Chapter Five
Within a short walk of Longbourn lived a family with whom the Bennets were particularly intimate. Sir William Lucas had been formerly in trade in Meryton, where he had made a tolerable fortune and risen to the honor of knighthood by an address to the King during his mayoralty.
The distinction had perhaps been felt too strongly.
It had given him a disgust to his business and to his residence in a small market town; and quitting them both, he had removed with his family to a house about a mile from Meryton, denominated from that period Lucas Lodge, where he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and, unshackled by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all the world.
What he had received at St. James's was a Warrant.
It is necessary to be clear about this, because Sir William never was.
A Warrant of the Crown is a fine thing and a real one: it confers precedence, and the right to certain forms of address, and a seal, and it may be inherited.
What it does not confer is an Accord. No land bargains with a man because his sovereign has touched him with a sword.
The old courts made their agreements with the ground itself, and the ground has never taken the least interest in what happens at St. James's.
Sir William knew this. Every person in England knows this.
But he had knelt on a floor at eight-and-forty and stood up different, and something in him had never afterwards been able to hold the distinction steady; and so he spoke of lines and precedence and the honor of the thing in one continuous breath, and his neighbors, who were fond of him, let it alone.
Lady Lucas knew the difference exactly, which was why she was the finest genealogist in three parishes, and why she had four daughters and no expectation whatever for any of them but Charlotte, who was sensible, and seven-and-twenty, and plain, and worth the other three together.
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The ladies of Longbourn soon waited on those of Netherfield.
The visit was returned in due form. But it was the morning after the assembly, before any of that, that the two families sat down together at Longbourn to take the evening to pieces, which is the true business of a neighborhood and the only one it never neglects.
"You began the evening well, Charlotte," said Mrs. Bennet with civil self-command to Miss Lucas. "You were Mr. Bingley's first choice."
"Yes; but he seemed to like his second better."
"Oh! — you mean Jane, I suppose — because he danced with her twice. To be sure that did seem as if he admired her — indeed I rather believe he did — I heard something about it — but I hardly know what — something about Mr. Robinson."
"Perhaps you mean what I overheard between him and Mr. Robinson; did not I mention it to you?
Mr. Robinson's asking him how he liked our Meryton assemblies, and whether he did not think there were a great many pretty women in the room, and which he thought the prettiest?
and his answering immediately to the last question — Oh!
the eldest Miss Bennet beyond a doubt, there cannot be two opinions on that point. "
"Upon my word! — Well, that was very decided indeed — that does seem as if — but however, it may all come to nothing, you know."
"My overhearings were more to the purpose than yours, Eliza," said Charlotte. "Mr. Darcy is not so well worth listening to as his friend, is he? — Poor Eliza! — to be only just tolerable."
"I beg you would not put it into Lizzy's head to be vexed by his ill-treatment; for he is such a disagreeable man that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him. Mrs. Long told me last night that he sat close to her for half an hour without once opening his lips."
"Are you quite sure, ma'am? — is not there a little mistake?" said Jane. "I certainly saw Mr. Darcy speaking to her."
"Aye — because she asked him at last how he liked Netherfield, and he could not help answering her; but she said he seemed very angry at being spoke to."
"Miss Bingley told me," said Jane, "that he never speaks much unless among his intimate acquaintance. With them he is remarkably agreeable."
"I do not believe a word of it, my dear.
If he had been so very agreeable he would have talked to Mrs. Long.
But I can guess how it was; every body says that he is ate up with pride, and I dare say he had heard somehow that Mrs. Long does not keep a carriage, and had come to the ball in a hack chaise. "
"I do not mind his not talking to Mrs. Long," said Miss Lucas, "but I wish he had danced with Eliza."
"Another time, Lizzy," said her mother, "I would not dance with him, if I were you."
"I believe, ma'am, I may safely promise you never to dance with him."
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"His pride," said Miss Lucas, "does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, every thing in his favor, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud."
"That is very true," replied Elizabeth, "and I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine."
"Pride," observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, "is a very common failing I believe.
By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed; that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary.
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously.
A person may be proud without being vain.
Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us. "
"And in the matter of lines," she went on, since no one had stopped her, "the distinction is of some importance, for pride is what a man feels toward his own blood, and vanity what he feels toward the ledger of it.
The first requires no witness. The second requires nothing else.
Which is why, I believe, the proudest families are so often the quietest, and the vainest so seldom—"
"Mary," said Mrs. Bennet, "do go and see whether Hill has the cold beef."
Mary went.
---
She came back some while later and stood at the edge of the room, and because there was a gap in the talk she said, in the flat voice she used for facts:
"Sir William. You said, just now — 'I would stake my honor upon it.'"
Sir William, delighted to be addressed, said that he believed he had.
"You did not," said Mary. "It was not an oath. There was no weight in it at all. It was only a manner of speaking."
"Well — well, my dear Miss Mary, of course it was! Good heavens, one does not go about swearing at breakfast—"
"No," said Mary. "I only mention it because I can tell."
There was a small pause of the kind that had followed Mary all her life.
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Bennet. "Very clever. Charlotte, do try the beef."
Mary sat down and folded her hands and said nothing further for the rest of the visit.
It was her whole gift. She had had it at nine and had understood by eleven what it was worth, which was nothing: she could hear whether a spoken thing had binding force in it — whether words were merely words, or whether the world had leaned in and taken them down.
In a country where oaths are sworn perhaps four times in a life, at a christening and a wedding and a deathbed and a court, it was a talent of no more practical use than perfect pitch to a woman forbidden to sing.
So she had gone to the books instead, and read everything, and quoted it badly, and been laughed at for the quoting rather than pitied for the reason, which she preferred.
Nobody in the room remembered it by dinner.
---
Elizabeth walked with Charlotte as far as the turning, as she always did.
"You defended him," she said.
"I explained him. It is not the same office.
" Charlotte had her hands in her muff and her eyes on the road.
"Lizzy — you asked me nothing, so I shall answer nothing.
But I will say one thing and you may quarrel with it as you like.
You want to know a man before you are bound to him.
All the way down. It is the great appetite of your character and it is why your mother despairs of you. "
"And you do not?"
"I think it is the most dangerous appetite a woman in England can have.
" Charlotte said it without heat, as she said everything.
"Consider what a braiding is. It is not an agreement.
It cannot be undone by consent, or by law, or by any court in this kingdom, because the parties to it are not the man and the woman — the parties are two Accords, and neither of them can read.
You go into a church and you come out with your blood in another person's keeping for the term of your life. "
"Which is precisely why one ought to know—"
"Which is precisely why one ought to know as little as one can bear.
" Charlotte stopped at the stile. "If you know a man entirely and he is good, you have gained very little, for you would have discovered it in a year in any case.
If you know him entirely and he is not good — Lizzy, what do you imagine you do then?
You are seven-and-twenty. Your father is dying at the ordinary rate.
There is no version of that morning in which knowing has helped you.
There is only a version in which you go up the aisle with your eyes open, and that is not wisdom, it is merely a more elegant way of arriving in the same room. "
Elizabeth was silent.
"I shall take a small, sound, dull line and a comfortable house," said Charlotte, "and I shall be perfectly civil to whoever comes with it, and I shall not look at him too closely on the way. And you will pity me for it, and I would rather you did it quietly, that is all."
She kissed her, and went up over the stile, and walked home.
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At Lucas Lodge, the youngest of the boys, who was ten and had been listening at doors all morning, announced that if he were as rich as Mr. Darcy, he should not care how proud he was; he would keep a pack of foxhounds, and drink a bottle of wine a day.
"Then you would drink a great deal more than you ought," said Mrs. Bennet; "and if I were to see you at it, I should take away your bottle directly."
The boy protested that she should not; she continued to declare that she would; and the argument ended only with the visit.