Chapter 11 #3
“Mr Collins offers all that I seek from a husband, Lizzy, and I am grateful for it. I want only security, a good character, and a social position in keeping with my family’s.
He is not a drunkard, a gambler or a brute, is he?
In his own way, Mr Collins is a principled man with good prospects.
My own prospects, by comparison, have been growing bleak. ”
“Oh, Charlotte!” Elizabeth exclaimed again, her face red and uncomfortable as she tried to come to terms with what she was hearing. “When I think of how I talked of Mr Collins to you, and the terms I used, and now you are to marry him. I am so sorry!”
“Do not be sorry,” Charlotte laughed now. “Congratulate me instead, and I shall forget every word. Mr Collins will give me the life I seek, even if he is not clever or interesting enough for your tastes.”
“Congratulations, in that case,” Elizabeth managed to say at last, pulling together her reeling mind. “If you are happy, then I am happy for you. And you are quite right that Mr Collins is a principled man and will make you a perfectly respectable husband, Charlotte. Are your parents pleased?”
“Pleased and relieved. They were both long resigned to me being an old maid, I think.”
“When did it happen? I really had no idea whatsoever.”
“Mr Collins proposed the very day that you refused him. Do you remember that I took him back to Lucas Lodge for luncheon? After that, we took him to the stagecoach in Father’s carriage.
It was so very clear that Mr Collins wanted a wife, and that any respectable young woman of good family would do.
It took very little to prompt him into a second proposal. ”
At this answer, Elizabeth could not repress a small giggle, although she tried hard to do so, unsure how Charlotte might receive her laughter. To her relief, Charlotte smiled back.
“Two proposals in one day,” Elizabeth remarked. “Mr Collins is a determined man when he sets his course, is he not?”
“Lady Catherine de Bourgh is determined that he ought to be married in order to set a good example in the neighbourhood,” Charlotte remarked. “Mr Collins could not do other than obey the edicts of his noble patroness, could he?”
The two young women giggled together at an observation at once so innocent, so true, and so absurd.
“Given your observation that any respectable young woman would have done, Mr Collins is fortunate that he fell into your hands, Charlotte,” Elizabeth told her friend, putting aside any lingering qualms about pragmatic and clear-thinking Charlotte taking such a husband.
“He can have no idea of the wisdom and good temper of the wife he is about to gain. I wish you both joy.”
“Thank you,” Charlotte accepted the compliment graciously. “I believe we have as much chance of happiness together as any other couple.”
“Now, let us continue our walk while the weather is good. As you will be married and established in Hunsford before the spring, we shall not have many more opportunities. I shall be the solitary old maid of the district before long, I suspect, and all the young girls will point to me as a cautionary tale.”
Standing and shaking herself down, Elizabeth held out an arm to Charlotte, who took it with a smile.
“Do you not wish to marry someday, Lizzy?” Charlotte asked curiously. “I understand that Mr Collins could not find favour with you, but is it marriage itself you reject?”
“Yes, no…I don’t know,” Elizabeth answered, laughing at her own indecision and then giving the question more serious thought. “If I were ever to marry, I must both love and respect my future spouse. If no man ever inspires those feelings, then I am content to be a spinster aunt to Jane’s children.”
“You have always been more romantic than me,” remarked Charlotte.
“Is love and respect really so much to ask?” Elizabeth asked. “It is not as though I am waiting for a knight on a white horse to rescue me from a dragon.”
Her friend shook her head.
“It is not so much to ask, but still more than some people get, despite their hopes and vows of love at the altar,” Charlotte replied. “Oh, who can say? Life can be very unpredictable, and sometimes people end up marrying the most surprising spouses and being happy together.”
“Just look at my own parents for a surprising match,” Elizabeth laughed. “They are like chalk and cheese. In their own way, they are happy together, I suppose, although each has disappointed the other. My mother has too little sense for him and my father too little heart for her.”
“Who would be the most surprising match for you, Lizzy?” Charlotte speculated with twinkling eyes. “How about old Mr Corbett of Threadington Hall? He has buried three wives, but the fourth may have better luck.”
“Mr Corbett is past eighty and can talk of nothing but pigs,” Elizabeth answered, as though giving the question serious consideration. “I fear my ignorance of the porcine world would prove an immovable obstacle in our courtship.”
“Then what about Sir Harold Beverley? An unmarried baronet of forty years and thrifty habits must be considered eligible, surely.”
“Any proposal would have to come from his mother, Lady Beverley,” pointed out Elizabeth.
“Sir Harold goes about everywhere with his mother and defers to her on all things. According to my Aunt Philips, Lady Beverley disapproves of my habit of tramping about the countryside by myself, so there can be no real hope in that quarter.”
“Dear me, you are very difficult to match, Lizzy. Let me see, what other surprising husbands might I find for you…Well, if he ever comes back to Netherfield Park, what about Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy with his ￡10,000 a year? He is neither old nor obsessed with pigs, and long orphaned, I believe.”
Elizabeth’s laughter died on her lips, and a strange, uncomfortable heat rose into her cheeks.
“No, not Mr Darcy,” she said quietly. “That would not do at all. Anyway, he would never have me, nor likely any other gentlewoman of Hertfordshire.”
“He danced with you at the Netherfield Park ball,” Charlotte pointed out, and Elizabeth felt her blush deepening with the memory of how surprisingly well Mr Darcy had danced, despite the circumstances and her own expectations. “I do not believe he danced with anyone else.”
“It was a most unexpected invitation,” Elizabeth murmured, recalling the sensation of her hand in his, and then his other hand at her waist, the sense of his height and broad shoulders, and even the faint woody scent of his cologne.
“Still, you accepted his invitation, and everyone thought you looked very well together,” commented Charlotte philosophically. “Might you not accept an equally unexpected proposal of marriage?”
Imagining herself as the wife of Fitzwilliam Darcy gave Elizabeth a different feeling entirely to imagining marriage to anyone else.
Unwillingly prompted by Charlotte, she visualised her hand in his at the altar rather than on the dance floor.
How very blue his eyes were, like a midnight sky…
Elizabeth shivered, despite all her wraps and the warmth of their exercise.
“Some things are more impossible than surprising,” she said firmly and then pointed down the slope from their path. “Come, I’ll race you down the hill!”
Picking up her skirts, Elizabeth ran swiftly away from Charlotte’s possible further questioning and her own unbidden response.