Part 7
Elizabeth and Wickham are permitted to talk together and to discover how their views and tastes coincide. Not the least bond of union is the confirmation of Elizabeth’s worst prejudices against Mr. Darcy. Wickham happens also to be a Derbyshire man, and he has actually been brought up in the most intimate relations with the Darcys. Wickham’s father was the confidential agent of Darcy’s father, who had been George Wickham’s godfather, and had charged himself with educating and providing for the lad. By appearing to respond unwillingly to the roused curiosity of Elizabeth, and by the flattery of giving her the idea that he is confiding in her alone, the young man manages, without seeming to be publicly proclaiming his wrongs, to convey to her the information of how badly he has been treated by young Darcy. This haughty, hard, unscrupulous man has defrauded his early companion of the church living bequeathed to him by his godfather. Darcy has a young sister, Georgiana, who had been very fond of her father’s favourite when he petted and played with her as a child, but her brother has infected her with the inordinate pride and selfishness of the family, and set her also against Wickham.
Elizabeth drinks in the whole story, which is a testimony to her own acuteness, is full of pity for Wickham and of wrath against Darcy.
The younger Miss Bennets have teased Mr. Bingley to give a ball, which comes off with great _éclat_ at Netherfield. The host’s attentions to Jane Bennet are the talk of the room.
Mrs. Bennet goes so completely off her head that, to the intense mortification and shame of Elizabeth, she overhears her mother enlarging on her eldest daughter’s brilliant prospects to Lady Lucas, at the supper-table, with so little reserve, that Elizabeth is sure Darcy, who is opposite, is listening--first with grave surprise, and afterwards with an unsuppressed expression of scorn.
Indeed, poor Elizabeth is doomed to experience anything rather than pleasure at the long-looked-forward-to, much-talked-of, ball at Netherfield. In the earlier part of the evening she is disappointed by the non-appearance of Wickham with the other officers; and she is full of resentment against Darcy for having either deprived him of an invitation, or caused the injured young man to avoid the painful encounter, though he had expressly told his warm adherent that it was not for him to go out of Mr. Darcy’s way.
Under the irritation produced by this suspicion, Elizabeth, when Darcy seeks her out, turns upon him with serious instead of playful antagonism. She mentions Wickham’s name, for the express purpose of observing Darcy’s annoyance. She provokes him to the cold observation that Mr. Wickham is well qualified to attract friends, but it remains to be seen whether he is equally fitted to retain them.
Elizabeth’s blood boils at the insinuation from the man who has so wronged her friend.
Then, as if the evil genius of the family had been at work, not Mrs. Bennet alone, but more of Elizabeth’s relations, make themselves obnoxious to censure and ridicule. Mary in her conceit consents, with her weak voice, to sing an after-supper song; and when it is received with forced approval, she volunteers to give another, amidst the covert smiles of her audience.
Elizabeth looks in agony to her father to interfere, lest Mary should go on singing all night; and he crowns the trying situation by one of his most ironical, disconcerting speeches.
“That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.”
One word on the terribly keen young eyes with which Elizabeth Bennet sees the faults and follies of her family, including her mother’s silliness, and the objectionable behaviour of her father in amusing himself at the expense of his wife, so as to risk rendering her an object of contempt in the eyes of her children.
No doubt, Elizabeth Bennet does not dream of being anything save respectful and dutiful to her father and mother, whom she addresses commonly with the old-fashioned, ceremonious “Sir” or “Madam.” The partiality of the former to her not only fills the young girl with honest filial pride, but it touches her indescribably at a crisis in her history. She seeks to screen her mother, and she strives to improve her younger sisters.
Elizabeth Bennet would have died rather than proclaimed the shortcomings of her family--far less have been so lost to all wholesome shame as to have made game of what formed her greatest affliction. She is removed, by a world of good principle and good feeling, from those heroines of the present day whose authors write as if they considered the absence of all reverence and tenderness, in the sacred relation in which children stand to parents, as a mark of emancipation from old-fashioned prejudices, of freedom from what is goody-goody, narrow and obsolete. These desperately ill-bred, benighted, worse than heathen young people, in their professed confessions to the public, or their confidences to their fellow-puppets, speak evil of dignities with a vengeance, have nothing save an ugly grimace or a heartless gibe for all that is honourable in years, wisdom, or virtue, and for all that is holy in natural affection. They pour forth their railings and mockings at the authors of their being with an absolute profanity, a base disloyalty, and an absence of common decency in their family disclosures, which would be altogether horrible and hideous, were it not also absurdly false and despicable, as well as odious.
Elizabeth Bennet was a very different being--an essentially Christian and civilized gentlewoman.
But one is impelled to wish that, especially where her mother was concerned, there had been a greater reluctance, even an incapability, to judge and condemn--a piteous veil drawn by the strong over the weak, in a relationship in which these attributes ought to have been reversed. For, whether the offence be wickedness or vulgarity,--
“A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.”
Jane Austen would have said probably that if Elizabeth Bennet’s nearest relations were guilty of impropriety and folly, she could not help seeing it. We know that the author herself was very happy in the family relations of which she proved herself worthy. She was a devoted daughter and loving sister, tempted to rest content with her own family circle, and to refuse, with a certain refined churlishness, other and wider associations. She may have been in his position who
“Jests at scars that never felt a wound.”
She could hardly perhaps realise, though she excelled in realising, how a good, affectionate girl, while forced in her sense and sincerity to condemn the failings of her kindred, yet instinctively shuts her eyes to them, so far as she can do so without moral injury to herself and others; or sees them through a half-shrouding mist of eager respect and faithful fondness for the merits which, in most cases, we may be thankful, balance the failings.
Besides, Jane Austen was very young when she wrote “Pride and Prejudice,” and gentle in some respects as youth may be, it is not from it that we are warranted in expecting charity. Youth at its best--a very sweet best, but with its sweetness consisting mainly of the unbounded promise of still better things--is in its ignorance, rashness, and unshaken self-confidence, impatient of all wrong-doing, nay, of all blundering, and intolerant to the wrong-doers and blunderers. It would be to rob the bountifulness of riper years of one of their chief gains if we were to deny them their prerogative of greater long-suffering with stupidity and pity for error.
In none of her other novels was Miss Austen quite so unsparing in her censure and withering in her satire--sufficiently provoked though it was--as in “Pride and Prejudice.” She is gentle to the comparatively harmless, kindly silliness and selfishness of Lady Bertram in “Mansfield Park;” while she is really tender, with a touch of pathos, to that worthiest and most lovable of old chatterboxes, Miss Bates, in “Emma.”
The Netherfield ball is fatal to Jane Bennet’s interest, innocent as Jane is of any of the family misdemeanors on the occasion. Bingley has to leave the next day for London, from which he certainly means to return soon. But his sisters and friend suddenly make up their minds to follow him, with the intention, if they can manage it, that the household shall not come back to Netherfield for the winter. Caroline Bingley communicates the news of the step, which takes the whole neighbourhood by surprise, in a plausible note to the victim, Jane.
Elizabeth reads between the lines, and discerns the truth, that the sisters and Mr. Darcy have at last taken alarm, and are bent on putting an end to the attachment on Mr. Bingley’s part before it has gone the length of a declaration, by detaining the naturally light-hearted, easily-impressed young fellow among the excitements and distractions of the town, away from Netherfield.
The sequel shows the conspirators successful. Sweet Jane Bennet is ruthlessly jilted, while bearing no malice, and insisting in her confidential intercourse with her sister that the affair has been all a mistake, caused by her fancy, the partiality of her friends, and Bingley’s amiable desire to please. She declares she is sure she will soon forget it, and be as happy as before.
In the meantime, Jane has to endure the mortification of hearing her mother lament, openly and loudly, over the ill-usage which her daughter has received.
The modern match-making mother has more guile, if she is not more delicate-minded, than to betray her feelings in a similarly unreserved fashion.
Elizabeth hotly resents the wrong done to her dear and gentle sister, is furious with Darcy and Miss Bingley, and begins to despise Bingley for proving a mere tool in the hands of his friends, whose interference in his affairs has been utterly unjustifiable.
Elizabeth and Wickham’s mutual preference goes no further. She says afterwards that every girl within visiting distance of Meryton lost her senses for a time where the winning young officer was concerned. But she herself did not lose her senses to such an extent as to be beyond recovering them; though the only remonstrance which reached her was on the indiscretion of allowing herself to be drawn into an attachment and engagement with a penniless officer, while she herself was little better provided for in a worldly sense, so that their marriage must either be impossible, or an event long deferred.
The warning, no doubt, has a mercenary ring, especially for young readers; but such worldly considerations were simply held reasonable in Jane Austen’s days, and reckless disregard of consequences and headstrong wilfulness in marriage, as in any other affair in life, were not qualities held up for admiration.
At the same time, Jane Austen was too true a woman not to deprecate what amounted to cold-blooded, calculating caution in marriage. More than once she exposes its fallacy and danger, and she has devoted a whole novel to show the injury which may be inflicted by over-carefulness on the part of a well-intentioned friend, and by over-submissiveness on the side of an amiable girl, in breaking off an engagement with a young man who had only his high character and hope of rising in his profession as hostages to fortune.
Elizabeth Bennet and Wickham’s mere liking for each other rather dwindles away after a time than meets with a sharp check; and Elizabeth considers that if they had been sufficiently in love they might have justifiably faced the risks of a long engagement and a poor marriage--even while she tries to be so hardened and cynical a philosopher as to think and say that Wickham is doing what he ought in withdrawing his attentions gradually from her, and setting himself to pay his addresses to a girl in Meryton who has nothing in particular to distinguish her save that she has recently inherited a fortune. This worldly argument is forced work by Elizabeth, and when she is a very little older and wiser she recants, and is affronted by the coarseness of sentiment into which her determination to be indifferent and reasonable had led her.
II.
In the following spring Elizabeth Bennet accompanies Sir William Lucas and his daughter Maria, travelling post, to pay her old friend Charlotte a visit in her Kent parsonage.
Any little awkwardness and coolness--there never was estrangement--between the friends have died out; “a good memory is inexcusable in such a case.” Elizabeth only recollects that she was Mr. Collins’ first choice when she has a passing comical impression that he is showing off his excellent garden and comfortable house, not without a design of letting her feel all she has lost.
But Mr. Collins is well content, as he may be, with the sensible, good-tempered wife who, in making the best of the home she has secured for herself, fully recognises that it is for her dignity to keep up his; though she encourages him to spend a great part of his time in working in his garden, and has her sitting-room at the back of the house, since, if it had commanded a view of the lane, and the passers-by, it would have been apt to entail on her a large portion of her husband’s spare time and company.
Elizabeth has the honour of being included along with the Lucases in the Collins summons, twice a week, to relieve the dulness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s family party at Rosings, and of being patronised and dictated to by Lady Catherine, a domineering, self-sufficient woman, who tells Mr. Collins how to manage his parish, Mrs. Collins how to keep her house and rear her poultry, Elizabeth how to practise her music, and Maria Lucas how to pack her trunk.
With the exception of Charlotte and Elizabeth, the recipients of these favours are overwhelmed, and awed into the humblest gratitude and obedience. Charlotte looks over Lady Catherine’s foibles, because they belong “to a superior woman and kind neighbour,” exactly as the judicious young matron takes care to value at the highest rate all the advantages of her position, and to ignore as far as possible its drawbacks, thus contriving to remain tolerably satisfied with her lot.
Elizabeth, entirely undazzled by the assumption and splendour which prevail at Rosings, amuses herself with detecting a resemblance between Mr. Darcy and his aunt, and feels satisfied that Lady Catherine’s only child, Miss de Bourgh, a sickly, supercilious girl, with a large fortune, who is designed for her cousin, will make him a fit wife.
Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam, another nephew of Lady Catherine’s, arrive on a visit at Rosings, while Elizabeth and Maria Lucas are still staying at Hunsford Vicarage, which is only divided by the lane and the park palings from the great house.
Naturally, the two young men, whatever the aristocratic trammels under which they labour, are attracted daily to the more congenial society of the parsonage. For that matter, Colonel Fitzwilliam, though the younger son of an earl, is agreeable and unassuming, likely to make himself happy among any fairly well-born and well-educated young people, and especially with a pretty, witty young girl like Elizabeth Bennet.
But even Darcy, under stress of circumstances, thaws considerably. He pays his homage unmistakably in the same quarter as that which attracts his cousin, and betrays considerable annoyance and shame when his aunt’s impertinence is directed at Elizabeth.
With regard to the great lady, she is so firmly convinced of her own supreme deserts and those of her daughter, that she does not so much as see the strong inclination to defection on the part of the gentlemen. Elizabeth Bennet likes Colonel Fitzwilliam, and is rather surprised to find that he is on cordial cousinly terms with Darcy. It does not mollify her in the least to discover that the latter seeks to renew their acquaintance on a more intimate footing, and perplexes Mrs. Collins by the extent of his civilities to the parsonage.
Elizabeth avoids the man she detests as much as she can; and when she has the ill luck to encounter him in the pretty country walks, and the strolls in Rosings Park, of which she is the only lady in the house to avail herself, she expressly mentions to him, without a grain of coquetry, her favourite path, that no untoward accident may occur again. She attributes the circumstance that she still meets Mr. Darcy to his letting himself come in the way, as a resource for sheer idleness, if not with the express purpose of spoiling her walk. He turns and walks with her without getting any encouragement, asks odd questions as to her opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Collins’ happiness, and--most unaccountable eccentricity of all--seems to imply, when they are talking of the rooms at Rosings, that the next time he and she are in Kent, she too will be staying at the great house, instead of at the parsonage. Elizabeth wonders, is momentarily put out, and thinks no more of it.
In a conversation between Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam, just before the two gentlemen are to take their departure, after the Colonel has mentioned that they would have been gone long ago, if Darcy had not, again and again, put off their leaving Rosings, and Elizabeth has hinted that Mr. Darcy has no objection to direct his friends’ movements, the talk turns on Darcy’s well-known influence over his great friend Bingley. Fitzwilliam, in his ignorance, refers to a service which Darcy has done this friend, and of which the benefactor has spoken to his cousin, without, however, mentioning names. Darcy has congratulated himself on having been able to rescue a friend from the misfortune of contracting a very undesirable marriage.
Elizabeth, understanding the allusion, feels her blood boil at what she regards as a heartless boast thus unconsciously repeated to one interested in the transaction. After she has parted from her innocent informant, she occupies herself with re-reading Jane’s last letters, and imagines she sees in them proofs of broken spirits and impaired tranquillity.
Elizabeth is herself so troubled that she pleads with reason a violent headache to excuse her from accompanying the Collins’ and Maria Lucas to dine at Rosings. Elizabeth feels she cannot encounter Darcy with calmness, after this confirmation of the injury he has inflicted on her sister.
In the course of the evening Elizabeth Bennet is startled by a ring at the door-bell. To her utter amazement, Mr. Darcy walks in. He has left the party at Rosings, and he at once imputes his visit to a wish to hear that she is better.
Elizabeth answers with cold civility.
He rises and walks about the room, comes towards her in an agitated manner, and bursts forth “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you!”
Elizabeth’s astonishment is beyond expression. She stares, colours, doubts, and is silent. “For once a young lady is incredulous on the subject of a proposal made to her.”
Darcy treats her silence as sufficient encouragement, and proceeds to plead his cause--speaking well, like the able man he is.
But, unfortunately, there are other feelings than love to be described, and he is as eloquent on his pride--of which he has never learnt to be ashamed--on the contrary, he has always been proud of his pride--as on his tenderness. With great candour, but little tact, he expatiates on the obstacles his attachment has had to overcome, refers to her inferior position, and lets it be plainly seen he considers an alliance with her family in one sense a degradation.
In short, Mr. Darcy pays his addresses in a high and mighty fashion, which belonged as much to the privileges of the great “quality” of the period as to the man.
Little wonder that, though he urges with some justice the strength of a regard which has been proof against such trials, and claims its due reward in her acceptance of his hand--speaking of apprehension and anxiety, but with his countenance expressing real security, so that it is evident he has no doubt of a favourable answer--a high-spirited girl like Elizabeth Bennet, who already looks upon herself as aggrieved by this man, her sister’s worst enemy, should become exasperated into forgetting her first sense of the compliment of Darcy’s affection, and pity for his inevitable disappointment.
With hardly more humility than he has displayed, she gives him his answer. She waives with disdain the usual expressions of obligation. She declares she cannot thank him. She has never desired his good opinion, and it is certain he has bestowed it most unwillingly. She is sorry to cause pain to any one. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and she hopes will be of short duration. The feelings which he has just told her have long prevented the acknowledgment of his regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.
Mr. Darcy, who is leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed on her face, hears her with as much resentment as surprise or pain. In fact, it is with the white heat of anger, rather than the extremity of grief, that his complexion grows pale; and when he has put just enough force on himself to speak calmly, it is with imperiousness and not with despair--above all, without the most distant idea of stooping to implore her mercy--that he demands, “And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting? I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavour at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.”
Thus pressed and goaded, Elizabeth speaks her mind with passionate, youthful freedom as well as dignity and scorn. She accuses him of a design to offend and insult her, by choosing to tell her he likes her against his will, against his reason, even against his character. She asks if he could think that, though her feelings had not decided against him, though they had been indifferent, even favourable, any consideration could ever induce her to marry a man who has destroyed the happiness of a beloved sister?
He is guilty of saying that he has been kinder to Bingley than to himself.
She retorts that she has long ago known his character from Mr. Wickham, and dares him to contradict what she has heard.
His hasty exclamation, “You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns!” betrays that jealousy is the first emotion aroused by her reproach.
But when she goes on to protest against the injuries he has inflicted on his father’s godson, in withholding from him what Darcy must have known to be his due, other feelings are awakened in her hearer.
“And this,” he cries, as he walks with quick steps across the room, “is your opinion of me? This is the estimation in which you hold me? I thank you for explaining it so freely. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed.”
But he is not so much hurt that pride and resentment are not to have the last word. He stops his indignant cry, to assert that perhaps his offences might have been overlooked if he had not wounded her pride by the honest confession of his scruples. Her bitter accusations might have been suppressed if he had flattered her with the belief that he was impelled by unqualified inclination. But he is not ashamed of the feelings he has related. They were natural and just. Could she expect him to rejoice in the inferiority of her connexions?
Here is the most masterful of incensed lovers. But he meets his match in the most resolute of indignant girls.
“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth says, with all the calmness she can summon to her aid, “if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt, in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”