Chapter Nine #5
“She knows that a suitable connexion is being sought,” Lady Catherine said.
“She was not told your name. She has not been consulted on the particulars, because Lady Caroline and I judged it better to establish first whether there were particulars worth consulting her upon.” A brief pause.
“Her mother has made it clear—clearly enough that I do not doubt her—that she will not be compelled into a marriage she finds intolerable. Lady Caroline has made it equally clear that she will not permit her daughter to be placed in a situation against her will. I tell you this,” she added, with a directness that was almost, in its way, a form of respect, “because I think it will weigh with you rather more than the forty thousand.”
“It does,” James said.
He said it quietly, but not lightly; and Lady Catherine, who missed very little, appeared to understand that he had answered not merely as a prudent man, but as one to whom the thought of Miss Eliot’s unwillingness was intolerable in itself.
Lady Catherine gave a short, satisfied nod. “I thought it would.” She picked up her cup, found it had cooled, and set it down again without visible irritation.
“You will dine with us this evening. Lady Caroline and Miss Eliot will be present. You will have the opportunity to form your own assessment, and she will have the opportunity to form hers. I ask only two things of you: that you approach the evening without prejudice, and that whatever conclusion you reach, you reach it honestly. I have no use for a reluctant party to this arrangement, and neither does Miss Eliot.”
For the first time since entering the room, the prospect before him altered slightly in character: it ceased, for a moment, to resemble an arrangement only, and took on something of the uncertainty—and the interest—of a personal concern.
Lady Catherine rose, indicating, with the finality of a woman who had said what she came to say, that the interview was concluded.
“I shall expect you both and Mrs. Collins at seven.”
James rose. Collins rose beside him, with rather more haste and rather less grace.
Mr. Collins drew a breath of such evident satisfaction that it was almost audible.
“A most—a most distinguished connexion,” he said, with the reverence of a man contemplating something that exceeded his usual vocabulary.
“The Eliot family—the elevation to the earldom—the fortune—I confess, Mr. Bennet, that when Lady Catherine first did me the honour of consulting me in this matter, I was—I was quite overwhelmed by the generosity of the opportunity she was proposing to extend to—”
“Collins,” Lady Catherine said sharply.
“Yes, your ladyship?”
“Mr. Bennet is thinking.”
Mr. Collins closed his mouth with the immediate compliance of a man who had learned, over many years, that Lady Catherine’s instructions were not suggestions.
James was, in fact, thinking.
He was thinking about the precision of Lady Catherine’s arguments, and about the word respectable, which he suspected was coming, and about the fact that Collins’s presence in this room was not accidental.
Collins was here as a witness—a man whose enthusiasm for the match was genuine and whose endorsement, however artless, carried a particular kind of social weight: the weight of a man who knew James, who vouched for him, and who would, if required, confirm to anyone who asked that the arrangement had been entered into openly and with full propriety.
“The fortune,” Lady Catherine said, redirecting the conversation with the ease of long practice, “is forty thousand pounds. I do not imagine that a man in your position would consider that an irrelevance.”
“No,” James agreed. “It is not irrelevant.”
“It would permit the purchase of an estate of some consequence. A property of the size of Longbourn, or larger, could be acquired without difficulty.” She allowed that to settle, and then continued, with the measured confidence of a woman who knew which argument to place last: “Your brothers would benefit from the connexion no less than yourself. The doors that open to a man allied with the Eliot family are not the doors that are presently open to the heir of Longbourn—and I say this not as a reproach, Mr. Bennet, but as a statement of fact which I believe you are too sensible to dispute.”
James did not dispute it.
Collins, who had been following the financial argument with the expression of a man watching a sum being calculated and finding the total gratifying, could not entirely contain himself.
“Forty thousand pounds,” he repeated, in a tone of quiet reverence.
“And the connexion with the Eliot family—and the prospect of the earldom—and Lady Catherine’s own personal interest in the matter—I confess, Mr. Bennet, that I cannot conceive of a more—a more —” He searched for the word.
“Advantageous,” he concluded, with the satisfaction of a man who had found it.
“Lady Caroline’s connexions,” Lady Catherine continued, as though Collins had not spoken, “extend throughout the highest circles of society. She is a woman of great warmth and considerable influence, and she has expressed herself with a degree of personal regard for this match that goes beyond mere arrangement. She is not a woman who would entrust her daughter’s future to a man she did not believe capable of deserving it. ”
Lady de Bourgh paused, and then said, with the air of a woman placing her final card with deliberate care:
“Your family, Mr. Bennet, has always been considered most respectable in the county. It is a family of good character and sound principles. I have no hesitation in saying that the connexion I propose would reflect credit upon it.”
Respectable. The word settled in the room.
James heard it as it was intended—as a compliment that was also a calculation: respectable enough to silence gossip, and not so powerful as to create difficulties.
He was not so vain as to resent it, nor so unworldly as to misunderstand it.
Lady Catherine was telling him, in the language of her class, that he was exactly the right kind of man for exactly this kind of arrangement.
Collins, for his part, received the word respectable with the expression of a man who had been paid a compliment by association and intended to enjoy it.
“A man who closes his mind before he has examined the question,” Lady Catherine said, with a calm that was its own form of pressure, “is not the man I took you for.”
James looked at her steadily.
“I will dine with you this evening,” he said.
Lady Catherine’s expression did not change, but something in it settled—the particular satisfaction of a woman whose arrangements were proceeding as intended.
“Excellent,” she said. “We dine at seven.” She rose from her chair with the unhurried authority of a woman whose movements were never hurried.
James rose and bowed.
He was at the door when her voice reached him, carrying the quality of a final remark that had been prepared in advance and delivered as though it were an afterthought.
“Mr. Bennet.”
He turned.
“I should be exceedingly surprised,” Lady Catherine said, with a calm that contained everything she had not said, “to discover that I had mistaken your character.”
Collins, standing beside James, nodded with such vigorous agreement that his agreement was almost a separate statement.
James held Lady Catherine’s gaze for a moment and then inclined his head once.
Lady Catherine paused and looked at him—not with warmth, precisely, but with the particular regard of a woman who had placed her confidence in a judgment and found it, thus far, justified.
“Mr. Bennet,” she said. “I have managed a great many things in my life, and I have learned that the things most worth managing are the ones that cannot, in the end, be managed at all—only arranged, and then left to find their own resolution.” A brief pause.
“I believe this may be one of those things. I hope I am right.”
He thought about an earldom, and open doors, and the particular arithmetic of a man who had always known the precise dimensions of his own situation.
And, against all such calculations, he found himself thinking also of a pair of grey eyes that had looked at him with composure first, and curiosity after.
***
They returned from Rosings a little before noon, Collins in a state of animated satisfaction that expressed itself in continuous commentary, and James in a silence that Collins interpreted as thoughtful appreciation and which was, in fact, something considerably more complicated.
Mrs. Collins was in the parlour when they came in.
She looked up from her work, and her gaze went to James first—not to Collins, who was already speaking—and what she read in his face caused her to set aside her sewing and reach for the teapot with a quiet deliberateness, as though she were giving him a moment before the conversation found him.
Collins required no such moment.
“My dear Mrs. Collins,” he said, settling into his chair with the gravity of a man delivering a considered judgement, “I think I may say, without fear of contradiction, that the visit has exceeded all expectation. Lady Catherine was in particularly fine form. The terms in which she spoke of the proposed connexion between our cousin and Miss Eliot, daughter of a baron, were such as to leave no doubt that she considers it a matter of the highest importance.” He accepted his cup with the satisfaction of a man who has earned it.
“Lord Eliot’s family is one of the most distinguished in the southern counties.
His lordship’s elevation to the earldom is expected before the year is out.
And the daughter’s dowry—forty thousand pounds, Charlotte. Forty thousand.”