CHAPTER 5 #2
Elizabeth saw, with amusement unsoftened by affection, that Miss Bingley had not forgotten Lord Pomington, though Lord Pomington himself, happily for her composure, was absent.
There remained in Miss Bingley’s address that slight care with which one meets a woman who may be entirely respectable and yet have once named a hideous dog as if announcing a peer.
The dancing began.
For one brief quarter of an hour, all went as such evenings ought.
Jane and Mr. Bingley stood up together. Lydia’s bonnet justified every shilling spent upon it by turning as often as possible in candlelight, and Lydia herself, though as bright and bold as ever, did once remember her shoulders before remembering to look for officers.
Kitty’s ribbons acquitted themselves with fluttering diligence, and Kitty, after one bright glance toward Lieutenant Carter near the door, attempted to look as if she had not been watching for him.
Mary, though not one of the first drawn into the floor, bore her gloves with a gravity that made them seem more improving than ornamental.
Mrs. Bennet glowed in a state nearly phosphorescent.
Then Mr. Collins approached Elizabeth.
He did so with the air of a man advancing upon an understanding already formed.
“Miss Elizabeth,” said he, bowing with solemn animation, “I trust I may now solicit the honour of your hand for the next two dances.”
Elizabeth turned to look at him fully.
“I thank you, Mr. Collins, but I am not at liberty for those dances.”
“Then perhaps the next?”
“Nor the next.”
“You are much engaged.”
“I intend to be.”
There was in his face for one short moment the expression of a man approaching reality and then, by some exertion of vanity, avoiding it.
“You are playful.”
“I am occupied.”
“Then I shall hope for a more fortunate opening later in the evening.”
“You may hope for anything you like, sir. Hope is not within my governance.”
Had he possessed either wit or humility, he might have stopped there. But Mr. Collins had been encouraged too long by his own interpretation of the world, and was now in that condition of masculine self-satisfaction which treats plain refusal as only another species of female ornament.
He bowed and withdrew, not wisely, but not yet defeated.
Elizabeth secured the next available officer who approached with a bow sufficiently civil and no obvious attachment elsewhere. He was a very ordinary young man, with a tolerable face and not enough conversation to become an inconvenience. That was all she required.
The set was not delightful. It was, however, free of Mr. Collins, and therefore possessed one excellence beyond criticism.
He did not recover in the direction of understanding.
He recovered in the manner most natural to him: by deciding that Miss Elizabeth’s unusual frankness was only another proof of spirit, and that spirit, if properly guided, would make her more rather than less desirable in a wife.
He attached himself afterward to the edge of her orbit with undiminished confidence, speaking to her when possible, bowing when not, and looking at her during country dances with the fixed self-approval of a man who has privately resolved what another person ought to feel.
It was not merely that he pursued her. It was that everyone who noticed seemed to understand pursuit as a thing Elizabeth ought, sooner or later, to justify by yielding to it.
That was the first moment in the evening when the room, for all its candles and music, felt suddenly too crowded.
She stood near a pillar between sets, with heat at her back from the press of bodies and a draft at her ankles from the hall door, and saw herself reflected in one of the long mirrors: a young woman in a very good dark gown, surrounded by neighbours who knew just enough of her fortune to turn it into drawing-room material and not enough to understand her freedom.
Laughter rose behind her. A fiddle began again.
Across the room, Jane smiled at Mr. Bingley as if no house could ever be too crowded while he stood in it.
Elizabeth was glad for her. Truly glad.
She was also, for one clear instant, lonelier than she had expected to be in company.
“It is quite hopeless,” she said under her breath, when she found herself momentarily beside Jane between sets.
Jane gave her a look half troubled, half affectionate. “He will surely understand in time.”
“My dear Jane, any man who can hear me refuse him plainly and yet survive it into renewed optimism is not to be defeated by time alone.”
“You were very direct.”
“I meant to be.”
“That was plain.”
“Yes. I have heard such plainness praised in sermons. I now wish to see whether it succeeds in life.”
Jane smiled, though with visible reluctance. “I cannot wholly approve.”
“No. That is why you are beloved and I am merely pursued.”
Jane would have answered, but Mr. Bingley was already back beside her, and one glance at his face made all further exchange unnecessary.
He was, Elizabeth thought, so evidently happy that one might have tied bells to him and sent him through the room with less noise than his countenance already made to any eye capable of reading it.
The evening advanced.
Mr. Bingley danced with Jane again. He walked with her between sets. He found her where she was not, and when she was where he expected, he looked relieved as though the universe had once more justified itself. Mrs. Bennet began to lose all command over the arrangement of her own features.
Lydia and Kitty, fed by music and scarlet, passed into states of giddy extravagance from which only marriage or sleep could have recovered them.
Lydia’s first set proved that instruction had not subdued her, but had at least given her spirits a better road on which to run.
Kitty danced once with Lieutenant Carter and returned from it in a glow, not of romance exactly, but of having been listened to while she spoke of his father’s stables.
Later, Elizabeth saw her touch the reticule where the folded scrap of horse-drawing lay, as if to be sure it had not deserted her.
Mary, after a pianoforte was thrown open later in the evening, was induced to perform. She came to it with more courage than ease, and with a seriousness Elizabeth could not help respecting, even while she wished it had chosen a smaller audience.
The piece was solemn. Very solemn. It had, Elizabeth suspected, been composed either for a cathedral, a death-bed, or a young lady determined not to be accused of frivolity.
Mary attacked it with such conscientious energy that the first minute silenced the nearest conversation, the second confused it, and the third began to oppress it.
This would have been endurable in a drawing room after tea. It was less happily suited to a ball, where the company had been warmed by dancing, supper was approaching, and half the room wished to be lively without being made to feel inferior for it.
Elizabeth watched the first smiles begin — not kind ones, and not yet openly cruel, but the sort that gather when a young woman is in danger of displaying more sincerity than judgment. That was enough.
She crossed to Mary as the movement ended and touched her lightly on the shoulder.
“Mary,” she said quietly, “that was very seriously done.”
Mary flushed. “I had meant to continue.”
“I know. But music requires more than execution. It requires occasion.”
Mary looked at her, uncertain whether she had been praised or corrected.
Elizabeth softened her voice. “Another room, another hour, and I shall hear the rest with attention. But a ball is not a sermon, and they are not in a temper to deserve your best solemnity.”
Mary’s mouth tightened. “Then I ought to choose something lighter?”
“Or something shorter,” said Elizabeth. “Taste is often knowing which mercy is required.”
Mary rose, still grave, still offended, but not exposed; and Elizabeth took her place only long enough to turn the room.
She chose something bright, brief, and easy to forgive.
It had no great ambition beyond restoring spirits, and in that it succeeded perfectly.
Conversation loosened; a few young people drew nearer; one of the officers asked whether the next dance might soon begin; and the room, which Mary had brought into solemn order, remembered itself a ballroom again.
Elizabeth did not linger for applause. The moment the piece ended, she yielded the instrument to a young lady who had been waiting with visible efficiency to exhibit, and who approached the bench with the satisfied air of one who had already selected three songs, two airs, and the proper degree of reluctance.
Elizabeth left her to it with gratitude.
There are few mercies greater than a performer who wishes to perform when one wishes to stop.
Mary, still standing nearby, said after a moment, “I was not finished.”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “That was the risk.”
But she said it softly, and Mary, though offended, did not look wounded.
Miss Bingley watched all with the polished self-command of a woman too well-bred to protest events she disliked before they were irreversible.
Yet even her self-command could not disguise a certain tightening of manner whenever Mr. Bingley’s attention to Jane became too marked to be explained away as ordinary civility.
She attempted, once or twice, to reclaim him into safer channels of company.
He escaped her each time with all the unconscious ingratitude of a man in love.
Mrs. Hurst took a lazier view of disappointment. She did not like Jane better for being admired, but she liked exertion too little to oppose what Caroline could resent for both of them.
Mr. Collins, unfortunately, liked exertion very much when it took the form of perseverance misapplied.