Chapter Twenty-Seven
"First," said Charlotte, walking. "At the Netherfield ball. You told me you did not know what had happened, and I believed you, and you have had four months since. What do you know now?"
Elizabeth told her. It took the length of the gravel walk and back, and she left out nothing, including the parts that made her look a fool; and Charlotte listened with her hands in her muff and did not interrupt once.
"Very well," she said at the end. "Second question. Do you know what is written in his pocket-book?"
"I have never seen it."
"I have. Not by asking; he reads it aloud to me, in the evenings, the way another man reads out the newspaper.
" Charlotte's voice did not alter. "It is her Ladyship's advice, set down verbatim, going back to the autumn.
There are nine-and-forty entries. Twenty-two of them are about closets and drains and the poor of the parish and the proper feeding of a cow, and they are very sensible, Lizzy — that is a thing nobody tells you about her, she is extremely sensible about a cow. "
"And the others?"
"The others are about people." Charlotte turned at the end of the walk.
"Who ought to marry whom in this parish.
Which farm ought to go to which son. There is an entry from November about a girl at Trelawny's who was not to be permitted to go into service at Bromley, with the reason given, and the reason is that her mother was a Naseby.
" She paused. "I looked up the Nasebys. There was an Accord in it, four generations back, and it is nearly out, and it is not entirely out. "
"She is breeding them," said Elizabeth.
"She is managing them," said Charlotte, "which is what she would call it, and which is what she has been doing since before either of us was born, and I have watched her do it at four dinners now and I will tell you the most frightening part.
She is not secret about it. She says it at table.
She said to a farmer's wife in my hearing that the woman's daughter would do very well for the Dawlish boy and that she had considered it and it was settled, and the woman said thank you your Ladyship, and it will be.
" Charlotte's mouth was quite straight. "It is not a conspiracy. It is a hobby."
"And your third question?"
Charlotte stopped walking.
"To-morrow you will dine at Rosings," she said.
"Her Ladyship will talk, and you will be asked forty questions, and Mr. Collins will be in a condition I cannot describe to you and you will see for yourself.
And somewhere in the room there will be a young woman of about nine-and-twenty in a great many shawls who will not say one word from the soup to the carriages, and everybody will explain to you that her health is delicate, and Mrs. Jenkinson will build up her fire and cut up her meat.
"That is my third question, Lizzy, and it is the one I have been keeping for five weeks. I have nothing to do it with. You have."
"You want me to look at her."
"I want you to look at her," said Charlotte Collins, "and then I want you to tell me the truth, whatever it is, and if it is nothing at all I shall be extremely glad, and I shall sleep better than I have slept since Candlemas."
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Sir William stayed only a week at Hunsford; but his visit was long enough to convince him of his daughter's being most comfortably settled, and of her possessing such a husband and such a neighbor as were not often met with.
The invitation to Rosings came for the Tuesday.
Mr. Collins's triumph in consequence of this invitation was complete.
The power of displaying the grandeur of his patroness to his wondering visitors, and of letting them see her civility toward himself and his wife, was exactly what he had wished for; and that an opportunity of doing it should be given so soon, was such an instance of Lady Catherine's condescension as he knew not how to admire enough.
"I confess," said he, "that I should not have been at all surprised by her Ladyship's asking us on Sunday to drink tea and spend the evening at Rosings.
I rather expected, from my knowledge of her affability, that it would happen.
But who could have foreseen such an attention as this?
Who could have imagined that we should receive an invitation to dine there (an invitation moreover including the whole party) so immediately after your arrival! "
"I am the less surprised at what has happened," replied Sir William, "from that knowledge of what the manners of the great really are, which my situation in life has allowed me to acquire. About the court, such instances of elegant breeding are not uncommon."
Scarcely any thing was talked of the whole day or next morning, but their visit to Rosings. Mr. Collins was carefully instructing them in what they were to expect, that the sight of such rooms, so many servants, and so splendid a dinner might not wholly overpower them.
When the ladies were separating for the toilette, he said to Elizabeth,
"Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel.
Lady Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us, which becomes herself and her daughter.
I would advise you merely to put on whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest — there is no occasion for any thing more.
Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you for being simply dressed.
She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved. "
While they were dressing, he came two or three times to their different doors, to recommend their being quick, as Lady Catherine very much objected to be kept waiting for her dinner.
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They crossed the lane at half past four.
Elizabeth put her hand on the little green gate going out, as she had done on the first evening, and found it a gate; and then they were in the park, and it was like walking into a current.
She had expected to feel more of it and she felt less.
That was the surprise. The leaning she had noticed in the parsonage garden — that steady few degrees of pull toward the house on the rise — did not increase as they climbed the slope.
It slackened, the way the noise of a river slackens when you get into it, and by the time they came up the steps to the hall she could not feel it at all, and understood that this was because she was inside it.
The hall, of which Mr. Collins pointed out with rapture the fine proportion and finished ornaments, they followed the servants through an antechamber to the room where Lady Catherine, her daughter, and Mrs. Jenkinson were sitting.
Her Ladyship, with great condescension, arose to receive them; and as Mrs. Collins had settled it with her husband that the office of introduction should be hers, it was performed in a proper manner, without any of those apologies and thanks which he would have thought necessary.
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Lady Catherine de Bourgh was a tall, large woman, with strongly-marked features, which might once have been handsome.
Her air was not conciliating, nor was her manner of receiving them such as to make her visitors forget their inferior rank.
She was not rendered formidable by silence; but whatever she said, was spoken in so authoritative a tone as marked her self-importance.
Elizabeth found that she was not at all frightened of her, and was interested to find it.
Miss de Bourgh was pale and sickly; her features, though not plain, were insignificant; and she spoke very little, except in a low voice to Mrs. Jenkinson, in whose appearance there was nothing remarkable, and who was entirely engaged in listening to what she said, and placing a screen in the proper direction before her eyes.
They had not been many minutes at table before Lady Catherine began.
"Your father's estate is entailed on Mr. Collins, I think. For your sake," turning to Charlotte, "I am glad of it; but otherwise I see no occasion for entailing estates from the female line. — It was not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family. — Do you play and sing, Miss Bennet?"
"A little."
"Oh! then — some time or other we shall be happy to hear you. Our instrument is a capital one, probably superior to —— You shall try it some day. — Do your sisters play and sing?"
"One of them does."
"Why did not you all learn? — You ought all to have learned. The Miss Webbs all play, and their father has not so good an income as yours. — Do you draw?"
"No, not at all."
"What, none of you?"
"Not one."
"That is very strange. But I suppose you had no opportunity. Your mother should have taken you to town every spring for the benefit of masters."
"My mother would have had no objection, but my father hates London."
"Has your governess left you?"
"We never had any governess."
"No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without a governess! — I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your education."
Elizabeth could hardly help smiling, as she assured her that had not been the case.
"Then, who taught you? who attended to you? Without a governess you must have been neglected."
"Compared with some families, I believe we were; but such of us as wished to learn, never wanted the means. We were always encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary. Those who chose to be idle, certainly might."
"Aye, no doubt; but that is what a governess will prevent, and if I had known your mother, I should have advised her most strenuously to engage one." Lady Catherine set down her glass. "Your mother's family name?"
"Gardiner, ma'am."
"Of?"
"Of Meryton. My grandfather was an attorney there."
"And her mother?"
Elizabeth said that she did not perfectly know.
"You do not know your own grandmother's family.
" It was not a question and there was no anger in it; it was the flat displeasure of a woman finding a gate off its hinges on a farm she does not own.
"That is a very great deal too common in this country and it will be the ruin of half of it.
Do you know your father's? — no, do not tell me, I know your father's.
Bennet of Longbourn, four hundred years, heirs male, and there are five of you and no boy. "
"Yes, ma'am."
"It is a great pity," said Lady Catherine, "and there is a remedy, and it has been declined." She looked at Elizabeth for the first time with actual attention. "Are you out, all five sisters at once?"
"Yes, all."
"All! — What, all five out at once? Very odd! — And you only the second. — The younger ones out before the elder are married! — Your younger sisters must be very young?"
"Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps she is full young to be much in company.
But really, ma'am, I think it would be very hard upon younger sisters, that they should not have their share of society and amusement, because the elder may not have the means or inclination to marry early.
— The last born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth, as the first. And to be kept back on such a motive!
— I think it would not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind. "
"Upon my word," said her Ladyship, "you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. — Pray, what is your age?"
"With three younger sisters grown up," replied Elizabeth smiling, "your Ladyship can hardly expect me to own it."
Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.
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It was between the removes that she did it.
Mr. Collins was speaking, at length, about the road to Bromley; and Elizabeth, who had been holding herself in for an hour and three quarters, and who had come to that house at her friend's asking, looked down the table at Miss Anne de Bourgh.
She had expected — she had put it to herself in the plainest words in her own room that morning, so that she should not deceive herself afterwards — she had expected to find nothing.
An invalid; a small, tired, dim, unused person; a woman of nine-and-twenty who had been ill since childhood and had been carried about in a phaeton and had never had one interesting hour.
What she found was a fire in a shut room.
There is no better way to say it and Elizabeth never afterwards found one.
Everything was there. All of it: quickness, and temper, and a great deal of anger, and an understanding that had been going full pace behind that gray face for nine-and-twenty years with nothing whatever to do; and it was all banked — piled up and pressed down and covered over and kept, the way a fire is kept in overnight so that nothing shall be spent before morning.
Not damaged. Not dim. Not one particle of it had ever been used.
There was a woman at that table who had never in her life spent a word, or sworn an oath, or given a promise, or held a hand in a figure at a dance, or told a servant to fetch anything, or said yes; and she was full to the top, and she had been being filled since she was born, and somebody was keeping her that way on purpose.
And Anne de Bourgh raised her eyes from her plate and looked straight back at Elizabeth Bennet.
It lasted perhaps a second and a half. There was nothing in her face; her face did not do anything at all; she was a pale young woman with a shawl looking down a table.
But she held Elizabeth's eyes for that second and a half, deliberately, and then — with a very small movement, the sort of thing that could be a tic, or a draft, or nothing — she shook her head.
Once.
Then she looked back at her plate, and said something inaudible to Mrs. Jenkinson, who at once got up and moved the screen.
"Miss Bennet," said Lady Catherine de Bourgh, from the head of the table, without turning round and without any particular emphasis, "do not do that again."
The room went on. Mr. Collins said that the road to Bromley was much improved. Sir William said something about St. James's. Charlotte asked Mrs. Jenkinson whether she found the evenings drawing out.
Elizabeth Bennet sat perfectly still with her hands in her lap and discovered that her heart was going like a bird's, and that she had been in Kent for six days, and that she was engaged to dine at that table twice a week for five weeks more.