CHAPTER 5
One Happiness and One Scheme
Though Mr. Collins remained as tiresome as ever, and increasingly persuaded of his own welcome, the Netherfield ball now approached so nearly that Longbourn had scarcely leisure to be oppressed by one anxiety at a time.
This, for Mrs. Bennet, was a great blessing; for she liked her hopes numerous and her agitation divided, and found no condition of life more trying than having only one triumph to think of at once.
Jane’s engagement was not yet formally hers, but so nearly hers that Mrs. Bennet had already begun to treat it as a piece of family plate merely awaiting delivery.
Lydia had a bonnet. Kitty had ribbons enough to feel herself in society before entering it.
Mary had gloves, a newly tuned pianoforte behind her, and the uneasy suspicion that improvement, once begun, might require evidence of itself.
Elizabeth had a gown, a headache, and Mr. Collins.
Of these, only the second was wholly new.
The day of the ball was spent much as days of public expectation generally are: in waiting for an evening by making the whole house unfit for daylight.
Mrs. Bennet went from room to room in a state of excited disorder, lamenting time while losing it.
Jane was commanded to stand still, sit down, turn about, not look pale, not look anxious, not look too resigned, and above all not to crush the gown which had become, in Mrs. Bennet’s mind, almost as important as the gentleman it was meant to encourage.
Lydia had practised before the glass with an industry she would have denied under oath.
The improvement was not large; there had not been time for largeness.
But she had learned that shoulders might be considered before entering a room, and that a turn, repeated often enough, could be made to seem intentional.
She was now eager to prove both discoveries before officers.
Kitty’s ribbons were arranged, rearranged, condemned by Lydia, defended by Kitty, and finally settled by Elizabeth, who had no great claim to expertise in ribbons except that she had paid for them.
During one interval of neglect, Kitty had been discovered with a corner of drawing-paper covered in something that might have been a horse, had the legs been better acquainted.
When Elizabeth noticed it, Kitty folded the paper away at once.
“It is nothing,” she said. “Only Lieutenant Carter’s story about the stables.”
Lydia glanced over and laughed. “That horse looks as if it has eaten the stable.”
Kitty coloured and put the paper into her reticule.
Elizabeth did not laugh. She only remembered that Kitty had asked whether drawing might be included among the improvements, and wondered whether some occupations were safest when not discovered too early.
Mary professed calm superiority to all such vanities and nevertheless put on her gloves twice before dinner to assure herself they had not turned frivolous in the interval.
Jane, who had the best right to tremble and the least inclination to display it, moved quietly through the house with a sweetness that made Mrs. Bennet alternately bless her and command her not to look so resigned, as resignation was a face no woman should wear to a ball if she wished to be asked twice.
Longbourn, for one evening, had the appearance of having been taken in hand by someone with money, taste, and no leisure for argument.
Jane’s gown was the triumph: soft, pale, and so becoming that even Mrs. Bennet was silenced for nearly four seconds by the justice of it.
Lydia’s bonnet turned whenever she did, which was often.
Kitty’s ribbons fluttered with anxious diligence.
Mary’s gloves were sober, excellent, and worn with the gravity of an experiment.
Elizabeth herself was the least adorned among them. Her gown was dark, good, and quietly cut; it did not solicit admiration, which was one of its better qualities. Mrs. Marwood would have approved it for that reason alone.
Mrs. Doddridge hooked, folded, fastened, and vanished.
Pom-Pom had been denied the ball on the grounds that Netherfield contained too many feet, too much music, and no hearth over which he possessed hereditary rights.
He had spent the afternoon in injured disbelief because his own evening coat could not accompany him, and was at last left behind under the care of Mrs. Doddridge, the servants, and a strict warning that if any creature in the house presumed to upset his basket, he was to be permitted the full expression of his feelings.
“You are fortunate,” said Elizabeth, stooping to settle the edge of his wrapper before she left. “You may dislike everyone from a distance. I must go and do it in person.”
Pom-Pom sneezed into her hand with such conviction that she nearly took it for assent.
The departure required almost as much management as the dressing.
Mrs. Bennet, who had first supposed that all her daughters, her husband, Mr. Collins, wraps, fans, smelling salts, and expectations might somehow be compressed into the Longbourn carriage by maternal will, was forced at last to acknowledge the superiority of wheels over hope.
Elizabeth’s carriage stood waiting behind the family’s, dark, well-sprung, and self-possessed, with its matched bays looking as if they had never listened to Mrs. Bennet in their lives and did not mean to begin.
“I shall take Jane and Mary,” said Elizabeth.
Mrs. Bennet turned. “Mary?”
“She is dressed, Mama. It would be a pity to waste so much solemn equipment in the other carriage.”
Mary looked uncertain whether to accept this as compliment.
Jane, who understood the rescue beneath the arrangement, gave Elizabeth a grateful look and said nothing.
Mr. Collins, however, advanced toward Elizabeth’s carriage with his hat already in hand.
“I had hoped,” said he, “that I might be permitted the honour of attending you, Miss Elizabeth, if such an arrangement should be convenient.”
“It would not be convenient, Mr. Collins.”
He blinked. “I should be most unwilling to inconvenience—”
“Then you must not.”
Mrs. Bennet cried, “Lizzy, surely there is room.”
“For ladies,” said Elizabeth. “It is a ladies’ carriage tonight.”
It was not, strictly speaking, a law of nature. It was better: it was a form of propriety Mr. Collins could not dispute without ceasing to profit by it.
He bowed, injured but unable to say so, and withdrew to the Longbourn carriage, where Lydia’s expression of delight did nothing to soothe him.
The two carriages set out.
Elizabeth’s was quiet for almost half a mile, which was not a condition she associated with any journey involving Longbourn.
Mary sat opposite with her gloved hands folded and an expression of serious preparation, as if she were being conveyed not to a ball but to an examination in female conduct.
Jane sat beside Elizabeth, beautiful enough to make candlelight seem an unnecessary extravagance, and nervous enough to keep smoothing one finger over the seam of her glove.
“Are you afraid?” Elizabeth asked, once Longbourn’s lights had fallen behind them.
Jane looked down. “A little.”
“Of Mr. Bingley?”
“No,” Jane said at once, and then smiled in a way that made the darkness of the carriage feel suddenly less close. “Never of him.”
Elizabeth said nothing.
“I am afraid of being looked at,” Jane continued. “Of Mama hoping too loudly. Of everyone knowing before there is anything to know. But when he speaks to me, I forget them for a moment.”
“That is a serious recommendation.”
Jane’s blush was visible even by the carriage lamp. “It is a happy one.”
Mary, after a pause in which she appeared to be weighing whether happiness could be allowed to pass unexamined, said, “Public felicity is often less tranquil than private satisfaction.”
“That is true,” said Elizabeth. “Though I hope tonight may contain both, in uneven quantities.”
Jane smiled and pressed Elizabeth’s hand once.
Netherfield was all light when they arrived.
The house, which had looked very well from without by day and better still from within by candlelight, now shone with that cheerful extravagance Mr. Bingley would always prefer to grandeur if given the choice.
Lamps burned in the hall. Candles multiplied themselves in mirrors.
Warmth rolled through the open doors with the smell of wax, flowers, damp wool, heated silk, and supper being guarded somewhere beyond sight.
Cloaks were shaken in the passage; footmen moved with trays; young ladies arrived with cold cheeks and anxious smiles; older ladies entered already prepared to judge the company, the music, and the punch.
Hertfordshire had come out in force. A ball at Netherfield, once promised, was the sort of event against which people prepared as if private character itself might be altered by good satin.
Mr. Bingley came forward almost immediately, and with a countenance so openly happy that Elizabeth, seeing Jane beside her, thought there could never have been a more unnecessary man than one who presumed to advise caution in such a case.
He had scarcely paid the common civilities of arrival before his whole attention flowed back toward Jane with the faithful absurdity of a stream determined to find one course only.
Miss Bingley, from a little farther off, received the Longbourn party with perfect grace and not one degree more feeling than was required.
Mrs. Hurst stood beside her, handsome, costly, and cool, her darker red hair arranged with a precision that did not quite conceal the watchful, dissatisfied sharpness Elizabeth remembered from Longbourn.
Miss Bingley’s eye passed over Jane’s gown and found, to its visible inconvenience, very little to correct.
Mrs. Hurst’s gaze travelled more idly over Lydia’s bonnet, Kitty’s ribbons, Mary’s gloves, and Elizabeth’s dress. Her manner suggested that if Longbourn had improved, it had done so in a way that made the improvement itself impertinent.