Chapter 3
Three
Mr. Bennet returned to Longbourn with no greater outward alteration than a degree of fatigue which he made no attempt to conceal—evident in the slight weariness about his eyes and the unhurried manner in which he relinquished his travelling coat to the servant—and a seriousness of manner which, though it passed unnoticed by his daughters in their cheerful bustle of welcome, was immediately perceived by his wife.
Mrs. Bennet, who had for the last few days been indulging herself in a variety of conjectures—none of them agreeable, and several bordering upon the catastrophic—concluded at once that Portsmouth had been every bit as dreadful as she had anticipated, and prepared herself, with a flutter of her cap strings and a quickened pulse, to hear of inconveniences, expenses, and perhaps even illness contracted amid the damp sea air.
She was therefore surprised—and not a little disconcerted—when her husband was at last seated opposite her in the parlor, the late afternoon light slanting through the windows and catching the dust motes in the quiet air, to find that he spoke not of roads or weather, sailors or inns, but of the young son of Cousin Collins.
“William Collins!” she bristled, in a tone which united astonishment with reproach, her hands clasping tightly in her lap as though to contain her rising agitation.
“I thought you went to Portsmouth to offer condolences, not to bring home relations! Upon my word, Mr. Bennet, one would suppose you meant to quarter the whole family upon us next.”
“I have no such ambition,” returned Mr. Bennet mildly, allowing the faintest trace of amusement to touch his lips, though his eyes remained serious, “nor, as you may observe, have I brought the boy with me. Nor have I any such power. I merely wish to inform you of a resolution I have taken—a resolution rendered necessary by circumstances you already know from the solicitor’s letter. ”
Mrs. Bennet drew herself up, her color heightening, and arranged her shawl with a decision which always preceded resistance.
“Necessary! And resolved! I knew it. I was certain the moment you spoke of staying longer than a day. There is always some resolution when you leave me to manage alone. And pray—what is it now? Do not tell me you mean to educate the boy. We have daughters, Mr. Bennet—five daughters—and not one of them provided for!”
Her husband, who had anticipated this reception with his customary foresight, bore it with patience, leaning back slightly in his chair and regarding her with that steady, half-veiled gaze she both resented and relied upon.
“I am perfectly aware of the size and composition of my family,” he said. “They have not escaped my notice. And I have reasons to believe he will become a fine clergyman, should his inclinations and abilities continue as they promise.”
“Then I cannot imagine,” Mrs. Bennet continued, warming with her subject and gesturing with increasing vehemence, “what you can be thinking of, to take upon yourself the expense of another man’s son—an innkeeper’s son, too!
—when we must look to our own future. What will become of me, and the girls, if you spend our income upon strangers?
I protest I shall not sleep a wink if this goes on—my nerves will be quite shattered, as you well know. ”
“You may sleep quite securely, I assure you,” replied Mr. Bennet, his voice calm and measured, offering the reassurance she craved even as he knew it would not immediately suffice. “The boy shall not cost you or the girls a shilling.”
Mrs. Bennet stared, her mouth forming a small circle of surprise before suspicion quickly reclaimed her features. “Not a shilling? Then how, in Heaven’s name, do you propose to make a clergyman of him?”
“By spending my own money,” said Mr. Bennet, “and by spending it in such a manner as to leave our household precisely as it was before—neither diminished in comfort nor altered in its prospects. The boy will be employed as a copyist; the small provision his mother left will suffice to improve his primary instruction; and he will not be without his father’s support. ”
This declaration did not immediately produce the tranquility he had intended; for Mrs. Bennet, though comforted by assurances of economy, was seldom satisfied without a full comprehension of particulars, and her mind, ever quick to foresee calamity, now turned to fresh apprehensions.
“Your own money!” she cried, rising half from her seat in her agitation.
“As if that were not the family’s money!
What difference does it make whether it is paid out of one pocket or another, when all must come to the same end?
And what return do we make upon it? Gratitude!
—I know what gratitude is worth. The moment the boy is settled, we shall be forgotten, I dare say, and laughed at for our folly. ”
“I do not propose to purchase gratitude,” said Mr. Bennet, with a faint, dry smile that acknowledged the justice of her worldly wisdom even as he dismissed it. “I propose to encourage merit—a quality I have observed in the boy, and one which his mother’s careful provision was intended to foster.”
Mrs. Bennet was not to be softened by so abstract a motive.
“Merit does not keep a roof over one’s head.
Nor does it secure husbands for daughters.
And what if he should marry? What if he should bring a wife and children upon us, and expect to be maintained, because we have once helped him?
Irresponsible as you are, you might die sooner than you should.
These schemes are all very well for men, who never think of consequences; but women must consider them—we have no choice but to consider them. ”
Mr. Bennet smiled faintly, though a shadow of genuine reflection passed across his countenance at her mention of his mortality. “You may spare yourself that anxiety. William Collins has no such expectations, and no such inclinations.”
“How can you be sure?” she demanded, her voice rising with renewed alarm.
“Because I have observed him,” returned her husband, his tone quiet but firm. “And because he has been taught, by circumstances rather than instruction, that obligation is not a claim, but a trust—a lesson hard won, and one that has formed his character more surely than any precept.”
Mrs. Bennet was silent for a moment, turning this over in her mind with reluctant consideration; but silence, with her, was rarely surrender.
“And what of the girls?” she resumed, her voice softening into a plaintive note.
“Am I to tell them that their father is educating a cousin while they must content themselves with nothing but hopes? They will think it the strangest thing in the world—and perhaps resent it, as young ladies are apt to do when their prospects seem overlooked.”
“They shall think what they please,” said Mr. Bennet, “provided they think it at home, and without expense. You know very well that I have been personally taking care of their education all these years, in my own fashion.”
Seeing that argument was unlikely to move her husband from a determination so calmly expressed, and perceiving at last the quiet resolve beneath his mildness, Mrs. Bennet had recourse to her last defense—prediction.
“You will repent it,” said she solemnly, fixing him with a look of prophetic certainty. “Mark my words—you will repent it.”
“That,” replied Mr. Bennet, rising with a slight bow that acknowledged the familiar ritual of their exchanges, “is a possibility I have already taken into account.”
***
If Mrs. Bennet’s opposition did not alter her husband’s purpose, it at least served to regulate it, impressing upon him with renewed force the necessity of proceeding with the utmost discretion.
He was resolved that no part of his design should encroach upon the visible comfort of his family—neither diminishing the customary allowances for pin-money nor occasioning any perceptible curtailment of household expenditures; and to this end he applied himself, with a diligence which few suspected him capable of—and which even he himself undertook with a private sense of surprise at his own perseverance—to the necessary arrangements.
He wrote first to those friends of his youth whose circumstances and dispositions he best understood—men with whom he had once read, disputed, and idled away many an hour at Cambridge; men who had since exchanged the frivolities of speculation for the sober pursuits of practice, and who now occupied themselves in the respectable spheres of scholarship, instruction, and the Church.
His letters were brief, unadorned, and free from entreaty, composed in his neat, economical hand and dispatched with a quiet hope that tempered his natural skepticism.
He stated the case as it stood: a young man of good character and moderate ability, with some modest provision of his own, in need of direction rather than indulgence; and he asked, not for charity, but for supervision.
If the boy proved worthy after a preparatory year, he would require further support of a kind which their old friend Bennet could—and assuredly would—provide.
To one of these letters he received, in due course, a reply which satisfied him more fully than he had dared anticipate.
The writer—Professor Saunders, an old acquaintance from his university days, now settled in quiet respectability at Oxford—expressed himself willing to receive the boy during his college terms, to lodge him under his own roof, and to assist him in his studies, upon terms which were neither lavish nor degrading, but framed with the plain honesty of a scholar who valued usefulness above display.
Mr. Saunders spoke of discipline, of regular hours, of plain living, and of expectations clearly defined; and though there was no warmth in his tone—no effusion of paternal solicitude—there was something better: steadiness, the calm assurance of a man whose own life had been ordered by principle rather than impulse.
Mr. Bennet answered at once, with a promptitude that betrayed his inward relief, and the matter was concluded after a few further exchanges of letters, each more confirmatory than the last.
It was then necessary to inform Richard Collins of what had been arranged.
Mr. Bennet wrote to him with that courtesy which costs little when it is unaccompanied by illusion, choosing his words with care to avoid any note of superiority or condescension, and explained, without reproach or apology, the plan for William’s instruction and eventual removal to Oxford, should he successfully remedy his deficiencies within the preparatory year.
He did not disguise the fact that the boy’s continued residence at the inn must then prove incompatible with his improvement; nor did he affect to believe that Richard’s circumstances would materially alter for the worse by his absence—indeed, hinting gently at the relief it might afford.
If there was pride to be wounded, it was spared; if there was indifference to be gratified, it was indulged.
Richard Collins returned a letter of confused gratitude and careless assent, scrawled in his uneven hand and bearing the faint stain of ink blurred by haste, in which he declared himself glad to be relieved of anxiety, and perfectly satisfied that the boy should be made something better than himself, provided he were not troubled with the details.
He added a brief postscript noting that young James Cox was proving a steady worker at the inn, laboring diligently both for his own support and to ease his friend’s path toward education—a circumstance that afforded Mr. Bennet a quiet satisfaction.
William was informed last of all, as befitted the principal party in the arrangement.
Mr. Bennet wrote to him with a directness which he had learned to value in others, and which he trusted would convey both authority and encouragement.
Mr. Bennet spoke of the opportunity now placed before the young man; of the absolute necessity of application; of the strict limits of the assistance offered; and of the expectation—neither more nor less—that he should conduct himself with propriety and diligence.
There was no language of affection, and no promise of indulgence; but there was, between the lines, that confidence which young men often feel more keenly than praise, a tacit belief in his capacity to rise to the occasion.
William’s reply, when it came, was short, but so earnest as to satisfy even Mr. Bennet, who was not easily impressed by professions, and who read it twice with a faint nod of approval.
He expressed his gratitude without effusion, his resolution without bravado, and his sense of obligation without servility—closing with a simple assurance that he would strive not to disappoint the trust reposed in him.
Thus, by degrees and without display, the plan took shape; and when at last Mrs. Bennet perceived—through the gradual accumulation of hints and the occasional abstracted air of her husband—that the business was settled beyond recall, she resigned herself to it with the air of one who submits to necessity while reserving the right to complain of it hereafter, though her complaints grew gradually milder, tempered by the reassuring knowledge that no immediate sacrifice would be demanded of her own comforts or her daughters’ prospects.