Chapter Fifteen
Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society; the greatest part of his life having been spent under the guidance of an illiterate and miserly father; and though he belonged to one of the universities, he had merely kept the necessary terms, without forming at it any useful acquaintance.
The subjection in which his father had brought him up had given him originally great humility of manner, but it was now a good deal counteracted by the self-conceit of a weak head, living in retirement, and the consequential feelings of early and unexpected prosperity.
A fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Catherine de Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was vacant; and the respect which he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a clergyman, and his rights as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.
Having now a good house and a very sufficient income, he intended to marry; and in seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn family he had a wife in view, as he meant to choose one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report.
This was his plan of amends — of atonement — for inheriting their father's estate; and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his own part.
His plan did not vary on seeing them. Miss Bennet's lovely face confirmed his views, and established all his strictest notions of what was due to seniority; and for the first evening she was his settled choice.
The next morning, however, made an alteration; for in a quarter of an hour's tête-à-tête with Mrs. Bennet before breakfast, a conversation beginning with his parsonage-house, and leading naturally to the avowal of his hopes that a mistress for it might be found at Longbourn, produced from her, amid very complaisant smiles and general encouragement, a caution against the very Jane he had fixed on.
— "As to her younger daughters she could not take upon her to say — she could not positively answer — but she did not know of any prepossession; — her eldest daughter she must just mention — she felt it incumbent on her to hint, was likely to be very soon engaged. "
Mr. Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabeth — and it was soon done — done while Mrs. Bennet was stirring the fire.
She had done it, moreover, without allowing herself to think, at any point in the twenty seconds that it took, about what she was doing; which was a skill she had been perfecting for four-and-twenty years and had by now brought to a very high polish.
She was not a wicked woman. She had five daughters and one house and a husband of one-and-fifty, and she had learned that there are certain sums which must be worked without looking at the figures, and this was one of them.
Elizabeth, equally next to Jane in birth and beauty, succeeded her of course.
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Mrs. Bennet treasured up the hint, and trusted that she might soon have two daughters married; and the man whom she could not bear to speak of the day before, was now high in her good graces.
Lydia's intention of walking to Meryton was not forgotten; every sister except Mary agreed to go with her; and Mr. Collins was to attend them, at the request of Mr. Bennet, who was most anxious to get rid of him, and have his library to himself.
In Meryton they parted; the two youngest went down the street looking for the officers, and Elizabeth walked behind with her cousin, who was giving her the dimensions of the closets at Hunsford.
Their attention was suddenly drawn to a young man, whom they had never seen before, of most gentlemanlike appearance, walking with an officer on the other side of the way.
The officer was the very Mr. Denny concerning whose return from London Lydia came to inquire, and he bowed as they passed.
All were struck with the stranger's air, all wondered who he could be, and Kitty and Lydia, determined if possible to find out, led the way across the street, under pretense of wanting something in an opposite shop.
They had just gained the pavement when the two gentlemen turning back had reached the same spot.
Mr. Denny addressed them directly, and entreated permission to introduce his friend, Mr. Wickham, who had returned with him the day before from town, and he was happy to say had accepted a commission in their corps.
This was exactly as it should be; for the young man wanted only regimentals to make him completely charming.
His appearance was greatly in his favor; he had all the best part of beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address.
The introduction was followed up on his side by a happy readiness of conversation — a readiness at the same time perfectly correct and unassuming.
He had no gloves.
It was the sort of thing that nobody in Meryton would have thought about for a moment, and nobody did.
It was a mild afternoon in the middle of November, and he was not in uniform yet, and a young man on a country street may do as he likes.
Lydia thought it uncommonly dashing. Kitty did not think about it at all.
He shook hands with both of them.
"Miss Lydia — Miss Catherine — I am very glad. Denny has talked of nothing else since Tuesday, and I see now that he was a great deal too moderate."
Lydia screamed with laughter and said that Denny was a wretch and had never said a word about them, and Wickham said that he had, and Kitty laughed too, and the whole party stood in the road being delighted for four or five minutes.
To Elizabeth he bowed, and offered his hand, and she gave him hers, which was gloved; and he held it a very little longer than the thing required, and looked at her with a warmth that she found, on consideration afterwards, extremely pleasant and not quite explicable.
"Miss Elizabeth Bennet," he said. "I have heard your name already this morning, from three separate people, which in a town of this size I take to be a sort of fame."
"It is a small town, sir."
"It is a very fortunate one," said Mr. Wickham.
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The whole party were still standing and talking together very agreeably, when the sound of horses drew their notice, and Darcy and Bingley were seen riding down the street.
On distinguishing the ladies of the group, the two gentlemen came directly toward them, and began the usual civilities. Bingley was the principal spokesman, and Miss Bennet the principal object. He was then, he said, on his way to Longbourn on purpose to inquire after her.
Mr. Darcy corroborated it with a bow, and was beginning to determine not to fix his eyes on Elizabeth, when they were suddenly arrested by the sight of the stranger; and Elizabeth happening to see the countenance of both as they looked at each other, was all astonishment at the effect of the meeting.
Both changed color, one looked white, the other red.
Mr. Wickham, after a few moments, touched his hat — a salutation which Mr. Darcy just deigned to return.
What could be the meaning of it? — It was impossible to imagine; it was impossible not to long to know.
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Three other people on that street understood a part of it, and none of them understood the same part.
Mr. Bingley, who felt nothing whatever, observed that his friend's horse had gone up on its toes and was being held very hard, and thought that Darcy was uncommonly severe with a good animal.
Lieutenant Denny, standing at his friend's elbow with what remained of a small gift after eleven months at Selsey and one night at the ninth stake, felt something go past him at about the height of his chest: a fast, thin, silent pull, there and gone, in the direction of the man on the horse — the way a draft goes under a door when a door somewhere else in the house is opened.
It lasted less than a second. His hand went to his hat before he had decided to move it.
He looked at Wickham, whom he had known for nine days and liked enormously.
Wickham was smiling up at the gentleman on the horse with an expression of perfectly open, wounded, forgiving civility, and he had gone red to the ears, and Denny — who was two-and-twenty, and had been taught in eleven months how much of a man may go out of him and never come back — thought, quite clearly and with no evidence at all: he was not blushing. Something in him just tried a door.
Then Miss Lydia Bennet asked him whether he had brought her the ribbon from town, and he said that he had, and put it out of his head.
And Mr. Darcy, who had his hand full of a good horse that had begun to fight him and his face arranged in the manner of a man returning a salutation from a stranger, sat quite still in the saddle and did the only two things he could do in a public street in front of six people: he kept his temper, and he kept his mouth shut.
He would have given a great deal — he thought this quite consciously, in the four seconds it took — to be permitted to say one plain sentence aloud in that road.
He had sworn not to. Not vaguely, not as a manner of speaking, and not to himself.
He had sworn it in a room in Ramsgate fifteen months before, to a girl of fifteen who had been shaking too hard to hold a pen, and it had been the only thing he had left to give her, and he had given it; and it had taken, as such things take, at once and completely, in the way that Mary Bennet could have told anybody about if anybody had ever let her finish a sentence.
So he sat on his horse in Meryton, and said nothing, and looked exactly as proud as he had looked at the assembly.
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In another minute Mr. Bingley, without seeming to have noticed what passed, took leave and rode on with his friend.
Mr. Denny and Mr. Wickham walked with the young ladies to the door of Mr. Philips's house, and then made their bows, in spite of Miss Lydia's pressing entreaties that they would come in, and even in spite of Mrs. Philips's throwing up the parlor window and loudly seconding the invitation.
Mrs. Philips was always glad to see her nieces, and the two eldest, from their recent absence, were particularly welcome; and she was eagerly expressing her surprise at their sudden return home, which, as their own carriage had not fetched them, she should have known nothing about, if she had not happened to see Mr. Jones's shop-boy in the street, when she was called on by Kitty to attend to something else.
"I am tired," said Kitty.
"You are always tired," said Lydia.
"I am not always tired. I am tired now, and I was not tired before, and I have done nothing but stand in the street.
" Kitty sat down rather suddenly on the window seat and put her hand up to her collar-bone, and then took it away again, having no idea what she had been meaning to do with it. "It is very close in here, aunt."
"It is not close in the least," said Mrs. Philips. "You want your dinner."
Kitty had her dinner. She was quiet through most of it, and cross afterwards, and Lydia told her that she was a great deal too much given to sulking, and Kitty said something unkind about the ribbon, and the two of them quarreled all the way home in the dark, in the ordinary manner of fifteen and seventeen, and nobody in the family thought about it again.
Kitty had a cough by Christmas. She had it, on and off, for the next four months, and Mr. Jones was of the opinion that she should not sit in drafts.