CHAPTER 6 #2
He drew himself up, injured into more dignity than nature had originally intended for him.
“I should have expected from a lady, and particularly from one not spoiled by great wealth, more gratitude for an offer so highly advantageous. You are, perhaps, unused to hearing your own interest stated with masculine impartiality. Women are not always the best judges of their future comfort. Your income, while no doubt comfortable, cannot compare with the permanent security which—”
“If Longbourn, Rosings, your living, Lady Catherine’s chimney-pieces, and the whole county were thrown into the bargain,” said Elizabeth, “I would not marry you. Do you understand me now?”
He opened his mouth.
And then his eye fell toward the hearth, where Pom-Pom, having slipped in behind some inattentive servant or perhaps by the direct intervention of Providence, stood in his morning wrapper like a malicious household spirit made visible.
Mr. Collins recovered, disastrously.
“I must urge you to consider, Miss Elizabeth, that in marriage a lady’s separate habits cannot remain wholly unregulated.
Certain indulgences of your present establishment would, of course, require alteration.
I could not, for instance, consent to the continued presence of that odious little animal in a household over which I must preside. ”
Elizabeth looked at Pom-Pom. Pom-Pom looked at Mr. Collins.
It was the first time all morning that perfect understanding had been achieved.
“The only odious creature in the room, sir,” said Elizabeth, “is yourself.”
Pom-Pom, from near the hearth, gave one low sound of complete agreement.
Then Elizabeth turned her head slightly and said, without raising her voice,
“Mrs. Doddridge, you hear how I am to be improved.”
Mr. Collins started.
He looked toward the window.
Mrs. Doddridge, still seated there with her work in her hand and her basket at her feet, raised her eyes with no more emotion than if she had been consulted on the weather.
“I hear it, miss.”
Mr. Collins paled.
The discovery shook him badly. He had not arranged a private future over tea and toast after all; he had performed the whole act before a respectable witness. Unfortunately, it did not make him wise.
“No,” said Elizabeth. “You have said enough. Go.”
That might still have ended the matter, had Mrs. Bennet not chosen that precise moment to enter.
She came in flushed with hope and nerves, saw Mr. Collins standing, Elizabeth standing, and the whole atmosphere sharpened into the dreadful clarity of having arrived one moment too late to direct the scene and one moment too early to avoid it.
“Well?” she said. “Well? My dear Mr. Collins, my dear Lizzy—”
“She refuses me,” said Mr. Collins, with the solemn resentment of a man unjustly denied what he had already inwardly spent.
Mrs. Bennet gave a cry.
“Refuses you? Lizzy, have you lost your senses? Refuses Mr. Collins!”
“I have done better,” said Elizabeth. “I have refused him.”
Mrs. Bennet turned upon her with all restraint shattered.
“Are you mad? Do you mean to throw away such an establishment? A clergyman, an heir, a gentleman connected to Rosings, and after Jane settled so beautifully too! What can you possibly want? You have no attachment. You have money enough to afford sense. Why should you not marry him?”
“Because I would sooner throw myself into the lake.”
“That is nonsense.”
“It is moderation.”
Mrs. Bennet clasped and unclasped her hands.
“You always think yourself above what is proper. You were difficult before; your aunt’s money has made you impossible. Other girls would thank heaven for such an offer.”
“Then let them have him.”
“Lizzy!”
“No, Mama. You have found the most grasping, odious man in Hertfordshire, listened while he counted my income, corrected my character, and arranged my household before I had granted him so much as a civil answer, and now you commend him to me with such conviction that I can only suppose you have already divided the advantage between you.”
Mrs. Bennet’s colour changed.
Mr. Collins made an indignant sound, but it came half a second too late.
Elizabeth saw it. She had not meant the accusation as more than anger; their faces made it evidence.
“Ah,” she said softly. “So you have discussed it.”
“Discussed it!” cried Mrs. Bennet. “I am sure I have discussed nothing but your happiness.”
“My happiness appears to have been very neatly arranged.”
“Elizabeth,” said Mr. Bennet sharply.
He had appeared in the doorway without her noticing him.
Perhaps he had come at Mrs. Bennet’s cry; perhaps he had been near enough to hear more than he wished and not enough to prevent any of it.
He took in, with one glance, Mrs. Bennet’s agitation, Mr. Collins’s outraged consequence, Elizabeth’s white anger, Mrs. Doddridge’s stillness, Pom-Pom sitting like a small apostle of judgment in the middle of the carpet, and an entire breakfast room arranged around a bargain she had not made.
Elizabeth turned on him.
“Is the suggestion offensive? I assure you, sir, it is not half so offensive as the original.”
Mr. Collins drew himself up.
“I cannot permit such an imputation upon my honourable intentions.”
“Your honourable intentions have taken a remarkable interest in my income.”
“Such language,” he said, “from a young lady—”
“Is the natural consequence of such conduct from a gentleman. You have mistaken marriage for acquisition, Mr. Collins, and my mother has mistaken acquisition for prudence.”
Mrs. Bennet gave a cry of outrage.
“And why should I not be prudent? What is to become of us all when your father dies? What is to become of me? You have more than enough. A house, money, servants, carriages, every comfort in the world. If you married Mr. Collins, Longbourn would be safe, your sisters would be considered, I should not be turned out like a beggar, and you would have done one proper thing for your family.”
“There it is,” said Elizabeth.
Mrs. Bennet stopped.
“Not affection. Not esteem. Not even prudence. A division of property, with me included.”
“Do not use such wicked words to your mother.”
“I use plain ones.”
“I would not,” said Lydia, from the doorway.
Everyone turned.
She had entered with Kitty half behind her and Mary at a little distance, all three drawn back by voices too loud to be private. Lydia, who had never yet discovered that silence might be an accomplishment, looked Mr. Collins over with frankest disgust.
“If my prospects were so poor that I must marry Mr. Collins, I should rather remain poor. He is very droll, and not in the agreeable way. A husband ought not to have a face one is pained to look at over breakfast.”
“Lydia!” cried Mrs. Bennet.
Kitty made a small sound that might have been alarm, but was not disagreement.
“Kitty,” said Mrs. Bennet sharply, “do not stand there looking foolish.”
Kitty coloured and looked down. “I only think Lizzy should not be made to marry him if she dislikes him so much.”
Mr. Collins drew himself up.
“Miss Catherine, I am sorry to discover that levity of mind is not confined to one young lady in this family.”
“It is not levity,” said Mary.
This was so unexpected that even Lydia looked at her.
Mary stood very straight, her hands clasped before her, her face pale with the effort of speaking against the room.
“A gentleman ought to possess sufficient delicacy to understand when his addresses are unwelcome. Perseverance in such a case is not constancy. It is presumption.”
Elizabeth looked at her.
Mary flushed, but did not retreat.
Mrs. Bennet was beyond patience.
“Oh, very fine! Very fine indeed! One daughter engaged and three others set up to instruct me in propriety before noon. You are all spoiled by Lizzy’s notions.
All of you. But I tell you now, Elizabeth Bennet, I will not have it.
You shall not insult Mr. Collins, and you shall not teach your sisters to despise their own security. ”
“Their security?” said Elizabeth.
“Yes, their security! You call it pressure because you can afford pride. A woman with nothing calls it prudence. You have a house, money, servants, carriages, every comfort in the world, and still you will not do one thing for your family.”
“I have done several things for my family.”
“Not the right one.”
There it was: the whole of it, spoken plainly at last.
Elizabeth’s anger went suddenly cold.
Mr. Collins, still stung and still unwilling to relinquish the dignity of a rejected proposer, said stiffly, “I would not willingly intrude where my addresses are treated with such singular incivility. Yet I must observe that young ladies are not always the best judges of their own future comfort, and that mothers, from wider experience—”
“Do not appeal to my mother in my hearing,” said Elizabeth. “It lowers us all.”
Mr. Bennet looked at her.
“Have you refused him?”
“Yes.”
“Then the matter appears settled.”
Elizabeth might almost have forgiven him that, had he stopped there.
But Mr. Collins, desirous now of preserving what remained of himself, said stiffly, “I would not accuse Miss Elizabeth of levity where perhaps only vivacity has overstepped decorum. Still, I cannot but regret that my intentions, so wholly honourable and so evidently beneficial, should have been met with a degree of asperity—”
Mr. Bennet smiled the dry smile with which he too often treated the pain of others as conversational diversion.
“My cousin, you will discover in my second daughter a degree of mind not always submissive to advantage. I could have told you as much beforehand, had I thought it likely to save us all breakfast.”
Mrs. Bennet stared at him in horror.
“You stand there and make jokes! Do you mean to let her ruin herself? Mr. Collins is the very thing for her. She has no right to be fanciful. Not after all this. Not when she has money of her own and need not even suffer inconvenience. I insist—”
“You insist on many things,” said Elizabeth, and turned from them all.
That was the moment she ceased arguing.