Chapter Nineteen #2
They stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, and at first was resolved not to break it; till suddenly fancying that it would be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk, she made some slight observation on the dance.
He replied, and was again silent. After a pause of some minutes she addressed him a second time with
"It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. — I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples."
He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be said.
"Very well. — That reply will do for the present. — Perhaps by and bye I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones. — But now we may be silent."
"Do you talk by rule then, while you are dancing?"
"Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together, and yet for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible."
"Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?"
"Both," replied Elizabeth archly; "for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds.
— We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb. "
"This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure," said he. "How near it may be to mine, I cannot pretend to say. — You think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly."
"I must not decide on my own performance."
He made no answer, and they were again silent till they had gone down the dance, when he asked her if she and her sisters did not very often walk to Meryton.
She answered in the affirmative, and, unable to resist the temptation, added, "When you met us there the other day, we had just been forming a new acquaintance. "
The effect was immediate. A deeper shade of hauteur overspread his features, but he said not a word, and Elizabeth, though blaming herself for her own weakness, could not go on. At length Darcy spoke, and in a constrained manner said,
"Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his making friends — whether he may be equally capable of retaining them, is less certain."
"He has been so unlucky as to lose your friendship," replied Elizabeth with emphasis, "and in a manner which he is likely to suffer from all his life."
Darcy made no answer, and seemed desirous of changing the subject.
He had been on his feet since seven, holding a room with his own blood because there was nothing else left holding it; he had given four days to a ward and then unmade it in nine seconds; and he was at this moment in the third figure of a dance with a young woman whose gloved hand he had taken six times, each of which had cost him rather more than he had to spend.
He was also, in the ordinary way of such things, in love with her.
He had been aware of it since Wednesday.
He would have said — if there had been in England a single person he could have said it to — that the difficulty was not the wanting, which a man may manage, but the fact that she had asked him a question at Netherfield about accomplishment which he had been unable to answer, and had gone home, and had not thought of it again, and that he had thought of nothing else for six days.
"I am trying to make you out," she said presently.
"And what is your success?"
"I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly."
"I can readily believe," answered he gravely, "that report may vary greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either."
"But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another opportunity."
"I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours," he coldly replied.
She said nothing, and they went down the other dance and parted in silence; and on each side dissatisfied, though not in an equal degree, for in Darcy's breast there was a tolerable powerful feeling toward her, which soon procured her pardon, and directed all his anger against another.
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They had not long separated when Miss Bingley came toward her, and with an expression of civil disdain accosted her.
"So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George Wickham!
— Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand questions; and I find that the young man forgot to tell you, among his other communications, that he was the son of old Wickham, the late Mr. Darcy's steward.
Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Darcy's using him ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has always been remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner.
I do not know the particulars, but I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the least to blame, that he cannot bear to hear George Wickham mentioned, and that though my brother thought he could not well avoid including him in his invitation to the officers, he was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself out of the way.
His coming into the country at all, is a most insolent thing indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it.
I pity you, Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favorite's guilt; but really considering his descent, one could not expect much better. "
"His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same," said Elizabeth angrily; "for I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward, and of that, I can assure you, he informed me himself."