Chapter Six
The ladies of Longbourn soon waited on those of Netherfield.
The visit was returned in due form. Miss Bennet's pleasing manners grew on the good will of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; and though the mother was found to be intolerable and the younger sisters not worth speaking to, a wish of being better acquainted with them was expressed toward the two eldest. By Jane this attention was received with the greatest pleasure; but Elizabeth still saw superciliousness in their treatment of every body, hardly excepting even her sister, and could not like them.
That they should admire Jane was, however, no wonder. It cost them nothing to be near her, and everything near her was easier, and neither lady had the smallest idea why she enjoyed those mornings so much.
Elizabeth knew, and said nothing, and was not proud of the silence.
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"It may perhaps be pleasant," said Charlotte, "to be able to impose on the public in such a case.
But it is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded.
If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark.
Your sister is not guarded. That is what is so cruel about it. She is not concealing anything at all."
"Then what is she doing?"
"She is doing what she does to a frightened horse," said Charlotte.
"Lizzy, think. What is it that Jane's gift does?
It makes a thing calm. It does not choose.
It does not know that Mr. Bingley is Mr. Bingley and Mrs. Long is Mrs. Long.
It goes out of her upon everybody in the room alike, and it smooths, and what it smooths most thoroughly is Jane. "
Elizabeth was quiet.
"She is in love with him," Charlotte went on.
"You know it, I know it, your mother has known it since the second dance and has told half the county.
And when he looks at her, he sees a young woman who is composed, and pleasant, and glad to see him — precisely as composed and pleasant and glad as she is to see the apothecary.
She could not show him more if she wished to.
It is not shyness. It is the gift, sitting on top of her, ironing her flat. "
"That is a horrible thing to say of her."
"It is a horrible thing to be." Charlotte shrugged.
"And Bingley is not a clever man. He is a good one, which is rarer and worth more, but he will not solve a puzzle that has been made this hard.
He will wait to be shown. And Jane will go on being unable to show him, and being lovely about it, and if there is anybody near him with a reason to say she does not care for you —"
"There is not."
"There is a friend," said Charlotte, "of ten thousand a year, who says almost nothing, and watches everything, and is the only person in this county whose judgment that young man has never once set aside."
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Of this, Elizabeth was perfectly unaware. To her he was only the man who made himself agreeable no where, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with.
Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticize.
But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes.
He would have said, if anyone had been able to make him say it, that the difficulty was this: she looked at people.
There is nothing in the world so rare. Ten thousand a year buys a man a great deal and one of the things it buys, absolutely and for ever, is that nobody will ever look at him again.
They look at the coat, and the horses, and the eight hundred years, and they arrange their faces before he is within twenty feet, and by nine-and-twenty Darcy had come to think of a room as a sort of weather that happened when he entered it and stopped when he left.
Elizabeth Bennet looked at him.
He could feel it. That was the other thing, and it was not a thing he had ever felt before and he had no name for it: a light, dry, attentive pressure, quite brief, like a hand laid flat against a wall to test for damp.
It had happened at the assembly, some seconds after he had said the unforgivable thing, and it had happened twice at Lucas Lodge, and each time he had known the exact moment it stopped.
He had spent his life being looked past. He was not at all prepared to discover how much he minded it, or how violently he did not mind this.
To this discovery succeeded some others.
He had detected, with a critical eye, more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form; he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness.
Of this she was perfectly unaware; — to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable no where.
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He began to wish to know more of her, and as a step toward conversing with her himself, attended to her conversation with others. His doing so drew her notice. It was at Sir William Lucas's, where a large party were assembled.
"What does Mr. Darcy mean," said she to Charlotte, "by listening to my conversation with Colonel Forster?"
"That is a question which Mr. Darcy only can answer."
"But if he does it any more I shall certainly let him know that I see what he is about. He has a very satirical eye, and if I do not begin by being impertinent myself, I shall soon grow afraid of him."
Mary was prevailed upon to play.
She played the concerto exactly. Her time was excellent, her fingering was better than any woman's in the room, and every note was where the composer had left it. She had practiced it four hundred times. Nobody stopped talking.
For there is playing, and there is the other thing — the trick of the great houses, where a woman with music in her line plays badly and slowly and the room goes still and someone's eyes fill for no reason they can give — and Mary had no more of that in her than the pianoforte had.
She knew it. She had known it at eleven.
She played on to the end, at the correct tempo, and got the applause that is given to a thing correctly done, and shut the instrument, and was afterwards described by Miss Bingley as very diligent.
Then the younger Lucases and two or three officers pushed the chairs back, and there was dancing at one end of the room.
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Sir William came up glowing.
"What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy! — There is nothing like dancing after all. — I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished societies."
"Certainly, sir; — and it has the advantage also of being in vogue among the less polished societies of the world. — Every savage can dance."
Sir William only smiled. "Your friend performs delightfully," he continued after a pause, on seeing Bingley join the group; "and I doubt not that you are an adept in the science yourself, Mr. Darcy."
"You saw me dance at Meryton, I believe, sir."
"Yes, indeed, and received no inconsiderable pleasure from the sight. Do you often dance at St. James's?"
"Never, sir."
"Do you not think it would be a proper compliment to the place?"
"It is a compliment which I never pay to any place if I can avoid it."
Sir William, undismayed, caught sight of Elizabeth as she was moving toward them, and was struck with the notion of doing a very gallant thing.
"My dear Miss Eliza, why are not you dancing?
— Mr. Darcy, you must allow me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner.
— You cannot refuse to dance, I am sure, when so much beauty is before you.
" And taking her hand, he would have given it to Mr. Darcy, who, though extremely surprised, was not unwilling to receive it, when she instantly drew back.
She drew back rather sharply, and one or two people noticed, because Sir William had done a thing that no woman of an old family would have done: he had taken her hand in his own bare fingers and put it out toward another man's, in a room without a ward on the door.
It signified nothing. It was Lucas Lodge, and a country party, and everyone present would have sworn there was no harm in the world in it, and there was not.
But Elizabeth had felt, in the half second before she pulled away, the whole length of her arm go cold and then very warm; and Mr. Darcy had put his own hand behind his back with a speed that in a less controlled man would have looked like flinching.
"Indeed, sir," said she, "I have not the least intention of dancing. I entreat you not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner."
Mr. Darcy, with grave propriety, requested to be allowed the honor of her hand; but in vain. Elizabeth was determined; nor did Sir William at all shake her purpose by his attempt at persuasion.
"You excel so much in the dance, Miss Eliza, that it is cruel to deny me the happiness of seeing you; and though this gentleman dislikes the amusement in general, he can have no objection, I am sure, to oblige us for one half hour."
"Mr. Darcy is all politeness," said Elizabeth, smiling.
"He is indeed — but considering the inducement, my dear Miss Eliza, we cannot wonder at his complaisance; for who would object to such a partner?"
Elizabeth looked archly, and turned away. Her resistance had not injured her with the gentleman.
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He was thinking of her with some complacency, when he was thus accosted by Miss Bingley.
"I can guess the subject of your reverie."
"I should imagine not."
"You are considering how insupportable it would be to pass many evenings in this manner — in such society; and indeed I am quite of your opinion.
I was never more annoyed! The insipidity and yet the noise; the nothingness and yet the self-importance of all these people!
What would I give to hear your strictures on them! "
"Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow."
Miss Bingley immediately fixed her eyes on his face, and desired he would tell her what lady had the credit of inspiring such reflections. Mr. Darcy replied with great intrepidity,
"Miss Elizabeth Bennet."
"Miss Elizabeth Bennet!" repeated Miss Bingley. "I am all astonishment. How long has she been such a favorite? — and pray when am I to wish you joy?"
"That is exactly the question which I expected you to ask. A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment. I knew you would be wishing me joy."
"Nay, if you are so serious about it, I shall consider the matter as absolutely settled. You will have a charming mother-in-law, indeed, and of course she will be always at Pemberley with you."
He listened to her with perfect indifference, while she chose to entertain herself in this manner; and as his composure convinced her that all was safe, her wit flowed long.
It was, Miss Bingley reflected afterwards with great satisfaction, the coolest she had ever seen him. He had not colored, or hesitated, or lowered his voice, or looked once across the room to see whether the girl was within hearing. A man in danger does none of those things.
She was six-and-twenty, and had been studying him for four years, and she was wrong about every part of it — for a man of Pemberley's line who feels nothing has no occasion whatever to be composed, and Mr. Darcy had not stopped being composed since the ninth of October.