Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sir William stayed only a week, and when he was gone the family went on in its usual way.
Elizabeth was thankful to find that they did not see more of her cousin by the alteration, for the chief of the time between breakfast and dinner was now passed by him either at work in the garden, or in reading and writing, and looking out of the window in his own book room, which fronted the road.
The room in which the ladies sat was backwards.
Elizabeth had at first rather wondered that Charlotte should not prefer the dining parlor for common use; it was a better sized room, and had a pleasanter aspect; but she soon saw that her friend had an excellent reason for what she did, for Mr. Collins would undoubtedly have been much less in his own apartment, had they sat in one equally lively; and she gave Charlotte credit for the arrangement.
More than once did Elizabeth in her ramble within the Park, unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy.
— She felt all the perverseness of the mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought; and to prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first, that it was a favorite haunt of hers.
That was later. In the first fortnight there was nothing to disturb them but the weather, and a great deal of quadrille.
---
The two gentlemen came on the Monday before Easter.
Mr. Collins had been walking the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into Hunsford Lane, in order to have the earliest assurance of it; and after making his bow as the carriage turned into the Park, hurried home with the great intelligence.
He waited on them the next morning, and had two nephews of Lady Catherine to admire; for Mr. Darcy had brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, the younger son of his uncle Lord ——; and to the great surprise of all the party, when Mr. Collins returned, the gentlemen accompanied him.
Charlotte had seen them from her husband's room, crossing the road, and immediately running into the other, told the girls what an honor they might expect, adding,
"I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy would never have come so soon to wait upon me."
Elizabeth had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the compliment, before their approach was announced by the door-bell.
Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly; but his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time without speaking to any body.
At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to inquire of Elizabeth after the health of her family.
She answered him in the usual way, and after a moment's pause, added,
"My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never happened to see her there?"
She was perfectly sensible that he never had; but she wished to see whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed between the Bingleys and Jane, and she thought he looked a little confused as he answered that he had never been so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet.
The subject was pursued no farther, and the gentlemen soon afterwards went away.
---
Colonel Fitzwilliam was about thirty, not handsome, but in person and address most truly the gentleman. He was a soldier, and had been a soldier for eleven years, and had the great advantage over most soldiers of never once having said so.
He asked Mrs. Collins where she came from.
"Hertfordshire, sir. Near Meryton."
There was a pause of about a second and a half.
"Meryton," said Colonel Fitzwilliam. "Yes.
That is in the west of the county, is it not — no, I am thinking of somewhere else entirely.
I beg your pardon. My geography is very bad and I have been three weeks at a desk, which ruins a man.
" He turned, easily, to Maria Lucas, and asked her whether she had been in Kent before, and was so pleasant to her that she was able to answer without blushing, which nobody had managed at Hunsford in a fortnight.
Elizabeth thought him extremely agreeable, and thought no more about it than that.
Mr. Darcy, standing by the window with his hat in his hand, had looked round at his cousin's pause; and had then looked at the carpet for the remainder of the call.
---
They were not asked to Rosings for a week. It was Easter week, and Lady Catherine had her nephews, and there was no occasion for the parsonage.
When at length they were invited — on the Sunday, to drink tea and spend the evening — Mr. Collins's satisfaction was very great, and Elizabeth's expectations were not high, and were exceeded, and not in a manner she had foreseen.
Lady Catherine received them civilly, but it was plain that their company was by no means so acceptable as when she could get nobody else; and she was in fact almost engrossed by her nephews, speaking to them, especially to Darcy, much more than to any other person in the room.
Colonel Fitzwilliam seemed really glad to see them; any thing was a welcome relief to him at Rosings; and Mrs. Collins's pretty friend had moreover caught his fancy very much.
He now seated himself by her, and talked so agreeably of Kent and Hertfordshire, of traveling and staying at home, of new books and music, that Elizabeth had never been half so well entertained in that room before.
They conversed with so much spirit and flow, as to draw the attention of Lady Catherine herself, as well as of Mr. Darcy.
His eyes had been soon and repeatedly turned toward them with a look of curiosity; and that her Ladyship after a while shared the feeling, was more openly acknowledged, for she did not scruple to call out,
"What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is."
"We are speaking of music, Madam," said he, when no longer able to avoid a reply.
"Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight.
I must have my share in the conversation, if you are speaking of music.
There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste.
If I had ever learned, I should have been a great proficient.
And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to apply.
I am confident that she would have performed delightfully. "
Elizabeth looked at Miss de Bourgh, who was sitting exactly where she had been sitting on the Tuesday, in the same shawls, with the screen at the same angle, and who did not move at all.
"Do you play, Miss Bennet?" said Lady Catherine.
"A little."
"Then let us hear you. Our instrument is a capital one. You may practice on it as much as you choose in Mrs. Jenkinson's room. You would be in nobody's way in that part of the house."
---
Elizabeth played, and was listened to.
She played not at all well, and knew it, and had made her peace with it at fifteen.
She had a good ear and no patience and had never in her life sat down to a piece for the fourth time; and what she had instead was the thing that cannot be got, which is that when Elizabeth Bennet sat down at an instrument, whatever else was going on in the room stopped being interesting.
It was very slight in her. It was nothing at all beside what Georgiana Darcy had possessed at seven years old and had since lost. It was enough that on the fourth or fifth bar Colonel Fitzwilliam broke off in the middle of a sentence and did not remember to finish it, and that Mrs. Jenkinson stopped moving the screen, and that a footman standing by the door with a tray forgot for perhaps ten seconds that he was a footman.
Lady Catherine listened to half a song, and then talked on as before to her other nephew, till the latter walked away from her, and moving with his usual deliberation toward the piano forte, stationed himself so as to command a full view of the fair performer's countenance.
Elizabeth saw what he was doing and stopped at the first convenient pause, and turned to him with an arch smile.
"You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me. But I will not be alarmed, though your sister does play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me."
"I shall not say that you are mistaken," he replied, "because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know, that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own. "
Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said to Colonel Fitzwilliam,
"Your cousin will give you a very pretty notion of me, and teach you not to believe a word I say.
I am particularly unlucky in meeting with a person so well able to expose my real character, in a part of the world where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of credit.
Indeed, Mr. Darcy, it is very ungenerous in you to mention all that you knew to my disadvantage in Hertfordshire — and, give me leave to say, very impolitic too — for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such things may come out, as will shock your relations to hear. "
"I am not afraid of you," said he, smilingly.
"Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of," cried Colonel Fitzwilliam. "I should like to know how he behaves among strangers."
"You shall hear then — but prepare yourself for something very dreadful.
The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire, you must know, was at a ball — and at this ball, what do you think he did?
He danced only four dances! I am sorry to pain you — but so it was.
He danced only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a partner. Mr. Darcy, you cannot deny the fact."
"I had not at that time the honor of knowing any lady in the assembly beyond my own party."
"True; and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball room. Well, Colonel Fitzwilliam, what do I play next? My fingers wait your orders."
"Perhaps," said Darcy, "I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction, but I am ill qualified to recommend myself to strangers."
"Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?" said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. "Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?"
"I can answer your question," said Fitzwilliam, "without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble."
"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done."
"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do.
They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression.
But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault — because I would not take the trouble of practicing.
It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution. "
Darcy smiled and said, "You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think any thing wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers."
---
He was standing very near her.
He had come to the instrument and stopped at the corner of it, which is where a gentleman stops, and he had not moved since; and Elizabeth, who was two feet from his sleeve and had been for a quarter of an hour, was conscious the entire time of the thing she had felt at Lucas Lodge when Sir William put out her hand, and again through six gloved meetings at Netherfield.
It was not unpleasant. That was the whole difficulty with it.
It sat about her wrists and at the back of her neck, a slow alternation of cold and then warmth, quite steady, and it made her clever — she was aware of being cleverer in that quarter of an hour than she had been at any time since Christmas, and of enjoying it, and of not wishing him to go away.
She was also perfectly certain that she disliked him, and had a fortnight's fresh grievance about Jane; and she put the whole of it down to the wickedness of a man who could produce such an effect and had spent the winter separating her sister from a house in Hertfordshire.
She had not yet asked herself the obvious question, which Charlotte would have asked in four seconds, and which was: and what does it cost him to stand there?
---
Here they were interrupted by Lady Catherine, who called out to know what they were talking of. Elizabeth immediately began playing again. Lady Catherine approached, and, after listening for a few minutes, said to Darcy,
"Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss, if she practiced more, and could have the advantage of a London master. She has a very good notion of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne's. Anne would have been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn."
Elizabeth's hands went on with the piece.
She had heard the sentence twice in one evening now, and on the second hearing it came apart in her fingers.
Had her health allowed her to learn.
Four hundred hours at an instrument. That is what it takes; Mary had told her the figure once, gloomily, over a work-basket. Four hundred hours of a girl's own attention, poured out of her and into a wooden box, day after day from the age of six — and every one of those hours a thing spent.
They had not kept her from the pianoforte because she was ill.
They had kept her from it, and from the drawing master, and from the languages, and from the dancing, and from the parish, and from the christenings, and from court, and from the word yes, for nine-and-twenty years; and the whole of that woman was still in her, banked and covered and unspent, waiting for the one occasion it had been saved for.
Elizabeth Bennet played to the end of the piece without a single wrong note, which had never happened to her before and never happened again.
Then she got up, and said something perfectly civil about the instrument, and did not look at anybody at all; and Mr. Darcy, standing at the corner of the pianoforte, observed that Miss Elizabeth Bennet had gone white to the lips in the space of about four seconds, and could not for the life of him account for it.