Chapter Fourteen
During dinner, Mr. Bennet scarcely spoke at all; but when the servants were withdrawn, he thought it time to have some conversation with his guest, and therefore started a subject in which he expected him to shine, by observing that he seemed very fortunate in his patroness.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh's attention to his wishes, and consideration for his comfort, appeared very remarkable.
Mr. Bennet could not have chosen better.
Mr. Collins was eloquent in her praise. The subject elevated him to more than usual solemnity of manner, and with a most important aspect he protested that he had never in his life witnessed such behavior in a person of rank — such affability and condescension, as he had himself experienced from Lady Catherine.
She had been graciously pleased to approve of both the discourses which he had already had the honor of preaching before her.
She had also asked him twice to dine at Rosings, and had sent for him only the Saturday before, to make up her pool of quadrille in the evening.
"Lady Catherine was reckoned proud by many people he knew, but he had never seen any thing but affability in her.
She had always spoken to him as she would to any other gentleman; she made not the smallest objection to his joining in the society of the neighborhood, nor to his leaving his parish occasionally for a week or two to visit his relations.
She had even condescended to advise him to marry as soon as he could, provided he chose with discretion; and had once paid him a visit in his humble parsonage; where she had perfectly approved all the alterations he had been making, and had even vouchsafed to suggest some herself — some shelves in the closets up stairs. "
"That is all very proper and civil, I am sure," said Mrs. Bennet, "and I dare say she is a very agreeable woman. It is a pity that great ladies in general are not more like her. Does she live near you, sir?"
"The garden in which stands my humble abode, is separated only by a lane from Rosings Park, her Ladyship's residence."
"I think you said she was a widow, sir? has she any family?"
"She has one only daughter, the heiress of Rosings, and of very extensive property."
"Ah!" cried Mrs. Bennet, shaking her head, "then she is better off than many girls. And what sort of young lady is she? is she handsome?"
"She is a most charming young lady indeed.
Lady Catherine herself says that in point of true beauty, Miss de Bourgh is far superior to the handsomest of her sex; because there is that in her features which marks the young woman of distinguished birth.
She is unfortunately of a sickly constitution, which has prevented her making that progress in many accomplishments which she could not otherwise have failed of; but she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends to drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies. "
"Has she been presented? I do not remember her name among the ladies at court."
"Her indifferent state of health unhappily prevents her being in town; and by that means, as I told Lady Catherine myself one day, has deprived the British court of its brightest ornament.
Her Ladyship seemed pleased with the idea; and you may imagine that I am happy on every occasion to offer those little delicate compliments which are always acceptable to ladies. "
"That is very true," said Mr. Bennet, "and it is fortunate that you have the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?"
"They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible."
Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped; and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.
---
Elizabeth was not enjoying herself.
She had begun, somewhere about the second dish, to hear a second story running underneath the first, told in the same words, by a man who did not know he was telling it.
"Her Ladyship's condescension in the parish," Mr. Collins was saying, "is such as I have never met with elsewhere and hardly know how to describe.
She does not confine herself to the church, nor to the poor-box, as too many great ladies do.
She goes into the cottages herself. Wherever there is a quarrel among the tenants — a disputed boundary, a young woman badly used, an old man who will not be moved out of a house that is falling upon him — her Ladyship goes in person and settles it, and I do assure you, sir, that she has never once failed.
Not once in eleven months. The parties are perfectly reconciled before she leaves the room. "
"Always?" said Elizabeth.
"Invariably, cousin Elizabeth."
"And afterwards? Do they stay reconciled?"
Mr. Collins considered this a very odd question, and said so, and then said that upon his word he believed they did, though he had noticed that people who had been settled by her Ladyship were often rather quiet for some time afterwards, which he attributed to a proper sense of the honor done them.
"And Miss de Bourgh," said Elizabeth. "She has never been presented, you say. Not even in a good season?"
"Alas, her health—"
"Has she taken any part in the business of the parish? Stood godmother, perhaps? Witnessed anything?"
"I do not perfectly follow you."
"I only wondered," said Elizabeth pleasantly, "whether Miss de Bourgh has ever, in her whole life, been required to swear to anything."
Mr. Collins beamed, delighted to be able to give a full answer at last. "Now that is a very singular thing to have hit upon, and it does you credit, for I remarked it myself within a month of coming into the parish.
She has not! Not at a christening, nor at a court, nor at her own presentation, which has never taken place.
Lady Catherine is most particular upon the point — most particular.
She has said to me more than once that her daughter's word is not to be spent upon trifles.
" He laughed comfortably. "Her Ladyship is a great economist in all things. "
"Yes," said Elizabeth. "I begin to see that she is."
Jane looked at her sister with a small crease between her brows, having heard the tone if not the substance; and Mrs. Bennet said that eight hundred pounds was a shocking deal of money for a chimney-piece; and the subject went by.
---
By tea-time however the dose had been enough, and Mr. Bennet was glad to take his guest into the drawing room again, and when tea was over, glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies.
Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but on beholding it (for every thing announced it to be from a circulating library) he started back, and begging pardon, protested that he never read novels.
Kitty stared at him, and Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some deliberation he chose Fordyce's Sermons.
He had first taken up a small brown volume from the end of the shelf, and turned it over, and read the spine — A Discourse Upon the Binding Word — and put it down again rather quickly.
"That is mine," said Mary.
"It is not a proper book for a young lady," said Mr. Collins.
"Why?"
"Because," said Mr. Collins, with the first entirely unaffected sentence he had uttered since he entered the house, "there is a good deal in it that is true."
He opened Fordyce.
Lydia gaped at the first three pages, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three pages, she interrupted him with,
"Do you know, mama, that my uncle Philips talks of turning away Richard, and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him. My aunt told me so herself on Saturday. I shall walk to Meryton to-morrow to hear more about it, and to ask when Mr. Denny comes back from town."
Lydia was bid by her two eldest sisters to hold her tongue; but Mr. Collins, much offended, laid aside his book, and said,
"I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. It amazes me, I confess; — for certainly, there can be nothing so advantageous to them as instruction. But I will no longer importune my young cousin."
Then turning to Mr. Bennet, he offered himself as his antagonist at backgammon.
---
They played two games. Mr. Collins lost both, being a bad player and a worse loser, and bearing it with a great deal of resigned commentary.
Between the games Mr. Bennet said, in the idle voice of a man making conversation while the pieces are set up:
"You said something before dinner, cousin, about ground being shy. I did not perfectly attend to it."
"Ah! Her Ladyship's phrase, sir, and a very fine one."
"Very fine. And what did her Ladyship advise you to do about it?"
"To marry, sir," said Mr. Collins, moving a man, "and to marry into the blood that holds it, where such a thing can be managed; and I am happy to say that in the present instance her Ladyship considered the circumstances most unusually favorable, there being — as I took the liberty of informing her — no fewer than five. "
"Five," said Mr. Bennet.
"Five, sir." Mr. Collins looked up, pleased to have been so well understood. "It is a great deal more than most gentlemen in my situation could hope for. Her Ladyship was pleased to call it a superfluity."
Mr. Bennet threw the dice.
"So it is," he said.
---
He did not go up when the house went up.
Elizabeth, coming down at something after one for a book she had not wanted at eleven, saw the light under the library door, and opened it without knocking, as she had done all her life.
Her father was at the table. He had not lit more than the one candle.
The backgammon board was still out and the pieces were still where Mr. Collins had left them, and beside it, out of the japanned box that lived on the high shelf and was opened perhaps twice in a decade, lay a strip of something that was not vellum, folded three times, with letters on it that did not sit still.
He did not put it away. That was what frightened her.
"Papa."
"Your cousin," said Mr. Bennet, "is a fool. I have not been so well entertained in nine years." He was looking at the deed. "He is also perfectly right, and so is his patroness, and there is not a word in that document that I have not known by heart since I was thirty-one years of age."
"Papa—"
"Do you know, Lizzy, that I have read this thing through perhaps a hundred times in twenty years, always at night, always alone, always in the same conviction that on this occasion I shall find the sentence that the last ninety-nine readings overlooked.
" He smiled a little. "It is a very short document. It is quite remarkably short."
Elizabeth stood in the doorway with her candle.
"Come," he said at last, in his ordinary voice, folding it along its old creases and putting it back in the box. "It is late, and to-morrow we shall have him again at breakfast, and I would not miss a syllable of it for a hundred pounds. Go to bed."
She went. At the turn of the stairs she stopped and looked back, and the light was still under the door.
It was still there at half past four, when Jane, who could not sleep either, came down for water and did not go in.