caroline Bingley’s hypocrisy and posturing before Mr Darcy over the wickedness of idle gossip while participating so fully in the spread of the very rumours that were likely on his mind, but her laughter did not last long.
Mr Darcy now found himself in a position that was no laughing matter.
While Elizabeth still retained her dislike of Mr Darcy for his behaviour at the Meryton assembly rooms and his slighting of her neighbourhood, it was tempered by sympathy.
At least Elizabeth and Jane would soon escape back to Longbourn.
Mr Darcy, meanwhile, would remain cooped up at Netherfield Park with Bingley’s sisters and Mr Hurst for company.
She supposed he might return to London or Pemberley if he wished, but with such horrible gossip circulating about him, these familiar places might be the very ones he most wished to avoid.
∞∞∞
“How fine it is to be home!” Elizabeth remarked with feeling, throwing herself onto the long sofa in Longbourn’s parlour with a loud sigh of contentment. “How glad I am to escape Netherfield Park!”
Mrs Bennet cast her second daughter a disapproving glance and returned to fussing over Jane, who was now settled in an armchair by the fire, wrapped in blankets, with a soft pillow at her head.
“Escape Netherfield Park? What a thing to say, Lizzy, when no one ever even asked you to go over there in the first place. Mr Bingley’s sisters would have taken good care of Jane without your interference, I dare say.”
“I was very glad of Lizzy’s company,” Jane said quickly in Elizabeth’s defence. “She nursed me well, and I would not have wanted to impose any more on Mrs Hurst or Caroline Bingley than I had to.”
“Of course, my dear Jane. Quite right, too,” said her mother. “Now, you must tell me everything about your stay. What did the ladies wear? How many courses do they generally eat at supper? How often did you see Mr Bingley?”
“I was sick in bed, Mama,” Jane reminded her excitable parent. “I largely ate light soups and bread. I do not really know what the ladies wore, only that they were kind to me and came to sit with me for a part of every day.”
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…” muttered Mr Bennet from his own chair, opposite to Jane, although it was unclear whether this remark pertained to the return of his two eldest daughters, the comments of his wife, or the letter he was presently reading.
They all looked to him, but no further comment was immediately forthcoming.
“I can answer some of your questions about Netherfield Park,” Elizabeth offered. “Mr Bingley is as amiable a gentleman as you could wish for a neighbour, and so attentive to Jane.”
“Lizzy!” protested her sister. “Do not make it out to be more than it is.”
“I am not. Mr Bingley asked frequently about Jane’s health without any prompting and could not do enough for her every day of our stay. Is a single word of that untrue?”
Jane shook her head, unable to deny any of the facts, only Elizabeth’s construction of them. Mrs Bennet clapped her hands delightedly.
“I knew it from the first time I saw you dancing together, Jane. What a model young man he is! How glad I am that you fell sick in his house!”
“Mother!” Jane and Elizabeth protested together.
“You know what I mean, Jane. Naturally, I do not wish you ill, but if you were going to be sick, it had best have been at Netherfield Park where it might be useful.”
“Dear me…Indeed…” muttered Mr Bennet, again drawing the eyes of the ladies, but without clarifying either the purpose or meaning of his words.
“Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley dress every day as though they were going out to call on a duchess,” Elizabeth then said, intending to lead her mother down roads that would not distress Jane.
“Silks, satins, brocade and feathers for family suppers. If I could draw, I would have sketched them for you, Mother.”
“Really? How fine,” Mrs Bennet sighed longingly. “I do like to dress well for supper myself, but what is the point when there is no one to appreciate it?”
She glared at her husband, although her crossness seemed wasted on him.
“That is how I feel,” Elizabeth said with a smile. “They dress for the appreciation of people who are not present. Perhaps Miss Bingley has other aims, too.”
“So she should,” responded Mrs Bennet approvingly, “as a handsome young woman with no husband yet. When Miss Bingley meets a suitor, she will be there in her silk evening dress with her hair nicely done, making refined conversation. Gentlemen will be more likely to come across you for the first time, Lizzy, in mud to your knees and with your hair in knots. What then, I ask you?”
“Gentlemen are not always swayed by the latest fashions and sophisticated manners of speech,” Elizabeth observed with a smile to herself as she thought of Caroline Bingley trying so hard, and with such futility, to endear herself to Fitzwilliam Darcy.
“Nor is every gentleman of fortune looking for a wife, whatever you believe, Mother.”
“You’re thinking of that unpleasant Mr Darcy, aren’t you?
” guessed her mother with one of her strange leaps of intuition, if not understanding.
“Well, if he slighted you or Miss Bingley at Netherfield, it is likely for the best, considering everything people are saying of him. I dare say he hasn’t the nerve to ask a lady for her hand with such a shadow over his name… ”
At this point, Mr Bennet folded his letter away with an ostentatious crackling of paper, and looked at his wife and eldest daughters over the top of his silver-rimmed spectacles.
“Before you return to the intolerable subject of Lady Lucas and Mrs King’s impossible powers of prognostication, my dear, I have some more mundane news to share,” he announced lugubriously.
“What is it, Father?” Jane asked anxiously, seeing the unhappy expression on his face. “Has something happened?”
“Not yet, although I know your mother looks forward often enough to the day when it will,” Mr Bennet sighed regretfully, drawing further worried looks from both Jane and Mrs Bennet.
Elizabeth, however, could see that he was only at his usual tricks and looked back at him steadily.
“Who was your letter from, Father?” she asked directly, and he smiled at her more naturally, pleased that at least one family member had the wit to discover him in his game.
“It is from my cousin Collins, who, as Mrs Bennet is so fond of saying, could turn you all out of here when I am dead.”
“Yes, yes, but what does he say?” demanded his wife, wringing her handkerchief and biting her lip at the very mention of this stranger who was so inextricably tied to her family and future. “What does Mr Collins say? Does he speak of the entail? Or his future intentions?”
“Well, you may ask him for yourself, dear Mrs Bennet, whether you might sleep a night or two in the barn after my demise. He is coming here to Longbourn next Tuesday!”
With a loud squawk of astonishment, horror, and anticipation, Mrs Bennet leapt to her feet and hurried away, shouting for Mrs Hill to immediately begin preparations for their guest.
“Dear me,” Mr Bennet said again as he watched his wife’s retreating back, his eyes only twinkling in the amused disapproval of Elizabeth’s expression. “I hope Mr Collins will prove sufficiently entertaining to warrant such fuss.”