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The British East India company first began to trade and formed establishments in Hindoostan. This company is supported by the British government, the power of whose arms has extended her empire over a considerable portion of Hindoostan. On the Ganges, the British possess Bengal, Bahar, and Benares, comprehending a territory of 550 miles in length, by 300 in breadth. They possess several other parts of Hindoostan, all which are supposed to contain 14 millions of inhabitants.

— Elements of Useful Knowledge; 1812

When an Englishman desires activity, inactivity, change, stasis, simplicity, intricacy, strangeness, familiarity, or the pleasure of having his own way, he will look—very naturally—to India. However little calculated that land, in itself, may be to fulfill these little caprices, its ideal is so fixed in his mind, that he is sure to find something within the stores of its ancient civilisation to answer to his notions.

Such was the case with Mr. Edward Bennet. The second son of a minor country squire, he was faced, at his majority, with the necessity of fixing upon some course, which would enable him to make his own way in the world. From a scholarly bent, which gave him a good deal of inborn curiosity; and because the idleness of habits, which he had heard to be common in the East, attracted him more than the manly rigour required for the practice of the legal or ecclesiastical professions in England; from these reasons, and perhaps still others, he left a country happily enlightened by sound philosophy, and the only true revelation, for one burdened with superstition and gross idolatry: he joined, in short, in the service of the East India Company at Bombay, soon after it was ceded to the English. Once his innate indolence had overcome the exigencies of the journey thither, it was not often further disturbed by any requirements of his post. His work as a writer for the Company kept him largely within its settlements in the western part of the state of Hindoostan; on the rare occasions when he left Bombay, it was only for Chaul or Bassein.

Mr. Edward Bennet had always intended to marry upon returning to his native England, when his contributions of learning to the Company would have earned him an independence. He was yet in India, however, when he was nearing forty; he grew increasingly susceptible to beauty, and ripe for picking; he was caught at last by a girl with gentle manners, a generous dowry, and remarkable beauty (so far as we can reconcile beauty with the olive complexion). She was the daughter of a Mahomedan merchant and moneylender, who had much to do with the India Company, and was very pleased to furnish one of its votaries with this his most precious good.

Just when Mr. Edward Bennet began to think of shipping himself and his newly acquired ware back to the place of his birth, he received word that his elder brother had died. His father, moreover, had predeceased his brother by some years. He became, therefore, Mr. Bennet, and had the charge of an estate of moderate size in Hertfordshire, for the management of which his education had in no way fitted him—and thus began his years of otium cum dignitate.

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”

“Indeed I had not,” he replied.

“But it is: for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”

“And now I suppose, that there is no escaping your telling me.”

Mrs. Bennet appeared not to notice his sarcasm. “Well, but let it is: by a single gentleman of large fortune, from the north. Mrs. Long had it from Mr. Morris, and then of course she told me directly. He will take possession even before Michaelmas. What a fine thing for our girls!”

“How so? how can it affect them?”

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome? You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them. Therefore you must visit him as soon as ever he comes.”

“I am not sure that I must do any such thing. If this gentleman from the north be so easy in his nature, and so good-humoured, as to consent to take one of our daughters off of our hands, he must also be easy enough not to object to being called on by them. I will send by them a few lines to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chuses—though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.”

“I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others—and she is so shockingly dark and coarse, besides, that it would be a trial to get her married even in India. She is not half so handsome as Jane—who you know is remarkably fair even for a half-caste—nor is she near so lively as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.”

“They have none of them much to recommend them,” replied he: “they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.”

“Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way?”

If this statement revealed a certain imperviousness to irony, it must be forgiven: Mrs. Bennet’s advantages were not those of the mind. Her education in India had done nothing to fit her to be a rational companion to an Englishman, Mahomedan men generally preferring to keep their women in a state of ignorance. It had become evident to Mr. Bennet soon after their alighting in Hastings, that the shyness of manner, which his bride had evidenced in Bombay, was due entirely to the dictatorial restraint imposed upon her by her father: that she was unused to enjoying the liberty, which Englishwomen claimed as their happy portion, and very unlikely to make good use of it.

Had she been reared from childhood in the healthier climate, and amongst the more wholesome doctrines, of England, he was sure that she would have been a sensible, sober, and industrious woman. As it was, either the stringent tyranny, or the abandoned voluptuousness, or some other facet, of the Mahomedan religion, had vitiated her intellect. Her temper was no less uncertain than her understanding. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The sole business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news.

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We have already, in treating on the ſubject of dress, had occaſion to give ſome account of the ancient ſplendour and magnificence of the Easterns; let us now take a ſhort view of their preſent condition, which we ſhall ſee is still governed by the ſame customs, and influenced by the ſame principles; for we find them at this day fond of that ſupine indolence, and of that pageantry and ſhow, which ſo ſtrongly marked their character from the earlieſt periods in which hiſtory gives an account of them.

— William Alexander, M.D., The history of women, from the earliest antiquity, to the present time; 1796

On the evening of the day following this significant conversation, the family had settled themselves into the sitting-room, and made themselves genteelly busy doing very little. Mary read; Kitty sat on a divan, yawning; and Lydia and Mrs. Bennet gossiped. Elizabeth was engaged in sewing a thin golden ribbon into geometric convolutions on a length of fringed trim, which process Jane was admiring. Looking up from his newspaper to regard his second daughter at her occupation, Mr. Bennet addressed her with,—

“I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy.”

“Nonsense, Mr. Bennet! You cannot be supposing that she will wear that before Mr. Bingley.”

“I am sorry, ma’am, but in fact I shall—if Mr. Bingley is to attend the assembly.”

“Well! I am sure that I do not know who inspired you to take up making that gaudy nonsense.”

“I beg your pardon, mama—but you did. And I do not think it so very different from what other ladies wear. Lady Lucas’s new dress is done up with gold embroidery and fringe; and she told us that she had had the muslin from India.”

Mrs. Bennet sniffed derisively. “Lady Lucas is frightfully overtrimmed. And I am sure that her trim cannot have been real gold. It is nothing like what they make in Surat. That is infinitely superior.” Elizabeth smiled at this seeming contradiction in the collection of Mrs. Bennet’s opinions.

The rapport subsisting between Mrs. Bennet and her second daughter was, in many respects, a strange one. In appearance, Elizabeth was the daughter who most resembled her mother—but this did not earn her any great portion of Mrs. Bennet’s maternal affection. Elizabeth was often ashamed of her mother’s grasping vulgarity; and yet she had a real fondness for the woman who—besides being endeared to her by familiarity and by filial duty—was her most tangible connexion to India, of which land her father seldom spoke.

Mrs. Bennet, for her part, decried what she chose to term her second daughter’s impertinence, disobedience, and headstrong determination to embarrass them all by refusing to act like the Englishwoman that she ought to be; yet, in her moments of homesickness, she relied on Elizabeth to be the one amongst her sisters the most thoroughly conversant in the Cutchee language, and the one from whom her little anecdotes and remembrances would receive the most attention. Elizabeth and her elder sister Jane were the only of Mrs. Bennet’s family who would listen to her speak of India with any patience; and Elizabeth, with any interest. It was Elizabeth whom Mrs. Bennet taught the gota embroidery of her youth in Jaipur, and Elizabeth to whom she read her sister-in-law’s letters detailing the current fashions of Bombay.

“What dress shall you remake with it, Lizzy?” asked Jane, eager to avoid any thing that seemed like it might become a dispute.

“The orange silk,” answered Elizabeth.

“Oh, Lord!” cried Lydia. “Why you will wear every ugly thing the Gandjees send, I do not know. You see no one else here in colours like that.”

“We should honour our relations, and value any thing that is given to us as a gift in affection,” Mary rebuked; but then, feeling that her elder sister would also benefit from some sobering advice, continued—“but you should take care, Elizabeth, to guard yourself against vanity. A style cannot be too simple, or too modest, to do credit to that most worthy adornment in a female: namely, virtue.”

This was too much talk of fringe and fabric and female virtue for Mr. Bennet, who had been intending some mischief, and was determined not to allow the conversation to evade him. He again made some reference to Mr. Bingley’s opinions, on the subject of feminine dress; this time, his bait had more success; Mrs. Bennet cried that it was useless to speak of Mr. Bingley’s opinions about any thing, as, since Mr. Bennet would not visit him, it could not be supposed that they would ever know any thing about it.

“If we are really to know nothing of his opinions at all, he must be a young man rather more diffident, and unwilling to speak of himself, than is usual: and I saw no evidence of that, when I called on him this morning.”

This revelation at once caused the furor, at which he at aimed all along. All six women were astonished and delighted—though Mrs. Bennet disclaimed having felt any surprise, the moment after she had expressed it. Of course it was just what she had expected all the while; she had always known that Mr. Bennet was too good to neglect any thing which could be to the advantage of their daughters; she had known that she would persuade him in time.

Elizabeth privately supposed that he had never needed any convincing: that he had intended to make the visit all along, but had pretended reluctance for the sake of vexing his wife. Despite her fondness for her father, it was a joke of which she could not wholly approve.

Mr. Bennet valued Elizabeth for the sharpness of her mind, and considered her as the finest companion, with whom his marriage had furnished him. Elizabeth, of all her sisters, was his nearest reflex in intellect and in humour. She was the person the most likely to understand him; the most likely to be granted ingress to his book room, where she took as near an interest to the study of various abstruse subjects as even he could wish; and the most likely to be able to persuade him to any action.

Mr. Bennet, in turn, endeared himself to Elizabeth by his unwillingness to join in his wife’s criticisms of her temperament, behaviour, dress, and appearance; and his countermanding of whatever directives she gave, as to the application of lotion of pitch, or caustic cachou oil, or various concoctions of crushed strawberries, bullock’s gall, and alum, purporting to whiten the skin or to remove unwanted hair.

There subsisted, nevertheless, a distance between the two—at least, in Elizabeth’s mind—that could not be wholly overcome by any exertions of this sort (if exertions they may be called). Mr. Bennet was a man too liberal in his opinions to believe that the tawny races of the globe were possessed of any innate inferiority; his wife’s faults of temper and of understanding, he blamed on her upbringing, and it was an upbringing which his daughters had not shared; besides this, he had a ready cynicism, which made him almost equally willing to satirise any thing, the familiar as well as the foreign; and the civilisation of England came in for its own share of his sharp comments. Yet, despite this, and despite her own Christianity, Elizabeth could not help but feel implicated by any thing her mother’s behaviour prompted him to say about Mahomedan or Hindoo women. Her father was the only person with whom she could discuss certain matters of the mind; but it was only with Jane that she felt any thing like perfect unreserve.

Chapter Text

From the climate of a fair skin, fine shape, and pleasing feature, going to the northward, the skin becomes of a blackish brown, the figure clumsy, and the features coarse. Going to the southward, in the same manner, we alter the complexion; shape and features, until the skin becomes perfectly black, the shape in some countries less graceful, and the features coarse: the colour being altered, according to the soil, situation and climate, by the most regular and insensible deviations and shades.

— Hugh Williamson, Observations on the climate in different parts of America, compared with the climate in corresponding parts of the other continent; 1811

The following days proved Mr. Bennet determined to be reticent on the subject of their new neighbour. Not even Elizabeth could prompt him to reveal any thing except for what was generally known—no idea of his manners, or his fashion, or his countenance, could be expected from that quarter. The ladies of Longbourn, therefore, were obliged to wait for the assembly to form any idea of him.

The day arrived; the people of Meryton could at last satisfy themselves as to the size and nature of Mr. Bingley’s party: it consisted of himself, his two sisters, the husband of the eldest, and another young man.

Throughout the course of the evening, Mr. Bingley proved himself to be a genteel, amiable man, friendly without garrulousness or vulgarity, and exactly the sort of person who was designed to be a credit to the neighbourhood. He was pleased with every body and every thing, and equal even to being glad of Sir William’s effusive gallantry. He danced every dance, was angry that the ball closed so early, and talked of giving one himself at Netherfield.

What a contrast between him and his friend! Mr. Darcy danced only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley, declined being introduced to any other lady, and spent the rest of the evening in walking about the room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party. Before two hours had passed, he was generally decried as a very disagreeable and arrogant man.

The ladies of the party were more like their brother’s friend, than like their brother. They were elegant, fashionable women, but it was too clear that they knew it; and that they were better pleased with themselves, than with any thing they observed. They did little to hide their disdain for the company in general, or their shock at the presence of actual Asiatics, neither lascars nor ayahs, in the countryside, and not in London or Liverpool where they belonged; and, upon perceiving Elizabeth in particular, they whispered to each other behind their fans in malevolent glee at having discovered so very odd an object in so unassuming a place. Elizabeth, who cared very little for any opinion which was not her own, was more amused than offended.

She was given, before the close of the evening, still further cause for amusement. Mr. Bingley approached his friend during a break between the first and second dance of a set, to entreat him to join the dance himself. Elizabeth, who had been obliged by a scarcity of gentlemen to sit down for the set, was positioned a little behind the pair.

“Come, Darcy,” said Mr. Bingley, “Will not you dance? I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner! You had much better dance.”

“I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this, it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with.”

“I would not be so fastidious as you are,” cried Bingley, “for a kingdom! Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening; and there are several of them, you see, uncommonly pretty.”

“You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room,” said Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.

“Oh, she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! That hazel eye, and that hair like honey!” Darcy looked long-suffering. “But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.”

“Which do you mean?” whereupon he turned round, and caught Elizabeth’s eye; an expression of surprise overspread his face before he succeeded in blinkering it. “Sisters? Are you quite sure?”

“Yes, perfectly. They are the children of Mr. Bennet, lately of the India Company, and his wife. If you had consented to be introduced to their parents, you would have knowledge of it yourself. But do let me ask Miss Bennet to introduce you—if her temper is any indication, her sister must be very sweet and obliging.”

“I thank you, no—the English people at a public country assembly are quite bad enough, without adding in the daughters of Nabobs. And the peculiarity of her complexion must preclude her being pretty, as you chuse to describe her.”

Darcy had turned again to face his friend as he spoke, and therefore did not see what Bingley did; the slow smile that overcame Elizabeth’s face as she met the eye of the latter proved to him that her hearing was perfectly good; and she had the dubious pleasure of seeing that amiable gentleman become rather ashen.

He began to whisper harshly to his friend; but Elizabeth was already rising, turning to find Charlotte that she may share the joke with her.

“Miss Bennet!”

Elizabeth, who was never wholly uncivil, turned round—but it was Jane who was being importuned—she staid still, and allowed the three of them to approach her. She consented to be introduced, by way of Jane, to Mr. Bingley, who courteously asked for the pleasure of standing up for the next with her.

Elizabeth apprehended some danger of Mr. Darcy’s asking her for a dance after all: and if she said yes to his friend, she could hardly refuse him. She thanked Mr. Bingley, therefore, and told him that he was very kind—but she had no intention of dancing at present.

At a significant look from his friend, Mr. Darcy gravely requested an introduction. Elizabeth, whether from a mischievous desire to plague him, or from a benevolent one, to spare them both from an acquaintance which she was sure would give no gratification to either, forestalled him.

“I thank you,” she told Mr. Bingley, “but my local acquaintance are quite enough for me. Your friend d’Arcy has perhaps descended from the Scandinavian wilds”—cutting her eye smilingly at him—“and is not yet accustomed to the little civilities which English people employ.”

Mr. Darcy bowed. “Madam, I—”

“No, no,” Elizabeth laughed—“do not trouble yourself. These little prejudices will intrude—in every one, perhaps, save those who are particularly well-informed.”

And she courtesied and effected her retreat, leaving Jane looking rather alarmed.

Overall, the evening had passed off pleasantly to the whole family. Elizabeth had had her joke; Mary had heard her playing on the pianoforte praised; and Lydia and Kitty had danced every dance. To Jane, there was a more particular source of pleasure, in reflections on Mr. Bingley’s perfect amiability, and in the recollection that he had asked her to stand up with him twice.

Mrs. Bennet related, on the subject of the ball, every thing that Mr. Bennet would consent to hear, and a little more besides. She crowned her description with a relation of Mr. Darcy’s shocking rudeness; which she delivered with much bitterness of spirit, and some exaggeration.

“But I can assure you,” she added, “that Lizzy does not lose much by not suiting his fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited, that there was no enduring him! Peculiar complexion, indeed! I assure you she is far too good-looking for him, with that sour, scowling face of his. And to call you a Nabob, who are the son of a gentleman! I assure you it gratifies me exceedingly that Lizzy gave him one of her set-downs. I quite detest the man.”

Elizabeth privately thought, that Mrs. Bennet had more to say than any body else she had ever met, on the subject of her complexion; but she kept her silence. Hearing her mother defend her appearance gave her such a sensation of warmth, that she began even to be grateful to Mr. Darcy. She thought that she would gladly endure six such slights, if they all but had the same result.

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The ſame hand which holds out forgiveneſs to the penitent, and aſſistance to the frail, diſpenſes comfort and hope to the afflicted.

— Sermons by Hugh Blair, D.D., 1784

If Elizabeth had rather expected to affront Mr. Darcy with her sally, she would be surprised and disappointed to know his real thoughts on the occasion. He was impressed with her poise, with her quick wit, with the laughing flash of her dark eye—and, he was ashamed after a moment to admit, with the clearness and purity of her English. He supposed that her father must, after all, be a gentleman, and not, as he had assumed, the son of some obscure, semi-literate clerk. Of course, he had still done well not to raise anyone’s hopes by going so far as to dance with her. He apologised to his friend for having caused an awkward scene, and then meant to forget all about it.

As for Elizabeth, discourse with her friends and neighbours served to keep the insult in her mind for longer than it may have remained there, had she been left to her own devices. As soon as an assembly had occurred, it must be talked over; and Elizabeth was much sympathised with on the occasion of the Lucases calling at Longbourn the next morning to make the necessary communications. Miss Lucas was so good as to repeat what she had heard to Jane’s advantage—namely, that Mr. Bingley had declared her to be decidedly the prettiest woman in the room—but then must continue:

“But I hear that Mr. Darcy is not so well worth listening to as his friend. Poor Eliza! To be called peculiar-looking.”

“He did not say any thing,” said Elizabeth, “but what everyone thinks. I do not begrudge him his opinion. However, he ought to have kept his own counsel.”

“And perhaps he would have, had Mr. Bingley not pressed him to behave in a manner contrary to his inclination. It is quite natural for such a man, with fortune, rank, every thing in his favour, to have a degree of pride which would prevent him from wishing to mix much with the people of Meryton.”

Here it was necessary for Miss Bennet to defend her favourite. “Mr. Bingley only wanted his friend to get to know the neighbourhood,” said she—“which is very reasonable, if he intends to stay here some time.”

“Hugh Blair,” observed Mary, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, “tells us that true gentleness seeks rather to conceal, than to dazzel with, superiority of talents or rank; and that this habit is one of the practices which we owe to God. Christ commands every one to please his neighbour for his good.”

“And then, you know, Charlotte,” added Elizabeth, following rather more closely to the original line of conversation, “we have in fairness to say, that Mr. Bingley would not have needed to pester Mr. Darcy, had that gentleman behaved with civility to begin with.”

“Oh, certainly. And had the workmen gone on strike all those years ago, and refused to construct Netherfield, it could not have been let, and the two young men would never have come to the neighbourhood—and this all may have been avoided.”

“So you see, Jane, it is those workmen who are to blame—or perhaps the man who hired them. Your Mr. Bingley is safe.”

Mrs. Bennet, who had no taste for theoretical conversation, but was proud of having done what none of her friends had done, in catching an English gentleman, now required the other half of the insult to be pulled out for communal inspection.

“The daughters of a Nabob, he said! A Nabob, indeed! I assure you, Mr. Bennet made but very little when he was with the Company. Longbourn has been in the Bennet family since the reign of King Edward IV! You can be assured that he did not purchase it within his lifetime—begging your pardon, Lady Lucas.”

Lady Lucas disclaimed any offence.

“And Mr. Bennet,” his wife continued, “has rather more, in point of family, than Mr. Bingley does, who is only letting Netherfield. And therefore I am sure that he need not be so proud.” This promiscuous mixing of Mr. Darcy’s qualities, with those of his friend, did not seem to trouble her.

“If I were as rich as a Nabob,” cried a young Lucas, who had come with his sisters, “I would keep six elephants to ride on, and drink a bottle of wine every day.”

“Then you would drink a great deal more than you ought,” said Mrs. Bennet; “and if I were to see you at it, I should take away your bottle directly.”

The boy protested that she should not; she continued to declare that she would; and the argument ended only with the visit.
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The Lucases had scarcely departed, when another party was announced. It consisted only of Mr. Bingley, and Mr. Darcy. Miss Bennet rose and flushed, courtesying to both men, but looking principally at Mr. Bingley. Mrs. Bennet winked at her eldest daughter significantly, as if to say, Is not this a marked attention?

A marked attention it was—but it was intended for Miss Elizabeth, not Miss Bennet. The very morning after Darcy had determined to put Miss Elizabeth’s unfortunate overhearing from his mind, Bingley had coaxed him to wait on the Bennets, by way of apology for his unseemly remark. Mr. Darcy had argued, that he had attempted to apologise once, and been rebuffed; Mr. Bingley asked if he meant to make things awkward for him with the principle family in the area where he meant to settle; and, at length, Darcy had relented. It is likely that his friend would not have prevailed with him, had his conscience not agreed; and perhaps his conscience would have had no effect, had it not been prevailed upon in turn by recollections of Miss Elizabeth’s black eyes, broad smile, and sportive speech.

“Well! Mr. Bingley! You are very, very welcome! Oh, sit down, sit down! Come here and sit down by my Jane! And your friend is welcome too, I suppose.” Elizabeth blushed to see the ill-bred distinction her mother made between the two men, however well it accorded with her feelings.

Mr. Bingley was so very glad to sit where he was directed, that he forgot even to point a speaking glance at Mr. Darcy. In the event, however, that man needed no prompting; he really wished to know more of Miss Elizabeth; courtesy being helped by inclination, he chose a chair near to her’s. Mary took up a book, and retreated to a seat by a window to catch the light.

“What a fine evening we had yesterday! What pleasant company, and what fine musicians! I regard it as a very auspicious beginning to my residence in the neighbourhood. I enjoyed our dances exceedingly,” said Bingley to Miss Bennet, “and I was only very sorry, Miss Elizabeth, that I had not the chance to partner you, before you were finished dancing for the night. But we came on purpose to enquire how you ladies enjoyed it?”

Jane directed a serene smile at him. “It was a lovely evening.”

“Oh, yes!” cried her sister. “I amused myself a good deal.”

“And justly,” came Mr. Darcy’s grave, deep voice from immediately beside her, almost making her start. This was so thoroughly the correct thing to say—Elizabeth having a high valuation for good humour, and especially for any statement which seemed to forgive her for her wit—that she was restored almost to the degree of charity she had felt for Mr. Darcy, before she had known that such a man existed.

“Well, then!” cried Bingley, who was not satisfied to let the matter rest on so implicit a foundation as this, but desired to have all out at once—“do say that we are all friends again!”

Elizabeth again looked askance to Mr. Darcy—he gave a slight bow, as though to accede to the proposition, though he disdained to do so aloud—it was enough.

“As we have never actually met, I do not suppose that we may be friends again—however, if you like, we may begin—” and she held out her hand for him to shake.

Darcy, from his pleasure at learning that last night’s lively speech was not the high-water mark, but rather the medium, of Elizabeth’s conversation, and from observing the graceful turn of her hand and wrist and the shell-like colour of her finely shaped fingernails, was slow in his response: Elizabeth withdrew her hand again, and addressed herself to Mr. Bingley—

“Ah, but I should not try Mr. Darcy’s forbearance. Perhaps he believes that my complexion is catching.”

Here, Mrs. Bennet spoke sharply to Miss Elizabeth in a language which Darcy did not recognise, but which he supposed, after a beat, must be Hindy. Miss Elizabeth did not seem very abashed; but Miss Bennet was looking between the three of them with consternation.

Flushing at his backwardness, and his consciousness of the reason for it, he took up Miss Elizabeth’s hand, and issued as a low a bow over it as was compatible with his seated posture. She looked only slightly mollified; but if she were determined to take every thing ill, he intended to let her; any further apology would be absurd.

Mr. Bingley evidently judged, that this was as near a rapprochement as was likely to be made that day; he made some remark about the neighbourhood, and the families residing in it, and the conversation thereafter was carried chiefly by himself and by Miss Bennet. Over the course of the next ten minutes, Elizabeth’s occasional wry remark, uttered with that same slow, amused smile and quirk of the brow, convinced Mr. Darcy that she had only been joking earlier, and that he had been too quick to take offence. He, himself, did not speak beyond the two words he had already uttered; and so Elizabeth was unable to form any such apprehension.

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To make a Curry the Indian Way.

Take two ſmall chickens […] and ſtew them in about a quart of water for about five minutes, then ſtrain off the liquor and put the chickens in a clean diſh ; take three large onions, chop them ſmall and fry them in about two ounces of butter, then put in the chickens and fry them together till they are brown; take a quarter of an ounce of turmeric, a large ſpoonful of ginger and beaten pepper together, and a little ſalt to your palate, ſtrew all theſe ingredients over the chickens whilſt frying, then pour in the liquor and let it ſlew about half an hour, then put in a quarter of a pint of cream and the juice of two lemons, and ſerve it up.

To make Paco-lilla, or Indian Pickle, the ſame the Mangoes come over in.

Take a pound of race-ginger, and lay it in water one night; then ſcrape it, and cut it in thin ſlices […]. Take a pound of garlic, and cut it in thin flices […]; take a quarter of a pound of muſtard-ſeeds bruiſed, and halt a quarter of an ounce of turmerick, put theſe ingredients, when prepared, into a large ſtone or glaſs jar, with a gallon of very good white wine vinegar, and ſtir it very often for a fortnight, and tie it up cloſe. In this pickle you may put white cabbage, […] cauliflowers, cucumbers, melons, apples, French beans, plums, or any fort of fruit.

— Hannah Glasse, Art of Cookery; 1803

The ladies of Longbourn soon waited on those of Netherfield; and the visit was returned in due form. Mrs. Bennet expressed her determination to have the Netherfield party to dinner as soon as may be: for, she assured them, she set a better table than did any of their other neighbours. Kitty and Lydia spoke mostly to each other, but when Lydia did stoutly insert herself into the conversation, what she said was invariably silly. Mary was silent, except for when it was in her power to be ponderous. It was the eldest Miss Bennets alone, the Bingley sisters decided, who had any degree of sense, conversation, or address; they might be acceptable acquaintances, so long as they were within reach of none better; and so long as they could give vent to their wit, as soon as the parties had partied, on the subject of whatever concoction Miss Elizabeth Bennet had been wearing that day.

Accordingly, Jane and Elizabeth were occasional occupants of Netherfield’s principle drawing-room. They paid a morning call, or were invited via note for tea, and arrived with all due decorum in the Bennet carriage. Mr. Bingley was present on these visits more often than not; and his friend joined him, perhaps, half the time.

The Netherfield party were pretty much all exactly as Elizabeth had expected from the first. That Miss Bingley was angling for Mr. Darcy, was evident; that Mr. Darcy did not mean to be caught by her was equally so. Mrs. Hurst attempted, scarcely less than her sister did, to fix Mr. Darcy’s attention, probably from his company being the scarcest of anyone else’s in the room—it could not be supposed that her husband was capable of entertaining her. Mr. Bingley was extremely attentive to Jane, always ensuring that she had the best seat, and her choice of cakes, and her tea made just as she liked it; and if some of these attentions ought to have fallen within the remit of her hostess, Miss Bingley did not look sorry to be relieved of them.

The largest surprise, by far, was Mr. Hurst. Elizabeth had decided immediately upon meeting him that he merely looked the gentleman; further acquaintance with him proved her to be essentially correct; he was an indolent man, who lived only to eat, drink, and play at cards. And yet, on these subjects, he could speak, and speak well. Her slight comment on the similarity of preparation between a ragoût and what the English chose to term a “currey,” upon his mentioning a particularly fine instance of the former on which he had supped the previous day, fixed all his attention, and inspired some close questioning. Elizabeth, from a genteel ignorance of cookery, was unable to answer some of these inquiries; but what she did say, evidently satisfied him; and upon her casually mentioning pickles, as another common application for ginger, long-pepper, and turmerick, he became really fascinated. She secured his affection for life when she promised him that he should have a jar of mango pickle from their kitchens, which their cook (at her mother’s instigation) always dressed up in such a way as to render it superior to what was generally available. His wife and sister-in-law only wrinkled their noses at the plebeian nature of this taste.

Elizabeth found herself an object of curiosity to more than Mr. Hurst. One day, from Jane’s having quietly absented herself from the room for a moment, Mr. Bingley was inspired to turn his attention to her. The general inquiries as to her health had already been made; he was obliged to say something more specific; and he thought he perceived a defect in his knowledge of her family.

“Do you know,” said he, with such earnest friendliness that it was difficult to be offended, “I am not sure that I know with any precision where you are from!”

Elizabeth responded in the manner that she always did: “From Hertfordshire. As you see.”

His fair skin flushed deeply. “Oh! Yes, yes, of course. I only meant—”

After a moment, she took pity on him. “Where are you from, sir? I believe I have heard, that you hail from the north?”

“Yes, yes! From Yorkshire.”

“Ah! Then you have travelled rather farther abroad than I have. I have never been beyond London.” This was said with a sort of arch sweetness, a natural gaiety, that could not easily affront anyone, and would certainly not offend someone as good-humoured as Bingley; but that he understood the implied rebuke, she saw from his countenance.

“You already know the family to be from Indostan, Charles.” It seemed that Miss Bingley, no less than her brother, was not generally contented to allow things to remain implicit.

“Yes,” said he—“but I trust that that country has it towns and its regions, Caroline, no less than England does.”

“My mother,” said Elizabeth, more willing to be forthcoming now that she could annoy Miss Bingley by doing so, “is from Jaipur, in what the English call Rajputana. It is north of Bombay—where her family moved shortly before she had reached her majority, and where she met my father.” Jane now happily returned, and so the conversation ended.

After a few of these visits, Elizabeth began to notice that she was the target of Mr. Darcy’s observation. Whenever there was a pause in the conversation, and sometimes when there was not, she would find him regarding her; but it was evident that there was no admiration in his looks. He gazed at her face, and at her dress, so frequently, but with such cool unconcern, that she was left to assume she drew his notice because there was something about her more wrong and reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in any other person present. The supposition did not pain her; she liked him too little to care for his approbation. Nor was his staring, as rude as it might be, unfamiliar to her. She was not regarded in such a way in Meryton, only because every body there was already used to her; but whenever she ventured elsewhere, she was sure to be stared at without apparent bashfulness or apology. It would no doubt please Mr. Darcy to know that he could group himself, in this regard, with the coarse inhabitants of country inns and London streets.

However wearing it might be to be observed thus, and to be more closely questioned on matters associated with her mother’s place of birth, than paid the courtesy of any question which related more particularly to herself, Elizabeth gained from these calls one source of satisfaction wholly sufficient to reconcile her to them. Despite Mr. Bingley’s evident admiration of her elder sister—and despite how clear it was to her that Jane was yielding to the preference, which she had begun to entertain for him from the first—her behaviour was as composed, serene, and uniformly cheerful as it should be. Even when any other party of visitors happened to coincide with themselves, no one present could suspect what Elizabeth knew: that Jane was in a fair way to being very much in love. Let her mother and youngest sisters be as silly and loud as they would—Jane would always act with perfect self-possession.

She happened one day to mention these reflections to her friend, Miss Lucas.

“I am not sure, Eliza,” replied Charlotte, “that Jane’s composure is as much of an advantage as you think. If the object of her regard is deceived as to the strength of her attachment, and she loses the opportunity of fixing him, it will be but little consolation to have deceived the public as well.”

“If Mr. Bingley can be deceived in such a case as this, I shall think him a great simpleton. Jane’s feelings must be evident to anyone who knows her well, and pays attention—and certainly he ought to do that, if he wishes to marry her.”

“But he may never really form such a wish, if she does not help him along. There is so much of gratitude in every attachment, that it is seldom safe to leave such things to themselves. If a woman wants to catch a man, she had better shew more affection than she feels, not less.”

“Your plan is a good one,” replied Elizabeth, “where nothing is in question but the desire of being well married; and if I were determined to get a rich husband, or any husband, I dare say I should adopt it. But these are not Jane’s feelings. I am by no means sure that she does, as yet, wish to catch him. She knows very little of his character.”

“And what does that signify? If the dispositions of the bride and groom are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar before their marriage, it is not sure to advance their felicity. I wish Jane every success in securing him: and I think she would have as good a chance of happiness in her marriage if she did so to-morrow, as after a twelvemonth of inspection.”

“You make me laugh, Charlotte; but it is not sound. You know it is not sound, and that you would never act in this way yourself. We should remember, besides, that Jane need not endeavour to secure any body, if she does not chuse to. The interest from her dowry will be enough to keep her creditably, if not fashionably—and, if I know Jane, credit is all she wants.”

When she had bid Jane good night, however, and was settling down to sleep, she thought again about what Charlotte had said.

Elizabeth herself was of a cheerful, active disposition, with ample resources of mind, and an ability to turn any situation to the best; she might find a man she liked well enough to marry, or she might not; she would be perfectly contented with being an aunt; but it would be a real tragedy, she thought, if Jane had not the opportunity to be a wife, and a mother to her own children.

Jane was a gentleman’s daughter; she had a respectable fortune; she was beautiful and good-tempered in a degree really out of the common way; she looked pretty nearly white, if one saw her alone, and not amongst her relations. But her mother’s family was in trade—and, what was worse, their mother was so evidently coarse and vulgar, their younger sisters such determined flirts—! Most men without need of Jane’s money would not forgive her ancestry, even were it not attached to such ridiculous relations. What other man was easier than Bingley? What other man could Jane like half so well?

She still believed that Jane needed to know Bingley a good deal more than she could do on a few weeks’ acquaintance, to begin to entertain a serious desire of fixing him; nor did she intend to persuade Jane to behave differently than she thought right. But she might just mention Charlotte’s concern, and see what Jane thought of it.

Chapter Text

There is another case, in which I suspect it is proper to be secret, not so much from motives of prudence, as delicacy. I mean in love matters. Though a woman has no reason to be ashamed of an attachment to a man of merit, yet nature, whose authority is superior to philosophy, has annexed a sense of shame to it. It is even long before a woman of delicacy dares avow to her own heart that she loves; and when all the subterfuges of ingenuity to conceal it from herself fail, she feels a violence done both to her pride and to her modesty. This, I should imagine, must always be the case where she is not sure of a return to her attachment. In such a situation, to lay the heart open to any person whatever, does not appear to me consistent with the perfection of female delicacy.

— Lord Chesterfield, A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters; 1786

According to her late resolution, Elizabeth returned from her brisk walk in the hours before breakfast to seek Jane out in an up-stairs sitting-room, where she was occupied with some plain sewing. She and her elder sister had seldom discussed Mr. Bingley alone, and a good deal had been left unsaid; therefore, she opened the conversation obliquely—

“I believe, Jane, that you have acquired another admirer for yourself. Dare I ask, whether this one has written you any sonnets? Have any more verses been dedicated to your hazel eyes and rosebud lips?”

Jane blushed becomingly. “Lizzy, be serious! Of course he has not.”

“But he does like you.”

“Oh! Do you think so? I would be—oh, Lizzy, I confess that I would be very happy, if I thought that he did.”

“Well! This is serious! You have been very reserved with me! The last I heard about it, you were warm on the subject of his happy manners—but that was all.”

“And his manners are exactly as they ought to be—you must have seen yourself how well-bred he is—but it is not only that. He is so gentle, and modest, and cheerful—and sensible, and well-informed. He is really concerned with the feelings and the credit of every body around him. He is not clever in that sparkling way that you are, Lizzy—his discourse is never difficult to follow—but that suits me exactly, for, really, neither am I. But if you spoke to him for very long together, even you would have no reason to think slightingly of his mind.”

This was no very pretty picture of herself. “Even I, Jane? Am I so very critical as that?”

Jane looked stricken. “Oh, no, Lizzy! No, how can you think it! I only meant that even someone very clever would not think Mr. Bingley deficient—that is all.”

Satisfied, Elizabeth continued: “Do you begin, then, to have any—any serious view in mind, Jane? Are you sure that you know his character quite well enough?”

“As well as I can know anyone’s character, that has been revealed to me merely through conversation, and through observation in the common course of life. I have not seen how he acts under any extraordinary circumstance. But I cannot imagine his behaviour ever doing him any thing less than perfect credit.”

“Jane!” exclaimed Elizabeth.

“Have not you, yourself, Lizzy, often said, that some people’s characters are laid out before you at once? That some people are perfectly comprehensible after five hours, while five years would be insufficient to understand others? Perhaps Mr. Bingley’s case is rather the former, than the latter.”

“I begin to think it very foolish of me ever to have said any such thing!”

Here Jane must protest against such an idea as her favourite sister’s being foolish; and Elizabeth was not sorry to leave off that line of reflection, and return to her subject. She clasped both of Jane’s hands in her’s, causing her to lay her sewing (which she had been neglecting in any case) in her lap; and rebegan—

“You like him, then, every bit as much as you can do, after five weeks’ acquaintance?”

Jane flushed still deeper; her hands tightened on Elizabeth’s. “I cannot see a flaw in him, Lizzy. Perhaps, he—he may even be too easy—but you know that I have learned enough firmness of purpose from you,” she smiled, “that I—I think I could, perhaps—steady him. And, then, his openness of temper might benefit me. You will not suspect me of an infatuation, Lizzy? I really have soberly considered—” she broke off, red to the roots of her hair.

Elizabeth chaffed her thumbs over Jane’s hands. She passed over this confession pretty lightly, wishing to spare Jane some embarrassment, and delivered the communication, which she had wished to impart all along—

“Well, Jane, if this is really so, then what I want to tell you is this—for I know that you are too good-natured to despise anyone for giving advice, however impertinently it may be offered:—take care of trusting any information, not wholly to our advantage, into the keeping of his sisters. They, and perhaps his friend, are sure to advise him against allying himself with us.”

Jane looked her confusion. “What can you mean, Lizzy? Why should they oppose it?”

“I believe his sisters mean for him to marry very well—a lady of some influence in society. You must have heard how they speak of every body they know in town, and which streets all of their houses are on, and who is the son-in-law of Lord Something-or-other, and which carriages are kept by which personages. Depend upon it, they do not mean to neglect any means at their disposal of advancing themselves.”

“I am sorry, Lizzy, but I do not understand why you mistrust them! Does not every body wish to speak of their friends? And Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst have been very kind to us. Why, just two days ago, Miss Bingley offered you the pieces of that mirror that her maid had broken, for your embroidery—do not you remember? That was very attentive of her.”

“It was an insult, Jane.”

Jane shook her head dubiously.


“And we know, already, what his friend’s opinions are on that score.”

“Oh, Lizzy—of course he should not have said what he said—but perhaps it was a momentary ill-humour, and not quite an inveterate prejudice.”

“He hesitated even to touch my hand, Jane.”

“I am very sorry, for your sake, that he has caused you any pain—but we cannot know what passed through his mind just then. Maybe it was mere inattention.”

“Pain, Jane! None at all! It would cause me far more pain to suppose myself admired, than disliked, by him. My feelings are not what I am concerned with. I only mention my impressions of the Netherfield party, because I have some hope of sparing your’s. And if my impressions are ever correct, his friends mean to advise him against you, if they can—therefore, you ought to make sure that you are more persuasive than they are.”

Seeing Jane looking doubtful, she hastened to add: “Of course I am not suggesting that you behave with any thing like design or dissimulation, Jane! You cannot seriously think it of me. But if he really begins to be dear to you, it will be just as well not to hide it from him. That is all I mean.”

“Well, Lizzy—I will consider what you have said.”

Elizabeth smiled. “That is all I ask. Now, let me help you. Have you drafted that new dress for the Smiths’ daughter yet?”

Chapter Text

Among savages, in every part of the globe, the love of dancing is a favourite passion. As, during a great part of their time, they languish in a state of inactivity and indolence, without any occupation to rouse or interest them, they delight universally in a pastime which calls forth the active powers of their nature into exercise. The Spaniards, when they first visited America, were astonished at the fondness of the natives for dancing, and beheld with wonder a people, cold and unanimated in most of their other pursuits, kindle into life, and exert themselves with ardour as often as this favourite amusement recurred.

—  William Robertson, D.D., The history of America; 1812

Mr. Darcy had assumed, at first, that his pleasure in Miss Elizabeth’s conversation would be very temporary. She was lively, true, and even clever; but he would surely soon assimilate all the delights of her discourse; her speech would no longer interest once it had ceased to surprise.

In this supposition he was to be disappointed. She seldom appeared to be speaking seriously, and yet in all of her statements there was the backing of sound reasoning and firm conviction. She might declare an opinion that was not her own, merely for the joy of trying to construct an argument to defend it; but it was only playfulness, and not dishonesty, that ever led her to speak so. She took delight in making people account for their own reasoning, in poking at their suppositions: but in an easy, friendly way, without arrogance or ill-humour.

Only so much could be gleaned, however, from watching her gracefully deflect Miss Bingley’s little gibes, and dance around answering Mr. Bingley’s questions. He wanted to hear how she spoke amongst her intimate acquaintance—and perhaps, in time, to venture to speak to her himself.

Therefore, during a large gathering at the newly purchased residence which Sir William Lucas had chosen to term “Lucas Lodge,” he took care to stay more often than not within ear-shot of her. She wanted to know how Mrs. Long fared, and whether her niece had recovered from her ague?; she told one of the Miss Gouldings that her new dress was very becoming; she thought it would be very good and obliging of Colonel Forster to give a ball in Meryton. She was kind, serious, witty, laughing, by turns—she could speak easily to anyone—despite what he suspected, of the quickness and acuity of her mind, she never made anyone feel their inferiority, or caused them to suspect that their discourse wearied her, as surely it must.

She crossed the room again; he followed her at a small distance once more; she greeted another lady with more pleasure and familiarity than she had employed with any body thus far. He saw, with some instinctive disdain, that the lady was rather plain, and past the first bloom of youth. He may, perhaps, have seen her at that assembly his party had attended on their first night in the area—but, however, he was not sure. Regardless, the fact that she was evidently Miss Elizabeth’s particular friend must speak well of her.

Before Miss Elizabeth’s discussion with the other lady had progressed very far, she glanced askance at him, in that wry way she often did; and addressed him directly—

“I was just about to ask Miss Lucas what you could mean, sir, by attending to my conversations in this way. I am certain that you mean to be severe on me: and therefore we may as well have it out at once. Do I express myself well, or ill?”

He hadn’t fully understood himself until now, but this was exactly what he had aimed at: he wanted to be the target of her raillery; he wanted to be looked at, and addressed, by her, in that sporting way which just bordered on impertinence.

He smiled. “You cannot really believe me to have any intention of being severe on you. However, if you are angling after a compliment, you have chosen a good subject for it: you must know that you speak very well.”

She returned the smile. “Oh, yes—very well, considering.”

Before he could do more than flush at the justness of this teazing reproof, Miss Lucas decided to cut the interview short—

“You will pay all the company a compliment, Eliza, if you consent to play for us.”

Miss Elizabeth laughed. “You, perhaps, may feel so, who have been my friend these many years; but there are others here, who must be in the habit of hearing the best performers. Under such circumstances, my vanity—though not in general inconsiderable—is not equal to exhibiting.”

“You know that every body is always glad of hearing you, Eliza; therefore you need not be bashful. And, as the daughter of your host, I have some expectation of being obeyed.”

She huffed. “Very well! If it must be so, it must. You see, Mr. Darcy, that duty calls me away—and therefore you may be as severe as you like without fear of interruption.”

It was, however, just as Darcy had said: he had not entertained any intention of being severe on her since, perhaps, the second time they had met. He listened to the simple Scotch air she sang with real pleasure, for all he acknowledged that her skill at the instrument would not, as she had said, place her among the first rank of performers. Rather, what was most notable about her performance was that she was obviously enjoying herself—she had a bright, gay style of playing—and if she did not form her vowels exactly as she ought, it was because she sang through a smile. At the end of two songs, despite several local gentlemen entreating her to sing again, she was obliged to give over the instrument to a younger sister, whose name he did not quite recall; but her playing was as heavy and affected as her speech; and she soon lost his attention.

When he was recalled to the happenings in the room, it was to observe a set forming, and to hear the younger Miss Bennet begin an Irish tune. He now had no more hope of hearing Miss Elizabeth play, and very little of overhearing her speak; and he stood for some time in silent indignation at this very undignified way of passing an evening, until he found himself addressed by his host.

“What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Darcy!” cried Sir William. “There is nothing like dancing, after all. I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished societies.”

“Certainly, sir; and it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst the less polished societies of the world: every savage can dance.”

Elizabeth at that moment happened to be moving towards them, and caught the better part of this speech. As fair was fair, she had no compunctions in revealing her eavesdropping—and she was more equal than Mr. Darcy was to joining a conversation of her own accord.

“But what is the difference, Sir William, between a polished and an unpolished society? And how can one tell,” she continued, turning now to Darcy, “when a dance is civilised, and when it is savage?”

“I did not claim,” rejoined the latter, smiling, “that a dance may be civilised, or savage—all I said, was that a person might be the latter.”

“Very well. We will take savage and unpolished, then, to be here synonymous—in your view, a savage is a person who belongs to an unpolished society—who was birthed to its people, and brought up amongst them?”

He bowed—eager to see where she would take her reasoning, and what errors in logic she would lay at his account.

“Very good. But this only brings me back to my first question: what is a polished society, and what an unpolished one? If each society has its own temperament—its own laws and customs—by what metric may any body determine which customs are fine, and which coarse? Who may presume to speak impartially, in such a case?”

“Ah—my dear Miss Eliza,” broke in Sir William, “you may be sure that neither I nor Mr. Darcy meant any offence! No, indeed (shaking his head); no, indeed.”

Darcy wished Sir William to the furthest, most savage reaches of the Earth. To him, he supposed, every argument must be a dispute: he could not follow the quick paths of Elizabeth’s mind, or understand that she sometimes argued for the sake of arguing; he did not understand the motives, which had led Elizabeth to join in Darcy’s conversation; he saw offence where there was none.

Miss Elizabeth also appeared irritated at having their conversation cut short. With the possible exceptions of Miss Bennet and Miss Lucas, she must not often have the pleasure of speaking to one not greatly her intellectual inferior; for all the patience he had observed in her, she must dislike Sir William’s interruption.

“But come, now!” continued that man indefatigably: “let us prove it to you! You must be wishing to dance. Allow me, Mr. Darcy, to recommend Miss Elizabeth to you as a very desirable partner. I know that you dislike the amusement in general; but surely you cannot refuse, when so much beauty is before you!”

Elizabeth smiled archly. “I thank you—but I have not the least intention of dancing.”

“Indeed, I could not refuse,” insisted Darcy. “Would you do me the honour, Miss Elizabeth, of standing up with me?”

“You are all politeness!” she laughed. “But, no—I am a benevolent creature, sir, and I am determined to spare you.” And she courtesied and turned away.

Her resistance had by no means injured her with Mr. Darcy; and, for the rest of the evening, he spoke to no one, but merely thought of Miss Elizabeth’s mind and manners, with some complacency.

Chapter Text

About half paſt eleven o’clock the cloth, which conſiſted in a white piece of cotton, was laid upon the table; and in a moment it was provided with a number of ſmall diſhes, filled with all kinds of Indian food, dreſſed in various manners. The chief ingredients of moſt of them were, however, fiſh and poultry, varied by numerous ſauces, according to the cuſtom of the country, of ſugar, vinegar, or tamarinds. […] It was only with the greateſt difficulty I could ſwallow a part of what was ſet before me, which was fiſh preſerved in ſugar, and which indeed I ſhould not have touched at all, if politeneſs had not required that I ſhould taſte of ſomething.

— Wilcocke’s translation of Stavorinus’s Voyages to the East-Indies; 1798

Mrs. Bennet’s scheme of having the entire Netherfield party to dinner owed its success, when it finally came, to a very unexpected source. Mr. Hurst, who usually seemed content to sit and sleep wherever his wife deposited him, actually exerted himself to urge his friends to accept the invitation, and fix a day. His wife had an understandable motive in keeping him contented; Mr. Bingley readily acceded, eager to see Miss Bennet, and willing to endure her mother and youngest sisters in order to do so; Mr. Darcy, whether from a curiosity about Hindoostanee fare, or for some other reason, was also easily induced to go; and wherever Mr. Darcy went, Miss Bingley would follow.

It was only with difficulty that Elizabeth could make her mother understand that the dishes of her youth, and of the dinners that the family ate when not entertaining, were what was desired. Serving laal aloo, dal gosht, and lehsan ke laddoo was not conversant with her opinions of what would suit an Englishman’s palate, or what was owed to his dignity. At length, however, Mrs. Bennet was persuaded to include some Indian dishes with each course; though the artichoke soup, haricot of beef, and fish with fennel and mint must also be supplied.

The day arrived; the Netherfield party came, and were led directly in to the dining-room; and it was immediately apparent that there were those among them determined to be displeased. Elizabeth was mischievously disappointed that the presence of familiar dishes afforded Mr. Bingley’s sisters an escape from dining solely on what they had rather turn up their noses at. She suspected that the fascinated revulsion they directed at the lentils and lamb was more affected, than natural: that it was a product more of the mind, than of the senses. To be sure, she could not trust herself to ascertain with any degree of certainty how the dishes might appear to one unaccustomed to them—she herself may be too used to them to tell—but she really felt that, with their cream sauces, nutmeg, ginger, mustard, etc., they were not in themselves highly distinct from English or French fare.

Elizabeth found a sample of the minimally prejudiced English palate in the form of Mr. Hurst. Curious to know what he would have to say—also determined to spare everyone else his minute questions, and especially to have him out of Jane and Bingley’s way—she had contrived to have herself seated by him towards the centre of the table. She found him to be really interested in food for its own sake, and not merely as a proof of how much expense one could afford to go to in setting a table: an Epicure in the refined, and not merely the pejorative, sense of the word. Similarities and differences to what he had had before were mentioned without the least apparent intention, either to insult, or to flatter. She began to be in more charity with his curiosity than she had been during their first conversation on the subject, when she had already been chafing against Mr. Bingley’s ill-phrased questioning and Mr. Darcy’s frequent impertinent attention.

The dinner afforded to her another source of pleasure, and it was the highest and rarest pleasure which any giver of advice can attain to: namely, that of seeing their advice actually followed. Jane behaved still with perfect propriety; she could hardly speak to Mr. Bingley more than she had done before; but her looks towards him were more expressive, the smile which she directed at him more distinct from that with which she favoured any other person. Elizabeth overheard her, at one point, asking if Mr. Bingley had taken any of a particular dish, which she believed from her observations that he might favour—

“For I wish to be sure,” she concluded, sotto voce, “that you try every thing you want.”

The blushing confusion with which she spoke—her inability, just then, to meet her suitor’s eye—even her unwitting double entendre—painted such a picture of perfect artless innocence and genuine sentiment, that, had Jane been a stranger to her, Elizabeth must have thought it affected! But, from her knowledge of her sister’s history, she knew her to be really unpracticed at giving any encouragement of this sort—her awkwardness was just what it must, and should, be—and it was far from harming her with Mr. Bingley.

That gentleman’s infatuation with Miss Bennet was already of longer duration than any other which he had ever entertained—he was sufficiently self-aware to understand, that he was rather prone to these sorts of things—but he was beginning to believe that, in the present instance, what he felt was no longer an infatuation at all. Her evident uneasiness melted him to such tenderness as could only serve to advance this supposition.

At several points during the evening Elizabeth had, as she had often had in the past, reason to be grateful that her mother’s worst trespasses against civility were conducted in Cutchee. If she did speak from her place at the foot of the table across to Elizabeth, in defiance of the ordinary rules of politeness—and if she did speak of what extraordinary success Jane seemed to be having, and how she expected an offer to be forthcoming, and how that would surely throw her sisters into the paths of other rich men—at least none of her guests could be expected to understand a word of it. Her gestures and looks, however, were perhaps speaking enough.

Elizabeth’s other sources of disquiet were Lydia and Kitty. There were too many females for alternate seating to prevail across the entirety of the table, and so they were sat next to each other. This had the dubious benefit, that their exuberance at the rumour of a regiment of militia men being soon to be stationed in Meryton, was at least expressed primarily to each other—however audible it was to every body else at table.

“And you, Mr. Bingley,” cried Lydia, at the tail end of one of these descants on her anticipated felicity, “must give a ball! I am sure that Netherfield would be a wonderful place for a ball! If I could but dance every dance with an officer at a private ball, I am sure that it would set me up in happiness for life.”

“Oh! Yes”—thus Mrs. Bennet, who foresaw splendid things arising from Jane’s being dressed well, and in her best looks, and in the sort of motion necessitated by a sprightly country dance, across from Mr. Bingley, while in his own home—“what a fine idea, Lydia! What a splendid amusement that would be!”

“I am sure that I and my sisters would have no objection to obliging you, Miss Lydia—and all the society of Meryton,” said Mr. Bingley. His thoughts at the prospect in fact mirrored Mrs. Bennet’s rather closely.

“Oh!” cried Kitty, in rapture.

“But do you promise?” persisted Lydia. “Do say that you promise.”

“I will certainly give a ball at Netherfield as soon as may be,” said Mr. Bingley, good-humouredly.

Jane smiled at him with silent, earnest affection. He caught her look, and held it. Mr. Darcy watched them both, frowning. Mr. Hurst spooned some more gajar jo athano onto his plate.

To dinner and dessert succeeded cards. The gentlemen approached from the dining-room to find the tables being set up, and Lydia crying out for lottery tickets. Miss Bennet and Mr. Bingley settled down at a smaller table to play a more sedate game of Vingt-un; they were joined by Mr. Darcy, and therefore by Miss Bingley. Mr. Darcy looked round at Elizabeth, and caught her eye—but she withdrew her’s, and joined the other party. Being grouped in with Lydia and Kitty in Mr. Darcy’s mind was a lesser evil to sitting by him.

There being seven people remaining, a round game was required; no one else having a decided preference, Lydia’s desire for lottery tickets carried the day. Mary, though particularly invited to sit by Kitty, declined.

“It is far from my intention,” she assured her sister very gravely, “to depreciate the pleasures of an innocent game of cards. Custom has introduced these sorts of games at most friendly meetings; and I cannot think that there is any real danger in them, so long as one does not become too fond of the amusement, or play too high. But, for myself, I should infinitely prefer a book.”

Mr. Hurst must now lose some of Elizabeth’s favour by calling attention, from where he sat at the lottery table, to her sister’s pompous eccentricity:—

“You prefer reading to cards? That is rather singular.”

This was quite as much encouragement as Mary needed to expound further. “Singular, it may be—card games are perfectly compatible, no doubt, with the generality of minds—but books store the greatest knowledge, and the deepest reflections, of mankind. It is, therefore, far more profitable, in my view, to seek to improve one’s mind by perusing them, than it is to game.”

Mr. Hurst had no reply.

The games began. Lydia could be heard to exclaim over every fish she won; Kitty just as loudly accused her of cheating; Mary occasionally read aloud a sentence or two by which she was particularly struck, quite unprompted; Mrs. Bennet, under the influence of the game, or of wine, or of her reflections regarding her eldest daughter’s matrimonial prospects, became more and more fulsome in her speech; Elizabeth blushed, and blushed again. Her father made no attempt to check any body, but merely smiled satirically at her, as though he expected her to be in the joke.

Her only consolations were, that her mother remained incomprehensible to their guests; and that, despite Mr. Darcy’s appearing to divide his disapproving gaze between herself and the progression of his friend’s courtship, such a look could not have any influence—with a man of any real feeling—against Jane’s obvious glow of happiness and affection. Every particular smile from her made Bingley still more marked in his attentions, which contributed in turn to her smiles. If Mr. Darcy would regard Elizabeth’s appearance, or existence, as a stain on the match, it was clear that Mr. Bingley would not—and, at that thought, she felt something rather like smugness.

At the end of perhaps half an hour spent in this way, and before Mrs. Bennet could prevail upon the party to remain for tea, Miss Bingley began to proclaim that she was very tired, and wished to rest before supper. Her party had no choice but to obey this hint, however mournfully Bingley looked back at Jane, and Mr. Hurst at the door to the dining room. Elizabeth smilingly promised the room at large that, should the Netherfield party come some other day for tea, they should have chaa and muthiya; and both men brightened somewhat.

Mr. Darcy was, by this time, fully conscious that what he felt for Miss Elizabeth Bennet might be termed admiration. Though his study of her had, at first, shewn him several failures of perfect symmetry in her face and form, he was soon forced to acknowledge, that these hardly seemed like defects when combined with the charming mobility of her expressions—and especially with the pull of those intense, smiling, prodigiously lashed eyes. He had at first thought them quite black, but he began to notice that one could, if the light were sufficient, distinguish iris from pupil; and he spent some time, whenever her eye was averted, in trying to catch the delineation.

At the assembly where they had first failed to meet, he had parroted what was generally thought, in objecting to her colouring; but he could no longer remember if that opinion had ever really been natively his. She was pretty and well-spoken; and it was therefore more natural than any thing, to enjoy looking at and hearing her.

His reflections on this score did not worry him. If he could have conceived of her as a marriageable woman, he might have begun to fear that he was paying her too much attention: but his danger was at present so unperceived, that his fascination by no means ranked as an evil with him. 

As the highest-ranked man present at dinner, Darcy had been seated to the right of his hostess, at the foot of the table. Elizabeth had been towards the middle, between Bingley and Hurst, and so it had been impossible to talk to her—but he could look. As Mrs. Bennet had chattered away in evident triumph, nodding significantly at where Miss Bennet and Bingley were speaking with their heads bent close together, her cheek had been suffused with a lovely red-violet. She had responded to her mother in a low, coaxing undertone—probably something to the effect that her looks and gestures were understood by everyone, whether her words were or not—but Mrs. Bennet merely sniffed at her.

Mrs. Bennet, whatever her flaws, kept an excellent table. It was richer than almost any other meal he had ever sat down to—which was rather saying something—and yet, in the composition of each course, there was taste and balance. He had been sure to try some of every thing, wishing to learn what Elizabeth ate when at home. At one point, he had with some difficulty smothered a cough at the quantity of chilli in the paco-lilla, and she had met his eye. He had held her gaze and taken another bite with mock solemnity (mixing it with rather more of the boiled rice this time), and the smile which had already been beginning on her face had broadened. That she had been amused was evident—but he thought there had been more of approval, than of mockery, in her look.

The other part of the evening he had spent in observing Miss Jane Bennet. He had earlier felt some alarm, at Bingley’s enthusiasm for the young lady seeming to persist beyond the duration usually allotted for his tendres. Jane Bennet would bring little to a match between the two except for herself; her dowry would replace a mere quarter of what Bingley must outlay for his sisters. Her father was a gentleman, true—but without connexions of any use or consequence; and her mother—!

After to-night’s observations, however, he was pretty well resigned to the match. Miss Bennet was a pleasant, artless girl, who really loved his friend, however sedate her behaviour in general may be—and, so long as that were true, her uniform calm cheerfulness of manner was no deterrent, and may even prove beneficial when contrasted with Bingley’s tendency toward flightiness. Undoubtedly, he could do better, from a practical point of view—but it was no great matter. He could do worse.

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White is the only native colour of the temperate zones, and appears to be the primitive complexion of the human species, as it still prevails over the world. It, however, suffers an occasional degeneracy of colour, from the operation of physical causes, in the most temperate regions. Thus the wandering gypsies acquire a swarthy colour, from their dirty habits, and constant exposure to the tanning powers of the weather.

Moral as well as physical causes operate on the cutaneous surface. Thus it is matter of common observation, that predominant passions make deep and lasting impressions upon the human visage: an inactive mind produces vacancy of countenance; and the blessings of a free government, a comfortable means of subsistence, and an exemption from controul, impress the face with regular features, and give it an animated and sensible appearance.

— Thomas Jameson, Essays on the Changes of the Human Body; 1811

Mr. Bennet’s property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation. His wife and children would remain in the house by right until his death, and by sufferance of this distant relation (which could not be expected to extend very long) thereafter.

Had Mrs. Bennet remained in India, the mahir contracted between husband and wife, who were considered as separate legal entities, would have guaranteed her independence from poverty all the days of her life—a fine example of Mahomedan cruelty against the gentler sex. The greater wisdom of English laws entirely subsumed the wife within the legal entity of the husband—and yet ensured that, from him, she was entitled to exactly nothing. All her competency thus came from what her father had been able to fix on her. From her good fortune of being his eldest (for many years, his only) daughter, however, this was no insignificant amount.

However wantonly she spent the interest of her fifty thousand pounds—appropriating what may have sufficed to every expenditure relating to keeping house, merely for her own pin-money, and as presents of money to her youngest daughters over and above their allowance—her husband never suffered her to touch the principal. He likewise, from a love of independence, never permitted her to overspend his income; which must be sufficient for board, the keeping of horses and carriages, the salaries of servants and labourers, and his own discretionary purchases. The dowries of their daughters, had Mrs. Bennet had a genius for saving, or Mr. Bennet for enforcing domestic tyranny, must have been splendid; as it was, at ten thousand pounds each, they were merely sufficient to their station in life. Had it not been for the Gandjees’ extraordinary wealth, it is likely that they would have had nothing at all.

Their wealth was apparent in the style of the Bennets’ dress, dinners, domestic furnishings, etc. However, Mrs. Bennet had such a horror of the nabob, that the strictest law of good taste—and, in this area, she was an acute observer—was held to in every thing; excepting in some of the fabrics which Elizabeth used, in which instance the consternation of the mother could do nothing against the express permission of the father. The fact that the Bennets were so evidently the only people of any fashion in the neighbourhood had contributed to the Bingley sisters’ willingness to be intimate with them, so near as they bothered themselves to be intimate with any body not immediately useful to their ambitions. If they could have supposed that their brother was contemplating an alliance so thoroughly disgraceful as the one which he had in view, they may have taken more care to limit their invitations to the eldest Miss Bennets. As it was, however, they had every expectation that his regard would sink under the influence of time; or that the Bennets’ disgraceful connexions would prevent the acknowledgement of it.

If Miss Bingley noted with mild exasperation that Charles was paying attention to the eldest Miss Bennet, she saw with real vexation that Mr. Darcy looked at the next eldest sister a good deal. She could not tell whether there were much admiration in that look; sometimes it seemed nothing but absence of mind; and yet she had never, in the years she had known Darcy, seen him to direct his gaze so often at any one object. She knew, or thought she knew, him well enough to know, that his disgust was expressed through avoidance—if he did not feel some fascination, probably he would not bother looking at her even to disapprove. But what could captivate him about that scrubby little Mooress, she could not imagine.

One evening, when the Netherfield party were at home and without company for dinner, Miss Bingley allowed her irritation to spill over into the presence of the gentlemen: till now, her sister had been its sole audience.

“How very ill Eliza Bennet looked when she called this morning! I recall how surprised we both were, Mr. Darcy, upon learning that she and Miss Jane Bennet were sisters—and how much more surprised, to learn that Eliza was a reputed local beauty!”

Mr. Darcy made her no reply.

“For myself, I cannot see any beauty in her. Her complexion is really shocking—she is so brown and coarse! How she contrives to be darker even than her mother, I cannot comprehend. And her features, besides, are not at all handsome. Her face is too thin; her nose has really the queerest shape of any I ever saw. Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way.

“Of course (in a gentler tone), she cannot help her face. But then those garish fabrics she wears! That excessive jewelry! I have never seen any thing so outrée! She is abominably independent-minded; really almost impervious to any thing resembling taste or fashion.” She adjusted the simple cross at her neck, then brushed an invisible bit of dust off her pale green evening dress.

“She does not even have the excuse of her mother’s influence,” added Louisa Hurst, “as Mrs. Bennet, whatever else she may be, has taste in these matters.”

“Her maternal grandparents, and aunts and uncles, it must be,” said Caroline. “Imagine, they are all actively in trade! And they send her half, and likely more, of the silk and muslin and trim she uses—she owns it herself! Not even, mind,” she added, taking a sip of her wine, “those intended for export here. No, no—those are too sedate for Miss Eliza Bennet. She must dress as the natives do.”

“A grandfather and two uncles—merchants—all the way off God knows where!”

“Within sight of the harbour where they dock their ships, I presume.”

“Oh, capital!” Mrs. Hurst and her younger sister laughed heartily.

“If the Misses Bennet had uncles enough to fill all the ports of Ceylon,” cried Bingley, “it would not make them one jot less agreeable.”

“Their relations do not live in Ceylon,” said Mr. Darcy.

“Oh, what does that signify?” Brought nearer to alarm by this reply than she had previously seen fit to be, Miss Bingley lost whatever portion of restraint she had been exhibiting. She spoke as if in an aside to her sister, but without really lowering her voice so as to be unheard by the male part of the room—

“And the amount of hair on that girl’s arms!”

Mrs. Hurst rejoined, in the same quarter-whisper: “Did you see the back of her neck at the assembly?”

“Why on earth she does not trouble herself to remove it, I am sure I do not know.”

“Perhaps,” broke in Mr. Darcy, who could no longer listen in silence, “she does not chuse to cavil at Creation.”

“Oh, yes, to be sure!” cried Miss Bingley, deciding to see in this remark an insult aimed at her rival. “Such people are as they are made, and there is no use in their pretending to be any different. What a contrast, though, between Eliza and her elder sister! If Jane’s sweetness of temper, and Eliza’s abominable pertness, do not prove that complexion has a good deal of the moral in it, I am not sure what does.”

“I think Miss Elizabeth Bennet a very good, obliging sort of girl.” Thus Mr. Hurst, whom no one had supposed to be listening.

Miss Bingley sniffed. “One wonders whether she attends church in that heathen garb.”

Privately, Darcy thought that this was an absurd way to describe clothing which differed in almost no respect from that of any other fashionable English lady; but merely said—

“Perhaps you might, some week or other, go yourself, and ascertain it.”

Mr. Darcy’s reply did not wholly satisfy Miss Bingley, and so here the conversation ended.

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Savages probably at first thought of cloathing as a protection only against the weather; but they soon discovered a beauty in dress: men led the way, and women followed. Such savages as go naked, paint their bodies, excited by the same fondness for ornament, that our women shew in their party-coloured garments. Cloathing hath no slight influence, even with respect to morals. I have no difficulty to maintain, that gold and silver, admitted contrary to the laws of Lycurgus, were what corrupted both sexes. Opulence could not fail to have the same effect there that it has every where; which is to excite luxury and sensuality.

— Henry Home, Lord Kames, Sketches of the history of man; 1774

One morning in early November saw the three eldest Miss Bennets, Mr. Bennet, and the Netherfield party in Longbourn’s drawing-room. Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, having heard the evening before at the Gouldings’ that Mrs. Bennet and her youngest two daughters meant to drive into Meryton the next day, had deemed that morning a very opportune time to repay one of the calls which they owed the Bennets. It cannot be supposed that any of the men saw fit to argue with them.

Elizabeth was sitting at a tambour frame by a window, embroidering a bit of trim with quick efficiency. Darcy, who had watched her work on previous occasions, and had for some time felt a curiosity about the process, approached her as soon as the typical greetings and inquiries were dispensed with. She was forming a Greek key design in muted shades of blue.

“This,” said Darcy, in a lowered tone, “is not like your usual work.”

“It is for Jane.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Bingley, who must have her share of any conversation in which Mr. Darcy made a part: “how kind of you. But are there no modistes in Meryton who are competent to this kind of thing?”

Elizabeth smiled. “There are. But my love for Jane is so excessive and unreasonable that it cannot sit idly, but must come out somehow.”

“Well! How sweet.”

Elizabeth only shuttled her hook about more rapidly.

Miss Bennet and Mr. Bingley were disposed on one side of the fireplace; Mr. Bennet pored over an enormous book which was propped open on a side table at its other end. Mr. Hurst sat down by his wife, and then seemed at something of a loss, looking about and hemm-ing.

Elizabeth, catching one of these motions out of the corner of her eye, rang the bell for tea; and made a quick whispered communication to Mrs. Hill, when she appeared. Jane looked up from her close conference with her suitor, blushing at her own negligence; but Elizabeth merely smiled at her, and returned to her work. Miss Bingley kept up a cheerful monologue that filled the corner of the room by the window, where she, Mr. Darcy, and Elizabeth were confederated; Darcy’s attention, however, was rather abstracted, engaged as he was in admiring the swift, deft movements of Elizabeth’s hands.

The promised chaa and muthiya were brought in; along with nankhatai, mithi thepla, and ginger cake. Elizabeth rose to pour; Miss Bennet set about making tea for those not disposed to accept chaa. Mr. Hurst was first at the table to collect, but Mr. Darcy was not far behind him.

“Chaa—or chai,” said Elizabeth, primarily to Mr. Hurst—“tea, cardamom, and saffron.” He readily accepted a cup—and so did Mr. Bingley, and Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth was briefly surprised by this last, until she remembered that, in fairness, she ought not to have been: Darcy had eaten heartily at dinner the previous week.

“Mary?” Jane asked, after she decided that the leaves had steeped long enough—“will you take tea?”

Mary, lost in her book, made no reply; but Elizabeth brought her a cup of the black tea she favoured regardless, ruffling the curls on her brow as she passed. Mary huffed in objection—but Darcy saw her smiling at her sister’s back as she walked away.

A tiresome inquisition on the tea cakes must now ensue. Elizabeth preferred Mr. Hurst’s matter-of-fact manner to Mr. Bingley’s exuberant curiosity, but she reminded herself that, as the latter was aimed for now at Jane, it was her opinions which mattered; and she seemed pleased with his interest.

With tea dispensed, Elizabeth resumed her work. She embroidered for some moments in silence, until Miss Bingley recalled her to her present company—

“Are you often in town, Miss Eliza?”

“Not often, no,” replied Elizabeth. “My father hates London. My uncle and aunt once took me and Jane to the gardens, and to see the theatre and the opera. It was very good of them; we—that is, Jane and I—enjoyed ourselves a good deal; but, in general, I confess I prefer the country.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Miss Bingley, with a look expressive of great sympathy. “That is for the best, if you are without much opportunity of ever being in London.”

“Do you enjoy plays, then, Miss Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth, certain that he meant to despise her taste, answered with good-humoured defiance:—

“Yes, I do! And especially comedies. Some writers tell us, that a young lady ought not to attend a comedy, lest her laughter open her up to suspicion: but that would be a great loss to me. I dearly love to laugh.”

“That does not surprise me. I have noticed, on occasion, a satiric bent to your speech,” said Mr. Darcy.

Elizabeth looked through her lashes at him without pausing the motion of her hands. “Oh? And which occasions were those?” she asked, wryly.

Mr. Darcy only smiled.

Miss Bingley, feeling that the conversation was escaping her, here inserted—

“Oh, yes, to be sure! Miss Eliza Bennet is a learned student of Swift, Gillray, and all the great satirists on the subjects of politics, and manners, and dress (looking aside at Mr. Darcy). She mimics them very skilfully.”

“I am sure that I deserve no such commendation! Political satire, I will own, may have its merits—where it is based, not in mere cynicism, but in a belief that a sense of the ridiculous may awaken people to errors in their thinking or behaviour. But I am no great student of satire on the basis of dress. Indeed I think it is seldom of any great value.”

“You think it is a mode of sacrificing the last company for the amusement of the present one, I suppose, and thus outside the bounds of civil discourse?” asked Darcy.

Elizabeth, who had a tendency to take up an opinion very readily, and convince herself of it even as she spoke, returned—

“No, no! You must not think that I mean to moralise in any such way. I do not object to such satire because it is unkind. For all that I am concerned, people may be as unkind as they like, so long as they are also witty—but wit is just what satire against any current fashion almost always lacks. It is too easy. One need only say something like—hm—something like, ‘Soon enough, fashionable ladies will be going about entirely naked’—or: ‘With the feathers on all of these turbans, I begin to feel as though I am in an aviary’—or: ‘Goodness, what a menagerie of ill-suited colours! At least it saves my purchasing a ticket to the circus.’ There is no learning, no humour, and very little imagination required to produce these little sallies. Magazines print them, I suppose, because they are a ready way of filling space.”

Miss Bingley had suddenly paled, and then flushed, on Miss Elizabeth’s producing the word circus; she looked at Mr. Darcy suspiciously, but he would not, just then, catch her eye. Elizabeth apprehended the probable reason for it, and was very satisfied with her achievement. To rebuke someone for a statement they had made, quite by accident, without even knowing what they had said! It really was too funny.

Darcy’s mind was otherwise engaged. He was delighted with the quickness and sprightliness of Elizabeth’s mind and speech, and with the conversation, which was quite the longest he had ever had with her. With a view towards prolonging it, he entered—

“You consider dress, then, to be removed from the rules which, by your estimation, govern political satire? Your feeling is, that there is nothing of morality in dress—and therefore no one need be taught better practices in that area by the application of a sense of the ridiculous? Do I understand you rightly?”

Elizabeth’s hook punctured the fabric sharply, several times in quick succession. “Is there a question of morality in dress? Well, perhaps—if we are to speak practically. If too much time or too much money is taken away from worthier endeavours, it is grave indeed. Moderation is necessary in every thing. But is there a moral question in the style of dress? I hardly know—but I think not. It seems to me—like dancing (looking up archly at Mr. Darcy)—to be a matter of custom: each race, and indeed each person, must dress as suits their resources, their climate, and their tastes. By what right may any body judge whose taste is moral, and whose immoral?

“But perhaps my opinion is affected, as well, by the fact that I think men ought to have better things to do than to ridicule what women wear. If they wish to teach us better sense, they had better put their mind to the reform of female education, and leave off scribbling caricatures. Excuse me—”

Having finished working in the last end of the present section, Elizabeth removed it from the frame and rose to shew it to Mary, asking her again if she were quite sure that she would not like a length of her own—though she expected the grave, grateful negative before it arrived.

Chapter Text

The female who attends a lady while she is dressing, &c., is called an Ayah; pretty nearly corresponding with the ‘lady’s maid’ among us. Some are half-cast children; that is, of European fathers and native mothers: brought up in families from their infancy.

Although very few of the Hindostanee women serve in the capacity of ayahs attendant upon ladies, many are employed as nurses to children after quitting the breast. In such cases an ayah rarely attends more than one child; hence, in some families, this class of domestics would be extremely numerous, were it not that few children, born of European parents, are retained beyond their third, or fourth, year in the country. The generality of those remaining, even for that term, under the care of ayahs, become crafty, proud, and unmannerly; which has occasioned several ladies to engage as few as possible of those attendants, and to give their little ones in charge to bearers, or other male servants; under whose care they are found to be less vitiated, and, in general, far more healthy. Unless great attention be paid, ayahs will initiate their young charges in many practices, and especially in language, such as must require infinite assiduity to subdue; and, after all, may not be completely suppressed. Besides, they are usually very slovenly, and offensive in their persons.

— Captain Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade-Mecum; or, complete guide to gentlemen intended for the civil, military, or naval service of the Hon. East India Company; 1810

Mr. Bennet was not sorry to have been at home to callers that day. To see his eldest daughter and her lover billing and cooing at each other had not been highly amusing—they were both too sensible for their communications to be ridiculous beyond the minimum below which no lovers’ communications could pass; but the argument between his next eldest and her admirer was a source, not only of amusement, but of pride. The sharpness of Lizzy’s discrimination, teazing out the various points of a question and taking each in turn, subjecting them to the scrutiny of her own reason, unconcerned when her conclusions were different from those of any body else—it was just what Jane shrunk from, what Mary laboured at without ever being able to attain, and what Kitty and Lydia never thought of.

That Mr. Darcy liked her was obvious; but that was not sufficient to alarm him. He would never stoop so far in the eyes of the world, as to offer for her—and she would never stoop so far in actuality, as to accept him if he did. He had a very sanguine expectation of keeping his Lizzy at home, for now.

Mr. Bennet had, at this time, yet another source of amusement in view. About a fortnight prior, he had received a communication from the man who stood to benefit from the entailment on his estate—and, if Mr. Collins were any thing like his style of writing, he was in equal degrees pompous, servile, pretentious, and absurd. The very day after the argument just canvassed, he returned his response—as he deemed some promptness due in a case of such delicacy as this. The cousin was very welcome to come any time he pleased.

Another two weeks brought him his first installment of pleasure from the news. He had waited to inform anyone that he expected his cousin, until the actual day that he was to arrive; when, at breakfast, he opened with—

“Which room, my dear, do you suppose our guest ought to have?”

“What can you mean, my dear? Our guest? I am sure I have no notion of our having a guest!”

“And yet, I assure you, we are to receive one, and to-day: a gentleman, and a stranger.”

This roused a general astonishment; and he had the pleasure of being eagerly questioned by his wife and five daughters at once. After amusing himself some time with their curiosity, he explained who had written, and how he had responded.

“Well!” cried Mrs. Bennet, when he had done. “If you will have a room opened for him, it will certainly be done—no one ever said that I was negligent in doing my duty—but, for my part, I cannot fathom why you would invite that man into our home. I hate the very thought of him! He means to pace out the grounds, and inspect the furniture, I daresay. Well, if he can be easy, turning innocent women out of their homes, then that is very well for him! I know that I should be ashamed to do such a thing.”

“He does not mean to turn any body out of their home just yet, Mrs. Bennet. See, here—he writes that he comes in a spirit of friendship, to heal the breach, and offer an olive branch, and etc.”

“I am sure,” she replied, refusing the letter, “that I want no branch, or olives, of his! Nor should he trouble himself with our breach. Why can he not keep quarreling with you, as his father had done, and not fret us so?”

“You will read, my dear Mrs. Bennet, that he had every intention in the world of honouring his father by doing just that; however, Christian charity, and a consciousness of his duties as a clergyman, led him to determine, that he had better—what was it (angling the letter, which Elizabeth now held, towards himself, and adjusting his glasses)—oh, yes—‘promote and establish the blessing of peace in all families within the reach of his influence,’ by—hm— by ‘assuring us of his readiness to make our daughters every possible amends.’”

“Well!” cried Mrs. Bennet once more, though in a tone slightly moderated. “I see now that there is some sense in what he says; if he is disposed to make the girls any amends, I shall not be the person to discourage him.”

“He must be an oddity, I think,” said Elizabeth, who was still looking wonderingly at the letter. “I cannot make him out. There is something very pompous in his style. Can he be a sensible man, sir?”

“No, my dear; I think not. I have great hopes of finding him quite the reverse.”

Therefore, on Monday, November 18th, at 4 o’clock, extraordinarily prompt to his appointment, arrived Mr. Collins.

It rapidly became clear that Mr. Bennet had failed to inform his cousin of the provenance of his wife, in the hopes of causing a diverting scene. When Mr. Collins was led into the parlour by Hill, he bowed very low to Mr. Bennet alone, begged to have the honour of being introduced to the girls’ ayah, and inquired gravely whether he were to meet Mrs. Bennet? That lady, instantly restored to all of her earlier ill-humour, drew herself up in a great rustle of muslin, and gave another emphatic, “Well!”

When Mr. Collins understood that he was then addressing his hostess, and not an imported servant, he paled alarmingly, and bowed still more obsequiously low. He begged pardon ten thousand times for having displeased her. In a softened tone, she declared herself not at all offended; but he continued to apologize for the next several minutes together.

“May I present to you my daughters, Mr. Collins?” Mr. Bennet at length broke in.

“Oh, yes, yes! Yes, indeed! Yes, what a fine family of daughters! Yes, I see it perfectly well now—and I am only exceedingly sorry, madam,” bowing once more to Mrs. Bennet, “for not perceiving how matters stood at once—though I will say, that I hope I am not generally behindhand, in matters of understanding. I have, you know, in my capacity as a clergyman, many duties to carry out, which require a certain robustness of mind—an acuteness of reasoning, which I may not be excused from occasionally exercising—and in which, I may venture to hope, I acquit myself tolerably well. It is therefore not a little wonderful to me, that I can have erred so—and I ask you to believe that, (though I am far from attempting to put off any blame or recrimination, which can, with only too much justice, in the present case, be assigned to me)—still, I hope that such errors are not common with me; and that, as your generosity must surely own, it was the mistake of a moment, and not in any way a premeditated disrespect. I can only beg your pardon again and again—and submit myself with grateful respect to the presentation of my fair cousins.”

“Yes, Mr. Collins, that is all very well. Our eldest, Jane; and then my Lizzy—then Mary—Catherine, or Kitty—and Lydia.”

Mr. Collins's eyes, Elizabeth noted, darted between herself and Jane, and over her face and those of her parents, as every body’s always did. She thought his mistake must have been occasioned by his, at first, seeing only Jane, and perhaps Mary—for the sight of herself, or even Kitty, must have set him right at once. It was clear that Mr. Bennet was enjoying both the error, and the fawning humility of the apology for it, more than she could do; and she blamed her father for having on purpose subjected his wife and his daughters to such a mortification merely for his own entertainment, however little her mother now seemed to mind it.

“It is an honour and a privilege, my fair—ah—my lovely cousins! And allow me to tell you, madam (bowing again to Mrs. Bennet), and you, sir (to Mr. Bennet), once more, what a fine family of daughters you have! That I could ever have mistaken your relation to them is a source of no little consternation to me; and I hope I may beg leave to tell you again how exceedingly, how mortifyingly sorry I am.”

“That is all forgot, sir.”

“There are no words which could apologise, or thank you, enough, madam! You are a model of Christian charity—of—” he stopt for a moment, confused.

“Yes, sir,” broke in Mr. Bennet, “you find us all quite Christian here. Church of England, you know.”

“Oh, yes! Yes, of course!” And, seeing fresh insult in his latest communication, Mr. Collins apologised very prettily and fulsomely yet again.

Chapter Text

There is one species of large ants, which Mr Huber denominates Amazones, who inhabit the same nests with an inferior species, namely, the dark ash-coloured ant, and whom we may call their auxiliaries. As soon as the heat of summer has set in, the amazons muster their forces, and, leaving the auxiliaries to take care of the nest, march out in regular order […] to the point of attack, which is always a nest belonging to ants of the same species as the auxiliaries with whom they live. These resist the aggression with great courage, but are soon compelled to fly from the superior force of the invaders, who enter the breach they have made, and proceed to plunder the nest of all the eggs and larvas which they can carry off. They return, laden with this booty, to their habitations, and consign it to the care of the ash-coloured ants belonging to their community, who are waiting in eager expectation, to receive them. These eggs and larvae are watched, nourished, and reared to maturity, with the same care and assiduity which the auxiliaries bestow on their own progeny; and thus they become, in process of time, inmates in the same society with those who had originally kidnapped them; and towards whom, had they been brought up at home, they would have cherished an instinctive and inveterate hatred.

— Review of P. Huber, Recherches sur les Mœurs des Fourmis Indigènes, 1810; in The Edinburgh Review or Critical Journal, Vol. XX; 1812

Mr. Collins’s company turned out to be of but limited value as entertainment, even for Mr. Bennet’s tastes. He could amuse at dinner, meditating on his great good fortune in having secured his preferment so soon, and from such an affable, such a condescending woman as Lady Catherine de Bourgh!—and repeating every compliment with which she had ever favoured him, in the way of invitations, permissions, and advice—and if Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth were occasionally brought to glance at the other in the midst of resolutely maintaining their countenances, Mr. Collins was not the wiser. But the attraction palled soon afterward.

They were to be obliged, however, to endure him for another two weeks and four days. He had come, because his patroness had advised him to find a wife as soon as he could; and the advice, being just then very agreeable to him—for he had begun to notice, that he had both the income and the inclination to marry—he meant to follow it with all possible alacrity. He had congratulated himself for his scheme of making his selection from within the walls of Longbourn, in order to recompense its females for his eventual usurpation; it had seemed that the plan was as eligible as it was benevolent, and uniquely well-suited to guarantee the happiness and prosperity of all involved. 

Now, however, he was not sure. Lady Catherine de Bourgh had enjoined him to chuse well, and with discretion; a gentlewoman, but an active, useful one; not above herself, but not so low that she was not suitable to adorn a household which the great lady herself meant sometimes to visit. Would she object to a half-cast? He hesitated for some time in an agony of confusion and perturbation. He would do any thing rather than make a choice which would distress her. At last he hit upon the expedient of writing. He hoped she would not think it presumptuous—but he flattered himself, that his station as a clergyman made permissible in him certain liberties which laymen ought not to think of taking—and was his marriage not an intimate concern of the great lady who had the charge of the parish?

These thoughts occupied Mr. Collins as he accompanied his young cousins (save Mary, who had elected to remain behind) on a walk to Meryton the day following his arrival. Lydia and Kitty’s searching after bonnets and soldiers was to be, on this particular walk, gratified in the extreme: Wilson’s had several of the former in, quite new; and their acquaintance Mr. Denny was found quite newly back from London. He was in the company, moreover, of another man, every inch the gentlemen in his appearance; and Lydia and Kitty crossed the street towards the pair directly, under pretence of wanting something in an opposite shop.

Mr. Denny caught sight of the younger girls, and the party which was trailing along behind them, and greeted them smilingly. He begged leave 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. Kitty and Lydia’s gratification at hearing this news was readily discernible: a red coat was all that was needed to elevate Mr. Wickham’s handsome face and figure into the highest sphere of perfection. In the course of the interview which followed, it became apparent that the stranger adduced to his beauty a happy readiness of conversation—a readiness at the same time perfectly correct and unassuming. He at once endeared himself to Elizabeth, by seeming not at all inclined to stare into her face with impertinent curiosity, or to beg leave to inquire as to the reason for her existence.

After some little time, the sound of horses drew the attention of the party; and Darcy and Bingley were seen riding down the street. On distinguishing the ladies of the group, the two gentlemen came towards 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—though his eyes were all the while fixed on Elizabeth.

Thus distracted, it was some moments before he chanced to catch sight of Mr. Wickham; and Elizabeth, happening to see the countenance of both as they looked at each other, was all astonishment at the effect of the meeting. An angry flush, already familiar to her from some of her conversations with him, spread over Mr. Darcy’s face; Mr. Wickham blanched. After a few moments, Wickham touched his hat—a salutation which Darcy just deigned to return. Bingley, from speaking earnestly to Miss Bennet all the while, did not notice what had passed; but he shortly thereafter took his leave regardless, and his friend rode off with him.

The ladies and Mr. Collins continued on—escorted by Denny, and the new acquaintance they had just formed—to make the circuit of Meryton, before returning back on the road to Longbourn. All the while, Elizabeth’s mind was busily forming and rejecting conjectures as to the nature of the acquaintance between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham. What could be the meaning of their evident awkwardness—she might almost say, enmity? 

The men took them as far as the park, before departing, resisting all entreaties to come in for tea. As the ladies continued home, Elizabeth related to Jane what she had seen pass between Darcy and Wickham; but though Jane would have defended either or both, had they appeared to be wrong, on so little information she was no more ready than her sister to forward an explanation for their behaviour.

Elizabeth was not yet to have any opportunity to sound the matter further. The Phillipses were the first local family to host the recently encamped militia; but, as Mr. Phillips was only an attorney in Meryton, it cannot be supposed that Mrs. Bennet would allow anyone of her family to attend the entertainment. Their company was confined, as usual, to the dozen genteel and half-genteel families in the area—foremost among them the Lucases, the Gouldings, the Longs, and the Netherfield party—and even Elizabeth’s impertinence did not allow her to ascend to the heights of openly asking Mr. Darcy about his acquaintance with Mr. Wickham.

Therefore, while the Phillipses were hosting a card-party, Jane and Elizabeth drank tea and ate carraway-cake in the Netherfield drawing room. The former conferenced with Mr. Bingley on the entire history of her travels to London; and the latter regarded Mr. Darcy, then occupied with writing a letter to his sister, with new curiosity. Some things, however, had not changed: his conversation (if such it could be termed) with Miss Bingley exactly suited what she knew, and expected, of them both. She teazed him with compliments, which he did not precisely accede to or reject; he answered her questions, whenever a reply could not civilly be avoided, with a few terse words, or a bow.

“How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of a year! Letters of business, too! How odious I should think them!”

“It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of to yours.”

And then, after a moment’s silence: “How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter! Do you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?”

“They are generally long; but whether always charming, it is not for me to determine.”

“It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter with ease cannot write ill.”

Elizabeth, despite her great amusement with how the conversation was carrying on without her, could no longer help interjecting:—

“The ease with which he writes to his sister, however, was perhaps dearly purchased. It may have been practiced on all those odious letters of business. Miss Darcy may open a missive now and then to see it half-filled with calculations, probabilities, and instructions on how some field or other is to be drained.”

Mr. Darcy smiled at her, and laid by his pen—but Miss Bingley answered before he could.

“Practice! No—I assure you, Mr. Darcy’s skill at writing is born of an intelligence which is quite innate. He need not labour at it.”

Once again, the gentleman in question half-demurred. “I cannot, any more than any body else, claim to have acquired any skill wholly without practice.”

“Is skill, then always strictly proportionate to the effort exerted?” asked Elizabeth—though why she should be torturing them both, by continuing to speak to him, she could not quite determine.

“I cannot believe so, no. Practice—effort—education—may allow a skill, or a character, to grow nearer to perfection; but there are natural advantages which the best education cannot confer, and natural defects which it cannot overcome.”

She smiled. “You, I think, are possessed of a good deal of natural pride.”

“Perhaps I am—but I do not regard that as a defect—or, if it is, it is not an insuperable one. The best any of us may hope for, is that our strengths will keep our defects in check. Pride, where there is a real superiority of mind, will always be under good regulation.”

“Ah!” Elizabeth laughed. “I see! ‘Superiority of mind.’ And in what, pray tell, does ‘superiority of mind’ consist?”

“In rigour of thought—in broadness of learning—in firm and just principles—in an avoidance of hypocrisy and self-deceit.”

“Therefore, in a determination to make up one’s own mind on points of importance—not easily to be led by prejudice—not merely to accept the superstitions of one’s society, and to believe what one is told?”

“Yes; naturally.”

If Darcy had intended, with this admission, some form of concession or apology, Elizabeth missed it; she merely turned away to hide her smile at this evidence of hypocrisy in one who professed to avoid it.

“Certainly,” broke in Miss Bingley, “we cannot underrate the effects of nature. Every body has a temperament, and an understanding, which is native to them. If there be flaws in the nature of any person, or race of people, the best education, the healthiest climate, may soften, but cannot obviate, them.”

Mr. Darcy thought that this was too pointedly rude to be allowed to pass, and was furthermore not what he had aimed at. “For my part, I spoke of individual, and not national, character.”

“But, surely, Mr. Darcy, the latter in large part determines the former.”

“How can you know?” asked Elizabeth. “What evidence can you furnish? How can such a question—so hopelessly broad as it is,” she laughed, “possibly admit of positive proof?”

“We might look to the example of those who are the sons and daughters of one nation, yet are educated in another. Then we would know, if their qualities are conferred with birth, or are due to their upbringing.”

“You mean, I suppose,” said Elizabeth, tired of speaking around the point, “to put me forward as one such example?”

“An example,” Mr. Darcy broke in before Miss Bingley could reply, “of an intelligent mind—of ready wit—and of genteel manners, Miss Elizabeth certainly does furnish.”

“But it will not do. A critic of our experiment might point out, that I have English blood.”

“Your mother, then, will furnish a profitable study?”

“Not so—you will recall that she lived in Indostan from her infancy until her marriage.”

“She must, then, to your way of thinking, be an excellent example of the manners of her country?”

“As worthy an example, Miss Bingley, as you are of your’s.”

“I wonder that you did not say, our’s.”

“That would be presupposing, what you have elected to question—and is therefore logically impermissible.”

Though Mr. and Mrs. Hurst continued on in strict abstraction, the liveliness of this exchange was sufficient to alarm Miss Bennet and Mr. Bingley, who hastened to break up the dispute; and Jane and Elizabeth soon afterward took their leave.

Chapter Text

High on a Throne of Royal State, which far
Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Show’rs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit rais’d
To that bad eminence; and from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain Warr with Heav’n, and by success untaught
His proud imaginations thus displaid.

— John Milton, Paradise Lost; 1667

The next occasion on which Elizabeth was to be in company with Mr. Wickham was two days hence, at a large card-party and dinner at the Lucases’. Not wishing to seem behindhand in offering hospitality—in fact, rather wishing to lead than otherwise—they had intended to invite the best of the officers the very day after their arrival. They were waylaid, however, by the delay of an additional card-table which they had ordered some little time ago, so that all of their early preparation did not avail them: but now they had the pleasure of hosting at last. Their offering to the militia’s entertainment need only surpass that of their old neighbours the Phillipses—and that, they were sure it must do.

Upon his entering the room, every female eye was turned upon Mr. Wickham. His fellow officers were, in general, a creditable, gentlemanlike set; but that Mr. Wickham was superior to them all in person, manners, air, and conversation, must be apparent to every body. Elizabeth’s pleasure and gratification when he at once sat particularly by her, may therefore be guessed at. She had no attention for Mr. Collins’s worrying that he was not perfectly acquainted with whist, or Lydia’s exclamations over bets won and lost; she was fully absorbed in the conversation which she and Mr. Wickham at once fell into, though it was only about the wetness of the season. He was as well-bred and well-spoken as she had remembered; and her enjoyment in talking to him little needed the help it received, from the mystery which his encounter with Mr. Darcy presented.

She was soon spared the necessity of practicing any ingenuity, by Mr. Wickham’s opening the interesting subject himself.

“I saw, when we met on Bond Street on Tuesday morning”—Elizabeth smiled at the exactness of his memory—“that you are acquainted with Mr. Darcy?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth; “a little.”

“May I ask—how long he has been in the neighbourhood?”



“I believe it is now a little over a month.”

“I suppose,” asked he, after playing his turn, “that he has made himself well-liked in Hertfordshire?”

“No, indeed. Every body is disgusted with his pride. I am not sure that you could find one person, excepting the friend he came with, who would speak well of him.”

“Really!” He seemed mildly surprised, and faintly troubled—but he rallied to reply: “I cannot pretend to be sorry for it. He is a man well capable of pleasing, when he chuses to—amongst those he considers his equals, he can be liberal-minded, sincere, and, perhaps, agreeable—but, otherwise, he relies on his fortune and consequence, or his imposing manners, to ensure that he retains the good opinion of the world. It is perhaps more remarkable that he has failed here, than that he generally succeeds.”

“This,” said she, “seems a very good picture of him—as near as I have been able to draw one, on so short an acquaintance. I can readily believe that his manners differ along with the consequence of his company. But you speak as though you have known him some time?”

“Yes, I have. We were children together.”

“Indeed!”

“You may well look surprised, given what you saw of our reception of each other—but it really is so. His father was my godfather; I was the son of his father’s steward; and a more amiable, generous, kind-hearted man than Mr. Darcy senior never existed. He meant to do very well by me. But his son was by no means pleased at our close connexion—and it was, perhaps, jealousy, that—” but here he hesitated—and Elizabeth felt how impossible it was to enquire.

“Ah!” continued Wickham after a moment. “I, perhaps, ought not to say—and you are wise not to ask.” He fixed her with a glance that somehow mingled sadness and admiration.

“That does not mean,” said Elizabeth, “that I do not wish to know—or that I would silence you, if you wished to tell me.”

Wickham had not the least objection in the world to telling her—and he therefore expressed his lasting sorrow, mortification, and disappointment in having been denied, by Mr. Darcy fils, the living in the church for which Mr. Darcy père had educated and intended him; and explained, moreover, why no help could be expected from the law—or from the opinion of the world, as he was resolved, from respect for the father, to keep the matter to himself.

“But this is too bad! This is abominable! Even I had not thought him capable of some thing like this!”

“Even you, Miss Elizabeth? Forgive me for inquiring—but do you mean to tell me, that he has given you some particular insult?”

“No,” said Elizabeth at once, without quite knowing why. “Well—that is—it is nothing, in comparison to what you have told me. But that he disapproves of me is certain.”

“Disapproves of you? I can see nothing—forgive me—I do not mean to be forward—but I can see nothing in you of which any body could disapprove.”

She looked at him dubiously. “You are very kind, Mr. Wickham, but let us not mince matters: you certainly can, and do.”

He blinked at her—realisation and affront chased each other in his eye. “He objects,” he said in a lower voice, “to your parentage?”

She inclined her head; and explained the nature of the insult or two which she had received from him.

“Well! This is despicable—but I cannot own to much surprise. When Darcy behaves well, it is only to those within his most intimate circles: any body would own, that he is a most affectionate, a most attentive brother to his younger sister; and if he is liberal to his tenants, and to the poor, it is out of pride for his family and his name, and a wish not to be thought to disgrace the memory of his father. But no such feeling can befriend him here. It is not to me wonderful that he would be capable of giving pain to an innocent stranger in such a way—or of insulting a young lady over some thing which she cannot help.”

“Cannot—help, sir? That word, ‘help,’ implies that my appearance is some sort of a defect—that I would change it, if I could,” she laughed. “And yet I would not. I like myself very much just as I am—and as God made me. If others wish to argue with Him, that, I suppose, is their prerogative. But these opinions are not mine—nor do they pain me,” she said, with such magnanimity and composure as must convince him of her truthfulness.


Wickham seemed alarmed and distressed at having offended her, and made his apologies very prettily; he had not paid sufficient attention, he said, to the present instance, but was speaking of a habit which he had perceived Mr. Darcy to possess in general. He had often, in the course of their association, known him to slight a young woman behind her back for some reason relating to her family, fortune, or figure, which no one of a disposition more generous, kind, or just, would think it right to mention; and it was of this tendency that he had just then spoken. As for himself, he possessed no prejudice as related to any body’s appearance—and he knew too well what it was to be despised for his parentage, regardless of any merit of his own, to be wishing to submit any body else to the same treatment. Elizabeth soon grew sorry, that she had made so amiable a man feel any concern over such a trifle; and she bid him be easy.

Mr. Wickham did not dwell on the point with the ill-bred obsequiousness of a Mr. Collins, but accepted his pardon at once, and with a very good grace; and their conversation soon passed again to indifferent matters. After the cards were cleared away, he entertained her so well over the cauliflower in white sauce and cold oysters, that she forgave him very heartily; and thought with some complaisance of the next time she was likely to be again in company with him.

Chapter Text

Criticism, like everything else, is subject to the prejudices of our education, or of our country. National prejudice, indeed, is, of all deviations from justice, the most common and the most allowable; it is a near, though perhaps an illegitimate relation of that patriotism, which has been ranked among the first virtues of characters the most eminent and illustrious.

— Henry Mackenzie, “Papers from the Mirror”; 1808

Elizabeth related to Jane, the next day, what had passed between Mr. Wickham and herself. Jane listened with astonishment and concern: she knew not how to believe that Mr. Darcy could be so unworthy of Mr. Bingley’s regard; and yet it was not in her nature to question the veracity of a young man of such amiable appearance as Wickham. She wished to clear both of them—she was sure that some misrepresentation, some misunderstanding, was at fault for the rift—she did not wish to believe in either such wickedness as Wickham attributed to Mr. Darcy, or such wickedness as would be required, for Wickham to have slandered him. She was therefore in an agony of indeterminacy. Elizabeth shared none of her compunctions, and lodged the blame firmly with Darcy.

As Elizabeth and Jane were walking in the shrubbery, where this conversation had taken place, they were summoned into the house by the arrival of one of the very persons of whom they had been speaking. Mr. Bingley, along with his sisters, had come personally to invite them to the ball, which Mr. Bingley had previously promised Lydia he would host, and which was fixed for the following Tuesday. Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley spoke principally to Jane, a little to Elizabeth, and not at all to anyone else; then hurried away, as if to escape Mrs. Bennet’s civility.

The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every female of the family, excepting not even Mary. Elizabeth was eager to dance with Mr. Wickham, and to observe the truth of every thing he had told her in Mr. Darcy’s manner; Jane imagined a night spent in the company of her two good friends and their brother; and Lydia and Kitty only wanted to be dancing, and to be admired.

That same morning, Mr. Collins had been favoured with a reply to his latest missive to his patroness, solemnly informing him that he had done well to apprise her of his hymeneal plans, and of the unexpected crinkle he had found in them. She did not object to a half-cast for one of his rank, if they had been brought up safely in England, and removed from all degenerating influences; it was her opinion, that a hot climate, a beating sun and dirty air, did all the mischief; and that a Christian education would purify both the skin and the mind.  She would, she assured him, with pleasure inform his wife of how she ought to eat, dress, and behave in her new condition of life. 

Mr. Collins was, at receiving this benevolent permission, considerably relieved. The interest of any of the girls’ 10,000l. would be a very welcome addition to his tithes, and would aid him significantly in seeing to the care and improvement of his dwelling. It was also highly convenient to be able to make his choice without worry that he may be refused, from which outcome the manner of his relation to the family must protect him—though of course, he would by no means neglect any of the elegant forms of wooing and courtship, of which young ladies were so fond, and of which his lovely cousins were certainly deserving.

All that remained was to select his bride. Miss Bennet, her mother had informed him, was likely soon to be engaged; Lady Catherine’s reference to purity of complexion made him determine that she would likely find Miss Elizabeth, and perhaps Miss Catherine, objectionable; and Lydia was much too young. This left Miss Mary—unfortunate, as she was as inferior to Miss Elizabeth in point of features, as she was superior in point of colouring—but it could not be helped. She had a sober, sensible disposition that would do him credit in a wife. That she was plain may serve as proof of his disinterestedness and his renouncing of worldly pleasures. Accordingly, though he threatened to dance with all his cousins, he took care to solicit the first dance from Miss Mary—which application she gravely acceded to, telling him that she considered intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for every body; and that she by no means considered herself as above the claims of society.

The day of the ball approached in a surfeit of rain that prevented any body’s walking out of doors. All Saturday, Sunday, and Monday the women of Longbourn were forced to make their preparations without applying to Meryton for novelty either of scenery or finery. Elizabeth felt terribly restless by the time the day arrived at last.

The ball began without any sign of the man who had formed half the evening’s interest for Elizabeth. Mr. Wickham was certainly not in the room. Lydia eagerly asked his friend Mr. Denny after him; and he pretty nearly told them that he had absented himself to avoid Mr. Darcy. This disappointment, after such a period of boredom and anticipation, struck Elizabeth acutely; and when Mr. Darcy approached her to enquire after her health, etc., it was only with difficulty that she could move herself to be civil. To be forbearing to him seemed a betrayal of Mr. Wickham and of herself.

But Elizabeth was not formed for ill-humour; and after complaining of the circumstance to Charlotte, and dancing two sets with two different officers, she was tolerably well resigned to her deprivation.

When her last partner had escorted her to Miss Lucas and left her, she had the misfortune of catching Mr. Collins’s eye from across the room. As he had danced already with Mary, and then with Jane, there was every reason to fear that he would approach her next; and she had but little hope that his manner of asking, or indeed his dancing, would do any credit to his sense.

She was to be, in one respect, saved—and, in another, merely doomed to a different sort of distress and misery. Mr. Darcy, who had evidently been near at hand for some time, approached, tersely greeted her and Miss Lucas, and then requested the honour of her hand for the next set. That he should ask her to dance at all—furthermore, that it should be the very first set after his duty to his hostesses had been fulfilled—surprised her so greatly, that she could not call an excuse to mind, and was obliged in common civility to accept. Another moment, however, allowed her to solve the mystery to herself: he was still smarting at her refusal of the first olive branch, which his friend had induced him to offer; his pride would not allow her challenge to go unanswered, or her refusal to be permanent.

Elizabeth shared these conjectures with Charlotte.

“I am by no means so certain as you that it is merely pride, Eliza. Perhaps Mr. Darcy has pride enough—but it seems to me that pride would make him avoid, not approach, you.”

“I will not allow you, Charlotte, to dismiss my motive without forwarding your own.”


“Perhaps he asked you to dance, because he wishes to dance with you.”

Elizabeth laughed heartily. “Oh, yes, that is more plausible by half! No, Charlotte, it won’t do—in any other case, of course I would agree with you entirely—but Mr. Darcy is too intricate a character for such a simple explanation to prevail. And our evidence that he does not admire me is too good.”

“Perhaps our evidence is out of date. He looks at you a good deal.”

“To own the truth, Charlotte, I have noticed that myself—but can you really maintain, that admiration must be the cause of it?”

Charlotte admitted that the feeling which motivated those looks was not one which she could readily guess at, from the countenance of the man in question.

“And yet you would no doubt advise me to catch him if I can.”

“Certainly I would.”

When the dancing recommenced, Darcy approached to claim her hand. Elizabeth read in her neighbours’ looks their amazement in beholding the eminence to which she was arrived—but they would probably have been less surprised, if they apprehended the true motive behind his application. 

They stood for some time without speaking a word; and Elizabeth began to imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances. At first, she 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 opened with—

“I am pleased that you have seen fit to join the rest of us in the plains and jungles, Mr. Darcy.”

He merely smiled at her.

A few more turns were accomplished in this manner, and Elizabeth was busily composing her next sally, when Mr. Darcy surprised her by actually voluntarily speaking—

“We were interrupted, I believe, during our last conversation on that subject.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Yes—so we were.” He seemed to expect her to say more—but now that he wished to speak, her perversity bid her be silent.

He exerted himself again. “You asked me, how one could determine what constitutes polish or refinement, in a society.”

“Yes, sir—and to determine it from first principles, without recourse to custom, or any other form of begging the question.”

“I have been considering the subject, and I am not certain that it can be done.”

“Indeed!” Here the dance separated them again; but in the interval of waiting for their turn which succeeded, and just when Elizabeth began to acknowledge to herself her own curiosity about what he would say, he continued—

“Naturally I could name a good many habits, the presence of which distinguishes a civilised, from a lower, society.”

She smiled. “Oh—naturally.”

“But then, and just as naturally, a native of that society may say, that our civilisation lacks many refinements which they consider necessary.”

Elizabeth blinked, surprised. “You will not propose any means of determining what is true polish, and what mere superstition?”

“I could do so. But you would say, that the qualifications which I forwarded in distinguishing refined from unrefined habits, were compiled post hoc, and followed, rather than inspiring, my complacency in our society—and that I was therefore not arguing as you had instructed me to, ab initio.”

“This is very convenient! I will soon cease ever to give myself the trouble of speaking.”

“That, would be surprising.”

She made an indignant noise. “It would be as entertaining a spectacle, as your doing the reverse.”

As he smiled at her again, it suddenly occurred to her that he was a markedly handsome man. The thought jarred her into remembering, that she had forgotten to think of Wickham once in the last half-hour—and her disloyalty troubled her. Had Wickham not said, that Darcy could, perhaps, be agreeable with those whom he deemed worth the trouble? And yet, why she should be amongst this exalted rank of humanity, she could not comprehend—till she surmised, that he may have seen his friend’s partiality to her sister, and judged that, as they may often be thrown together in the future, it may be just as well to be civil.

She determined to open the subject of Mr. Wickham; and, before she could lose her resolution, began—

“You came across us in Meryton the other day just as we were forming a new acquaintance.”

His face shuttered, only to be overspread by its familiar hauteur. “Yes—I saw it myself. I should tell you that, while Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may insure his making friends, he is not often capable of retaining them.”

Elizabeth, though she blamed herself for her weakness, felt much less certain than she had at the beginning of the evening. She had intended to reprove him; but her reply was, in the event, more equivocal:

“He told me, that the manner in which he had lost your friendship had been particularly detrimental to him.”

Darcy was looking at her with some concern, and judging how best to respond, when the pair were approached by Sir William Lucas—and his effusions on the subject of the forthcoming engagement between his friend, and her sister, for a time prevented further discourse.

Once Sir William had left, Darcy turned back to his partner, and said,—

“Sir William’s interruption has made me forget what we were talking of.”

Elizabeth thought, that this was probably untrue; but she lacked some part of the presumption necessary to pursue the subject, and therefore allowed him to change it.

“Nothing of any moment. You had just yielded to my superior argumentation, on the point of the societies of the world, and so there can be no need to continue on that topic. What we were to talk of next, I cannot imagine.”

“What think you of books?” said he, smiling.

Elizabeth had no particular desire—his recent approach to amiability notwithstanding—to speak to Mr. Darcy of books, or of any other subject; but her defiance of spirit disdained laying herself open to any charge of ignorance or intellectual deficiency which he may impute to her race. She therefore acceded to the topic, though in part:—

“A very good subject—I commend you—but it is a little broad. Narrow it, if you please.”

His smile widened. “What are you reading at the moment?”

“You assume, then, that I do read?”

“That you have either read, or discussed, works of philosophy is apparent.”

She inclined her head. “I have—in the past. But at the moment, I am reading Maria Edgeworth’s Essay on Irish Bulls, a collection of Cowper’s poems, and some of Gilpin’s essays—and I will begin on Burney’s Evelina, just as soon as Mary is finished with it.”

“Do you read in any language other than English?”

“French, of course—then Italian, and then German, in that order. I can muddle my way through Latin and Greek if I have a dictionary to hand.”

He smiled anew. “This is an impressive list.”

“Not really,” she laughed. “Reading is much easier than speaking. By no means ask me to have a conversation in German.”

“I have no intention of asking you to do any such thing—as I would not understand you, if you did.”

She laughed again, surprising herself. After a moment, he continued:—

“Do you read in Hindy?”

“No, sir—I cannot.”

“The situation is then the reverse?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The reverse of your knowledge of German, I mean—you can speak, but not read?”

“I do not speak Hindy, sir. There are hundreds of languages spoken in Indostan—you could guess one every day for a year, without arriving at the language which I speak.”

He flushed. “Ah—I beg your pardon.”

It was very odd—but his mistake made her better disposed towards him than she had been at any other point in the full history of their acquaintance.

“It is Cutchee—spoken along the western coast of Indostan. The Sindhi script has been used to write it for centuries—there are some writings—devotional poems—but mainly, I encounter it in letters.”

Their conversation was here interrupted, by the end of the dance, and Mr. Darcy begged leave to escort her to the table for punch. Wondering at herself, she agreed—but they had not been there long, before they were approached by Mr. Collins. Elizabeth at first anticipated only the unpleasantness of being entreated by him for a dance: but she was soon to discover that the case was worse than this—that he had overheard, by some mischance, that Mr. Darcy was the nephew of his patroness; and that he deemed this connexion sufficient to entitle him to pay that gentleman his addresses.

Immediately she had comprehended the situation, she broke in with some abruptness—

“Mr. Darcy, will you permit me to introduce to you Mr. Collins, my father’s cousin?”

Mr. Darcy, who had begun to look at Mr. Collins with an expression of unrestrained astonishment, gravely bowed his assent (indeed he could hardly have done any thing else), and Elizabeth rushed to perform the introduction before Mr. Collins could object to her interference.

Mr. Collins looked reprovingly at his cousin, but he seemed to decide not to scold her before so illustrious a personage as Mr. Darcy.

“Yes, sir—well met, well met! As I say, I have been eager to beg your pardon, ever since I learnt of the circumstance, for having neglected to greet you before—my entire ignorance of our connexion must plead my apology. I am gratified, I assure you, exceedingly gratified, to find myself now in the company of such a near relation of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, for whose patronage in granting me the living at Hunsford, I am most feelingly, most extremely grateful. I have benefited many times from the beneficence, from the great condescension of that lady—of which quality, of course, you cannot be ignorant, sir (issuing a low bow)."

As Mr. Collins continued his disquisition on the subject of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Darcy merely inclined his head, with an air of distant civility. That a relation of her’s should be exposing himself to Darcy in this way thoroughly mortified Elizabeth—and, after a few moments more, she resolved to sacrifice herself, and ventured to wonder aloud which dance would be played for the next set. Recalled to his other goal of the evening, Mr. Collins fulsomely requested the honour of her hand. She had no sooner acceded, than he ran off to pay his compliments to Miss Mary, who was just then passing; but solemnly informing her that he would return to her side in time for their set, and that she need have not the least fear on that score, for he would do any thing in the world rather than disappointing her.

Mr. Darcy was at last at liberty to hand her the promised glass of punch. She was scarcely capable, just then, of meeting his eye; and yet, as she accepted it, she found herself unable to resist saying,—

“If you were not aware of the name of your own aunt before, Mr. Darcy, you certainly are now.”

Chapter Text

At the time of the firſt deſcent of the English in Ireland in the reign of Henry the ſecond, the country was in a ſavage ſtate; the natives lived in clans under elective chiefs, in the fame manner as do the native Indians in America. There were no towns nor buildings in the country, except at the mouths of rivers, where the Danes and other northern nations had built ſmall towns or factories, for the purpoſe of collecting ſuch commodities for exportation as countries, however barbarous, are known to furniſh: The English coloniſts poſſeſſed themſelves of, and ſettled in, ſome part of the nation oppoſite to Britain, and a conſtant predatory and deſultory war was waged between theſe colonies and the ſavage natives for ſome centuries.

— Patrick Duigenan, History of the Irish rebellion; an impartial history of the late rebellion in Ireland, and of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland; 1802

Mr. Darcy remained by Elizabeth’s side until Mr. Collins arrived to collect her. Her dances with the latter gentleman were just as she had suspected they must be. More than once, he moved wrong—then became so distracted in apologising for moving wrong, that he moved wrong again. Her sole consolation was, that Mr. Bingley was then dancing again with Jane, and the two were just as mutually absorbed as usual. The train of agreeable reflections which her observations gave birth to made her perhaps almost as happy as Jane. She saw her in idea settled in that very house, in all the felicity which a marriage of true affection could bestow.

During dinner, Elizabeth was at some pains to place herself by her mother. She knew that she must have observed Jane and Bingley; that she was sanguine in her hopes for Mr. Collins and Mary; and worried that she was perhaps even then forming some absurd supposition as regarded Darcy and herself. It was therefore highly necessary that she be immediately by her. Her mother’s triumphal feelings must have some expression—she was not a woman capable of keeping her own counsel, or even of lowering her voice—but if Elizabeth were near at hand to hear her, they would at least not be expressed in English. Elizabeth therefore interspersed the delights of cold ham and chicken, with those of her mother’s expressions of her anticipated success.

When dinner was over, singing was talked of; and Elizabeth had the mortification of seeing Mary, after very little entreaty, preparing to oblige the company. She laboured stolidly through one song; then, upon Mr. Collins begging her at very unnecessary length to oblige the company again, she laboured through another. Her powers were by no means fitted for such a display; her voice was tuneful, but weak and affected. Elizabeth was in agonies. She looked at Jane to see how she bore it; but Jane was very composedly talking to Bingley. His sisters were making signs of derision at each other. She glanced at Darcy, rather expecting to see in his face his habitual grave contempt; but he was just then looking at her. His expression was hardly readable—but Mary’s performance did not seem to make up any large part of his reflections; and she felt relieved, without knowing why.

No hint was issued at the close of Mary’s second song; and, though her vanity was considerable, she did not wish to seem, or to think herself, vain; she would not play without being asked; and she relinquished her seat before the instrument.

“Extraordinary! Perfectly extraordinary, my fair cousin! What a delight it is to listen to you! I should not say, that you do great justice to the instrument—rather, that the instrument is adorned by you! Such diligent application as must be thanked for the birth of an accomplishment such as this, should be—”

Elizabeth could listen no more. Though not in general inclined to exhibit unless really personally ordered to, and in particular not wishing Mr. Darcy to condemn her as putting herself forward, she saw in the instrument an opportunity to silence her cousin; and she took it. Haydn’s “Gypsy Rondo” made him mute for four and a half minutes together: and if she did see Miss Bingley make a sneering aside to her sister, and guessed the content of it, she still did not think her reprieve too dearly bought.

The conclusion of the ladies’ performances brought a return to dancing. Elizabeth saw that Mr. Collins was once again partnering Mary, and began to worry lest she were inclined to accept his suit; but it was not in her disposition to borrow trouble, and so she merely resolved to speak to her sister about it on the morrow.

Some time after she had returned from dancing a set with another officer, she noted that Mr. Darcy had been all the while standing within a very short distance of her, quite disengaged: he seemed to wish to speak to her, though without knowing how. In light of the style of his conversation as they had danced, and his unusual forbearance towards her relations during dinner, she read his having applied to her for a set in a different light than she had at the time it had occurred. She was now convinced of what she had afterwards suspected—that, from the expectation of her being in future connected to his friend (for she thought he had noted Bingley’s marked attentions to Jane that evening with sentiments closer to resignation than to censure), he wished to demonstrate his good-will. How this could be reconciled with his previous sarcasms and mockeries against herself, or with Wickham’s account of his having behaved so infamously by him, she was less certain. Could one man really be so conciliatory and respectful to those within his own circle, and so vicious and unprincipled to those whom he considered outside of it?

She was sure that she would receive no reasonable, no satisfactory conjectures from any body but herself. Jane would wish to construct scenarios to clear Darcy of all charges of which he could, by any stretch of plausibility, be cleared; Charlotte would tell her that she would be a fool to affront a man of his consequence, whether he had behaved badly or no; and her father would twit her about why she cared. She would need to determine how to solve the mystery for herself—and for this, and no other reason, she met his eye, and smiled.

He approached her directly, though he still seemed at a loss to speak. She waited, holding his eye, for a moment; but at length, she laughed:

“Yes, Mr. Darcy, you are perfectly correct. You chose the last subject of conversation, and therefore in fairness it ought now to be my turn. Let me see—will you think meanly of me, if I merely turn your query round? What do you read? For I presume you must—or you would not have asked such a question of me. No one who is not a reader themselves, cares much for the habit in any body else.”

He smiled, seeming grateful to her for making a beginning. “A history of the Irish rebellion—a retrospect of recent mechanical and agricultural discoveries—and I have just finished Evelina.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I have made Mary promise, and now I insist that you do as well—at no event tell me how it ends. I want to discover it for myself.”

“I would by no means frustrate any pleasure of your’s.”

“I believe you have a younger sister?”

He blinked at the change of subject, but his smiled softened. “Yes. Georgiana.”

“Was your perusal of Evelina intended for her benefit, or for your own?”

“Certainly it was at her instigation—though I did not begrudge the experience.”


“And how did you find Evelina—the character, I mean?”

“Insipid.”

“I cannot say that that surprises me,” Elizabeth laughed. “That is often the case with these novels. The authors are so unwilling to have a young lady behave with any thing other than perfect propriety in every respect, that all of their heroines are pretty nearly identical—and are merely puffed passively about with every motion of the plot.” After a slight pause, she continued: “And what is Miss Darcy like? How old is she?”

“She is just now sixteen.”

“Sixteen! And under your sole care?”

“No—my cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam—the son of my mother’s brother—shares guardianship of her.”

She looked at him speculatively. “Is there any relation to the Viscount FitzWilliam?”

He flushed. “Yes, madam.”

“Your mother, then, is of an Irish family?”

He bowed.

She laughed heartily. “I see that I ought not to have said Scandinavian wilds—Hibernian ones, rather!”

He smiled at her. “Your revenge would then have been complete indeed.”

“But I shall be merciful—we were speaking of Miss Darcy. Does your charge give you much trouble? Young ladies of her age are sometimes a little difficult to manage.”

His smile vanished, his face became forbidding, with a rapidity which almost made her start. “What can you mean? Why do you suppose her capable of giving trouble?”

“I—”; under his intense gaze, Elizabeth almost stuttered; but, never willing to be intimidated, and conscious of her own innocence, she quickly rallied. “You need not be uneasy. I never heard any harm of her. I spoke idly—you must be aware of the fact, that I often do.”

Darcy wavered between wariness, and willingness to be reassured. In his breast there was a tolerably powerful feeling towards Elizabeth, which made him reluctant to consider her capable of conspiring with Wickham, or of believing whatever calumny he may have issued against his sister. “You never heard any thing at all?”

“From Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley, as you must know, I have heard much—they profess themselves prodigiously fond of her.”

“But from no one else?”

Elizabeth now realised what he must be asking, and was surprised at herself for her slowness to notice that the conversation had been brought round to the subject which she had, at first, most wished to address. “Mr. Wickham said, that you were broadly acknowledged to be a very affectionate brother to her—but that is all. Of her, herself, he said nothing.”

He nodded, and seemed satisfied; but Elizabeth was left more befuddled at the end of the interview, than she had been at its beginning. She was undecided between anger at having been suspected; consciousness that she had, in fact, opened the conversation with Mr. Darcy hoping to learn something of his history with Wickham; and intrigue, at what that gentleman could have to do with Miss Darcy. That the continuing breach between the two men in some way concerned her, was evident; but she did not like to ask either man further questions about a young lady so wholly unconnected to her.

The Longbourn party were the last of all the company to depart; and by a manœuvre of Mrs. Bennet had to wait for their carriage a quarter of an hour after everybody else was gone, which gave them time to see how heartily they were wished away by some of the family. Mrs. Hurst and her sister scarcely opened their mouths except to complain of fatigue, and were evidently impatient to have the house to themselves. They repulsed every attempt of Mrs. Bennet at conversation, and, by so doing, threw a languor over the whole party, which was very little relieved by the long speeches of Mr. Collins, who was complimenting Mr. Bingley and his sisters on the elegance of their entertainment, and the hospitality and politeness which had marked their behaviour to their guests.

Mr. Bennet, in perfect silence, was enjoying the scene. Mr. Bingley and Jane were standing together a little detached from the rest, and talked only to each other. Elizabeth saw Mr. Darcy looking at her as frequently as ever, and guessed that he would pleased to allow her to relieve some of her own boredom and impatience by speaking to him; but she was very unwilling to have her mother observe such a pointed conference. Lydia was too much fatigued to utter more than the occasional exclamation of “Lord, how tired I am!” accompanied by a violent yawn.

When at length they arose to take leave, Mrs. Bennet was most pressingly civil in her hope of seeing the whole family at Longbourn once again before long; though addressing herself particularly to Mr. Bingley. Bingley was all grateful pleasure; and he readily engaged for taking the earliest opportunity of waiting on her after his return from London, whither he was obliged to go the next day for a short time.

Mrs. Bennet was perfectly satisfied; and quitted the house under the delightful persuasion that, allowing for the necessary preparations of settlements, new carriages, and wedding clothes, she should undoubtedly see her daughter settled at Netherfield in the course of three or four months. A man whose grandfather had been idle, and who intended to purchase an estate within his lifetime, was quite enough of a gentleman for her; and she well knew the value of a bird in the hand. Of having another daughter married to Mr. Collins she thought with equal certainty, though not with equal pleasure. To Mr. Bennet it must be agreeable to know, that his estate would stay within his own immediate line—men would care about these things—and, to be sure, the match was quite good enough for Mary.

Elizabeth’s thoughts were differently engaged. At the beginning of the evening, she had meant to read the truth of Mr. Wickham’s statements in Mr. Darcy’s behaviour. Now, she saw how impossible it must have been to do so. Darcy had been, to her, almost entirely amiable—and to Mr. Collins, he had been at least civil (and in fairness, she had to acknowledge to herself that that man ought not to be treated with more encouragement to impertinence than what the barest of civilities would afford him). But then, had not Mr. Wickham himself acknowledged, that Darcy was capable of behaving well, when he deemed it worth his while? Towards his sister, it was obvious that Darcy felt a high degree of protectiveness, for which, after some reflection, Elizabeth could not fault him—and yet, Wickham had freely owned that, as well. It was clear that the truth would not be gotten at to-night; Elizabeth arrived at home very thoroughly tired; she was asleep soon after she had gained her bed.

Chapter Text

“There is one class of distinguished professional men, to whom, from every human motive, matrimony seems to agree, rather than any other. This consists of those who perform the mysterious observances of religion. These have ample wealth to divide among themselves, and live in the most tranquil repose, far from fatigue and danger, and completely free from those intellectual torments, which an enquiry after truth produces in the profounder sciences.”

— “On Marriage,” from the Italian of Antonio Cocchi, The Scots Magazine and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany Vol 74; 1812

Before breakfast the next morning, at an hour when she would more habitually be traversing the paths and woods surrounding Longbourn, Elizabeth knocked on the door of Mary’s bedroom, judging her more likely to be there than in the up-stairs sitting-room where her younger sisters and mother tended to congregate. Her assumption proved correct; Mary solemnly bid her enter; and Elizabeth pulled up a chair next to the writing-desk at which her sister was labouring over an Italian novel.

“I have just now finished chapter seven,” said Mary, replacing her quill in its stand. “If you will go over it and tell me if I have got all the tenses correct, Elizabeth, I would be very grateful to you.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Of course. Though there is more to translation than grammar—the flow, and the feeling—the ideas expressed—are just as important.”

Mary nodded while tidying her desk, but otherwise acted as though she had not heard.

“But there is some thing more particular, Mary, about which I wish to speak to you. You will have noticed, that Mr. Collins seems inclined to pay his addresses to you.”

“Yes,” said Mary, pleased to have the subject opened. “His gestures in that direction have all been perfectly correct; and it speaks in his favour that he is so attentive to form. Nor do I think less well of his mind in general, than I do on this one point: his reflections have a solidity, a sensibleness, that well becomes a clergyman; and though he is not—” Mary wished to say, that he was by no means so clever as herself; but she reminded herself that it was approaching near to vanity, to bring another’s inferiority to herself to anyone’s notice; and therefore she continued: “He might, I mean, become a very agreeable companion, if encouraged to read and improve himself. But of his understanding, his native powers of comprehension, I have no doubt.”

“You mean, in short, that you wish to marry him, provided you may direct his reading?”

If there was a joke in this question, Mary missed it. “I am certain that he would accept my guidance on that point. From his remarks to me, it is evident that he is impressed with my learning and accomplishments; and I might now and again venture to suggest a book or two.”

Elizabeth saw how Mr. Collins’s ideas of courtship, and his strange admixture of conceit and servility, were exactly calculated to find purchase with Mary’s vanity. It was impossible for her to tell Mary how certain she was, that Mr. Collins had selected her, not because of any quality of her’s, but because of Jane’s imminent engagement, and her own complexion, without injuring her; and she was confident, besides, that she would not be believed. She therefore merely said:—

“Well, Mary, by now you know that I do not rate his powers as you do—but this is nothing, if you really like him. You will need to remember, though, that you would need to take time from your studies to carry out the tasks required of a clergyman’s wife; and that Mr. Collins also seems to have a great dependence on the opinions of his patroness, to whom you would no doubt be called upon to make obeisance likewise.”

Mary, though she felt very little dependence on the opinions of anyone else, was by no means discouraged by this interview; and Elizabeth felt that she had said all she dared, though not all she wished, to say.

Breakfast succeeded without incident. The major incident of the day was to come just afterwards: Mr. Collins, reflecting that his leave of absence extended only to the following Saturday, decided that this morning was as propitious a time as any to make his declaration in form. Accordingly, on finding Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth, and Mary together, he addressed the mother in these words,—

“May I hope, madam, to solicit for the honour of a private audience with your fair daughter Mary in the course of this morning?”

Even Mary was surprised that the moment was to come so soon; but as she was not unwilling to hear him, she readily agreed to stay in the room as her mother rose to ferry Elizabeth out of it. Elizabeth went, though uneasy at heart. She could not settle herself to any work, but went to sit upstairs with Jane, and share with her the nature of the event then ongoing.


“Oh! Well—I suppose, if he is only staying another week—it makes sense, that he wishes to have every thing settled. But do you think she means to accept him?”

“I spoke with her about it this morning, and I think that she does”; and Elizabeth related the major points of the earlier interview.

“If this is how she feels,” said Jane, “then I am glad for her. I have every hope that they shall, both of them, be very happy.”

“Oh, but Jane!” Elizabeth’s feelings, which could not be expressed to Mary, must have out: “can you really believe that the two of them put together have enough good sense to manage the practical and spiritual upkeep of a parish? Can their—their—oh, you know our younger sisters are dearer to me than anyone save you—but can their dispositions really be such as would each improve the other? They have, both of them, such a—a self-seriousness—such a mixture of self-abnegation and self-importance, that I am afraid they can only each make the other worse.”

“I will not pretend, Lizzy, not to know what you mean,” answered Jane, slowly: “but I do not think the case is so dire as this. Attending to practical matters—running a household together, and engaging in all the little daily necessaries of life—learning how to work and speak with each other—these things are precisely what will teach them practical sense.”

“And so rubbing along together will sand the edges off them both. Well! I am by no means so confident as you profess yourself to be; but I hope it may be so.”

Jane smiled. “You have such a fanciful way of expressing yourself sometimes, Lizzy!”

Lizzy laughed brightly, and impulsively kissed her; and then sat down under the pretense of doing some plain sewing, though she really just frayed the thread with her nail.

When curiosity drove Jane and Elizabeth down stairs again, they had some thing to hear very different from what they had expected. Mr. Collins was not just then in the house; he was all in a twitter, Kitty gleefully informed them, at having his suit rejected, and at both of his fair cousins’ parents being disinclined to press her very hard to accept it. The two elder sisters went on to find Mary at her pianoforte, deep in the study of thorough bass, and seemingly unperturbed at what had passed.

“Well, Mary,” Elizabeth began, “you have greatly surprised every body—not least, if Kitty is to be believed, Mr. Collins himself.”

“That may be so—but I hope that I will not be suspected of inconstancy. A flighty temperament is a failing indeed; but I believe that an unbending, stubborn will—which must be understood as a refusal to reconsider one’s ideas or decisions once one has attained new information—ought also to be guarded against.”

Elizabeth extracted from this generalisation some of the particulars of Mary’s interview.

“You learned some thing about Mr. Collins, or of his expectations for his marriage, which was not to your liking?”

“His susceptibility to the influence of rank is, I think, blamable—particularly in a clergyman, who ought to apply his learning for the benefit of all his parish, and not be led astray by such worldly considerations as wealth or precedence. Not that I exempt the nobility from their obligations to their inferiors, or except the latter from the respect which they owe to their superiors; but an appropriate and dutiful deference to rank should be tempered with—”

“Yes, Mary, very true,” interrupted Elizabeth, too eager to hear more to exhibit her usual patience. “You would object, no doubt, to having Mr. Collins more ready to take his patroness’s advice, than your own. I begin to comprehend the matter.”

Mary nodded gravely. “Especially when his patroness’s advice is so very objectionable.”

Elizabeth exchanged a surprised glance with Jane at how brief and to the point this communication was.

“You mean to say,” forwarded Jane, “that he shared with you some requirement of Lady Catherine’s, which you would not think it right to accede to?”

“He impressed upon me, that I would need to be an Englishwoman in every aspect of my appearance and behaviour: in my habits of dress, of taking meals, of reading, of speaking, and of worship.”

“But, Mary,” said Elizabeth, though very unsure that she ought to be making the match seem more attractive in Mary’s eyes, “that is pretty nearly how you behave already.”

Mary paused, for just a moment, in rearranging her music on its stand. “He insulted you.”

Elizabeth was so touched that it took her a moment to recover herself. When she felt herself to have done so, she replied,—

“You should not consider me, Mary, if you think a situation likely to bring you real felicity.”

“Any insult given to my sisters, or to my mother, must be understood to reflect on me also. I believe it is highly impermissible in any body to consider themselves as distinct from their parents, who birthed and raised them, and whom they ought therefore always to honour. I am not more English, or less Indian, than you.”

Elizabeth had never before considered the situation in this light; she, perhaps, often had fallen into the habit of thinking of herself as more Indian than her sisters. But whether or not one could tell that Mary was a half-caste from her appearance or her habits, alone, the people of Longbourn and Meryton still knew—and, of course, Mary must feel it.

“If you have different ideas about what will bring you happiness in your future lives, then of course, you were right to refuse him,” said Jane. “But poor Mr. Collins! Such a disappointment! I hope he does not long suffer for it.”

“It would be very impressive if he did, as it has not yet been two weeks since he learnt of Mary’s existence. Perhaps it would set a fine example for constancy, to be suffering over the failure of a love-affair for several times longer than one ever had it in view to begin with; but I cannot think it very likely. But, tell me, Mary—my mother did not object to your reply?”

“After some thought, she was resigned to it. When my father told her that he did not absolutely insist upon Longbourn passing through his immediate line, she ceased to care much about the match; and she says there is no saying but that I may, some time or other, do better.”

“I am sure you shall,” said Elizabeth, who could not keep from smiling at such a conclusion of such a beginning.

Chapter Text

We must be particularly careful how we allow infidelity or skepticism to take root in our hearts, for they are a soil more natural to the growth of evil, than of good. I believe, that all the ways of God to man are not only perfectly justifiable, but perfectly wise, just, and good: still there are mysteries I cannot develope. Conscience whispers, I am a worm of the dust; and God is the Almighty, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end of wisdom. And shall I scrutinize, shall I scan, or dare to judge between him and his works?

— Letter from Mrs. Harriet Backus, 1801; in The Christian's Magazine, volume IV, issue ii; 1811

Mr. Collins, in spite of his late heart-break, proved himself as great a proponent of punctuality in his departure, as he had at his arrival. He had no intention of taking himself off a moment sooner than he had planned; he was always to have gone on Saturday, and to Saturday he still meant to stay; and if his angry pride caused him to maintain at most times a resentful silence towards all other inhabitants of the house, he was no worse a companion for it than he had been before. Neither, however, was he a better one: and Charlotte Lucas, who had always intended to spend the day with them on Wednesday, and therefore arrived at about two o’clock that afternoon, had been invaluable, in drawing off much of his attention onto herself.

After breakfast on Thursday, the girls walked to Meryton to inquire if Mr. Wickham were returned from the business which had necessitated his absence from the Netherfield ball. He and his friend joined them on their entering the town, and it was soon evident that they meant to escort them the whole morning. Mr. Wickham offered Elizabeth his arm, and attended particularly to her; it was her to whom he principally spoke; it was to her alone that he acknowledged that the necessity of his absence had been self-imposed.

“As the day approached,” said he, “I found that I had better not meet Mr. Darcy—that forbearance was worth more, in this instance, than a blind courage, which might cause scenes to arise unpleasant to more than myself.”

Elizabeth gave some rote reply about discretion and valour, but her mind was really otherwise engaged; it was further opening to skepticism. Was this an admirable sacrifice on the part of her friend—giving up his own pleasure for an evening, in order to avoid laying himself open to the pity, and Mr. Darcy to the censure, of the room? Or was it not rather the consciousness of guilt, which would lead him to avoid a contest, of which he did not have the right side?

The possibilities, so far as she could arrange them before her own mind, were three: first, the accusation was false, and Wickham feared a denial; but how he could have lied in such a thoroughgoing manner, with names, facts, and everything mentioned, without demurral or ceremony—with such an air of candid, unconcerned truth—! It seemed impossible.

Second, the accusation was true, but the fault was on Wickham’s side. He had owned, himself, that Darcy had laid the charges of “extravagance” and “imprudence” at his feet; the extravagance might be real, and worse than what Elizabeth had any notion of. But, in this case, that Wickham could have communicated to her just criticisms of himself, that contained within them the explanation for the whole, seemed extraordinary! And he had such an air of sobriety, of earnestness, of propriety about him, that any charge of imprudence strained her credulity.

Third, the accusation was true, and the fault on Darcy’s side. He had persecuted Wickham without justice, from feelings of jealousy, or of disdain for Wickham’s descent; Wickham feared to meet him, because he could not trust himself to bear his company indefinitely, or because the mere reminder of his existence might remind Darcy to persecute him again. A week ago, no villainy had seemed to her too black to impute to Mr. Darcy; but now, it seemed strange that he could object so strenuously to Wickham as the son of a servant, and yet reconcile himself to addressing her, the granddaughter of an Indian merchant, with civility.

As these reflections continued to lead Elizabeth to no where in particular, she found herself again addressed by Mr. Wickham:

“I was very sorry to miss an opportunity for such an agreeable amusement—and among such amiable people, with such open, happy manners, as I have found in Meryton; but, I must own, that I was in particular sorry to have missed the opportunity to dance with you. However,” he smiled, “perhaps I am presumptuous—it is not to be supposed that you had a dance free.”

She had—because she had spent it standing out with Mr. Darcy, in such pointed conversation as had prevented any other gentleman’s approaching her. She set aside the guilt, which this remembrance occasioned, long enough to make a laughing reply to the effect that he would have needed to be sure of asking early enough in the evening; he replied in a similar style; and the conversation from there proceeded on indifferent matters. They continued to speak as Lydia and Kitty hailed every officer they passed, Jane purchased a handful of things as a favour to Mrs. Hill, and Lydia spent half the month’s pin-money on ribbons, a painted fan, and a new parasol, for all that it was autumn. All the while, Wickham was as gentle, well-bred, and winning as ever; and, if she could still have believed that the history of a particular incident might be revealed by taking anyone’s general character, her faith in his absolute innocence must have been certain.

When the gentlemen escorted them back to Longbourn, they were duly invited in for refreshments, and introduced to the master and mistress of the house. That Wickham delighted her mother, and amused her father, was evident to Elizabeth; but she was at some thing of a loss as to the reason for the latter sensation. Her friend’s great gentleness of address was, perhaps, not calculated to suit Mr. Bennet’s tastes.

Partway through the visit, Jane had had a letter from Miss Bingley; and, after Wickham and Denny had departed, she related its import to Elizabeth. Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy would be in London for a week, or perhaps a little less; Mr. Hurst dined out with the officers; Jane and Elizabeth were therefore entreated to come and prevent boredom, disputation, and whatever other dire consequence Miss Bingley feared from an evening’s tête-à-tête between two ladies.

“I can readily believe,” said Elizabeth, who could not help herself, “that a close conference between two women must end in such a way, if Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst are the women in question. Of course, we would not be half so welcome as we are, if the gentlemen were at home—and Miss Bingley has no compunction in telling us so.”

“I am sorry that you cannot like them, Lizzy; and I am sure that you have your reasons; I know that you never harbour any sentiment unjustly. But they have always been very kind to me—and I mean to see this note as a kind attention also.”

Jane could never quite be brought to admit that Elizabeth received different treatment on the basis of her personal appearance, than Jane received on the basis of her’s. Elizabeth—who had more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and whose judgement was unassailed by any complimentary attention to herself—perceived the distinction: the lesser degree of forbearance that was given to her; the comparative hesitation to offer her any of those little gallantries deemed necessary for a gentleman to pay a lady; the higher readiness to consider her to be angered or ill-humoured, which had taught her carefully to temper her every speech with a gay smile and a light sweetness of tone. That this sweetness of manner did not avail her with the Bingley sisters, was perfectly evident to her.

In truth, however, Elizabeth did not really wish for Jane to acknowledge the disparity. She had a tender, protective feeling towards her—a bit unwieldy in a younger sister, but no less earnest—that did not like to think of her being exposed to the world’s wickedness. She therefore dropt the subject, and consented to call the carriage to bring them to Netherfield. Throughout dinner, tea, and supper, as she busied herself with eating, working, and reading in silence, she took a wholesome happiness from Jane’s interest in her friends; and a rather less wholesome delight, in the fact that said friends had no idea what matrimonial mortifications were preparing for them.

Chapter Text

Marriage enlarges the ſcene of our happineſs and miſeries. A marriage of love is pleaſant; a marriage of intereſt eaſy; and a marriage where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleaſures of friendſhip, all the enjoyments of ſenſe and reaſon, and indeed, all the ſweets of life.

— The Spectator, no. 261; 1711

The following day, the Bennets were engaged to dine with the Lucases; and again, during the chief of the day, Miss Lucas was so kind as to listen to Mr. Collins. Elizabeth was grateful for it; the resolute silence which he maintained towards any one bearing the name of Bennet would have made the engagement very uncomfortable, if she had not; but she hoped that her friend was not taking too much upon herself for the comfort of her younger sister.

If, however, a view of proving herself useful to Mary made up any part of Charlotte’s ambitions, it was a trifling part only. She knew that Mr. Collins was in want of a wife, and that he did not object to plainness; she wished to try whether he would object to poverty (for the Lucases, whatever their title and address, lived rather beyond their means than otherwise). She meant, therefore, for him to find her attentive, obliging, sober, sensible, and any thing else desirable in the wife of a clergyman and heir presumptive to a country estate.

Throughout the course of his life, Mr. Collins had not often been listened to with any thing like close attention. Miss Lucas was pretty tolerably assured of a place in his affections, as soon as she condescended to hear him, and to look at him with careful heedfulness, for four minutes together; but she nevertheless feared, that his imminent departure from Hertfordshire would overthrow, or significantly delay, all her tender plans.

This, however, was underestimating Mr. Collins. The very next day saw him creeping, undetected, from Longbourn, to come across her in the lane—to tell her of the absolute overthrow of his heart, the violence of his affections, his consciousness of the great error he had made in ever having offered for any body else—to throw himself, in short, in love and eloquence at her feet. Miss Lucas would have been more satisfied, with less; but she nevertheless expressed herself with all the complaisance which was compatible with a very becoming feminine modesty; and the two new lovers had settled the matter between them in the space of ten minutes. The prospective bride’s parents were applied to for their consent, and granted it with joyful alacrity; and, though no date was yet set, a marriage was spoken of as certainly taking place within a few months.

Assured of his triumph, Mr. Collins had no more fear of having his errand detected; and he returned to Longbourn house with all the inflated dignity that his egress from that place had lacked. He had been enjoined, however, to say nothing, until his bride-to-be had communicated her good fortune to her friends: a dictate he followed only with great difficulty, as he was longing to publish the news of his successful love.

As he was to begin his journey too early on the morrow to see any of the family, the ceremony of leave-taking was performed when the ladies retired for the night; and from Mrs. Bennet issued the necessary formula, that he was very welcome to come again some time or other. This application was taken much more seriously than she had aimed at: for immediately, Mr. Collins was saying—

“My dear madam, this invitation is particularly gratifying, because it is what I have been hoping to receive; and you may be very certain that I shall avail myself of it as soon as possible.”

They were all very much surprised by this reply; and Mr. Bennet, who felt that so much acquiescence was hardly to be desired, said—

“But is there not a danger of Lady Catherine’s disapprobation here, my good sir? You had better neglect your relations than run the risk of offending your patroness.”

“My dear sir,” replied Mr. Collins, “I am extremely obliged to you for this friendly caution, however needless it may be—for you may depend upon my not taking so material a step without her Ladyship’s concurrence.”

“You cannot be too much on your guard. If you find her displeasure likely to be raised by your obliging us again with your company, you had better not risk it. By all means stay quietly at home, and be satisfied that we shall take no offence.”

“My gratitude is, I assure you, very warmly excited by this affectionate attention, my dear sir! You may depend upon speedily receiving from me a letter of thanks for this affable, this generous consideration—as well as for every other mark of regard with which you have favoured me during my stay in Hertfordshire. As for my lovely cousins, though my absence may not be long enough to render it necessary, I shall now take the liberty of wishing them health and happiness, not excepting my cousin Mary.”

The ladies then withdrew, now able to condole themselves and each other for the loss of Mr. Collins’s society, with the hope that it would be soon restored to them.

As for Miss Lucas, it could not be said that she respected Mr. Collins’s mind, or desired his company. To her, all the advantage of the match lay in the prospect of an establishment of her own, and in her future preservation from want. Her chief source of uneasiness, was the surprise which her news must occasion to Elizabeth, whose friendship she valued beyond that of any other person.

It was therefore with some trepidation that she called at Longbourn the next day after breakfast. As soon as she was able to speak to Elizabeth alone, she related the news of Mr. Collins’s application, and her answer; and it was some moments before her friend trusted herself with a reply.

“Engaged to Mr. Collins? Charlotte, what can you mean by it?”

Miss Lucas was a little confused at the tone of frank wonder in Elizabeth’s voice, but soon composed herself to reply,—

“I am not romantic, Eliza. I never was. I only want a comfortable home; and, considering Mr. Collins’s character and situation, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state. My only source of concern now is, that you will see it as a slight against you. I know that Mary thought his compliance with Lady Catherine’s opinion on the subject of her parentage was very blamable—and I am sure that it is—but it is weakness in him, not prejudice—and he has told me already, that he would have no objection to your visiting. When you have thought about it a little, I hope you will be satisfied with what I have done—I hope you will try to understand me. Please, my friend—tell me you are not angry?”

“Angry! No, Charlotte—not on my own behalf. I am very far from minding what a—”; here she had been about to say fool, forgetting Mr. Collins's new connexion to her friend; but pulled herself up short, though she knew that Charlotte would, unhappily, apprehend her meaning at once regardless.

“You know,” she continued, “that I never mind what any body thinks of me. If any body, to style themselves my friend, had to deny all connexion with any body not very radical in their views, there would be no end to the matter. But my concern is all for you. I will not pain you by telling you my opinion of Mr. Collins, which you must already know very well—but I will ask if you are certain, very certain, that you can be happy with him? You must know, Charlotte, that you need not fear poverty or dependence, so long as Jane and I live.”

“Eliza,” cried Miss Lucas, taking her friend’s hands, “you are very good—but, I confess—I do desire my own establishment. I want to run my own household: to sit in my own room, and to know that I am not beholden to any body for it. You know that I do not think highly of men in general; and I have no reason to suppose that there exists one, whom I would like better. I have before me an opportunity, which I had never supposed I would receive; and I mean to take it. I only hope that you will write to me—and that you will agree to a visit of some weeks, as soon as may be.”

Elizabeth, feeling that Charlotte’s only chance of agreeable company for the near future must depend on her acquiescence, agreed at once; but she was really uneasy.

They returned to the rest of the family, and Charlotte staid the full prescribed term of her visit. Elizabeth was unable to attend much to her, or to any body, busy as she was in thinking over what she had learnt. She had always felt that Charlotte’s opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own; but she could not have supposed it possible that she would thus sacrifice every better feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte, the wife of Mr. Collins, was a most humiliating picture! Her reprieve from imagining Mary in that situation had been very temporary indeed; this was even a worse mortification than that would have been. And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself, and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen.

Later that very day, after Charlotte's departure, Sir William Lucas arrived, having evidently been sent by his daughter to announce the happy news to her friends at Longbourn. With many compliments to them, and much self-gratulation on the prospect of a connexion between the houses, he unfolded the matter. Six-sevenths of his audience wondered at the news. Mrs. Bennet, once she could be made to understand what had happened, congratulated him with a very superior air, saying that, though Mr. Collins had not been so happy as to have success with her Mary (who was greatly discerning, you know), she was sure that Charlotte Lucas was very welcome to him. Lydia, unguarded as usual, boisterously exclaimed,—

“What a reversal is this! So lately as he was wanting Mary! Good Lord, how funny!”

Elizabeth and Jane, called to action by the awkwardness instituted by these speeches, more earnestly congratulated Sir William:—making a variety of remarks on the happiness that might be expected from the match, the excellent character of Mr. Collins, and the convenient distance of Hunsford from London. Sir William’s good-breeding carried him comfortably through every impertinence he suffered on the visit; and he soon left his neighbours to talk through the news in his absence.

Mrs. Bennet was vexed that Lady Lucas had a daughter engaged before she did; but she comforted herself, that Mr. Collins was only Mary’s cast-off; that Charlotte Lucas ought to be ashamed of herself for elbowing into other people’s affairs and other people’s estates, and it was just what she would never do herself; and that she would, God willing, soon have a daughter married to a man who far exceeded Mr. Collins in both fortune and fashion.

Mr. Bennet’s reflections on the occasion were rather different. It gratified him, he said, to discover that Miss Lucas, whom he had been used to think tolerably sensible, was more foolish than one of his silliest daughters. Jane confessed herself a little surprised at the match: but she said less of her astonishment than of her earnest desire for their happiness; nor could Elizabeth persuade her to consider it as improbable. Kitty and Lydia were far from envying Miss Lucas, for Mr. Collins was only a clergyman; and her engagement affected them in no other way than as a piece of news to spread at Meryton.

Between Elizabeth and Charlotte there was a restraint which kept them mutually silent on the subject; and Elizabeth felt persuaded that no real confidence could ever subsist between them again. She had been in perfect earnest, when she had told Charlotte that she was not angry; but she had some difficulty in ascertaining what she did feel. The idea of Charlotte’s consenting to live on such terms of intimacy with a man she could not respect, went against her every idea of rectitude and delicacy—and yet, it was not just this: her disappointment with Charlotte’s behaviour, especially as it contrasted with Mary’s, was impossible to deny. She felt that Charlotte was lacking in a degree of loyalty, which it would be a gross unfairness to try to exact from her; and her consciousness of the paradoxical nature of this emotion, could not succeed in making it any less pressing.

Chapter Text

Thus far of trees: the pleasing task remains,
To sing of wines, and Autumn's blest increase.

Th’effects of art are shown, yet what avails

‘Gainst Heaven? oft, notwithstanding all thy care

To help thy plants, when the small fruitery seems

Exempt from ills, an Oriental blast

Disastrous flies, soon as the hind fatigued

Unyokes his team; the tender freight, unskill’d

To bear the hot disease, distemper'd pines

In the years prime; the deadly plague annoys

The wide enclosure: think not vainly now

To treat thy neighbours with mellifluous cups,

Thus disappointed.

— J Philips, “Cider: A poem in two books”; in The works of the English poets, from Chaucer to Cowper; 1810

The world, long teetering on the crisp edge of December, had toppled over into it in a whirl of dead leaves and pine-needles. Jane and Elizabeth, in half-boots and pelisses, were walking towards the green-house, with the intention of examining the pears and medlars, and carrying off to the fruitery any that were ripe. Their first information that Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy were returned from London came in the form of the gentlemen themselves, who were just then walking down the path that led from the stables to the back of the house. That Mr. Bingley had come to call, and quite immediately upon his return, was obvious; and Elizabeth, in sympathetic feeling, pressed Jane’s arm where she held it against her side.

“Miss Bennet! Miss Elizabeth! What a happy accident! You find us just coming to inquire after you. I hope you are well? And your parents?”

Miss Bennet was in too much of a blush to speak very readily; and it was therefore Elizabeth who answered and returned Mr. Bingley’s queries, and informed him of their errand. They were promptly, and very civilly, offered escort. Mr. Bingley gave Jane his arm, and asked if he may take her basket from her; and Elizabeth was surprised to find Mr. Darcy (who, until now, had merely mutely bowed) performing the same gallant office by her. As they proceeded to the green-house, Elizabeth found her progress somewhat checked by Mr. Darcy, who seemed to wish to let Bingley and Jane walk ahead of them; perceiving which, she gladly slowed her steps to match his. They walked in silence, watching the couple ahead of them bend their heads and speak low to each other, until they had attained their destination; at which point, Bingley and Jane entered the green-house, and Mr. Darcy exerted a gentle pressure on her arm to keep her from following.

“Perhaps, Miss Elizabeth, you might shew me the walk just here?” said he, in a voice that startled her with its warmth and its nearness—gesturing down the path that led along one side of the green-house to the fruitery and still-room, bordered on the other side by a pretty little wilderness of a garden. She hesitated, looking back at the threshold through which her sister and her suitor had just passed; but, anticipating her objection, he continued:—

“I believe that Bingley has reason to wish to speak to Miss Bennet alone. We will certainly keep the green-house within view.”

“Oh!” cried she, smiling at him in joyful surprise; before she had time to do more than blush at her unguarded exclamation, she saw him return her expression. His smile was slight, but earnest; he seemed to have determined to be glad for his friend, and not to begrudge her her joy for her sister; and, perceiving this, she really felt that, were it not for the matter of Wickham’s inheritance, she would be in perfect charity with him.

“I am glad, as well,” he continued, leading her down the path to which he had earlier alluded, “to have the opportunity of speaking with you.”

She blinked. “Oh?”

“We were talking, when last we met, of—Mr. Wickham.”

Elizabeth endeavoured not to betray her eagerness to hear more. “Yes—so we were.”

“George Wickham has always felt, that the best lies were ones which consisted, almost entirely, of the truth. I therefore feel safe in supposing, that he told you I had denied him a behest which my late father left him—a valuable living, which I have within my gift?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, just as naturally, he will not have told you, that he was never ordained? That, before the living fell vacant, he had denied any intention of taking orders, and preferred to receive some thing of more immediate benefit to him: that, in short, he gave up all claim to it, in return for three thousand pounds; which, adduced to the thousand which my father willed to him, and which I accordingly paid, must have kept a man of any prudence in comfort for life?”

Elizabeth pondered this for a moment. “This is giving things a rather different cast, than the one with which he presented them.”

“That,” said Darcy, surprising Elizabeth with his emphasis, “is just precisely how Wickham lies. Every thing, except for where stauncher untruths are absolutely necessary, is a matter of cast.”

After a moment, he seemed to recover himself, and continued:—

“He professed, at the time that he accepted the money, a desire to study the law. I must own that I was hardly surprised when it became clear that he had not succeeded in this endeavour—that, more than likely, he had never seriously bent himself to it—and, having spent all his inheritance in the intervening three years, he applied to me again for the living when it fell vacant. You will not blame me, I hope, for refusing him.”

“No,” said Elizabeth, wonderingly; “no, certainly not. But—such a sum, in so little time! How can it be possible?”

Darcy looked grim. “A man of such vicious propensities as I have known Wickham to demonstrate, from the time of our adolescence—such a man is never at a loss for ways in which to dissipate great sums of money. If his behaviour during that later time was of a piece with what I had known of him before, it was drink—and gambling—and—” he glanced aside at her—“other methods that tend to the ruin of men’s peace, and their health.”

She nodded once, briskly. “I understand you.”

Now they had reached the stables, and were obliged to turn back round, trading one view for another. Another moment passed, before he added:—

“My intention, I hope you will believe, is not maliciously to defame him. It is unpleasant to me, to lay open my affairs to any body; not even Bingley knows the full history of what passed between Wickham and myself; and I would be content to say nothing, if I believed him desirous of reform—if I believed him, even, to be in a situation where he was unlikely to do harm. But I—forgive me—I understand that you, and your sisters, are in expectation of an inheritance, from your mother?”

Elizabeth’s mind worked to find the connexion between this, and the late topic. “Yes—you mean to say, that you believe him to be a fortune-hunter?”

His expression darkened. “I know him to be a fortune-hunter. He—” Darcy again looked aside at her, hesitating. 

“By all means, do not tell me the particulars, if you do not think it right to do so. There is some case, though—or—cases—where you are certain that affection was not his guiding principle?”

“Neither affection, nor honour. He importuned a girl of fifteen years of age—and with a considerable fortune—to leave all her friends, and elope with him. Not only importuned—but conspired with her companion, to gain access to her.”

“My God,” cried Elizabeth. “My God. But this is beyond any thing! It is little wonder, that you were—” but she stopped short, conscious of what she had almost betrayed.

He searched her eyes for a moment. “Of course—you are too clever, not to have arrived at the girl’s identity.”

She shook her head. “I have no intention of spreading the report. And I can assure you, again, that he did not seem inclined to approach the subject himself. But is she—this girl, whom I will not name—”; Mr. Darcy almost smiled—“is she quite well?”

“Yes, thank Heaven. She is, perhaps, a little low in spirits. She was persuaded to believe herself in love—such a betrayal, from one with whom she had had such happy associations in childhood, could not but have a lasting effect. But her reliance on me was sufficient, that, when I arrived in Ramsgate unexpectedly, a day or two before the intended elopement, she revealed all to me; which, your generosity will own, is, despite her imprudence, much to her credit,” concluded Darcy. He had not meant to say half so much, but he could not regret it; he had often observed Elizabeth’s kindness to her own sisters; and he felt by this time a perfect dependence that nothing told to her in confidence would ever go beyond herself and, perhaps, Miss Bennet.

“It is much to your credit, as well, I am sure—that she trusted you, I mean. I am sure that you owe her deliverance, not only to Heaven, or to Miss—I mean, to the girl’s—character—but to your own.” Darcy nodded, his jaw tight. They spent some little time in mutual abstraction.

Elizabeth only entertained the idea of doubting Mr. Darcy for a moment. She felt how impossible it must be, for him to lay open his own sister to the risk of rumour and speculation, merely to harm Mr. Wickham—however much, and from whatever motive, he may dislike him.

Of Mr. Wickham, she had, in justice, to own, that she knew no real good of him. She could not accuse him of any particular act of integrity or benevolence. Of his former life, she knew only what he had told her himself. His countenance, voice, and manner, had established him at once in the possession of every virtue, just as Mr. Darcy’s manner had proven him to be a perfect villain—but she felt, now, how little dependence could be placed on such things, in matters of real import. She had been, when he had first told her his tale, struck with the truth which had seemed to be in Wickham’s looks—but she was now struck with the impropriety of his having made such a communication to a stranger, and in a public place!—and she wondered that it had escaped her before. Mr. Darcy had not spoken until he had felt there to be some particular cause for alarm.

The affinity which Mr. Darcy’s story bore to Mr. Wickham’s history of himself, when neither could be supposed to know what the other had said, was a circumstance which must tend to support the truthfulness of one—and Elizabeth was now inclined to think the truth all on Darcy’s side. Had she not earlier reflected that the extravagance, with which Wickham himself owned that Mr. Darcy had charged him, was a catch in Wickham’s story—which, when pulled, might unravel the whole?

As they approached nearer to the green-house, Elizabeth saw, through the glass wall, her sister and Mr. Bingley standing very close together, as if engaged in earnest conversation; the basket had been set down on a nearby bench.

“How curiously empty of medlars that basket appears, Mr. Darcy! I wonder how it can have happened.” A smile touched his face as he regarded the path at their feet.

The structure was gained (Elizabeth walking rather more noisily than was her habit); the lovers hastily turned round and moved away from each other. When the first blushes of surprise were got over, they approached their friends for congratulations—Bingley grinning widely and shaking Darcy, and then Elizabeth, heartily by the hand, and claiming from the latter all the affectionate interest of a sister; Jane in tearful happiness as she hugged Elizabeth, and shyly accepted Mr. Darcy’s congratulations.

Elizabeth could just spare a moment from Jane to see how Darcy took it—he caught her gaze and smiled at her, seeming content to be caught up in the general flush of joy—she was satisfied. If he could be pleased to be a friend to Jane, he was firmly her friend as well; and he could think of herself how he would.

Chapter Text

Now, if ſuch behaviour is rude to men, it is much more ſo to women, who, be their rank what it will, have, on account of their ſex, a claim to officious attention from the men. Their little wants and whims, their likes and diſlikes, and even their impertinences, are particularly attended to and flattered, and their very thoughts and wiſhes gueſſed at and inſtantly gratified, by every well-bred man.

— Lord Chesterfield, Principles of politeness, and of knowing the world; 1786

If it had ever again occurred to Elizabeth to doubt Mr. Darcy’s assertions, that doubt could not survive for long, against every evidence that Mr. Wickham was very assiduously courting her. She might, in other circumstances, have found the stores of her vanity sufficient to the task of believing that a man liked her for herself alone—that her money could perhaps increase the prudence of a match, but would not be his sole object in desiring one—but with Wickham—somehow—her manners and moods were attended to a little too closely—he was a little too eager to agree with whatever she said, or to divert himself from any course of conversation which rendered her less animated. He spoke, not like a man who wished to determine whether he found a woman pleasing, but like a man determined to please.

Elizabeth began to take note of this state of affairs on the very day following Jane’s engagement. Bingley had arrived before breakfast, and was pressed to stay until dinner, and make himself comfortable quite without ceremony. Lovers are seldom interesting to any body save themselves; and it was thus not many hours before Lydia and Kitty were crying out for amusement and activity. The weather just then being dry, Elizabeth consented to escort them into Meryton, where they soon encountered Mr. Denny, Mr. Pratt, and Mr. Wickham. Lydia at first seemed inclined to demand all of Wickham’s attention; but his polite, good-humoured indifference, combined with the attractions of the shops and several others of her friends from the village, soon combined to draw her attention away from him. As if by common agreement, the other two officers moved to escort Elizabeth’s younger sisters, while Wickham walked with her, a little behind.

“Are you well, Miss Elizabeth? Of course, you have received my formal inquiry—but I mean to ask you more particularly. Are you really pleased with Miss Bennet’s engagement? Can Mr. Bingley deserve her, do you think? She is such a beautiful, amiable, sweet-tempered young woman, that it must be difficult,” said Wickham, who had already determined exactly whom he must flatter to please Miss Elizabeth.

Elizabeth smiled tightly. “I am sure that Mr. Bingley will come as close as any man can.”

Mr. Wickham gave a slight, but feeling, sigh. “He is a fortunate man, then—to be free to make his proposals where he chuses. A man always likes to know, that he is giving a woman a home at least as good as the one from which he takes her.”

Elizabeth declined the invitation, which she saw she was receiving, of saying “You speak as though you envied him,” and merely rejoined: “Yes—I believe he is very fortunate,” with which speech Wickham was not half so satisfied—but by which he was by no means discouraged.

“I worry that you will miss her. I know how fond you are of each other. But then you will, perhaps, be very frequently at Netherfield, after they are married?”

“I am sure I shall—I have been invited to make my home there. Poor Mr. Bingley will be perfectly overrun with sisters.”

“Again I say,” said Wickham, smiling, “he is a fortunate man. I was not blessed with siblings—except that—” he sighed; “except that—Darcy and I were very like brothers—when we were children. But he grew to object to my parentage,” he continued, his walk and his posture gaining in correctness, “and our intimacy could not survive the prejudice, which his schooling instilled in him. I suppose,” he smiled ruefully, “that you and I have that in common.”

“He is perfectly kind to me now.”

“Is he!” exclaimed Wickham. “For your sake, I am glad of it. I hate to think of him discomfiting you, if you and he are to be often thrown together at Netherfield. But, of course, I ought not to be surprised,” he continued, with the air of someone deep in consideration; “he has always been, as I have acknowledged, perfectly affable to those within his own family circle.”

This bore such a startling resemblance to Elizabeth’s own earlier reflections, that she was at a loss for a reply. She felt a momentary impulse to repeat the thought with which she had one day amused herself: that she had joined a particularly select and exalted rank of humanity, in being admitted to the enjoyment of Mr. Darcy’s rare civility. Her dislike of him had been such a spur to her genius, such an opening for wit! It had added such zest to her thoughts and her speech! It was impossible to be continually abusive without now and then stumbling upon some thing witty or well-expressed. Had she not disdained Gillray’s satires, for that very reason?

She felt that it would be pleasant—that it would be fun—to feel herself to be united with Wickham against Darcy—that, of course, this was exactly the sensation, which the former aimed at inculcating—and she was briefly frightened of herself. What errors might she have been led into, merely because one man was gentler, more well-spoken, had a better countenance, than another? She, who had always set herself up for cleverness!

She desired to be speaking of some thing else, and so pointed out Wilson’s, which was a little way down the street, intending to mention a need (which was real enough) for a new pair of gloves. At that moment, however, she perceived the object of the late conversation, approaching on horseback from the direction of Netherfield and Longbourn, and seeming as if he were looking for some thing. When he discovered Elizabeth, he touched his hat to her, and nodded tightly at Wickham—then returned his gaze to her, looking into her eyes searchingly. Elizabeth blushed to be seen at Wickham’s side, though entirely innocent of any collusion to that outcome; she gave a slight nod towards her sisters, who were examining some trinkets at a street stall at a few yards’ distance, by way of explaining what she did in his company. Darcy, perceiving that Elizabeth did not absolutely object to his approaching, began to dismount; and Wickham very rapidly decided that he had somewhere else to be, making his excuses to her, and walking off to take his leave of Denny and Pratt.

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth quietly, as Mr. Darcy drew near to her.

Darcy’s concern was rather increased than assuaged by this communication. “He was not—importunate?”

“No, no,” she said, quickly. “More—insinuating.”

His lips pressed together in a thin line.

“I assure you that I will be quite well,” she laughed, the evidence of his perturbation somehow decreasing her own. “I have not attained almost to my majority without having gained practice in deterring an unwanted suitor.” This statement appeared to bother Darcy still further—though, for what reason, Elizabeth could not imagine.

“Besides,” she continued, after a moment, “any time which he spends attending to me, is time which he does not spend attending to my sisters—speaking of whom, I ought to join them”; she nodded at where Kitty, Lydia, Denny, and Pratt were entering Wilson’s.

“May I accompany you?”

“Certainly,” Elizabeth laughed, raising her brows at him, “if you do not object to ladies’ gloves—mine are growing too thin for winter.” She placed one of said gloves on his arm, when he offered it, and he looked at it in a state of apparent abstraction for some moments, until she took it upon herself to begin walking. “I hope, however, that you are not neglecting your hostess? You have been a perfect gallant—but I think Mr. Wickham unlikely to return.”

“I will be sure to be at Netherfield in time for dinner.”

As Elizabeth examined the display of gloves in the shop—which was richly appointed and spacious, by Meryton’s standards—it occurred to her to question why, from amongst her sisters, Wickham had decided on herself. Jane was, of course, engaged already, and Mary’s manners towards young men were, almost always, decidedly repulsive; but surely Kitty’s and Lydia’s silliness and flirtatiousness ought, in his mind, to have marked either of them as more likely to conduce to his ambitions. She reflected, however, that for all his viciousness, he did not want understanding; her younger sisters, as they were now, could not be pleasant companions to any man of common sagacity; and he must, as they had shopped in Meryton on previous occasions, have also noted their extravagance. He was taking a long view of the matter, and would not, from a lack of faith in his own powers, condescend to a match with a woman less likely to entertain, and more likely to plague, him.

Mr. Darcy withdrew her from her abstraction by holding a pair of gloves out to her. “These, I think?” he asked, lowly.

Elizabeth was surprised at how apt the selection was—the pair were in her usual style, richly embroidered all down the backs of the hands and wrists, and in a kid leather of the warm ivory which she tended to favour over white—even the size looked correct. She was, for a moment, in some confusion, lest he thought by his suggestion to mock her again; she had, after all, mentioned the question of expense, when last they had canvassed the subject of dress—and there were less elaborate articles on display. Why, however, he should be returning to his old pastime of insulting her, in light of their recent truce, she could not comprehend. She was saved from these reflections, by the lucky recollection that it did not matter what he thought—she desired the gloves regardless—and she therefore held out a hand to receive them, thanking him with mock gravity. He bowed in the same manner, seeming to try not to smile.

A flurry of purchases ensued. The proprietor counted Lydia and Kitty’s coins, as they tenderly accepted the officers’ offer to carry their packages. Elizabeth gestured with the hand that held her gloves, and Mr. Wilson nodded—from her he did not demand ready cash, but merely wrote some thing down in his ledger. She changed the new gloves for the old before any one could offer to box or to carry her purchase for her.

Kitty and Lydia seemed still inclined to linger in town, but Elizabeth reminded them that it was about time to be getting back for tea; and, once Denny and Pratt announced an intention to escort them, they submitted without a grumble.

“Would you care to join us for tea, Mr. Darcy?” asked Elizabeth, as Darcy retrieved his horse from the boy who had held it. “I imagine that Mr. Bingley will still be at Longbourn.”

“I imagine he will,” said Darcy, dryly. He wordlessly bent his steps alongside her’s, leading his horse behind them; Elizabeth was no longer surprised at his compliance.

“How is Ireland?”

He smiled. “Ireland?”

“Yes, sir, Ireland. And your retrospective on—what was it—recent developments in matters mechanical and agricultural? I do not ask after our friend Evelina, as she and I have only just met—and she may consider it an impertinence.”

Darcy laughed—Elizabeth could not help herself, and exclaimed:—

“A-ha! He laughs! I had no notion that you were capable of such an exertion.”

“I am glad that I am still capable of surprising you.”

“You have seldom done any thing else. But now to my question, sir.”

“Duigenan’s account of the rebellion is so partial and prejudiced that it is difficult to extract the real history of any thing from it; but I hope that the Retrospect may in some points be of practical use to me.”

“And how so?”

Mr. Darcy hesitated, feeling the impoliteness of discoursing on a subject of no pertinence to his auditor, and suspecting that he could scarcely hope to interest Elizabeth in a conversation about various methods of converting old grass land to tillage, or the recent successes that had been found in using soap-suds as manure. At length he mentioned, quite at random, that a gentleman claimed to have produced wool of superior fineness even to that of pure Merino, by importing Merino sheep to be interbred with the native Ryeland.

“Oh, yes, certainly! You and I, sir, must feel how the occasional importation of foreign stock improves the herd. By the bye, I am sorry that the account you read of your countrymen did not please you.”

Darcy frowned at her expressively, though not at all in anger; her smile broadened.

“Here we keep only Wiltshire Horns; my father has no tolerance for improved sheep. By no means seek to interest him in a conversation about Leicesters or Southdowns. But, tell me, how do Ryelands fare in Derbyshire? Do you mean to take up the experiment yourself?”

Darcy soon found, that he could entertain her with conversation about the minuter affairs of a productive estate; and he did so until after tea, when he felt compelled to return to Netherfield.

Chapter Text

“Never fear to loſe a friend by the habits which I recommend; reconciliations, as you have often heard it ſaid—reconciliations are the cement of friendſhip; therefore friends ſhould quarrel to ſtrengthen their attachment, and offend each other for the pleaſure of being reconciled.”

— Maria Edgeworth, “An Eſſay on the Noble Science of Self-Juſtification”; 1795

Mr. Darcy could not be speaking to Elizabeth as frequently and as persistently as he did, in the days since Mr. Bingley’s becoming engaged to Jane, without her eventually realising that he took pleasure from the exercise, and was neither mocking her, nor imposing a sort of voluntary penance upon himself for the sake of his friend. He addressed her readily, conversed intelligibly and intelligently on any subject she introduced, smiled often, and even made the occasional dry, ironic sort of joke. This realisation inspired her to cast a retrospective glance over their acquaintance, and revise her opinion of much of what she found there.

On the morning at Netherfield when Miss Bingley had been discoursing on the subject of national character, Elizabeth had thought herself beset on both sides: if Mr. Darcy had quarreled with Miss Bingley’s interpretation of his words, it was only due to a sort of innate rigidness of mind—if he had paid any compliment to her own understanding, of course it was biting sarcasm. And yet, he had never spoken to her as someone whom he thought to be deficient in that regard. Even if he had then spoken in order to chide Miss Bingley (for in this light, she must now understand his reference to her “genteel manners”), he had meant what he said.

Once this inroad had been made, others perforce followed. His remark, about satire on the subject of dress being a mode of “sacrificing the previous company for the amusement of the present”—was this not also intended as a reproach to Miss Bingley? And he had asked, at that time, whether Elizabeth thought there were any thing of morality in dress—he had not argued, as she had assumed he meant to, that there was. Had she not since had several discussions with him, in which he sought to ensure his understanding of her position, before he would venture to reply to it?

For that matter, had he at any time spoken slightingly of her habits of dress? Or was she carelessly mixing his opinions with those of Miss Bingley? And was this not the very error of logic which she had often laid at her mother’s door? What contradictions and absurdities she had led herself into, trying to explain his behaviour in any light other than the one which now appeared obvious! Had she ever truly been the judge of character, which she used to fancy herself?

All of this was already sufficiently mortifying, and Elizabeth would gladly have left off her examination—but, time and again, she had no sooner succeeded in thinking of some thing else, than another instance of her own misreading was called to mind; and she was too honest, too forthright with herself, permanently to shun the recollections which intruded.

The origin of her more particular dislike of Mr. Darcy had been his hesitation to shake her hand on his first call at Longbourn. But even for this, there may be some explanation. Perhaps it was as Jane had said, and it had merely been absence of mind. He did often have the air, while in company, of someone not closely attending to what was passing. Her attitude towards her eldest sister’s generous candour, in forwarding this interpretation, had perhaps been little short of disdain—! Yet had her own distrust, in this instance, availed her any thing?

On the one occasion, on which Darcy’s insults had been too unambiguous to be denied, they had been twofold: firstly, that she was not English; secondly, that she was not pretty. As for the first—had he not referred to her, in speaking of “our civilisation” at the Netherfield ball, as an Englishwoman? Whatever his opinions had been, on the subject of her parentage, he had either changed or disregarded them. And as for the second—she had never cared whether any man had thought her pretty before, and she certainly would not start now.

Such were the reflections of Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, therefore, when Elizabeth and Jane dined and took tea at Netherfield, Elizabeth felt she could understand Mr. Darcy’s equivocal responses to Miss Bingley’s sallies for what they were.

That lady was more than usually sour. Two days had done little to reconcile her to the humiliation which her brother had prepared for their name and their lineage. When Charles had told her of his need to be off again shortly to prepare a marriage settlement before his January wedding, she had set about very calmly and coaxingly trying to convince him that Miss Bennet did not care for him, but only meant to ally herself to a man of fortune, who moved in the first circles. Her real sources of disgust at the match, she carefully concealed: they would not convince him, and might make him distrust her advice. Nothing, however, availed; not coaxing, nor pleading, nor ordering, nor even applying to Mr. Darcy to wield his influence. A match which had always been meant to raise them in society, must now sink them; the fact that she herself had invited the fatal adder into her household was as bitter as gall to her; and not even to seem amiable in Mr. Darcy’s eyes could she yet appear tolerably resigned to the evil which awaited her.

Mr. Darcy’s evident admiration of Eliza Bennet was another source of irritation which she little needed. She had been convinced, by the perfect indifference with which he listened to her discourse on the difficulty of capturing the depth of Miss Eliza’s black eyes and the subtle luminance of her complexion, when her portrait came to be hung at Pemberley, that all was safe on that score; but his fixation still had the power to annoy her. She followed, therefore, her natural inclination of annoying her rival in turn:—

“How the officers have enlivened the society of Meryton, Miss Eliza! You, in particular, must be pleased at their addition.”

Elizabeth, perceiving Miss Bingley’s misapprehension, met Mr. Darcy’s eye to enjoy their mutual good information.

“Yes, Miss Bingley—I have been very well entertained.”

“I do not doubt it,” said Mr. Darcy. “I am intimately familiar with the methods by which you entertain yourself.”

Miss Bingley was very well pleased by this rejoinder; Elizabeth, who understood it better, was equally so.

“Oh, yes. The officers and the Bennets are always busy entertaining each other.”

“In a little town such as Meryton, Miss Bingley, one must stay busy somehow. Visiting and parties are generally considered as among the necessities of civil life.”

“And your society is usually so confined and unvarying, that pretty nearly any body must be a welcome addition to it.”

“Yes!” laughed Elizabeth. “Pretty nearly.”

Mr. Darcy turned away to hide a smile; Miss Bingley sneered.

“And speaking of Meryton, Miss Eliza—how go the preparations for the wedding? I do not venture to suppose, that every thing necessary may be purchased here?”

“That is a question on which Jane must consult her own taste. If it is discovered that a stay in London is necessary, we will probably be able to convince my father to let a house there for a time. I do not imagine he could hold out long against all of us. He values his peace too much,” laughed Elizabeth.

“How charming! You are in training for a termagant!” cried Miss Bingley, endeavouring to meet Mr. Darcy’s eye.

“I beg your pardon,” said Elizabeth, making a shew of being offended. “I hardly need training for that.”

“No, indeed,” said Mr. Darcy, once he had finished laughing. “You are entirely capable of argumentation as it is. It is frightening to think what you would be capable of, if in receipt of specific instruction to that end.”

Miss Bingley really wished to perceive another insult in this communication, but Elizabeth’s responding merry smile gave her an uneasy sensation—becoming familiar to her of late—that she was the one who was missing some thing. A smile from Miss Eliza, however, was so common an occurrence as to mean precisely nothing: and she comforted herself, that that lady was more probably the one whom Mr. Darcy’s true meaning escaped.

Chapter Text

— She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i'th’bud,
Feed on her damaſk cheek: She pin’d in thought,
And ſat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at Grief.

— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night; quoted in Alexander Pope & William Warburton, The works of Shakespeare; 1747

The first person to whom Elizabeth had occasion to disclose her change of thinking on the subject of Mr. Darcy, was Jane herself. Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy had called in the morning, unaccompanied by the rest of their party: Elizabeth could only assume, that Miss Bingley’s disgust of certain members of her family was sufficient for her to wish to be away, Mr. Darcy’s presence notwithstanding.

The population of the drawing-room fell naturally into discrete groups. Jane and Bingley sat in a corner, their chairs angled towards each other, her speaking earnestly and him listening with an air of happy concentration; Mary resisted being drawn into any conversation; Kitty and Mrs. Bennet gave their advice on a bonnet which Lydia had taken apart, and now meant to make up again; and so Elizabeth and Darcy were left to each other.

Elizabeth, despite having now finished Evelina, touched on it only lightly—the heroine’s mortifying family, the irregularity of her birth, her duplicitous suitor, were circumstances too unfortunately pertinent to bear much discussion. She mentioned, instead, a piece of music she had begun learning—telling Mr. Darcy wryly, that this was the cost of having a lady as a conversational partner, and that, once the weather and the state of the roads had been canvassed, it must be either music or embroidery. He smiled and said gallantly that he was not sorry for it; and a conversation on Miss Darcy, her playing and singing, her talents and habits, then followed.

When they went up stairs to dress for dinner, Jane apologised to Elizabeth, in some distress, that she had left Darcy so entirely to her:—

“I did not notice how things were disposed, until we were just about to come away. But to-morrow I will be sure that all four of us sit together, and then you will not have to make conversation with him all on your own.”

“Oh! You need not worry on that score. I find, that Mr. Darcy improves on acquaintance—or, perhaps, that I have come to understand him better, of late. I do not mind being left to speak to him—we have only such arguments as entertain us both—and therefore you need have no fear of appropriating your lover to yourself.”

“Lizzy! Can this be? No, you cannot deceive me—you say this only for my benefit.”

“This is ascribing to me rather more virtue than I possess. I am a selfish creature, and one prone to complaining—you may therefore believe me, when I say I am content. I have not really disliked him for some days now. You would have noticed it earlier yourself, had you not been so absorbed with a certain young man.”

Jane, initially in some alarm lest Elizabeth feel herself neglected, soon perceived from her face that she was merely teazing—and therefore only laughed at her.

“Oh, Lizzy! Every thing has been even better than I could ever have guessed. He was gentle before, but now he is so sweet to me—and yet he is not too busy making love to me, to listen to what I say.”

Elizabeth smiled at this praise; pleased, after her anxious, unavailing solicitude on Charlotte’s behalf, to have a friend for whom she could whole-heartedly rejoice.

“That is what first drew me to him,” continued Jane; “the sense that he was really listening to me, and not merely—” she broke off, blushing.

“And not merely admiring your excessive beauty, as if you were Galatea fresh from the chisel?”

Jane laughed again, taking up Elizabeth’s hands in her’s. “What shall I do without you? Tell me that you have given it some thought, and mean to come with me?”

“I think I shall—if my father can spare me—and if your husband will not mind having so many sisters underfoot. Though surely the others will at some point return to their establishment in London?”

“I think they mean to leave for the winter season.”


“Does Mr. Darcy go with them? He has said nothing of it to me.”

Jane looked at her strangely. “Yes, I imagine so—and Charles will have business to do with the settlement, which is best managed in person.”

“Oh, alas! How terrible for you will that be! It is a pity you cannot go with him. How will you manage?”

Jane smiled. “He will be back very shortly, Lizzy. I will not be deprived of his company for long.”

“Yes,” agreed Elizabeth, though seeming a bit abstracted.

“Oh, Lizzy, I am so happy! Why cannot every body be as happy as I am? Why am I thus singled from my family, and blessed above them all? If I could but see you as happy! If there were but such another man for you!”

“For me, Jane! I do not suppose that I shall ever marry. It will be enough for my happiness, to see you well-settled. You see I am disposed to be contrary, and to reverse the old wisdom that married people only want to get their single friends similarly engaged.”

“Never marry! What can you mean, Lizzy? You are as charming a woman as ever lived.”

Elizabeth attempted to shake off the unaccountable melancholy, which had suddenly settled over her; and succeeded so far as to be able gaily to reply,—

“Ah, but there’s the rub! To marry, it is not sufficient that I be charming—I must also be charmed—and I have yet to meet the man who can accomplish it.”

“Oh, but you will! When I am married—think of it, Lizzy! I, to be married—! When I am married, Charles and I will be able to introduce you to all of his single friends, and you may take a fancy to whichever of them you chuse.”

Elizabeth merely hugged Jane tightly, feeling the need to hide her face for a moment.

“Although,” continued Jane, once Elizabeth had released her, “I have sometimes thought, that—Mr. Wickham—seemed to admire you a good deal?”

“Ah! So you have, despite your preoccupation with your Charles, observed some thing of late. But if Mr. Darcy is to be believed, it is not myself, but my money, which Mr. Wickham admires—”; and she related that gentleman’s account of the history between the two parties.

At once did Jane return to her prior occupation, of trying to prove the probability of error, and to clear one party, without involving the other.

“This will not do,” said Elizabeth; “you never will be able to make both of them good for any thing. There is but such a quantity of merit between them to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting about pretty much. I am inclined to make it all over into Mr. Darcy’s keeping; but for yourself, you must give it to whichever one you chuse.”

It was some time, however, before a smile could be extorted from Jane.

“I do not know when I have been more shocked,” said she. “Wickham so very bad! It is almost past belief. Oh, poor Lizzy! To have the attentions of such a man! Can not you be cold to him—send him away? I do not like to think of your being made uncomfortable.”

“Perhaps I could—but I have no desire to. If he thought every thing hopeless with me, he might very well try for Kitty, or for Lydia—and there, he might sadly succeed. I have hit upon the very amiable strategy of keeping him occupied and safely away from the flightier females of Meryton, until the regiment decamps.”

“You will be careful with your heart, Lizzy?”

“My heart!” Elizabeth laughed. “Mr. Wickham is very far from touching my heart, Jane. I liked him, it is true, at first—but he grows too gentle, too agreeable, too deferential, for my tastes. There is such a wearying sameness about him. I would not have fallen in love with him, even were I ignorant of what I know now—and how much more is my disgust of him, now that I do know!”

Chapter Text

Wives are expreſly commanded in the Scriptures, to ſubmit and be obedient to their huſbands. As CHRIST and the Church make one myſtical body, of which CHRIST is the head; ſo man and wife make one body, of which the man is the head: and as CHRIST is the Saviour of the Church, ſo likewiſe is the huſband given to the wife, to be a ſaviour to her; to maintain and protect and defend her, and by his ſuperior prudence to provide for her well-being; and to conduct her in every inſtance of diſcretion and duty.

— Patrick Delany, Twenty sermons upon social duties and their opposite vices; 1750

A few days hence, Elizabeth returned home from her morning walk to find the house in somewhat more than its usual state of chaos. Lydia was complaining loudly, and Mrs. Bennet querulously seconding her. Kitty, determined not to be behindhand in the production of noise, just as loudly demanded to see “the letter” for herself—though, when it was in her hand, she merely scrunched up her face at it and pushed it away. Mr. Bennet made a quip about nobody stirring from the house so far as Meryton for a twelvemonth, which only served to redouble the commotion. Jane was trying to soothe every body at once.

“What on Earth has happened?” Elizabeth asked Mary as she entered the sitting-room.

“The Gandjees are to be in London for the year; and you and Jane are invited to stay with them,” said Mary, looking up from her book to nod at the paper which Kitty had discarded.

“Oh!” cried Elizabeth, rushing to take up the letter.

“Yes, yes, take it—though I don’t know what you want with it. It is only a bunch of senseless scribbles.”

“They are only senseless because you will not let any body teach you, Kitty,” said Elizabeth, with the air of uttering a sentiment oft repeated and never listened to. She read on, standing by Kitty’s chair and absently chafing her hand over her back.

“It is not fair,” cried Kitty, resting her head on Elizabeth’s stomach. “We are just as much their nieces as you are. Why should not we all go?”

“My aunt and uncle are just arrived in London,” Elizabeth muttered, casting her eye over the page. “They bring the children with them—goodness, that must have been a job—beg pardon for not sending word earlier—letter would not have reached us from Bombay before they reached England—coming to Longbourn for Christmas—mean to stay in town a year complete and give Jane and myself a season this coming January!—and Mary the year after, if one of us marries—won’t they be pleased to hear Jane’s news!—and that, you know, Kitty, brings you one sister closer to having a season of your own after all. Besides, the Gandjees’ acquaintance are all men of business, and so our entertainments will hardly be amazing—if you wait until Jane is established in town and can introduce you around, you will have a much better season than I will manage: so you must not fret. Besides, I am certain that they will have brought you presents.”

Kitty, who had determined to be upset by the news largely because Lydia was, and who really only wanted some body to pay attention to her, was so calmed by this presentation of the matter, that Elizabeth was soon at liberty to read the letter through once more, and to delight in the near prospects of felicity which it offered to her. Just the thing to shake her from her late wistfulness! Just the thing to give her fresh life and fresh vigour!

Only the timing was a little awkward—the proposed visit coincided with the intended date of Jane’s wedding—but, as London was less than a day’s travel distant, it was hardly grave. She might propose that they impose on the Gandjees sooner, and spend the fortnight before Christmas with them in town. They could then all return to spend the day at Longbourn, and remain there until Jane married. When Jane departed on her bridal tour, Elizabeth, and perhaps Mary, may return with their aunt and uncle to town, and stay until the season ended in July.

Her only source of uneasiness was Wickham. She did not have enough confidence in her own power, or his sensibility, to suppose that he would wait for her return, without receiving a tolerably positive assurance, of the kind which her delicacy shrank from untruthfully providing. Her deception thus far had been only of the negative sort: her manners were not repulsive, but neither had she stooped so far as to give any encouragement. How, then, to ensure that Lydia and Kitty continued indifferent to him, was a matter of some anxiety. Even if she were to stay in Hertfordshire—and she could little resign herself to losing the pleasure of such a visit, especially as her aunt and uncle, who were very dear to her, were in England only one year out of every six or seven—how long would Wickham’s patience last? Her plan of allowing matters to remain as they were suddenly seemed very impracticable.

She resolved at once to speak to her father about her concerns; and, to that end, followed him into the book-room to which he had lately retreated. She told him, that she believed Mr. Wickham to be on the hunt for any thing resembling money; and that she feared, therefore, for her two youngest sisters, when she and Jane were gone. Her father, however, could not easily be brought to understand the girls’ great danger.

“If he wishes to marry them, why should not he? It may hurt you, Lizzy, to lose your beau—but, you know, you shall have many others in London.”

“Almost certainly he would wish to marry either of them, for ten thousand pounds. And yet he can add nothing of his own fortune to defray the expenses, which the couple would then face—which would, I assure you, be very immoderate. Perhaps a prudent man and woman could live on such a sum as four hundred pounds per annum; but, from your own knowledge of them, is either Kitty or Lydia such a woman? For Wickham is certainly not such a man—”; and she explained what she believed, of Wickham’s past habits (excepting only as they related to Miss Darcy), and named the source of her information.

“You seem, my Lizzy,” said he, taking her hand affectionately, “to believe whomever is your lover at the time.”

This, Elizabeth would like to think, was a very unjust attack; and yet experience told her, that to react with offence, would be to convince her father that he was correct. She laughed, therefore, with a very convincing appearance of unconcern—

“I wish, my dear father, that I had even half so many lovers as you are now attributing to me. But do think, and ask yourself whether I am not right: have either Kitty, or Lydia, ever been taught to think on serious subjects? Have they ever learnt, that their present pursuits are not to be the business of their lives? Are they prepared for the serious task of chusing a husband who will not involve them in disgrace and misery? Can you really think that such girls as they are ready to be wives?”

“I cannot see that this method of education has caused any lasting harm to your mother.”

“But if the man she had married had not been so decent as yourself, sir? Where then would we all be? If you had had no fortune of your own—and were determined only to dissipate her’s with all possible dispatch? If you had made a thorough entry into every possible vice, and meant upon your marriage to give none of them up? With Mr. Wickham as a son-in-law, think what poverty you would be required to support your grandchildren in! Think what—what neglect they would face! It would be, in the end, the least amount of trouble to you,” concluded Elizabeth, seeing that she had grown too warm in her expressions, “to ensure that your daughters only marry where a man’s character is assured.”

“Very well, Lizzy. I see that your heart is in the matter. If Mr. Wickham asks for either, or both, or them, I shall certainly refuse my consent.”

Elizabeth would have liked to have said more, and to have extracted further promises; but how to do so, without approaching nearer to Miss Darcy’s history than she liked to do, she could not readily think. She comforted herself, that the desperate step of an elopement had been determined upon only because Wickham anticipated Mr. Darcy’s opposition to the match; that, if he expected no such opposition from Mr. Bennet, he was more likely to attempt to do every thing properly, than to put himself to the expense and inconvenience of clandestine travel, and to the risk of his bride’s being disinherited by her displeased parents. With these reflections she was forced to be content; and she was soon able to turn her mind towards other plans for the immediate future. It was not in her nature to increase her vexations by dwelling on them. She was confident of having performed her duty; and to fret over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was no part of her disposition.

Chapter Text

“Charming creature!—and can you really bear ill usage with so much sweetness?—Can you, like patience on a monument, smile in the midst of disappointment?—For my part, though I am not the offended person, my indignation is so great, that I long to kick the fellow round the room!”

— Frances Burney, Evelina: or, The history of a young lady's entrance into the world; 1778

Mr. Bingley arrived at Longbourn before breakfast as usual the next day. He told the family that he and his party would be leaving for London the following morning, but that he would certainly pay them a farewell call before he was off; he was informed, in return, that, given the approval of their aunt and uncle, Jane and Elizabeth would be following him shortly. The pleasure which he felt on hearing this news was considerable, and warmly expressed.

After breakfast, the family fell to their separate occupations. Bingley and Jane conversed, as inattentive as usual to every body else. Elizabeth patiently attempted to discuss a novel with Mary—though the conference more resembled two separate monologues than any thing that could properly be termed a discussion. The other females of the family lingered about their toilette until the earliest acceptable hour for morning calls arrived—and, with it, the rest of the Netherfield party. Mr. Hurst wanted tea and biscuits; Mr. Darcy, having discharged all the town and country business which he could conduct by correspondence, wanted occupation; and Miss Bingley had again recalled herself to the importance of not letting the latter gentleman out of her sight. Hill knew by now that Mr. Hurst’s presence meant chaa, and descended to tell the cook. Elizabeth left Mary to her own devices, and took up some light work on a chair a little distant.

“The last time we were in company,” said Mr. Darcy, pulling up a chair near her’s (though waiting to ensure that Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst were situated, before he would venture so far as to sit in it), “it was music—this time, I suppose, it must be embroidery?”

“What are you speaking of?” asked Miss Bingley. “Are you speaking of music?”

Elizabeth explained the joke with a very good grace; and the conversation continued on the subject of music, with only a little boasting and flattering, and very little acrimony. Elizabeth, casting her eye around the room, saw Jane and Bingley still occupied as before—and laughed to think, that this was the arrangement which Jane had supposed her to prefer to a tête-à-tête with Mr. Darcy! She could not in justice claim that Miss Bingley’s presence was calculated to improve her situation.

When the acceptable time for a morning call between intimates had come and gone, and before Mrs. Bennet had opportunity to issue the same invitation or caution, Elizabeth told Mr. Bingley,—

“You are very welcome to stay for dinner—but you will recall that Mrs. Hill is shewing Mrs. Nichols how to superintend the making of athano—and Jones has appropriated every free surface in the kitchen to that end—so it will only be a cold collation.”

Unluckily, however, Mrs. Bennet did hear; she could not hear but that she must speak, and could not speak but that she must be vulgar.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Bingley! You are very, very welcome indeed—you know that we do not stand on ceremony with you—or your friends. Only I am quite ashamed of not having some thing better for you. But there is so much to be written down and demonstrated and copied out and translated, I begin to think I shall go distracted! And now I think of it, Lizzy, you had much better ask cook to shew you, as well—as it cannot be supposed that you will ever marry, so dark as you are. Why you will not have some care for your complexion, I cannot understand. But nobody attends to what I say.”

Every body looked distinctly distressed at this communication, save for Mrs. Bennet, and Miss Elizabeth herself. She merely thanked her mother for the thought, with calm dignity; then turned the conversation to other particulars relating to the preparation of Netherfield to receive its new mistress. She, smiling, issuing the occasional jest, and appearing interested in every answer that was given to her queries, had soon made every body comfortable again—except that Darcy was wretched.

He had been used to disdain Mrs. Bennet as an uncouth, extravagant, grasping, ill-educated person. And yet, in contrast to the straitened privation of which the education of a Mohamedan woman must consist, what advantages had been his! And what ill use he had made of them! As Elizabeth gestured and laughed, the thousand tiny mirrors on her sash scattered and fragmented his image.

Elizabeth’s lack of surprise at her mother’s attack shewed that it was a common one. He would comfort himself that at least he had not been so vulgar as to proclaim his opinion of Elizabeth’s appearance aloud—except, of course, that he had. He had flung salt into what must have been a very old wound. And yet, far from exhibiting any sign of distress or rancour, she had lifted her chin, and smiled, and issued an intelligent rejoinder in a light, sweet tone; and had been willing to shake hands and forgive him, even after such a grudging, such a haughty apology as the one he had made! The young woman whom he had dismissed at half a glance turned out, in the event, to be the worthiest one he knew: and it was a lesson which he hoped he would not soon forget.

Her mother was wrong, of course. A woman in possession, as Elizabeth was, of every feminine virtue—of sense, wit, vivacity, beauty, youth, gentility, and some fortune—must always have it in her power to marry, if she wished it. Her connexions, her ancestry, and the impropriety almost uniformly displayed by her relations, must naturally lessen the chance of her husband’s being a man of any consideration in the world—but that was another matter. She would never want respectability, or objects for the affections of her declining years.

He hoped with all his heart that life would make her happy; and yet, for the sake of their friendship, he hoped that it might not be for some few years yet.

After dinner, the Netherfield party departed to prepare for their journey. Mr. Hurst was far more content to be returning to his house in Grosvenor Square, now that he knew of the Gandjees’ visit, and the gustatory opportunities which it would afford him. Miss Bingley felt only irritation that the intimate jaunt in the countryside, which ought to have secured Mr. Darcy for good, had instead squandered her brother’s eligibility, and saddled her with two unavoidable acquaintances, who were now following her even to town.

Soon after the party left, Longbourn house made another entry into noise and upheaval. Mr. Bennet chose to relate the benefit which was to fall to his eldest two daughters, in the form of an advance of pin-money, to the family in toto. Elizabeth supposed she ought to feel grateful, at least, that he had not done so while their neighbours were yet present.

“I understand,” cried Lydia, “that Jane needs money for her bride clothes, but why should Lizzy get any more than usual? She will only give it all away, like always! She never even buys any thing with it!”

“I bought a pair of gloves last week.”

Lydia made a sound very expressive of what she thought of this claim to prodigality. “Well, I think it is wretchedly unfair. Why should you get all the amusement, merely because you are older? Every body says that I am just as lively as you are—and I am taller, besides!

“And you needn’t think that I shall miss you, either! In fact, I shall be very glad when you are both gone,” she crowed, coming over to give Jane and Elizabeth each a very tight embrace, “for I intend to sleep in your room.”

“As you like, Lydia,” said Elizabeth, laughingly, as she kissed the top of Lydia’s head—a feat which she only managed, because Lydia was slouching to rest her head on Elizabeth’s shoulder.

“And while I occupy your bed, I shall be sure to occupy your beau, besides,” said Lydia, not initially intending for her words to sound lewd, but quite enjoying the effect they made when she noticed that they did. “But you needn’t worry, because I haven’t cared a jot about him since the second time we met. Denny is ever so much more agreeable, and pays me a good deal more attention.” Elizabeth cast a significant glance at her father, and said nothing to discourage Lydia’s idea of Mr. Wickham as being her own peculiar property.

On Saturday, therefore, after Jane and Elizabeth had received a reply to their letters to their aunt and uncle (warmly scolding them for asking if the change of plan were acceptable, and informing them that they ought to have simply turned up on the doorstep), they and a lady’s maid were off in one of the Bennet carriages. Mr. Collins was to return in two days; but neither Elizabeth nor Jane can be supposed to be very sorry to be missing him.

END OF VOL. I

Chapter Text

VOL. II

“Merchandize, which disperses men into the most remote quarters of the globe, exposing them to a thousand labours and dangers, and filling them with burdensome anxieties, agrees little with domestic repose, and with the care of a family.

Now, matrimony fills man with turbulent, though minute anxieties, and by confining him to the domestic circle, withdraws him greatly from public life; it places him in a fixed rank, from which he cannot easily rise. And as the wife is united to the husband by a relation so close, that she has an equal share in the private management of the family, it is not possible that he should not participate in the blame and losses, to which female imprudence and vanity is subject.”

— “On Marriage,” from the Italian of Antonio Cocchi, The Scots Magazine and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany, vol. 74; 1812

The Gandjees had taken a house in Russell Square for the year. The voyage from Bombay, around the Cape of Good Hope, to St. Helena, and finally to London, occupied the better part of four months; and, while owning the vessel itself allowed for more comfort and convenience than that enjoyed by the generality of travellers, there were limits to the amount of luxury that a merchant ship, or any ship, could provide. For these reasons, this was the first year in seven that they had made the trip, which they intended to combine business and pleasure—and only the third time they had done so within Elizabeth’s memory. Their two eldest children, at the ages of six and five years, had been deemed old enough to come along; their youngest, who had just reached the end of her first year, had been left with her nurse.

Mr. Gandjee was a sensible, gentlemanlike man, greatly superior to his sister, as well by nature as education. The Netherfield ladies would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived by trade could have been so well-bred and agreeable. Mrs. Gandjee, who was several years younger than Mrs. Bennet, was an amiable, intelligent, elegant woman, and a great favourite with her two eldest nieces. In how husband and wife spoke of, and to, each other, it was evident that their marriage was one of mutual respect, from which each derived considerable benefit; their information, their understandings, their temperaments, their inclinations, were complementary in every place where they did not exactly agree; and Mr. Gandjee—though he had certainly been set up in a way to succeed by his father—attributed no small part of his fortune to the cleverness of his wife.

Elizabeth had been too young to remember the first time the couple had met her and her elder sister; but she could recall their next stay at Longbourn, when she had been about eight years of age, and Lydia newly three; and the trip to London, on which they had all four embarked, when she was thirteen, and Jane fifteen. Mrs. Bennet and her children all wrote to the Gandjees on occasion, but Jane and Elizabeth in particular kept up a lively correspondence with them: a two-way traffic in news and needlework, music and poetry, sentiment and recipes, made them all sincerely attached to one another, despite the difficulty and irregularity of their meetings.

The eldest Bennet sisters’ feelings, therefore, when the carriage stopped at the address the coachman had been given, and the family of four met them at the bottom of the stairs, may be imagined. The house could not be examined or admired as it deserved, its very good location and the newness and fashion of its gardens could not be pointed out, until quite ten minutes of embraces and kisses were gotten through—the children all the time coyly half-hiding behind their parents.

“And how was your journey?” asked Mr. Gandjee, when all six were at last settled in the sitting-room.

Elizabeth laughed at such a question from such a quarter. “Our journey, of four hours, has rewarded us quite as well as your’s, of four months, has—and better, too, for we have new acquaintances to form, while you are forced to content yourselves with the same old dull ones. Do you suppose the children can bear to be introduced to us now? Or are Jane and I still very frightening objects?”

At this, one of the boys insisted that he was not frightened; and the other must naturally follow. The girls therefore made their courtesies to Masters Manoj and Karim, with playfully exaggerated formality, which was returned with all the considerable seriousness which young children can command. The introductions over, the boys returned to their seats and listened intently to all that passed; ascribing a good deal of importance to any conference between adults, and happy not to be sent up to the nursery, as by necessity they were when their parents met any body for reasons of business.

“I had forgotten how witty you are,” said Mrs. Gandjee, when every body was settled again. “Of course, it comes through in your letters—but any body can have wit in a letter, with all the time in the world to conjure it. Real wit ought to be quick.”

“Lizzy is a true original,” said Jane, smiling at her fondly.

“And beautiful, besides! You are both grown so very beautiful!” Mrs. Gandjee must exclaim for at least the third time. “Of course you were both pretty when last we saw you—but what an embellissement you have gone through! We shall have no difficulty whatsoever in settling either of you.”

“Difficulty!” cried her husband. “In settling beauty, sense, accomplishment, and taste! No, no.”

“But tell me, Jane, what sort of a man do you like? Shall he be Indian, or English?”

“Oh, English, to be sure,” forwarded Elizabeth.

“Dark or fair?”

“Fair,” said she, decidedly. “And with a grandfather who was a gentleman, so that Jane does not sink by her marriage; but a father who was a younger son, and made his fortune by trade, so that he need not think himself above her. He must be amiable, well-bred, easy of manner, and open-tempered; and he must live very, very nearby, that Jane need not be parted from her family. He must have sisters, so that Jane does not miss the noise of Longbourn; but they must not be as charming as I am, so that I don’t get jealous.”

Mrs. Gandjee laughed. “Well, Lizzy, I will do my best—though I am not sure that such a man exists. Mr. Winmore, whom I had in mind, is very cheerful and lively—you won’t have met him before—but we may have him to dinner this week.”

“Oh, aunt, but such a man as I have described does exist—his name is Mr. Charles Bingley—and Jane is violently in love with him.”

“Lizzy!” cried Jane, laughing and blushing.

The exclamations of surprise, which Elizabeth had aimed at all the while, were now supplied; which being done, Mr. Gandjee could ask whether Mr. Bingley knew his good fortune.

“If he does not, he is a greater blockhead than any body could possibly imagine. Only think of it! For a man not to know, that the woman he is promised to loves him!”

“Promised—oh, Jane!”

Now Jane must receive a renewal of kisses and embraces, and be congratulated by every body, not excepting the children.

“I was too hasty in my praise, before,” said Mrs. Gandjee, primly, as she regained her seat. “I see that it is possible to be too quick-witted.”

“It is only that she spends a good deal of time with our father,” said Jane.

Elizabeth sputtered in offence, as she saw she had been intended to do: though the general laughter which succeeded, lightened her heart powerfully.

Chapter Text

“What is most surprising to an European, is the decorum, gravity, and elegance of the Moorish children. They are, for the most part, handsomer at this age than when fully grown; and with all that is infantine and engaging, they can upon cases of ceremony assume the unaffected steadiness of an old courtier. I found the leading principle of external behaviour to be a majestic and martial deportment, a serene and steady countenance, which should remain calm and unaltered amidst the greatest events.”

— James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs: Selected from a Series of Familiar Letters Written During Seventeen Years Residence in India; 1813

Miss Bennet’s aunt and uncle were very eager to meet the young man who had claimed her heart, and so overthrown all their kindly plans for her. Despite their family connexion, however, Mr. Hurst’s being a gentleman made them unsure that they ought to call first. On Monday, therefore, a note informed the Bingleys and Hursts that the Bennet sisters had arrived in London, and apprised them of their address; and the Gandjees expected to be waited on the following day. Elizabeth knew better: and she was not surprised to find Mr. Bingley on their doorstep within three-quarters of an hour of the missive’s being sent.

That gentleman immediately set about proving the justice of Elizabeth’s depiction of him. He greeted Jane as though they had been parted for rather longer than the six days, which had in fact separated them; warmly shook hands with every body, and did not care in the least in what order who was introduced to whom; and begged Mrs. Gandjee to keep the children downstairs, when she seemed inclined to have them sent up. Elizabeth met her aunt’s eye and raised a brow, as if to say, Did not I tell you so?; and evinced a degree of happy pride, which would have excused the supposition that she had brought off the match herself.

When every body was sat down, and tea had been rung for, Mr. Bingley informed them that the rest of his party would be calling on them as well; and no sooner had he satisfied his curiosity as to the particulars of the Gandjees’ journey, and the health of all their family, than his prediction was fulfilled. It was fulfilled, however, but in part: Mr. Hurst, Mrs. Hurst, and Mr. Darcy entered the room, but Miss Bingley was conspicuous by her absence. A long span of like treatment was beginning to wear on Miss Bennet, and to awaken even her generous mind to such suspicion as she had never entertained about another person before. She began to think Miss Bingley less than candid; and she lamented every time she had sought to represent to Lizzy, that her distrust of her must be mistaken.

Once this doubt had entered, her mind of course followed its subject; and earnestly did she watch Mr. Darcy for a sign of the disdain, which Lizzy had earlier observed in him. On that score, however, she was soon satisfied: he consented to have the Gandjees made known to him, not with warmth, but with civility; and, after some time looking attentive to the general conversation, which was carried on principally by Charles and by her aunt and uncle, he addressed Lizzy more particularly. If she could not trust herself to read Mr. Darcy, she knew that, on the subject of her sister’s expressions, she could not be mistaken—she saw that Elizabeth really was as willing to speak to him as she had earlier claimed—and so she ceased to be uneasy.


As soon as it was at liberty, her attention returned to where it naturally must. Bingley conversed as affably and sensibly with her aunt and uncle as she had known he would; and she felt sincerely glad to have been the means of introducing each party to the other.

“Four months! Your children must be uncommonly well-behaved,” exclaimed Bingley, smiling at them where they were playing with a bevy of round tin soldiers on the Axminster rug.

Just then, Karim discovered some irregularity in Manoj’s handling of his regiment, and sent up the alarm; the accusation of perfidy must be fervently and vigorously contested; and the contest threatened to become physical. Mrs. Gandjee moved to intervene, but Elizabeth was nearer: she knelt down in the midst of the battlefield, and asked both boys if they were not ashamed to be carrying on so, and before company, too? Karim sat on her lap directly, and, looping his arms round her neck, told her of the great injustice he had suffered; and she, listening and then mediating, blended sympathy and mock severity in getting the children to calm again.

“You may have spoken too soon,” laughed Mr. Gandjee, as this was ongoing.

“No, no! Look, they are perfect angels once more. How old are they?”

Mr. Gandjee told him.

“Wanting of seven years! Which means (turning to Jane) that you won’t have met them before?”

“No. Not before yesterday.”

“It must be difficult,” said Bingley, just coming to realise what the length of the journey actually entailed. “Being so often separated.”

“Yes,” said Jane. “But then, we are so often writing to each other; we know all one another’s news; and I really felt as if I understood the children’s dispositions perfectly, from my aunt and uncle’s descriptions of them, even before I had ever seen them.”

Karim squirmed back onto solid ground, and set about regaining his character on the field and in the drawing-room; and so Elizabeth was free to regain her previous seat.

Darcy, sitting on the other side of the rug from the rest of the party, had been watching Elizabeth rather intently during her intervention. As she returned to his side, he asked,—

“You won’t have had experience with young boys before now?”

“Girls are not so very different,” said Elizabeth, thinking of Lydia and Kitty’s brawling over jewellery and ribbons, and all the arguments she had ever gotten into about who would play what part in a scene of make-believe.

He smiled. “Perhaps not. I am by no means an authority on the typical behaviour of girls, in the plural.”

Elizabeth was careful not to touch on the subject of Miss Darcy’s being or not being well-behaved again: and only said,—

“Oh, yes! Poor Miss Darcy! Having no one with whom to get into a really good dispute. Unless—I do not suppose that you were often teazing her, and taking her toys?”

“No. My cousins and I were all so much older than she, that our natural inclination was to amuse, and not to distress, her.” His face darkened briefly—and, supposing him to be thinking of Wickham, she endeavoured to turn the subject, by requesting an accounting of his cousins; and then asking after his sister. She was informed that Miss Darcy was even then in London.

“Will you permit me,” said he, “to introduce her to your acquaintance, during your stay in town?”

Elizabeth, surprised but not displeased by this application, acceded.

Here the conversation again became general. Mr. Gandjee made some apposite remark, which he had drawn from Johnson; Mr. Darcy responded in the same style; but, upon Mr. Bingley’s cheerfully disclaiming being a reader, the first gentleman promptly turned the discourse to the London season, the entertainments then ongoing, and whether Mr. Bingley or the Hursts meant to partake?; and Bingley readily replied. Mrs. Hurst troubled herself so far as to nod in confirmation of what he said.

Some time later, Mr. Gandjee took up a slight comment of Bingley’s on an aspect of the business, which had brought his family to town; Bingley was forestalled from apologising for boring the ladies, and changing the subject, by Mrs. Gandjee’s reminding her husband of some detail he had forgotten, or confounded, and so proving that she was not averse to the topic which had been introduced. Elizabeth, watching Mr. Darcy, saw that he sometimes evinced surprise, but never displeasure; and she gloried in every expression, every sentence of her relations, which marked their intelligence, their education, their taste, or their good manners.

When at last their guests rose to take their leave, Mr. Darcy asked Mrs. Gandjee when she was at home to callers, and expressed his intention of bringing his sister to wait on them, if she were amenable? Mrs. Gandjee agreed with alacrity.

Elizabeth, having understood his overture to refer only to herself and Jane, was amazed and gratified at this piece of civility. She reflected that he had perhaps come alone to-day, that he might ascertain her relatives’ fitness to enter Miss Darcy’s circle; she wondered whether she ought to be offended; but there were circumstances, which rendered his protectiveness eminently forgiveable, and so she decided against it.

As they were walking their guests out, Mr. Hurst, who seemed to take Elizabeth as a sort of ambassador, drew her aside in the vestibule and asked if his cook might come and copy out some recipes from their’s. Elizabeth, conscious that the superintendence of the kitchens was a task which must ordinarily fall to Mrs. Hurst, glanced at that lady to assure herself that she was not opposed to the scheme. Mrs. Hurst, surprised and a little pleased at this attention, nodded her head; and so Elizabeth agreed to speak with her aunt on the subject.

Chapter Text

In the male sex the active pursuits of business or pleasure, more quickly supplant tender impressions; and men much sooner regain that mental tranquillity which fits them for the busy scenes of life. This is not the case with the fair sex; for the influence on both body and mind, seems to be in proportion to the concealed struggle of attachment. The heart obtains relief in pouring forth its complaint, and acquires resolution when this is done: but the hidden passion burns the fiercer by being suppressed.

— Thomas Trotter, M.D., A view of the nervous temperament, being a practical enquiry into the increasing prevalence, prevention, and treatment of those diseases commonly called nervous, bilious, stomach and liver complaints; indigestion; low spirits; gout etc; 1812

The domestic scenes of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday gave way on Tuesday to the bustle of commerce, as Elizabeth, Jane, and Mrs. Gandjee began the process of acquiring every thing that was wanting by way of wedding clothes and linens. Elizabeth was pleased to be refamiliarising herself with the city following her long absence from it. London, after the narrowness of her country life and the fixedness of its set of acquaintance, seemed to her to be the world on a larger scale—the veins connecting near and far were more visible—there was greater scope for happiness and for misery. Elizabeth was determined to be happy; and she was aided by a naturally cheerful disposition, which disdained to be miserable over any thing for very long—much less some thing which she could scarcely define to herself.

Thirteen minutes in a westbound carriage were sufficient to bring the party to Mayfair. From there, Old Bond street, New Bond street, Grosvenor-street, were all within the compass of a comfortable walk; and the linen-draper, the haberdasher, the dress-maker were visited in their turn. The years since the party had last visited the district had brought an increase in the number and the fashion of the shops there; and many exclamations to this effect must be interspersed with the business of acquisition. Elizabeth and her aunt attracted the odd stare, in spite of their English dress; but they were busy and well-bred enough to ignore it.

Jane refrained from the block-printed Indian cottons, as being better and more cheaply had from her own relations. In general, however, her preference was all for simplicity; she had had a pretty good idea of what would be required before the party had embarked; and she was so efficient and decided in her operations, that her aunt had scarcely had time to learn what changes the passage of six years had worked in her taste, before she had concluded them. Elizabeth, who had a greater interest in all things fibrous and textile than did her sister, nearly took longer to order two dresses, than Jane did to order six—though she had had the fabric for them as a present from her aunt, and so had no decisions to make at the draper’s.

As the party made their way back to the carriage, trailed by two footmen carrying the few items that had been purchased outright, Mrs. Gandjee asked her nieces if they would not mind heading back east to take a survey of Fleet-street and Cheapside—as it might in the future prove useful to her to have knowledge of what people were wearing and buying, and how the shops were outfitted, in that district. Jane and Elizabeth readily agreed; Russell Square was reattained, and then passed; Oxford St., High St., Drury Lane took them to their intended destination. A few pieces of ribbon and trimming—not planned upon, but indispensable once seen—were added to the ladies’ freight in Fleet-street; and St. Paul’s, its lofty edifice crowded round with cobblers’, butchers’, and fishmongers’ stalls, was passed on the way from thence to Cheapside.

The shops on that street were just as spacious and inviting as those in Mayfair. Barouches, gigs, and carts rambled along the thoroughfare three- and four-abreast, and plumes of smoke rose merrily from chimneys far above their heads. Mrs. Gandjee had seen enough to satisfy her before they had spent twenty minutes weaving in and out of the many neat establishments that lined the street—besides which, she and Miss Bennet felt the need to rest. A coffee house on King St. furnished the party with a light meal in a private room; and the proprietor soon left them to the enjoyment of a warm fire, a pot of tea, and a rich soup—very welcome despite the unseasonable mildness of the day.

“What do you mean to do with that garnet sash, Lizzy?” asked Jane, between sips of tea.

“Oh, some sort of beaded embroidery ‘round the edges. To be worn with my red net dress. And those, um”—Elizabeth twirled her fingers next to her ear—“those jummar butti, with the rubies and pearls. But no one cares about that. What we want to hear, Jane, is what you shall be married in? You know she only asked me,” she continued in a low aside to her aunt, “that she might be asked herself.”

Jane shook her head, smiling. “Lizzy.”

Miss Bennet found no quarter from her aunt, who only said:—

“Yes, Jane, do let us hear it!”

“I especially liked the white muslin, with the little blue flowers,” replied Jane, naming one of her recent purchases.

“Oh, yes! With a white chemisette, and that beadwork necklace you have, with the daisies—and your sapphire hair pins.”

Jane laughed. “I am glad that you have settled that for me so neatly, Lizzy! But you have forgotten to mention the trim you made for me in November.”

“Oh!” cried Elizabeth, realising why Jane had not purchased any trim to adorn the fabric in question, and laughingly accusing her sister of having been very sly. Here their aunt must ask her nieces to describe the trim to her; Jane did so, and told her as well that it was very finely and neatly done.

“That does not surprise me, in the slightest. Our Lizzy has been very accomplished in that way from the second time I met her. The things she sends us have only been increasing in beauty.”

The conversation continued in like manner until Mrs. Gandjee felt capable of walking once more. The ladies wrapt themselves against the bluster of the day, and regained the walkway, making their way back to the coachman and carriage which awaited them on Fleet St.

Their voyage of exploration had not been long resumed, however, when they were halted again. A woman perhaps a year or two older than Miss Bennet was loitering under the awning of one shop and then another, timidly attempting to arrest the attention of the shoppers. She was constantly walking, lest the proprietor of one shop or another be minded to tell her off, but quite evidently without any fixed destination. Upon Elizabeth’s party coming abreast of her, she lost all her former shyness of manner, and became nearly frantic—reaching out to take Mrs. Gandjee’s hands, and speaking to her in rapid Hindy, of which Elizabeth did not understand above one word in five. Cutchee, however, was sufficiently similar to permit her to learn, that the young woman’s name was Saira; that she complained of hunger, and of wanting lodgings; that she said some thing about money, and some thing about work. After these preliminaries, Elizabeth was unable to follow. She saw, however, from the grimness of her aunt’s countenance, that there was some thing in some body’s conduct of which she disapproved.

After some time spent in quiet attendance, Mrs. Gandjee spoke soothingly to the young woman. Whatever the import of this speech, the result of it was that she seemed close to fainting from relief, and made many professions of gratitude, which, at least, Elizabeth and Jane readily understood. They resumed their westward walk—Saira now on Mrs. Gandjee’s arm, seeming scarcely able to support herself, and silently weeping.

Elizabeth’s earlier supposition was confirmed when her aunt explained to herself and Miss Bennet what had occurred. Saira had been lady’s maid to an Englishwoman, who meant to return to her native land; she had been engaged to attend this lady for the duration of the trip from Calcutta to London, at the end of which she was to receive an hundred rupees, and passage back to India. She had, however, in the event, been given somewhat less than sixty rupees, and left to shift for herself regarding her passage home. The lady who had engaged her had explained this discrepancy, and quieted her own conscience, by telling Saira that her services had in some respects proven unsatisfactory; and by assuring Saira and herself that she would surely find passage with some lady wishing to leave London for Calcutta, at which time she could make up the difference in wages.

Elizabeth’s relation of Mr. Wickham’s past conduct had already been a very painful blow to Jane’s opinion of the goodness of human nature; and this was another. She was not a fool, and she understood that evil existed in the abstract—but it seemed to her to be different, to acknowledge such a thing as cruelty being harbored in the bosom of anyone with whom she might actually come into contact. She ventured to wonder whether there had not been some mistake: had not the Englishwoman perhaps positively arranged with another lady, to return with Saira? Any number of misunderstandings could be brought about by a difference in language and custom; and she asked her companions whether they thought it might not be so.

Saira, who was in command of English, assured her that this was not the case. Elizabeth was closer than she ever had been before to feeling irritated with Jane, who should have seen that her solicitude on behalf of Saira’s employer was ill-timed, and sure to be painful to the story’s principal. Miss Bennet, however, apologised directly, and assured Saira that she believed her—but it was very distressing!

Elizabeth now saw that Saira found the support of her aunt’s arm insufficient, and maneuvered herself beside her to take her other arm.

“Shukriya, behen.”

The word “sister” was clear enough—but, embarrassed for a reply, Elizabeth only nodded.

Within five minutes, Mrs. Gandjee was recalling coach, coachman, and horses from the inn where all had been stationed; but Elizabeth, feeling as though the network of her nerves had been frayed, was very unwilling to be confined within. She begged her aunt and sister to return without her, for she wished to walk for a while in the Temple Gardens; and if Thomas would be pleased to attend her, she would walk back to Russell Square, or take a hackney.

“Certainly, Lizzy—but do let us send back the carriage for you.”

“No, no. I don’t wish to be the occasion of any inconvenience.”

Thomas declared himself not at all tired or cold; and he trailed Elizabeth south to take in the Gardens, while Saira was being bundled up within the carriage.

Elizabeth walked briskly, seeking tranquility of the mind through exhaustion of the body. She wove between clusters of ladies, gentlemen, and children—listened to the rattle of the trees as the wind battered their branches together—looked out over the Thames as the boats went by. Here was the river which Saira had come in on—which her mother had come in on—which her father had gone out on—on which ships like those of her uncle were all the time threading and weaving themselves. Her mind was a riot of contradictory impressions which she could not bend to a conclusion; and it was only the recollection that she must be wanted at home, that led her at length to wend her steps (Thomas, not wishing to be bested by a woman, insisting that he did not mind the walk) over Chancery-lane, High Holborn street, and Southhampton-row, to Russell Square.

She inquired after Saira when she returned, and was informed that she had been given food, warmer dress, and a room in the servants’ quarters. Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee had offered to speak to their London acquaintance to find someone immediately undertaking the journey east, that she may be returned to her home as soon as possible. This, however, she had refused—she would trust no one else to act fairly by her, and would not enter into a contract to work for any body but Mrs. Gandjee—she had some apprehension of being abandoned at St. Helena, or at some other port equally distant from Calcutta—and the year, which her new employer meant to stay in London, was nothing to her in comparison to this risk.

All evening, the subject of Saira and her employer, and of what had been done and what ought to be done by her, occupied the Russell Square party. The Gandjees, having an extensive network within as well as outside of India, talked of asking around for a good position for her in Calcutta, once they had known her long enough to give her a character. Elizabeth thought that they looked far less surprised than she felt, that such a thing should happen; but they bore all of her and Jane’s questions and suggestions with patience.

It was not until she was turning in to bed, and the stillness and quiet of night reasserted itself, that Elizabeth realised that she had spared no thought all day for—any young man of her acquaintance.

Chapter Text

What a delightful entertainment must it be to the fair ſex, whom their native modesty, and the tenderneſs of men towards them, exempts from public busineſs, to paſs their hours in imitating fruits and flowers, and tranſplanting all the beauties of nature into their own dreſs, or raiſing a new creation in their cloſets and apartments! How pleaſing is the amuſement of walking among the ſhades and groves planted by themſelves, in ſurveying heroes ſlain by their needles, or little Cupids which they have brought into the world without pain!

This is methinks, the moſt proper way wherein a lady can ſhew a fine genius, and I cannot forbear wiſhing that ſeveral writers of that ſex, had choſen rather to apply themſelves to tapeſtry than rhyme.

— The Spectator, no. 605; 1714

Mr. and Miss Darcy arrived at an acceptable hour for callers the next day. The family, who had been expecting the visit, were all decorously arrayed in the drawing room—this including Mr. Bingley, who had arrived at Russell Square to break his fast with the others.

Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee, Miss Bennet, and Miss Elizabeth rose to be introduced to Miss Darcy. She was a tall, well-grown girl, womanly in her stature, though her face looked very young. Elizabeth thought that she was not so handsome as her brother—but that she might be, when she was six or eight years older, and had had time to grow into her features.

Mr. Darcy performed the introductions; the party all greeted Miss Darcy with due decorum, and pronounced themselves very pleased to make her acquaintance. Elizabeth, in particular, said that she had heard many good things about her from her brother and her friends. She refrained, however, from revealing what those things were, upon discerning that Miss Darcy, far from being as penetrating as her brother, was exceedingly shy, and inclined to be embarrassed by any praise of herself. She seemed frightened of speaking, and would look, as if reflexively, towards her brother for reassurance, each time she ventured to do so. Elizabeth understood and forgave Mr. Darcy’s desire to ascertain the suitability of any body whom he introduced to this girl’s acquaintance—and she was glad, very glad, that she need not fear her being discomfited by her aunt and uncle. She hated to think of her being exposed to Mrs. Bennet!

The preliminaries dispensed with, Elizabeth returned to her tambour frame by the window. The Gandjees, knowing that they would have a small party, had set up the chairs pretty close together; and so Darcy could lead his sister to sit by her, without shutting them off from the discourse of the rest of the room. 

As Miss Elizabeth took up her hook and began to work, Mrs. Gandjee opened the conversation:—

“How long have you been in town, Miss Darcy?”

“I—spend most of the year here.”

“The rest of the year, I suppose, you spend in the country? Or perhaps you prefer the seaside?”

Miss Darcy looked down at her hands, which were trembling in her lap. Here her brother intervened:—

“The summer and autumn months we typically pass at Pemberley—in Derbyshire.”

Mrs. Gandjee now perceived that the kindest way to be attentive to her young guest, was to pay her less attention; and she therefore kept her next remarks general.

“You avoid the worst of the cold weather, I suppose, by coming south for the winter season. Though this year it is exceedingly mild. I wonder when it will frost.”

“It is, yes—very mild. I felt the good fortune of it on the road from Meryton—as, I am sure, did Miss Elizabeth. And Miss Bennet.”

“It must have aided you, and Lizzy, on your shopping expedition yesterday? I hope you had success?” asked Bingley.

“Yes,” said Miss Bennet. “We made a very good beginning.”

“You have never known such an efficient, such an expeditious shopper, as Jane was. She had finished quite before either of us knew what had happened. But that has always been Jane’s way. She is a very decided, sensible young woman,” said Elizabeth—partly to fulfill her duty in maintaining the conversation, and partly for the pleasure of seeing Jane blush.

Bingley replied in like fashion; and the discourse was soon carried out principally between himself and the Gandjees, with the occasional comment from Jane.

Darcy rose from his chair by his sister to regard Elizabeth’s work: she was fixing beads from a series of small bowls onto a length of red fabric in an elaborate geometric design. “This, I believe, you make for yourself.”

Elizabeth only said, “Well, sir—if you believe it, it must be so”—but her smile told him that he was correct.

Wishing to try Miss Darcy’s willingness to speak before an audience containing only one stranger, Elizabeth then turned to her, and asked her if she were much in the habit of embroidering—or if she preferred other pastimes?

Miss Darcy still glanced at her brother’s face as though she might find the answer there; but she then replied readily enough, that she was very fond of music.

“I cannot truthfully claim to be surprised,” said Elizabeth, smiling. “Our mutual friends tell me, that you play very well. But you must not worry—I shall not make you answer your own praise—instead I shall ask you, what kind of music you are most fond of? What do you most like to play?”

The conversation continued in like style, with Elizabeth content to chatter on, and Miss Darcy relieved to have the discourse managed so that she need only answer the occasional direct question, rather than search after a reply on her own. Eventually, however, when Elizabeth came to a new section that required her to check and re-check the pattern she had drawn, she saw that the answers came more slowly—Miss Darcy seemed to be nervous of interrupting or distracting her at her work—and so she placed the pattern aside and began to return the beads to their chest.

“It is very beautiful”—thus Miss Darcy, timidly.

“Oh! Thank you,” said Elizabeth, as she again came away from the frame, pleased to have been addressed voluntarily—“but I am afraid it was immensely uncivil of me to carry on with it after you came.”

“N-no—” Miss Darcy looked to her brother for aid.

He smiled. “It is perfectly acceptable to do needlework during a call—as you know. No one could take any offence from your doing so.”

“Yes—it is perfectly acceptable to do light work—which this, perhaps, is not. Though, if my opinions are to be consulted,” she continued, smiling at Miss Darcy as she sat down in the chair at her other side, “it should not be how consequential or inconsequential work appears, that decides whether its doing is polite, or no—but whether a woman can, in point of actual practice, be attentive to it and to her guests simultaneously.”

“It ought, in short,” said Mr. Darcy, “to depend on how clever the lady in question is. A particularly able woman should be free to do just as she likes.”

“Yes! That is it precisely.”

“This is a very self-serving opinion, however.”

“I shall respond to the compliment, which that remark contains, and ignore the insult—and only tell you, that I am glad you think so.”

Miss Darcy was, at first, only surprised at the fluency of this discourse, her brother not having participated in the conversation between Miss Elizabeth and herself until now; but she then grew alarmed at the idea of her brother’s insulting any body, which she was very sure he had never done in his lifetime. She was soon made easier, however, by Miss Elizabeth’s smile, which shewed that she was not really offended; and Miss Elizabeth’s beginning to speak to her as before soothed her the rest of the way to equanimity.

The guests soon rose to depart: Mr. Bingley because he had business, relative to the wedding, to conduct; the Darcys because the proper time for a morning call had more than elapsed. No other callers being forthcoming—the Gandjees having elected not to send round their card until they returned to town after Christmas—the day then passed to the performance of small matters of housekeeping.

Elizabeth wrote to her sisters of their relations’ good health, and made much of the children—knowing that the topic would not interest Lydia or Kitty so much as a recounting of the fashions she had seen at the shops, but not wishing to excite jealousy. She dispatched also a letter to Charlotte Lucas, likewise littered with little nothings—though to her she described the excursion in much more detail. The encounter with Saira, however, was allotted a smaller share of Elizabeth’s paper, than of her mind. She was kept from relating all her feelings, by the greater reserve which she now felt to subsist between Charlotte and herself; and by the fact that she would not know how to word them so that they might be understood. She mentioned, however, how glad she was that the encounter had occurred, and that her aunt had been in the right place to offer material assistance. It was very unpleasant to think what might have happened, had they not gone to Cheapside that day!

Elizabeth was then at liberty to ask her aunt to ask the cook whether she would object to an English servant peering into her kitchen; and, if not, to name a convenient day for the imposition to take place. Her errand for Mr. Hurst thus accomplished, she could join Jane and her uncle in playing a game with the children, who were now allowed downstairs; and this attendance to the present state of things made her forget, for the moment, her concern with what might have been.

Chapter Text

Of all things in nature, there is nothing so truly impracticable, as obtaining a reform of parliament by temporizing expedients, miserable tinkerings, and puerile half measures.

Parliamentary reform, in truth, is that sort of achievement which never can be accomplished at all, by going to work mending piece-meal. The notion is absurd. A victory over real corruptions would enable us to baffle the spurious, the pretended reformations.

— John Cartwright, The comparison: in which mock reform, half reform, and constitutional reform are considered; 1810

Human nature is very apt to decide, at certain intervals, upon its own reform, without ever seriously setting about to effect it. Fitzwilliam Darcy, however, had long prided himself on the discipline of his mind; and he did not mean, in this respect, to be like the wayward majority. The immovability of temper, which he had been used to think of as an indelible defect; the desire to think meanly of the rest of the humanity, which he had but lately discovered in himself: he intended to watch for the results of these qualities in his interactions with the world, and to act and think differently, if he could.

He called on the Gandjees, therefore, not without some apprehension of finding the brother and his wife like their sister, but with every resolution of paying them the minimum of civility regardless—and every willingness to discover that his apprehensions were unfounded. He discovered, in the event, no reason to regret his condescension: the couple were elegant, unaffected, well-mannered people; the children perhaps lively, but not beyond what was to be expected at their age.

His resolutions received their first real trial later that same day. The season was beginning in earnest; cards and visits of form were shuffled back and forth throughout the web of his acquaintance; a dinner party at Lord Curzon’s was one of those invitations which, whether from a motive of desire or duty, was accepted.

In years past, he would have been relieved to return to the greater variety and refinement of entertainments in town, after such a period of sequestration in the country—but still determined to speak only to his particular friends, or to those whose rank, or connexion to him, made courtesy unavoidable. He could follow this course of action in the drawing room; but once his hostess had led the company to the table, he was obliged in common civility to have some conversation with the ladies on either side of him. He determined with himself at once that he would not perform his office as reluctantly as he had sometimes done—nor would he go looking after reasons to disdain his partner’s understanding. His judgement could not, and should not, be silent, if indeed there were any thing to condemn; but he would search for, and rejoice in, good qualities, rather than triumphing over bad ones.

If he had, despite his best intentions, expected to find in his companion a silly and ill-informed mind, he was once again to be happily disappointed. Miss Cecily Southwell had both address and information in a degree conversant with her age and her sex; she was content to carry on most of the conversation herself, and required from him only the occasional inquiry; it was perhaps a little tiresome, but not really arduous, to appear interested in her concerns. 

He seized, nevertheless, the first opportunity to turn the discourse away from the personal and particular, and towards the intellectual:—

“—claimed that he could run that path twice before I had done it once, for he was the better horseman, never mind that I was older—and this was a slight, which neither my nature nor my place could bear.”

“Are you, then, an admirer of Shakespeare?”

She seemed surprised at the bend he had made in the topic, but answered readily enough—

“Oh, of course! There is no superior dramatist to Shakespeare.”

He smiled, and asked—“On what basis do you make this claim? In what quality does he excel all others?”

“I am sure,” she laughed, “that I do not pretend to be the preeminent authority on literary merit, Mr. Darcy. I assert no more than what every body owns to: and where an opinion is generally agreed upon, it is—generally—correct.”

Naturally, he disagreed—but he checked the impulse to regard this evidence of impressibility with derision; nor did he flatly contradict her. He rather smiled anew, and pressed her to submit some reason why it should be so:—

“Do you think so? Do you mean that the generality of an opinion creates its correctness, in matters of taste? Or are most people correct about most things, quite on their own?”

She, however, seemed to be in some confusion as to how to answer this application. After a moment, she laughed again, and asked how he could be so wicked as to expect her to account for herself: “Ladies, you know,” she smiled brightly, “must be allowed our little nonsenses. You may chuse to argue with me all you like, Mr. Darcy—but, be you as correct as you please, I should be ashamed ever to admit it. You will not wrest my poor little opinion from me.”

“Where an opinion is a woman’s, then, it does not matter whether it is correct?”

She smiled still more brightly than before.

“I feel every bit of my danger, sir—you will reveal, with irresistible logic, that two or three of my statements, when taken together, must be either a contradiction or an absurdity—but your entailments and syllogisms will have no effect on me. I will assert just as boldly as I did before. You see that I mean to be incorrigible.”

Her comportment, her manners, were perfectly correct, and even fashionable; she tried after the liveliness and originality, which were at the moment so modish in London circles, and her native quickness and playfulness allowed her to succeed in a greater degree than most; but he had no taste for these well-sounding, unmeaning sentences. Still mindful, however, of his resolution, he exerted himself to continue the conversation—though he did not ask her to be serious again.

“I assume that you raced young Master Southwell? Did he lament his hubris?”

“Oh, yes! Heartily—” and she continued the story he had interrupted, relieved to have done with metaphysical questions.

With the change in courses came a change in collocutor. Mrs. Clarent was as sensible, though less lively, than Miss Southwell; he listened to her impressions of her recent travels, and spoke of his own favoured sights in Derbyshire, without requiring her to defend her assertions on the nature of the picturesque, or her dislike of landscape gardens; and this carried him creditably through to dessert.

He sought out Mr. Clarent when the ladies departed for the drawing-room. That gentleman seemed somewhat surprised to be addressed by him, and did not soon recover; nor did he have the conversation of his wife. He spoke more, and said less. Darcy, however, bore it with very good grace: if he did shrug his shoulders, it was not until Mr. Clarent had turned away.

It was clear to Miss Bingley that something had altered in Mr. Darcy. He seemed more than usually thoughtful and listless—he did not respond to the sallies she issued against company they both disliked as he had used to, with a smile and a witticism of his own, but only looked stiff and uncomfortable—he spoke more to other people, and less to herself.

He had been abnormally silent in company in Meryton; but this, she had attributed to the inferior society in that place. Their return to town ought to have returned him to his former self—and yet it had not. Resolutely did she shun any reflection that might have led her to realise what had effected the change. She only knew, that when the gentlemen at last rejoined the ladies in Lady Curzon’s drawing-room, he seemed reluctant to derogate the dull prosings of whomever he had been speaking to for the last two hours; would only say, that he believed Miss Cecily and Mrs. Clarent to be good-natured women; would not even admit, that Mrs. Clarent had married a fool; would only own, when pressed, that Mr. Clarent had not his wife’s address, but that he was by no means unpleasant or ill-humoured.

Miss Bingley would not for a moment have considered Mr. Darcy as a potential spouse, had he not the name, the fortune, and the connexions, which she deemed necessary to her happiness; and it was very likely that she would, for these reasons, marry him even if she did not like him. She did, however, happen to like him a good deal. She liked the sharp, uncompromising nature of his mind and manners, and the sharp unkindness of his wit. He did not make her feel as though she must blunt or soften herself. He represented to her, not merely access, but also discernment—the unmerciful, unerring delineation of the high from the low, in rank, in taste, in talents, in understanding—and the absolute assurance that, that delineation being made, she would be on the correct side of it. It irritated her, it grieved her, to think that he could not be trusted to make that judgement as he had used to.

However it had happened, though, it was evident that his taste in conversation had changed. No matter—she would change with it. She wanted his name; and she had put too much time, too much effort, too much of herself into the attempt, to abandon it, let Mr. Darcy act and speak how he would.

Chapter Text

Necessary Qualifications and Business of the Lady’s Woman

As the servant under the above character is obliged to be near her lady, it is necessary that none pretend to be properly qualified for it, unless their education has been something above the ordinary rank of other women; for she will not only be obliged to do some fine pieces of needle work, but also to read at proper times the best authors. It is her duty to study her lady’s temper. A soft answer, a submissive carriage, and a ready compliance with her lady’s orders, will always entitle her to respect.

— The female instructor, or Young woman's companion: being a guide to all the accomplishments which adorn the female character, either as a useful member of society—a pleasing and instructive companion, or, a respectable mother of a family; 1811

Two full days had not yet passed since Saira had been installed under the Gandjees’ roof, when the lady of the household reintroduced her to her nieces’ notice over breakfast. Saira had told the housekeeper, that she wanted to be doing some thing; that she did not care what it was, so long as she was shewn how to do it; but, however, all her training and practice had been in attending ladies. Begum Azeez, though slightly piqued at a newcomer’s aspiring to the stratum of the upper servants, had passed this request on to Begum Gandjee; and that lady now asked the girls what they thought of it over their chaa and dhokla.

“Carter ought to stay with Jane,” replied Elizabeth, “as she has seniority. But I would be happy to know her better—if you do not object, Jane—and if she is not needed elsewhere.”

“Surely she needs more rest—after what she has gone through?” said Miss Bennet.

“Rest,” said Elizabeth, “may be the last thing she wants. It is only empty time, in which to think and grow melancholy. If she says she wants to be doing some thing, we have no reason to doubt or countermand her. But you may trust me to watch that she does not become too fatigued.”

Her aunt expressed her satisfaction with this plan, and proposed that she ask Carter to communicate whatever information and instruction Saira would need, for the moment—Jane had not the least objection; and so a matter, which had been the cause of so much solicitude and anxiety over the past day and two nights, was settled very efficiently at last.

Saira Das was the natural daughter of an obscure London clerk, who—impatient for preferment, but finding himself unable to rise—had thrown in his lot with the East India Company, and undertaken the journey to Bengal. He found, however, that the rumours of the great wealth to be obtained by the ordinary Englishman, from working in that line, were as a profusion of perfume with no source at its centre, and very apt to dissipate into the air upon being disturbed.

His disappointment was followed, as it often is in these cases, by his death. This was not, however, before a singing-woman, living in Calcutta, and performing with a troupe of her fellow-musicians along some of the thoroughfares there, had been delivered of a pretty, winning little girl, who thereafter travelled with her mother’s set, and thereby gained, by way of an inheritance, a superior ear for music.

When she had obtained of twelve, Saira caught the eye of a visiting Englishwoman, who wanted her for her household. She was the personal attendant of this woman for some years, until the lady’s return to England with her husband required Saira to seek a new post; this she easily obtained on recommendation; and she had been tending to her new lady’s hair and dress, and fetching little things for her, until very lately. She was grateful for the light work, and for her high place in the household, and for the mildness of her mistress’s temper, and felt that she had, overall, a very good situation—so that, when her lady announced her intention to return to England, fondness for her, and a curiosity to see London, and the reflection that she must be working in any case, and it may as well be on board of ship as not, induced Saira to agree to attend her.

Her lady’s betrayal was deeply, very deeply felt. Were eight years of faithful service to be so repaid! Were such mistakes as were unavoidable so long as man was mortal, to be used as excuse for leaving her without passage, without work, without so much as food and lodgings once she had exhausted her pocket? Her mistress had said, that she would surely get passage with another Englishwoman who wished to take the trip to Calcutta; but she would not trouble herself so far as to inquire after such a woman, or to give her a character which might make her being taken on more likely; and Saira, left to search on her own, had found no one of that description in need of her services. She was, at last, reduced to begging on the street, which she had certainly never lowered herself to do before. Hunger, dirt, cold, exhaustion, had clouded, though they could not entirely blot out, grief, and anger.

It was plain to her, from this circumstance—and from the condition of the poor in London, which was so much worse than it had been in Calcutta—that the English must be a very hard-hearted sort of people; and she determined, that she would never again work for a firingi, if she could at all help it. The kindness of Shrimati Gandjee confirmed this belief in the superiority of her countrymen—for so, in this foreign place, the Gandjees must be called, though difference of region, rank, and religion may have led her to think otherwise, were they all at home.

She received the news that she was to wait upon one of the young misses—the slighter, darker one—with no inconsiderable pleasure. She was, in general, possessed of a sort of cheerful restlessness, which manifested itself as industry—and which her old mistress’s slight wants, adduced to her complete sequestration in her household, had but little satisfied. She was glad to be working and to be secure again, after such a period of idleness and worry. This pleasure was, however, alloyed with some nervousness—she had never served a lady so fine or so rich as Shrimati Gandjee’s nieces—nor, for that matter, any gentleman’s daughter. Her security must lie, in her ability to learn; and in the kindness, which she had already seen her new lady evince.

Saira found Martha Carter to be very full of information regarding laces, muslin, gauzes, and cambrics, and what could be trusted to the laundry-maids, and what could not; and quite devoid of information regarding any thing else. This was not her household, she said; she had only come to attend the Misses Bennet, and so she would not know if Mrs. Gandjee disapproved of servants stepping out; but her air as she said this seemed to disapprove of her for asking.

Carter, however, softened towards the end of her demonstration. She was not averse to having some of her work taken from her hands—and the fussiest of it, besides—and she was influenced by an idea, perhaps as natural as it was irrational, that Saira, being Indian herself, must take well to that portion of Carter’s duties to which she had been assigned.

The first opportunity which Saira had of speaking to Miss Elizabeth, since their encounter in Cheapside, was that very night, when she helped her to undress before bed. She was relieved to find her more lively, more full of smiles, and more loquacious than she had been on that day; and reflected, that what she had taken for natural reserve, may have only been the fatigue of walking and of shopping.

“Good evening, Saira! How are you? I trust that Carter told you what you would be about, and where every thing is, and that sort of thing?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Good,” said Miss Elizabeth, sitting down at her vanity and beginning to remove her ear-rings, meeting Saira’s eye through the mirror. “I think that much of it must have been familiar to you—but if you have any questions, or if you forget some little detail, I am sure she will be very happy to help you. Or I will, if I am at home.”

“Thank you, miss,” said Saira, reaching out to receive the ruby-encrusted kharanphool jhumka, and moving to arrange them and their associated pearl-strands and hair-pins within layers of India-paper and saffron-paper and green baize, as she had been instructed—trying not to reveal the sense of awe she felt at handling them.

“What is your surname, Saira?”

“Das, miss.”

“Well, Das—I don’t imagine that—”

“Oh, must you call me by it?”

Miss Elizabeth blinked at her. “It is typical, as a sign of respect, for an upper servant—but, no, there is no must about it. Do you prefer ‘Saira’?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Very well,” said she, with a gentle smile. “I don’t imagine, Saira, that you will have much to do by way of needle-work, unless you like it—for I do most of my own. You shall set your own schedule for cleaning and pressing, as I don’t often care which dress I wear, so long as there is some thing appropriate to hand. What else—?—oh! No one here objects to servants reading, as long as every thing gets done in due course: but if you want some thing in particular from the library, only ask me.”

“Yes—I mean, thank you, miss,” said Saira, beginning to unravel Miss Elizabeth’s hair, and setting its pins aside in the box which her lady had opened for that purpose.

“As your work does not much depend upon any body else’s, you may have off which day you like—are you a Christian, Saira?”

“No, miss.”

“Then you may wish to chuse Friday, as I understand most of the upper servants here do. Or Sunday, along with Carter, and those whom my aunt hired in London. But whichever it is, I will make do.”

“Yes, miss.”

She had the dress, stays, chemise removed, the night-rail presented, without incident; the dress folded and tucked away into its bag, to be taken to the laundry; and all other occupations of this sort exhausted, just as the housemaid came in to light the fire. Miss Elizabeth thanked the girl by name, and then dismissed Saira to her own rest; which she obtained quickly, satisfied at having at last done some thing to merit her keep.

Chapter Text

Amid such scenes, the riches and luxury of the Eaſt, are diſplayed with faſcinating charms. Our hoſt was that elevated kind of character, in which public and private virtues were happily blended; he united the Stateſman with the private Gentleman; the deep Politician with the ſocial Companion; and though of the mildeſt manners, he was brave in an eminent degree, having led the way to victory in many campaigns.

— The travels of Dean Mahomet: a native of Patna in Bengal, through several parts of India, while in the service of the honourable the East India Company; 1794

The next day passed much as the previous had. Saira gained confidence in the performance of her duties; and what she yet lacked in confidence, she made up in the appearance of it.

Mr. Gandjee returned from a call of business near dinnertime, with the news that the Company gentleman he had gone to attend, had furnished him with an interesting piece of information: namely, that since the last time they had been in London, the odd coffee-house boasting a curry on its menu, had been supplemented and surpassed by one on George St., which served nothing but Hindoostanee fare.

Mrs. Gandjee and Elizabeth in particular professed a great curiosity to see the place; the slight irregularity of women attending eating-houses would not put them off, if Mr. Gandjee would agree to escort them; and the fact that the Gandjees had furnished their own kitchen with every thing required to make meals which were more familiar to them, than these could be, only increased their desire to see what this Indian restaurateur would serve.

Mr. Bingley, who had lately arrived to join the Gandjees (but principally Jane) for a family dinner, expressed willingness to be of the party—he only begged leave, to send a note to Mr. Hurst apprising him of their plans, for if he did not he was sure never to hear the end of it. This permission was readily granted; the note was sent; and the party dressed and set off.

The Hindoostane Coffee-House was a neat, agreeable-looking building, demarcated by a neat, agreeable-looking sign. The interior consisted of a series of rooms laid out en suite, furnished with chairs and sophas of woven bamboo, and ornamented with pictures shewing Indian landscapes, Indian sports, and Indian people of various occupations in various attitudes. The Gandjees were too familiar with the English-inflected Company style to give them more than a passing glance—but Elizabeth looked and looked again, her feelings warring between recognition, embarrassment, and longing. The views of the countryside and of several Mughal court buildings were beautiful, but, she thought, a bit stolid—but the portraits! The men and women in them always had dark hair and eyes, but their complexions varied—some were darker than she, some lighter than Jane—and the clothing all so colourful, so heavy with fringe and embroidery—draped sometimes to cover a woman’s whole form, but sometimes allowed to reveal her stomach, even to the bottoms of her breasts—

The usher was briefly surprised by the party’s evident foreignness, but mastered himself quickly, and led them to a room at the opposite end to that in which the Chilm pipes were enjoyed, “that the ladies not be bothered by the smoke.” Elizabeth and Mrs. Gandjee in particular had inhaled their fair share of hoakha smoke, but kept their silence. Bingley helped Miss Bennet into her chair, and Mr. Gandjee performed the same office by his wife and younger niece.

They had not been seated long when they were joined, not only by Mr. Hurst, but also, to their considerable surprise, by Mr. Darcy—and Miss Bingley. That lady had briefly struggled, between the picture of feminine gentility she would form by disdaining to breach the sequestration at home, which was appropriate to a woman of her station; and the necessity of adhering to Mr. Darcy. Her new conversational strategy had already yielded promising returns—namely, he frowned at her less, and was more likely to respond when she spoke—but it had also left her somewhat at a loss for things to discuss with him. She had not realised how much of her speech had centred around expressing his, and her, superiority to the lower and sillier part of their set, until she had forbidden the topic to herself—and she had let her desperation for subjects carry her so far, as actually to read whatever books she saw him read, rather than merely making a good appearance of it. The success of this procedure was yet to be tried; the progress which she had already made, was new enough that she wished to be sure she was quite secure of it; and so to the coffee-house she went.

If the Gandjees were surprised to be joined by a young lady whose acquaintance they had never made, they were too well-bred to shew it; nor did they visibly object to Miss Bingley’s being the one to request the introduction. Her brother carried out the task. He seemed really pleased to have their party thus expanded, professing several times how glad he was that all three had been able to come at such short notice. Elizabeth, finding his good-humour irresistible, began to be pleased herself, though she could not say that she had ever relished Miss Bingley’s company.

“Miss Darcy does not join us?” Elizabeth asked, once Bingley had done.

“No,” Darcy said, casting his eye around the room, and flushing slightly—“she was not equal to it.”

Which was to say, thought Elizabeth, either that she had been too shy to wish to join such a large party at a public place, or that, from one motive or another, he had himself forbidden it. Before, when she had been pleased to assume the worst of him at every opportunity, she would have been only too happy to quiz him on the subject, until he was forced to make some admission which would give her leave to hate him. Now, however, she felt some danger in further inquiry—his opinion had some power to cause her pain—and she was not equal to facing it—but then, perhaps asking him would reassure her—at present she was not sure what to think.

The party were served with a full spread of dishes and a pot of good coffee. The Gandjees declined any wine, but begged that the others would take some, as they liked. Miss Bingley, to Elizabeth’s astonishment, had no half-veiled insults to offer the surroundings or the aliment: she ate in silence, save for when she had it in her power to mark her deference for Mr. Darcy’s opinion about the weather, the roads, or how the season was proceeding.

These preliminaries over, Mr. Hurst arrested and maintained Mrs. Gandjee’s attention on the subject of the baigan bharta, the dalpuri, the mirch ka salan; and what she supposed, based on the articles provided, to be the native region of the proprietor. Mrs. Gandjee, who had grown to regard Mr. Hurst much as one regards a curious child—with an attitude partaking more of indulgence than of reverence—answered him readily, as well as she could. Meanwhile, Miss Bingley pursued a different tack:

“How does Miss Darcy with her studies? Why, I did not see her at all yesterday! I had no occasion to ask how she got on with the Italian biography she meant to translate.”

“I believe she is managing well enough.”

“Well, do please tell her that if she ever finds herself in want of practice, she will be sure to call upon me—of course, she has her master, but one cannot really converse with a tutor as easily as one can with a friend.”

A single nod.

“For my own part, I have been reading a good deal lately.”

“Have you?”

“Oh, yes! All about that horrible business with the rebellion against the British Crown in Ireland, in 1798.”

A pause. “I see. And what do you think about it?”

Mr. Bingley looked at his sister with some curiosity, never having known her to pronounce an opinion on politics before.

“I am certainly very glad that the Union came off. It was a perfectly judicious remedy to all the disturbances, which had occurred; and I hope that the native rebels will repay with gratitude all the trouble which the Crown was put to, to bring it about.”

“I have known some writers to argue, that these disturbances were in large part occasioned by those to whom that Union seemed judicious—which is to say, advantageous. It was certainly a decided increase in the power and influence of the British ministry.”

“What can you mean, Miss Eliza? Surely you are not accusing the British Crown of duplicity?”

“Of wishing to expand its dominion, I am—which is just what all empires seek to do. It is not so very strange.”

“You forget, Miss Eliza, that this late rebellion was not the first of its kind. Similar outrages had been occurring since the British first settled in Ireland, in the reign of Henry II,” said Miss Bingley—glancing up, to see how Mr. Darcy took this evidence of her learning. “They occurred for much the same reason, that rebellions always do: savages—I speak, you understand, not of all Irishmen, but only of the Catholic peasantry—savages never can bear to be under any kind of wholesome restraint.”

“The British Empire, then, is an empire unlike all others in history: it expands its domain, only to share liberty, reason, and the true revelation with its subjects?”

“Yes—that is it precisely.”

“And yet all empires in history have thought so.”

Miss Bingley was really surprised by this statement. “Even you, Miss Eliza, cannot meant to be casting doubt upon the truth of Scripture!”

“No, Miss Bingley—I am speaking only of the propriety of the methods by which that revelation is spread. Those who are converted by force will profess with their tongues, what they do not believe in their hearts.”

Mrs. Gandjee, having now become aware that a dispute was ongoing, laid a hand on Elizabeth’s arm in gentle restraint. Elizabeth allowed herself to be ruled, and applied herself with new vigour to her mutton and potatoes.

Darcy wished to be speaking to Elizabeth again, but dared not revert to the prior subject with Miss Bingley yet present, and listening; and so he merely asked her, whether she and her party meant to spent Christmas in London?

“No—we are all to return to Meryton to pass the day. I remain there until Jane’s wedding.”

“Do you then go with them on their wedding-tour? I—thought your aunt spoke, a few days ago, as though you were to stay in town much longer.”

“Yes, I am! That is, I am to return to town with Mary for the remainder of the season.”

“Oh, how wonderful for you, Miss Eliza!” Miss Bingley now broke in. “I daresay it is about time you had a season. You may rely on me, you know, as your friend, to get you all the introductions you ought to have.”

Elizabeth looked at her sister rather expressively; but only responded with a serene, “Thank you.”

Such trivialities as these occupied the party until they had finished eating and drinking; and Miss Bingley was beginning to think of making her escape, when Mr. Gandjee and Mr. Hurst united in asking to give their compliments to the proprietor. The waiter, seeing the party’s obvious quality, was quick in fetching his employer—and within five minutes the group was attended with great civility by that gentlemen, who did not only come to wait on them himself, but, on hearing their description, brought his wife to wait on them also.

Sake William Dean Mahomed was a man of fifty or so years of age, dressed in a black coat and neat white cravat. His wife, Mrs. Jane Mahomed, was a white woman, dark in colouring, and likewise in English dress. The gentleman was surprised to observe, that Mrs. Gandjee was not by her husband held so sacred that she could not be exposed to the public eye, which in Indostan was true only among the lower orders of people—but he had the grace not to inquire about it.

He shook hands with Mssrs. Gandjee, Hurst, and Bingley, and bowed to the rest; telling them all that they were very welcome in his establishment; and that he hoped they had found the articles he had produced to be genuine, and possessed of a higher degree of excellence than what had been available in the nation before. Mr. Gandjee gave the necessary assurance; but Mr. Hurst was forced to own, that he never had been in India before. Mr. Mahomed was no less pleased to meet an Epicure than the Indian gentleman, whom he had previously taken Mr. Hurst to be, and told him that he was very gratified by his interest in his offerings. Miss Bingley yawned conspicuously.

Mrs. Mahomed here found it wise to tell the party—in accents which marked her to be Irish by birth—that they would keep them no longer. Mr. Mahomed moved to obey his wife, stopping to make only one further communication—

“You will be pleased to know,” said he, bowing once more, and addressing himself principally to Mr. Hurst, “that we offer dishes which may be dressed and delivered at the shortest notice, once sent for—and that I have here for sale some curry powder, made by my own hand, which is certainly the only genuine curry powder to be found in England.”

Mr. Hurst immediately made arrangements for its purchase. Elizabeth smirked into her wine, but kept her silence.

Chapter Text

And as all persons who are born under the protection of that power, are entitled to that protection at their birth, and to every civil right which that supreme power has given; so the obligation to obey attaches upon birth, and protection and subjection are coeval and coexistent. Neither length of time, nor change of place, can vary, affect, or rescind, these reciprocal obligations. The form or knot can only be untied by the hand which tied it. Nothing but the consent of the supreme power, which represents the whole community, can release the duty of subjection.

— On the Abstract Question of the Right to Tax the Colonies," written 1765 or 1766; in Memoirs of the life of the Right Honourable Sir John Eardley Wilmot, Knt., Late Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and one of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council; 1811

Mrs. Gandjee thought that Mr. Darcy’s civility in bringing his sister to make their acquaintance ought properly to be returned before her party departed for Meryton; and she therefore, on the next day but one, brought her husband and nieces to his house to pay a farewell call.

Miss Bennet had not had any solitary conversation with Miss Darcy on their previous meeting, but she sat down by her now. Though her native temperament was more reserved than otherwise, Jane was very capable of exerting herself, where exertion was required; and her gentle manners had soon induced Miss Darcy to feel perfectly easy. Georgiana liked Miss Elizabeth, and admired her spirit and vivacity in company; she thought that she was very kind; but she had sometimes felt that her bright speeches hid more than appeared on the surface. With Miss Bennet, she felt more comfortable.

The others were soon in the midst of a discourse about travelling, which had the distinction of being as sensible as it was entertaining (for, Elizabeth reflected, many conversations were solely one or the other). The Gandjees had, of course, roamed more broadly, and could give accounts of the scenery, art, fashion, and manners in Jaipur, Bombay, Siam, and Sumatra; but, within England, they had never been outside of London and Hertfordshire. Darcy could speak with them of London, or share his impressions of Brighton and Scarborough—but it was on the subject of Derbyshire that he was most well-informed, and most animated. He gave anecdotes of the history, the landscape, the location and formation of geologic features, which every instant proved his thoughtfulness, his aesthetic judgement, and his knowledge of his home.

After some time speaking aside to Miss Bennet, Miss Darcy grew interested in the general conversation, and even ventured to ask Mrs. Gandjee a question about the musicians for hire in Bombay. She wanted a description of the various instruments used, and was soon in danger of exhausting Mrs. Gandjee’s knowledge of the organisation and composition of Indian melodies.

Darcy took this opportunity to question Elizabeth, on a matter he had for some time felt a curiosity about:—

“Some thing amused you, two nights ago—about the curry powder.”

“Did it?”

“I am sure that it did. That was not a smile arising from general good-humour, but from some particular joke.”

“Your perspicacity is really astonishing.”

He merely smiled, and waited.

“Oh, very well,” she huffed after a moment, having never been really averse to telling him. She looked round, as if to see if any body else were listening; then leaned in, and said in a low tone—“curry powder is not an Indian article.”

His smiled broadened. “No!”

“And yet I say nothing but the truth!”

“But how can Mr. Hurst have been mistaken on this point? His authority was too good.”

Elizabeth suddenly felt awkward, and lacking in loyalty; she half-wished that she had not said any thing, the warm light of Mr. Darcy’s attention and interest notwithstanding. She hastened to explain, that she dared say the constituent spices and herbs were perfectly genuine and good; and the only difference was, that in an Indian kitchen, they were not mixed together in advance of cooking,—

“But certainly here, and as an article intended for the convenience of English cooks, it is a clever invention.”

“You may feel confident of my secrecy.”

She smiled anew—of course he had recognised, and sought to alleviate, her disquiet. After a moment, she determined to raise a new subject:—

“The book, which Miss Bingley said she had read—”

“Yes?”

“Was it your’s?”

“I suspect that it was. I believe I had left it out in the drawing-room; and my friends know that they may borrow any book they like of me.”

The reminder that he counted Miss Bingley among his particular acquaintance was a well-timed caution; and she approved of the delicacy behind it, even as she thought its subject unworthy of it. She therefore addressed her next question to the argument of the book’s author, rather than to the opinions of Miss Bingley, though she rather suspected that one of them was subservient to the other:

“I believe you once told me, that you disapproved of that history’s treatment of its subject?”

“Yes. It was too—emphatic, too decided. History and politics are too complex in their nature for us to pretend that we may assign any calamity definitively to any one cause—or that we may lay the blame for it solely on any one party.”

Elizabeth thought that there were many cases in which blame could be laid solely on one party; but she determined to leave off the general, in favour of the particular:—

“This historian, I assume, blamed the Irish peasantry?”

“Yes. But I cannot believe that any people ever rebels merely because of a natural tendency to subversion and rebellion. It put me in mind of some thing that—one of my relations—is in the habit of saying, about her servants and tenants; but, where discontent is general, it arises, not from the bad dispositions of those in subjection, but from some abdication of responsibility on the part of their superiors—who ought to repay with their diligent care, the obedience which they expect to receive.”

“Authority, then, is a mutually beneficial arrangement, in which the high safeguard the rights and the liberty of the low—and, in exchange for their obedience, protect them against injustice, imprudence, and want?”

He smiled. “I have said no such thing—only that it ought to be so.”

“Ah. Of course you are correct. We must not confuse is and ought. Though, in the case which we are speaking of, I might wonder by what right the English sought to impose their authority at all—be it of what nature it may.”

He fixed her with a penetrating look. “Our author argues that it was necessary—the native Irish being, at the time of English settlement, in a very wild state. However, it may not be so. I cannot claim ignorance of the fact, that some lies are told because they are convenient.”

Elizabeth wished to press further on the implication which this remark contained, that a wild state would justify the imposition of foreign authority; but she saw that, another group of callers just then arriving, her aunt was rising to signal that they ought to take their leave.

Elizabeth followed the others out; only stopping to say, that as she was unlikely to see Darcy before she returned to Meryton, she ought now to wish him a merry Christmas and a happy new year: and she proffered her hand, to shake good-bye. He accepted it without hesitation.

When the carriage had delivered the party back in Russell Square, Mrs. Gandjee and Miss Bennet went directly up stairs—Mrs. Gandjee to see to the children, and Jane to rest before dinner. Elizabeth and her uncle settled into the smaller sitting-room to read.

Elizabeth, however, was unable to fix her attention on her book. She ended by worrying the recto page between her fingers, and gazing into the fireplace.

Mr. Gandjee had a slight suspicion as to the reason for her abstraction, and sought by the following means to determine whether he were correct:—

“I think, Lizzy, that it is not only Jane, to whom we are too late to proffer any material assistance. You will soon be beyond the reach of our help, as well.”

Elizabeth looked up, perplexed. “What can you mean?”

“You and Mr. Darcy seem to pay a good deal of attention to each other.”

Some thing passed over his niece’s face, which he could not readily identify: but, after a moment, she laughed. “No, sir. We are, perhaps, friends—which is just as well, as our family connexion would hardly allow us to be always apart, even if we did not like each other—but that is all.”

“And yet, any time that you two are in company together, you end in speaking exclusively to each other.”

“Yes—we are very certain to dispute with each other—there is no one, save for Miss Bingley, with whom I am more likely to be at odds—but I have yet to hear that recommended as an indicator of future connubial felicity.”

Satisfied by this denial, Mr. Gandjee allowed the matter to drop.

Mrs. Gandjee, when she had an opportunity to speak to Elizabeth after dinner, took a different view of the matter. Mr. Darcy’s appearance at the Hindoostane Coffee House had given her a notion that he may have a preference: and so, on that meeting and the next, she had narrowly observed them both. She could not tell, however, whether they really did have a preference for each other—it may be only that, in the small family parties that had been then assembled, there had been nobody better to speak to. And yet she felt it prudent to deliver a word of caution, as nothing of that nature could be counted on from either of Elizabeth's parents:—

“You are too sensible a girl, Lizzy, to fall in love merely because you are warned against it; and, therefore, I am not afraid of speaking openly. I thought I perceived, that you and a young man of our acquaintance looked at each other a good deal—but I fear that encouraging any such preference would not be wise. These old English families are apt to be proud. If our friend were a Company officer, an alliance with our family might be a prudent thing for him; but as it is, I think his family likely to object. Your family all rely on your good sense: you are too wise to do any thing secretly, or to consent to any thing rash.”

Elizabeth was for some moments at a loss for a reply. When she could make herself speak, it was only in jest—

“I thank you, my dear aunt, for the compliment you have paid to my sense: but you cannot suppose that I would be so cruel as to rob you and my uncle of the distinction of making a match for one of your nieces twice. I shall submit with a very good grace to whomever you find for me; I won’t try to beat you.”

“Elizabeth, this is not being serious.”

“I beg your pardon. I will try again. Mr. Darcy and I do our best to get along peaceably, so as not to alarm our more delicate companions—but that is really all. I am not waiting, or wishing for, or encouraging, any development in that quarter: therefore I can certainly obey you, and promise you to avoid secret engagements, long engagements, quasi-engagements, elopements, and any other circumstances by which the heroines of novels are apt to become dishonoured, or inconvenienced: and with this promise I hope you are satisfied.”

Her aunt assured her that she was; and Elizabeth, having thanked her for the kindness of her hints, they parted,—but Elizabeth was more confused than she appeared. Why she should resent her aunt for speaking aloud what she had already decided for herself, she could not determine: except that she must be vain enough to wish her relations to suppose any man on Earth to be at least potentially under her power, and did not like to hear practical considerations set up against her own charms!

Chapter Text

Mahomet was a man of superior genius; in writing his pretended revelation, he borrowed much from the Sacred Scriptures; he endeavoured to adorn his work with all the imposing charms of human eloquence, and cultivated language; and he appealed to the perfection of his compositions, as a proof of their divine original. Such an appeal would have little served his cause in a critical and enlightened age. The learned of such an age would reject a prophet who in the relation of events, past and future, is seen to contradict, or add strange extravagant conceits to the credible and well-attested revelations of former times.

In the Koran, which admits the heavenly origin and divine mission of Jesus Christ, he is represented as returning to the earth, marrying, begetting children, and embracing the Mahometan doctrines; and this is said plainly and without figure or mystery; and the reasons are plain why it is so said. 

— John Chappel Woodhouse, M. A., A Dissertation, in which the evidence for the Authenticity and Divine Inspiration of the Apocalypse is stated, and vindicated from the Objections of the late Professor J. D. Michaelis; 1805

The day which saw the Gandjees’ call on the Darcys, was the same day on which Mr. Collins was called from his amiable Charlotte by the necessity of making some preparations for the reception of his bride; and therefore Elizabeth and Jane, returning with the Gandjees to Meryton on the Monday two days afterwards, had the misfortune of missing him again.

Saira, upon being questioned as to her preference, had resolutely refused to be parted from Miss Elizabeth. She had no objection to travelling wherever Miss Elizabeth and Shrimati Gandjee pleased to go, but she would not be left behind; and so she, and the small valise of personal effects, which she had acquired in London with an advance of her wages, were loaded onto the back of the carriage beside Carter and her things, and transported the twenty-two miles to Longbourn.

When they arrived, Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee were received by the family with a number of kisses and tearful exclamations proportional to the years which had separated them. The children must be examined and fussed over, every body’s looks must be admired, and the tumult of embraces, which had just subsided, must be renewed and completed at least twice more.

The Gandjees’ next order of business was to distribute presents—though whether these offerings were intended as Christmas gifts, or were merely given on the occasion of their travels, they left to their recipients to determine.

Twenty minutes later, as Mr. Bennet flipped through a Hindy translation of the Hitopadesha, and Mary tentatively plucked at the strings of her new kamaisha, Mrs. Gandjee was entreated by Mrs. Bennet, Kitty, and Lydia, to describe the newest fashions of London, as she had seen them. In this endeavour she called more than once upon Elizabeth as an aide-mémoire. She was also queried about the colours, cuts, and patterns lately worn by the modish ladies of Bombay; upon which Kitty and Lydia, not much interested in any thing which affected them so little, allowed their attention to drift back to their newly acquired wares: but Miss Bennet was polite, and Elizabeth really interested.

The next part which the Gandjees had to play was a less active one. Mrs. Bennet had much to boast and to complain of: and as it was by no means certain which mode of speech she most excelled at, it was some time before her auditors had more to do than to smile and hum in sympathy.

“—and a daughter on the point of being married! I would, you know, have had two, but that horrid Mr. Collins was so above himself, it was not to be endured. To imagine that, in order to be worthy of the honour of being his wife, Mary ought to bend to his whims! No, indeed! As though my girls, in possession of gentility, and money, and beauty—though, to be sure, Mary is not so handsome as the rest—to imagine that my girls should be begging after him! Well, Mr. Bennet was so good as to say that he did not care so much about the match after all—and so we told Mary never to mind about it. The only thing that vexes me about it now, is that it has got Lady Lucas so frightfully puffed up—as if she has taken some great prize from us! No, indeed! Well, I just told her that if her daughter could feel right about taking other people’s husbands, then she was very welcome to him—though I am sure it is just what I would never do.

“But however, I have one daughter about to be married, and to such a rich, handsome, agreeable gentleman—Charlotte’s is nothing to it!  And when you return to London, I hope that you will see what you can do with Lizzy in that way: for, really, I am about ready to wash my hands of her. You won’t have known any thing about it,” continued she, forgetting that she had thoroughly canvassed the subject in two or three letters over the years, “but she has already sent away one or two of the local young men, who had very promising inclinations—not but that they were too poor and too low for her, anyway—and I am not at all certain that she will not end in doing the same to poor Mr. Wickham, who has been asking after her this past week and more, and who is so very handsome and charming. But no, no, nobody is good enough for Miss Lizzy! Not but that Lizzy is a very good girl—but you just be sure to tell her that with her complexion she cannot afford to be too dainty about the business, and to find her some respectable officer, or clergyman, or Company man, and see her safely settled down.”

Elizabeth, engaged in attempting to learn a new style of zari work for which she had been gifted the materials, affected not to hear. Lydia, who had been waving about her new peacock-feather fan, despite the coolness of the weather, in order to hear her new delicate golden bangles chime together, now approached and fluttered it over the table, so that the shorter lengths of gold wire were scattered; Elizabeth huffed in pretended offence, but, after a moment, the sisters laughed together heartily.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Gandjee made her sister a slight answer, and then, in compassion to Elizabeth, turned the conversation. When alone with Elizabeth afterwards, she spoke more on the subject:—

“We talked before, Lizzy, of your good sense; and I hope that you have too much of it to mind what your mother says. You are a markedly pretty girl: besides which, no reasonable man cares about these things—certainly no body you would want to marry. And, indeed, you need never marry at all, if you do not like it. You know that you have friends—Jane, and your uncle and I—with whom you will always have a home.”

Elizabeth assured her of her perfect indifference; but Mrs. Gandjee nevertheless resolved to speak to her sister-in-law about guarding her tongue at the earliest opportunity that presented itself.

After dinner, Elizabeth applied to her father for any aid he might give her in learning Hindy herself. Mr. Bennet, long accustomed to Elizabeth’s intellectual curiosities, readily agreed: and if the lesson he gave were disorganised and not really suited for a beginner, Elizabeth was so quick that it hardly mattered.

“I am glad to see, by the by,” said he, as she rose to leave him to his own studies, “that you have not by your stay in town acquired any bad habits. I was not sure that I would not find you desiring to eat dinner barefoot on the floor.”

“There is yet time, sir.”

Christmas dawned dull and grey; the provisory frosts, which had covered the lawn overnight, had melted by morning. Miss Bingley and the Hursts were yet in London, but Bingley, having completed his business in town, had arrived in Meryton the afternoon before, and intended to spend Christmastide with the Bennets and Gandjees. Karim and Manoj made good their escape from the nursery and the schoolroom, delighted to have a holiday to which they were not usually entitled.

Most of the family were crowded into the large drawing-room when Bingley was announced at Longbourn. Mrs. Bennet was busy with the housekeeper, revising her menu yet again; but Mr. Bennet sat in a corner of the room, lending his countenance to the gathering. Kitty and Lydia were arguing over a trade, which one of them wanted to make, and the other did not; and Elizabeth and Jane were sat on the floor, teaching the children how to play at cat’s-cradle. Mary had retreated to the quiet of her own room.

Bingley cheerfully greeted every body present, and shook hands with Lizzy and Jane with especial warmth; and then gave each child a little bag of nuts and dried figs. As the boys opened the bags to ascertain their contents, a surprised “Thank you, sir!” and its echo were heard; and Manoj, as the elder and therefore the emissary, went to ask Mrs. Gandjee whether they might not have some now.

“You are very welcome!” replied Bingley, smiling brightly. “It is not every day that our Saviour is born!”

“Who is our saviour, mami?” asked Manoj, through a mouthful of candied almonds; meanwhile sitting beside her on the sopha, the more properly to receive their caller.

Bingley, becoming conscious of his faux pas, coloured deeply; but the Gandjees, who were well-practiced in the art of syncretism, were untroubled—and Mrs. Gandjee told Manoj, that he was already aware of who Isa was. Manoj and Karim, eager to show off their learning before the man who was to become their bhai, and to prove themselves worthy of their sweets, chattered happily about the wife of Imran and her daughter Maryam, to whom Jibril brought news of a son, and that son was Isa, and he performed many miracles, and he was a masih:—“but I beg your pardon, sir,” concluded Manoj, “for I do not know the English.”

“Messiah,” supplied Mr. Gandjee; and the children tested the word to themselves.

Mr. Bingley gave the boys the praise which they were wanting, and told them that they must be very clever and diligent to have remembered so much; he was sure that he had never been such a diligent student himself.

“I think you are too modest,” said Jane. “I am sure that you always did well.”

“Yes, Bingley,” returned Elizabeth—“you see that your reputation is under Jane’s protection: therefore you must not say any thing against it.”

To this succeeded a general conversation, to which the children for a while seemed attentive: but eventually Karim laid his bag aside and applied to Manoj for a recommencement of their game, which they could by now carry on pretty well by themselves. They spent some time in recreating the figures they remembered, then began to invent new ones.

The day passed amidst the alternating periods of calm and chaos which seven inhabitants, four guests, and a dozen servants must occasion in a house of moderate size. That night, when Saira began to help her undress for bed, Miss Elizabeth handed her a small box—

“I know that you don’t celebrate, yourself,” said her lady. “But I noticed that you had pierced ears, and no ear-rings.”

Inside the box was a pair of pretty garnet ear-drops in a pinchbeck setting.

“Oh! Thank you,” cried Saira, forgetting herself so far as to leave off helping her mistress, and instead bend down slightly to don the ear-rings in the vanity’s mirror. She twisted her head this way and that, to admire their effect in the candlelight.

Miss Elizabeth laughed. “Well! I am very happy you like them, Saira. Now, why don’t you retire for the night? I shall manage the rest very well for myself.”

Chapter Text

The mindy is a plant much resembling the myrtle; the leaves being pounded, or steeped for some time, yield a very strong tint of a reddish brown. It is very common for the ladies of India to plaster their hands and feet with the pulp made of bruised mindy leaves, and to sit for ten or twelve hours deprived of their use, until the stain may have been made sufficiently strong. A lady would consider herself quite negligent of her personal charms, if she should fail at least to tinge the tips of all her nails, both of the hands and feet, with mindy, and to blacken her teeth with the gum, or rather the composition called missy. To Europeans these at first are by no means attractive, but use soon reconciles them, and after a while many are rather gratified by, than averse to, such peculiarities.

— Captain Thomas Williamson, Oriental field sports; being a complete, detailed, and accurate description of the wild sports of the east; 1807

During what remained of Christmastide, Elizabeth carried out a study of the principles and practice of Hindoostanee cookery—having been requested by Mrs. Jones to wait till after Christmas day, when the operations pertaining to the plum porridge, Christmas lamb, and cider would be over, to launch her invasion of the kitchens.

Mrs. Bennet began to think it inappropriate for any daughter of her’s to be engaged in the work of cooking, and would not own that she had ever suggested any such thing. But Elizabeth was firm—the idea, once it had been put before her, had taken hold—she wished to be secure of this inheritance against all future vagaries of fate—and Mr. Bennet refused his wife’s request to countermand her. Thus Elizabeth spent part of every morning and evening learning from Mrs. Jones in the kitchen, or Mrs. Hill in the still-room.

Before beginning on this course, Elizabeth had asked Saira if she was familiar with cookery, or if she would like to learn; but Saira peremptorily declined, the offices of a kitchen-maid being rather beneath her station.

The better part of each day was devoted to visiting and parties; and part of each night, to amusing Saira with her halting Hindy. These visits permitted Elizabeth to learn, that Mr. Wickham still hoped to convince her that he was essential to her happiness; and that, whether Lydia had tried again for his attention during her absence or no, she had by now left off, and so had presumably not been encouraged.

She first met her gallant again during dinner at the Gouldings’, when he took care to lead her in to the dining room that he might seat himself next to her. After the initial inquiries as to her health and that of her family, he asked for an accounting of her time in London.

“It was busy. I was very glad to see my aunt and uncle again, after so long an absence.”

“They seem to be very genteel, agreeable people.”

Elizabeth thanked him, and said that indeed they were; but did not say, that she would ask to be permitted to introduce him to their notice.

“Dare I ask—whether, in between those busy scenes you passed in London, you had any time to miss me?” he asked, his voice low.

“You may ask—it is doubtful, however, whether I will answer,” she smiled.

“Ah! Then I do not ask.”

A few moments of silence here succeeded; but Wickham then wondered how Mr. Bingley did, and whether his friend still treated her with the respect that she was due?—“for his manners, like his promises, can be a little whimsical.”

Elizabeth thought, that he meant to test whether she were still deceived in the matter of his inheritance: and accordingly she made some affirmative reply, which did not reveal her good information.

The rest of their conversation was as it had always been. Wickham was gentle, winning, amiable, and handsome as ever: but she noticed anew, what she had already known a month before—even had she not known him to be given up to vice, he was not as thoughtful, not as thorough, his mind was not as well-informed as Darcy’s.

Mrs. Bennet had conceived the very amiable plan of marrying her daughter to Mr. Bingley shortly before Charlotte Lucas’s marriage to Mr. Collins, that Lady Lucas might have the honour and the challenge of following the entertainment which she would provide. Her notions of English taste must forbid the palanquins, the dancing girls, and the bands of musicians, that usually attended such an event: but a wedding feast was a common point in the traditions of her youth and her adulthood—and a very splendid one must certainly be provided.

One day, as Mrs. Bennet chattered about which articles should be offered—under the pretence of wanting the others’ opinions, which however she did not admit—Elizabeth asked from whence the mindy was to be procured, and whether she ought to ask Saira whether she were skilled in its application, or if she would try her own hand at it?

Mr. Bingley issued a bright, cheery laugh—in response to which Elizabeth, smiling but puzzled, asserted that she was sure she could manage it,—

“Years of drawing lessons and embroidery cannot escape giving someone a steady hand, if nothing else.”

“Oh! I—beg your pardon,” said he. “I only did not realise that you were serious about the mindy.”

Elizabeth would not speak until she believed herself to have attained the appearance of composure. “Well—I suppose the opinion that matters in this instance, is Jane’s—and therefore there is no need for you and I to speak any more about it.”

Mr. Bingley hastened to say that he would of course accede to any thing Jane desired pertaining to her dress, and his. He had not considered the existence of any difference in custom before, not being in the habit of thinking of Jane as an Indian woman—now, however, that it had been brought to his attention, he was too easy, too good-natured, and too violently in love, to object to any alteration to what he had been used to consider as the usual forms of a wedding, so long as the ceremony itself were binding according to English law.

Mrs. Bennet, however, did forward an objection: and Miss Bennet, whose mind was more pragmatic than symbolic, had no great attachment to any of the external formalities of a wedding—she wanted only to be married—and accordingly she said that she did not view the ritual as a necessary one.

The revolution of ideas taking place in Elizabeth’s mind was similar to that which Bingley had just experienced, though opposite in direction. She had never had any conception that Jane would wear a nuth, the alteration required by it being rather a permanent one; but that she would abjure all the rites which their mother had described as attendant upon a wedding in India, had never occurred to her. The conversation altogether had made her uneasy: and, though she scolded herself for attaching more significance to trifles than they warranted, she could not help but feel that, somewhere unseen, some fissure was forming.

Nevertheless, Elizabeth determined to pass as much time as she could with Jane and with Charlotte, before each had entered the hymeneal state. Mr. Collins was to return on Saturday, and to reside with the Lucases; Elizabeth, therefore, was at Lucas Lodge soon after breakfast on Friday.

Elizabeth, who had not seen Charlotte for several days, opened the interview by inquiring after the progress of preparations for the wedding since that time. Miss Lucas answered her, and made Elizabeth the same question. Elizabeth chose not to disclose the matter of the mindy, not quite wishing to hear whatever no doubt very sensible thing Charlotte would say about it: and only answered,—

“Some of the fillings for the pies and pastries are already being made, if you can believe it.”

Charlotte laughed. “Forgive me, Eliza, but I easily can.”

“Indeed. You know my mother well enough to have suspected it even before you were told,” replied Elizabeth, laughing as well.

“And how is—what was her name? Your new maid.”

“Saira Das. She is as well as can be expected—though still rather inclined to startle, at times. But she seems happier, now that she has taken to going out to the village with some of the other girls, some afternoons. She actually laughed at me last night, which I regard as a very positive development. I will teach her to be insolent and insubordinate yet.”

“If any body could succeed in such a goal, it would be you. You always did try to lead by example.”

Elizabeth took up a cushion and hurled it at Charlotte’s head; and once more the girls laughed together, though each was sadly conscious of the great change that was soon to take place.

Chapter Text

Safe in the arms of beauty’s Queen,
Tranſported to the bliſsful ſcene,
Where fortune firſt indulgent ſmil’d,
And bleſ’t with wealth her darling child;
There ſhall the nuptial knot be ty’d,
In all the pomp of eaſtern pride.

— James Messinck, “The Choice of Harlequin; or, The Indian Chief. A Pantomimical Entertainment in two Parts”; 1781

Mr. Collins returned to Hertfordshire on schedule, and took up his residence under the same roof as his fair intended. Mrs. Bennet, some of her pique soothed (or, at least, redirected) by considerations of the excellent match Jane was soon to make, could meet him with every appearance of composure; but she was still glad, that he was not staying at Longbourn to be met with more often.

Twelfth Night came and went; Christmastide was no more; and the day arrived, on which Miss Bennet and Mr. Bingley were to be joined in matrimony. Bingley’s party, having made the journey to Netherfield the day before, accompanied him to the church. Elizabeth fussed over Jane’s hair and dress for some time after Carter had been dismissed, which treatment Jane patiently bore; eventually, however, their departure could be put off no longer; and the Bennet party made the short drive to the parish church.

The ceremony proceeded without incident and without parade. Elizabeth, in a borrowed gown of Mary’s, was bridesmaid; Darcy stood up with his friend; Mr. Bennet gave his daughter away; Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst whispered to each other; Mrs. Bennet had frequent recourse to her salts. By this one rite, two significant transmogrifications were produced—Miss Bennet became Mrs. Bingley; and Miss Elizabeth became Miss Bennet. Mr. and Mrs. Bingley then departed the church, arm-in-arm and smiling broadly through tearful eyes, amidst showers of rice and flower petals.

At breakfast, Elizabeth proudly informed Charlotte that some of the articles at table were of her own creation. She was laughed at good-naturedly for her trouble, Miss Lucas having been accustomed to cooking from her childhood.

In due time—the bride and bridegroom, from their good nature, having been induced to stay rather longer than they had at first intended, but Jane at last insisting—our couple rose to leave. Jane embraced all her family in turn: till at last Elizabeth came forward.

“Oh! What will I do without my Jane?”

Jane gave her a gentle smile. “I will not be gone for so very long, Lizzy—and then we will not be parted again until you marry.”

Lizzy responded only with a tight embrace, and relieved her feelings, by pouring tears into her sister’s neck; and then hanging around it, a little silver vinaigrette full of saffron-water, “for luck—not, of course, that you will need it.”

Jane took up the vinaigrette from where it had nestled, beside her beadwork necklace, within the folds of her chemisette; and, upon smelling the saffron, grinned widely.

“Mangjee! Dey diyotha chandlo?”

Mrs. Bennet looked up from where she was speaking to Lady Lucas, surprised to be thus addressed by Jane amongst company; her lips briefly thinned in disapproval at the request; but the beaming faces of her two eldest daughters, still half-embracing, softened her—and she excused herself to perform the ceremony.

The bride and groom’s foreheads were duly anointed with the saffron-water—Bingley was slightly bemused, but submitted—and they were showered with rice yet again. Jane looked round for a piece of candy, but Elizabeth was already at her side with a plate of wedding-cake: “that our life may be sweet,” Jane explained to her husband, as he obediently swallowed his forkful.

The bride’s family then walked the couple out to their carriage. Mr. Bennet told Jane that she was a very good girl, and he was proud of her; Elizabeth laid a tearful kiss on her lips; and so she was at last sent off, smiling and weeping, to the insuperable distance of three miles.

Miss Lucas was to be married on Thursday; on Wednesday, therefore, she paid the Bennets her farewell visit. When she rose to take leave, Elizabeth, ashamed of her mother’s insinuations about the splendidness of Jane’s breakfast, and the comparative insignificance of the Lucases’ income and the station of their daughter’s groom, accompanied her out of the room. Elizabeth was sincerely affected to be parting with the woman who had been her most particular friend from the time when she was of an age to be a rational companion to any body; and wished for an opportunity of speaking to her alone.

As they went down stairs together, Charlotte said,—

“I shall depend on hearing from you very often, Eliza.”

“That you certainly shall.”

“And I have another favour to ask. Will you come and see me?”

“I will—if you will but tell me when.”

“My father and Maria are to come to me in March. Indeed, Eliza, you will be as welcome to me as either of them.”

The wedding took place: the bride and bridegroom set off for Kent from the church door, and the others were had to Lucas Lodge for a breakfast—which, however, did not rival Mrs. Bennet’s. This was just as well, as it was doubtful whether a large quantity of bride-cake could have been consumed for the second time in one week, if it had been provided. Elizabeth, as she ate, was silent and distracted, imagining Charlotte’s progress on her journey, and measuring when she would likely arrive at each stop—not envying her the prospect of such a distance to be travelled alongside Mr. Collins, and then unhappily reflecting, that that distance was but the beginning of an entire lifetime.

Having now staid above two weeks in Longbourn, and with nothing keeping them there after the nuptials of their friends, the Gandjees and Elizabeth planned to depart for London on Saturday. Mr. Bennet was pained to be losing his favourite daughter so soon after he had regained her—and in fact so little liked her going, that he told her to write to him, and almost promised to answer. For her part, Mrs. Bennet gave Elizabeth a tight embrace and a compliment on her pastries, in place of the scolding on the subject of her attitude towards prospective suitors, which she had been expecting.

Mary, when she was asked, pronounced herself willing to go along to London for the benefit of her education in drama and the opera: and she issued several very sententious sentences about the institution of marriage, and for what it had been ordained, and assured her relations that she felt herself prepared to embark upon it with sobriety, diligence, and obedience.

Elizabeth thought that her uncle and aunt looked surprised to find Mary so very much in person what she was in her letters, and needed some care to conceal a smile—till she reflected, that Mary might have been married already, had she really been as prepared as she claimed to place herself under such subjection; and this remembrance softened her so much, that she could even assure Mary that she would do any man credit.

One event of this period remains to be described. Mr. Wickham, hearing the date of the intended departure of Miss Elizabeth’s party, and understanding that it would not be to his benefit for her to enter London society in search of a husband, came to throw himself upon her mercy on Friday.

Wickham would ordinarily be inclined to consider ten thousand pounds as very insufficient to his support. His situation, however, was growing desperate, and he would not throw away an opportunity for immediate relief, from the slim hope of some future ascension to a greater fortune—especially not when the difference might be between the lively, sparkling Elizabeth Bennet, and another woman rather less interesting, or less comely.

He had at first regarded Elizabeth’s race only as some thing which might make his conquest easier: but now, the more he thought about it, the more it warmed him. His mind was full of hazy images of Indian dancing-girls in translucent veils, and heavily bejewelled, barefoot women reclining on cushions in the sultry sequestration of sultans’ harems; and he wondered, underneath the modesty with which she had always addressed him, how much of the licentiousness and sensuality of the East were pooled in her blood, or might be brought by his encouragement to dwell there. He went to profess his love for her believing that he might almost mean it this time, and even toyed with the idea of remaining for some time faithful to her—and, perhaps, her maid.

By good luck, he came upon her in the shrubbery. They exchanged greetings, and he turned to walk with her. He entered into his subject a moment later, and, seizing her hand, spoke meltingly of his love—his fear—his consciousness of his unworthiness—his hope in her goodness—his admiration for her beauty, her wit, and her vivacity—and his fervent desire to be accepted as her husband, on which title his happiness for ever must depend. Elizabeth, who thought that she knew pretty well what these declarations were worth, thanked him for the compliment he paid her with his proposals, but told him that it was impossible for her to do otherwise than to refuse them; however, she was very sorry for the pain she must be causing him, however unintentionally it had been done, etc.

Wickham looked surprised, and almost angry, before he subdued his expression into one of gentle woundedness. At last allowing her to withdraw her hand, as she had been attempting to do for some minutes, he spoke thus:—

“Yes—I believe I understand you. Your ambitions are greater than what you think my expectations can fulfil. My birth is too insignificant to be thought worthy of an alliance with your’s. Perhaps, if my prospects had not been so blighted—had I a gentleman’s fortune, to match my gentleman’s education! But you are perfectly right—to stand in the face of familial opposition, merely for love, would require a courage, which—but stay—I will say no more. I have now only to lament you, as the dearest, the most beloved object which my old friend’s treachery has cost me,” said he, his tones sinking as if under the influence of suppressed tears.

Heartily did Elizabeth resent this mistaken representation of her motives, and the attempt at persuasion which it concealed. She wanted to ask him, how long he thought the principle of her fortune would last in his hands: for, at his rate of spending, it could not be above eight years? She stopped herself, however, at the last moment, remembering that he would of course determine the source of her information, and desiring to give him no further motive to wish to revenge himself upon her friend. She allowed him, therefore, to believe himself correct, and only begged leave to return to the house.

Chapter Text

MURTOCH: I knew it—I knew it—Black, brown, green, or yellow, I bother them all—Oh! Murtoch, you murtherer of beauty—but the milk of compaſſion riſes within me for poor Cubbagh—I wiſh ſhe was not ſooty—Who knows—may be the journey will bleach her—Troth it's a ſhame your miſtreſs never found out that fellow, that advertiſes to whiten ladies hands and faces, the limping Jew, he'd make you fair as a daiſy.

CUBBA: No matter, my colour, if me do right—Good black face be happier den bad white.

MURTOCH: Troth and I believe ſhe may be the daughter of a king, for ſhe has the mind of a prince—If her face was but as white as her heart, ſhe'd be a wife for a pope.

— William Macready, The Irishman in London; or, The Happy African. A Farce in Two Acts. Performed at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden; 1793

The intended party arrived in Russell Square on the intended day. A letter was there awaiting Elizabeth from Charlotte; and she responded to it with news of the weather in London, and the behaviour of the children on their journey, and the health of her uncle and aunt. She then wrote a letter to Jane, to be sent to await her arrival in Yorkshire. It contained much of the same news, and considerably more in the way of teazing references to her correspondent’s new marriage.

In her missive to Lydia, Elizabeth was not sure how much to reveal: would telling her of Mr. Wickham’s proposals make him appear as her own cast-off suitor, and therefore undesirable? Or would the knowledge of his disappointment make him a tragic figure, in need of consolation and comfort? She resolved, at last, upon asking after Mr. Denny, in hopes of distracting her—judging that introducing Wickham into their conversation in any guise would only serve to keep him in Lydia’s mind.

During the following weeks, Elizabeth and Mary entered in earnest into the entertainments of the season. “Othello,” “Percy,” “Siege of Damascus,” contributed to Mary’s education in the arts; and the party always stayed afterwards for the comedy and the pantomime, though Mary pressed her lips together in disapproval when Elizabeth’s laughter grew too unguarded.

The girls were introduced to Mr. Winmore about a week after their arrival in town, when the Gandjees had him to dinner. He was precisely as Mrs. Gandjee had promised: cheerful and lively; though his manners were perhaps not such as could be termed polished.

Mr. Winmore’s father had been a tradesman in a small way in Lincolnshire, manufacturing and bleaching English linen. Mr. Winmore himself, upon his ascension to the family business, had carried on this concern—but, observing the increasing cheapness and popularity of Indian cottons, and knowing that he must sail the way the wind was blowing, had begun looking about him for a way to join in their trade. Fortunes from the East India Company were rare and slow in the making, unless one were already a gentleman of some consequence with the right set of acquaintance; but the Company’s exclusive privileges made it impossible for him to enter into business with any Indian manufacturer in his own right. It was in this state of hesitance and confusion that he was first introduced to Mr. Gandjee, who, as a subject of the Maratha, and not the British, Empire, and scion of a very old trading family, enjoyed a certain amount of leniency in these matters; and so Mr. Winmore became a wholesale importer and seller of muslins, and the Gandjees’ foremost connexion to the fashionable linen-drapers and dress-makers of London. The prospect of a more permanent alliance between the two families was therefore a highly eligible one.

Winmore addressed himself, at dinner, particularly to Elizabeth. The usual course of questioning about the length of her stay in town, and the variety of entertainments which she had seen, and those which she had not, concluded with the inquiry:—

“And do you like the theatre?”

“Oh, yes! Though I do not know who would dare to answer no to that question.”

He laughed at some length, before continuing: “Then I hope you have had the opportunity of going, of late?”

Elizabeth said that she had, and briefly named the tragedies, and the histories, which her party had thus far attended—but confessed to her preference for comedies.

He smiled. “I can well believe it. You were formed for laughter.”

“As you say,” she replied—laughing.

“Did you see Shakespeare’s ‘Comedy of Errors’ last week? Or ‘The Irishman in London’?”

“Yes—both—and ‘Blue-beard.’ I thought ‘The Irishman’ particularly interesting—a queer blend of farce and feeling—though I don’t like to see quite so many Irish bulls consecutively. One would think, from watching a production of this sort, that no one except for the Irish and servants are ever ridiculous.”

“Ha! Very true, Miss Bennet—very true. No one may avoid being ridiculous always. But who interested you, in particular? Mr. Colloony, I suppose,” he asked, winking at her—which she affected not to see.

“Cubba.”

“Ah, yes, of course! Good-hearted, honest Cubba, who so sincerely loved her mistress.”

“Sincerely! I do not know if she was sincere. It is difficult to judge of the sincerity of someone, who is not at liberty to be otherwise than submissive.”

“Yet, while in England, she does have liberty—as does every servant. She could give notice, and leave.”

“True—and go where, and serve whom? In a strange country, having been taken so far from her home!”

He smiled at her warmly. “Your sensibility does you credit. It is one of the foremost of the many admirable natural qualities of your sex: that ready sympathy!”

“Feminine sensibility, do you think it? Common humanity, I should rather say.”

“Well! It shall be as you please. I have no desire to argue with you,” he said, bowing slightly, and still smiling.

Besides Mr. Winmore, there were other men with whom Mr. Gandjee did business, and whose sisters, wives, and daughters were counted among Mrs. Gandjee’s acquaintance: they must pay formal calls to each of them, and institute a round of dinners to be given and received at in turn; routs, card-parties, and balls among the third and fourth circles began to fill their time. Elizabeth thought that, to judge from this set, people in town were much as they were in the country: drawn in various shadings of sense and foolishness, meanness and generosity; and rather inclined to think and to talk of themselves—the men, in particular, inclined to flatter, and to speak nonsense.

Throughout this period, Elizabeth’s correspondence with Charlotte continued as regular and frequent as it ever had been—and as reserved as it had been since Charlotte’s engagement. She read these letters with considerable curiosity: she wanted to learn how Charlotte would speak of her new home, how she would like Lady Catherine, and how happy she would dare pronounce herself to be. This curiosity, however, was but ill repaid—Elizabeth felt that Charlotte expressed herself on every point exactly as she might have foreseen. She wrote cheerfully, seemed surrounded with comforts, and mentioned nothing which she could not praise. The house, furniture, neighbourhood, and roads, were all to her taste; her Ladyship was very friendly and obliging; the demands, which Elizabeth felt sure she must be constantly making, as to the proper management of Charlotte’s home, were all softened or elided. Elizabeth perceived that she must wait for her own visit there, to judge of Mrs. Collins’s situation with any accuracy.

Chapter Text

It must be impossible to navigate ships, whose voyages commence in India, as cheap as those which sail from this country, because they must be chiefly manned by Mohamedan natives of India, called Lascars, who, from their feeble habit of body, and being accustomed only to short voyages during the fine-weather season upon the tranquill seas of India, are unable to bear the cold, and utterly incapable of the vigorous exertion necessary in the boisterous seas of Europe. As they are very expensive, eighty or ninety of them being scarcely equal to fifty British seamen, many of them are turned off in London, where they beg and perish, in order to put as many British seamen as possible in their place for the return passage to India.

The appearance of these miserable creatures in the streets of London frequently excites the indignation of passengers against the Company, who, they suppose, bring them to this country, and leave them destitute. The truth is, that the Company support as many of them as they can collect. But many of them are so much vitiated by intercourse with worthless women, as to prefer a state of beggary to the support which the Company have provided for them.

— David Macpherson, History of the European Commerce with India; 1812

A few days later, Mr. Winmore and Mr. Hayward—a manufacturer and importer of fine jewellery—attended Elizabeth, Mary, and their aunt to Hyde-park. Miss Bennet had made the shocking confession, that she had never seen it: and Mr. Winmore had insisted that such a privation could not be suffered to stand. Her protestation that she had seen Kensington Gardens would not avail her: she must see the Ring, and Rotten-row, and the Serpentine, or she could lay no claim upon having seen London. Mr. Hayward, who was then present to pay a morning call on Miss Bennet following their dance at the previous night’s assembly, had volunteered himself as another escort, ostensibly to Miss Mary; and so the engagement was fixed.

The gentlemen arrived at Russell Square at the appointed time, and quarrelled good-naturedly about whose carriage would convey every body to and around the park (winter being no season for curricles). Hayward emerged victorious: and his coach took the party over Southhampton-row, Great Russell street, and Oxford-street, thence to enter the park via Cumberland-gate.

Mary and Elizabeth, looking out opposite windows of the forward-facing seat, saw the throngs of horsemen and pedestrians kicking up the dirt and gravel of foot-paths and horse-rides; the carriages, with their brightly painted side pannels and splendidly liveried footmen; the great expanse of lawn, covered in a fine layer of frost, and interspersed with benches, shrubberies, and trees, now bare of their leaves.

“How do you like your first sight of the park, Miss Bennet?” asked Mr. Winmore.

“It has already endeared itself to me by its extent. I am a country girl at heart, and had begun to miss the look of unimpeded sky.” Winmore nodded and tried to smile, though he suddenly looked thoughtful.

“Though I will be disappointed,” she continued, “if I do not see at least one entertaining bit of human folly. The 'Scourge' and the 'Satirist' have led me to expect some very daring exhibitions of horsemanship.”

“Or at least some very daring fashions,” forwarded Mr. Hayward. “Some days I do not know whether I am at Hyde-park or Drury-lane theatre.”

Hayward congratulated himself on the brightness of the smile which Miss Bennet then directed at him—though he would not have, had he known what she was really thinking of.

“What do you think, Mary?” asked Mrs. Gandjee. “Does it live up to its reputation?”

Mary expressed her hope that she would not see any notable exploits of whippism, “as any risk undertaken ought to be in proportion to its necessity; and there could be no call for riding quickly without any emergency to render it needful.”

Elizabeth here wished to descend and walk, and would not listen to any representations of the coolness of the weather or the state of the lawns. Mary wished to stay in the coach, and so Mr. Hayward and Mrs. Gandjee were obliged to do so also: but Mr. Winmore led Elizabeth to observe the dozens of fashionably attired ladies and gentlemen milling about and leaning against the railing, which separated one of the foot-paths from the Ring; and then onward, to walk the path around the Serpentine.

“How beautiful,” said Elizabeth—looking thoughtfully at the swans, with their white wings extending and folding like so many sails, as they weaved between and through each other, braiding their wakes.

Mr. Winmore gave the birds a peremptory glance, before saying, boisterously,—

“It is only a shame that you were not in town in the summer! We might have gone to Vauxhall.”

Elizabeth smiled, though without ceasing her observation of the water. “Is it very grand?”

“Is it very grand! Yes, indeed it is. The music is not what one would call elegant—I don’t claim that—but it is pleasing—and the lights are very grand indeed. And then there is the Rotunda. A terrible shame you were not in town in the summer! It was all done up in style of a Hindoo temple—with Indian scenery, the mountains and palm trees, painted all round—and a golden Hindoo idol of—well, I do not know which god it was—it was a man, kneeling in the open mouth of a fish. And golden elephant-heads mounted on the pillars.”

“It is a shame I missed it,” said Elizabeth, dryly.

“Yes, indeed! You might have told me all about it.”

“All about what, sir?”

“Well,” he said, suddenly stymied—“the—the idol, you know. I have read Mr. Terry, and Miss Hamilton, and I understand that Hindostan has an extraordinary civilisation—very ancient religion—the missionaries ought to let it alone, if you ask me.”

“I could not have told you any thing, sir. I am not a Hindoo. I am afraid I am sadly ignorant of their gods.”

“Oh, yes! Yes, to be sure! I know that you were raised in England, and away from the religion of your relations. Forgive me my bit of foolishness, Miss Bennet. But I do wish you had been with me, when I went!”

“My relations have not been Hindoos for some centuries, sir. The Gandjees are Moslims.”

“Ah!” said he, expressively—and then fell silent.

“Perhaps we ought to return to the coach: the others will have almost completed the circuit by now.”

“Yes, yes! You are wise, Miss Bennet. We don’t wish to keep them waiting.”

The party returned the same way they had come. Twilight had fallen while they had been admiring the park and its inhabitants, and Oxford-street was now lit with a superfluity of dazzling lamps; the shop windows were wide and sparkling and illuminated from within; and the various lights cast their alternating shadows across the windows of the coach as it clattered along.

Of a sudden, the coach ground to a halt, making the flambeaux shake and rattle; its inhabitants heard the coachman swear, and the horses sport their hooves.

“What is the matter?” asked Mrs. Gandjee.

“Wait one moment, and I will ascertain it,” said Mr. Hayward, who left the coach immediately; though, to what effect, the others could not be sure, except to say that a loud tumult began.

Elizabeth, urgently looking out the window, saw a large group of men crowded in front of the carriage—which explained why they had stopped—but, what they wanted, she could not ascertain. She began to slide the glass of the window downwards, against her aunt’s advice; and one of the men in the throng instantly moved back to meet her, lowering his head to stare in, and almost starting when he saw her and her aunt. He bowed, and began to speak in soft, pleading tones, sweeping his hands out before him, palms up; though Elizabeth could not understand what he said. Mrs. Gandjee answered him, though haltingly, and reached for her purse.

Mr. Hayward, alarmed to see several more men now move to crowd about the open window of his expensive coach, clambered back into it; and, seeing Mrs. Gandjee in her operations, spoke to halt her:—

“Oh, there is no need of that, madam. My men are armed, and will soon have them cleared away.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Gandjee, repressively, “but it is no inconvenience to me.”

“Well, but let me distribute whatever you see fit to give—for Heaven’s sake, Miss Bennet, do not reach out the window—! Or at least take off that bracelet, before you do.”

But the man took the purse, and began to distribute its contents fairly amongst his fellows, without making any move for the bracelet. He bowed again, and said some thing else—though all that was intelligible to Elizabeth was “thank you,” and “sister.”

Mrs. Gandjee, meanwhile, was writing down an address on one of her calling cards, which she likewise gave Elizabeth to hand to the men’s impromptu representative. What she then said to him prompted another outpouring of gratitude—Elizabeth supposed she had put them in the way of finding work and passage on one of her husband’s fleet—and he moved off to share the news with his friends.

“Those were lascars, I suppose?” asked Mary, as the carriage again began to roll ahead.

“Yes,” said Mr. Hayward. “Dratted nuisances.”

“It may be, however,” said Mr. Winmore, “that they were turned off their ship for no fault of their own. And then what are they meant to do, but to beg? I am sure they would work, if they could get any.”

“What are they meant to do? To return home, I suppose. The Company pays their passage, when any of their captains turn them off against orders. I do not doubt that many lascars are honest and hardworking people,” he continued, conciliatingly, “but those are not the ones you see on the streets of London. They prefer begging to working, or they would not do it.”

“I am sorry to contradict you,” forwarded Mrs. Gandjee; “but the Company pays the occasional passage, for a lascar or a servant who has been turned off: by no means do they arrange passage for every one such who applies to them.”

“Ah! How odd. I am sure I read that they do.”

“Oh, I am sure that you did! But public information and private information often differ. It is one of those matters which my husband follows closely.”

Elizabeth, who had until now been silent and grave, put forth,—

“What language was he speaking?”

“Bengali. I know a little, but it has been some time since I have had to use it.”

“Saira speaks Bengali.—My maid,” she explained, when the gentlemen looked quizzically at her. “I wonder if she could teach me any.”

“One thing at a time, dear Lizzy! Your Hindy is yet rudamentary,” said Mrs. Gandjee.

Mr. Winmore now began a recital of all the Hindy books and plays, which he had read in their English translation. Elizabeth noted, with some amusement, that a few of these texts were in fact Sanscrit ones; but the larger part of her mind was taken up in thinking what a den of misery London seemed to be, and what might be done about it.

Chapter Text

Looks, the language of the eyes,
Tears may speak, and so may sighs
But the muse must lend her aid
To describe my lovely maid.

Limner, would you paint her fair,
Mark her mien, her gait, her air;
Mark the mischief of her eye,
Where the loves in ambush lie.

Shall ambition, wealth, or pride,
Lead me from thy path aside?
No—sweet sovereign of my breast,
Love alone shall make us blest!

— “On the Absence of his Mistress.” Translated from the Persian of Amir Khusroo by Colonel Woodburne. In James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs; 1813

The Russell Square party had paid the Darcys a formal call on the occasion of their return to town, which courtesy had been repaid twice. It was now the Darcys’ turn to wait on the Gandjees: but, perhaps through mere bad luck, Mr. Darcy went on a day when his sister had a prior engagement.

He arrived to find the house in a state of some confusion. The door was opened for him, his coat and hat were taken, after the second time he applied the knocker: but he was merely told where the family were, and then left to his own devices, rather than shewn in and announced.

He entered the drawing-room to find Elizabeth sitting on her heels on the carpet: she, Karim, and Manoj had taken over the centre of the room with what looked to be a particularly elaborate game of cat’s-cradle. She was trying to obey the instructions which Manoj was giving her in Cutchee, but succeeding mostly in getting her fingers tangled in the cotton—laughing brightly all the while.

When she observed him in the doorway, she extracted herself from the untidy loom the three had constructed, and rose to her feet, smiling—but then gasped and wavered, heavily favouring one foot.

“What has happened?” he cried, rushing to give her his arm.

“Oh, nothing,” she said—“I must have been sitting the wrong way, is all. My foot is in a sort of—spasm.” She tried to speak lightly, but a wince belied her tone.

He started to help her to the sopha; but she gasped again as she tried to step forward with the affected foot, no matter that he supported as much of her weight as he could take without lifting her; and so he sank down onto one knee, guiding her hand to rest on his shoulder, to see what was the matter.

As he took her foot into his hand, he noticed, with a start, that it was bare. He had not previously taken note of her dress, but he now saw that she was not attired as she usually was: her dress fell only to her calves, exposing underneath it a pair of long, wide silk drawers; adduced to this ensemble was a shawl thrown round her shoulders; the whole was richly trimmed, and in a bright blue which set off her complexion until it fairly glowed. Her hair, black and sleek with oil, fell in a thick braid over one shoulder.

Shaking himself, he bent back to his task—pressing his thumb into the arch of the affected foot until the muscle’s fluttering slowed and stopped, roughly apologising as she made a small, pained noise at the sensation.

“Do you think you can walk now?”

“Yes,” she assured him—but still accepted his help in reaching the sopha.

“Thank you,” she said, after a moment. “I am sorry for my uncle and aunt’s absence—and for the irregular reception, which you must have had. Friday is a Sabbath, of sorts; and so most of the servants have a free day.”

“I am sorry,” he cried, embarrassed—“I did not mean to disturb you.”

“No! Not at all. My uncle and aunt are at prayer, and Mary is at study, and so I was left in charge of the children; but I am glad of the company. You see they pretty nearly entertain themselves.”

Indeed, the children appeared to be paying no attention to what was passing between the adults in the room; though Darcy was sure that the revelation he had just experienced ought to have had some impact on the very atmosphere. Even Elizabeth seemed perfectly composed, and able to speak to him with equanimity—and yet he found himself to be slow in responding. All he could think of was that long moment when he had been kneeling before her; the shape of her light figure through that fine silk; the feeling of her foot in his hand—how small, but how firm and how strong it seemed; the knowledge he now possessed, of the full length of her hair; her thick, heady smell of jasmine and roses.

He staid only long enough to assure himself that he was not being uncivil, making the necessary inquiries and sharing the necessary news; and then made some excuse and departed, his only companion the uneasy sensation that he was in a state of flight.

Darcy retreated to his sitting-room as soon as he had arrived home, citing a head-ache and asking not to be disturbed. Georgiana told him that she hoped he soon felt well—though he thought she looked at him with some suspicion—and sent a cup of ginger-tea up after him, which he allowed to grow cold, staring into its surface and thinking.

He had always prided himself on his temperance, on his avoidance of the weaknesses that made fools of other men of birth and means: he did not drink to excess, or visit gambling dens, or even play particularly high at cards; when he married, he meant to do so with his fortune, his heart, and his health intact. Now he felt, as though all of the self-control on which he had prided himself for so long had really been nothing at all—for it had never been tested before. He had never wanted any thing so badly as he wanted Elizabeth Bennet.

He wanted her; he esteemed her; he admired her; he wanted to have her always at his side, always speaking to him, always directing her attention at him alone; and, when this could not be, he wanted to watch her in her interactions with others, to see her smile and laugh, to hear her pert responses and imagine the thoughts that lay behind them. He wanted to be the person who knew those thoughts best—the person to whom she would return, after every visit, and card-party, and dance, and tell who she had seen, and whether she had enjoyed herself, and all the little odd whims and follies she had noticed in herself and in her company. He wanted to be the man to benefit from the liveliness of her mind; the intelligent, mischievous expression of her eye; the lithe, robust activity of her body. No other woman had ever moved him so. 

Esteem, admiration, desire—the parts added up to a whole, which he dared not, which he ought not, which he feared to name. From the beginning of his acquaintance with her, he had been courting ignorance, driving away self-recognition, setting up a blind with which to conceal one half of himself from the other. He was deep underwater, swept far from shore by the firm, strong motions of the current, by the time he realised he had begun to sink.

He was faced, at the end of it all, with a contradiction that no force of will could deny or resolve. The only fulfillment his wishes could have, was to marry her; to marry her was impossible. Her father, a minor country gentleman with no town acquaintance, no influence or connexions to speak of—and her mother! A silly, vulgar woman of a mercantile family, whom he could neither ask Elizabeth to renounce, nor suffer to be introduced to his circle of acquaintance. Her sisters equally silly, load, and coarse—her fortune very moderate, no doubt depreciated by the extravagance of her mother—her father unwilling to exert himself in the least to preserve his family’s credit—Elizabeth herself maintaining such Indian habits as could not help but invite the inquisitiveness of the impertinent, and which he was sure she could not be induced to relinquish, even if he thought he had the right to ask it of her—as he knew he did not. Whatever he desired, he owed more to his family, and to his name.

He understood at once that he could not trust himself to stay out what remained of the season and not offer for her. Therefore, he must leave. He stared all night at this hard necessity, sick with grief; wishing that he had been wiser, sooner; wishing that he had seen the direction in which the tide was turning before he had reached the point when leaving must cause him this much pain.

His only consolation must be, that she would not suffer as he did. At least his blindness had not injured her. She smiled at him, she laughed at him, she teazed him, just exactly as she had done from the very beginning of their acquaintance; she spoke to him with the same gentle raillery with which she favoured Bingley, and her sisters, and Miss Lucas as was. It was true that he desired to believe in her indifference; but he was not the weak-minded sort of man, whose investigations and decisions were apt to be influenced by his hopes or fears; and in reviewing the past, he remembered enough to be sure that his conviction was impartial. It was clear to him that she was the sort of woman whose heart was not likely to be easily touched.

It cannot be supposed that Darcy slept well that night. In the morning, he invented an emergency—asked Georgiana whether she would carry on at her establishment in town, or away to Pemberley with him—sent a note to Mr. Gandjee, apologising for missing him the day before—and went on a brief round of formal farewell calls. He was on the northward road by the afternoon.

Chapter Text

ELDER LOVELESS: You have forgot your lost love.

LADY: Alas, sir, what would you have me do? I cannot call him back again with sorrow.

— Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Scornful Lady; 1616, repr. 1812

Elizabeth was equally pensive that night—but her subject was entirely different. The amusements of the past four days had had no power to make her forget the scene of Monday evening. She still thought of the thin, haggard appearance of the few lascars she had caught sight of through the carriage window; how, to them, that window must have transformed as she lowered the glass—first a mirror, and then a picture-frame that shewed her face; of Saira’s quiet desperation, her fervent relief, her lasting timidity; of how many others like her there must be in the city; of being called sister, again and again. Her experiences in town had been like the stately carriages circling each other in the railed-off ring at Hyde-park: elegant, polished, confined—but there was so much outside of them, from which she was almost entirely closed off.

She descended to breakfast the next morning, hungry and ill-rested, to find that her uncle had had a note from—Mr. Darcy—and that she herself had received a missive from his sister. She learned, on Mr. Gandjee’s communicating the contents of his letter, that the news each contained was the same: namely—he was gone.

He begged pardon for having forgotten to mention it yesterday, but he had called to bid them all farewell; he could not call again, as his business was very pressing; he asked again for forgiveness, and hoped they all continued well; etc. Miss Darcy herself likewise expressed regret that she had not seen Elizabeth before departing, and shared her sincere hopes that Elizabeth would enjoy the rest of her season.

Elizabeth set the note down by the side of her plate and began buttering a muffin with smooth, methodical movements; meanwhile informing her companions,—

“Miss Darcy gives the same news, with her compliments. It is a shame—she is such a sweet, unassuming girl, and I would have liked to see more of her—but, with her disposition, she is perhaps more glad than otherwise to be returning to the country.”

And she ate her breakfast sedately, though she was suddenly not very hungry at all. It was only with considerable force of will that she could restrain herself from asking to see Mr. Darcy’s note to her uncle (for, as she told herself sternly, she had no cause to feel an interest in his hand), and behave so as to escape the suspicion of her relations. Her success, though she did not know it, was amazing—even Mrs. Gandjee became convinced that she must have been mistaken in her earlier observations and conclusions.

It being the tenth day of Moherrem, the Gandjees had dressed in raiments of thorough black; and, after breakfast, they and their servants set about putting into place all the appurtenances proper to a house in mourning. The drapes were hermetically sealed; the knocker was wrapt round with black fabric; those servants who were Shiahs themselves, or who were merely caught up in the spirit of things, wore black arm-bands at least.

The boys were of an age at which it was difficult to be solemn all day, even for so tragic an occasion as the martyrdom at Kerbela: and they were denied, besides, the entertainment of the procession of tombs and rending of garments which they might have seen in Bombay. Nevertheless, they acquitted themselves rather well to begin with: they looked appropriately forlorn all through breakfast; and, when prompted, jointly told the story of Hussein, son of Ally, and his brave refusal to submit to Khalif Yezzid’s rule, and how this stalwart resistance to oppression and subjugation had been met with iniquitous bloodshed.

Elizabeth was glad of the excuse to retreat to her room. She had much to think of, and to decide; breakfast had been no more than a slight break in the flow of her calculations; and she resolved to return to them at once.

She had determined already, that the amount of deprivation and want amongst the ayahs and lascars in London alone would make necessary an enterprise of such a scope, that her ten thousand pounds would be a very insufficient support in it. Therefore, a charitable society of a more public character would need to be founded, if none such existed; aided, if it did. The work of managing such a society—of speaking on behalf of it, soliciting subscriptions for it—could not decently be done by a single woman. Her aunt had her own obligations, and could not stay to do it; neither Jane nor Bingley had the decisive, ambitious character required for such a scheme; even had she lived in London, her mother was out of the question.

Therefore, she needed to marry. She needed a man who was respectable—wealthy—influential—and willing, in turn, to be influenced by his wife. A man with money enough to purchase a seat in Parliament would be acceptable; a man who already had one, would be better. If this were aiming too high, any man with an ordinary vote would do. The most important thing, was that he give her her head.

The time for listlessness and melancholy was over—she wanted to be doing some thing—and she meant to begin as soon as was practicable.

The direction in which these reflections brought her was, perhaps, predictable. Elizabeth—whatever her other faults, and whatever her ability to deceive herself in the moment—had always been honest to herself, in the fullness of time. She now found, that she was weary of subterfuge and concealment; she could not continue to hide half of her mind from the other half, as behind a translucent veil; the shroud must be taken down, and examined, and cast aside.

She loved Mr. Darcy.

He certainly at least admired her—he preferred her company to that of any body else of their mutual acquaintance—and yet, his concern for his reputation, for his circles, for his name, would prevent him from offering for her under their present circumstances—whatever he may have done otherwise.

So be it. If he could be satisfied with only regretting her, when he might have obtained her hand, then she would soon cease to regret him at all. He must always be—at least, in his late conduct—her model of what a man ought to be: sensible, steady, earnest, clever—willing to engage a woman in a serious conversation—willing to listen to a teaze or a reproof alike. It was only a shame that he was also a fool, and a coward. She determined to throw herself into the labour of being quite as miserable as she pleased for the whole day and night together: and then to carry on with what must be done.

Saira was startled, upon coming up to help Miss Elizabeth dress for dinner, to find her in bed, clutching an embroidered cushion and crying as if she would break her heart.

“Oh, miss. There, there. It is hardly worth your tears. Now, now.”

Miss Elizabeth sat up and wiped at her eyes. She had always been so poised and authoritative; but Saira thought that she suddenly looked terribly young.

“It is not as though crying will bring him back, miss.”

Her mistress nodded, looking about her for a handkerchief, which Saira presently handed to her.

“Yes, Saira—I know.”

“And, in any case,” she said, pulling a dress out of Miss Elizabeth’s armoire, “you may comfort yourself that he is in a more pleasant place than this—and has been these thousand years and more.”

Why her mistress just then burst into laughter, Saira could not say. Miss Elizabeth was the kindest and most permissive employer Saira had ever had—but she did have her queer moods.

Throughout these past several weeks, George Wickham had been feeling lower than he had in some long time.

He did not cherish any hope of bringing Miss Elizabeth Bennet around. He knew, from long experience, when a woman was wavering, and when she was determined. He had been fooling himself by imagining her haughty reserve only modesty. He was sure that she had sympathised with him at first—he remembered her bright laugh, her quick speech, how intently she had listened to him that first day at the Gouldings’, the way her fine eyes had softened with pity, the sense of alliance they had shared—but she had hardened herself soon afterward.

Of course he did not care about Elizabeth Bennet. What he lamented, was the amount of time he had put into a fruitless pursuit. His consolation must lie in Mary King, and the fortune, which she had lately gained—the same, as if by a work of Providence, as that which he had lately lost. She was plain, dour, and mouseish by comparison with her predecessor, but Wickham was wise enough—or mean enough—to have learned by now to moderate his ambitions; he needed to make his fortune in a hurry, and did not mean to be foiled a third time.

Chapter Text

Back-anſwers from ſervants are highly aggravating, and anſwer no good purpoſe. Let a maſter or miſtreſs ſcold ever ſo much, or be ever ſo unreaſonable; as a ſoft anſwer turns away wrath, ſo will ſilence, or a mild anſwer, be the beſt ſtep a ſervant can take.

— Domestic management, or the art of conducting a family; with instructions to servants in general; 1800

Elizabeth had not induced her party to call on the Hursts since their reappearance in town. She knew that a continuing acquaintance between herself and Miss Bingley was inevitable, but understood that that lady, no less than herself, must wish their meetings to be as infrequent as could be managed. Now, however, she had sufficient motive for intruding herself upon her sister-in-law’s notice: she remembered her offer to make introductions for her, and meant to take advantage of it, however insincerely it had been meant. She felt that she had taken her relations’ assistance as far as it could go: as a husband, Mr. Hayward was of course out of the question; and there was no cause for resigning herself to Mr. Winmore without first taking some time to look about her.

Miss Bennet had no reliance upon Miss Bingley’s benevolence. She thought, however, that part of that lady’s dislike for her may be due, not to their philosophical disagreements, but to Mr. Darcy’s obvious preference—and that Miss Bingley must therefore be happy to see her safely married and out of the way. Elizabeth’s conjecture was soon to be proved correct; and she would just as soon learn that Miss Bingley, when one’s goals were aligned with her’s, was an ally worth having.

When she and her relations arrived, the Hursts’ sitting-room contained, besides the house’s inhabitants, two ladies and two gentlemen; and, when one of the gentlemen requested an introduction rather than moving to take his leave, Miss Bingley’s mind—very quick in matters of matrimonial ambition—allowed her to reach the same conclusion that Elizabeth had, in rather less time. She was therefore able to watch Mrs. Hurst make the parties known to each other with every appearance of good-will.

Elizabeth learned that the men in question were a Mr. Blanchard and a Mr. George Harrison; the women were Mrs. Evans, the sister of the latter, and a Miss Harding, her friend. Mr. Blanchard, a fashionably dressed gentleman of perhaps five-and-thirty, observed Elizabeth with some interest. Meanwhile Miss Harding, perceiving that her party had no immediate intention of leaving, continued to make dilatory conversation with Miss Bingley and Mrs. Evans, though sneaking frequent glances at Miss Bennet over the rim of her Meissen teacup. That Miss Harding was a woman of some consequence, was apparent in the cold superciliousness with which she spoke to Miss Bingley, and the deferent attention she was given in return.

Miss Bennet was asked all the questions which an unknown young lady must be asked in London: was it her first time in town, and when had she arrived, and how long did she mean to stay, and had she been to the theatre yet? When he had fulfilled his duty by satisfying himself on these points, Mr. Blanchard turned the conversation nearer to his real source of curiosity:—

“And how long have you lived in England, Miss Bennet?”

“It is highly impolite, sir,” she smiled, “to ask a lady her age!”

Blanchard comprehended this remark within some few seconds. “You were, then, born here?”

“Yes, sir. My father’s estate is in Hertfordshire.”

Mr. Harrison’s attention sharpened upon the mention of this property; and he put forth two or three questions of his own, crafted to help him determine the size and income of this holding, and the length of its tenure within Miss Bennet’s family, without the appearance of asking directly. In the course of answering these inquiries, Elizabeth intimated that Mr. Bennet’s ascension to his estate had been unexpected only insofar as it had been supposed that his elder brother would inherit. Miss Bingley now claimed to have found some particular part of the house especially charming—and asked whether it were original, or if it had been rebuilt by one of Mr. Bennet’s ancestors in the centuries past? Elizabeth answered as well as she could: and the result of these ostensibly disconnected queries was, that Miss Bennet’s paternal pedigree was established. Elizabeth spared a wry smile for her aunt, who had caught and been amused by it all.

“Do you hail from Hertfordshire as well, sir—madam?” Mr. Blanchard now asked the Gandjees; and, though he saw through this attempt to determine the source of Elizabeth’s maternal line, Mr. Gandjee had no reason not to answer.

“No, sir—I am from Rajputana, in Indostan. My wife hails from Guzerat, in the same country.”

Miss Bingley here moved to divert the conversation from any course which might reveal Mr. Gandjee’s profession, by asking Mrs. Evans how the preparations for her forthcoming ball were proceeding.

“Oh! As well as can be expected. There is always some little thing delayed, or wanting, or not what was needed after all—there have been such dreadful scenes about the punch as cannot be imagined—but I am sure that all will come out right in the end.”

Elizabeth was tempted to laugh—but she observed that Mrs. Evans was in perfect earnest in time to prevent it.

“You ought to invite Miss Bennet and her friends, Henrietta,” forwarded Miss Harding, who had not spoken for some time. “We have been in the same old circles for too long.” To this highly condescending suggestion Mrs. Evans acceded.

Here a natural pause in the conversation induced Mrs. Gandjee to rise to take her party away again; and the group which had preceded them likewise announced an intention of taking their leave. Miss Bingley solicitously walked Miss Harding and her friends to the door; Mr. Blanchard said that he hoped to see Miss Bennet, and her uncle and aunt, at the ball; and so every body parted, each satisfied with the meeting for reasons of their own.

Miss Margaret Harding was the only daughter of Robert Harding, Baron Audley; she had lived most of her life in town, being courted and cosseted by men and women alike; and the only thing which saved her from seeming impatient at this treatment, was the air of refined langour with which she was accustomed to dull her expressions. Miss Bennet, however, seemed to promise a break in her boredom. She was intrigued by the way she had of holding herself slightly above and outside of the conversation she was holding, but without any superciliousness of manner—rather, there was a good-natured amusement in her half-smiles—as if she did not except herself from her opinion of the silliness of the proceedings. Miss Hardling wished to see how she would behave in a larger company, and hoped that she would prove an enlivening influence.

Mr. Blanchard, for his part, thought that Miss Bennet was a pretty, genteel, lively sort of girl. He had felt, more than once during the course of their conversation, that he was a step behind—her manners, being more playful than fashionable, did nothing to temper the quickness of her mind—but, at least on a first meeting, he did not dislike the sensation.

“Perhaps you will beat me after all,” began Mrs. Gandjee, as the party was returning home. “Mr. Blanchard seemed to wish to know more of you.”

“Perhaps,” said Elizabeth, “but perhaps not. It is very possible for a man to treat as a curiosity, a woman whom he does not mean to marry.”

“Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of disappointment.”

“Of caution only,” rejoined Elizabeth, a bit piqued. It was easy enough for her aunt, who was in England but rarely, and who had been born and married within her own country, to counsel against bitterness; she had not known the causes which Elizabeth had for it.

A moment later, however, she came to regret the openness of her speech: and tried to smooth over its rough edges, by adding:—

“I would not object, however, to knowing more of him. He seems a very polite, gentlemanlike man—and I know the value of a person who has the goodness to ask after me, myself, before inquiring as to my antecedence.”

When they arrived at Russell Square, Elizabeth and Mary both bent themselves to their studies. Elizabeth did not know how to suppose that she would marry a man who cared overmuch for an imposing shew of learning, disconnected from all practical concerns—it had always been enough for herself and Jane to know how organise a menu, balance an account, and tend to the the needs of the nearby tenants and cottagers—they had been made to acquire the rudiments of dancing, drawing, playing, and French, but all other occupations had been attended to as their fancy dictated. Now, however, Elizabeth felt that she needed every advantage she could get: and she put aside her favoured occupations of reading, walking, and needlework, to rescue her accomplishments at painting and the pianoforte from the dust which they had been accumulating. Mary was approving, and happy to alternate between working silently beside her elder sister, and assuming the mantle of instructor; and so passed the hours until supper.

When Elizabeth went up to bed, her maid was already awaiting her, and tending to one of her own dresses. As she grew more comfortable in her situation, Saira was revealing tendencies towards fastidiousness in dress, and towards embonpoint—the confluence of which had obliged her to let out the seams of all her clothing, and to begin thinking of replacing it altogether. She was glad to be back in London for this reason—though she had not disliked the noise and bustle of the larger party at Longbourn while it had lasted.

“Now that you have sampled both, Saira,” said Miss Elizabeth as Saira unwound her hair, “which do you think is preferable? England’s great city, or its countryside?”

“The shopping is better in town,” said Saira, in accordance with her late musings.

“Fie and nonsense!” cried Miss Elizabeth, in a tone of offence which Saira now knew better than to take in a serious light.

“But the hills here are very pretty.”

“Yes,” said her mistress wistfully—“they are. I hope to always spend part of every year in the country.”

“You had better come to Calcutta, miss. The city is large and flourishing, but the hills and fields all round it are so, so richly green. There is none of this dreary weather. And all the boats on the river! There is no place like it all the Earth round.”

“I will not remind you that we would procure you passage at any time you asked—you see I am very capable of believing a woman to be serious in her refusal—instead I will only assure you, that you will be well on your way by this time next year.”

“In saying that you will not remind me, miss,” said Saira, “you have reminded me”—and glanced up into the mirror to see how her mistress bore this liberty.

Miss Elizabeth laughed brightly. “Well! I hope you will forgive me for breaking my resolution. I have a sash, by the way, which I think will go very well with that dress,” she said, nodding at the article which Saira had laid down to attend her—“let me fetch it.”

“Oh! No, miss, let me. I know just the one you mean.”

Chapter Text

I have been at several private balls, in which pleasure, not profit, was the motive for which they were given.

— “A Paris Ball”; in Literary Magazine vol. 3, issue 16; 1805

Candlemas came, and passed; the day of Mrs. Evans’s ball arrived; and Elizabeth, splendidly dressed and with spirits as high as she could manage, entered the ball-room with her party, ready to mix with a new set.

Their hostess greeted them all blandly, and pointed out the location of those people whom they already knew. Mr. Blanchard, who had evidently been watching the entrance in wait of her, approached to ask Elizabeth for her first set; and, to her surprise, Mr. George Harrison requested the second. The Gandjees, satisfied that Elizabeth was now comfortably situated, left her for the card-room: they were not confident that they would be familiar enough with any dance that was called to execute it with credit, as fashions in these matters were always changing.

Mr. Blanchard was as Elizabeth remembered him: and she forgave him, a little into their first dance, for his troublesome curiosity on the occasion of their first meeting. He was correct in his speech and behaviour, without quite being dull; talkative without vulgarity; and attentive without flattery. They made such light conversation as was suitable to the pauses between figures—Elizabeth shared her impressions of the gardens and the theatre, though she did not venture again to state an opinion of any of the plays which might be termed political.

During the second dance of the set, the gentleman again opened the discussion on indifferent matters:—

“I believe, Miss Bennet, that you have been to town once or twice before now?”

“Yes, sir, once—but that was seven or eight years ago, and I was not yet out. I had not been to a London ball before this year.”

“Is this the first private ball you have been to in town?”

“Indeed it is! Of course you know that I am not yet well-acquainted with Mrs. Evans—but she seems an accomplished hostess.”

“Certainly she is. It is a general fact, however, that private balls are pleasanter than public ones.”

“I will own, if my limited experience in this matter can be admitted, that they are less crowded! The room is spacious enough that I feel in no danger of injuring my neighbour in the set with a stray elbow.”

Mr. Blanchard laughed; and then said,—

“You must prefer the country to town, if you dislike a crowd?”

“I do not dislike a crowd, now and again—there is some thing enlivening about all the bustle and activity—but I think I should eventually weary of it, if I did not live some of the time in the country,” said Elizabeth as they came to the end of the line. “I need the occasional ramble. One may stroll in town—one may, perhaps, even walk—but it is absolutely impossible to ramble.”

At the end of the set, Blanchard parted from his partner very pleased with the dance in general: he admired her pretty smile and sprightly movements, and her way of bringing levity and novelty into even a rote conversation.

Mr. George Harrison collected his partner for the second with every will to be pleased, also: but his thoughts were full of little more than the ten thousand pounds, which Miss Bingley informed him Miss Bennet would have from her mother, and the additional funds he was assured would be forthcoming from her prosperous uncle and aunt. Mr. Harrison was the younger son of the younger branch of a noble family; his grandfather had been the proprietor of one of their tertiary estates; his father was a judge; he was, therefore, highly respectable, and rather impecunious.

He was disappointed to learn, through some careful prodding, that Miss Bennet was not to inherit her father’s estate. Still, ten or fifteen thousand pounds, and a gentleman’s daughter, was likely as high as he could aspire to, as he did not stand to inherit any of his family’s store of titles; even Miss Bingley had never entertained him. The peculiarity of Miss Bennet’s colouring would take getting used to—but she was pretty enough, and seemed in no way disposed to ill-humour.

Elizabeth found that her partner spoke, more than he listened: he wanted her to hear of the location and the number of rooms in the house his parents would give him, once he married, and how preferable London was to the seclusion she had heretofore been living in, and all about his friend, Viscount So-and-So, and his sister the Baroness, and his grandfather, Lord etc. She could not take much exception to this naked bargaining, having as she did her own requirements in a husband: and she asked him in turn about his connexions’ representation in the houses of Parliament.

At the punch table after the second set, Elizabeth encountered Miss Harding—who, to her surprise, did not give her a civil nod and then away, but drew her a little aside to speak to her. She talked in a quick, peremptory way, which suggested that she was little in the habit of being contradicted:—

“Well, Miss Bennet, it is pleasant to see you again. I hope you have been enjoying yourself thus far. In a moment I will take you round and make sure you have all the partners you want—but first I wish to know more of you. These occasions become very dull if one does not seek out novelty now and again. The debutantes will hardly do, one is so much like another. They all try for wit, and yet their wit is sadly threadbare.”

Elizabeth smiled at so much fashionable ennui in a woman who could hardly be older than herself. “Perhaps,” she said lightly, “these ladies are all as deficient as you say. Then again—perhaps every thing seems threadbare when you go at it with a hook.”

Miss Harding looked taken aback for a few moments, but then laughed heartily. “You believe I am too severe a critic.”

“No, Miss Harding, no such thing! I said—perhaps. I cannot claim to have met many debutantes for myself. Who knows but that if I did, I would be equally severe on them?”

“Oh, I promise you, you would. It is all a flutter and a flurry of phrases that mean nothing—and if any of them has read the books they quote from so promiscuously, I would be astonished.”

Elizabeth bit her cheek, amused despite herself. “I presume, then, that you read?”

“No—not much,” replied she, with a careless, affected little flick of her fan; “but then, you see, I don’t pretend to.”

“Ah! I begin to understand you.”

“Do you? Good. But I wish to better understand you. Surely you cannot be such a paragon of virtue, as never to be severe on a stranger?”

Now Elizabeth was in danger of becoming too serious—and of thinking of some thing which would only depress her spirits. She recovered herself, however, well enough to answer,—

“I hope I am not often severe—but I will own to being amused by the little follies, and whims and peccadilloes, which no body is wholly without.”

“That is just what I expected of you. And what are your strictures on the present company?”

Elizabeth smiled. “I am sorry that I must disappoint you.”

Miss Harding was by no means deterred by this bit of modesty, and only prompted,—

“Every man is very insinuating: very eager to tell you all about what rooms and what outbuildings he has, and whose son and whose grandson he is.”

“Is this a dislike which is wholly original—or have you inherited it from your father, the Baron?”

“Ha! And now I begin to understand you. You withhold severity only from those not present.”

“Some would deem me a very dull companion if I were never severe on any body—but others would censure me for mocking those not here to defend themselves. The best course of action, therefore, for a young lady who would be universally loved, is to ridicule every body she speaks to.”

“Well, Elizabeth—and you shall call me Margaret, or I will become cross with you—what do you require? Youth, beauty, money, a title?”

Elizabeth laughed. “Of course I want every thing, if I can get it! But most of all, I intend to be involved in charitable endeavours.”

“A man who does not mind an active wife, then—and connexions. Let me introduce you to Lord Francis Drummond. He is the son of Earl Guildford, and a member of the senate,” said Margaret, beginning to lead Elizabeth across the room to her target.

“I am certain that he would soon have told me as much himself.”

Again Margaret laughed. “And then you shall give me your card—and I will call on you to-morrow morning, as soon as any body is capable of rousing themselves after so much riotous entertainment,” said she, gesturing at the elegant ladies and gentlemen sedately circling each other in the centre of the room.

When Elizabeth returned home, it was to the feeling that much progress had been made: and yet the ball seemed to have tired her far more than the actual exertion required would warrant.

Chapter Text

She loved, but yet he knew not that she loved;
For virgin modesty with decent pride
Veil’d each fond thought, nor once the veil removed
Till Edmond claim'd Eudora for his bride.

Man loves—but to possess! and, if unblest,
His sickly fancy languishes! expires!
But woman clasps chimera to her breast.
Small aliment her purer flame requires!

She, like the young camelion, thrives on air,
Content no grosser sustenance to gain;
Takes every tint from the loved object near,
Clings to her griefs, and glories in her pain.

Of poorest flowers she forms triumphant wreaths!
Her world contracted to one little space,
Enough for her to breathe the air he breathes,
To steal a look, unnoticed, at his face!

— Miss Elizabeth Trefusis, Poems and Tales; 1808

As Elizabeth’s learning, ambitions, and net of associations grew, Darcy’s world contracted to concern little more than the most immediate of necessities.

His servants were too well-trained to inquire after the reason for it, but it was evident they were surprised at his being in residence. There was no planting to manage, the winter-wheat being already sown, and the potatoes, pease, and oats not to go in for another month or more. The ditching, hedging, draining, manuring, and threshing were over with. Neither could his presence be explained by his social calendar: his circles were thinned out by the ongoing season, and he attended none but the least avoidable of entertainments given by those who remained. Though he scolded himself into a tolerable approximation of attentiveness, he could not help thinking the young ladies he encountered on these few occasions pallid and lifeless—floating by in a stream of pale pastels and light lavender-water scents—nothing deep or rich or elaborate enough to catch or fix the attention.

He brought himself once or twice to one of his clubs or societies, where his dullness and stupidity were remarked on by every body who was on such terms with him as to take the liberty of remarking on them. He rode, and shot pheasants, and attended to his correspondence, and had breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper with Georgiana, and was civil to her companion, and asked after her studies. He thought he perceived that she wanted to ask the reason for his low spirits, but did not feel free enough with him to venture. At any other time he may have been sorry for it; but now, he regarded it as a mercy. There was one woman of his acquaintance who would not hesitate to injure his dignity with impertinent questions—and he had left her behind in London. Bingley was yet in Yorkshire with his bride; his cousin Fitzwilliam was in Spain; there was no body to whom he might consider unburdening himself.

Darcy wavered between lamenting what he had lost, and sternly reminding himself of his reasons for denying it to himself. He tried to be convinced, that it was only the melancholy succeeding upon the initial parting, which led him to feel as though he were squandering the only chance of openness, or companionship, or real affection, which he was likely ever to have. There must naturally be other ladies in England equally intelligent, lively, and dauntless; if he had not taken notice of any before now, the fault must lie with his perception. Had his experience with Elizabeth not taught him, that he had for many years blinded himself to the merits of others? He would meet a woman whom it was possible to marry, with all the happy qualities, which she had taught him he required; and he would then be able to meet Miss Bennet as a friend—as Bingley’s sister—and be grateful to her—as a friend. Every thing would then be easy—once the wisdom of experience had shewn him that he had acted rightly.

The Prince Regent expressed his congratulations on the success of the British army in capturing the Island of Java. The Laurel frigate ran aground at Quiberon. The English repaid the French seizure of Valencia by wresting Ciudad Rodrigo from them; but it was thought a very bad trade. The Prince and his ministers ordained a day for fasting, humiliation, and religious devotion; and Darcy, in a fit of superstitious sentimentality, kept it, though the ritual seemed rather Catholic. The state of manufacture, employment, and commerce was every where lamented. The propriety of ending the East India Company’s monopoly on private trade was debated. Darcy slept exceedingly ill. A bill was read proposing to make the breaking of stocking and lace-frames a capital offence. Georgiana took up tambour-work, and just as quickly abandoned it. The House of Commons considered allowing the Irish Catholics the same rights which their Protestant brethren enjoyed, and at length voted no.

So matters stood in the middle of February. About this time, some thing brought Miss Bennet’s current movements and actions—which he had been endeavouring neither to think of nor to guess at—painfully to his attention: namely, Bingley wrote him a letter, which was given him at breakfast along with the rest of the day’s post. It was more tranquil than Bingley’s usual style, and more legible than his usual hand. He wondered if Mrs. Jane Bingley had done as his friend had anticipated, and exerted a levelling influence upon his spirits and habits—and then quickly directed his thoughts away from a path which had so little to recommend it, containing as it did a distressing reminder of what he had given up. But the letter itself, as I have said, would not permit such avoidance—it went so far as absolutely to mention Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s name—she was, he was informed, yet in London, but soon to travel to Hunsford Parsonage, in Kent, near Westerham, in the very shadow of Rosings Park. Bingley had had it from his wife, and thought that it may interest him, being that the proprietress of Rosings was a relation of his.

His danger was no greater than it had been before. True, he would have it in his power, come March, to go to Rosings—to singe himself with the light and warmth of her presence, and to risk submitting to the influence he feared she still held over him—but this was no revolution in the current state of affairs. He had had it in his power these last several weeks to return to London, and to settle back into their pattern of calls and visits, and to court disaster and heartbreak that way—and his long practice in self-denial and in the unremitting performance of his duty had carried him through. There was no reason but that it would continue to do so now.

The letter was put away; the rebellious emotions, which it had called up in his breast, ruthlessly subdued; and Darcy endeavoured to determine that his business at Pemberley was pressing. The mildness of the autumn had succeeded to a winter rainier, colder, and more sunless than usual. Much of the wheat had been waterlogged, and perished; all the other crops were behind. Several of his sheep were affected with foot-rot—neither did the lambing go as well as usual. He had intense, feverish dreams, all full of silk, and skin, and the sensation of drowning. One writer came forward to argue that crossing with the native Ryeland by no means improved the coat of the pure Merino, but that the quality of Merino wool depended solely upon how it was treated. Rebellions in China caused some anxiety, lest the revolutionary contagion inspire the subjugated Hindostan to attempt to throw off her yoke. Georgiana’s worried looks increased in quantity and duration. The wisdom of a radical reform of Parliament was debated, and debated again. A gentleman from Kingsand reported that he had safeguarded his output of cider by coating his apple trees in spirit of tar. Bingley wrote that he and his wife were again in Meryton. Colonel Fitzwilliam sent word that he was soon to be back in England. Darcy replied, and fought for an even tone.

So matters stood in the beginning of March. Instead of growing dull with the passage of time, the temptation of Rosings Park seemed only more immediate and more pressing. And yet Darcy was determined to ride it out. It was impossible that he should feel this way forever. With luck, he may even be married at this time next year—and this sorry interlude would then seem very trivial. Until then, he had only to remain devoted to his judgement—to restraint—to his duty—to his name. 

Chapter Text

Does not the variegated marble yield
To the gay colours of the flow’ry field?
Can the New-River's artificial ſtreams,
Or the thick waters of the troubled Thames,
In many a winding ruſty pipe convey’d,
Or daſh'd and broken down a deep caſcade,
With our clear ſilver ſtreams in ſweetneſs vie,
That in eternal rills run bubbling by?
And yet in town the country proſpects pleaſe,
Where ſtately colonades are flank’d with trees:
On a whole country looks the maſter down
With pride, where ſcarce five acres are his own.
Yet nature tho’ repell’d maintains her part,
And in her turn ſhe triumphs over art;
The hand-maid now may prejudice our taſte,
But the fair miſtreſs will prevail at laſt.

— Christopher Pitt, “An Epistle to Mr. Spence, in Imitation of Horace, Epiſt. X. Book I.”; 1747

Miss Bennet began to feel the difficulty which the path she had embarked upon must represent for some body of her disposition. By the beginning of March, she was weary of restraint—sick of feeling as though she were playing a double game—conscious, that there was no one around her with whom she could be really open—and increasingly worried that she would ultimately fail in the duty she had chosen.

Her intimacy with Margaret Harding had progressed apace: but it was an intimacy of manner and of circumstance, and not an intimacy of the heart. She enjoyed Miss Harding’s company, but she perceived that her place with her was to surprise and to amuse—her wit and her challenges were welcome, so long as they were but glancing—Miss Harding was an agreeable companion only if not asked to be serious. There were no arguments about national prejudice, or habits of dress, or the various causes of rebellion, to be had with her.

Meanwhile Elizabeth kept up the course of mutual evaluation, of which courtship appeared to consist. She discouraged Mr. Hayward, and was cordial to Mr. Winmore; was ambivalent towards Mr. Harrison, and tentatively hopeful about Mr. Blanchard; she contemplated making a greater effort to appear interesting to Lord Drummond. She watched these gentlemen, in turn, measure her against other young ladies of their acquaintance, without jealousy or anxiety.

She was pleased with the prospect of returning to the wider spaces of the country, and of having some time away from the glittering ballrooms that oppressed her spirits even as they entertained her mind. A week before her departure she broke to all of her suitors, and to Miss Harding, that she would soon be in Kent for some indefinite weeks; and all except the young lady—who despaired of the doom of boredom which awaited her, and enjoined Elizabeth, if she must go, at least to write—bore it with tolerable equanimity.

Arbain marked the fortieth consecutive day on which Hussein had been wept over and bemoaned. On the following day, therefore, the period allotted for grief expired. The drapes were opened; the knocker unveiled; colour reintroduced into clothing and furnishings; the children no longer spoke in under-voices.

Maria and Sir William Lucas came a few days later and partook of the newly lightened atmosphere, in advance of travelling to Rosings Park to visit the new Mrs. Collins. The cook had produced an assortment of English dishes for the occasion; but their guests still looked about them, in awe bordering on alarm, at the black servants in their Oriental dress, and the richness of the fabrics that were pressed into service as antimacassars, and the calligraphic paintings on the walls.

At length, Sir William grew sufficiently comfortable—or sufficiently desirous of impressing—that he recalled himself to the necessity of relating to his new acquaintance all the wonders of his knighthood and his presentation at St. James’s. This polite gentleman’s absurdities were too well-known to Elizabeth to delight her any further, but she had some enjoyment in seeing how her uncle and aunt took them: they looked wondering, amused, and indulgent by turns.

The next morning, Elizabeth bid a fond, temporary farewell to the Gandjees, and left them to the prosings of her younger sister. She and her friend’s relations departed for Kent: Elizabeth eager to at last have her curiosity regarding Charlotte’s situation satisfied; Maria wide-eyed and silent, looking out the window; and Sir William relating all that his son-in-law had related to him concerning the consequence, eloquence, and furnishings of his patroness. It was fortunate that he required very little reply, for more than this Elizabeth could not have given him: she had never before been in this part of the country, and she had at every turn a picturesque vista to admire. So prolonged a stretch of new and interesting scenery cannot but have a salubrious effect on any body of youth and spirit; and Elizabeth every second felt herself reviving.

When they left the high road for the lane to Hunsford, the paling of Rosings Park formed their boundary on one side; and every turning was expected to bring the Parsonage into view. At length, it became discernible—the garden sloping to the road, the house standing in it, the green pales and the laurel hedge—and Mr. Collins and Charlotte, having spotted their guests’ carriage, appeared at the door.

Mrs. Collins welcomed her friend with the liveliest pleasure, and the delight Elizabeth had at again being in the country, was heightened by this very affectionate reception. She saw instantly that her cousin’s manners were not altered by his marriage: his formal civility was just what it had always been; and he detained her some minutes at the gate to hear and satisfy his inquiries after her family. They were then, with no other delay than his pointing out the neatness of the entrance, taken into the house; and as soon as they were in the parlour, he welcomed them a second time to his humble abode, and punctually repeated all his wife’s offers of refreshment.

Elizabeth had been prepared to see Mr. Collins in his glory, and she was not disappointed. He pointed out, with pompous minuteness, the aspect, the proportions, and the furniture of the room; and, in detailing every article from the sideboard to the fender, seemed desirous of reminding them all that, had wiser decisions been made by a certain young lady of their acquaintance, Elizabeth might even now be a near relation of his.

“And the lacquered tables, you see, do not compare so very poorly with those in the parlour of your own home, Miss Bennet. There is no reason to suppose that any body of your birth might think it coming down in the world, to have such a parlour as this. But on this subject it would be as well to be silent.”

This style of discourse cannot be imagined to have made Elizabeth eager to see the gardens, if under the same superintendence: but the invitation was made, and could not be avoided; Mr. Collins led the party through every walk and cross walk, scarcely allowing them an interval to utter the praises he required for one view, before he was hurrying them on to the next.

From his garden, Mr. Collins would fain have led them round his two meadows; but the ladies decided that their shoes would not stand up to the remains of a frost, which stuck to them; and while Sir William accompanied his son-in-law, Charlotte took her sister and friend over the house, extremely well pleased, probably, to have the opportunity of shewing it without her husband’s help. It was rather small, but well built and convenient. Charlotte particularly pointed out a comfortable sitting-room, in the rear of the house, in which she spent most of her time; and the style and arrangement of furnishings here, told her that Mr. Collins had had nothing to do with either. Elizabeth remembered what Charlotte had said, regarding her desire to sit in her own room, in the security that she could not be ejected from it; she endeavoured to be glad of her friend’s evident contentment; but she could not help but remain conscious of the fact, that the comfort of the house was dependent upon Mr. Collins, himself, being quite forgotten.

Elizabeth was soon to discover, however, that her friend had her own active methods of accomplishing this forgetfulness. She freely owned, that she encouraged her husband to work in his garden as often as he could; was very understanding of the rigorous demands on his time, which sermon-writing represented; and had chosen her own little sitting-room precisely because it did not command the view of the approach to the house, which her husband valued.

Thus of Mr. Collins. Elizabeth now only wanted to know more of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, to judge of how advantageously Charlotte was situated.

Chapter Text

The servants in waiting were principally negroes, dressed in white turbans with muslin jackets, but without stockings or shoes. The tables were of polished mahogany; and the company present in full uniform;—an association of things so incongruous with the natural horrors and barbarism of the country, where persons from India and from England were met to banquet together, that perhaps no similar result of commerce and of conquest is ever likely to occur again, in any part of the habitable globe.

— E. D. Clarke, LL. D.; Travels in various countries of Europe, Asia and Africa, Volume the Second, Part the Second; 1814

The first opportunity which Elizabeth had to observe Lady Catherine’s conduct occurred two days after their arrival, when they were invited to the great house—and not merely to tea, but even to dinner, to Mr. Collins’s extreme gratification. He first, however, had some thing to say to Miss Bennet on this great occasion, though he was totally unconscious of the blow he was about to impart. When the ladies were separating to perform their toilette, he addressed her thus:—

“Let me take the liberty of advising you, my dear cousin, on what manner of dress will be most appropriate for the engagement, which Lady Catherine de Bourgh has done us the honour of soliciting. Of course I have a good opinion of your judgment in all matters within the scope of your understanding—but you will permit me, I hope, from my relation—I had almost said, near relation—to yourself—and from the fact of my clerical office, which, you will grant, authorises me to speak on what mode of behaviour is most becoming to one of your sex and your age—you will allow me to hint, that this occasion will call for a greater simplicity of dress and adornment, than that which you are usually in the habit of observing. Lady Catherine likes to see the distinction of rank preserved; and she and her daughter, from their near connexion to an Earl—as well as from the elegance and grandeur of the estate, which Miss de Bourgh is to inherit, and is destined to unite with the equally fine estate at Pemberley—they must, you will own, be considered greatly your superiors in that respect. Therefore I would advise you to put on whatever of your clothes is the simplest.”

Elizabeth was heartily glad that the haste, with which Mr. Collins seemed to expect them to be dressed, excused her in hurrying away to her room at once. She had known already, that Lady Catherine was the aunt, and her daughter the cousin, of Mr. Darcy; she had been trying not to think of the connexion, though her heart had already formed a secret resolution of tracing the features of both women in search of a resemblance. To know that, if Mr. Collins could be believed, he was bound to this very cousin, should not injure her—she had thought herself to have given up every hope in that quarter—and yet she now discovered, that she had had some tranquillity still to lose—she had, without knowing it herself, relied upon his remaining single.

She needed some time to steady her hands, and to cool her face; and then she was allowing Saira hastily to dress her in whatever gown she had already laid out, though taking a plainer shawl, and declining the jewellery. Mr. Collins seemed satisfied with her timing and her clothing alike, giving her a peremptory nod before rushing her, his wife, and her family out to walk the half-mile to the great house.

He made much of the park’s extent and its prospects, and the windows in front of the house, and the immense cost of their glazing; but Elizabeth had no attention for him. Half of her mind was immersed in the numbness of the shock she had received—the other half consumed with anxiety to see Miss de Bourgh, and to determine what sort of a girl she was. She remembered Mr. Darcy once speaking of her, and his cousin Fitzwilliam, during his first call in Russell Square: if he were engaged to her, would not he have said so then? Mr. Collins’s information may be mistaken—it may be an arrangement which Lady Catherine wished for, but which the principals did not mean to comply with—or it may be that Darcy did not like to speak of his affairs to any body unconnected with him. She could not help thinking that, if he did consider himself bound in honour to his cousin, it might explain why—

The imposing grandeur of Rosings’ interior, the awe with which Maria and Sir William Lucas regarded it, Mr. Collins’s rapture over each object, his wife’s making the introductions, washed over Elizabeth’s mind without making any impression. When she first cast her eye on Miss de Bourgh, she felt a strange mixture of despair and savage triumph: the girl looked colourless, sickly, and cross; she could not imagine any body better calculated to teach Mr. Darcy what he had lost.

But she scolded herself for her injustice a moment later. Had she not determined, months ago, that she ought to be slower when taking a person’s measure? Why should she be wishing to decide, at a mere glance, that this lady was less worthy than herself? What could be less kind or less just, than feeling triumph over her own good health and another’s weakness?

This lesson would have been more instructive had Miss de Bourgh proven, upon further observation, to be different than she had appeared at first. She spoke very little, except to Mrs. Jenkinson, her hired companion—and this, with a peevishness with Elizabeth could not think consistent with a good nature. But then, the long suffering caused by a poor constitution—and having had the misfortune of being, from a young age, always obeyed and obliged—these circumstances might account for it—it might be only a foible, and not really a fault—a change in environment may remedy it, if she were to marry and move away—

Before these reflections had half exhausted themselves, they were being led in to dinner: her Ladyship only pausing to say, that she hoped Miss Bennet was accustomed to sit at table to eat, and that she had no objection to pork or beef? and pronouncing herself satisfied upon receiving her affirmative.

The dinner was exceedingly handsome, and there were all the servants, and all the articles of plate, which Mr. Collins had promised. Mr. Collins and Sir William paid extravagant praise to each dish; Lady Catherine was gratified, and Miss de Bourgh silent; Mrs. Jenkinson fussed over her charge. Elizabeth observed also that Lady Catherine had fallen victim to the vogue for Indian footmen, which had pervaded the fashionable world in the last century. One of these articles stood behind each chair to hand round the vinegar and mustard, to adjust the dishes whenever they became disarranged, and to remove each plate the moment it was no longer wanted. Elizabeth could not succeed in meeting any of their eyes; but she thought she observed her man to hesitate, after the meat course, in taking up the plate which had lately held the rolled neck of pork; and she, after putting the handle of her knife and fork into the plate, placed the whole atop her napkin, that he might take up the setting without sullying his hands. He took up the hint, and the napkin; and with this small act Elizabeth was forced to be satisfied.

When the ladies returned to the drawing-room, there was little to be done but to hear Lady Catherine talk, which she did without any intermission till coffee came in. After completing a minute inquiry into Mrs. Collins’s domestic affairs, she turned her attention towards Miss Bennet, and asked her at different times how many sisters she had, whether they were handsome, whether they were as dark as herself, what carriage her father kept, what had been her mother’s maiden name, what had been her religion, and was she now a professed Christian?

“I must say, Miss Bennet,” intoned Lady Catherine, after she had been informed on these points, “that your English is remarkably good. Your accent is very pure.”

“Thank you, your ladyship,” said Elizabeth, mildly.

“Do you play and sing?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, then—some time or other we shall be happy to hear you. Do your sisters play and sing?”

“Yes, ma’am—a little.”

“Do you draw?”

“Yes, all—tolerably. Kitty, my youngest sister but one, is acknowledged to have the most skill at it.”

“I understand that your eldest sister is married?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Then it will be your turn to come out, and have a season in town?”

“Yes—myself, and my next youngest sister, Mary. She is eighteen at present.”

“Good, good. That is all as it should be,” said her Ladyship, though seeming almost disappointed to have no reason to scold. “I suppose you were all brought up in the religion of your father?”

“Yes, we were.”

“Good. There is nothing for it, but that a girl be educated properly: accustomed to hearing and speaking English, and eating English food, and observing English morality.”

“And so we were—though we also speak an Indian language, and eat Indian food, when at home.”

Now her Ladyship was on better footing. “Ah! That will not do. That will spoil any half-cast child. If I had known your father, I should have advised him most strenuously against it. Very careful attention is required to counteract the demerits of nature in these cases. Your sister, I hope, was at least married in an English manner, and with the Common Book?”

“Yes, your ladyship, she was.”

When the gentlemen had joined them, and tea was over, the card tables were placed; and the games proceeded as they usually did, each character in the play taking up the role which Elizabeth might have expected, from their performance at dinner. At length they were summoned by the arrival of the coach; and with many speeches of thankfulness on Mr. Collins’s side, and as many bows on Sir William’s, they departed.

As soon as they had driven from the door, Elizabeth was called on by her cousin to give her opinion of all that she had seen at Rosings, which, for Charlotte’s sake, she made more favourable than it really was. But her commendation, though costing her some trouble, could by no means satisfy Mr. Collins, and he was very soon obliged to take her Ladyship’s praise into his own hands.

Chapter Text

It will require no uncommon share of soundness, either of taste or of judgement, to satisfy any one, how truly respectable is such superiority of the mind over fortune, nor can it well escape observation how disgraceful to our nature, on the contrary, is that vile and creeping subjection to its yoke.

— The Observer, No. XVIII, in The Scots Magazine and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany volume 73; 1811

Further experience did not contradict the opinion which Elizabeth had formed of Lady Catherine’s manners. This lady and her daughter, to judge from the events of the following week, represented greater assaults on Charlotte’s domestic peace than even her husband. They expected to be attended at any time, and at the smallest notice; Miss de Bourgh would drive with her companion just to the gate at the entrance, and oblige Mr. and Mrs. Collins to stand outside to speak with her as she sat at her leisure; the Lady herself would call at odd hours; and the couple’s previous references to her close and condescending attention to their concerns seemed only too accurate.

In Lady Catherine’s imperious behaviour—dictating to Mrs. Collins how and how often to clean her furniture, how much meat to order in the course of a week, and how to discipline and remunerate her servants—Elizabeth had, at least, new follies and foibles to observe: but this was poor conciliation for the knowledge that her friend must continue to live with them after her family’s visit was at an end. Nor was Elizabeth herself exempted: she was ordered at different times to play, and to display her sketches and water-colours. These earned measured praise; but Lady Catherine was rather displeased at her embroidery, and told her at length how, and with what materials and patterns, she ought to manage the business, and would not allow for any national difference of taste.

Only a week after his arrival, Sir William returned to Meryton; but his visit had been long enough to convince him of his daughter’s being most comfortably settled, and in possession of such a husband and such a neighbour as were not often met with. The entertainment of dining at Rosings was repeated twice more in the next three days; and, allowing for the loss of Sir William, both such entertainments were counterparts of the first.

The Parsonage had no pianoforte, and Elizabeth half-lamented her lack of practice. She spent her time, instead, in continued study of Hindy; in going, some mornings, to the village with Charlotte and Maria, and passing, at other times, half-hours of pleasant conversation with Charlotte alone; and in walking in the gardens whenever the wet and the cold retreated enough to allow it. She sometimes took the opportunity, while the others were calling on Lady Catherine, to walk along the open grove, which edged the Rosings side of the park. The trees that sheltered the path were behind, and had yet to come into bloom—but this did not injure the walk in Elizabeth’s eyes—she was glad that no body else seemed to value it, and she could traverse it in peace. In this quiet way the first ten days of her visit passed away.

At this time, Elizabeth learned that an addition to the family at Rosings was expected within a few days. Mr. Darcy would soon arrive to pay homage to his aunt.

The flutter of spirits into which this news threw her may be imagined. She dared not suppose, that he came for her; she hardly knew whether she felt more of pain, or of pleasure, in the prospect of his coming; she did not know how she would act. She alternated between resolving to maintain the steadiest, coldest dignity she could; to behave towards him, as far as was possible, as she always had; or, in particularly vicious moments, to flirt with him outrageously—she knew, better than Miss Bingley ever had, how it was to be done—and let him try to resist her then.

The days passed with little rest, and without much to distinguish one from another. Charlotte sewed, and tended to her chickens, and made preserves; Maria chattered with herself and Charlotte, and was silent before Mr. Collins; Mr. Collins made slow, laborious progress on his next sermon, and lamented that nothing in his garden had yet sprouted. It was only on the day itself that Elizabeth was able to recall that it was Nawruz; and her letter wishing her relations a happy new year, and a prosperous beginning to the spring, was therefore certainly belated.

When Mr. Darcy did arrive, a little after spring did, the Parsonage had the earliest possible news of it: for Mr. Collins had been walking the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into Hunsford Lane; and, after making his bow as the carriage turned into the park, he hurried home with the great intelligence. Elizabeth smiled at his excessive eagerness, and blushed to think how he would likely expose himself before the other gentleman, whenever they happened to meet; her predominant sensation, however, was agitation at knowing Darcy to be so near.

On the following morning, Mr. Collins hastened to Rosings to pay his respects. There were, in the event, two nephews of Lady Catherine to require them, for Mr. Darcy had brought with him Colonel Fitzwilliam, the younger son of his uncle, the Earl. When Mr. Collins returned to the Parsonage, the gentlemen accompanied him. Charlotte saw them crossing the road from the window of her husband’s sitting-room; and immediately running into the other, told the girls what an honour 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 was too confused to make any answer. In a moment the gentlemen’s approach was announced by the door-bell, and shortly afterwards they entered the room. What Colonel Fitzwilliam was, Elizabeth could scarcely say—she looked at him without seeing—but she thought she saw that Mr. Darcy was peculiarly intent, and his colour higher than usual.

As concerned herself, Elizabeth believed that she had achieved the appearance of composure. There is a limit, however, to what a woman can conceal before a man who is paying attention—the evidence of ill sleep shaded her eyes—her face remained immobile, but her colour changed—or perhaps, her colour remained the same, but her lip trembled—however it was, Darcy now saw at once, what none of their past intimacy, or his past observation, had allowed him to determine.

Elizabeth courtesied upon being introduced to Colonel Fitzwilliam, and smiled evenly at Mr. Darcy; she might have come forward to offer her hand for him to shake, but she feared the Collinses’ observation, each for a different reason. Of the assembled party, Colonel Fitzwilliam was the most comfortable, and the most able to speak; and he entered into conversation directly, with the readiness and ease of a well-bred man. Charlotte and Elizabeth answered him, trying to forestall Mr. Collins’s more effusive replies to whatever degree possible. In time, Darcy recalled himself so far as to inquire of Elizabeth after the health of her family; she smiled, and answered him in the usual way. She could not, however, forbear saying,—

“You quitted London very suddenly in January. I hope that your business was concluded satisfactorily?”

“Yes,” he said, still maintaining his intent gaze at her face. “All of that is now over.”

She merely smiled again, uncertain of how to answer—this declaration had too many possible interpretations for her to trust herself to settle upon any one of them—and she turned to once more address his cousin.

Their guests left them soon afterward; Colonel Fitzwilliam wondering the reason for his cousin’s unusual stupidity, and Darcy in earnest contemplation of the near future, and how he ought to behave in it. Mrs. Collins was trying to determine the likelihood that Mr. Darcy admired her friend, and wondering whether more had passed between them in London than Eliza had shared; and Elizabeth was trying not to decide what Darcy’s words and manner meant. Mr. Collins was all in an ecstasy to think that his rooms, however unworthy, had entertained such great personages, and near relations of his patroness, too!

Chapter Text

A ſervant owes his maſter and the family the greateſt reſpect and attention. A faithful ſervant will never, having committed a fault, and being charged with it, be pert or inſolent, and behave as if he was the injured perſon; nor will he tell a lie, or lay the blame upon the innocent; but if he committed the fault, acknowledge it, in order to remove ſuſpicion; and there is little doubt but that, if ſuch acknowledgement is attended with a promiſe to be more obſervant in future, it will be forgiven.

— Domestic management, or the art of conducting a family; with instructions to servants in general; c. 1800

A day passed with no greater event than Mr. Collins beginning work on his Easter sermon. Nothing could be expected from other quarters: they could not take the liberty of calling at Rosings without invitation when Lady Catherine had houseguests to entertain; nor were they likely to be invited anywhere else, the style of living in the neighbourhood in general being beyond their reach.

The day after this was Maundy Thursday. Mr. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam called again at the Parsonage, to Mr. Collins’s infinite astonishment and delight. It was many minutes before he could be recalled from thanking his guests for their extraordinary condescension, so far as to allow them to speak; but once he had been, Colonel Fitzwilliam at once sought to engage him, and his wife and sister-in-law, in a conversation about the house. He was not familiar enough with its past appearance, he explained, to know how it had been reformed upon Mr. Collins’s ascension to it, but it appeared now to be very comfortable; and this was a subject on which Mr. Collins could talk extensively, and Mrs. Collins sensibly.

Mr. Darcy was therefore free to engage Miss Bennet; but when he did so, it was on no greater subject than that of her recent movements:—

“I hope that your journey to Kent was not too taxing? You had less luck in the weather, than you had in December.”

Elizabeth looked at him in some surprise—Colonel Fitzwilliam had inquired as to their journey two days prior, and been answered—besides which, Darcy must himself have travelled along some of the same roads, which she had—but, at length, she replied,—

“True, sir; but we have all survived the journey, and are much more comfortable now,”—nodding at the fire which was even then burning in the grate.

“Yes,” said he, smiling, but without removing his eyes from her face to follow her gesture—“so we are.”

Once again, Elizabeth was left with the sensation that he meant more than he said, but she shunned the reflection in some irritation; she would not be troubled to work to decipher him if he would not be troubled to speak intelligibly; and she turned the conversation to the Bingleys’ return from Yorkshire. They spent some time in discussing their friends’ travels, and comparing Elizabeth’s intelligence from Jane with Darcy’s from Bingley.

“How fares your sister, by the by?” asked Elizabeth presently. “Is she yet in Derbyshire? I hope she is not all alone.”

“Yes, she remains at Pemberley—but no, she is not alone. Mrs. Annesley—her companion—is with her. She will certainly be very glad to renew her friendship with you, when she sees you again.”

Elizabeth privately thought that friendship was rather a strong word; but she only asked, if Miss Darcy meant soon to return to town? Darcy coloured, and looked confused, and said that he could not exactly account for her plans; but he was sure that they would all meet again sometime or other. Elizabeth now perceived that his statement had not been a strictly factual one, so much as a polite apology for the haste with which her acquaintance with Miss Darcy had ended; and so she told him, in the same spirit, that she would be glad of any opportunity to reacquaint herself with the younger girl. Darcy’s answering smile was very bright.

On the next day, the Parsonage party received another call, which proceeded much as the others had; but still there was no invitation from Rosings. While there were visitors in the house, they could not be so necessary to Lady Catherine as they otherwise would be. It was not till Easter-day, therefore, that they were honoured by such an attention; and then they were merely asked on leaving church to come there in the evening.

Miss Bennet had already worn all of the gowns of which her Ladyship was least likely to disapprove, and she was not certain what had been sent to laundry and what had not. She rang for Saira, therefore, and asked her to ensure that one of these was pressed and ready for evening, she cared not which; and Saira—who, her mistress smiled to note, had come up stairs marking her place in her book with a finger, as though she had forgotten she still held it—said that she would.

Elizabeth read her borrowed Hitopadesha, and conversed with Charlotte and Maria, and listened to Mr. Collins wonder how Lady Catherine had liked his Easter sermon, until the time of their engagement drew near, and the ladies were rushed up stairs to dress. Again she rang for her maid; but this time, a moment after she had entered the room, Saira gave a small cry, and became ashen. She reached out to lay a hand on the toilette-table—really looking as though, but for its support, she would faint.

“Good heavens! what is the matter?” asked Elizabeth, drawing nearer to look into her face.

It cost Saira some effort to speak. “The—the gown. You asked—I forgot—every body else was away, because of Easter—and so the time just—I am sorry.”

“Never mind it, Saira. It hardly matters. The engagement was made on short notice. I will wear whichever gown you pressed yesterday. Here—sit down,” she said, helping the other onto the toilet cushion, “and I will dress myself.”

“But I readied the—the deep blue, with the orange buti,” said Saira, wringing her hands—“and you said that Lady Catherine—”

“Never mind Lady Catherine. I can handle her.”

Elizabeth had half-turned her back to undress, thinking to allow Saira a moment to regain her composure—but time was making her less composed, not more—and Elizabeth abandoned her plan when she heard the first stifled sob.

“Oh, Saira,” cried she, perching on the toilette-table in her chemise and stays, and drawing the other woman in to rest her head on her shoulder—“all is well. Do not worry yourself over it. They are only clothes.”

Saira nodded, but did not disengage herself; her mistress’s kindness was only making her crying more difficult to forestall; and for some time she could do nothing but cling to Miss Bennet’s shoulders, and pour tears into her neck. Her breath was coming in quick, shuddering gasps—she could not slow it—her head spun—her body felt like some thing beyond her, and outside of her control. Elizabeth chafed her hand over Saira’s back, and rested her lips on the top of her head, waiting for her to calm.

Mrs. Collins startled both women with her knock; and she explained through the chamber door that Mr. Collins was becoming anxious to be off. Elizabeth apologised, but said that there had been an unavoidable delay: and begged the others to begin their walk without her. Charlotte said that she would make her excuses as well as she could.

Saira now drew away, and made many representations of remorse, and promises that the incident would never be repeated—neither her unpardonable negligence, nor her silly tears. Not for the first time, Elizabeth wished that she could drag Saira’s former employer through the streets of London by her hair.

“You need not fear losing your place, Saira. Nobody will be sending you anywhere,” said she, handing her a linen handkerchief. “I like you too much to turn you off—besides which, nobody else has ever managed my coiffure half so well.”

Saira nodded, wiping her eyes.

“And if you discover some quarrel with me,” continued Miss Bennet, “you need only speak to my aunt, and she will give you some thing else to do. You are not without friends.”

Seeing Saira considerably more tranquil, Elizabeth in a short time finished dressing; and added, in a moment of defiance, a heavy minakari necklace and bracelet. As she left the room, she added,—

“Now, Saira, we are even—but do not forget that next time, it is my turn to cry.”

Saira was really unable to help herself, and laughed heartily. Oh, but laughing felt so much better than weeping!

Chapter Text

The comparative smallness of their numbers made them bend their superior and commanding knowledge to the conciliation and management of the natives of India, whom they literally employed to conquer each other. The actual condition of that vast continent greatly facilitated the execution of this plan.

To men tired out as they were with wars and contentions, and who had long (from the repeated conquests to which they had been subjected) been lost to all feeling of national pride, the very permanency of usurpation was a blessing; and it was natural for them to forget their prejudices against their European masters, in a contemplation of that superior regard to justice, good faith, and civilization, by which they saw their rule accompanied.

— John Malcom, Sketch of the Political History of India; 1811

Elizabeth, being more vigorous than Charlotte, Mr. Collins, and Maria, caught up to them just as they reached the house at Rosings. Mr. Collins looked at her in sharp disapproval as she handed off her pelisse; but he evidently decided that tardiness was a worse sin than vanity, as he rushed them all in to the parlour regardless.

It was soon apparent that his consternation had been needless. Her Ladyship received them all with civility, but she had no attention to spare for Elizabeth’s recalcitrance in point of dress; she was almost engrossed by her nephews, and spoke to them, especially to Darcy, much more than to any other person in the room. Earnestly did Elizabeth watch Darcy, to see how he behaved towards his cousin; but she could detect no signs of particular regard—indeed they never spoke to each other. His eyes were on her face and person more often than they were turned upon Miss de Bourgh.

Colonel Fitzwilliam was really glad to see the Parsonage party. Any thing was a welcome relief to him at Rosings, and Mrs. Collins’s pretty friend was an especial draw: she had caught his fancy very much; and he had a curiosity, besides, to know more of any woman who had so evidently captured Darcy’s interest. He had hardly spoken to her on his calls to the Parsonage, excepting the very first; and he determined to remedy this deficiency now, while Darcy’s attention was claimed by their aunt. Accordingly he seated himself by her, and began to talk of new books and music, of Kent and Hertfordshire.

Elizabeth worked to rally herself so far as to be able to enjoy his conversation. She had been too uncomfortable, on their first meeting, to have been aware of more than half of what she said to him; but in time her nerves were sufficiently settled to allow her more fully to appreciate what she had then dimly noticed: he spoke readily and attentively, and displayed every willingness to please and to entertain. Elizabeth’s skills at conversation ran much in the same vein: and the two were therefore soon talking with a good deal of spirit, and with the air of people who had been acquainted for rather longer than in fact they had.

When Elizabeth had extolled the beauties of her home county, and laughingly accepted the charge of partiality which Fitzwilliam had been pleased to lay at her account, he turned the discourse to ask how much of each year Elizabeth was at Longbourn, and where she had travelled. She owned to her two stays in London; but admitted that she was now the furthest she had ever been from home.

“I believe, however,” said she, “that this cannot be your case?”

“No,” said he, smiling; “it is not. I was lately in Spain, and in time I shall have to return. But here is some thing that will interest you: some years ago, I was in India—and staid long enough to gain some familiarity with the manners there.”

“You were there, I suppose, in a martial capacity?” asked Elizabeth. He admitted that he had been; and seemed to think that she would like to know more of where he had been stationed, and the regiment of which he had had the command.

Elizabeth knew that she ought to change her line of inquiry, and ask, perhaps, some light, meaningless question about his travels within England, or about the climate of Spain. But her mind rebelled against the idea of smoothing her conversation over. There was a catch somewhere in it that she couldn’t pull loose. The sound of Saira’s convulsive, shuddering tears was too fresh in her memory. Lady Catherine’s insolent questions, and Charlotte’s silence—the past several months of smiling through her teeth—the past many years of her father’s cutting jokes—the wan thinness of that group of lascars—the gratitude that she had done little, very little, too little, to deserve—all contributed to a tangled knot of anger, which Colonel Fitzwilliam had unknowingly plucked and set to vibrating.

“How odd it must have been for you,” she said, with none of her usual sweetness of tone, “to take up, in Spain, the role of a defender from foreign violence and usurpation. What a reversal, from what had lately been your task!”

Colonel Fitzwilliam perceived at once, that he had misjudged Miss Bennet’s loyalties, and would fain, with all the diplomacy of good breeding, have changed the subject. But Miss Bennet would not have it; she asked him again, how he could reconcile his behaviour.

“Of course,” he said, in a conciliating tone, “your question is a natural one, and I would be sorry to lose your good opinion—but I cannot agree that the case is so perfect a reversal. Not all usurpation, as you term it, is alike: the principles according to which a people are ruled, are of vital importance. I do not deny, that atrocious acts have been committed by individuals, who have used the army as a means of satisfying their own desires: but such people are ousted as soon as they are found out.”

“And yet Warren Hastings was acquitted. Let me, however, grant you your point: let us say, that markedly cruel individuals are deposed at once. Do you, then, believe that blameworthy violence lies only outside of the usual terms of warfare? Is it possible, in your view, to calmly, and civilly, and justly, force a nation under your yoke?”

“That is a hard phrase with which to characterise governance—but governance may, at times, be to the benefit of those governed.”

“For a moment, please, let us drop this pretense. You cannot possibly think that the motive behind any of these military actions is a moral one. I want to speak very seriously now. The reason for all of this is nothing more, or less, than money. England is no longer so dependent upon foreign sources of cotton, or indigo, or silk, now that it has subsumed India. It can supply itself—and profit, too, by selling to the Continent. What reason is there, to believe that France’s dominion over Europe would, if accomplished, be different in character to the British rule of India? And do you really mean to tell me, that your conviction of it is impartial, and not based upon your own interests?”

Fitzwilliam’s habits of chivalry kept him from feeling any offence at his lovely inquisitor; he wished to answer her; but he hesitated to do so, when the answer must be a representation of the very wild state of the native Indians, and the many outrages associated with cast and suttee, which could not fail of displeasing her, or injuring her delicacy. He began, instead, to describe the unified government of England, and the salutary contrast it formed with the internal wars that shook the foundation of the Maratha state.

“But this,” said Elizabeth, “is making the case worse, not better! Is it not terribly convenient, that the evidence that Indians are unfit to govern themselves, may be found in the same circumstance, by which its native rulers are temporarily weakened? This is not morality—it is strategy—I might almost say, cowardice.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam was beginning to insist that, while strategy did have to be considered in waging war, still the motive behind the war was as he had described it, when he was interrupted. His intent conversation with Miss Bennet had drawn the attention of Lady Catherine, as well as of Mr. Darcy; his eyes had been soon and repeatedly turned towards them with a look of curiosity; and 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 were talking of music, madam,” said he, after a few moments’ hesitation.

“Of music! Then pray speak aloud. I must insist upon having my share in any conversation about music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music, or a better natural taste, than myself. I do not doubt that I should have been a great proficient on the instrument, if I had ever learned. And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to apply. How does Georgiana get on, Darcy?”

“Very well. She is remarkably proficient, and likely to become more so. She is at work at present on a concerto of Steibelt’s, which she plays already with feeling and precision.”

“I am very glad to hear such a good account of her,” said Lady Catherine. “Pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to excel, if she does not practise a great deal.”

“I assure you, madam,” he replied, “that she does not need such advice. She practises very constantly.”

“So much the better. It cannot be done too much; and when I next write to her, I shall charge her not to neglect it on any account. I often tell young ladies, that no excellence in music is to be acquired without constant practice. It is very unfortunate for Miss Bennet, that Mrs. Collins has no instrument. Her playing is very tolerable—she does not play amiss—but I am afraid her skill will be sadly degraded if she does not practise. She is welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs. Jenkinson’s room.”

“I am certain,” said Darcy, “that Miss Bennet’s skill at the instrument—which, indeed, I can attest to myself—will survive until she returns to London. Her aunt keeps a very superior instrument there.”

Lady Catherine was not highly pleased at being contradicted, but did not chuse to appear at odds with her nephew before guests; and so she merely suggested—or, rather, ordered—that Miss Bennet play for the company while the coffee was brought in.

“Perhaps Miss Bennet will oblige us all, some time very soon—but it may be preferable to her to take some coffee herself?” asked Darcy, turning by the end of this speech to address Elizabeth where she yet sat by Colonel Fitzwilliam.

“I thank you, no,” said Elizabeth, taking the opportunity to remove herself from a conversation which had become very disagreeable to her. “I am extremely gratified by her Ladyship’s kind interest in my playing,” she continued, nodding to her—“and I am ready to entertain any time I am wanted.”

Her Ladyship bowed her head regally, having expected no less; but her nephews were in great danger of betraying themselves with a smile.

If Darcy had previously wondered at his aunt for failing to censure Elizabeth’s playing—for all that he had never found any thing wanting in it—he understood soon after she began to perform. It was obvious that she had, in fact, been practising a good deal—and his heart constricted unpleasantly to think of all that she must have done, and every body she must have seen, during those months when he had not been present to observe it. For whom had she been applying herself so?

Colonel Fitzwilliam pulled up a chair near the instrument. Lady Catherine listened for some time, and then turned to address her other nephew as before. Darcy replied as well as he could; but Elizabeth’s playing soon drew his attention again; and he walked towards the pianoforte, to secure for himself the ability to watch and to listen to her without interruption. He remained for a few moments, standing and looking on the fair performer’s countenance, before Elizabeth could remain no longer silent under the provocation.

“Have you come,” asked she, smiling, “to be severe on me? I remember how cruelly you once abused my speech. You told me, I remember, that I spoke very ill.”

“Is this true, Darcy?” asked Fitzwilliam, laughingly.

“Not in the least,” said he to his cousin; “but that does not surprise me. I have had the pleasure of Miss Bennet’s acquaintance long enough to know, that she is on occasion willing to say some thing untrue so long as it is amusing.” He then turned back to Elizabeth, adding,—

“You do not believe that I mean to be severe on you now, any more than you believed it then.”

“And yet this is saying very little—for I did believe it then. However, you are correct—I believe now that you have come for another reason entirely—perhaps in order to escape some thing, which exists on the other side of the room,” said she, glancing over at where Lady Catherine was listening in satisfaction to one of Mr. Collins’s encomiums. “There may, for example, be a draught.”

Darcy smiled; and Fitzwilliam laughed as loud as he dared.

“My manners then,” said Darcy, “were not what they should have been; and you were right to tell me so; but I sincerely hope that they have since, in some measure, improved. I believe that we have both been at practice”—nodding at her fingers where they moved with dextrous rapidity over the keys.

“You see now,” cried Lady Catherine, “what I mean—Miss Bennet does not play really ill—though she has not Anne’s taste.” And she continued her remarks on Elizabeth’s performance till her carriage was ready to take them all home.

Chapter Text

Their long black hair is adorned with jewels: their ears are bored in many places, and loaded with pearls: a variety of gold chains, strings of pearl, and precious stones, fall from the neck over the bosom; and the arms are covered with bracelets, from the wrist to the elbow. I think the richer the dress, the less becoming it appears; and a Hindoo woman of distinction always seems to be overloaded with finery.

What superior advantages do my fair countrywomen derive from a liberal education, and a milder climate? the virtues and graces assemble in their train, and form a delightful union of chastity, beauty, elegance, and affability! what influence such women have over our sex, every man of feeling and sensibility must acknowledge.

— James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs: Selected from a Series of Familiar Letters Written During Seventeen Years Residence in India; 1813

Elizabeth was sitting by herself the next morning, and writing to Jane, while Mrs. Collins and Maria were gone on business into the village, when she was startled by a ring at the door. She had heard no carriage, and therefore was not without some apprehension of its being Lady Catherine: but, when the door was opened, it was Mr. Darcy who entered the room.

Elizabeth smiled, and rose to greet him. He returned the salutation; and then explained,—

“I apologise for intruding on your solitude; I thought that Mrs. Collins and Miss Lucas would also be within.”

“No—they left some time ago on an errand—but I expect them back very soon. I sometimes go to the village with them myself, but to-day I remained behind, as I am a letter in every body’s debt. You find me now writing to Jane.”

“I would say that I hope she is well—but, if she were not, my news of it would likely be as early as your own.”

“And earlier, too—for I would expect more from Bingley’s solicitude, than from Jane’s aptness to complain,” laughed Elizabeth, as she took up a piece of mending from Charlotte’s work-basket and took a seat away from the escritoire.

“Very true,” said he, pulling up a chair near her; then adding,—“I do not think I have seen you at plain sewing before.”

“And yet, strange to say, I am capable of it!”

He smiled. “I never doubted it. But do you prefer embroidery?”

“It is difficult to say,” said she, as she turned the corner on a hem that had fallen out. “Unless the drafting is particularly complicated, or a repair particularly troublesome, it is less engagement for the mind, than a complex piece of embroidery is; and yet—though I certainly possess all the fondness of ornament with which many are pleased to charge my sex—it is pleasant to feel that I am doing something useful. What I should really like, is to learn to weave.”

His smile deepened; he leaned forward on his knees, drawing his face, in the process, nearer to her’s. “There are several old tapestry-frames at Pemberley. It would be pleasant to see them in use again.”

She looked up at him, startled; but was saved the necessity of finding a reply, by the more pressing necessity of tending to the thumb she had pricked with the inward motion of her needle.

“Are you well?” he asked her, coming to kneel before her chair, and cradling her hand within his to examine the injury, before pressing his handkerchief to it.

“I think my chances of survival very high,” she said, colouring. “I am only sorry to be so continually requiring your aid of late.”

He satisfied himself that the wound (which had been very trifling) had clotted, before pulling his handkerchief away, and then tucking the square of white linen—and the smear of blood at its centre—back into his pocket. “I do not feel,” said he, “that my aid was required; but I am very glad to have been present to lend it.”

At this moment, the sound of footsteps in the hallway caused Darcy to hastily regain his seat; and Charlotte and her sister, just returned from their walk, then entered the room. The tête-à-tête surprised them. Mr. Darcy related the mistake which had occasioned his intruding on Miss Bennet; and staid another ten minutes, asking cordially after their success on their errand, before going away again.

“What can be the meaning of this?” said Charlotte, as soon as he was gone. “My dear Eliza, he must be in love with you, or he would never have called on us in this familiar way.”

Elizabeth looked thoughtful. “He may be,” she said, slowly; “but it does not follow that he will do any thing about it.”

Charlotte then earnestly asked for a recounting of what had passed between them: but the one which Elizabeth gave her was incomplete. She did not mention what he had said about the tapestry-frames; she did not want to be scolded by her friend, into a hope which might come to nothing, or into a mode of conduct which must be abhorrent to her delicacy and to her pride; but she otherwise allowed her to conjecture as she would.

The hour after the Parsonage party’s visit the previous night had satisfied Darcy’s curiosity regarding Elizabeth’s conversation with his cousin. He knew Elizabeth’s expressions—and she had been too intent, her speeches had been too long, for the discourse to have been a friendly one on the subject of music. Colonel Fitzwilliam confirmed his suspicions, and shared what their topic had really been. He complimented the spirit with which she argued; adding, that Miss Bennet was very pretty when so impassioned, and reassuring Darcy that he believed his lady to be only misinformed, and not really lacking in principle.

This relation had two effects on Darcy: it reaffirmed him in his conviction that his union with Elizabeth would be, socially, a disastrous one; and, contradictorily, it made that union seem all the more necessary to his happiness. He admired her beyond anyone else he had ever known. She had such firmness and sharpness of mind; such a way of cutting through pretension, and illusion, and convenient lies! Marriage, and all its attendant concerns and responsibilities, would, he hoped, funnel those energies in a more orthodox direction. It would behoove a woman who had the charge of a large household to be uncompromising in matters of right.

Darcy had spent some time fruitlessly pressing his cousin about whether Elizabeth had been misinformed; whether he was not wrong in regards to India; and, when their forbears’ actions on behalf of the British Crown in Ireland were brought up in Fitzwilliam’s defence, whether they had not been wrong also. But Fitzwilliam responded to it all with his customary combination of good-humour and stubbornness; and in time, Darcy gave up the conversation to go up to bed.

The gentlemen from Rosings called upon the inhabitants of the Parsonage every morning for the next several days. Elizabeth spoke cordially to Colonel Fitzwilliam when the topic was light, but resolutely shunned any particular compliment, offer, or request that seemed a mark of intimacy. In this reticence, Fitzwilliam saw only a loyalty to his cousin, which did nothing to harm his opinion of Miss Bennet.

On Easter Tuesday, Lady Catherine sent a note containing such a stroke of civility, that it was some moments before Mr. Collins was equal to the task of relaying the happy news to his party. They were to come and have dinner at Rosings that very evening, notwithstanding how occupied Lady Catherine must be with her nephews. The genesis of this extraordinary politeness, Mr. Collins thought, must be his patroness’s approbation of his Easter sermon; and Maria did not know enough to think any differently. Charlotte, however, met her friend’s eye, with a look that seemed to imply her information was better.

Elizabeth resented that the footmen should be made to serve at a formal dinner to-day, which, her aunt’s latest letter had informed her, was also Mawlid; but of course there was nothing for it but to accept the invitation. When the ladies separated to dress, Elizabeth donned the red net gown, paisley shawl, and kundan ornaments that Saira had laid out. Since Easter, she had begun dressing again as she always had; and it was only for Charlotte’s sake that she bothered making an excuse to Mr. Collins about the laundry.

Her reprieve from Lady Catherine’s censure, however, was to end over the broiled whiting. Her Ladyship turned from addressing Darcy to observe the object on which he had, in an unguarded moment, fixed his gaze, and frowned.

“It is a mark of good taste, Miss Bennet,” she began, “to shew restraint in one’s clothing, and to dress according to one’s rank of life. I am very attentive to such things; nor will you find me unwilling to give advice, for fear that it may be resented. I am everywhere celebrated for the frankness of my character. Therefore I will not hesitate to tell you, that a young lady, especially, ought to look to her honour and her credit in such matters as this. You are unlikely to marry, if you give men reason to think you vain or extravagant.”

“I thank you for your kind hints, your Ladyship. But I do all of my embroidery myself—and therefore the expense is very trifling,” said Elizabeth, smiling. Unable to resist scandalising her further, she then added—“Besides this, I have means of getting good Indian silk and muslin very cheap indeed.”

“But the pernicious effects of this style of dress do not lie merely in its expense,” said the great lady. “Excessive ornament, or an affection for lurid colour, have a naturally vitiating effect on the morals in and of themselves. Your climate and your religious education have been in your favour—I will say that for your father—but you should look to your other habits: what you wear, and what you eat, and what you read.”

Here Elizabeth looked up at Mr. Collins, who would not just then meet her eye. But Lady Catherine was continuing,—

“In these things your mother cannot be a proper example for you. You ought to find an English lady, several years your senior, and look to her.”

Elizabeth’s amusement transmuted itself to anger with a rapidity which startled her. “My mother is a Christian woman, who birthed and raised me, and whom the Bible calls upon me to honour. It is therefore to her, and to no other, whom I owe a natural debt of obedience,” said she—though it is doubtful whether she had ever supposed any such thing before.

Lady Catherine nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes—your feelings do you credit. But they are not wise. You need a more suitable model. Is your governess still with you?”

“No. My youngest sister has been out of the school-room for a year.”

“She is, I believe, of an age with Georgiana?” asked Mr. Darcy, who had been searching for some time after a way of intervening, without further exasperating his aunt against Miss Bennet by causing her to suspect his partiality. His mentioning his admiration of her playing, two days ago, when adduced to his suggestion that the Parsonage party be invited to dine to-night, created a picture, that he was anxious to keep his aunt from seeing until Elizabeth was at such a distance as to be spared the first outpourings of her anger.

“Yes, sir. She will be sixteen in June.”

Darcy nodded. “Georgiana, also, was taken out of school last year.”

Here Lady Catherine frowned. “She ought not have been. She would not have been, had I been listened to. She ought to have been made to stay another year. You cosset that girl too much, Darcy.”

And she continued, and was answered, in a manner that made it clear that the argument was an old one. Elizabeth, who understood Darcy’s intention in opening it, gave him a slight smile when able to meet his eye.

Chapter Text

Hence! hence! concealments—hence! each female art!
A virtuous passion needs not shun the light.
Is it disgrace, to virtue's power to bend,
Is it disgrace, high intellect to prize?
When brilliant talents all their glories lend,
Is it disgrace to view with partial eyes?

— Miss Elizabeth Trefusis, Poems and Tales; 1808

Some thing soon occurred to alter Elizabeth’s ideas of much of what had gone before. The morning after their dinner at Rosings, and some time before breakfast, she was walking along the grove at the near edge of its park—some of the crab-apple trees that shaded the path were struggling into blossom, and she was admiring their appearance in the crisp, early light—when, upon looking down from their canopy, she found herself faced with Mr. Darcy.

Greetings had hardly been exchanged, when he turned back and began to walk with her.

“I admit,” said he, “that I had been hoping to meet you. I must take this opportunity to apologise for my aunt’s remarks, last night—and for forbearing from contradicting her—”

“No,” said Elizabeth, almost before he had finished speaking: “I know what it is, sir, to have relations who will have their say. You must not consider yourself responsible for her. Nor can I blame any body, for not speaking sooner. There was no call for putting yourself in a difficult situation with her.”

“But it is not myself—” he began intemperately; then paused, and started again. “I have no reason to fear her censure—my actions, I assure you, will not be dictated by her—nor am I a sharer in her opinions. I thought only of you. If she believed I were shewing too lively an interest in you—”

“Ah! I see now. She would lock me away in a convent, like in the Italian, that I not be in her daughter’s way. I thank you, sir. I had hardly perceived my danger.”

He seemed caught between amusement and consternation. “I feared you had heard that foolish notion. I assure you it is an idea of my aunt’s, and nothing more.”

“I—beg your pardon,” said Elizabeth, in some confusion. “I had not meant to inquire—”

“Not at all,” he hastened to say. “That is—you have nothing to be sorry for.”

She nodded, and began searching after some thing else to speak of; but he preceded her.

“I recall, the last time we were all in Meryton, that Bingley’s housekeeper was receiving instruction in pickling?”

“Yes, sir.” Elizabeth was a bit confused at the non sequitur, but answered readily enough. “The making of athano is a very particular ritual, the nicety and importance of which cannot be overstated.”

He smiled. “And all the pickling which is done at Longbourn occurs in this esoteric manner?”

“Mostly,” laughed she; “but it is not so very esoteric that I cannot share how it is done, if you have contracted a liking for it.”

“I am certain that my cook would be capable of learning.”

“Yes—I do not doubt it.”

Here was another pause of some seconds; which being elapsed, he was asking her where their cook acquired her mangoes. Elizabeth told him that they were purchased already in pickle, and then merely redressed.

“I have never eaten one fresh,” she said.

“I wonder if they could be grown in England. Pemberley has several hothouses.”

“You should think better of telling me, if ever you succeed. I would rob you.”

Darcy laughed, and told her that she would have no need to.

He gave her his arm as they turned back at the far end of the grove, offering to return her to the Parsonage. After breakfast, he made his usual call with Colonel Fitzwilliam. Whenever she chanced to look at him (which was not a quarter so often as she wished to), his eyes were intent on her.

This pattern repeated itself the next day. Darcy met her in the same spot, as though it were a matter of course. It occurred to her, during their conversation, that he was often turning the subject towards his home. When she owned that this was a favourite walk of her’s, he described some of the winding paths through the coppice-woods and apple orchards of Pemberley. Upon learning that much of what she read came from her father’s collection, but that she and her sisters were indebted to the local circulating library for every thing that was unlikely to interest him, he told her that the library at Pemberley had been the work of many generations, and that he regularly added to it himself.

“And yet I am afraid it cannot be reckoned a really good collection unless it contains a great many novels,” said she—trying to keep up her usual style, but only half-aware of what she said. She had had the occasional tête-à-tête with him before—but somehow it was different out of doors, with the thin morning sun in his hair and down the line of his nose, and the feeling of his arm under her hand: her breath came quicker than exertion alone could justify.

“It contains several,” he said, smilingly, “and I’ve no objection whatever to more being added.”

At the time, she had only said something about his sister; but after breakfast, as she readied herself to go downstairs, she suddenly thought of what Miss Harding had said, about men boasting of their rooms and outbuildings, when they wished to impress a woman favourably—and felt so overcome that she had to sit down with some haste.

In reviewing the past several days, she suddenly felt that she had been unaccountably slow. His cook, and the athano—the tapestry-frames—his telling her how things stood with Miss de Bourgh, as though there were no impertinence in her mentioning it—as though she had a right to know—she was certain to meet his sister again, some time soon—whatever had caused him to leave in January was all over now—

The gentlemen called at the usual time. Elizabeth looked at Mr. Darcy quite as much as she pleased, and therefore met his eye very frequently; she was only in danger of smiling too brightly. She knew that she could not escape Charlotte’s observation, but she hoped to keep Mr. Collins, at least, ignorant as long as was practicable.

Colonel Fitzwilliam now wished for a walk in the gardens, and asked Miss Bennet to accompany him. Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy looked at them with curiosity, but the former decided that he had better stay, and shew proper deference to the latter. Charlotte, whose kind schemes for her friend had at times paired her with Fitzwilliam, and at others with his cousin, was no less intrigued by the circumstance. Elizabeth was only surprised, and wary; but she was always willing to be out of doors, and she wanted to know what Fitzwilliam had to say.

As they walked the paths, Elizabeth opened the conversation:—

“It is unfortunate that you were not present when Mr. Collins shewed us these gardens. You will not find me such an able guide. I am sadly unable to give you an exact description of the fields in every direction, or the precise number of plants in each grouping, or an enumeration of which rooms of Rosings that gap in the trees gives us a prospect of.”

Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “I consider my deprivation amply repaid by the greater pleasantness of my walking companion,” he said, gallantly; Elizabeth merely nodded. After a short pause, he said, slyly—

“We were always meant to leave on Saturday morning, but now I am not sure that Darcy will not put it off.”

“Oh? You are, then, I suppose, quite at his disposal?”



“To be sure. We military men are used to obeying orders.”

Elizabeth bit her tongue.

“And I suppose,” continued he, “that Darcy is rather used to giving them. He has often, since soon after he attained his majority, been under the necessity of managing things on his own.”

Now Elizabeth began to think that she perceived the motive behind this interview. She was not averse to obliging Fitzwilliam in speaking of his cousin—it was just what she would like to be speaking of, as well—and accordingly she asked him,—

“And what sort of a manager do you find him?”

“I doubt you could find one of his servants or tenants who would not speak well of him—and old family retainers, too, who have had every opportunity to understand his temper and his habits. He has always given Georgiana, as far as was compatible with her age, the power of doing as she pleases—he is no tyrant there—as you have already heard our aunt complain of. And then he has kept up and expanded every measure his father ever instituted for the relief and education of the poor.”

“You make him sound like a man without fault,” she laughed.

“That was the common complaint amongst his classmates, I understand, when he was at Cambridge. Straight-laced, and priggish, and that sort of thing.”

She thought she might have betrayed her embarrassment at this implication—but she only said,—

“He committed, I suppose, the unpardonable sin of attempting to obtain an education at school?”

“He was known to attend, on more than one occasion, a class which took place before noon.”

“No! This is too bad—I won’t believe it.”

The conversation continued in this style until they had twice made the circuit of the park, at which time they returned to the sitting-room; and, after a few minutes more, the gentlemen took their leave. Elizabeth was agitated and distracted the rest of the day: hardly daring to let herself form any wish or expectation that would bear the name, and yet utterly unable to think of any thing else.

Chapter Text

LEAR: I am even
The natural fool of Fortune.

— William Shakespeare, King Lear

When Elizabeth hurried to her grove the next morning, it was to find Mr. Darcy waiting for her at the turn. They exchanged the usual greetings and inquiries, and Darcy offered her his arm, which she took.

They walked in their usual direction for some time. Elizabeth, her every nerve alight, attempted some chatter about the few small blooms bordering the path, and Charlotte’s housekeeping, and Mary’s letters; but Darcy was mostly silent, and seemed more than usually abstracted.

After some few minutes, he led her to one of the benches along the Parsonage side of the path, and invited her to sit down; but he, himself, kept to his feet, pacing agitatedly before her, his hands held tensely behind his back. Elizabeth’s heart clamoured within her breast.

At length, he came to a halt, and began abruptly,—

“My resistance has been useless. No longer can I maintain this fruitless struggle. You carry all before you. I love you desperately—hopelessly.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth, but could only gasp silently: the passion and despair, which inflected his voice, formed a mixture too strange for her to know what reply she ought to make. This silence he evidently considered sufficient encouragement: for he was soon continuing,—

“I admired you from our first meeting. I began to love you, I think, not very long afterward. Your wit, and vivacity, and the easy playfulness of your manners, early bewitched me: and my tender feelings obtained a steadier character, and a firmer basis, from what I afterwards observed of your sense and understanding. I loved you for the patience and kindness I saw you shew to your sisters, and my own. I loved your frankness; your honesty; your intelligence; your graciousness; your bravery. Every thing I saw of you only added to my affection.

“This inclination, however, I did every thing in my power to oppose. My consciousness of the insignificance of your birth, when compared to my own, long deterred me from surrendering to it. I knew that a scandal would be created, not only by your parentage, but by your habits and opinions—and that the name, the dignity and worth of which I have made it the study of my life to uphold, must be degraded in the eyes of the world by such an alliance. In considering this, and the opposition which my family was likely to make to any match between us, I tried, as long as I could, to give up thinking of you.

“But the force of my passion is—absolute. Nothing I have done has been sufficient to conquer it. No matter how many miles separated us, I thought, constantly, of you—only of you. You have overturned and overruled every precept, every authority with which I used to govern myself. You are the only woman who has ever touched me in this way. You are the only one who ever will. I beg you to relieve my anxiety—to end the state of apprehension in which you now see me—and do me the honour of accepting my hand in marriage.”

It was several moments before Elizabeth could speak.

“You had no right,” she began, when she had collected herself—looking up at him where he stood above her, with hot tears streaming down her cheeks—“You had no right to speak to me on this subject while your feelings were so unsettled.”

Darcy was startled, and somewhat affronted, by this attack: but the sight of her tears softened him; he believed she only wanted reassurance; and accordingly he fell to his knees before her, and grasped her gloved hands firmly within his own.

“My feelings are settled, Elizabeth,” he cried, with passionate earnestness: “I tell you, I am decided.”

Elizabeth moved back an inch in her seat, and tried to withdraw her hands. He was confused, but released her at once, sitting back on his heels to give her the space she seemed to want.

“If your feelings were settled, sir, you would have felt no need to relieve them by expressing to me all of your objections to the match. What can you have meant by it—other than to cause me pain?”

Darcy’s feelings now blended sympathy with exasperation—he had thought more of Elizabeth’s sense, and less of her sentimentality—but he calmed himself, by thinking of the allowances which ought to be made for her age and her sex; and resolved to make her understand him.

“I am very sorry—it grieves me that my words have hurt you—but it would hardly have been honest of me, to have concealed my objections. I think too well of you, to believe that you are the sort of young lady who requires unqualified flattery. I heartily regret the necessity of speaking as I did—but I am not ashamed of the feelings I related; which, I hope you will own, after some reflection, were only natural.”

“Natural!” cried she, with a warmth that startled him. “My God, I am sick of that word, natural! It is just what every fool and imbecile in the kingdom cloaks his personal prejudices in—! it is just what is arranged to suit each person’s taste.”

She leaned forward to grip the edge of the bench in both hands, breathing hard, and flushing more deeply than he had ever seen her. “If Britain wishes to bleed Antigua, Jamaica, and Sumatra to fill its coffers, well, it is because their people are naturally disposed to submission! If men wish to exclude women from public life, they need only say that females should restrict themselves to the role that nature has given them! How very convenient, to give to all of one’s petty nonsenses, one’s despotic impulses, the—the mantle, the dignity, of nature! How convenient—and how cowardly!”

“I believe,” said he, now growing angry, “that you regarded my suit with favour, as recently, perhaps, as yesterday. You have given me every encouragement—every reason to expect—you cannot seriously mean to tell me that you intend to reject me on the strength of the last five minutes’ conversation?”

“Yes, sir—that is just what I mean to tell you. Perhaps I did favour you, before this explanation—perhaps, if you had concealed your natural feelings, and flattered me, as you call it, your suit might have been accepted. What then? Do you truly believe, that what you say matters so little? That people’s feelings are of so little moment, that they may as well be trampled on as not? Do not you think I have some right to refuse a man, on the basis of a selfishness that would seek to relieve his feelings by wounding mine? Can you really feel that what you chuse to say reveals nothing about your character—about your temper—about what reproaches and resentments, perhaps, I would be made to suffer in the future, if I allowed your passion to carry the day—even knowing that your judgement did not accord with it?

“In time, you will acknowledge the justness of what I say—you will see that I have done right, and that I have acted to spare us both further pain. You must know, that I—that I hope—very dearly—that I have every wish for your future happiness. That it be with me, however, is quite impossible.”

Here he attempted to take up her hands again, and assure her, in fervent whispers, that he could never reproach her—that she would never be regretted—but she would not permit it—she begged to be allowed to return to the house—and he watched her go in agonised disbelief. He tried to stand, but found that he could scarcely support himself; he was forced, from actual weakness, to take up the bench which Elizabeth had lately quitted; and it was half an hour at least before his tears stopped, and he had strength to return to the house at Rosings.

END OF VOL. II

Chapter Text

But besides the methods of ornament and dress common almost to all nations, the women of Europe have a variety of others by which they endeavour to attract the attention and attach the heart. Among these we may reckon every genteel and polite female accomplishment, such as music, drawing, dancing, to all which we may add that correspondent softness of body and of mind, the radiance that sparkles in their eyes, and the melody that flows from their tongue, their unaffected modesty, and the nameless other qualities which so eminently distinguish them from all the women who are educated only to become slaves, and ministers of pleasure, to the tyrant man.

— William Alexander, M.D., The history of women, from the earliest antiquity, to the present time; 1796

Elizabeth had lain awake much of the night, feeling sick and miserable. Morning therefore found her bleary and ill-rested: but she felt that she could remain no longer in bed; she needed air and exercise; and accordingly she hastily dressed herself and started off along one of the paths that wound between the Parsonage and Rosings.

Their grove was, of course, out of the question. She turned instead up the lane which led her farther from the turnpike road, and walked its length with quick, long steps that soon made her breath come heavier. She turned back only at the edge of the property, and then repeated this ritual two or three times; so that, within an hour, she felt warm despite the morning chill—and relieved, also, of some of the restlessness of her mind. When she entered the house to take breakfast with the others, it was with the wish of appearing cheerful as usual, and the resolution of repressing such reflections as must make her unfit for conversation.

The party settled, after breakfast, into the principle sitting-room. Elizabeth took up several occupations in succession, but was forced to relinquish each one—each one contained some painful recollection—every thing only served to remind her of the chasm between her wishes and her expectations, which she had thought would soon be closing, and which instead only gaped more dizzyingly than ever. To try to sew was to feel his hands holding her’s, when he had called on Monday and found her alone; to try to read was to imagine what he would say, if she told him that she had remedied the deficiency he had identified in her education, and could read Hindy after all; to try to draw, was to remember that he had wanted her without feeling the need to examine her portfolio, and judge of the degree of application attested therein. 

She was just laying her pencil down in disgust, when the bell rang—and Mr. Darcy and his cousin were announced. She was suddenly glad of her occupation; and she bent herself back to it, her hands trembling, as the greetings were exchanged, and Darcy explained that he and Colonel Fitzwilliam had just called to take leave.

Elizabeth was amazed when the gentlemen handed off their hats and gloves, indicating that this would be a visit of longer than a few minutes’ duration; and, indeed, Fitzwilliam was soon sitting down, and agreeing to take tea. Darcy, while his cousin claimed the others’ attention, was, to her considerable perturbation, drawing near to admire her work: except, in the space where he should have said some thing about the spiritedness of her lines, or the verisimilitude of her foliage, he was instead entering, under his breath—

“I looked in our grove for you—but you did not come.”

Elizabeth only shook her head minutely. She brought up her pencil in an attempt to remedy the unsteadiness of the few lines she had laid down at his entrance; but this was making matters worse, not better; and instead she moved the sheet to the side to reveal a completed water-colour, hoping to make it appear that the portfolio was their real object.

“I thought about what you said, yesterday—indeed, I thought all night of nothing else—and I realised that you were right.”

Elizabeth’s hands were in danger of crumpling or tearing the edge of the page she was now trying to move; and Darcy leaned in still further, taking over her task before she could do more damage. Some thing in her face made him hurry to say:—

“No! Not that—not that we would be unhappy together. But that I was wrong to speak as I did. I maintain that I would never reproach you; that I could never regret you. But nothing that I said gave you any reason to believe as much.”

She nodded again, keeping her head bent low over her work to hide the brightness of her eyes. If this was all he had come to say, she thought that she might have done without the interview.

“I am sorry,” said he—“I see that you are wishing for my absence. I have only one thing more to say: my wishes, and my affections, are not easily moved. They are steadfast. I mean to wait for you, in London. Time, I hope, will convince you that I am in earnest; that I did not offer for you in a moment of heedless passion. I ask only for time, to try to regain the trust, which I know I have squandered. But if you forbid it—if you tell me again that it is impossible—I will not persecute you. It will not be like in the Italian.”

She let out a watery laugh, despite herself. “Nobody in the Italian is persecuted by a man who wishes to marry her.”

He frowned. “The Romance of the Forest?”

“No. Well—Adeline thinks that the Marquis de Montalt has entrapped her in his villa because he means to make her his mistress—but it is not so. In actuality, he is her father. He only wants to kill her.”

“Ah. How foolish of me.”

“You might, with justice, have named The Castle of Otranto.”

“I will remember that, the next time I beg you for clemency.”

She swallowed convulsively, and set about regathering the sheets of paper, which now spanned the whole desk, back into order. After a few moments, he pressed,—

“I have told you of my plan. Do you absolutely forbid it?”

The closeness of his person, and his voice; the temptation to close that chasm, to fix the vertiginous lurching she felt in her stomach when regarding it—she was not equal to withstanding either—and, at length, she shook her head.

His deep, sudden intake of breath, and the tensing of his hands where they still rested on the desk, told her how fearful he had been of a positive reply, and how relieved, not to receive it. She was half-inclined to despair of her own vanity, when she understood how much this evidence conciliated her; but she defended herself, a moment later, in thinking that it would hardly have spoken well of the seriousness with which he regarded her reservations, had he displayed again the security which he had evinced the day before.

“Thank you,” he said, lowly; then drew himself back up and rejoined the others. He and his cousin staid long enough for civility, and then departed to say their final good-byes at Rosings, and be off.

Mr. Collins had the earliest news of the gentlemen’s departure; he went to wait by the lodges to make them his parting obeisance, notwithstanding that he had just seen them an hour ago. To Rosings he then hastened to console Lady Catherine and her daughter for their loss; and on his return brought back, with great satisfaction, a message from her Ladyship, importing that she felt herself so dull as to make her very desirous of having them all to dine with her.

Elizabeth could not meet Lady Catherine without thinking that she may, at some future date, be presented to her as her niece. She amused herself with imagining what would then be the strength of her indignation; but it was an amusement which shaded towards the serious. In recollecting what had been her Ladyship’s treatment of her, and in remembering that she was almost his nearest relation yet living, she could almost make herself sympathise with the feelings which had motivated Darcy’s uncivil language.

Charlotte had observed much of Elizabeth’s abstraction on this day and the last; and accordingly, when Maria was resting before supper, and Mr. Collins was attempting to read a book which Lady Catherine had recommended, she called upon her to join her in her sitting-room. She could not suppose any thing but that Mr. Darcy had gone away again without making his proposals; and she was prepared to represent to Elizabeth how particular his behaviour had been—how he only wanted a little encouragement, or convincing—and what she ought to do, when next they met in London, to provide it.

Of Mr. Darcy’s offer, his expressions as he had made it, and what had been her reply, Elizabeth of course said nothing. She knew that Charlotte would only wonder at and blame her. She shared part of the story, in saying that Darcy had told her he would be happy to renew their acquaintance in town, during that morning’s call. This was quite enough for her friend, who began earnestly emphasising Darcy’s consequence, and telling her that, to have any hope of catching him, she must make herself appear rather more in love with him, than she did at present.

“And you will not have a hard task,” continued Charlotte. “He is certainly a handsome man; and I believe that you like him pretty well already.”

Elizabeth wondered at herself, that she could have missed the mercenary tinge to Charlotte’s opinions during all the years they had spent as close confidants. She promised her friend, wryly, that she would see what she could do; and Charlotte begged her very seriously to see that she did. Her mind was divided pretty equally between considerations of how well Darcy’s intelligence and steady character would suit her friend—and of the considerable patronage he had in the church.

Chapter Text

Letters are the life of trade, the fuel of love, the pleasure of friendship, the food of the politician, and the entertainment of the curious.

To speak to those we love or esteem, is the greatest satisfaction we are capable of knowing, and the next is being able to converse with them by letter.

— Rev. Thomas Cooke, A. B., The Universal Letter-writer; Or, New Art of Polite Correspondence; 1812

Elizabeth had settled it with the Gandjees and with the Collinses that she was to remain in Kent until the last week of April. The remaining three weeks of her visit brought four events of note: the Parsonage party dined at Rosings on no fewer than five occasions; the greenery advanced a little, though hampered by the weather, which continued unusually cold; Elizabeth began speaking to Saira in no language but Hindy, except for when she requested the odd word in Bengali; and Mr. Collins was delighted beyond his wildest imaginings, to receive an actual letter from Mr. Darcy.

Most of the letter—which Mr. Collins read to the assembled party over breakfast twice over on the day it was received, and once each on the next two days—was inconsequential. It thanked Mr. Collins and his wife for their hospitality on those occasions when he and his cousin had called, and expressed that he hoped they were in good health. The purpose of this missive—if a purpose it had—was pretty likely to be found within its last line, which read:—

"Please give my best to Mrs. Collins, to Miss Lucas, and to Miss Bennet.”

No longer had Miss Bennet to remain in a state of suspenseful ignorance regarding Mr. Darcy’s hand. Mr. Collins, besides discoursing at length about its virtues—its elegance, its legibility, its firm uprightness, etc.—passed the note around the table, that all might admire it at their leisure. The first such exhibition ended in Charlotte directing at Elizabeth a very significant look, as if to tell her, that it was only on her account that this excessive civility could have been performed.

On the third day of the letter being brought out, Elizabeth had the brief, absurd thought of spiriting it away, that she might trace a finger over the purposeful lines making up the Miss Bennet without being observed—and despaired of herself a moment later. How odd, that these girlish frivolities, having absented themselves for the length of her actual girlhood, should arrive to trouble her so late!

Lady Catherine was as she had been since Elizabeth’s arrival. She almost insisted that Elizabeth remain longer; inquired minutely into her and Maria’s plans for the journey to London, and endeavoured to change them; gave them directions as to the best method of packing; and tried, to no effect, to make Elizabeth promise to represent to her father the ill effects that any air perfumed with Indian cookery would have on the constitution, the digestion, and the complexion. Elizabeth would only proffer expressions of gratitude for the advice, without giving the necessary assurance. Having known to expect it before she arrived did nothing to endear her to this kind of treatment; and, except for the necessity of leaving Charlotte, she saw nothing to regret in her departure. Even the pathways and gardens surrounding the Parsonage had lost their charm, associated as each now was with some particular memory or anxiety.

On the morning of the Saturday when the guests’ departure was to take place, Elizabeth and Mr. Collins met for breakfast a few minutes before the others appeared; and he took the opportunity of paying the parting civilities which he deemed indispensably necessary. These civilities, in apologising for having presented but poor entertainment for a woman of her spirits, while unfolding the great benefit he understood her to have received from the Parsonage’s close relationship with the family of de Bourgh, blended abject servility with boastfulness in so thorough a variegation, that it was all Elizabeth could do to avoid a smile. She tried, as well as she could, to unite civility with truth in her replies; and, at length, the others arrived to relieve her.

Some time after breakfast, the chaise arrived. After an affectionate parting between the friends, Elizabeth was attended to the carriage by Mr. Collins; and as they walked down the garden, he was commissioning her with his best respects to all her family, not forgetting his thanks for the kindness he had received at Longbourn in the winter, and his compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee, though unknown. They were off as soon as he, putting his head in at the window, had earnestly reminded them that they had not given him the charge of any thanks to Lady Catherine and her daughter, and just as earnestly assured them that he would be sure to make the communication regardless.

Elizabeth could not help pitying Charlotte such company as she went away, though Charlotte herself did not seem to ask for it. She evidently regretted that her visitors were to go: but her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms for her; and she faced the loss of their society with admirable stoicism.

Their journey was performed without much conversation, or any alarm, and within four hours of their leaving Hunsford they reached the house at Russell Square, where Maria was to stay a day before departing for Meryton. Familiarity with her surroundings had made Miss Lucas a bit easier, but she was not the equal of her elder sister in sense or intelligence, and was no companion for Elizabeth.

For companionship, and for counsel, Elizabeth must look to Jane. She had been considering, in the weeks since Mr. Darcy’s proposals, how much to tell her sister of them—but without success. She had powerful temptations to openness: in the first place, her conquest of Darcy’s heart had created such feelings of gratification, as reason had yet had little power to dispel. It pleased her to know that he had been thinking of her, wanting her, loving her, suffering for missing her, all the time that he had been away; it repaid some of the vanity he had injured, in having left so precipitately. In the second place, the disdainful, the disgusted feelings he had described—and the evidence, in his recounting of them, that they yet held some sway—caused her pain; and this pain wanted Jane’s consolation.

Her sister’s new condition in life, however, made her hesitate. Jane’s husband must naturally now be first with her; and her husband was Darcy’s friend; therefore, it was either asking Jane to keep some thing from Bingley, or taking a risk of revealing to his friends some thing which Darcy would not want known. The rest of Elizabeth’s stay in Kent passed away, without her telling a soul of what had occurred: all consideration of the subject took place within her own mind.

Darcy’s compliments to her charms, and to her character, could not but please her; and she hoped, for her own credit, that they indicated he understood her mind. It was just as evident, however, that he did not understand her feelings—that he had, indeed, little respect for them. What woman of even common delicacy could have accepted such a proposal! Only one who was thoroughly mercenary, or entirely heedless of the future, would accept a man’s love without his esteem.

So she reaffirmed to herself, as many times a day as she found needful, that she had taken the only course she could have taken. Still, it was painful to think, that she might even now have been engaged to him, had she acted differently! It had been easier, under the first flush of indignation, to repulse him—but the hurt of it had been creeping in, making it a trial to speak, even by the time she had quitted him—and it was now all but overwhelming. So lately after she had been ready to despair of him as belonging to another, she had felt certain that he would soon be asking to be all her own—that all the pleasures and trials of their future lives would be entered into together—and then, and just as quickly, he was lost to her. The deprivation was even a bodily one: her chest felt heavy; her hands ached.

She ought, perhaps, not to have accepted his request for time. It may only be making her future sufferings worse, to avoid acknowledging the finality of their separation now. She wished to believe, that he understood how he had hurt her, or could be brought to; but the strength of this very desire was making her wary of herself: she feared that her decision may be influenced by hope, more than by conviction. She feared the temptation that she had led herself into, to accept him too soon, and on too little evidence. And yet, perversely, she was glad that the choice was not yet taken from her—glad, that his letter proved him still to be thinking of her!

On Monday, Maria was escorted back to her father’s home. Elizabeth resolved that, on the following day, she would begin her round of morning calls, as a step towards informing—all her town acquaintance—that she had returned. The afternoon of the present day, however, she gave over to correspondence. Charlotte must be informed that she had arrived safely, and must hear whatever Elizabeth, on her last day in her home, had not been able to say to her in the presence of her husband. Her father must be consoled for his loss of, as he said, the only sensible people in the house, and his threats to arrive in Russell Square himself responded to with good humour.

Lydia and Kitty wanted consolation also, for the regiment was to leave Meryton in three weeks; and every hope of amusement for the summer went with them. There was little purpose in drawing, playing, or making up dresses, without officers to impress: even shopping and dancing would then have lost their lustre. Lydia made much of Mrs. Forster, and Chamberlayne, and Pratt, and Denny; when Wickham’s name appeared, it was only because it occurred in train with the others’, or because it was linked with Mary King’s. Elizabeth was relieved on her sisters’ behalf, and worried on Miss King’s—but she did not see what she could do, not being a particular friend of that girl’s, and not being in the neighbourhood—Jane, perhaps, ought to be consulted.

When it was written, Jane’s letter contained family news; a description of the journey back from Rosings; an expression of concern about Wickham’s courtship; and the intelligence that she had received a proposal of marriage from a gentleman she knew in town, whom she had liked very much, but which she had felt forced, by the manner of his expression in making it, to refuse:—

“In this extremity you can imagine how I want my Jane. Tell me, therefore, if you can, that I have not been very vain and nonsensical, or ruled by too refined feelings, but that I have acted rightly—and by all means clear the gentleman also of all wrongdoing, if you can contrive it.

“Your's,” etc.

Chapter Text

नदीनां शस्त्रपाणीनां नखिनां शृङ्गिणां तथा
विश्वासो नैव कर्तव्यः स्त्रीषु राजकुलेषु च
सर्वस्य हि परीक्ष्यन्ते स्वभावा नेतरे गुणा
अतीत्य हि गुणान् सर्वान् स्वभावो मूर्ध्नि वर्तते

— नारायण पण्डित, हितोपदेश

Tuesday was Miss Harding’s at-home day; and accordingly the Russell Square party arrived at the London seat of Baron Audley at an acceptable hour thereon. The Baron and Baroness were as they had been since Elizabeth had known them: cordial, but with something slightly chilling in their demeanour—not excepting when speaking to their daughter. Miss Harding herself exhibited more warmth. The presence of her parents imposed some restraint, and she still kept up with most people her old air of patient disdain; but with Elizabeth, she blended this with a pretty, conscious affectedness that verged on coquetry.

“Ah! She returns!”

“I told you it would be to-day,” laughed Elizabeth, coming over to where Miss Harding was holding out her hands to her, and taking them.

“Oh, yes. But I had quite forgotten.”

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. They both knew that she was lying, and so there was little need to say so. “How have you been faring? You wrote to me but once, and that was some weeks ago.”

“Oh, to be sure. I was much busier, you know, than you were. You cannot have had much else to do but write. Unless you mean to tell me that your cousin has suddenly become a wit?” asked Margaret, releasing Elizabeth’s hands to begin fixing tea for her, displaying as she did so an elegant hand and wrist to all possible advantage.

“Mr. Collins was not my only company. I went, as you know, to visit Charlotte.”

Miss Harding wrinkled her nose. “Hm. Charlotte.”

“You cannot possibly dislike her! You have never met her!”

“I beg your pardon—she took you away from me, and therefore I dislike her heartily, for all that we have never met. But tell me: you must have seen Lady Catherine de Bourgh, as well?”

“Quite as much of her as I wished to.”

“I have never had the pleasure myself. She prefers to be waited on in her own home—she never comes to Pemberley, when we sometimes go down in the summer.”

“You are acquainted, then, with Mr. and Miss Darcy?”

“Oh, every body knows every body,” said she, in a tone of exquisite boredom. “But how did you find her Ladyship?”

Elizabeth hesitated, caught between a quip and a serious reply. “She seems—much in the habit of being obeyed.”

“Ah! And you, la pauvre femme, not much in the habit of obeying any body—unless it is me. But what sins did she urge you to commit?”

“Those of silence and deference.”

“Oh, horror!”

“And—” but again, Elizabeth hesitated to speak. Miss Harding only looked at her, slowly sipping her tea. Eventually, Elizabeth ventured, in a light tone—

“And the abandonment of all my pernicious Indian habits.”

“Ah—well. If you wish to advance your position through marriage, that is probably wise.”

Miss Harding could not have known what a lance she was throwing into Elizabeth’s breast with this remark. Still, it was just what Elizabeth had suspected of her—that being serious would not be rewarded—and she made her retreat accordingly.

“Sorry to say, I am not always wise. I have, after all, befriended you.”

Margaret very gracefully swept away Elizabeth’s plate and teacup before she had actually finished with either—but Elizabeth saw that she was fighting a smile.

The next ten minutes passed much as the first five had. At the end of them, Elizabeth met her relations’ eyes, and they all silently agreed to depart: Elizabeth and Margaret may have been particular friends, but the Hardings’ reception of the others was not warm, and Mary must be uncomfortable. Miss Harding was calling on Elizabeth to fix some day very soon to go to an exhibition, or a concert, or any thing so long as it took her from home; and the Russell Square party were rising to take their leave, just as Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst were announced.

Both women greeted Miss Bennet with every appearance of being very fond of her. Now that she was an intimate of Miss Harding’s, it was in their favour to appear very intimate with her also. A worse actress than Miss Bingley, however, must have shewn some part of her resentment that Miss Bennet seemed to have taken that place which she had angled at herself.

Elizabeth’s thoughts during the rest of the day made circles around Mr. Darcy: his estate, and his sister, and his acquaintance with Miss Harding. What was Pemberley like? in what light did it shew its master? what did Margaret think of it? would Miss Darcy approve of her brother’s courtship of herself? were the questions which busied and troubled her mind.

Thinking about the nature of Pemberley during the summer months naturally led to contemplation of how time would be spent in London, in the winter. She realised, of a sudden, that she had never had any apprehension that Mr. Darcy would attempt to keep her from carrying on work of a public nature. The way in which he spoke to her was so serious, so devoid of that tender gallantry which suggested a belief in the necessity of females’ exemption from business of all kinds, that she had not considered it. His reference, however, to the dignity of his name in the eyes of the world, made her think that perhaps she should.

Would he object to the specific object of the work she had in mind? If he said that he did not, and never would, could she believe him? She had always rather thought of him as the kind of man who, having once made a resolution, would adhere to it with fastidious exactness: but that had been before his proposals had proven that he could act against his principles. Could she trust the word of such a man? And did it work in his favour, or against it, that what had induced him to act against his convictions had been his feelings about her, herself?

Word of Elizabeth’s return to town must have spread more quickly than she had been anticipating, for the Darcys arrived the very next morning, at an hour so early as to be nearly uncivil.

The visit gave her no further reason to doubt Darcy’s delicacy: there was no peculiarity of manner, no improper display of regard, in his treatment of her. Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee nevertheless noted a change in his demeanour towards their niece. He had, as long as they had known him, been more fixed by her than by any body else in the room; but now, his attention seemed steadier, and more purposeful; and Mr. Gandjee began to think that he would be vindicated, after all.

Elizabeth had been at work at a small escritoire when their guests were announced. She rose from her books as they entered, and chose a chair across from the divan which Mr. Darcy and his sister shared; then fought to keep her fingers still in her lap. How dearly she wished she had a bit of sewing to hand!

She had, however, a motive besides the obvious to shew herself to advantage. For all that she had said it in an attempt to throw off suspicion regarding her feelings for the girl’s brother, she had meant what she said in January, about Miss Darcy seeming very sweet and unassuming; and she had now a dearer interest in her than ever, as someone who may in time be a sister to her. She exerted herself, therefore, as soon as the initial greetings and inquiries were over:—

“I am very pleased to see you again, Miss Darcy! It has been some time.”

“Y-yes—yes, it has.”

Elizabeth was about to make another remark, when Miss Darcy seemed to remember that more ought to be said, and added,—

“I mean to say, that I am glad to see you, too, Miss Bennet.”

Elizabeth favoured her with a bright smile. “How have you spent your winter? I understand from your brother that you were at work on a new concerto, several weeks ago?”

“Yes—Steibelt’s ‘L’orage’.”

Miss Darcy’s inflection seemed to imply that she was about to continue; but, an additional few moments convincing Elizabeth that nothing more was forthcoming, she prompted the girl to give her impressions of the piece, and to say some thing about how she progressed with it. Georgiana’s speech became more fluid as she warmed to her subject, and saw that Miss Bennet was really interested; and the latter congratulated herself for having drawn from her so many sentences together. As she spoke, Elizabeth perceived that Miss Darcy’s manner was much as it had been in the winter, from which observation she concluded that her brother had told her nothing of the significance of this meeting. She was grateful for it—she did not wish to be regarded with any especial wariness or scrutiny.

“I can only applaud your diligence,” said Miss Bennet at last. “I tend to grow weary of performing by the end of a long concerto—though I am very happy to listen to them. But for myself, I prefer airs and variations. There is some thing very playful about them: beginning with a small deviation, and elaborating on it again and again—repeating some thing, but differently.”

Miss Darcy only nodded—she seemed to have a different opinion, but was afraid of contradicting her brother’s friend.

“But you, I think,” said Elizabeth accordingly, “do not favour them?”

“No, I—not for myself, but—”

“You need not be sorry for feeling differently than I do! Variety, as a very great sage once said, is the spice of life. It is for the best, that different ladies like to play different kinds of music—or else we should bore all the gentlemen to tears. And do not say,” she said, turning to Mr. Darcy, “that we do so anyway.”

Darcy smiled. “I never would say such a thing. I have always found you well worth listening to.” Elizabeth did not miss that this ostensibly plural “you” would do equally well for the singular.

Mr. Gandjee chose this moment to claim Miss Darcy’s attention, and he and his wife were soon entertaining her with questions about her journey from Derbyshire, and stories about the children. Mr. Darcy’s eye happening to land on the desk, which Elizabeth had lately come away from, he asked her what it was that she had been working on.

“A translation, sir.”

“May I—?”

“Yes, of course.”

She trailed him back to the escritoire, where he flipped through her Hitopadesha, and the two dictionaries she had been consulting, taking care to preserve her page. He ran a finger over one of her lines, and lingered there. 

“Is this Cutchee?”

She smiled. “No, sir—this,” she said, gesturing to the book of stories, “is Hindy; and I am working to translate it to Bengali. The script is Devanagari—which is used for Hindy, and Sanscrit. There is another script which is used for Bengali, but I do not know it. Saira—that is, my maid—can speak Hindy and Bengali—in fact, her information is the origin of all of those notes you see written in the margins—but she reads only English.”

“Your translation, then, helps you to practice two languages at once?”

“Yes.”

“That is clever,” said he. She smiled, and thanked him; but was unsure how to proceed. After a moment, he continued,—

“I believe you once told me, that Cutchee has a script of its own?”

“Yes—it looks like—” and she took up her pen again, and thought for a moment, before rendering in Cutchee, on a piece of foolscap, the sentence she had lately been working on.

He looked as though he would have liked to stroke a thumb along these lines, as well, but stopped himself before he could smudge the ink. “And what does it mean?”

“Rivers, people with weapons in hand, animals with claws and horns, royal families, and women, are untrustworthy by their innate nature, notwithstanding what other qualities they may acquire: innate nature stands at the head of every thing.”

“That,” he said, emphatically, “is nonsense.”

“You mean to speak, I suppose, in defence of rivers? I understand they are very useful.”

He smiled, but persisted,—

“I mean to say, that I have never repented of trusting you: and am sure that I never shall.”

She blinked up at him, breathless; unable to find a reply, and embarrassed by her own stupidity. Presently, he added,—

“I wished to thank you—for your kindness to my sister.”

She gave him a slight smile, relieved by the return to safer waters. “It is no trial. She is a very sweet girl. It—it galls me to think—that some body could—”

He nodded, his lips thin with displeasure. “I had, by that time, long since ceased to consider him a friend: but I will own that the manner in which he again intruded upon my notice, was—very surprising to me. I think I missed my parents, then, more than I had at any time before.”

“I cannot imagine,” said she, after a few moments. “I will tell you again, though, that I am certain you did well by her. I can tell that she esteems you, very much. That is not always the case, between a girl of that age and her guardian.”

“I cannot reconcile myself so easily to my own conduct. It must have been negligent. I ought to have known sooner.”

“I believe you were already responsible for more than most gentlemen are, at that age—or ever, if the truth were told. And there was nothing at all unusual in her having an establishment of her own. But, however it was, there is no sense in lamenting the past. You must follow my advice, and look only to the future.”

He looked at her with a fixed intensity with which she was becoming rather familiar. “Indeed.”

He seemed then to decide against speaking more; he escorted her decorously back to her seat, and smiled at her uncle’s proud insistence that she was becoming quite the philologist.

“Yes, she is,” said he, in such accents that Elizabeth’s relations were at once convinced, despite his polite, restrained behaviour, that he was very much in love with her.

Upon returning to her desk later that afternoon, when calling hours were over, Elizabeth discovered that the paper containing the sentence of Cutchee had disappeared from it.

Chapter Text

The manufacture of lac lake is certainly well worthy the attention and encouragement of government and the nation, in every point of view. First, because it is the produce of our own territories, and can afford to pay the same duty as cochineal. Secondly, because it will save the nation not less than 260,000l. per annum, in procuring cochineal from foreign countries. Again, because it affords a dye equal in splendour, and superior in permanency to cochineal, at one third or one fourth the expence; thus enabling government to clothe our troops uniformly, officers and soldiers, with cloth of the same shade. Again, because it must become a most valuable article for export, and tend to enrich us, as much as our manufactures of indigo.

— William Martin, A Treatise on the Art of Dyeing Woollen Cloth Scarlet, with Lac Lake; 1812

The forty-fourth Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts opened on the first of May. Miss Harding arrived, with Mrs. Evans in tow, to collect Miss Bennet and survey the offerings. They were escorting, in addition, Miss Mary, as Elizabeth would not hear of her not being invited. Margaret, however, did not much mind: the girl in question never said any thing of sense, but she had the virtue of being usually silent. It being a Friday, Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee declined attending: and so it was a party of four that made their way to the Great Room to spend the morning in earnest contemplation of water-colours, oils, and sculptures.

Mary behaved just as Elizabeth had expected, in lamenting the preponderance of portraits, discoursing gravely on the deleterious effects of a love of money on the progress of English art, and searching the rooms for the few history pieces which they could boast of. Elizabeth’s expectations of Miss Harding, however, were to be disappointed. It was soon apparent that her interest in the Exhibition was not, as she had claimed, only in being out of the house—the paintings were not merely a backdrop to a social scene—she stayed close to the walls of the crowded rooms and looked at each one, examining some, in particular, for some time. If hailed by an acquaintance, she would smile and talk in her usual gay, careless manner, and say every thing correct, but Elizabeth thought she was hiding a sense of impatience at the interruptions.

Elizabeth admired the few landscapes on display; she liked the prospects of city streets from above, and the scenes of peasants at work; but scenes of war, and portraits of people she did not know, could not much fix her attention; and the still-life paintings, with their sedate arrangements of fruit and flowers, interested her still less. Miss Harding, however, liked those especially, and studied each one, speculating about how the artist had produced a certain colour, or a particular play of light. Elizabeth had never seen her friend look so absorbed, or so unconscious of how she appeared; and for her sake she willingly listened to talk of cobalt blue and Indian lake, washing and glazing, pure and compound tints.

Mrs. Evans had, some time past, wandered off to speak to some acquaintance across the room. When she returned, she was accompanied by Mr. Blanchard, who, upon seeing that Elizabeth formed a part of her party, had asked if he may return her to it. Blanchard greeted Miss Harding with cordiality, and Miss Bennet with some thing greater. Elizabeth gave a guilty start upon seeing him; she coloured slightly, though Mr. Blanchard did not observe it.

The events of March and April had thoroughly effaced Mr. Blanchard from Elizabeth’s mind. She had forgotten to consider how she would behave towards him: she was unsure whether or not she ought to seek to discourage him. That she preferred him to Mr. Winmore was almost certain: his manners were more elegant, his mind a little quicker; she did not feel, with him, that she often had occasion to hide a smile. She had yet to sound him on his opinions regarding the peoples of the Indies in general—but, if he was considering her for a wife, they could not be highly disfavourable. She only wished she knew what he felt for her, and how strongly he felt it! Was it fair to allow him to hope, when her hopes were directed at some body else? But then, was it not common enough, in the early stages of a courtship, to have more than one person in mind? And could she afford to discount him, and thus delay all her plans, if, in the event, Darcy proved unamenable to them?

He recalled her attention by asking her the requisite question in such a setting: namely, what did she think of the collection?

“I confess,” said Elizabeth, “to preferring the scenes of nature, even to the allegorical paintings—though, of course, there are few enough of those. But I must say I am surprised to see how many really distinguished horses there are in the kingdom! I had no notion that so many of them were worthy of representation.”

He smiled. “Those who commissioned the paintings no doubt thought so.”

“One wonders, however, what the horses themselves thought of the goings-on.”

He laughed, and offered her his arm. Elizabeth turned to regard Miss Hastings, but she was taking Mrs. Evans by the arm and leading her away, smiling. Mary, who was taking a sketch from a scene depicting Cleombrotus after his failed rebellion, declined to join them in taking another circuit around the rooms, citing her occupation. Elizabeth therefore consented to be escorted alone. Mr. Blanchard spoke, when the subject of a painting allowed for it, primarily of history, literature, and allegory, rather than technique; and Elizabeth listened, nearly silent, looking again at the paintings she had lightly passed over before: human figures bound together in tense, improbable poses, the male ones swarthy, muscled, and active, the female ones languishing, hairless, and almost preternaturally pale.

One of the pictures they encountered was an aquatint of an Indian scene, which Elizabeth had not noted before. A man on an elephant was attempting to cross a bridge: a series of snow-covered mountains fell away from him in the background. It was just as stolid as the drawings in the Hindoostane Coffee-House—she knew not how—the lines of the buildings, perhaps, too straight, the perspective too flat—and she moved on from it, to Mr. Blanchard’s slight surprise, without making any comment.

They made their way through the inner rooms, duly evaluating the drawings and sculptures. Elizabeth lingered on the few statues of female figures on display, starkly white, carved in marble. Mr. Blanchard asked her if she drew and painted—she owned that she did, a little—and he said that he would be pleased, some time or other, to see her work, if she did not object. She did not: and so she must, some day soon, expect his call.

Mrs. Evans, when they found her back in the outer room, declared herself impatient to leave. She had spoken to every body important. Even Mary and Miss Harding had had their fill. The outer-coats were collected, the carriage called; and Mr. Blanchard helped the ladies into it, bidding them farewell.

“Well!” cried Miss Harding, as the carriage began moving towards Russell Square. “That is a very promising inclination. Though I still prefer Lord Drummond for you. I shall see which assemblies he is to attend, and procure invitations for you. You see what a valuable friend I am!”

“You do not need to be valuable to me,” said Elizabeth, struck by some thing in Margaret’s voice, despite its apparent levity, “to be my friend.”

“Oh, no—but you know what I meant,” replied she, airily; but she turned her face towards the window in some haste.

On her return, Elizabeth noted that she had received a reply from Jane by the third post. The pieces of household news which Elizabeth had related to her, the recountings of the children’s lessons, and the descriptions of the landscape between Kent and London, were all duly and minutely attended to, before Jane turned to more serious matters:—

“Since we came back, Lizzy, I had been noticing some thing of that nature myself, and I really think that I might have given Miss King a little hint if she had staid in Meryton. I was afraid, however, of doing too much. It would have been too bad, if he had been really fond of her, and sorry for what he had done, and it all went off only because of my interference. I asked Charles about it, but without giving any hint of the involvement of a certain young lady of our acquaintance, and he said that it was difficult, in such a circumstance, to know what was best to be done, but that he was sure I would do right. However—as you have gathered from what I have already said—Miss King has left the county. She is even now in Liverpool with her uncle. It seems that there is not now, nor ever had been, any formal understanding between them. The regiment is to leave Meryton in a fortnight, and the gentleman we are speaking of with them, and so our worries ought soon to be over. You may depend until then on my informing you of any thing new that occurs in that quarter.

“Now, Lizzy, I must turn to the last subject that you address. I cannot tell you how sorry I am for you! I do feel for that poor gentlemen, when I consider what he must have suffered, and what must be the strength of his disappointment, and I am sure that you feel it too. But he was wrong to speak as he did. If he could not reconcile himself to our parentage, then he ought not to have spoken at all. Poor Lizzy! To endure such language from a man you liked so much! I can only console myself in thinking that at least you were not positively in love.

“You ask me to tell you that you have acted rightly, and indeed I am convinced that you have. If you feel any doubt in such cases as this, it is best to say no at once. You are a very cheerful, good-tempered, sensible person, and I have never known you to be needlessly delicate. If you foresaw any danger in accepting, then you could not have done otherwise than to refuse.

“This gentleman’s language, however, may have reflected only his past struggles, and not his present feelings. Are you very sure that there is any danger of his reverting to his old opinions? Must they not have been overcome, for him to have made his proposals at all? He perhaps only meant to emphasise how dear he finds you. By relating the strength of the objections he overcame, he meant to relate the strength of his affection. To be sure it was poorly expressed. But perhaps he is sorry for how he put things, and willing to make amends, and wishing for another hearing. If you really like him, then it may be better to give him another chance. I have never known you to like any body before—you have never written to me of any other gentleman! I am sure you would not have asked me to defend him, if you did not really wish to forgive him.

“Please keep me informed of all of your news, and especially tell me what happens with this poor young man.

“Yours,” etc.

Chapter Text

The advantages of a conquest of Hindostan to this country are obvious. It would pay as much of the national debt as government should please to discharge. Should the influx of wealth raise the price of the necessaries and conveniences of life, the poor, on the other hand, by being eased of most of their taxes, would be more able to purchase them. — But, say some grave moralists, how can such a scheme be reconciled to justice and humanity?—This is an objection of no weight. It would be promoting the cause of justice and humanity, to pull petty tyrants from the height to which their villainies have raised them, and to give to so many millions of mankind a government founded upon the principles of virtue and justice. 

— Alexander Dow, The history of Hindostan; translated from the Persian, to which are prefaced two dissertations; the first concerning the Hindoos, and the second on the origin and nature of despotism in India; 1812

Mr. Darcy called at Russell Square the next day to find Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee, Miss Mary, Karim, and Manoj in the sitting room—and Elizabeth absent. If the Gandjees were surprised to see him calling alone, or out of turn, they did not shew it: he was invited to sit down, and questioned about his health, and his sister’s, and spoken to about the weather, which, as Mrs. Gandjee noted, remained unusually wet and cold.

“Yes,” said Darcy, gravely—“I am sorry that we could not offer you any thing better. It is bad luck, that the only English spring you have experienced in some time should be so disobliging.”

“To be certain. But I have no reason to complain!—I am very happy with the company of my nieces. Lizzy, by the way, is in the garden at the back of the house. Abdullah can shew you the way, if you do not object to being out of doors. I am sure that she would be sorry to have missed you.”

Darcy did not much bother to disguise his eagerness to follow the footman to the named destination. He was glad to have an ally: and if being more obvious in his intentions than he may otherwise have been was the cost of securing one, he would pay it.

When he found Elizabeth, he observed her for some moments before coming forward to claim her attention. She was on a wooden bench nestled into the roots of a tree whose bare canopy spread out above her, reading; a breeze ruffled the curls on her brow, and pressed the fabric of her skirts against her lower legs. She stood, when she noticed his approach, to give him a slow, nervous smile, and exchange greetings with him.

“I am sorry,” she then said, “that I was not present to receive you—I am surprised that my aunt did not call me in.”

“No—she sent me out. I believe she had the notion that I would be grateful for a chance of speaking with you alone.”

“And would you?”

“You know I would.”

“Then—will you walk with me?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling; taking her book from her, that she need not lay it on the damp bench, and offering her his other arm. As they began to make the circuit of the square, he added:—

“This is hardly enough space for you. I came intending to offer to escort you wherever you might wish to go—Gunter’s, or Mother Red-cap's—but perhaps Hyde-park is the place.”

“I would like that. I have never seen it in the spring. But I hope that you can keep up with me once I really get to walking! I need a good ramble, and I have no intention of slowing myself down.”

He smiled. “I assure you that I can keep pace.”

Some minutes of companionable silence here followed. Elizabeth was about to open a conversation about the theatre, or the Exhibition, when Darcy said,—

“I have been reading another history.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Of course you have. You are addicted to histories. No day in which you do not read a history is satisfactory to you.”

“I beg your pardon—throughout the entire course of our acquaintance, I have read only two.”

“That by no means proves me wrong. Perhaps you are a slow reader. But what do you think of this history? Does it satisfy more than the last? And what subject does it treat of?”

“It describes the military actions of the British in Indostan—and it contains a chapter, as well, on Mahomedan conquests in the same region. I find myself obliged to read it with the same skepticism as the last. It may be useful as a catalogue of events: but the cast it puts on every thing, is doubtful.—The author makes no secret that his loyalties lie with England.”

“I have encountered the same difficulty, in attempting to learn of the same subject. That a writer should praise the military successes of his own nation, is, perhaps, understandable, however little laudable it is. National prejudice requires, I believe, a certain greatness of mind to overcome, and it is not an ordinary person who manages it,” said she, thoughtfully. “But even when writing of the history of India before the British incursion, I find that historians are usually pretty partial. They favour the Hindoos, or the Parsees, or the Afgans, and deride all the others.”

“Your mother’s family, I believe, are Mahomedans?”

“Yes, sir—and my aunt’s. But I do not expect that a history of Moslim conquest in India would treat of their tribe: it is not descended from a conquering army, but was converted from Hindooism by a missionary, some time in the fourteenth century. If you want to know more about Islam itself, however, you would be better off asking my relations, and not me. I only know the fundamentals.”

“It does not surprise me,” he said, admiration clear in his tone, “that you have learned some thing of it. I already knew you to be a woman of information.”

She laughed. “Not much information at all! I have never even read the Koran: I am not in possession of the necessary Arabic.”

“My experience, however, tells me that, having said so, you will certainly begin learning within six months. How many languages is it now? Nine?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I was never really in command of Latin or Greek—and they, as well as my Italian and German, have surely decayed this past year. I have not kept them up.”

“No—you have employed your time far better. There are enough people in the country already who read the European languages.”

“This is a fine way to have a conversation,” said she, laughingly—“with every thing I say turned to my praise!”

He stopped and turned to peer under her bonnet. “I do not tell you any thing which I do not mean. I will say, however”—and here he hesitated a moment—“that the sight of that lovely blush, is a significant inducement to frankness.”

She looked amused, and puzzled. “I am certain that I do not blush. I am too dark for it. No body else has ever noted it before.”

“Then no body else has paid enough attention.”

They had stopped walking by now, and stood, with their heads turned inwards and towards each other: Darcy drank in the sight of her face, making a quick, aborted movement with his hand, as though he would touch her cheek. She, without thinking, caught his hand to prevent him from drawing it wholly back; but, startled by herself, dropt it before she could compel him to complete his intended motion.

He seemed to recognise her confusion, and did not press his advantage; only gave her a gentle smile, before offering his arm again and moving to complete their second circuit of the square. In time, Elizabeth was again able to speak:—

“I have a Persian history of India, translated into English, if you wish to look into it—but I ought to warn you that it is rather long and minute, and that the prefaces which the translator appends are perhaps faulty, in the manner we have been speaking of.”

He owned that he would like to see it: and accordingly she led him back to the house and into the library.

She drew out the volumes to which she had referred, and laid them out on a side-table. “Here,” as she shewed him the pages she meant—“the first volume contains the various prefaces and appendices I mentioned, and the end of the second describes the recent history, and present state, of politics—which may be of more interest than the reign of Mamood over Guzerat in 415.”

Darcy, upon looking through the publication, exclaimed that it was recommended, as filling in several gaps and imperfections in the history he was then reading; and Elizabeth told him that he might borrow whatever of the volumes he liked. He thanked her, and took the first two, giving her back her novel at the same time.

The pair returned to the sitting room to discuss the proposed excursion to Hyde-park. Mrs. Gandjee was not a walker, and Mary gravely regretted that she could not spare the time away from her studies; but Mr. Darcy suggested that his sister and her companion might join Elizabeth and himself—and, in a moment of inspiration, added that the children might come as well, if they liked it. Upon receiving their parents’ permission, Karim and Manoj said, with admirable gravity, that they would be delighted to come; and so it was arranged that they would have an afternoon’s respite from their lessons on Wednesday, if the weather permitted.

At the conclusion of these proceedings, Mr. Gandjee looked at Elizabeth rather meaningfully—but she affected not to observe him.

Chapter Text

It is impossible for any one to walk through the streets of this metropolis without meeting many objects to whom he would be glad to administer relief, if he could ascertain that his bounty would not be mischievous rather than useful.

— The Christian Observer, vol. 11, iss. 129; 1812

Towards the end of the usual calling hours, The Russell Square party paid the Hardings their usual Tuesday visit, which proceeded in the usual, listless manner. The Gandjees and Mary left at the end of the time allotted to a formal call; but Elizabeth, who was to spend the day with Margaret, remained behind.

For some time afterwards, Miss Harding and Elizabeth remained in the sitting-room, making light, cheerful conversation. They were not, however, to continue in each other’s sole company; Elizabeth was soon given to understand that her friend had invited to tea such society ladies as she thought would prove useful acquaintances to Miss Bennet: and it was in this sort of salon that the hours until dinner were to be spent. Elizabeth was equal parts touched by the gesture, and vexed not to have been informed before the day itself: but it was so consistent with Margaret’s peculiar, decided way of doing things, that she could not help but be charmed.

The ladies and the tea things arrived in due course. A Mrs. Markham, when Miss Harding informed her that Miss Bennet had intentions of doing good works in London, expressed her firm approbation:—

“Good! A woman ought to have ambitions. It is not men alone who are charged with the care and maintenance of the world. Tell me,” she asked, looking over Elizabeth’s dress, “have you an independent fortune?”

“Yes, ma’am—in a small way.”

“But you do mean to marry? We females, of course, make all the decisions of note, when it comes to charitable works—but it is the men’s names on the boards of management. It would be best if you had one at your command. A man’s name, I mean.”

“Oh? Not the man himself?”

Mrs. Markham laughed heartily. “That, too, if you can manage it!”

“We are considering one or two likely candidates,” said Margaret.

“Good, good. But what is it, precisely, that you wish to do?”

Somehow, Elizabeth felt embarrassed—as though she were laying part of herself bare—but she understood the opportunity she was being given, and determined to make good use of it.

“I want to set up a—sort of home, for the relief of distressed travellers. It would provide food, and lodging, and passage back to the East Indies, for servants and shipmen who find themselves stranded in London.”

Miss Harding, who had never asked after the particulars of Elizabeth’s ambitions, raised her eyebrows. Mrs. Markham appeared thoughtful. After a few moments, she said,—

“You might consider proposing a ‘domestic foreigners’ branch to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.”

“That seems, in general, a very eligible plan,” said Elizabeth, carefully; “but it would be—disagreeable to me, to take any part of the funds for my society from profits gained from the practice of slavery. And I should not like the provision of aid to be dependent upon a person’s professing the Christian religion. There is no guarantee that people mean what they say, when they say it under such duress.”

“Yes, yes, to be sure. Well, then—might the East India Company be applied to?”

“I wondered that myself. If their charter for a commercial monopoly is renewed—as seems likely—they may be ordered to provide a fund for the purpose which I have in view.”

“And, in that case, they will likely be pleased to hand over the money, and be spared the trouble! How do you mean to manage this institution, by the by? Joint-stock?”

“I had far rather it were privately owned. I have no expectation that it will yield any profit—and I cannot like the thought of important decisions being taken out of my hands.”

“You ought, then, to consider private sources of funding: donations, and subscriptions. I know of one institute for the suppression of mendicity in London that sells tickets, which people may hand out to beggars—and the tickets are then redeemed for food, lodging, or transport back to their home parish, when the person in question goes to the address written on them. You might do some thing similar yourself.”

Miss Harding leaned back in her chair, watching the two women coolly, as they continued to discuss bazaars, collection boxes, dinner parties, charity balls, concerts. A few of the other ladies approached to see what was being talked over so intently; and, upon receiving an explanation, had their own suggestions to proffer, some more eligible than others.

Elizabeth rang for pen and paper, and began, amongst the debris of the tea and cake, to scribble down the names of societies to apply to, papers to advertise in, regulations to consult, etc.; and conducted some hasty arithmetic with what she was told she might expect to pay for rent, and coals, and bread, and the employment of nurses, in houses of different size. It was the first time that any thing related to the prospective endeavour had existed in any place other than her own mind—and she felt all the significance of it.

When the other ladies left, Margaret informed Elizabeth that she had invited several people—some of whom claimed an acquaintance with her—for an intimate dinner, and that she expected their arrival in an hour or so. Elizabeth, surprised, announced an intention of returning to Russell Square to dress, but Margaret would not hear of it:—

“Oh, no, there is no time! You shall borrow some thing of mine. Marshall can have it done up in a trice: it will likely be only the hem that needs taking up, and hem stitching goes quickly. Perhaps my willow green silk—with—ah!”

She undid the clasp of her short chain of pearls, and drew it from around her neck, before securing it around Elizabeth’s, instead; fidgeting with it for a few moments to ensure that the pendant gold cross was centred at the hollow of her throat.

“There!” she exclaimed, her hands lingering for a moment, at the place where Elizabeth’s neck met her shoulders, as she pulled away. “That looks darling on you. How those pearls gleam!”

“I know perfectly well what you are doing, Margaret.”

“Yes, of course you do—I never thought you wouldn’t. But you ought to do as I say, just for now. There will be time enough for dressing as you please after you marry, when no one can do any thing about it. Now come up with me, so we can get started on that alteration—there’s a good girl.”

Though the Baroness Audley was, of course, nominally hostess, Miss Harding had in fact arranged the guest list and seating herself: and Elizabeth therefore found herself with Lord Drummond and Mr. Blanchard on either side, and sitting a little higher in the order than she perhaps ought to have been.

Lord Drummond, when she spoke to him, was polite, but seemed rather bored. Mr. Blanchard talked, as usual, by rote: once she had exhausted her descriptions of what she had seen in town since their last meeting, he was wishing to know if she had read a certain new book, or seen a certain play. She gathered, from how he spoke, that he was a consumer of theatrical reviews—his language seemed to owe much to them—The Secret Mine may not rank highly as a literary production, but it had merit as a melo-drama, being rich in incident, and supplied with strongly-drawn characters—the Hindoo mine was a beautiful piece of scenery, and the music was in some places charming—the horses appeared very well-trained and, while novel, such feats must possess the power of interesting—etc.

“But what do you think,” asked Elizabeth, “of the detractors’ view, that these pieces of—thespian equestrianism—will crowd all the serious works out of the legitimate theatres?”

He smiled at her phrasing, but seemed disinclined to vouchsafe an opinion until she had given her’s; he only told her, that he had heard of pamphlets being distributed containing arguments to that effect.

“I think,” said Elizabeth, “that they may have saved themselves the trouble. No taste for pageantry and shew can rob a serious work of its merit. Shakespeare’s plays have survived into the modern age: but no one, in two hundred years, will have heard of Timour the Tartar. The rage for equestrian dramas will, no doubt, die down on its own. In the mean time, those who enjoy them may safely be left to their pleasures. We need not be improving ourselves at all hours of the day.”

Blanchard smiled anew. “No—only some of them.”

Elizabeth obligingly laughed; and some moments of silence followed.

“You look very well,” said Blanchard, at last. “That dress is very becoming.”

“Ah! Thank you. It is Miss Harding’s. She has taken me on, I think, as a sort of project.”

Blanchard seemed unsure of what to say in reply; and at length responded, ambiguously, that Miss Harding had very good taste. Elizabeth wished to ask, if he meant to refer to her taste in gowns, or her taste in projects—but she did not like to come so near to flirting; and so she only said some thing about the quality of the silk, and then reapplied herself to her stewed celery.

At the end of the evening, Margaret sent Elizabeth home in her carriage. Upon attaining her room, Elizabeth rang for Saira—who exclaimed at her mistress’s strange gown and jewellery. Elizabeth explained the circumstance that had led to her wearing them; and Saira examined the fit of the dress and the stitching along its hem, muttering.

“I would certainly have taken you along had I known we were having company for dinner, Saira.”

“Yes, yes. Now stand up and let me get you out of that thing—you scarcely look yourself. Whoever saw such plain trim?”

A few minutes later, as Saira worked on her stays, she opened, hesitantly, a new topic:—

“I wonder, miss—that is—some of the girls downstairs speak Cutchee—and I don’t like to oblige them to speak English with me all the time. But the lower servants and I aren’t together often enough for me to ask them—and Begum Azeez is always busy, and doesn’t like me hanging about the still-room. So, I thought, maybe—”

“Oh! I am sorry,” cried Elizabeth, stricken. “And here I’ve been quizzing you all the time, and never thought to ask if I might perform the same office by you! Will you be wanting to learn to read, or just to speak?”

And, while Saira wrapt Elizabeth’s borrowed necklace and took out the hem on the dress in anticipation of its return, the two young women agreed upon a schedule for study and practice, and Elizabeth promised to begin work on a dictionary which Saira might consult.

Chapter Text

Gradually, as the wisdom, the virtues, and the necessity of reform came to be understood, shallow admiration was improved into an intense attachment of the heart. While, therefore, reform was gazed on as a new beauty, the love of her was only skin deep: but her perfections being now universally known, and her potency to save the state, to preserve every family from pillage, every individual from slavery, believed in, her influence is felt in the bone and the marrow.

— John Cartwright, The comparison: in which mock reform, half reform, and constitutional reform are considered; 1810

Mr. Darcy had spent the month of April in a state of such resolution and activity of mind, as formed a considerable contrast with the melancholy inertia of February. All struggle was now over; his goal was clear; and he had only to decide how best to effect it.

The indignation he had felt at Elizabeth’s refusal had been fierce, but short-lived. His recriminations had turned on himself by the time he had reached the house at Rosings. Over the course of that night, as he turned Elizabeth’s words over and over in his mind, he felt that he came to understand himself in a way that he had never done before.

He had always been very sure that he was his own man: that his opinions were the result of rational consideration, not of prejudice, or interest; that he was a stranger to hypocrisy. Upon discovering that he was unhappy with what his address suggested of his temper, he had become determined to change it—and he knew that he had carried out this determination with some success.

But he now found that this change had been a half-measure: not a revolution, but a spurious gesture at reform. A civil address alone did not make a man’s character. What he lacked were precisely those qualities he had most prided himself on his possession of!—courage—decision—independence of thought. He had contented himself with doing what had been marked out to him as his duty—but he had never asked himself what he thought was right. It had been Elizabeth, and his love for her, that had first forced on his attention the fact that they may be different things. Even then, he had tried to run from the realisation. He had thought, during the months of his estrangement from her, only that his duty conflicted with his desires. He had not wondered whether it conflicted with his morals—with the sober conclusions of his rational mind.

The obligation he had inherited was clear. He should preserve, and increase, the dignity, wealth, and influence his forebears had accrued. He should continue to collect rents and sell grain, as was becoming of an old landed family; more covertly, he should begin to collect on investments in Indian silk, American cotton, Jamaican sugar. He should marry a woman whose forebears had gathered up a similar hoard, through similar means, and use the children she bore him as a conduit through which these possessions would pass into future and future generations. It would be expected. It would be dutiful.

But was it right? Would it make him happy? Was any of it real?

He spent the early hours of the next morning, as he walked the grove in hope of meeting Elizabeth there, trying to determine what words would best represent the change in his thinking; how best to prove that it was a real and a lasting one, and not more of the desperate, senseless pleading of the day before. In the end, under the roof of Collins’s house, he had had to be rather briefer than he may have otherwise been—but, after a pause so long that he had begun to despair, she gave him leave to try—and he spent the following weeks in London determining how best to use that second chance. In the mean time, he read; and took Georgiana and her companion to the museum and to the opera; and summoned his banker to change his instructions regarding the purchase of stocks and bonds, for the first time since he had attained his majority.

His feelings upon first seeing Elizabeth again in town were, of course, powerful; and it needed some care not to overwhelm, or embarrass her with them. When they conversed, she seemed, in some ways, much as she always had—cheerful, good-humoured, speaking with an equal mixture of frankness and archness—but he thought that there was a wariness, a carefulness, in her manner—and he was determined not to rush her.

On the first Wednesday in May, Darcy, Georgiana, and Mrs. Annesley arrived at Russell Square to escort Miss Bennet and the Masters Gandjee to Hyde-park. Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee solicitously walked their callers back out to their carriage, and ensured that their children were settled therein. Darcy handed the ladies in himself, before settling beside his sister; Elizabeth sat on the other bench, between the children; and they were off.

The boys, who had conducted themselves admirably while within (Manoj, however, needing once to be reminded not to fiddle with the retractable top), burst into activity as soon as they had gained the green. They ran circles in the open space bordering the path on which their companions walked more sedately, for some time content with this anarchic motion. The activities of children, however, soon acquire some form of organisation, even if they must invent it themselves; and Karim and Manoj had soon joined another group in playing a game, wholly original, which appeared to involve a football, a bag of marbles, a fair bit of running, and a good deal of arguing about the rules.

All the wildflowers that had invaded the park had been cut cleanly back, until only the occasional shoot was interspersed with the closely cropped grass: but the elm trees were starting to flower, some of their cramped buds exploding outward into frothy sprays of red-violet. Elizabeth took a deep breath of the spring air, leaning her head back to catch the sun under the brim of her bonnet; she smiled brightly at Mr. Darcy, when she saw him gazing at her.

“It is a beautiful day,” said she. “I am so pleased it did not rain.”

He returned her smile. “I am glad to see you, as well.”

She turned to regard the path ahead of her, colouring slightly; but her smile did not abate.

“And I am pleased to be out of doors,” she continued, as though he had not spoken. “I am certain that Karim and Manoj will thank you later for their part in the outing. Or, well, Karim will, and that will do for them both.”

She looked back, to ensure that the children were still attended—true to her word, she had not slowed her wonted pace, and the others had fallen behind—but Mrs. Annesley and Miss Darcy were contentedly strolling the boundary of the field that had been chosen for the boys’ game, and so she turned back ahead, satisfied.

“I am glad to contribute to their entertainment, and their exercise. A large park to run about in is, I think, a necessity, for children raised in the city.”

“Yes,” said she, thoughtfully; “I suppose you are right. I know it would have been a great loss to me, had I not been able to slip off into Longbourn’s parks and gardens any time I had a mind to.”

“You cannot wish to live always in town?” he asked, making no attempt to disguise the earnestness of the question.

“Not always,” she replied. She seemed to keep herself from saying more; and, guessing the reason for her hesitation, he continued:—

“I spend, these days, about half the year in the country; but I am not very set in my routines. I would be perfectly content with less, or more. And of course I would not attempt to prevent you from travelling on your own—if you wished it.”

Her hand, in its ivory kid glove, tightened momentarily on his arm. “I think half the year would suit me perfectly.”

They walked for some time in an easy silence; until Elizabeth continued:—

“I believe that that you and Miss Darcy often go up to Pemberley for the summer months? A mutual acquaintance of our’s told me so—Miss Margaret Harding.”

He owned that this was true; and continued,—

“It is to Miss Harding that I owe my first knowledge of your presence in town—which of course must indebt me to her. She is an intelligent, sensible young woman, though perhaps a little affected.”

“Take care, sir,” said Elizabeth, laughingly. “She is my particular friend; and it is not the affectation with which a friend ought to concern herself, but what lies beneath it.”

He knew, somehow—from the particular sound of her intake of breath just then—that she was about to teaze him—and, indeed, she continued,—

“She is like you, in that respect. All my friends are determined, at first, to hide their best qualities.”

He smiled, chastened. “Perhaps we wish to make ourselves more interesting subjects for you. A woman of your understanding could not be satisfied with a simple, humble sort of character. You want intricacies to trace, and follies to laugh at.”

Elizabeth laughed heartily. “This is a fine picture of me! And yet, little though it may be to my credit, it is a pretty accurate one. I used to consider myself quite the studier of character.”

“Used to?”

“I try, these days, to keep the tendency under check. I am not certain that I was ever very good at it. I was, for example—quite mistaken, once, about the—” and she hesitated a moment; “about the relative worth of two men of my acquaintance—and, in short, I hope I have learned my lesson.”

He brought his free hand up to rest over her fingers. “A very great sage once told me,” he informed her, solemnly, “not to regret the past, but to look only to the future.”

She turned her head to smile at him. “This is wisdom, indeed! It must be a piece of Eastern philosophy.”

“I believe it is in the Ramayana.”

Elizabeth laughed again—a bright, joyous sound—though, Darcy had to own, his remark had not been in the first standard of wit.

“I am beginning to grow warm,” said Elizabeth, after another few moments. “Shall we sit down?”

Darcy agreed, and led them to the bench that she had nodded towards, under the partial shade of a particularly large elm tree. Elizabeth directly removed her gloves, and stretched her hands out on her lap that they might catch the light.

“I really am very pleased that the sun is at last making an occasional appearance. What a spring! Thus far it has hardly been worthy of the name. I was getting so pale, it was unsightly.”

“Are you well?” he asked her, taking up one of her hands in alarm, and examining the cut that marred the side of one finger; becoming aware, as he did so, of some yellow staining around the sides of her fingernails.

“Oh,” said she, colouring slightly; “yes; perfectly fine. I was slicing chillies, and my hand slipped. By the by, if you are planning to cut your hand while slicing some thing, I recommend to you that it be any thing other than chillies.”

He frowned. “You cannot be needed in the kitchen?”

“No, sir,” she said, repressively; “there is no necessity for it; but why should not I do as I like?”

He needed a moment to understand the reason for her displeasure; and another to determine how to smooth it over. At length, he answered:—

“I beg your pardon—I did not mean to censure you. I was thinking of what your mother said, before Christmas—that you ought to learn to cook, because—”

“Oh!” Her face cleared. “I see. But no one is obliging me to cook. In fact, my mother rather disapproved when she saw that I was serious about learning. But I liked the idea, and I persisted in it. I did not like to think that I was beholden to anyone else for my continued access to the foods of my youth—that some series of accidents, I know not what, might leave me unable to recreate them.”

“And so you judged that there was no safer place to keep the information, than in your own mind. It is a sensible plan.”



She raised an eyebrow at him. “It is an overly cautious and an eccentric one, and it will ruin my hands.”

To give a paean to the beauty of those hands was his first thought; but he knew, a moment later, that it would be a false step; and so he said instead:—

“Ruin them? In what sense? They appear to me to be perfectly functional.”

The smile she fixed on him then was very ample compensation for having held his tongue.

Chapter Text

We have seen the faithful minister of the Word go forth with the zeal of an apostle, and the constancy of a martyr; submitting to the drudgery of learning barbarous languages, and to the disgust of complying with barbarous manners; watching the dark suspicions, and exposed to the capricious fury of savages; courting their offensive society, adopting their loathsome customs, and assimilating his very nature, almost, to theirs; enduring all things, becoming all things, in the patient hope of finding a way to their good opinion, and of succeeding finally in his unwearied endeavours to make the word of life and salvation not unacceptable to them.

— Memoir of the Rev. J. T. Van der Kemp, M.D. late missionary in South Africa; 1812

Darcy and Elizabeth retraced their steps along the broad footpath that would return them to the rest of their party, making light conversation all the while. Elizabeth had insisted upon a summary of her companion’s time at university (“for I have no brothers, and have therefore heard very little of what goes on in the colleges—and all my cant is from books”); and he did his best to entertain her, though he maintained that his Cambridge years had been largely uneventful. At length they rejoined Miss Darcy and Mrs. Annesley, who were sitting together on a bench near the children, calling encouragement to them as they completed a round of their mysterious game.

Every thing then seemed to happen very quickly. One of Karim and Manoj’s playmates, rounding the corner of the green space which the group had laid claim to, but in the opposite direction, collided with Manoj’s shoulder, and went down; Manoj came to a halt, and looked round to see to the wellbeing of his fellow, who shortly jumped up again, laughing; and, at the same moment, the child’s mother, who had been approaching to rejoin him and his governess, gave out a startled, indignant cry. She scolded his governess, for having allowed him to play with “children of such a rough, uncivil nature”; and overlooked Georgiana and Mrs. Annesley to round on Elizabeth, as the possessor of the nearest brown face. She cried:—

“You ought to keep a closer rein on your charges!”

Elizabeth hurried up to place a hand on Manoj’s shoulder, who was now looking around with wide eyes, uncertain whether he had done wrong.

“As you say, madam,” said Elizabeth, coolly. “Excuse us.” She held out a hand to Karim, who obediently approached, and took it; and began guiding the children away from the scene. Mr. Darcy seemed about to speak, but she caught his eye, and shook her head—and so he merely offered the other ladies of his party an arm, and followed Elizabeth back in the direction of the Cumberland-gate entrance, though looking a bit mutinous.

“I did not push him, Lizzy,” Manoj offered, tentatively, as the party resettled themselves in the carriage.

“I know, vahalum,” she replied, hugging him in close to her side. “Any body could see that it was an accident. That lady was a bit ill-tempered—that is all.”

“It is because we are from India,” Karim informed his brother, with the faintly arrogant tone of a child a little superior in years to his fellow.

“Is that true?” Manoj asked his cousin, whom he had come to regard as an unimpeachable authority in all things.

Elizabeth sighed. “Do not blame your provenance, but her prejudice. When she said ‘uncivil’, it is not unlikely that she meant ‘Indian’—but, if that is the case, her ideas about the character of all of our race were formed long before to-day. It is not your fault.”

Manoj accepted this explanation; but he persisted in looking thoughtful and grave. Miss Darcy looked about ready to sink from confusion and mortification; and even Mrs. Annesley’s good breeding did not tell her what she ought to say in such a case as this. Elizabeth was in search of another subject to introduce, when Darcy surprised her by leaning down, to bring himself as near to the children’s height as he could within the small space of the barouche, and asking,—

“Has either of you ever been to White Conduit-house?”

The children, immediately interested, answered in the negative.

“Perhaps, if your cousin says we may, we might go and have some tea, and some hot buttered rolls.”

If the mention of hot buttered rolls did not quite work the same magic as it might have on English children, who were more familiar with the institution, the boys could at least tell that these were meant to be very desirable articles; and their entreaties were turned upon Elizabeth at once.

“What say you?” Elizabeth asked the other ladies. “Can you spare the time?”

Miss Darcy looked to Mrs. Annesley, before realising that she must speak; whereupon she said that she would not be averse to going, if the others liked it. Therefore, when the carriage passed Russell Square, it continued on, through the fields, to Islington.

As they went by Sadlers’ Wells, Darcy told the boys that there was talk of building a canal, very nearby where they were then passing, the better to transport cargo and conduct trade along the Thames. Finding them interested, but possessed of the ignorance of the mechanics of lock-canals which might be expected of their age, he explained the general principles of their operation, as far as he understood them: and their curiosity regarding how the locks were constructed, and how lowered and raised, threatened to exhaust their informant’s knowledge.

All the while, Elizabeth’s eyes were fixed on her suitor: his mouth as he spoke, his hands as he gestured; and he met her gaze once or twice, flushing at whatever he saw in it. When Elizabeth finally drew her eyes away, she saw Miss Darcy regarding her curiously, and reflected wryly that if the younger lady had been ignorant of her brother’s courtship of her until now, she probably was so no longer.

At length the carriage stopped before an attractive white brick building, surrounded by shaded footpaths. The party disembarked, and the children ran to admire the fish in the small artificial pond on the lawn, while Elizabeth, glancing them over, said that the walks seemed very pretty. She was disinclined, however, to again leave the children to any body else’s supervision; and so the party remained below until the fish ceased to be amusing. Every body then ascended together to a dining room on the upper floor, taking a table under a window. Darcy ordered a repast for them all, and they were soon enjoying tea and hot rolls, with good butter and fresh cream. A child of six cannot be grave forever, and the diversion soon had its intended effect: Manoj looked out at the gardens and ate his roll, looking much recovered.

In between sips of tea, Karim addressed his cousin:—

“Didi?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Why are we not to speak Cutchee or Guzerati before English people?”

“Because it is impolite,” replied Elizabeth, “to hold a conversation which some people present are unable to have a part in.”

“Oh,” said Karim. He took another roll—having apparently decided that the treat lived up to its reputation—as he added,—“then why do not they learn?”

Elizabeth smiled. “I suppose we learn the languages which we think ourselves likely to use. Most English people do not encounter speakers of Guzerati. When they do learn an Indian language, it is usually Hindy, or Bengali. But more often, they learn French.”

“Do you speak French, didi?”—thus Manoj.

Elizabeth laughed. “Yes, well enough.”

“Oh, say some thing!”

“Qu’est-ce que tu voudrais que je dise?”

The children gasped in appreciation. Mrs. Annesley made her own submission for their amusement (“Puissez-vous me rendre service en me passant la théière, Mademoiselle Bennet?”); and the conversation continued for a minute or two in the same style. Even Miss Darcy, when asked if she would take more, gave her affirmative in the same language. In time, the children called a halt to the scene by demanding the names of each item then on the table, and proclaiming that they had never heard such queer sounds.

“I do,” forwarded Mr. Darcy when these operations had concluded, “know a word or two of Cutchee. In fact, I believe it is exactly two words.”

Karim then made the expected inquiry; in response to which, Darcy gave “chaa,” and “athano.”

“That is very good, sir,” said Karim, politely; but Manoj smiled at his pronunciation.

Darcy then requested, and was given, the same lesson which the boys had lately received in French—learning “tchemtcha,” “khan,” “makhan,” for “spoon,” “sugar,” “butter,” etc.

“If it is any thing like my experience with French, however,” said Elizabeth, “it will be better to learn each noun’s gender alongside the word itself—or else you will never remember it.”

“Is there no pattern?” asked Darcy.

Elizabeth thought for several moments, silently constructing and discarding sentences. “No,” she said, hesitatingly. “Well—if a word ends in an ‘ee’ sound, I think it is usually feminine. But not all feminine words end in that sound.”

The party went through the series of words again, with their genders—“kaythel” for “teapot,” “pyalo” for “cup,” “pani” for “water.”

“And is that feminine?” asked Darcy, at the last.

“Um—thad-i pani… No, it is thad-o pani, so it must be masculine.”

Darcy made a sound expressive of great irritation—exaggerated, it must be supposed, for the benefit of the children, who laughed heartily. He then asked for a definition of the unknown adjective, and was told that it meant “cold.”

“And how do you say ‘is’?”

“Aye.”

“So I might say—‘chaa aye thado’?”

“Chaa thado aye,” Elizabeth corrected, smiling. Her eyes, he thought, were alight with some thing—and very, very tender—they had never looked so deep.

“Chaa thado aye,” he repeated. “Shall I ask for another pot? Or some more rolls?”

Karim looked hopefully at Elizabeth—but she shook her head. “We don’t wish to spoil the children’s dinner. I think we ought to be getting back.”

Accordingly the party returned to Russell Square, where the boys were handed back to their parents. Karim, as Elizabeth had predicted, solemnly thanked Darcy for the outing, while Manoj looked on. Darcy was then driven home, repeating words over to himself, and reflecting on the day’s progress.

Chapter Text

NEGRO'S COMPLAINT.

Forc’d from home and all its pleaſures,
Afric's coaſt I left forlorn,
To increaſe a ſtranger's treaſures,
O'er the ſwelling billows borne

Is there, as you ſometimes tell us,
Is there one who reigns on high?
Has he bid you buy and ſell us,
Speaking from his throne the ſky?

— Apollo's lyre; being a selection of choice songs, sung at Vauxhall, Theatres Royal, convivial meetings, &c.; 1795

The following weeks passed amid similar entertainments, excursions, and discussions as these. Mr. Darcy continued his self-education in the far and near history of Indostan; and, during morning calls and evening engagements, when he and Elizabeth would inevitably end in separating themselves from the rest of the group, this was usually the subject of their conversation.

Mr. Blanchard made the promised call to look over Elizabeth’s portfolio, and, as they leafed through its pages, admired her easy, lively style, and her tasteful use of colour.

Miss Bingley and Miss Bennet, by silent, mutual consent, kept their visits to each other as infrequent as was possible, without constituting an actual cut—allowing four and even five weeks to lapse between each. The Hursts once or twice called on their own, and once attended a dinner party at Russell Square, Elizabeth having assured her uncle and aunt that the invitation would be highly acceptable. Mrs. Gandjee’s table, though similar in large degree to that of her sister-in-law, evidenced some distinction in its organisation and its savour; and Mr. Hurst was very happily entertained, though he scarcely opened his lips but to eat and drink.

The Gandjees attended an opera in Italian. Mary brought a pencil, and spent the evening taking neat, even notes in her playbill.

About the middle of May, the militia left Meryton to encamp somewhere near Brighton. Lydia wrote that she and her mother had been working on Mr. Bennet to take them thither for the summer, but to no avail; his answers had been so vague that Mrs. Bennet had held out some hope of succeeding at last, but then of course it had all come to nothing. Now, however, she was the happiest creature in the world, because her particular friend Mrs. Forster would be taking her instead, and she would sea-bathe to her heart’s content for three months complete, and so there was no reason whatsoever for them all to go, however little Kitty liked being left behind, which however could not be helped, as she was not Mrs. Forster’s particular friend. Elizabeth immediately wrote to her father urging him not to allow Lydia to make the trip: Mrs. Forster sounded, from Lydia’s description, very inadequate in guise of a chaperon. She was not, however, highly surprised when a week passed without a reply from Mr. Bennet.

Elizabeth heard that Mr. Winmore had recently become engaged to the heiress of a needle-making factory in Redditch. She heartily wished them both well; though she did idly wonder whether his interest in all things Oriental would endure, now that a nearer connexion to the Gandjees was no longer possible.

When Elizabeth found herself at last in the pleasure grounds at Vauxhall, a little after their reopening on the first of June, it was in the company of a large party: her own relations, Mrs. Evans, her husband (now returned from some business in the country), Mr. Harrison, and Miss Harding. The whole group was shipped, in twos and threes, over the Thames, which was just then busy with scores of scullers transporting other pleasure-seekers to the gardens. Elizabeth turned her head as they were rowed across, to watch the boats’ wakes spin and braid together in the water.

Once arrived, Elizabeth and Margaret walked the Gardens arm-in-arm. They amused themselves in observing and talking over the whole scene: the thickly congregating populace, the bustling waiters, the offensively priced ham and cheese-cakes; and, after twilight, the splendid profusion of brilliant lights; their various shadows, deeper wherever they crossed; the orchestra, arrayed in its illuminated temple. Singers pretended to be, in their turns, a beggar girl, a woman betraying her love with an untimely blush, a flower-seller, a Negro man complaining of being captured and sold far from home.

Miss Harding would not express any thing like enjoyment, insisting that she had been over the Gardens too many times to care much for them any longer. Even the newly rebuilt Pavilion and quadrangle could not interest her. Elizabeth, however, though not overawed by splendour in general, made no secret of her appreciation for the many thousands of lamps—or the spectacle of them all, the moment the sun became dim, being lit in one blazing, sweeping line.

At no point during the whole of the outing did Mr. Harrison pay Elizabeth any attention which lay outside the demands of common courtesy.

Elizabeth attended another private ball, to which Miss Harding had secured her an invitation. Mr. Darcy was also in attendance, and danced often enough that Elizabeth had no reason to teaze him over it. He took care to shew no partiality that would lay himself, or her, open to speculation—but he danced with her once, and was sometimes speaking to her.

“The last time we were so engaged,” began Elizabeth, as they waited their turn to go down the line, “we were having a very entertaining discussion, about the difference in customs and manners in different quarters of the globe.”

He looked chagrined. “If my manners had then been as they ought, the subject would not have been canvassed.”

“And what a loss that would have been! I beg you not to not think that I meant to censure you. In fact it is a fond memory of mine. That evening proved us both to be in possession of a very laudable trait:—namely, the ability to change our minds.”

“I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself. My mind had not changed enough, to have spared you—but, stay—” he added, as they began the dance in earnest—“I shall do as you suggested, and think only of the future.”

“Unless thinking of the past is pleasant, or entertaining—and then you may do it as much as you please.”

He smiled at her. “This is not a difficult edict to follow. Many occurrences of recent weeks are pleasant to think of, indeed.”

Elizabeth, as they were about to part for the night, followed a moment’s impulse in inviting him for a family dinner that Friday:—

“We shall be very informal—just ourselves, and the children.”

Darcy looked highly pleased at this suggestion. “I would be very glad to be one of the party. Karim and Manoj will want to know that I have been a diligent student.”

“Have you?” she asked, laughing. “Do you remember absolutely every thing?”

“To be sure. I have it all by heart. I am in need of a more advanced lesson.”

“The boys will find it a pleasant change, I am sure, to be giving, rather than submitting to, instruction.”

“You already know that I am perfectly willing to contribute to their amusement.”

“Even if the amusement should be at your expense?”

“Even then. It has done me no harm yet.” His expression proved that he was not thinking, just then, of the children.

When Darcy was shewn into the small sitting-room on the appointed day, it was to a scene a little different to any he had seen in that house before. Elizabeth, he noted at once, was again attired according to what he assumed was the common mode in Rajputana: a short dress and wide drawers, with a translucent veil set far back on her head and thrown around her shoulders. The whole was in a dark green, save for the lighter willow-green of the veil, and the deep, rich stripes of crimson trim that adorned dress, drawers, and veil alike. But the difference was that the others, too, were similarly attired: the boys and Mr. Gandjee in the same style, but that the dress, or tunic, was shorter, the trousers slimmer, and the veil exchanged for a thick belt of silk at the waist; Mrs. Gandjee wearing her short tunic and veil over a wide skirt. Her costume was more brightly and variably coloured than that of her niece: glinting mirrors were interspersed with densely embroidered geometric patterns. Even Miss Mary wore a rich shawl, shot through with silver thread, over the shoulders of her typical cream-coloured dress.

Darcy briefly wondered whether he ought to feel under-dressed, though he had never been dissatisfied with himself (or his valet) on that score before; but he was soon being greeted with a warmth that precluded any continuance of the thought. Hands were offered, and taken; the boys made their usual courtly bows; and then Mrs. Gandjee was proposing to have dinner laid out in the large dining-room.

“Surely we might use the small one, as usual?” said Elizabeth. “I think there will still be room enough.”

Mrs. Gandjee’s eyes flittered towards Mr. Darcy in surprise, as if involuntarily; but, seeing no objection arising from any other quarter of the room, she rang the bell to request that the meal be brought into the room that had been mentioned.

“And we shall tell you all the names of things, sir, as we did last time,” said Karim; “for we will have some good things for you that were not there, when we went to—to—”

“To White Conduit-house,” said Darcy, smiling.

He had just had time to explain to a pair of curious boys what a “conduit” was, and how it differed from a canal (Mr. Gandjee assisting in the lesson by giving the Gujarati for each word), when the group was informed that dinner had been brought in.

Chapter Text

We had ſome difficulty in complying with the oriental made of fitting croſs-legged, but at dinner it was neceſſary, the table being only a large low ſalver, placed on the carpet. A variety of diſhes were ſerved up in quick ſucceſſion, and we were ſupplied as rapidly with cups of wine. We had no plates, or knives and forks, but uſed our fingers.

— Richard Chandler, D.D., Travels in Asia Minor: or an account of a tour made at the expense of the Society of Dilettanti; 1775

The reason for the surprise his hostess had earlier evinced was apparent to Mr. Darcy as soon as they entered the family dining-room. It was outfitted in the same style as the rest of the house, in point of wall-paper, drapery, and pictures: but it was rather empty of furniture. There was no dining-table—only an enormous wooden platter, or salver, in the centre of the room—and there were no chairs, the thick rug underneath the aforementioned article seeming intended to supply their place. Nor was there a sideboard, or any wine: but the salver was loaded with such a quantity of small dishes as seemed remarkable, even to him.

Miss Mary was obliged, by the narrowness of her English gown, to sit on her heels; but the others settled cross-legged around the salver, Elizabeth all the while chattering gaily with the children about which “mitayo” they most hoped for. She had not looked at him as they entered, as if wanting to give him the opportunity to recover from his surprise; and when he approached the empty space which remained at her left side, he was therefore pretty tolerably composed. It took him a moment to seat himself as the arrangement demanded—he was obliged to let out the ties at the hems of his knee-breeches—and then he was meeting her eye, and giving a slight nod, in acknowledgement of her challenge. She bit her lips to hide a smile.

The discomfort of getting into the unfamiliar posture was forgotten, and the novel method of going about things instantly endeared to him, from the fact that his knee, by necessity, came to be pressed against Elizabeth’s—(and in some proximity to the bare foot, which was tucked under that knee)—and that, far from being an illicit liberty, this appeared to be the expected mode.

The reason for the profusion of dishes, he noticed, was that each person had their own coterie of small ceramic bowls, full of an identical variety of soups, curries, and vegetables; though the breads, cakes, and even the sauces were placed directly on the larger salver. Mrs. Gandjee informed him that he “saw his dinner”; he laughed, and told her that it would be some thing truly wonderful if he did not. She smiled, clearly pleased—but her attention was soon afterwards occupied by Manoj, who wanted to know which vegetable was in the saak, as he was very certain that he had never eaten it before?

This exchange signalled the beginning of dinner, and left Elizabeth, despite Karim's earlier promise, to tell him what had been prepared.

“The saak,” she explained, “is the vegetable dish, which we made from salsify to-day. Manoj is quite right, he will not have had it before. He wanted duddi, which is—well, I do not know the English—suffice it to say there was none to be had. Rotli and dal you are familiar with already; the kadi is a sort of spiced, thickened buttermilk; and then the farsan, or side dish, is patra—though it is made from spinage, and not arbi leaves—”

And she continued to point out the beef and mutton, and to name the various sauces, sallads, pickles, sweets, etc. He endeavoured to commit their names to memory, but almost certainly failed: besides the quantity of new words, there was the nearness of her person, and the graceful lines of her hand as she gestured towards this bowl, and that.

“May I assume you had a part in the creation of some of these?”

She smiled. “I rolled the leaves for the patra, before they were steamed.”

Accordingly these were the first thing he sampled. Some of the dishes were to be eaten with the fingers, others with a spoon, and still others by using pieces of rotli as implements—and he did a creditable job of following along.

The informality of the dinner, no less than the geometry of the seating arrangements, excused any body in addressing any body else; and Mr. Gandjee was soon asking him how he had been, since last they had spoken?—“I believe it was at Lady ———’s assembly, some days ago.”

“Quite well. My complaints are but few. My steward tells me that the hay is late—but that, perhaps, was to be expected. The spring wheat, at least, is not blighted, as the winter was. I hope your business continues well?”

“Oh, yes, yes—as well as one would expect. There are several matters that have been easier to manage in person, than by letters that take several months to arrive. But the Company is growing more and more determined, it seems, to prove an obstruction to traders who wish to carry on as before.”

“I believe,” said Elizabeth, “that they were always determined to be so—the difference may be, that they possess, more and more, the power of being so.”

“I am not certain, sir, whether it touches your concerns—you will forgive an old businessman his idle words, if our interests should be contrary—but I must hope the monopoly is not renewed.”

“If it touches my concerns at all, it is very indirectly. I am not a shareholder.”

Mr. Gandjee nodded, satisfied. “My father made a shew of his cooperation, whenever he could; but those days, perhaps, ought to be over. At least we needn’t be supplying them with the ships their soldiers use to rob us, and to make a nuisance in the ports and streets of Bombay.” He seemed to regret this mode of expression a moment later, adding, to Elizabeth: “Of course I exempt your father from any such charge.”

Elizabeth smiled. “My father does not have the energy to make a nuisance. It would interfere with the time he has to devote to his studies.”

“Yes, yes,” laughed Mr. Gandjee. “Even when I first met him, he was very studious! And very mild-mannered. I used to thank God every day that he met your mother when he did,” he continued, growing grave and thoughtful. “Our father was—a hard man—and Namrata fared worse than I did. I suppose she left just as soon as she could. Too many men in India think it their natural right to be tyrants at home.”

If Darcy wondered why his host was discussing such an intimate matter before a guest, the motive soon became clear: he perceived that a response was expected from him; and, after a moment, he succeeded in tempering his annoyance at being suspected, with sympathy for Mr. Gandjee’s circumstances. Being obliged to leave a younger female relation under the care of indifferent parents, too far away for him to be of any immediate help, was just what he would not like himself; and he therefore composed himself sufficiently to reply,—

“It is a problem sadly not unique to India. Nor do the English courts do enough to restrain such men, in cases where it proves necessary. If nothing else, our law of divorce ought to be reformed.”

“In favour of what model?” asked Elizabeth, smiling. “One of mutual consent, perhaps? It is very republican of you, Mr. Darcy—very French. But perhaps I ought not to be surprised.”

He returned her smile, but would not be waylaid from his point. “All I mean to suggest is that the standard that must currently be met to prove cruelty is too high.” His consciousness of the presence of the children kept him, however, from continuing in this vein; and Mary entered an observation about the sanctity of the matrimonial contract into the silence. No body seemed inclined, either to agree, or to argue; and, after a moment, Darcy again addressed Mr. Gandjee:—

“I was very fortunate in the character of my own father. He was an excellent man: sober; industrious; charitable; kind. My parents’ marriage began as an arranged one, but it was always evident that they had grown to hold each other in great esteem. He has been a model for me, all my life.”

“Were you very young, when he died?” asked Mrs. Gandjee.

“I was not three-and-twenty. My mother had gone some years before.”

“That must have been very difficult for you.”

“It was. But Georgiana and I had each other—and I have tried to supply the place of a father to her.”

His countenance, or his voice, must have revealed some thing of his self-reproaching thoughts—or perhaps Elizabeth merely guessed—she did not look at him, but her knee came to press more firmly against his own. This, naturally, distracted him from the conversation that had been ongoing: but the Gandjees, misreading the reason for his abstraction, changed the subject out of compassion. When Darcy recalled himself to what was passing, Mr. Gandjee was again speaking:—

“—and I imagine that, monopoly or no, we will be able to continue in that way, for as long as this latest peace lasts.”

“You think it likely, then, that there will be another war?” asked Elizabeth.

“I am almost certain of it.”

“The Senapatis,” said Mrs. Gandjee, “cannot remain content with the Peshva’s surrender of Guzerat forever.”

“I believe that the Marathas had re-secured it, and forced Hastings out, in 1784?” asked Darcy.

“Yes” replied Mr. Gandjee, surprised by the exactness of his information—“and all his officers with him. But then, of course, Peshva Bajee Rao handed half of it over again in 1802. Though, if you ask me my opinion, it will be the British—I should say, the Company—who will force a return to war. They will not be satisfied with the terms of the Treaty as they currently stand, nor with any thing short of the whole of India.”

“Well, however it begins,” said Mrs. Gandjee, unwilling to contest the point, “I believe it must conclude in favour of whoever retains the loyalty of the seapoys. At present, the Company pays them more.”

Elizabeth’s lips thinned. “Their loyalty ought to be to their own people, regardless of any slight differences in what salary they can expect.”

Her aunt smiled indulgently. “The Marathas have always recruited from the ranks of the smaller nations they conquer. You, as an Englishwoman, may consider them as belonging to the same people—but they are unlikely to see it that way.”

“If the Company were to win a re-engagement,” asked Darcy, when he saw that Elizabeth had no reply, “could they hope to retain what they had won? ‘The whole of India,’ you said (this to Mr. Gandjee)—it seems too much for them to aspire to. There must be rebellion.”

“I think concerns of religion and language—even clothing, and coinage, and that kind of thing—as likely to be decisive as any thing else, in the question of rebellion,” answered Mrs. Gandjee. “The Marathas always had the wisdom to allow their constituents their own way, in these matters. The force of rebellion is always proportional to the weight of suppression.”

“To be sure,” answered her husband. “But perhaps we have allowed ourselves to wander too far into the future. The next five or ten years will be decisive, in the matter of the Company and the Marathas—after that, who can say?”

Every body’s dishes now being pretty nearly empty, the salver was cleared, and coffee was brought in. Mr. Darcy and the Misses Bennet were offered wine, which they declined; and conversation continued for some time in the desultory style typical of people who are friendly with each other, and have just eaten well. The boys, perhaps, were the most content of any body: besides having been allowed to sit with the adults even though there was a guest, they had eaten both shreekand and kansar; and they had been confirmed in their opinion that Mr. Darcy was quite the cleverest man in the world, excepting only their father.

Chapter Text

If it be urged, that the wife has frequently more understanding and ability to govern than the husband, and on this account ought to be excused from living in subjection, the answer is obvious: she hath liberty to use her superior wisdom in giving counsel. But if her advice is not accepted, subjection is her duty. Suppose a servant, as is often the fact, endued with more capacity than his master, would it not be insufferable insolence, should he urge this as a reason for refusing to be any longer under control, which, on another account, was indisputably his duty, viz. from his station in life? An attempt, therefore, to gain the ascendency is an attempt to subvert the order which the sovereign Giver of all wisdom has appointed.

— Henry Venn, A.M., The complete duty of man or, A system of doctrinal & practical Christianity; 1811

Saira spent the early hours of the next morning tending to some personal sewing. When Elizabeth entered her dressing-room before breakfast, therefore, it was to find her maid adding embroidered inserts into the seams of one of her dresses. She had gained still more weight in the past four months and a half, and was now rather plumper than was fashionable—but Elizabeth thought that it became her very well: she looked healthy, cheerful, and active, especially now that the sun had heightened her colour.

When Saira heard her mistress enter, she laid by her work and leapt up to attend her; answering, when they came, the usual greetings and inquiries.

“Where did you get that trim, by the by?” asked Elizabeth, as Saira tied her gown in the back. “I hope that you have not paid for it yourself.”

“Certainly I have.”

Elizabeth frowned. “At least allow me to reimburse you. You are meant to have two new dresses per year, gratis.”

“Yes, miss—but I have already had them.”

“That is no matter. If the dress you were provided is not suitable, you can hardly be expected to wear it. I will pay you for the trim, if you remember what you gave for it—in fact, I ought also to give you some thing for the work of sewing it yourself.”

“As you say, miss,” said Saira, in a remarkable display of meek obedience—though her thoughts were fixed on the pretty locket she had been forced, for want of funds, to leave behind, and which she now fully intended to purchase.

Some hours after breakfast, Elizabeth was summoned from the garden to attend Miss Darcy and her brother in the drawing-room. They were forming a party to go up to Pemberley in August, once the season had ended, and had come to give the Gandjees and Misses Bennet their personal invitation. The party was also to contain some people with whom the Gandjees boasted an acquaintance—namely, Mr. and Mrs. Bingley. Mr. Darcy made the communication; and Miss Darcy, though with a diffidence which marked her little in the habit of giving such invitations, immediately seconded it.

Elizabeth at once looked to her aunt, who, reading her niece’s countenance, announced that they would be delighted to go: and Mr. Gandjee said that he would be sure to arrange his business so as to make it possible. The boys (who were just then in the nursery) were then included in the invitation—but, upon learning that they would be the only children in attendance, Mrs. Gandjee said she expected that they would prefer to stay with their aunt and uncle.

“Very well,” said Darcy; “but I hope you will tell me if there is any arrangement I might make for their entertainment, if that plan should prove inconvenient.”

“You are very good, sir,” said Mrs. Gandjee, smiling. “I hope you have the time to stay for a while, and take some tea? Or have you more invitations to deliver?”

“Indeed not. It was in hope of laying claim to some chaa and farsan that we made this our last stop.”

His hostess was unable to suppress an exclamation of happy surprise at this unexpected breadth of vocabulary. “I suppose you’ll have learned a few words from our Lizzy?”

“Of course not,” said she. “No body could presume to teach Mr. Darcy any thing. All of his intelligence is perfectly innate. Every thing he knows, he has divined himself.”

“I will not take the trouble of contradicting you,” said Darcy, “because you already know yourself to be speaking nonsense.” Then, to Mrs. Gandjee, as she rang the bell: “Karim and Manoj have also contributed to my education—such as it is. I know perhaps twenty words, and they are all related to food.”

“Ah, but those are the worthiest words of all!” replied she. “I cannot recall, Miss Darcy, if you have taken Indian tea or cakes before?”

“No, madam. But I—but I would—”

Mrs. Gandjee gave her a gentle smile. “Well, I believe we have some carraway-seed cake as well, which Rahmani will bring up; and you shall eat just what you please. And you can try a little spiced chaa, and see if you like it or no. Mary prefers her tea plain,” she concluded, nodding to her younger niece where she read in a far corner of the room. Miss Darcy smiled gratefully in reply.

Accordingly the tea was brought in, and distributed. To Miss Darcy it was now a matter of some anxiety to make herself agreeable to Miss Bennet: and she exerted herself to talk as much as she could. She found that Elizabeth’s manner of speaking was readily comprehensible, once one had understood that she was not always quite serious; and she appreciated the kindness with which Miss Bennet would move on, if ever she saw that she did not have a ready response. Mr. Darcy was often speaking with Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee, though he also appeared eager to further the intimacy between his sister and Miss Bennet by any means he could, sometimes reminding Georgiana of a relevant fact or anecdote to share. When their guests at last exclaimed at the time, and declared that they ought to be going, somewhat more than an hour had passed away.

Elizabeth returned upstairs, to spend an hour with Saira in practicing Cutchee before dressing for dinner. Finding that the time for the lesson had not yet quite arrived, she began to read through the journals which she had collected relating to charitable works in London, taking extracts and making notes in pencil in her commonplace book.

She had begun to examine an account of the superintendence of a female charity-school, when Saira entered the room, dictionary in hand.

“How do you do, Saira?” asked Miss Bennet, putting her books aside. “Are you ready to begin?”

“Yes, miss,” replied she, taking a seat at the desk beside her mistress. “But what are you working on? Is it another translation?”

Elizabeth merely stared at her for several moments, appearing stunned by some sort of shock, and unable to speak.

“They are plans for a charitable institution,” she began at length, “for the benefit of distressed travellers from the East Indies. Its goal would be to provide such persons with passage home—as well as with food and lodging, while they awaited an eligible ship.”

“Oh!”

The success of Elizabeth’s early intention of encouraging insolence and insubordination in her servant may be judged of, by the fact that Saira did not scruple to seize the pages at once, and begin to look through them.

“So there is to be a house?” she asked, her finger tracing a series of columns laying out how many persons might be accommodated, in houses of different sizes, for varying sums of money.

“Yes—that is, I hope so. I would need to collect donations, and subscriptions. I cannot fund it myself.”

“If you set the inhabitants of the house to work, it would save you some of these costs,” said Saira, pointing to a section that detailed the wages of various day-labourers.

“I do not wish to send any body away—which seems inevitable, if willingness to work is a condition for being admitted. I have no intention of creating a workhouse.”

“No—but, if you gave people instruction, and a choice, I have no doubt but that some of them would chuse to work. We are not all fit to be idle all day. And then you would be in a position to write those servants a character, which could be very useful to them once returned to India. Whoever turned them off is not likely to have provided them with one.”

Elizabeth took up her pencil and turned to a new page, taking down notes rapidly.

“They might also,” continued Saira, “be able to get work on their passage home. You could advertise, that any lady desiring an attendant for a voyage to India might come and speak to a girl or two, and read their letters of character, and chuse some body she thinks will suit. It would be better for the girls to have already earned some money once they arrive home, and not to be set to begging as soon as they disembark.”

“And thus for the characters of the servants—but how will we know that these prospective employers are worthy of trust? How do you decide whom to serve?”

“The lady sends her coachman into the kitchens to be fed, and some body talks to him,” replied Saira, in the manner of one explaining some thing very simple to a young child. “And as long as you give the ticket directly to the maid or ayah, and not to her employer, it cannot be withheld from her. Better yet—do not tell the employer that you have done so.”

Saira and Miss Bennet worked a little past the proper time to dress for dinner, discussing large matters of superintendence, the raising and spending of funds, and the avoidance of various abuses; as well as the smaller particularities of translation, clothing, cooking, and cleaning. Elizabeth then rushed to dress and went down, endeavouring to be as cheerful and attentive as usual: but she was grateful when every body had finished eating, and she was free to retire early, claiming a headache.

Why had she never thought to tell Saira of her plans? While those plans existed only in her own mind, there had been some excuse—but now that Miss Harding, and Mrs. Markham, and a dozen other ladies of her circle, all knew? Who would be more certain of being interested, and informed, and helpful, than Saira Das?

She could prevaricate with herself all she liked, and tell herself that it was because she was concerned for Saira’s wellbeing, if she were too indelicately reminded of her ordeal; that she had wanted things to be in a greater state of readiness, so as not to raise her hopes if her plans did not bear fruit; and any number of things else.

But the reason of it, put quite simply, was that Saira was her maid. It was because of the cast of her mother and the class of her father that Elizabeth had not thought to consult her. The women she had consulted, whose articles she had read, whose experience she had sought, were women of her own class, the superintendents and administrators of charity: to the intended recipients of it, she had given no thought at all other than as a target for her benevolence.

She piqued herself, as a mistress, on being liberal, generous, and kind; but was this all that mattered? Was there not also a question of consideration—of respect? Teaching her Hindi had not been amongst Saira’s duties: and yet she had asked her to do it, though she had known that Saira, from fear of being turned off, would be hesitant to refuse any thing that was asked of her. Teaching her to cook was no part of Jones’s duties, either—and yet, perhaps, unbeknownst to herself, she had been assuming that she would be rather delighted by her condescension, than annoyed at her presumption.

How different was she from that great font of condescension, Lady Catherine de Bourgh? She had more gentleness of manner, and a more civil tongue in her head, and that was all!

Elizabeth remained in this mood of extravagant self-recrimination for at least twenty minutes together—and was then prepared to be reasonable again. The only thing that she could do now, was to try to alter her thinking and her behaviour, in the future: and it was this resolution which was foremost in her mind as she settled down to sleep that night.

Chapter Text

𑈁𑈩𑈶𑈬𑈐𑈭

𑈩𑈶𑈭𑈫𑈺𑈩𑈴𑈙𑈲𑈉𑈭𑈺𑈞𑈬𑈦𑈭𑈺𑈈𑈅𑈺𑈈𑈅𑈺𑈪𑈲𑈩𑈶𑈰
𑈪𑈲𑈩𑈶𑈰𑈺𑈈𑈫𑈤𑈬𑈴𑈪𑈰𑈺𑈈𑈅𑈄𑈭
𑈈𑈫𑈭𑈤𑈬𑈴𑈪𑈰𑈺𑈩𑈙𑈺𑈈𑈅𑈺𑈞𑈺𑈦𑈬𑈉𑈰
𑈙𑈰𑈺𑈟𑈰𑈙𑈶𑈯𑈺𑈈𑈬𑈦𑈉𑈺𑈊𑈤𑈬𑈨𑈰
𑈁𑈫𑈭𑈺𑈀𑈞𑈀𑈴𑈙𑈻

𑈁𑈩𑈶𑈬𑈐𑈭

𑈈𑈯𑈙𑈶𑈯𑈴𑈡𑈺𑈟𑈦𑈨𑈬𑈦𑈴𑈞𑈮𑈺𑈫𑈬𑈐𑈴𑈺𑈐𑈺𑈦𑈬𑈉𑈰
𑈀𑈞𑈰𑈺𑈩𑈬𑈩𑈯𑈺𑈩𑈩𑈦𑈬𑈞𑈰𑈺𑈐𑈬𑈘𑈰𑈐𑈭
𑈄𑈞𑈯𑈴𑈈𑈲𑈺𑈩𑈙𑈺𑈙𑈰𑈺𑈡𑈭𑈡𑈭𑈺𑈦𑈬𑈉𑈰
𑈙𑈰𑈺𑈦𑈬𑈉𑈰𑈺𑈁𑈫𑈭𑈄𑈭𑈞𑈭𑈺𑈞𑈬𑈦
𑈁𑈫𑈭𑈺𑈀𑈞𑈀𑈴𑈙𑈻

— 𑈟𑈮𑈦𑈵𑈺𑈈𑈨𑈮𑈦𑈛𑈮𑈞𑈵, 𑈀𑈞𑈀𑈴𑈙𑈺𑈀𑈉𑈬𑈛𑈲

Kitty and Mrs. Bennet complained, in every letter, of a good deal of dulness at home. Their parties abroad were less varied than they had been, before the loss of the regiment; their old neighbours and old pastimes did not have the power of pleasing, which they had used to have; and it was at least the middle of June, before any thing they did or saw could be allowed to console or amuse them.

Lydia, before she had gone to Brighton, had promised to write very often and very minutely—but her letters were always long expected, and always very short. Laconic well-wishes were interspersed with one or two small bits of news: they were just returned from the library, where such and such officers had attended them, and where she had seen such beautiful ornaments as made her quite wild; she had a new gown, or a new parasol, which she would have described more fully, but was obliged to leave off in a violent hurry, as Mrs. Forster called her, and they were going to the camp; etc.

Elizabeth at last informed her aunt and uncle of her ambitions, now that she had a ledger full of operable plans to shew for them. Her relations' connexions were more mercantile, than society ones—but money was money, whether it belonged to some body with any influence in town, or no—and they promised to mention the project to their English friends, in hopes of finding a few subscribers amongst them.

The last day of June was the twentieth of Jumada al-thani, and therefore the birthday of Fatimah, Mahomed’s daughter. Elizabeth, who had been at Rosings for the birthday of Mahomed himself, was pleased to be present, and to partake in the general atmosphere of celebration. The children were exempted from lessons; every body had double portions of sweets with dinner; and her uncle and aunt took turns singing ginans in Fatimah’s praise in the evening.

Elizabeth’s aunt had, over the years, written out and translated many of the devotional songs for her, and she therefore had some familiarity with their contents: exhortations towards temperance and charity, explanations of the timeless nature of God, prohibitions against the worship of idols, and the like. But she had not heard them for several years—and her attentiveness therefore probably surpassed that of the children, for whose education the hymns were principally performed.

Among the verses were some which Elizabeth recognised and remembered the signification of:

O Lord!
In this world rarely any woman will be completely pious and patient.
In this world no one maintains their righteousness;
they give it up for their appetites.
Ali, you are eternal.

O Lord!
The one who preserves the honour of her family and relations,
and is forbearing to her father- and mother-in-law,
she will be preserved by Bibi Fatimah,
who is indeed the wife of Ali.
Ali, you are eternal.

Mary was invited to play a piece on her kamaisha, which she had been practicing diligently in the months since Christmas, for all that she had never intended to exhibit; but she, somewhat pompously, declined. Elizabeth begged leave to attempt it instead, which was granted: but the sounds produced by this endeavour were so discordant, that at last Mary deemed allowing them to continue a greater sin than applying her fingers to the celebration of a heathen holiday. She seized the instrument from Elizabeth, who pretended to try to keep it away, but eventually allowed the theft, laughing gaily all the while.

Jane was kept apprised, as she had requested, of all of Elizabeth’s news, and most particularly what occurred with her “poor young man.” They had met again; he seemed once more to be the considerate, respectful gentleman that he had been before that day in April, excepting that he was rather more open when they were alone; whether or no he might object to Indian modes or habits in the future, he seemed content to abide with them for now—at least when not in public. Jane, when she replied, seemed gently puzzled at why Elizabeth still hesitated; and indeed Elizabeth scarcely knew how to explain it herself. With any other man, a forbearance with Indian habits in private, and to a certain degree, might be enough for her—it would be all she could likely expect, and it would enable her to pursue the real, the first object of her life.

With Darcy, however, such equivocation seemed impossible. She could not keep him, as she kept Margaret, and Charlotte, and her parents, and at times even Jane, at arm’s length: being friendly with him without quite loving him, or loving him without quite thinking well of him. He had a way of laying waste any intentions of the kind. With him, she must be all of herself, or she must cease to meet him on any thing like intimate terms.

July continued unusually cool and wet. Whenever she and Darcy spoke alone, he was still attentive—intent—making no secret of where his wishes and his hopes lay. But she saw that he would not proceed without definite encouragement: and definite encouragement, she felt herself unable to give. At the very least, she could not induce him to propose again, until she had told him of the results, and aims, of her recent planning; but every time she half-formed an intention of doing so, the conversation, and her courage, seemed to move away from her. Some thing still prevented her from being wholly open with him.

The reason of it may be, that as long as she had not told him, there was hope: but forcing a resolution, one way or the other, would necessarily incur risk. At times, she felt nearly certain that he would approve, and wish to help—or at least, he would not hinder her. She would remember him settling down beside her at dinner with, as far as she could deduce, no hesitation worth considering; his gaze on her mouth and her hands, as she gave the dishes their Guzerati names, half-convinced that he was paying attention to nothing other than her face; until he had shewn, the next day, that he had remembered at least one of those words. “Surely this,” thought she, “is not a man who could object to being associated, in public life, with the East Indies, or with good works performed on their behalf?”

But then she would remember his disdainful expression, when speaking of her Indian habits—the distress in his voice, when he spoke of his love for her as a source of struggle—his mild, exaggerated patience, as he had told her she was too wise to require flattery, as though speaking to a child who had not given the desired response—as though it were her father, saying, whenever she took up the idea of being offended at one of his jests, “I hope you are not going to be missish?”—and her breast would fill with a cold, paralytic fear, which seemed insuperable.

In the beginning of their acquaintance, she had known of, and expected, his unfavourable opinion; but she had not thought well enough of him herself, for it to give her any pain. Afterwards, however, at Rosings—for him to say such things, after she had come to love him—after she had thought all such compunctions on his part overcome—! her pride, no less than her heart, had been injured; and she was by no means certain which would be slowest to heal.

Suppose she were to marry him—suppose she were to become comfortable—and it should happen again? Suppose, one day, one of his friends twitted him with his odd taste—or one of their children spoke Cutchee before the wrong company, and caused offence? Suppose some thing happened in British East India, or with the East India Company, that caused the disgust against nabobs to intensify, and he were caught in it, because of her? Would his love for her survive such trials? That it would be put to them, was all but certain—and she could not help but see his assurances as so many words spoken in the first flush of youthful passion.

And yet it was exhausting, always to be so guarded—always to be making such efforts of resistance!

At this juncture all her hopes were fixed on Pemberley. “A stagnation in thought,” thought she, “may be often caused by a stagnation in place: new walks, new people, new scenes, may have an enlivening effect on the mind: it must often happen that a heretofore unseen view brings before the mind’s eye heretofore unseen ideas. Once I have got to Pemberley, I certainly will not come away again with matters so unresolved.”

Chapter Text

The power of incloſing Land, and owning Propriety, was brought into the Creation by your Anceſtors by the Sword; which firſt did murther their fellow Creatures Men, and after plunder or ſteal away their Land, and left this Land ſucceſſively to you, their Children. And therefore, though you did not kill or theeve, yet you hold that curſed thing in your hand, by the power of the Sword; and ſo you juſtifie the wicked deeds of your Fathers; and that ſin of your Fathers, ſhall be viſited upon the Head of you, and your Children to the third and fourth Generation, and longer too, tell your bloody and theeving power be rooted out of the Land.

— Gerrard Winstanley, A Declaration from the Poor oppreſſed People of England, directed to all that call themselves, or are called Lords of Manors, through this Nation; That have begun to cut, or that through fear and covetouſneſs, do intend to cut down the Woods and Trees that grow upon the Commons and Waſte Land; 1649

The appointed day came at last, and to Pemberley they went. The Gandjees and Misses Bennet, the Hardings, and the Evanses formed a loose travelling party, held together principally by the friendship between Elizabeth and Margaret, and by the charming imperiousness of the latter, who could by no means tolerate so many hours together in a coach without Elizabeth to entertain her. The Darcys, Bingleys, Hursts, and another party of friends, were to travel together from London, a day or two before.

Mary, of course, would have preferred to remain in town, within reach of the opera, the theatre, and the museums, but she could hardly do so without a chaperon: and she had formed no particular friendship that would have enabled her to impose on any body in capacity of one. She consoled herself, however, in reflecting that there was sure to be a pianoforte, somewhere out of the way, for her to practice on; and she spoke of all the precious opportunities she would have of exercising the Christian virtue of patience, until Elizabeth was in danger of losing her’s.

The first-mentioned travelling party, though their coaches sometimes pulled apart on the road, came back together each evening in the private sitting-room of a selected coaching inn. Elizabeth rode with the Hardings. The Gandjees’ carriage was, by necessity, rented, and did not make a display, as the others’ did, of armorial bearings and livery; but neither the Gandjees nor the Misses Bennet were apt to be put out of countenance by such a thing.

Their route had been chosen for its efficiency, rather than for any spots of interest that lay along the way. Dunstable, Northampton, Leicester, therefore transpired without any great notice. Elizabeth was the only person in her carriage who was particularly caught by the scenery—and the sweeping hills and vales, the stone walls, the lazy ponds and straggling sheep, and the neat patchwork of enclosed fields, all delighted her eye as she gazed out the window for hours together, idly chatting with Miss Harding. After four days of easy travel, they at last turned in at the lodge by the gates of Pemberley Woods about noon, and began along the lane that led to the great house. To come closer to the house was to come closer to the source of all her hope, and all her anxiety: and Elizabeth’s heart made a strange leap in her breast.

The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through a beautiful wood, stretching over a wide extent. A gradual ascent of about half a mile took them to the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye could catch a clearer view of the grounds that fell away below: the wide swathes of cultivated land; the meadows and fields surrounded on all sides with ditches and hedges; the orchards and gardens that embroidered the scene in the middle-distance; and in the background, to the near side of a ridge of high woody hills, a stretch of clear ground that might be waste land, or common pasture.

Pemberley House stood on a crest of rising ground on the opposite side of the valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome stone building, nestled amongst some of the wildest of the meadows that covered the intervening hills. Before it, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. The plan that had been followed, in laying out the grounds immediately surrounding the house, was evidently more indebted to the philosophies of the English landscape garden, than to any taste more rigidly ornamental: and Elizabeth was delighted with it. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. At last finding her voice, Elizabeth was warm in her admiration; and Margaret laughed at her heartily.


“Oh, yes! I should have guessed that the grounds would enrapture you at once. Whenever we walked about in town, you always had a way of ferreting out the nearest park.”

“You are trying to be coy, Margaret, but I know that even you must approve of them, quite as much as I do. And do not tell me,” she continued, when Miss Harding opened her mouth to protest, “that you have seen them too often before to care for them any longer. I will see you pronounce pleasure with some thing during the next months.”

“I have pleasure in your company—you will have to content yourself with winning from me that admission. I will certainly make no other.”

By now they had descended the hill, crossed the bridge, and driven to the door. Their host and hostess, together with Jane, Mr. Bingley, Miss Bingley, and a respectable-looking, elderly woman whom Elizabeth took for the housekeeper, were standing at the base of the stone steps that led up to the entrance; and Elizabeth scarcely had patience to wait to be handed down from the carriage before she was running to embrace her elder sister.

“Jane! Twenty miles is a very sorry distance to have kept us apart for so long. I cannot think how we allowed it to happen.”

“You wished to give me time to accustom myself to my new situation at Netherfield, you said,” replied Jane, with a gentle smile.

“Yes. It was very foolish of me. You ought not to have listened.” And then, accepting her brother’s embrace—“Charles!”

“Lizzy! I expect we will not see you but at meal-times. You will be too busy losing your way in every lane and shrubbery about the place.”

Elizabeth laughed at this picture of herself, especially as it accorded so perfectly with Margaret’s. Miss Harding herself, having greeted Mr. and Miss Darcy, had watched the sisters’ reunion with close attention. She was prevented from taking Elizabeth’s arm, by Mr. Bingley offering his escort to the latter woman, as the group began to ascend the stairs; and she therefore attached herself to Mr. Darcy, in her stead. The Gandjees’ and Evanses’ carriages had arrived within a few minutes of the Hardings’, and amidst the chaos of the general arrival, Elizabeth and that gentleman had managed only a brief, warm look, and a tentative smile; which however instantly communicated to each, that they both felt all the significance of their reunion.

The housekeeper, who was given the name of Mrs. Reynolds, was joined by Miss Darcy in inviting every body inside to be shewn to their chambers, that they may wash and rest, before meeting again in the saloon to take some refreshment. Mrs. Reynolds was not nearly so grand or so imposing as the housekeeper of such an establishment perhaps had a right to be. Her first flutter of surprise upon beholding the Bennets and Gandjees among the guests was politely concealed, and she was then as civil and obliging to them as to any body else present—indeed more so, for, its being their first time at Pemberley, she invited them most particularly to call her at any time, to be told the history of any the pictures or tapestries they saw.

No sooner had Elizabeth been shewn to her room, than she was seeking to lure Jane inside of it also. She had not realised how much she had missed her dearest sister, till now that she saw her again; and she repented of the partial reticence of her letters. She wished to speak of her concerns, and to hear all of Jane’s, in greater detail than even a diligent correspondence could allow. Bingley, who understood very well the attachment that could subsist between sisters, smilingly assured his wife that he would wait for her in their sitting-room, that they may all go down later: and so Jane and Elizabeth closeted themselves together, while the latter washed the dust of the road from herself and changed her clothes.

“Is he here?” asked Jane at once (which is to say, when once she had inquired after Elizabeth’s health, and that of their relations, and the course of her journey).

“Oh, Jane! He is. And how I am to act, I do not know. I am—I worry—I feel—oh!” she cried, sitting down at the toilet-table with some abruptness.

“You worry?” Jane prompted, beginning to take out the pins from Elizabeth’s hair.

“That he will change his mind, again. That he will cease to be the man I—that he will again become the disdainful creature, who told me, that he liked me against his reason. He seems to be two men, instead of one. He behaves well now, because he knows that my acceptance depends upon it—but now, when I can still refuse—well, that is all the power that I have. In accepting him, I would give it up entirely. How can I trust any body, so much as that?”

Jane met Elizabeth’s eyes in the mirror, her beautiful features sculpted into a slight frown. “Is it—Lizzy, is it Mr. Darcy?”

Elizabeth’s silence spoke for her.

“Surely,” said Jane, “his being such friends with Charles is in his favour? He speaks so highly of him—! Charles does, I mean. How principled, how responsible, how active, how charitable he is. And he has always been very respectful to me.”

“It is not the same thing,” said Elizabeth, examining herself beside Jane in the mirror.

“Because you would be his wife?” asked Jane. “It is a nearer relationship, true—but I am sure no one whose closest, oldest friends speak so well of him could treat his wife ill. Caroline, too, admires him so much! And would he not be still more solicitous of the wellbeing of his wife, than he is of that of his friends, precisely because it is a nearer relation?”

Elizabeth forbore correcting her, and only told her that she would consider what she had said, before turning the conversation. She wished to know how her Charles treated her, and whether she were or were not quite the happiest woman in existence? Jane, blushing becomingly, allowed half-answers to Elizabeth’s more intimate questions to be wrested from her—before, glancing at the time, said that they ought to be going down to meet the others, if Lizzy did not intend to rest.

Accordingly they rejoined Mr. Bingley, and then found Mrs. Reynolds, who was waiting at the far end of the guest wing to shew the newer guests the way to the saloon. How the room was furnished, Elizabeth could scarcely tell; with taste, she supposed; but, after having been in town for a few months together, all her attention was again caught by the windows, which, opening to the ground, admitted a view of the hills behind the house, and of the beautiful oaks and Spanish chestnuts which were scattered over the intermediate lawn.

Here was more leisure for greetings and introductions; and Elizabeth made Jane known to Miss Harding. Margaret spoke to Mrs. Bingley in just the same quick, critical, decided style that she had, at first, used with her younger sister; but, if she expected to confuse her, she was to be disappointed. Jane was too serene, too sensible, and too accustomed to Elizabeth’s manners, to be ever at a loss for a reply.

Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, meanwhile, were busily making themselves agreeable to Miss Darcy. Caroline had seen nothing in Mr. Darcy’s behaviour to give her new cause for alarm—he was even then standing amongst a small group of gentlemen, and appearing absorbed wholly with them—and so she allowed herself to believe that all was still safe.

Chapter Text

As from you originated the good work, on your constancy and firmness entirely depends the bringing it to a happy issue, the obtaining all your wishes. Every art, every sophistry, every false alarm, and hypocritical jealousy will be tried to disunite, to unman you; but if you suffer yourselves to be overreached, to be intimidated, you have made your last attempt for your country, for yourselves, and for your children; and you will fall below the level of other slaves; the character of Englishmen, the very character of men will not be left you.

— The Rev. George Walker, speaking in support of a reform in public expenditure; Nottingham, 1780; published in The Belfast Monthly Magazine, vol. 5, December 1810

In compassion to the better part of their guests, who were just arrived from several days spent on the road, the Darcys had arranged nothing in particular for the evening. Most of the ladies remained congregated in the saloon, talking, playing cards, and working; though others retreated to rest before dinner. Those gentlemen comfortable enough with Mr. Darcy to take full advantage of his hospitality, whether accompanied by him or no, rode, or fished. Darcy asked Mr. Gandjee whether there were any activity or occupation he could put him in the way of—which invitation, however, was declined, that gentleman being content to remain with his wife and nieces.

Elizabeth staid in conversation with Margaret and Jane until the first dinner-bell rang, and the ladies went up stairs, in twos and threes, to dress. Miss Harding, unwilling to test her power against Elizabeth’s will, in the case where no exigency rendered it inconvenient for her to chuse her own gown, wisely allowed her to enter her chamber without importuning her: and the power which decided Miss Bennet’s dress was therefore, largely, that of her maid.

Saira, who could never sleep in inns, had rested upon the party’s arrival at Pemberley: but she had spent the hour immediately before dinner in unpacking Miss Bennet’s things, and rescuing an evening gown from the crush of her valise. Therefore, by her industry, her mistress was outfitted in a vivid crimson silk, with wide stripes and panels of Indian floral devices down the front, and round the bosom and hem; a fine shawl in contrasting tints; arm-bands, bracelets, rings, and even a forehead-ornament; the tout-ensemble shot through with gold, in spite of the current fashion for silver trimmings. Elizabeth half-suspected that Saira meant to vent her displeasure with Miss Harding through the medium of her dress; but she merely smiled to herself, and did not inquire.

The procession from the drawing-room to the dining-parlour seemed a little more formal than Elizabeth had been used to at Longbourn, the order being determined pretty much by rank—excepting, as she was extremely gratified to observe, that Miss Darcy and her brother walked in with Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee, as the greatest strangers to the party. Mr. Blanchard had spent the afternoon on the grounds: and therefore Elizabeth’s first meeting with him, since their leaving London, was his approaching to escort her to her seat. After she had been settled, and Blanchard took the chair to her right, Elizabeth looked round the table, noting that the Baroness Audley was at Darcy’s left, and looking a little sour to have been expelled from pride of place; Lord Drummond was to the left of his conscious-looking hostess.

Dinner was brought in and served amidst all the usual ceremonies. Elizabeth was a little struck by the awkwardness of being attended to by Mr. Blanchard in Darcy’s presence, and wondered whether his performance of the gallant manœuvres of filling her plate and wine-glass would seem merely rote, or whether any thing of his admiration would appear to an acute observer. Nevertheless, his discourse was unexceptionable; and she was pleased, on an evening already sufficiently trying to her nerves, not to be obliged to make conversation with any body unknown to her.

Though her sense of her own importance was perhaps deceiving her, Elizabeth could not prevent the apprehension that her preferences and habits had been studied in ordering the menu. No curry had been attempted; but the mutton and rice, the almond custard, the ragout mellé, the quantity of nutmeg in the white sauce, all seemed to declare it. She looked down the table for her friend Mr. Hurst, and smiled into her spoon to see him attending to his meal to the absolute neglect of his companion. Unhappily, the company was too large, and the table too narrow and too long, for her to hear what was passing between Mr. Darcy and her aunt, or between her uncle and Georgiana; but she saw that they were often speaking to each other, and that with more warmth than civility; and she was satisfied. What a relief it was, to have some relations for whom there was no need to blush!

After two courses’ worth of conversation about the roads and the weather on her journey to Derbyshire, what new books she had read, and what new music practiced, Elizabeth followed the rest of the ladies into the drawing-room. During the last month or so of their acquaintance, Elizabeth flattered herself Miss Darcy had become more at ease with her; but, in such a large company, she seemed to have regained all of her customary shyness; and many a significant look and smile from Mrs. Annesley was necessary, before she recalled that it was her office to ring for coffee. 

Nevertheless, the discourse in the room was substantially superior to what it often is, in such a party. The initial wariness with which some of the ladies regarded Mrs. Gandjee, could not survive her native ease and elegance of manner; the broadness of her information, the refinement of her opinions, were evident, as soon as she was tried on any subject; she could withstand any test. All of Miss Bingley’s not inconsiderable powers, as well, were put to the task of shewing Miss Bennet and her aunt in a favourable light—and especially, in advancing the former woman’s acquaintance with the female relations of every eligible man then at Pemberley, save one. Elizabeth therefore passed a very tolerable half-hour in the company of Mrs. Evans, Miss Harding, Lady Annabella Drummond, and two Misses Milton. She had nothing to repent of, save Mary’s occasional addition to the conversation, and the gentlemen’s absence.

At last, however, the men did enter, as they always do. Miss Harding, on their approaching, took Elizabeth a little aside, and whispered into her ear—

“Ah! And here come the gentlemen. Surely our discourse has not been so dull as to make us desirous of their attention?”

In so saying, however, she looked at Mr. Darcy, and smiled; Elizabeth’s eyes were just then fixed on him likewise; and that gentleman had no desire to withstand the invitation. He approached directly, and asked if the ladies had enjoyed their dinner, and their coffee. Elizabeth smiled; but Margaret was quicker; and she released Elizabeth’s arm to take his, saying,—

“Oh! Yes. You know that Miss Darcy, and your Mrs. Reynolds, always set an excellent table. I thought their inclusion of the boiled rice especially thoughtful,” she finished in an under-voice, casting a glance across the room at the Gandjees.

Mr. Darcy frowned, and endeavoured to compose a reply; but Elizabeth merely sighed. “You know perfectly well, Margaret, that rice has been on English tables for decades.”

Miss Harding merely smiled at Miss Bennet; which smile was returned a look of such exasperated fondness, as convinced Darcy that Elizabeth was not really offended, but that there was some thing about the discourse between the two women that he was not meant to understand. He let it pass, therefore: but his intention of distinguishing Miss Bennet, not only by every effort of courtesy, but by every especial mark of intimacy, was nevertheless as immediately apparent, as even his rebuking Miss Harding could have made it:—

“I have already asked your uncle, and now I mean to ask you—how do you think Georgiana fares? Has she passed a pleasant half-hour?”

Elizabeth smiled. “She was perhaps, at times, a little shy—but never truly discomfited. She seems very fortunate in her companion: I think Mrs. Annesley, though on short observation, to be a well-informed, respectable, judicious woman.”

A tone of benevolent condescension, when directed towards an impoverished gentlewoman, seemed too entirely natural to Miss Harding, for her to notice what more had passed between her two companions under cover of this ordinary remark. She was only unwilling to believe herself left out of Darcy’s question; and therefore she answered it too, to the effect that Miss Darcy had performed her office admirably, and only wanted a little practice.

As she was speaking, Mr. Blanchard approached the little gathering, and informed the ladies that the instrument was then being opened. He especially entreated Miss Bennet to do him the very great pleasure of playing:—

“For, sir (turning to Mr. Darcy), you have before you a really extraordinary performer.”

“Yes,” replied he, more sharply than he perhaps meant to; “I know.”

Miss Harding frowned, looking between Darcy and Elizabeth—but her friend would not, just then, meet her eye—she only said, that she would be very willing to entertain them, if she were so called upon.

“Certainly you are called upon,” said Blanchard, and escorted her to the instrument, before Darcy could disengage himself to perform that service.

Miss Darcy, at a glance or three from Mrs. Annesley, asked Mrs. Gandjee if she would do the company the honour of being the first to perform; but that lady admitted, that her musical talents did not lie in the way of pianoforte-playing. Miss Bennet, the task now passed on to her, gave Miss Darcy a bright, reassuring smile, selected from the stand a newish piece, which she knew well, and sat down to play.

Elizabeth was the sort of student who had always progressed more rapidly than she had any right to, considering her degree of application. She was not, as Blanchard had claimed, extraordinary—only the passage of years could do so much as that—but, now that she had spent some months in diligent practice, though without losing any of her native sprightliness of manner, she was some thing rather out of the common way. The better part of the conversation in the room slowed, and stopt, as she progressed through her first piece.

At the invitation of several of the gentlemen in the room, she began another, from memory; and was very glad, a few moments later, that she was not relying on written music. She looked up to find that Darcy had approached, rather nearer to her side than she had had any knowledge of—her lip quivered, her breath, for a moment, stopt—it was the force of habit, alone, that kept her fingers moving as they ought. He smiled at her, then—tenderly—and kept up his station till the end of her second piece, not regarding the fact that he had not the excuse of turning her pages.

Mary, perforce, was asked to perform next. In spite of Mary's own continual discourse on the importance of accomplishment in any young female, Elizabeth’s increased skill had done nothing to endear her to her younger sister; and she took up playing with a sullenness which was ill-calculated to do credit to her performance, even had the piece she selected not been a little too ambitious. To add to Elizabeth’s mortifications, the earlier exchanges between herself, Miss Harding, Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Blanchard proved to be the pattern of those that came after; and Miss Bingley's approaching, after she had delighted the company with her own performance, could only serve to increase their awkwardness. Darcy, however, being so open and so pointed, in company of his friends, recompensed her for every embarrassment she suffered; and she went to sleep that night satisfied with what had passed. The first day, at least, was over, and would not need to be gone through again.

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Do but recollect what women you have known men to be passionately in love with: some short and fat; some tall and skinny; some with a little turn-up nose, a small gimlet eye, a dusky skin, or one covered with freckles: and yet did you ever know one of these lovers so biassed by his particular fancy, as to insist upon it that these were criteria, and universal principles of beauty? or who was not ready to acknowledge the superior, though, to him, less interesting beauty of other women, whose persons differed in every respect from that of the object of his passion?

— Uvedale Price, Essays on the Picturesque; 1810

Elizabeth woke early the next day to walk down some of the paths immediately surrounding the manor. The party had been promised a tour of the pleasure gardens at some time in the afternoon; but, with so many of the guests still abed, there was nothing capable of tempting her to spend the hours until breakfast indoors. Therefore, when Margaret entered her chamber in the morning, as she had sometimes done when Elizabeth had spent the night at the Hardings’ town-house, it was to find Saira alone, examining the settings in some of her mistress’s jewellery, in order to ensure that the stones had not loosened.

“I see Miss Bennet is not in?”

Saira looked up, but did not rise. “No, Miss Harding, begging your pardon. She has set out on a walk, these twenty minutes. Have you a message for her?”

Her words were respectful, but Margaret thought she noticed some thing defiant, or disapproving, in her tone.

“No, no—nothing in particular.”

Saira nodded, then went back to her work without a word. The dismissal was perhaps more fascinating than it was irritating—Margaret had never before received such treatment from any body below the rank of a marchioness—and she felt a strong desire of teazing out some other response. Accordingly, she took a few steps further into the room, saying,—

“Well! Your mistress certainly trusts you a good deal. I have never seen such a collection of gold and gems but it was under lock and key.”

“I would never do Miss Bennet the least injury, Miss Harding.”

“And you fancy, I suppose, that I would?”

“I have said no such thing,” said Saira, setting a necklace that evidently displeased her off to one side.

“Please,” said Miss Harding, becoming increasingly delighted with the exchange—“let us have no more prevarication. It is evident, that you have taken up a notion of disliking me—but I cannot account for it. Has Elizabeth been telling tales of me?”

“Miss Bennet never speaks ill of any body.”

“Oh, yes. It is an unfortunate predilection; I have been trying to cure her of it.”

Margaret was immensely pleased to observe, that Saira here had some difficulty in restraining a smile—she was obliged to bow her head down, as if discovering a need to examine some particular ornament more closely. As Miss Harding was deciding on her next mode of attack, and very much to her surprise, Saira began voluntarily:—

“I hope that your gown was returned to you safely? I took the liberty of removing that hem-stitch, as I could not suppose that Miss Bennet would have any occasion to wear it again.”

Margaret laughed heartily. “So that is it? Listen—”; but she broke off, and frowned. “Remind me of your name, my dear girl?”

Saira did so.

“Yes, that was it! Saira.” And she continued, with unwonted gentleness:—

“Of course, Saira, we both want what is best for Elizabeth. It is only a matter of who is most likely to know what that is. The best way for any woman to get on in the world, is to marry well; and the best way to do that, is to give over these little eccentricities.” She took up the forehead-ornament that Elizabeth had worn at dinner the previous evening, and let it dangle between her thumb and fore-finger; the mirrors behind the gems reflected the light from the open windows, which glinted in dozens of coloured sequins across Saira’s face.

“I am certain,” said Saira, with an upraised chin and a curled lip, “that Miss Bennet is capable of deciding for herself, on these matters. I am sure that I can have nothing to say about it. I do just as she tells me.”

“Oh! Of course you do. You are the very picture of submission and compliance.” She placed the ornament back onto the toilette-table, and watched in amused indulgence as Saira peremptorily wiped it clean, and began wrapping it in layers of cloth and waxed paper. Margaret then said, smilingly,—

“I imagine that you have for some time been wishing me gone. I will leave you to your work, and seek your mistress in some bit of wilderness somewhere, where I have no doubt she must be—and so, au revoir.”

“Good day, Miss Harding.”

True to her word, Margaret descended the stairs, and turned down the south corridor, which terminated in the door leading out to the ornamental garden. She was nearing the gate which separated this garden from the wilder portion of the pleasure-grounds, when her expectations were answered, by the appearance of the young lady she had been searching for—on the arm of Mr. Darcy. They were walking back in the direction from which Margaret had come, laughing with their heads bent together, as if sharing some particular joke; and Margaret was surprised at the suddenness and ferocity of her jealousy.

She maintained, however, an acceptable appearance of composure; only exulting a little in startling the lovers as she cried,—

“Elizabeth! I thought I would find you somewhere in the gardens. How do you do, Mr. Darcy?”

Elizabeth soon recovered herself sufficiently to smile, and bid her good morning; and Mr. Darcy, as the path was just wide enough to admit three, was offering her his other arm with all the readiness of good breeding. Accordingly, she took it; and was then again addressing Elizabeth:—

“I spoke a little with your maid, when I first went up in search of you. She is a dreadfully impertinent thing. ‘I have no opinion about it, Miss Harding’—but with the most insolent look! You certainly deserve her. I liked her excessively. I cannot remember when I was last so pleased with a conversation—it may have been, perhaps, the first time I spoke with you.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I think Saira bears you a grudge because I did not send for her, before dressing for that one dinner-party.”

“That was in May!” cried Margaret.

“Yes—and no doubt she would remember it, were it May of twenty years ago.”

Miss Harding here chanced to look up, and observe Mr. Darcy’s admiring glance at Elizabeth’s smile. She was determined, however, to seem unconcerned; her speeches only became more gay, voluble, and blithe.

“I know I have reminded you a thousand times if it is once,” she said, presently, “to bring a parasol with you, on these walks of your’s! Especially now that it is summer.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, wryly, “I know you have. You and my mother both attribute some strange power to parasols, which I am quite certain they do not possess.”

“Mr. Darcy, you must help me. You know that women never much listen to each other—but surely you can be trusted, on the subject of female beauty. Miss Bennet is a pretty girl, and with some features that are really remarkable—she confirms every thing one reads about the brilliancy of Oriental eyes—! but surely, if she does not take care, she will be grown very coarse by the end of the summer.”

She had her victory, such as it was—Elizabeth looked a little nettled—and Mr. Darcy favoured her with a very forbidding frown.

“On the contrary,” said he, sharply. “Pretty, she may have been called, and with some justice, in the winter months, when she was rather paler. But being tanned suits her—and I can now assert, that I know of no woman handsomer.”

The party now being arrived at the garden-door, Mr. Darcy coolly invited her to take some breakfast—but she refused—she left the other two to walk off towards the breakfast-room together, and retreated into her chamber to be miserable.

Why was she so miserable? Why was it such a disaster—why was it so unthinkable, that Elizabeth marry Mr. Darcy? She had been perfectly ready to give her to Lord Drummond, or to Mr. Blanchard—even to Mr. Miller, if he were to ask! Why was it so different, that it was him?

Of course, she had long intended Darcy for herself—their lineage, fortune, manners, ambitions, all seemed to accord—but she had not thought herself so transported with love for him, as to feel sick at the thought of his marrying elsewhere.

It was, perhaps, Darcy’s cleverness that was the matter. A Mr. Blanchard, even a Lord Drummond, was one thing: they were respectable enough, and by no means deficient in understanding; but she and Elizabeth would manage such a man, and look at each other over his head, and be friends just as before. But, even from what little she had seen, the bright, glowing way that Elizabeth responded to Darcy seemed markedly different from her patient reception of the others. It was as if, by entertaining him, Elizabeth passed out of the realm of her influence—as though Elizabeth would soon be done patiently entertaining her.

It struck her, of a sudden, that Elizabeth’s amused indulgence, her unwillingness to argue, her deference whenever Margaret should insist on some thing, was not actual submission—it was as though Elizabeth did not think it worth the time to argue with her—she acceded, merely because she did not care enough to fight. She treated Margaret, herself, with some thing more of a kind with the forbearance she shewed a Mr. Blanchard, than the warmth with which she met Mr. Darcy.

Margaret took up a book, a sampler, a series of mathematical problems, but ended in throwing them all aside in disgust. She retreated to her bed to rest, and remained there until dinner.

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A good shepherd should understand the best method of folding, feeding, watering, and pasturing his flock, of treating its diseases, and improving it, as well in the breed, as in the quality and fineness of the wool; to drive, wash, and shear his flock in the best manner; to rear and train dogs, and keep them in subjection, and to protect the flock against wolves, and other noxious animals.

— M. Daubenton, Advice to shepherds and owners of flocks, on the care and management of sheep; 1811

Lord Francis Drummond was one of that amiable class of men, who are guided pretty entirely by the opinions of their fellows. In school he had never taken the place which his lineage, or his stature, ought to have afforded him: he wanted some body to follow; and, having found him, he was unlikely to break away again. It was to his great good fortune that he fell in with Darcy and his respectable set, for, once having fallen in with a disreputable one, he would probably have been led passively into every manner of vice.

Since forming the acquaintance of Miss Bennet, he had been cordial to her, because Miss Harding was—but Miss Harding’s approbation alone could go no further. She was an original, and her opinions were no proper measure for those of the rest of their circle. He had taken note, however, of Mr. Blanchard’s esteem of Miss Bennet; and, the events of their first few days at Pemberley confirming him in the belief that she and her relations had Darcy’s respect, he gave himself leave to esteem her likewise.

The morning two days after the late-comers’ arrival was, for most gentlemen of the party, given over to fishing. Darcy had a variety of water-courses on his grounds, well-stocked with a variety of fish; and the men disposed themselves as they would, along the rapids and shallows, in the sun or the shade; some eager for sport, some sleepy, some bored, and others merely happy not to be called on to make conversation. Mr. Gandjee was a little bemused that fishing was here considered to be a genteel occupation—he had never, in any place he had lived, had occasion to partake of it before—but he was quick to learn; and enjoyment soon followed facility.

Some pleasant hours passed in this way, before Mr. Gandjee noted that Mr. Darcy was frequently glancing towards the house. He saved that gentleman the necessity of making an excuse, by declaring himself in need of refreshment, and wondering aloud whether the ladies were yet having tea. This desire being seconded by several others of the company, the gentlemen took up their rods, and began returning across the lawn to the manor house; the servants, trailing behind them, carried covered baskets of chub and trout.

The men entered to find that the ladies were, indeed, at tea. The sounds of a pianoforte reached the party from the music room, whose doors were thrown open to communicate with the drawing-room, in which the larger part of the company remained. Miss Bennet sat at a table, working on a piece of embroidery which involved gold threads and beads of various kinds; Miss Darcy and Mrs. Bingley sat nearby, evidently discussing her work. Miss Harding and Miss Bingley shared a sopha that commanded a good view of the hall-door, chatting volubly: they looked up at once upon the entrance of the gentlemen.

Darcy explained what they did there, looking round to catch Elizabeth’s eye: her fingers still plied her needle, but she smiled up at him. She turned to whisper into Georgiana’s ear—which young lady, blushing, rang to request a fresh pot of tea and a tray of sandwiches. The sounds of the pianoforte then ceased, and Mrs. Annesley entered, observing her charge to see whether she were wanted. Being satisfied on this point, she retreated to sit in a corner of the room, rummaging through a workbasket that had been placed there for that purpose.

Miss Bingley came forward to draw Mr. Darcy towards a seat near her, briefly frowning at what had pleased her so much before—namely, the presence of Miss Harding there. Margaret, however, warmly seconded the invitation, and Darcy, with no very civil way of refusing, took his place where he was directed. He was recompensed with the sight of Elizabeth, biting her lips to hide a smile, and looking at him as if they shared a joke.

Mrs. Bingley made her excuses to Miss Bennet, and moved to stand by the table and talk with her husband. Lord Drummond, to Elizabeth’s considerable surprise, was then placing himself in the seat which had lately been her’s, and greeting her and Miss Darcy very cordially. He examined her work, declaring it “singular” and “very pretty,” unhappily scattering, as he did so, some of the threads which had not yet been couched. Elizabeth laughed off his civil apology, and helped the maid who approached to pick up the fugitive gold; when, again surprising her, Drummond knelt to gather a few smaller beads which had escaped to a greater distance. Mr. Blanchard frowned at the scene over his plate.

No sooner had the gentlemen eaten than Darcy, unsatisfied with the way things were currently disposed, was proposing another outing, and asking whether any of the ladies present would like to walk over the pastures and see how the new sheep were faring. They were not quite spring lambs any more, he explained—perhaps half-grown—but they would no doubt be glad of some attention, and some slices of apple. Elizabeth, of course, agreed at once with this somewhat eccentric plan; as did four other ladies of the company. Lady Annabella Drummond wanted air and movement, and Miss Cynthia Miller really wished to see the lambs. With Miss Bingley’s and Miss Harding’s motives, the reader is already sufficiently acquainted.

The sheep were roaming freely over the pasture, not having yet been folded into their enclosures for the evening. They were a handsome flock of new Leicesters, with long, white wool, and blue-grey faces; the lambs frisking about over the grass, and the ewes grazing sedately. Elizabeth reached out a hand for one of the smaller ones to nuzzle into, while Darcy sought the shepherd in quest of some oats. Miss Bingley said some thing in a loud whisper to Miss Harding, nodding at Elizabeth as she scratched the lamb behind its blue ears, and Margaret placed a hand on her shoulder as if in need of support, convulsing with laughter. If Elizabeth heard them, she gave no indication.

She turned, instead, to Lord Drummond, where he hovered beside her, his hands folded behind his back; and, casting about for a subject, ended in asking him how he had enjoyed his morning of fishing. He answered, that the fishing at Pemberley was always “capital,” and gave her a minuter account of the proceedings than she had been expecting to receive. She replied, she knew not how; and, by gradations, Lord Drummond moved to ask her about herself: from whence did she hail, were any other of her sisters married, had she been converted or was she born a Christian, and were there any clergymen in her family?

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, to this last—“a cousin of my father’s.”

“My father,” he was then saying, “has a good deal of influence in the Church, you know. Earl Guildford is a clergyman himself, and the Master of an almshouse in Hampshire.”

“Oh, yes,” said Elizabeth, trying hard to avoid a smile, and wishing she could share the joke with Margaret; “I believe Miss Harding told me.”

Mr. Darcy had now arrived with the shepherd, a small bag of oats, and several sliced apples; and he moved quickly to secure Elizabeth’s arm within his own, before any of the others in the party could again separate them. Elizabeth smiled at him; and then, while such of the ladies as chose to, fed the sheep from their gloved palms, she began to ask the shepherd such questions about his flock, their wool, their pasture, their hooves, and his future plans for how they ought to be bred, as were pretty sure of securing her his friendship for life. Now and again, she met Darcy’s eye with an expression, that proved her memory of their earlier conversations to be as thorough as his; and he could not but feel that soon, very soon, all would be well. The press of her hand on his elbow—the sunlight that melted her eyes, whenever she tilted her head up such that they were no longer cast in shadow by her bonnet—her smell of jasmine, and of some thing thicker, and darker—it was exceedingly pleasant. It was torture.

Miss Bingley was the first to express fatigue with all this standing about. She and Miss Harding had been huddled so closely together, as to be obliged to share a parasol (Miss Bingley, of course, having been the one to close and lower her’s); but she now proclaimed herself in need of more support than Margaret’s arm could give her; and she obliged Mr. Darcy to offer her his. Lord Drummond escorted his sister and the younger Miss Miller, leaving Miss Harding to walk with Mr. Blanchard.

When they had again entered the house, the party drifted off to their separate occupations till it was time to dress for dinner. Miss Bingley and Miss Harding, however, seemed determined to remain wherever Mr. Darcy and Miss Bennet were—appearing engaged wholly in each other at one moment, and attempting to capture Darcy’s attention at the next.

Elizabeth was surprised at how much this display distressed her. Of course, it was not evidence of any true friendship between the two young ladies—it was only calculated to make her jealous—but her sentiments at the thought that Margaret at least wished to hurt her, caused her to understand, that she had not guarded her heart against her as carefully as she had thought.

This course of behaviour, Elizabeth believed, was ungenerous in the extreme:—and she flattered herself that she would never behave in such a way to any other woman, merely over a man. The realisation that Margaret favoured Mr. Darcy had not led Elizabeth to regard her with any ill will! “But then,” thought she, “perhaps I am not being just: it is no very great feat, for the victor to be gracious.”

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Oh, Britons! extinguish those horrid fires, the deadly smoke of which has but too long sullied and obscured the brightness of the Indian sun; rescue, oh rescue, the poor Indian widow from her lamentable doom, and let not her unpitied ashes ever more be a disgrace to a land ennobled by the wisdom of your laws, strewed with numberless trophies of your victorious arms, and placed under the control of your influence and glory. Great is thy power, immense are thy riches! Placed by nature between two hemispheres, to command both worlds, thou seest the sun rise and set within the widely-extended domains of thy stupendous empire; and the unbounded ocean itself, enamoured of thy gentle sway, lowers its majestic and lofty waves but beneath the noble flags of thy triumphant fleets.

— N. Fraisinet, “Indian Fanaticism,” in The Lady's Monthly Museum, volume 8; 1810

In keeping with the experience of the last few days, Elizabeth found Saira more than usually punctilious in dressing her. She had retrimmed her mistress’s indigo silk, and shortened its waist, in accordance with the current fashion; to this must be adduced one of Elizabeth’s finer demi-parures, comprising a hasli with elaborate, deep blue enamelling, inlaid with diamonds and emeralds, and bangles in the same style; her hair must be partially encased in a silk turban, trimmed with emeralds, and set with two peacock’s feathers, in place of the white ostrich, so modish at present: and the effect was rather more shewy than it had been, when Elizabeth had last worn the same gown, at Rosings. Saira, however, managed the whole with great facility and taste, and even managed to impart to the coiffure some thing of the carefully managed dishevelment recommended in her magazines.

The formality of the procession into the dining-room had by now somewhat lapsed, as will happen when a large party gain familiarity with each other. Lord Drummond escorted Elizabeth, leading her to the head of the table; he seated himself at Miss Darcy’s left, with Elizabeth on his other side; Lady Annabella was directly across, in company with the Baron Audley. Mrs. Bingley and Miss Mary were closer to their host, at the foot. Miss Bennet, despite the eminence which she had borrowed, thought that she would have been happier, to have sat lower—she saw Mr. Darcy regarding her earnestly, and would have liked to have spoken to him—but Lord Drummond exerted himself rather more than he had done the last time he had been her dinner partner, and she, apprehending the probable reason for it, was amused enough to forget most of her dissatisfaction.

After dinner, when the ladies retired to the drawing-room, Elizabeth naturally fell in with Lady Annabella. Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst hurried over to take charge of Miss Darcy; Mrs. Bingley remained with Mrs. Gandjee, talking about the latest news of the children; and Miss Harding moved in along with the rest of the ladies, though staying a bit aloof from every body.

Elizabeth soon found Lady Annabella to be, either sincerely curious, or determined to quiz her. She wanted to know all about Indian cuisine, Indian manners, Indian culture—and would not be induced to direct her questions to Mrs. Gandjee, as the person then present most qualified to answer them. Elizabeth shared what she had heard of Bombay and Calcutta: the verdure, the architecture, the manners; but her Ladyship seemed as though she were not hearing what she had wanted, or expected, to hear—and she became more active in directing the conversation.

“One reads that the excesses practiced, in the name of Hindooism and Mohammedism, are extreme.”

Elizabeth slowly stirred sugar into her second cup of coffee. “Of what excesses do you speak, my Lady?”

“Well—that women, for example, are kept in such a state of ignorance, as fits them for the accomplishment of no task of import.”

“That is sadly true. The men of England are much better disposed towards us poor females. I, for example, have just graduated from Cambridge, and am beginning to think of taking additional training. I may wish to obtain a medical degree, or take orders.”

Margaret stifled a laugh into her cup, and Elizabeth gained in courage to observe it—it made her wit flow longer, than it may have otherwise—and she continued:—

“I intend, by the bye, to vote for the Opposition candidate in the next general election. Do you know how you shall dispose of your vote?”

Lady Annabella merely smiled, and persisted:—

“Indian women of rank, I have read, are not allowed to shew their faces—not allowed, even, outside of their own homes, save that they are carried by their attendants.”

“Have you, your Ladyship, been on a European tour?” asked Elizabeth—now growing exasperated, but still maintaining a laughing tone. “Have you ever been so far as to the next town, quite by yourself, without an attendant? Are you, or am I, at liberty to go to a club, or a concert, or a play, or any public place, alone, or in the sole company of other unmarried women?”

“The type of wholesome restraint you describe—the moral guidance of which you are now speaking—is hardly the same thing as being required to cover even your face.”

“And yet, those of foreign habits may consider English dress just as restrictive.”

“In the days of hoop-skirts, panniers, and periwigs, Miss Bennet, you may have had a point! But the natural elegance of the Grecian line cannot properly be considered in the same light.”

“Why may not it be? I assure you, the layers of stockings, garters, chemise, petticoat, stays, gown, over-gown—considered in a merely physical sense—are more restrictive than a choli and lehenga. And one reads just as much opprobrium directed against the licentious performances of the nautch girl, as against the unwholesome restraint practiced against the noblewoman—which, on the face of it, appears contradictory. There is, in short, always some excuse, any thing or nothing, to explain why the women of India urgently need English intervention: in any form which would bring money, or laurels, to those proposing to intervene.”

Her Ladyship leaned forward and clasped the arms of her chair. She seemed, in a moment, to lose all the polish of her fashionable manners; and spoke, with passionate earnestness, her reply:—

“Can you really say, that you feel nothing for those poor women? Not for the girls, who will never be sent to so much as a charity-school? Not for the widows who jump, or are thrown, onto their husband’s pyres? Your own discontentment with your lot here, cannot make you unsympathetic to their’s. Do not you feel that the government of England, as an enlightened nation, is called on to do some thing to aid them?”

Elizabeth paused for a few moments, reviewing the turns of the conversation, and reconsidering her interpretation of her Ladyship’s motives for entering into it.

“Your Ladyship’s father, I believe, is the Master of an almshouse?”

“Yes,” said Lady Annabella, a little surprised by the question. “I imagine my brother told you?”

Elizabeth affirmed, that he had.

“He used to come home and tell me all about it—my father, I mean. Whom he had admitted, and what donations were received, and from whom, and how they were circumstanced for the next year.”

At the end of some few minutes, Elizabeth had asked all that she could think to ask about the management of the house, and what her Ladyship had had to do with its operations (which, as it happened, was very little). She turned the conversation, then, in a direction that she hoped was more likely to turn to account:—

“I think, your Ladyship, that you and I might never agree about India. We could attempt to correct what needs to be corrected there; however, in my opinion, it would accomplish nothing, except in making us accomplices to the depredations of those, who only claim to be acting from disinterested motives. Would it not be more sensible, to put our efforts somewhere where they are more sure of being useful? I have a scheme of my own—”

Miss Bennet then explained all of her charitable plans that had been decided, thus far, and endeavoured to make her Ladyship interested in them. She was listened to with no less attention by Miss Harding; and she glanced over, from time to time, to find her regarding her intently—though, with what sentiments, she could not tell.

Chapter Text

Who is she that wins the heart of man, that subdues him to love, and reigns in his breast? Lo! yonder she walks in maiden sweetness, with innocence in her mind and modesty in her cheek. Her hand seeks employment, her foot delights not in gadding abroad. On her tongue dwells peace, the sweetness of honey drops from her lips. Decency is in all her words; in her answers are mildness and truth. Submission and obedience are the lessons of her life, and peace and happiness are her reward. Her breast is the mansion of goodness, and therefore she suspects no evil in others.

— The female instructor, or Young woman's companion: being a guide to all the accomplishments which adorn the female character, either as a useful member of society - a pleasing and instructive companion, or a respectable mother of a family; 1811

The next day brought two letters of note. The first was from Mr. Gandjee’s London clerk, who wrote to inform his employer that he had, within the parameters specified, located a house to serve as Elizabeth’s “Home for Asiatics.” It was a property on ——— Street, in Hackney, which location had the advantage of being highly respectable, without being at a very inconvenient distance from the India Docks. Requests for funding had been passed through the net-work of the Gandjees’ acquaintance: and the result was, that the rent on this property could be paid through the first year of the experiment, the moment he was authorised to make the transaction. One donor in particular, however, having been generous in the extreme—though desiring to remain anonymous—had put it within their reach to purchase the property outright, if Mr. Gandjee would permit him to make the relevant inquiries.

This was far beyond Elizabeth’s liveliest expectations: and she read the letter— and its neat table, arranging the donors and subscribers, with their respective contributions—six or seven times over. The subscribers could not, perhaps, support the endeavour alone; and it would be better to seek out more, and thus to be safe, than to assume that those here listed would give to the same amount, indefinitely. Still, to have an address, representing a real fabric, which was even now in existence, at No. —, ——— Street, Hackney, London, gave to her plans still more of the weight of reality, which they had begun to acquire when she had first shared them.

Elizabeth recalled, with a measure of restless melancholy, that she had done so through the instrumentality of Miss Harding. How sincerely she wished to be on good terms again! But apologising for her imperfect submission, and renouncing Darcy, were equally out of the question; and so she must leave Margaret to recover from her pique when and how she would.

Such were the thoughts occupying Elizabeth’s mind, when she at length took up the second missive, which was addressed to herself and Jane. She felt, at first, nothing but amusement, that being deprived of the company of both herself and her elder sister had driven her father to such extremes, as actually to write and send a letter; but these sensations were soon succeeded by others, infinitely more painful and perplexing.

She hurried from her bed-chamber, to the one appointed to Mr. and Mrs. Bingley; blushing to interrupt the couple before breakfast, but feeling that the nature of her news required it. Jane opened the door at her knock, and led her into the suite’s sitting-room, exclaiming at Elizabeth’s evident anxiety.

“Here,” said Elizabeth, upon being questioned; “read these, and you will know all”—and she handed Jane her father's letter, and the missive which had been enclosed with it, indicating which ought to be read first.

The letter from Mr. Bennet was as follows:—

“Longbourn, Aug. 4

“You, Lizzy, will be too good to triumph over me as you should. Rest assured that I feel how much I am to blame. I will have no doubt gotten over the sensation by dinner, however, so you have no cause to fear for me.

“The silliest of your sisters has proved herself even sillier than I ever knew, and has run off with a man, of no particular family and no particular account, to Scotland. I leave it to yourselves to determine what these young people’s attractions to each other may have been.

“If your geography stands you in good stead, you will perceive at once that Brighton is many days’ travel from Gretna Green, and that the fugitive couple must have departed near a fortnight ago. Colonel Forster informed all of us here when it first occurred. I resolved to await the event before informing you, as there is no sense in anticipating sorrow. The outcome is the best that could have been expected: they are married, and at home; and here they remain, until some place is found where Lydia and this indigent young man may be supported on such money as her fortune can supply them. I attach the letter which Lydia sent to Mrs. Forster on the occasion of her elopement, as this edifying piece of literature will explain things with more thoroughness than I am inclined to.

“I am now left the unenviable task of making your mother understand, that paying out Lydia’s dowry will necessitate a reduction of her pin-money.

“Your’s,” etc.

Jane, as she finished this missive, exclaimed again in surprise and concern; but she soon calmed herself, and endeavoured to calm Elizabeth also:—

“Of course they did not go about things as they should: but I am certain that they are really fond of each other.”

“You mean, I suppose, that we must decide to believe they are. I cannot bring my judgement of probabilities into such subjection as that; but I will hope that they are—and will not leave off so hoping, until it is proved otherwise.”

Elizabeth now directed Jane to the letter which had been enclosed; but Jane protested against reading the correspondence of any other person. She relented, however, when told that Lydia’s permission was implied in the letter itself.

“My dear Harriet—

“I have played such a good joke as you cannot possibly imagine. Mr. Brathwaite asked me to marry him yesterday, and of course I said yes. He said that he could scarcely wait to be mine, and so we are going to be off to Gretna Green directly. I have not time to write any body at Longbourn. You may send this letter on to them, but you need not trouble yourself if you do not like it, for it would be terribly funny for them to know nothing about it till I write and sign my name Lydia Brathwaite.

“You may be a little surprised at my choice, for you know Wickham has been making love to me for weeks, and I used to say I would perish with love for him. But I cannot forgive him for preferring that freckled, ugly little Mary King to me for all those weeks in Meryton, though I have just as much money as she has, and I am determined to shew him what he has lost. And so the joke is, that I told him I would meet him on the ——— Road the first thing in the morning, but all the while I am really at the ——— Inn with my Henry, and we will go as soon as the horses are harnessed. I can hardly write for laughing!

“I shall send for my clothes when I get to Longbourn; but I wish you would tell Sally to be careful in packing my parasols, and to do it only in the way I shewed her. Good-bye. Give my love to Colonel Forster.

“Your affectionate friend,

“Lydia Bennet.”

Jane was now very near to frowning in earnest. “The trick she played seems unkind. Poor Wickham!”

“Poor Wickham, indeed. Knowing what we know, however, of his character, you cannot suppose him to have had any real affection for her? In this case, you know, it will turn to the best account if he had not.”

“I hope he will soon recover from his disappointment,” was Jane’s delicate reply.

“From his morning’s inconvenience, you mean. I am sure he shall—and now there is nothing else to hope, but that Lydia and her husband can both contrive to live on her income. I wish I knew what sort of a man this Mr. Braithwaite is! His manner of managing his affairs, to judge from this circumstance, is not in his favour.”

Jane again sought to represent the likely strength and sincerity of their new brother’s affection, and to present the elopement in any light, other than as a thing very rash and disgraceful; Elizabeth again expressed her uneasiness regarding the probability of such a pair remaining happy, or solvent; but, until more was known, more could not be said; and at length the sisters fell mutually silent.

“I suppose some body ought to tell my uncle and aunt, and Mary,” said Elizabeth, after a moment.

“I will tell Mary,” said Jane, taking upon herself the more difficult task.

“Yes—do. Of course I need not remind you to tell her, that the marriage’s having begun in an elopement is some thing that ought not be widely known. At least they are married! To think, how much worse it might have been—!”

Chapter Text

In our progress through the mine I had the satisfaction of seeing the most important ores of lead; the beautiful crystalizations of fluor spar, and calcareous spar; the sulphat of barytes, native coppers, and extensive strata of lime stone, filled with the most curious petrifactions. The ore is conveyed to day light by means of small waggons. The nature of the situation necessarily precludes the employment of any domestic animal, and the miners therefore act in their stead; they are literally harnessed to the waggons, with collars and traces, and thus travel back and forward through these dismal regions.

— Benjamin Silliman, A journal of travels in England, Holland, and Scotland, and of two passages over the Atlantic, in the years 1805 and 1806; 1812

Angular uneven bodies, such as pieces of iron, cut lead, &c. always occasion far more dangerous wounds, than round even bodies, like leaden bullets.

— A dictionary of practical surgery: containing a complete exhibition of the present state of the principles and practice of surgery; 1810

After breakfast, the younger portion of the party split themselves into smaller groups, ranging over the lawns to play at cricket and bowls. This was an occasion on which the unseasonable coolness of the weather was very much to the purpose; and the games were livelier than they may have been, were the summer progressing as it ought. Amongst the ladies who ventured to play at cricket were Miss Bennet, and Miss Cynthia Miller, whom Elizabeth had discovered to be a pleasant girl: not clever, but amiable, unaffected, and unassuming.

Darcy and Elizabeth were, by an unhappy chance, enlisted in opposite parties, and so there was no opportunity of speaking on the field, or while waiting to strike; but this separation, though Elizabeth could not help lamenting it, had its consolations. When Darcy took his place as a striker, she was excellently placed to watch him run from wicket to wicket, and to reflect, with proprietary satisfaction, on his tall, vigorous, well-made person; then, when it was her turn to run, the exertion was made more pleasurable by the consciousness that he was nearby to admire her.

With exercise and amusement Elizabeth thus attempted to occupy her mind. She had determined to find her opportunity, some time in the course of the day, to tell Darcy all; but it was of no use to trouble herself about it now, when it must be impossible; and so she directed all her energies into the game.

After a couple of hours passed away in this manner, a groom approached to inform his master that the conveyances had been prepared, as he had ordered. Those of the party who were amenable to “taking an airing” stepped, or were handed, into the carriages that were to conduct them along the northward road to Cressbrook. Mrs. Gandjee, for whom a very little exercise sufficed, had contented herself watching the progress of the games, while they were ongoing; but she now took her place beside her husband in one of the carriages. She really wanted to see more of the Peak District; and to this motive was adduced a hope that, as chaperon, she would have it in her power to forward her niece’s match—or, at the least, not to hinder it, as the Hursts, or the Baron and Baroness, may have done.

Darcy, once assured that every body else was seated, stepped into one of the barouches, and settled himself opposite Elizabeth; then gave the coachmen the order to proceed. The carriages wound through Pemberley Woods, until they passed the lodge marking the furthest extent of the park: another few turns, and they were on the road to Tideswell.

This road continued straight for some time, disclosing to the passengers in both open carriages several scenes highly picturesque. Ashford-in-the-Water was passed—a hill ascended—and the vista which was then opened, made Elizabeth gasp with delight. Darcy had been particular about handing her in on the forward-facing left side, and she thought she now perceived why. A stone wall separated the road from a considerable drop; a string of mountains folded themselves into the distance, the sun alternately glinting and diffusing over their sheer limestone faces and lush, tufted summits; between them ran a narrow dale, watered by the River Wye, in which the farm-house, the rustic wooden bridge, the smooth river rocks, displayed themselves to great advantage. Darcy, who she supposed must be already familiar with every view hereabouts, was looking at her, rather than at the landscape; and she met his eye at intervals, smiling brightly.

The carriages followed each other down an abrupt descent, and over a road which wound itself into the valley they had lately been surveying. The route forward was then too narrow for the barouches. Darcy had hired several curricles, which had been led into the valley from Ashford village, for those disinclined to walk; and a rearrangement of passengers and provision baskets was effected. Darcy, having handed Elizabeth down from the carriage, and retaining her arm, remained behind to ensure that the curricles were in good order, and that every body who wanted one, was furnished with one: thus Lady Anabella was disposed of with her brother, Miss Bingley with Mr. Miller, Miss Darcy with her companion, the Gandjees together, etc. Elizabeth smiled to see such convenient usage made of the duties belonging to a host.

She had fully expected to set off alongside those ladies and gentlemen who had resolved to go forward on foot. Mr. Darcy, however, begged her to step into a curricle, into which he placed one of the provision baskets, and then checked the horses’ tackle; and he tarried about these arrangements so long, that he and Miss Bennet were obliged to bring up the rear. Elizabeth’s desire for further exercise could not survive her comprehension of his motives.

“This is a beautiful spot,” she said, as they set off at last.

Darcy smiled at her. “I am pleased that you find it so. I thought you would.”

“I wonder, however, if this was the only consideration that guided your choice? There is some thing decidedly—inspiring, about the narrowness of this path.”

He adjusted his hands on the reins, and moved one long limb until his knee pressed against her’s, in lieu of a reply; and she smiled, turning her face to see the view from her other side.

Darcy began speaking about the history of the immediate area—the limestone beds, the lead mines, the cotton mill on the Wye that had recently been restored to usefulness—and Elizabeth made the occasional reply, though unable wholly to disguise the distraction of her mind. Her companion, however, seemed determined to allow her to come to the point in her own time: and it was only a very few minutes later, that she began:—

“I received this morning some news from Longbourn, of a very uncertain nature. It is too soon to know—but I do not see how it can turn out well.”

The path now ran, through a series of meadows and corn fields, alongside the river, which occasionally appeared to their view through the dense foliage of the intervening trees; the air was perfumed with the wild plants that overspread its banks; and Elizabeth breathed deeply, fidgeting with the string of her reticule.

“Lydia has—has married—to own the truth, she has left her friends at Brighton, and eloped. Of her husband’s character, or habits, or family, we know nothing. His probable motives, however, I cannot pretend to misunderstand.”

After a slight pause, Darcy lifted a hand from the reins to press her’s. “This is—it is—grievous—shocking. They are certainly married? Has nothing been attempted to bring her home?”

“Oh! She is at home: she, and her Mr. Braithwaite. And, yes, I am certain they are married—short of inspecting the certificate myself. It would likely be impossible to effect a separation now, even should Lydia agree to it: and I have no doubt that she would not.”

The curricle clattered over the wooden bridge, which led across the river. Afterwards, the path still carried on directly ahead; but the track Darcy had intended for himself and Elizabeth to traverse, branched off to the left; and he therefore directed the horses in that direction. He found, however, to his consternation, that the opening through the wood was lower and narrower than he had remembered, and the horses shied from entering into it.

He remained for a moment in a state of uncertainty, divided between the safety from interruption provided by a conveyance that could accommodate only two, and the desire to see Elizabeth’s joy upon beholding Cressbrook Dale. The look of earnest longing, with which she was regarding the track, immediately decided the question; and he handed her down, before directing the horses off of the pathway and fixing them to a nearby tree.

“There is nothing in that case to be done,” said Darcy, as they began walking through the wood, “but to see what sort of a husband this man makes. I hope, in the intervening time, you will try not to worry overmuch. There will be ways to restrain him, no matter what occurs. He may, for example, be tempted by some property or other, which we may leave him under care of a steward—its income to be provisional upon his wife’s remaining content with him. I promise you that she is not lost to you.”

Elizabeth pressed Darcy’s arm with impulsive affection, and very earnestly thanked him. She had not really expected him to turn from her, in light of her information; she had thought, perhaps, given his fondness for her, and his own sister’s past misconduct, that he would be kind; but his determination to act in the interest of her sister’s preservation, won him all her gratitude, and all her admiration; and she was now more convinced than she ever had been, that every thing would be well between them.

The steady rushing noise, which had filled Elizabeth’s ears the past few minutes, she soon learned to attribute to a water-fall, as a clearing in the trees revealed it to them. The water, tumbling over the rocks, glinted in the afternoon light, raising a spray that cast the base of the fall in a sparkling haze. Far downstream, the river churned the wheel of the mill Darcy had spoken of. They remained for some time in silent admiration, before Darcy expressed a wish of shewing her Cressbrook Dale; and therefore they walked onward.

At length, the wood opened to a more extensive prospect of meadow and valley. The Wye received a small stream, which curved and wound over the far distance, sometimes narrower and sometimes wider, breaking apart into rivulets before coming together again. Part of the Dale had been recently enclosed, and turned into a plantation for lavender and mint, for the benefit of a nearby distillery; and the fields of aromatic herbs made the air sharp and heady.

“Are you hungry?” asked Darcy, after some minutes had passed away.

“Oh!” Elizabeth laughed at the prosaic nature of the question, but owned that she was. Therefore, the pair returned back the way they had come, intending to recover their curricle, and rejoin the other walkers. As they again passed the water-fall, Elizabeth ventured,—

“There is some thing else, that I ought to tell you—some thing that I have resolved to do. In fact, I have already begun—and I—and I hope—”

The sound of approaching footsteps, somewhere in the near distance, stopped her short: and, after a moment, she met Miss Harding’s eye through the opening in the wood that led back to the main path. Elizabeth and Darcy glanced at each other in surprise; but there was nothing now to be done but to come forward to meet her; and this, accordingly, they did.

Miss Harding greeted the pair with apparent warmth, and then explained,—

“I was obliged to excuse myself for a moment. How glad I am to have come across you! I suppose,” she addressed Mr. Darcy, “that you were shewing Elizabeth Cressbrook Dale? Darcy and I (turning back to Miss Bennet) have been there several times. It is a charming spot.”

“Yes, it is,” said Elizabeth, mildly.

“By the bye, Elizabeth, I have been meaning to find an opportunity of telling you,” she continued in a lower voice, taking Elizabeth by the arm, and advancing further towards the curricle—“I am not at all certain that your sister-in-law has the regard for your best interests, which she ought to. She has said some very unkind things about you.”

“I thank you for the warning, Miss Harding—but this hardly surprises me. Miss Bingley has never made a secret of her sentiments towards me.”

“Oh, but it will surprise you, when I tell you what it was she said—on the subject of the sheep, you know—and your apparent preference (this to Mr. Darcy) for blue faces—”

“Madam,” Darcy began, in cold outrage; but was forestalled by Elizabeth, who, freeing her arm from Miss Harding’s in a quick, harsh motion, cried:—

“I do not want to hear it, Margaret! For God’s sake, have you not had enough? Are you not tired of prodding at me and then denying that you have done so, like a child? Will you not tell me what it is that you are actually angry about? What have I done to you? Out with it!”

Miss Harding disdained making any reply. Far from angering her, Elizabeth’s quickening temper only made her feel viciously satisfied: and she looked to press the advantage. Her eye lighted on Mr. Darcy; and her smile widened.

“Does he know?”

Elizabeth merely looked at her; but some thing in that look made Miss Harding laugh in amused surprise.

“He doesn’t, does he? Oh, tell him! tell him how the only thing that matters to you is your ambitions: that no man is any thing to you, but a means of furthering them. Tell him that you spent months courting Mr. Blanchard—that you only entertain him now, because he is the richer, more influential man—and that you will surely jilt him in turn, now that you have got Lord Drummond on your hook. Tell him how you used me to get in with this entire set, and do not now even have the courtesy to pretend to be grateful!”

“Gratitude! Is that you want from me? Is that what this is about? Miss Bingley—who is, yes, for better or for worse, my sister—was the one who introduced me into your set. Do not call on me for gratitude! I never asked for your help! You played at Pygmalion only for the purpose of entertaining yourself, because you have no idea how else to have a friend!”

“And you do? Are you so skilled at friendship?”

“No!” cried Elizabeth, with a fervency which startled even herself. “No, I am not!” She lowered her voice, afraid of being heard by the others of the party; but she forced herself to continue:—

“I have faults enough of my own. I am afraid of being open—of being honest. Oh, I am forthright enough with my opinions—but my feelings—! I lie about them, to every body. I try to keep myself from caring—about any body—because it seems the only thing that is safe. I shut myself away—I give up—rather than arguing.”

Her hand tightened convulsively on Darcy’s arm; and he pressed it with his own, running his thumb in firm circles over her wrist.

“But you!” she continued. “You are not being honest, either. You pretend that you are content to be a stepping-stone for some sycophantic social climber—but you are not: or else, to be frank, you would have befriended Miss Bingley years ago. But you never did! You befriended me—for the same reason for which you now quarrel with me! Whatever you may chuse to say, you do not really wish for gratitude; and it now rests with you to determine, what it is that you do want. I know that I would like us to be friends; I would like that a good deal more, than whatever pale thing we have been playing at; I have enough people to hold my tongue around, and be civil to. But I cannot be your friend, Margaret, until you have made up your mind to be mine—and to stop being hateful, merely to induce me to react.”

After a moment, it was clear that Margaret, whose colour was very high, had no response; and Darcy gently pulled on Elizabeth’s arm to lead her back to the curricle. Miss Harding, meanwhile, disappeared down the path that led to the water-fall. Darcy let her go without a word. He was too angry to trust himself to speak at all, to a lady; though he felt that, if she were a man, he would know how to act.

“Are you well?” he asked Elizabeth, searching the basket he had tucked under their feet for a flask of wine, and handing it to her.

“Yes,” said she, accepting it with a grateful nod. “Well enough. But what—what Miss Harding said—about my ambitions—”

“—was clearly nonsense,” Darcy broke in, as he urged the horses onwards. “I beg you not to believe that you must defend yourself to me, Elizabeth. Our information on the subject is better than her’s.”

Elizabeth smiled wryly. “In some respects. But in others—well—it is what I was about to tell you, when we were interrupted. There is a house, in Hackney, which is—or which soon will be—a sort of distressed travellers’ home, for ayahs and lascars who are turned off in London.”

A look, which Elizabeth could not decipher, flickered across Darcy’s face; some thing lurched and twisted in her breast; but she persevered:—

“I am the originator of the scheme; and I mean to be the one to carry it out. I have been so determined since January. I have been determined to marry, because it would enable me more respectably to pursue work of a public nature; and I did tell Margaret so—in February.”

Elizabeth was fixedly regarding the path immediately before them; and so her first indication of Darcy’s reaction, was the warmth of his hand on the small of her back.

“You cannot think that I would censure you for some thing so laudable?” he asked, lowly.

Elizabeth only shook her head senselessly, her eyes full of tears.

“Do you intend to abandon me in favour of Drummond?”

“No,” said she, laughingly.

“Then I do not care about any thing else. I would be very glad to be of whatever use you chuse to make me.”

Elizabeth would not trust herself to speak; but she moved to again press her knee to his, blotting at her eyes with a handkerchief. He seemed to understand that she needed to be quiet, and to think: and he devoted himself to driving onward.

In time, they came upon the rest of their party, who had spread out their blankets on an expanse of turf under a handful of trees, and were eating their repast, or wandering over the nearby paths. Margaret eventually returned, and made a shew of eating and drinking amongst every body else; but she was unusually grave; and Elizabeth could not succeed in catching her eye.

Chapter Text

𑈄𑈐𑈮𑈺𑈏𑈰𑈖𑈲𑈺𑈞𑈬𑈴𑈉𑈮𑈞𑈰𑈺𑈩𑈬𑈤𑈮𑈺𑈗𑈬𑈴𑈈𑈐𑈲
𑈀𑈨𑈃𑈘𑈺𑈀𑈤𑈺𑈙𑈘𑈬𑈺𑈁𑈟
𑈀𑈤𑈰𑈺𑈙𑈲𑈺𑈀𑈢𑈫𑈬𑈺𑈁𑈛𑈮𑈞𑈺𑈏𑈯
𑈧𑈐𑈬𑈺𑈙𑈤𑈬𑈦𑈮𑈺𑈪𑈬𑈺𑈦𑈬𑈄
𑈤𑈪𑈰𑈦𑈺𑈘𑈦𑈰𑈬𑈺𑈤𑈲𑈦𑈬𑈻

— 𑈟𑈮𑈦𑈺𑈪𑈩𑈞𑈺𑈈𑈢𑈮𑈦𑈜𑈮𑈞, 𑈁𑈛𑈤𑈺𑈁𑈛𑈺𑈞𑈭𑈦𑈮𑈐𑈞

The party were returned to Pemberley House in time to rest, or to pursue what occupations they would, before dinner. Miss Harding was not to be seen in the drawing-room: Elizabeth supposed she had gone up to her chamber. 

Miss Bingley had made no such retreat. Before to-day, she had been comforted by Mr. Blanchard’s attentions to Miss Bennet, and by the length of time Darcy and her rival had remained in town without an engagement’s being effected; but seeing, as the pair approached the grove, that they had shared a curricle, had renewed all of her earlier alarm; and she spent the hour until it was time to dress in paying Mr. Darcy and his sister anxious, obsequious attention.

Elizabeth meanwhile sat by a window to catch the fading light, working on a small piece of embroidery that required neither a frame nor a table. She felt unequal to reading, conversing, or any effort not wholly mechanical. Her mind was occupied in thinking over the events of the earlier excursion. Miss Harding would have been mortified to learn how little their quarrel concerned her: on that score, she had said all she could, and the future nature of their association must lie with Margaret to determine. Rather, she thought of Darcy—his steady gravity as she had shared her bad news; his willingness to act in Lydia’s interest; his disregard for whatever Miss Harding had to allege against her. She felt that there was no further occasion for hesitation or delay—she wanted only opportunity to make him understand her determination—and it now fell to her to find, or to create, it.

Dinner began, and went on, and ended, all without incident. When the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, one of them begged for the indulgence of some music. Lord Drummond was thinking of applying to Miss Bennet; and nobody, save for Miss Bingley, would have been sorry to hear her; but Darcy spoke first, and addressed Mrs. Gandjee thus:—

“I believe, madam, a few days ago, that you said you did not play the pianoforte; but you implied, if I am not mistaken, that you are musical?”

Mrs. Gandjee replied, that she was; and Mr. Darcy asked if he could provide her with any instrument more suitable. Elizabeth, who had had no notion that she had brought it along to Pemberley, was considerably surprised when Mary offered to send for her kamaisha. The offer was accepted; the instrument was brought down, and tuned; and Mrs. Gandjee took her place in a chair a little further towards the front of the room to play. Her dress rendered the typical cross-legged posture impossible, and so she merely balanced the kamaisha on one knee.

Perhaps due to this little difficulty, she did not play any thing really complex, but rather used the instrument mostly as one would use a shruti: though echoing, sometimes, a fragment of the raga at the end of a line. Elizabeth, who had never heard the kamaisha so accompanied, listened intently—but her aunt, for some mischievous reason of her own, had chosen to sing one of those verses which cast the soul as a young maiden, pleading for her groom, the Lord—and she felt her cheeks warming far beyond what was due to the fire in the grate.

Darcy, whether alerted by her blush, or merely desiring an excuse to whisper aside to her, soon drew a chair near to Elizabeth, and requested an explanation of the recitation. Elizabeth, from a lifetime of modest habits, was inclined to equivocate—“but then,” thought she, “have I not just been determining with myself, that I must find some way to make myself clear? Here is a chance: and if I am to gain what I desire, I ought to take it.” She made herself speak, therefore:—

“It is one of those religious poems, which I believe I once spoke of to you. The theme of it is ‘venti’—which is to say, supplication, or—or entreaty. The Pir—the, um, religious leader—speaks as, or ‘becomes,’ a woman, and pleads with God to find his soul acceptable.”

Elizabeth had looked up to meet Darcy’s eye on the word “supplication”—as it happened, unwisely—for the look in it made her fairly stutter, which he could not possibly avoid noticing. In deference, perhaps, to her evident embarrassment, he only nodded, and made to withdraw—but she stopt him, by saying,—

“If you like, sir, I might try to render it in English?”

“I would like that very much,” said he, earnestly; “if it would not interfere with your enjoyment of the music.”

She told him, therefore, whatever of the Guzerati verses she remembered, holding his eye when she could, though this was only at intervals:—

“O Lord! Cast a veil to cover me, for I am full of faults.
I am weak and dependent; my honour lies with you.
Preserve my honour by accepting my hand.
Reveal your love’s secret.
Marry me out of love, for I am sinful.
Come with a marriage procession; do not delay.
Be merciful and come; I am your woman.

“O Lord! My attention is fixed on your feet.
How could I turn to another?
O Lord! Preserve my honor.
How could I submit myself to another?
Your’s is the only offer of marriage I have received.
How could I turn to another?

“Do not remember my sins, or take them into your heart.
I am only a weak and dependent woman.
I have reached the bloom of my youth;
I am still an innocent maiden.
Preserve me from shame.
Set up a canopy and marry me before the whole world.
Appear and marry me, that I may enjoy completion.”

He had, perforce, to lean in close to hear her low whisper; and, by the time the performance had ended, his colour was as high as she had ever seen it—the heat in his eyes burned her—but it was not unpleasant—a prickling, stinging feeling thrilled all through her—and it required considerable restraint, to recall that they were in public, and that she ought to look away.

Other women took their turns at the pianoforte and the harp, just as if nothing of any consequence had occurred. Mr. Darcy and Miss Bennet endeavoured to appear attentive: but the air between them was still tense and electric; and it is doubtful to what degree they succeeded.

Mrs. Gandjee, meanwhile, only smiled into her hand.

Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy both took to the paths outside of the ornamental gardens in the early morning the very next day. Upon their encountering each other, Darcy offered Miss Bennet his arm, which she took with both hands, tucking herself tightly into his side; and he brought his opposite hand up to cover her’s.

The pair walked for some time in a conscious silence. The dew had not yet dissipated, and everywhere the foliage glittered with it. The balsam and crowfoot were in full bloom, opening themselves to the early sun; the foxgloves hung in shewy towers throughout the hedges and borders.

“I have been wanting to thank you,” Elizabeth began at last, “for the solicitude you have shewn my uncle and aunt, during our stay. I am sure that our acceptance in your circle is to be attributed to your example.”

“Nonsense,” said he. “It is due to your own excellent qualities—all of your’s. Such people—well-informed, amiable, decent people—must be respected wherever they go.”

“That,” said Elizabeth, smilingly, “is most certainly untrue. The respect of the world is by no means given to all those who are worthy of it; and it may, besides, be purchased, readily enough, by those who are not. But it does not surprise me that your friends are wiser.”

Darcy gently drew them to a halt, at a place where the main path branched off into a smaller. Over their heads stretched a bower, dripping with flowering ivy, which dappled their faces with shade.

“I thank you for my part of the compliment. I will not trouble you by disclaiming it, which may appear purposely to invite contradiction. I will only tell you,” he continued, hesitatingly, “that I hope I am always wise enough, to value—what is good—”

Elizabeth had tilted her head back to meet his eye, and he broke off at the sight of her face: earnest and slightly flushed; her lips parted; her eyelashes fluttering. He raised a trembling hand to cup her cheek, slowly—pausing at the last moment—and she completed the movement, leaning her face into his palm. He stroked his thumb along the curve under one of those deep, luminous eyes.

He ought, at this critical juncture, to have had more to say for himself—but it was as if, now that the time for words had finally come, all need of them was over—all he could say, was:—

“Elizabeth—”

Her eyes, which had been intent on his, dropt to focus on his lips.

He leaned in, down, slow as honey, to run his nose along the line of her’s—her breath came in quick pants, filling the space between their mouths—and then she lifted her chin up, and pressed forward, and that space was gone—

The first kiss was soft: the merest brush. Their eyes met again; and Darcy’s face was overspread with a look of such great tenderness, as made Elizabeth’s happiness overflow in a breathless laugh. Scarcely another second had passed away, before he was leaning in to kiss her again—she pressed back more firmly—and he was opening his mouth, just slightly, to take her bottom lip between the two of his—caressing, pulling away, and moving in again, in an endless cyclic motion—both of his hands now cradling her face, brushing her curls from her forehead—she reaching up to tangle her fingers in his hair, to stroke his jaw where he worked it against her, to touch the sensitive skin just behind his ears, over his collar—

It was some time before the lovers could remember where they were. They pulled away from each other, ruffled and smiling, and recalled themselves to motion: though such prudence was regarded by them both as more wise than desirable.

They had passed the hedge separating the wilderness garden from the first of several open meadows, and were walking by a spot on the banks of a stream where the wildflowers were particularly close, when Darcy realised that, according to all conventional principles, he had asked no question, and received no answer.

“This does, my Elizabeth,” said he,—“this does mean, that you will be my wife?”

“Oh,” replied she, “I shall absolutely insist on it.”

Elizabeth, the first flush of joy having settled enough to make curiosity possible, desired him to make the past a little clearer to her, than it was at present.

“Did you love me,” asked she, “in January? Or, were you aware of it then? Was this the period of struggle, to which you referred? I did have a fancy at that time, that your business would not have been so pressing, had I not been so irresistible.”

He smiled, but answered her seriously:—

“I did. Fool that I was! I ought to have staid, and tried to judge whether I could make myself as necessary to your happiness, as I soon discovered you were to mine. But I was not yet rational enough.”

“You would have had no very difficult task before you,” said Elizabeth—finding, as she spoke, that her present joy had robbed the past of all its power to wound. “I loved you then, already. I had been trying not to avow it to myself since, perhaps, November—but I knew it was certainly true, when you wrote that you had gone.”

“Elizabeth!” he cried, his face stricken. “You—when I left—you suffered for it?”

“You must not blame yourself,” said she. “If I had one consolation, at that time, it was that I believed myself effectively to have concealed my affections from every body—and most particularly from you. I am by no means sorry to discover that I was correct.”

“You will not—”; he exhaled forcibly. “You are very good—you have such a forbearing, good-natured, cheerful temper—how I admire you for it! But even you cannot expect that I will not reproach myself, for causing harm to the creature dearest to me in all the world—for no reason other than my blamable pride! I cannot tell you how sorry I am. Would to Heaven that I could do it over again!”

“And yet, for all that,” said Elizabeth, “the fault was mine, as well. I thought my advice perfectly good for Jane, and yet impracticable for myself! I disdained to display feelings, which may not be returned. How can you blame yourself for having been deceived, by some body who was taking every pain to deceive you?”

“If you sought to avoid the appearance of indelicacy, it is only natural,”—he caught himself, and changed his expression—“it is, I mean, perfectly understandable. It was my task, as a gentleman, to make my feelings clear, without first requiring any such assurance.”

“You are very kind—to try to justify me—but I do not believe that you have any more patience than I do with talk of females’ natural delicacy. And it was, besides, not merely delicacy. It was pride, too.”

He warmly disclaimed the existence, or at least the influence, of any such feeling, on her part; and eventually she ceased her arguments, and only laughed.

“Very well! It shall be as you like. I shall be a paragon of feminine modesty, in whose bosom has never dwelt any sentiment not wholly to my credit. My good qualities are, after all, your’s to protect and defend; and it therefore falls to you also, to exaggerate them as much as you can.”

“I would have you, Elizabeth,” said he, “in one respect, a little short of the perfection of feminine modesty”—and he spent some time in demonstrating to her what he meant.

Chapter Text

But, as the submission of the heart is far more delightful than the service of blind subjection, we are, secondly, invited into the path of obedience, by a highly interesting class of inducements, under the head of Motives of Love.

— Rev. Johnson Grant, M.A., Sermons; 1812

At length, Darcy and Elizabeth, fearing they would be missed at breakfast, began their walk back to the house—though it was not without further conversation, and further delays.

They agreed that Darcy would apply to her uncle, and write to her father, later that very day. Darcy then told her that, it being the bride’s especial privilege to chuse the time and place of the marriage, he would not attempt to exert any influence on that score—which assertion, however, Elizabeth doubted, as he made it while laying a trail of kisses down her neck which were, as it happened, rather influential. She agreed, however, that they would not wait long past the reading of the bans.

They were passing back through the ornamental gardens when Elizabeth said that it was her hope to be in London again as soon as was practicable, that she could see the house that her uncle’s agent had taken there, and judge of what needed to be done before it was fit for her purpose. Darcy then recalled a subject, which his delicacy had prevented him from addressing sooner, but which he felt admitted of no further delay.

“Regarding the Home,” said he,—“I asked my man of business, some months ago, to keep me particularly apprised of any work being done in that way in town—and, when he informed me of the proposal for the project, I engaged myself as a subscriber. I am sorry that I did not tell you yesterday, when first I learned of your involvement; it might, perhaps, have the appearance of duplicity; but my purpose was, to ensure that you felt no sense of gratitude, or—obligation. Now, of course,” he smiled, “I need have no fear of the kind.”

Elizabeth halted their motion, and pulled him round to face her by the arm she still held.

“You—you were—”; she was obliged to break off, having had, when she began speaking, no clew how she would continue; but her sentiments had an easier manner of expression, than words; and she pulled him down by the knot in his cravat, to make him kiss her again. It may be supposed that he submitted to this treatment without the least complaint.

Our couple were, in fact, a little late to breakfast. Elizabeth entered a few minutes after Darcy did, and smilingly accepted the plate, which he had made up for her.

If Elizabeth had thought to look at Miss Bingley just then, she would have seen the expression of irritated suspicion, with which this transaction was watched. She looked, however, instead, to Margaret, who was fixedly regarding her plate—eating slowly, and with exaggerated neatness.

In compassion, Elizabeth worked for a sedate appearance, and tried not to be more engrossed by her companion than was polite. She longed to give Jane her news; she supposed, that it would also fall to her to tell Margaret; and, as she applied herself to her carraway-cake and cocoa, she determined to ask Bingley to tell his sister, some time when they were alone.

Her chance to speak to Miss Harding came immediately she had left the breakfast-room. Margaret, with unwonted timidity, just touched her elbow, and asked if she would grant her an interview. Elizabeth had no objection: and so the pair retreated to an up stairs sitting-room.

“I am not,” Miss Harding began, slowly, when they had sat down, “accustomed to apologising. No body has ever much cared what I said or did, before. My temper, I suppose, was naturally bad—and it was not corrected by instruction. I am now to learn that really worthy people will not attempt to curry favour no matter what one does: they will expect better.

“I might wish that the lesson had come sooner,” continued she, with some thing more of her usual tone,—“it would have been less mortifying. I will learn, however, eventually, to be grateful that it has come at all. All I can tell you now, is that I know I have acted wrongly—and that I wish I had not. If I could live these months over again, I would not.”

“You say that you are unskilled in the art,” said Elizabeth,—“and yet these are the fundamentals of an apology.”

Margaret heaved a sigh, as if of great emotion, or of relief.

“But what can have inspired it?” asked Miss Bennet. “What can have made you so angry with me? I do not believe that it was all about Darcy.”

“In a way, I think it was,—that is,” she hurried to add, seeing Elizabeth’s distressed expression, “it is not that I am in love with him!—but I was angry to think that you had got what you wanted without my interference. It was as if I had no—no place. That I was of no use to you.”

“I told you, I believe, some time ago,” said Elizabeth, “that I did not befriend you for your usefulness.”

“Yes. I was a dreadful fool, to have been so angry at what ought to have pleased me! But I suppose I did not really believe it—that we would still be friends, were I not in a position to exert influence on your behalf.”

“This is not a very flattering view of my character.”

“I know it. I ought to have known better. I ought to have taken that charming wilfulness of your’s seriously, rather than regarding it as some thing amusing in conversation, but unlikely to have any real effect on your behaviour. And I ought to have considered what would be most to your benefit—and what you wanted—rather than attempting to secure you to me by creating a sense of obligation. I was afraid of losing you—I was—too proud, to submit to being set aside—perhaps I thought it would be easier to estrange you all at once, and have done with it.”

“You really never had a friend before, but that you were a means of advancement to them?”

“Never. I suppose it may be my fault—my manners are unlikely to endear any body who considers themselves my equal. I believe those in my own circle tend to think I am rather queer.”

“But did you never have any moral instruction? I must suppose that you had a governess?”

“Oh! Yes—three or four, at different times. But when the parents are not inclined to enforce a governess’s edicts, they seldom come to any thing—and my parents never wished to be bothered with me,” said Miss Harding, her tone becoming lighter as she spoke. “Of course they needed a son—but my birth was difficult—and I rendered it impossible for my mother to try again. Nothing I did made any difference—I was born wrong—and so, in time, I gave up trying to be good.”

“Well,” said Elizabeth, “you ought to begin again. Never mind your parents: there are others in the world, whom you can rely on to approve good behaviour, and to censure bad. I ought to tell you, that even if there were not, your own conscience could guide you—but I am not so good myself that I can presume to give you that advice. It is a shame that you never had a Jane to sigh at you whenever you said some thing unkind—! mine was invaluable to me.”

“I have not attempted to know Mrs. Bingley, as I ought to have. I can’t suppose that she will ever forgive me?”

“She knows nothing about it.”

Margaret regarded her in clear surprise. “You are very good.”

“And I will bring Darcy round as well, in time—you need not fear being excluded in future from any entertainments we give at Pemberley.”

Miss Harding evinced no surprise at this news—only seeming very sincerely glad, and reaching over to grasp Elizabeth’s hands in earnest affection.

“If you remain on your best behaviour till then, I may even let you go with me to inspect the house I have taken, to serve as my Home for Asiatics. No doubt you will have some strong opinions concerning how it ought to be furnished.”

“Oh! You have found enough subscribers, then?”

“Yes. You would have known about it earlier, had you been speaking to me.”

Margaret smiled, chagrined. She now believed the interview to have reached its conclusion—but Elizabeth stopped her, when she tried to rise.

“I have another question,” said she. “Why, on the day of the excursion, was it my skin, with which you chose to take issue? Was it merely an easy point of attack? Or was it something more?”

“It was Miss Bingley who mentioned your skin—not I.”

“Margaret,” said Elizabeth, sharply.

Miss Harding heaved another sigh. “I suppose I was envious. I thought you ought to have been—less sure of yourself—more concerned with the general opinion.”

“And so you determined to try to depress my spirits, and my sense of my own worth. What a difficult task for you! My self-esteem is no fragile thing. Nor am I at all certain,” continued she, examining her fingernails, “that the ‘general’ opinion of a sable skin is, indeed, so general as people pretend.”

“Oh, yes. Your personal charms are undeniable—they are certainly greater than mine—though I never before thought I would care about such a thing as that! It was very unworthy behaviour—and I am—and I am sorry.”

“Very well,” said Elizabeth, as she rose to her feet. “I am too happy, and in too much charity with all the world, to be churlish. Let us say no more about it.”

Chapter Text

As the weather was very warm, we advanced ſlowly, and found it exceedingly pleaſant to travel along the roads ſhaded with the ſpreading branches of fruit-bearing trees, bending under their luſcious burthens of bannas, mangoes, and tamarinds.

— The travels of Dean Mahomet: a native of Patna in Bengal, through several parts of India, while in the service of the honourable the East India Company; 1794

Mr. Gandjee heard Mr. Darcy’s application for his niece’s hand without great surprise, and granted his consent with great alacrity. Having three nieces married during his stay in England was rather more than he had bargained for: but in the case, at least, of his eldest two, the pleasure of seeing them settled was unalloyed; and he flattered himself, that his taking a house in London had contributed to bringing the newest couple together.

Darcy then sat down to write a long, earnest, diligent letter, informing Mr. Bennet of his wishes, and asking for his consent also. To this missive Elizabeth added several lines, assuring her father of her sincere desire that the match should take place, and her perfect surety that she and her lover were well-suited in every particular; as well as telling him that she would surely be home for the marriage itself, and therefore he need not despair of seeing her very soon.

When Mrs. Gandjee was informed, she warmly congratulated her niece, also with a great deal of pleasure, but very little surprise.

“I cannot think,” cried she, grasping Elizabeth’s hands, “when I have ever been so glad to be wrong! I am sure you must already know that I like him very well. His behaviour towards all of us has been every thing pleasing. His understanding and his opinions all please me—he will be a very good match for you. And it is certainly a prudent match for him: it will give his manners all they are wanting, which is a little liveliness. I hope you will forgive me for having doubted his wisdom in this matter before. You will have the justice to impute my caution to its real cause—to a concern for your heart—and not to a doubt of your having the power of attaching where you chose. But you have been very sly! All last winter, I thought you perfectly indifferent to him!”

Mrs. Bingley’s pleasure and relief at Elizabeth’s news were considerable. It had been painful to think that two people of whom she thought so well were estranged from each other, and made unhappy by it: and this union, when considered alongside her own, seemed to comprehend every thing that was yet wanting for perfect earthly bliss.

“I thought,” said she, “that Mr. Darcy’s asking my aunt to play some Guzerati music must speak in his favour, and that you could not fail of appreciating his intention. If Charles does purchase an estate, it must be in Derbyshire—our children ought to grow up very close. Oh, Lizzy, I am so happy! I did so hope that you would be as happy as myself.”

Elizabeth had been anxious, since receiving the news that a house had been taken for her, to commence the work that must be done to fit it for habitation. Her eagerness was increased by the thought that this work, if properly begun now, would occupy slightly less of her time in the earliest days of her marriage. She begged her uncle and aunt, therefore, to return to London with her earlier than they had planned. Neither they, nor Mary, had any objection; and so they determined to depart on the next day but one.

Elizabeth’s indication that Mr. Bingley had informed his sister of her engagement came just after church on Sunday. Any affront that Miss Bingley may have felt at this base usurpation had been carefully polished smooth: she was almost as attentive to Darcy as usual; and she began even to be civil to Miss Bennet. Elizabeth supposed she was determined not to display any resentment which may lose for her the right of visiting at Pemberley, or of making use of Darcy’s name.

Miss Darcy’s gladness at hearing her brother’s news was much more sincere. She was less shy, and more effusive, than Elizabeth had ever seen her: and all the rest of the day, she wished to be speaking to Miss Bennet, or sitting by her. When the ladies removed after dinner, she summoned courage enough to ask her, whether they would be often together at Pemberley; and Elizabeth smilingly assured her that she would like that very much—she had been rather too used to having sisters about her to manage without one now.

On the morning of their departure, Darcy and Elizabeth found themselves once more in one of the gardens surrounding the house, nestled onto a bench beneath the canopy of a guelder-rose tree.

“I wish,” said he, running his fingers over and around the lines of her palm, “that you did not have to go away again so soon.”

Elizabeth’s feelings pretty well accorded with his: but she only said,—

“The sooner I begin my work, the sooner we may be wed. All will be well—as long as you still mean to follow me?”

He smiled, and pressed a kiss into her palm. “Always. Any where.”

She laughed. “We shall get along together very harmoniously, if you always plan to be such a picture of submission. Of course I shall get dreadfully spoilt—but why mind that?”

He favoured her with a smile larger, and more full of heartfelt happiness, than she had ever seen from him; then continued to kiss her fingertips, her knuckles, the web between her thumb and forefinger. Only when this task was completed to his satisfaction could he speak:—

“I mean to begin with that task directly; and, to that end—”; and he withdrew a small velvet bag from an inside pocket of his coat, and placed it in the hand he still held.

“Well!” laughed Elizabeth, as she untied the string; “I see that you are not inclined to lose time—oh!”

She turned the golden étui over in her hands, before opening it to reveal that it contained a thimble, needle-case, pin-cushion, and scissars, of the same material, and likewise chased with flowers and vines; a single, blood-red ruby adorned the clasp.

“Darcy! It is beautiful!” she exclaimed; but then regarded him with some suspicion. “Did you send for this from Lambton?”

“I—admit that I did not.”

“I must conclude, then, that you purchased it in London?”

He nodded his head, colouring slightly.

“Was this before,” she asked, laughingly, “or after we had met at Rosings?”

“Before,” said he; still having the grace to look abashed, but more at ease now that he saw Elizabeth had not been offended by his presumption.

“It really is remarkably lovely. And it gives me, besides, the opportunity of teazing you about the circumstances surrounding its purchase for the next several years, at least—which, I assure you, will be no small part of its usefulness to me. But, besides that, I will make very good use of it. It is very thoughtful of you! I am forever losing my needles and pins.”

“Yes—I know.”

Elizabeth had not enough time to pretend affront with this assertion. Seeing actually in her hands the article, which he had been picturing in her use, and longing to present to her, for the past several months, was extremely affecting: and her hands must again be taken up and pressed to his lips, leaving the étui to tumble into her lap. Her wrists must follow; then her arms up to the insides of her elbows, through her gathered sleeves; and then the thin Palestine tippet must be shifted from around her neck, that her throat could be treated in the same manner. Elizabeth gasped, laughed, and hummed, burying her fingers in the curls at the back of Darcy’s head.

“I am beginning to think that my departure is rather wise!” she cried.

Darcy only smiled at her, unrepentant. Another thought then occurred to him: there was some thing he ought not to leave unsaid, before she went; and accordingly he began,—

“I have not told you, in so many words, since—April—but you must know—surely you must know—how I love you?”

Elizabeth looked archly. “If I must, then I must!”

“But seriously, Elizabeth,” said he; taking up her hands once more as soon as they were no longer occupied with returning her étui to its bag.

“Forgive me—the habits of a lifetime are not so easily done away. I do know it—though I do not object, you know, to hearing it now and again.” She ran her thumb over the boundaries between his finger-nails and the surrounding skin, and by dint of this interesting occupation avoided his eyes, as she continued:—

“And you have learned already how long I have loved you. You were so unlike other men—! So clever, and so earnest—and always speaking to me as if you thought me a rational creature, and not merely an elegant young woman. Whether or not we always agreed, I was always able to be serious with you. I began to admire you, as I have said, at the Netherfield ball—when you proved, that preconceived prejudices could not hold sway with you for ever—and love followed soon after—though I did not let myself know it for another month or two. I wonder what would have happened, had I determined then to try to fix you.”

Darcy was too fastidiously honest to give any other reply, than that he did not know; but he suspected that he could not have long resisted her.

Elizabeth smiled. “Thank you,” she said, regarding him tenderly,—“that reply will do very well.”

In time, the pair returned to the house to breakfast; after which, the carriage was got ready. Elizabeth warmly shook hands with her brother, and embraced Jane and Georgiana, before she was handed in by her betrothed lover; the Gandjees, Mary, and Miss Harding (who had taken Elizabeth’s invitation absolutely seriously) soon followed; and the journey southward was begun. If Elizabeth was rather indifferent company for the first several hours of it, her party were inclined to forgive her. Mary was happy to read, and the Gandjees to look out the windows and make each other the occasional remark; Margaret speculated aloud about the style of the house, and the style of furnishings that would suit it, but seldom requiring an intelligent response.

Chapter Text

There is something so opposite to Christian charity in those family feuds which frequently disgrace domestic life; a house divided against itself so evidently totters to decay.

— Medora Gordon Byron, The Englishman: a Novel; 1812

The house was just as Mr. Gandjee’s agent had described it to them: a handsome, modern brick edifice of two stories, built on a plan perfectly elegant and regular. It was furnished, but only slightly; and all the walls and surfaces quite plain. Elizabeth, Mr. Gandjee, and Miss Harding therefore spent several days after their arrival haunting the upper story of the Auction Mart on Bartholomew-lane, purchasing furniture, pictures, plate, and linen. Margaret, as Elizabeth had predicted, prided herself on possessing a good deal of discrimination in these matters, and was always very willing to share her opinions. She had, in particular, a perfect horror of the “asymmetry and tasteless profusion” of the Louis XIV style; on occasion, Elizabeth would pretend very seriously to be considering one of these pieces, only to twit her.

Elizabeth was surprised, on her uncle’s writing the first cheque, to find that he did not draw against the account containing the funds that had been raised to support her endeavour, but against his own: he accepted her embrace, but declined her thanks, only insisting that “it was little enough.”

Maids, cooks, nurses, and orderlies must then be found, until such time as residents could be asked, or trained, to fill some of these posts. The tasks of advertising for servants, inquiring for characters, and deciding whom to hire, were ones with which Elizabeth was wholly unfamiliar; and Mrs. Gandjee, as soon as she had returned from fetching Karim and Manoj from Longbourn, aided her in them a good deal. Saira Das was almost invariably present during these meetings, and Elizabeth was frequently asking her opinion. If Mrs. Gandjee was a little surprised at Elizabeth’s maid being consulted, she soon reminded herself, that the manner of Saira’s entry into their household may render her peculiarly useful in these proceedings, and said nothing about it. 

Saira’s being involved in matters relating to the House meant that she and Margaret were often in company together. Elizabeth saw this circumstance with some concern, till she assured herself from observation that the women were cordial with each other. Margaret seemed determined to induce Saira to laugh; which imposition Saira seemed equally determined to resist. Elizabeth was not certain whom she most wished success.

Mr. Darcy was in receipt of Mr. Bennet’s—very laconic—letter of consent by the middle of August. On or about the same day, the author of this letter arrived, in propria persona, at Russell Square. He was by no means satisfied with the idea of his favourite daughter, who had been absent for many months together, returning home for only a few days, before she intended to be absent in perpetuum; nor was he satisfied with being assured of her desires merely in writing, and unable to put questions to her himself.

When Elizabeth was called down to attend her father, she rushed into his arms, and accepted his affectionate embrace. Time and distance had softened her memory of every impropriety of conduct she had to accuse him of; and she found, now he was before her, that she had missed him very much.

“What is this about, my Lizzy? What are you doing? Am I to find out about all of your business only in letters, and you not twenty-five miles away? Come, come, sit down with me. So, you are an engaged woman, are you?”

“Oh, papa! You are the one who must tell me. You do not, then, mean to refuse your consent?”

“No, indeed. I have given it him already. He is the kind of man I would not readily refuse any thing he chose to ask of me. But how did this come about? You liked each other well enough in Meryton, without any thing so serious as this having come of it. I must suppose he finally came to his senses?”

The cast which this put on the matter was a little too flattering to herself, and a little too derogatory to Darcy; but she could not correct the misconception, without laying his past conduct open to scrutiny, as well as her own; and so she only answered, rather vaguely, that they were both wiser than they had been.

“And is this all the explanation I am to have of the matter?”

“Papa! Who can explain such things? How do any two people come to decide that they are necessary to each other’s happiness? We liked each other in Meryton, and in London; but we quarrelled, too; and I suppose we both felt that a nearer association would be unwise. But we could not meet in Kent, and be so often together at Pemberley, without coming to love each other as we do now. It was the passage of several months, which convinced us that the—the regard, which we had early felt for each other, was not of a slight or fleeting nature—and that our union would really be to the advantage of both.

“When you come to understand him better, you will not wonder that I esteem him as I do. He is an earnest, sensible, respectable man—but it is more than that: he is clever, but without behaving as though every thing I say must be nonsense; he has a mind, and a temper, capable of listening to reason, and of hearing persuasion, but without being really compliant, or without conviction. Then can you be surprised that I said yes, with all my heart, when he explained himself to me?”

“No, my dear,” said he; “I cannot, indeed, when it is all put before me in these terms. I can see, as well, what you do not care to say—namely, the attractions which a mind such as your’s must have, to a man of such a stamp as you have described. I hate to part with you: but there will be some comfort in knowing that the man who is to take you from me, deserves you.”

Elizabeth was soon to learn that her father meant to stay at Russell Square until such time as they must all travel to Longbourn for her marriage. Here was some little constraint: the family’s meals were now taken in the larger dining room, rather than the smaller, whether they were entertaining or no; and Elizabeth was now uncertain that her father’s presence was adequate recompense for the change which it had caused.

The next week passed away in a succession of highly important trifles. Mr. Gandjee must make arrangements for the transfer of donated funds from himself, to Elizabeth’s betrothed husband. Elizabeth herself must write and place advertisements, directing the public when the House was to be opened, where it was to be found, and on what terms residents would be accepted. She must decide what phrase ought to be written on the tickets, which they were to ask the public to hand out to mendicants; that phrase must then be translated into as many Indian languages as she, her uncle and aunt, and all the Russell Square servants could manage between them; and a printer must be found, whose compositors could set Hindy and Guzerati characters. Elizabeth and Miss Harding must direct various workmen on where to place various pictures and items of furniture; Elizabeth and Mrs. Gandjee must determine with the cook that the kitchen was in condition to be used, and make up a menu, and tell the kitchen maid what to give, at the most, for so many pounds of such a vegetable.

There were also the preparations for the marriage to consider. Mrs. Gandjee brought the waxed paper parcel of powdered mindy up from the pantry, and Saira (who insisted that the work could be done only by herself) practiced its application on any body who would consent. Then there was the gown to be chosen; the gold and silver bangles to be readied; the trousseau to be sewn; and a few requests for dishes to be prepared on the day of the wedding to be sent to her mother, though she had but little expectation that they would be complied with.

Elizabeth, in short, was so busy, that she scarcely had time to think of any thing but the most immediate of objects and plans. The approach of a chaise and four, one day when the family were at breakfast, therefore took her very much by surprise: all her perspicacity was insufficient to help her in forming any expectation of to whom it might belong. The horses were post; and neither the carriage, nor the livery of the servant who preceded it, were familiar to her. At the moment, however, that the door was thrown open, she felt that she ought to have suspected the identity of the visitor before. It was Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Chapter Text

Seeing we are civilized Englishmen, let us not be naked savages in our talk.

— “Specimens from the Writings of Fuller, the Church Historian,” in The Reflector, vol. 2; 1811

You cannot talk of liberty, without supposing the fear, nearer or more distant, of slavery. What other sense is there in the word liberty? Why talk do about any such thing? In short, political liberty has these two meanings; freedom from oppression; and the legal right of doing certain things which may be displeasing and even injurious to others. 

— “A Letter to Lord Ellenborough,” in Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, vol. 19; 1811

Her Ladyship entered the room the moment the door was opened to her, casting a stern and supercilious look about her. She gave a slight inclination of the head at Elizabeth’s greeting, but made no other sign of having heard it. Elizabeth, seeing that her relations’ curious looks had come to be directed at herself, mentioned her Ladyship’s name to them, though no request for an introduction had been made.

Good breeding had been too thoroughly inculcated in Mrs. Gandjee’s mind, for her to remain silent for long, even under the influence of such surprise as this: and she greeted Lady Catherine, hoped that she had had a pleasant journey, and earnestly desired her to sit down and take some refreshment with them. This invitation was peremptorily declined; and her Ladyship remained standing in silence for several more moments, before finally beginning:—

“I suppose, Miss Bennet, that these are your uncle and aunt?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And that is your father?”

“He is.”

“And that, I suppose, is one of your sisters?”

“Yes, ma’am; this is Mary, whom I mentioned to you once before. She is next in age to myself.”

“This house is adequate,” returned Lady Catherine, after a short silence. “It is in an acceptable area—though rather new. But the garden is very small.”

“Yes, your Ladyship. It is a disadvantage sadly very common in town.”

Elizabeth saw her father looking back and forth between herself and Lady Catherine with an expression indicative of great amusement, and was obliged to bite her lips to hide a smile.

“I hope, Miss Bennet, that you will take a turn with me about the garden. I have some thing of a very particular nature to discuss with you.”

“Certainly, your Ladyship.”

When they had gained the named spot—leaving behind a Mr. Bennet very disappointed at their going, and very determined to receive from Elizabeth a full account of their interview at the earliest possible moment—Lady Catherine opened upon her intended subject:—

“You can be at no loss, Miss Bennet, to understand the reason of my journey hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I come.”

“Yes, indeed, ma’am.”

“Good! I had hoped to find you prepared to be forthright with me.—I received a letter from my nephew yesterday. You must be aware of what it contained. You must be the genesis of what he writes. He believes himself to be betrothed to you.”

“That makes a good deal of sense, your Ladyship, because he is.”

“Nonsense!” cried she, in furious derision. “The arts you practiced to bring it about, must have been of a very base kind. Whatever you have done, to make Mr. Darcy believe that he is in honour bound to you, is just what any lady ought to be ashamed of. Can you practice on a respectable, honourable, dutiful young man, so as to make him forget what he owes to all of his family, and then hold your head up to me so boldly? What! Are you so shameless as this?”

“Your Ladyship is entirely mistaken. I assure you that nothing of the sort has occurred. I have not acted by design. I accepted your nephew’s proposals, only because I earnestly believed that to do so, would secure the lasting happiness of both. His regard for me, as mine for him, is of many months’ duration; it has not been the work of a moment. Indeed, to accept a man, who had been led to offer for me only by a momentary passion, is some thing I would disdain under any circumstances to do.”

“So you are, after all, determined to be insincere. You shall not, however, find me so. I will be perfectly frank, whatever you may chuse to be. I will tell you, once for all, that this match, to which you have the presumption to aspire, can never take place. Mr. Darcy is engaged to my daughter. Now, what have you to say?”

“If he is so, it is some thing pretty wonderful that he is engaged to me. You cannot suppose that he means to marry us both?”

“This, Miss Bennet, is a civilised nation, however little inclined you may be to act in accordance with that fact.”

“What is it,” asked Elizabeth, “that makes a civilised nation? Most authors, whom I have read on the subject, name liberty—independence—freedom from oppression.” 

Lady Catherine appeared to be on the verge of an angry retort: but she thought better of it; and, in a tone of voice somewhat moderated, continued:—

“We shall not quarrel over irrelevancies. If your regard for my nephew is real, as you say it is, then you must have some concern for his honour and his credit in the world. Think how an alliance with some body of your birth must damage both. Think how the respectable and ancient name, which he inherited from his father, must be degraded; think what censure, what derision he would be exposed to! Consider what misery you will involve him in, if you remain thus determined to draw him in—to impose upon him—to take advantage of his sense of honour. You are determined to marry: very well; but marry some body of your own sphere.”

“I cannot see that Mr. Darcy is not of my sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter. Where, then, is the disparity, from which you expect so much evil?”

“Yes, Miss Bennet—your father is a gentleman. But what of your mother? What of her father and brother? Merchants!—Mohammedan merchants! Ignorant alike of the gospel, and of every law of civilised society! What sense of decency, what idea of virtue, were these persons able to give your mother? What ideas of decency or virtue did she impart on her daughters? Do not imagine me ignorant of your sister’s elopement! Do not suppose that I cannot imagine what allurements she taught you, that have made my nephew forget himself so far, as now to think your marriage necessary!”

“Madam!” cried Elizabeth, in real outrage.

“If it be so,” continued her Ladyship, as though she had not spoken, “you need have no fear for yourself. Some situation can be found for you, perfectly comfortable, though out of the way. Or, if you will insist on being married, there are doubtless those who would still have you, given that you have some little money. I will make some inquiries, and we will soon have you very well placed. But your ambition, of joining my family, will certainly never be gratified; and I will not go away till you have assured me that you have given it up.”

“I certainly never will give you such assurance. No insults, no persuasions, and no manner of intimidation will ever induce me to do any thing so wholly unreasonable. I have promised Mr. Darcy my hand, and I will not withdraw it. Whatever lurid fantasies you have conjured, to explain to yourself the reason for our association, are matters for your concern, and not mine.”

“You are determined, then, to have him! You believe that an alliance with his blood, and with mine, will raise you in the world! Let me assure you that you are entirely mistaken. No such elevation will ever, can ever take place. You will never be received into my family. You will be censured, slighted, and despised, by every one connected with it. Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by us. You will be the contempt of the very society, into which you mean to force your way. You will ruin yourself, as well as him, in the eyes of the world. Now what have you to say?”

“If the resentment of his family were excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment’s concern. Nor do I fear the censure of the world in general: the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that these considerations cannot weigh with her.”

“Unfeeling, selfish girl! I hoped to find you reasonable; but I ought not to have expected it, considering your descent. On your father’s side, a minor country gentleman: your maternal line, an assemblage of foreigners—ignorant heathens! Heaven and earth!—of what are you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”

“If they are to be so, it will be nothing new. From whom is his maternal line descended? From whence comes the blood, with which you insist I mean to elevate mine? From Irish Catholics!”

“How dare you?” cried her Ladyship, highly incensed. “How dare you compare titled loyalists, rewarded by the British Crown with every mark of privilege and favour, to common traders from a nation of ignorant, enslaved pagans?”

“We can now have nothing further to say to each other,” Elizabeth resentfully answered. “It is evident, that we shall never agree. Further conversation would be pointless. I must beg to return to the house.”

And she began walking as she spoke. Lady Catherine then had no choice but to turn back also; though she continued speaking.

“Very well! You refuse to oblige me. You are lost to every feeling of delicacy and rectitude. No matter! I shall now know how to act. Depend upon it I will carry my point.”

Elizabeth made her no answer. They were now at the door of her Ladyship’s carriage; and, as she entered, she added,—

“I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your father. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.”

Elizabeth merely inclined her head, and walked back into the house. To her family’s inquiries, she would only say, that Lady Catherine disapproved of her nephew’s engagement, but that her Ladyship’s consternation was nothing to her.

Mrs. Gandjee looked a little troubled; but Mr. Bennet laughed.

“I daresay she was not very pleased with you. I would give much to have heard the conversation. She made quite a figure, striding in here, all dignified displeasure! You must give me a more complete account of what was said, some time or other.”

“I advise you, Elizabeth,” said Mary, “to think the better of this engagement. To enter into a family that would disdain to receive her, is a circumstance which must be considered as highly degrading to the dignity of any upright young female.”

Elizabeth said mildly that she would consider this advice, and reapplied herself to her breakfast.

Chapter Text

The parents of the bride send him, on the second day, a dress in return; which is received about twelve o’clock at night, together with the hinna, or mehendy, left from the bride’s hands, which he applies to his own in their presence. This is one criterion by which they judge of his devotion and attachment; it being considered, on common occasions, highly disgraceful to use cast-off mehendy.

— Captain Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade-Mecum or Complete Guide To Gentlemen Intended for the Civil, Military or Naval Service of The Hon. East India Company; 1810

It might be expected, that Elizabeth should feel some perturbation at Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s stated resolution of preventing her marriage; but I cannot be certain she suffered any thing of the kind. That her Ladyship was meditating an application to her nephew, seemed obvious: but that she would meet with success, very doubtful. Darcy had already weighed and discarded every consideration she could have to urge. It was all but unthinkable that he should come to Elizabeth requesting a release from his promise as a consequence of the interview.

Accordingly, the preparations for the marriage—alongside those for the outfitting of the Home—went on just as before. Elizabeth began to have some sympathy with Jane, in the matter of the mindy, the bangles, the breakfast, etc.; every thing seemed likely to become a quarrel with her mother; she was both wishing that she could be at Longbourn, to see what she could do to direct things herself, and glad that she was not.

A little in advance of the evening of Thursday, the 24th of August, when the House was to open its doors, Elizabeth looked around to find that the furniture had all been placed—the floors scrubbed—the candles purchased—the pantries filled—and all the other little things, which she might have found to address, already attended to.

“It seems so strange,” she told her aunt, turning round on her heel to regard the large sitting-room from every angle.

“That the Home now exists materially,” asked Mrs. Gandjee, “or that you have nothing, for the moment, left to do?”

“Both,” replied she, laughing. “But I will probably grow accustomed to the sensation, in time.”

On its first evening, the Home for Asiatics on ——— Street, Hackney, admitted four permanent residents, and fed six others. One of the Gandjees’ servants had spoken to two or three groups of lascars on the East India docks, and in the brothels thereabout; and this servant’s being an Indian man himself tended in some degree to mitigate the apprehension, which the shipmen must be supposed to have felt, at being invited to a strange house in a strange country. Still, they sent for now only a couple of emissaries, rather than going in a body.

The women, who were admitted to a separate floor, were brought, one after another, by two Englishwomen who no longer required their services. On each occasion, the ayah’s mistress, looking about for a white face to address herself to, spoke at first to the housekeeper; but, upon hearing Miss Bennet’s greeting, transferred her attention to her readily enough. Each woman told her name, introduced her servant, and gave the fee, which was asked of all who were capable of paying it. Saira, meanwhile, spoke aside to each servant: in Bengali in one instance, and English in the other, the two women discovering that they held no other language in common.

One of the ayahs, who had been relieved of her young charges as soon as they were delivered safely home, had been contemplating demanding the fee her mistress had given for her, and leaving to find cheaper lodging elsewhere, as soon as her lady had gone; but, in the event, the house was so agreeable, the fee so low, and she herself so tired, that she thought she may as well stay as not: and, with all her personal effects secreted in the chest at the foot of her bed, and the key round her neck, she even slept rather well.

Elizabeth returned to Russell Square at the end of the night, trusting the rest to the housekeeper and the nurses’ superintendent; feeling that the day had been at once extremely momentous, and highly uneventful.

On Friday morning, another small group of lascars entered the main hall, looking all about themselves; and asked very cordially if there were a room, out of the way, which they might use for the dhuhr prayer, in preference to the docks, which were just then being soaked in a mizzling rain. Elizabeth saw no reason not to accede, and was only vexed that she had not sooner considered the matter herself. When once they had been shewn to a drawing-room, one of the men, consulting a compass which he pulled from his pocket, moved a rug to serve as a sort of mihrab; and Elizabeth, seeing that she was no longer needed, withdrew.

The next two days proceeded much as the first had. Saira found that she had rather be at the Home than at Russell Square, as furnishing some thing new and interesting to do. Elizabeth was occasionally consulted with small problems that arose in the kitchens, or between the maids; but this happened less often, as the servants became more accustomed to their posts, and more comfortable in acting for themselves.

The family had been at Russell Square again for some hours that night, when they heard the knocker strike against the door. Elizabeth might have felt some surprise at the arrival of a guest, its being, not only a Sunday, but also far too late for visitors: she had, however, a pretty good idea of who it would be; and she rushed to the door to shew him into another sitting-room herself.

Young lovers will be a little silly sometimes. Darcy’s news would have been the same, his apologies as sincere, his devotion as complete, had he waited until Monday morning to call, or had he paused so much as to change his clothing from that which he had worn on the road. Elizabeth, however, while she told him that he need not have been in such a hurry, was young and silly enough herself to feel highly gratified by it.

“I felt that I must come,” said he, “as soon as I could. You will have already apprehended that I received a—visit—from my aunt. She relayed the substance of a conversation, which she had with you—?”

Elizabeth’s expression convincing him that her Ladyship’s account of the interview had been neither fabricated nor exaggerated, he apologised, in the strongest terms he could summon, for his aunt’s presumptuous interference, and for the gross insults which she had offered, in attempting to gain her ends. 

“I cannot tell you how mortified I am. That she should speak thus to you—that I should be absent—! Had I any apprehension that she would apply to you, rather than addressing her concerns in a letter to me, I should never have informed her of our engagement in writing; nor should I have suffered you to travel to London so far as a day in advance of myself.”

“You had your guests to entertain,” she told him, smiling.

“You say this only to teaze me. You do not really believe that any consideration would have detained me from you a moment, had I known what was passing. Dearest Elizabeth—!”; he cried, looking earnestly between her eyes; then pressing a fervent kiss to her lips.

“I assure you, your worry is really excessive,” said she, as soon as she was able to speak. “I was perfectly capable of withstanding your aunt. She angered me, she offended me, while she was here; but I thought of it very little after she had gone. I may now even be grateful for her attempt to interfere, as it has brought you rushing here to me, like a proper romantic lover. Come, now: did not you feel a little romantic, riding through the rain as you did?”

His eyes glowed with admiration as he regarded her. “You are the bravest—the ablest—the most capable person I know. Can you really say so much? But of course,” he added, thinking better of this question, “Lady Catherine’s calumnies cannot have injured your peace, which is born, not only of bravery, but of innocence. Loveliest Elizabeth! What praises do you not deserve?”

“Many,” said Elizabeth, laughingly, “that I can think of—but of course you ought to be wholly ignorant of that. I will soon, by the bye, be wishing you had a dozen aunt Catherines, if every brush with one of them would but yield me such agreeable treatment as this.”

There was, in the end, no inducing Darcy to be less serious, or inducing Elizabeth to be more so; his feelings must seek what relief they could, in one or two dozen burning kisses; and only after this was done could he address a new subject.

He wished to know how the preparations for the Home had proceeded, and what had been the events of its first several days of operation (her letter on this subject of course not having reached him); and she told him every thing, as she had experienced it.

“And how go the preparations for the wedding?”

“Oh! Well enough. I am very grateful to my mother for taking matters in hand; but of course she is determined to contradict me at every turn.”

“I am sorry for it,” he said, feelingly, stopping his hand where it had been playing with the curls at her temple. “What are the subjects of these disagreements?”

“My wedding-gown, mostly,” said she; “though she objects also to my intention of performing some of the usual ceremonies, prior to the marriage.”

“Such as the mindy?” he asked. 

“Yes—and the missy, and the chandlo.”

“I am not familiar with that last,” he admitted.

“It is one of the simpler forms associated with an Indian marriage—and one performed by the mother of the bride, which is why I thought it may be practicable,” she explained, smiling at him sadly. “You might remember it from Jane’s wedding—”; and she explained the steps of the ceremony to him.

“Perhaps I should write to your mother—some thing that makes clear I expect to participate, and have no objection.”

“Oh! Would you? She would not dispute with you.”

He said that he would.

“I have read, also,” he continued, “that I am meant to wear mindy which has been taken from your hands”—and he took up her hands to run his fingers in sweeping lines across the backs of them, over her palms, and around her finger-tips.

“You need not, if you do not wish it. It is done because it is meant to be rather degrading to the groom’s dignity.”

“Have we not determined already, that I was gravely in need of humbling, before I met you? This is the one form, of all of them, which I would by no means do away.”

She laughed, turning her hands round to clasp his.

“Nor,” he continued, “do I think it would degrade me to accept any thing from your hands. They were, in fact, the first part of you that I admired—if not the liveliness of your manners, or the brilliancy of your eyes.”

“Were they?” she smiled.

“Certainly they were. You once offered me your hand to shake, and its lines were so graceful that I forgot myself entirely, and could not respond for many moments.”

She laughed heartily. “This is a fine picture of the past! This is an elegant species of forgetfulness! But I will not quarrel with it. A good memory, in such cases as these, is unpardonable.”

“I am in earnest, Elizabeth. That is precisely what occurred.”

She searched his eyes for several moments, sobering. “Oh.”

Some minutes later, Darcy pulled himself at last away from her mouth; pressing a light kiss to the side of her nose just before he withdrew. “And the nuth? How is that done? Does one consult a surgeon?”

“No,” she said, laughingly—“it is done just as ladies pierce their ears, here: with a sharp tapestry needle.”

He winced in sympathy.

“The ears were not so very bad; and I am told that the nose is not much worse. But would you not object to it? I am given to understand English men consider it rather disfiguring.”

“It is your nose, Elizabeth. You must feel yourself that it does not matter if I object, and are only putting the question to me as a kind of test. But you see I am too wise for you. However, if you will know, I think it looks rather attractive, on your aunt.”

“She is a very handsome woman,” said Elizabeth—“and much younger than one might suppose, from the words ‘my aunt.’”

“I cannot think any praise too high for Mrs. Gandjee. I consider myself as much indebted to her.”

“Oh! Yes. She was very sly, was not she? It might have taken me days to determine how I was to encourage you, had she not given me such an opportunity. However, speaking of my relations, we had better return to them—they are very forbearing, but even such forbearance as their’s must have its limits.”

They then returned to join the others, and Darcy was earnestly pressed to stay for supper. The Gandjees understood what his continued presence meant, and were very glad that he did not mean to allow his aunt to dissuade him from his course. Mr. Bennet, who had felt less certain of the late interview's outcome than any body, also had the most uncertain feelings at its conclusion; but he endeavoured to put them aside, and to seem cheerful. If he was somewhat more teazing to Mr. Darcy than was usual, that gentleman bore it with a very good grace.

Chapter Text

Goneril. No more. The text is foolish.

— William Shakspeare; King Lear. In The Plays of William Shakspeare, Accurately printed from the Text of the corrected Copy left by the late George Steevens, Esq.; 1811

In the event, Elizabeth got her way in every particular: the gown, the wedding-cake, the mindy, the bangles, and the groom, were all just as she had chosen: and no body, to have watched the proceedings, could have guessed that the mother of the bride had been, very lately, violently set against at least half of them. She fussed and fluttered from Longbourn to the parish church and back again, exclaiming, blessing herself, making sure that every body ate heartily of the breakfast, and alternately smiling and weeping. Mr. and Mrs. Bingley performed the same office by their friends, as their friends had, many months before, performed for them. The bride and groom were very splendid: and if Mr. Darcy’s red-stained hands, blackened teeth, and borrowed suit were stared at, his attention was all Elizabeth’s, and he did not notice.

The end of all this finery and parade was, that Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy were united in the honourable estate of holy matrimony, for better, for worse. Elizabeth made all her relations fervent promises to write; and she and her husband were then departing on the road to London.

The Home for Asiatics continued to receive Elizabeth’s daily attention for a few months following. The stream of people admitted thereto was, at first, rather slow: but, those who had been driven by desperation to chance the journey soon finding that they were neither abused nor imposed on, news of the endeavour began to spread over the streets and the docks of the city; and the number of residents increased apace.

The Home came to serve many functions which Elizabeth and Saira had anticipated, and several which they had not. Some of its inmates used the downstairs chambers as prayer-rooms, meeting-rooms, class-rooms, etc.: and taught other residents, as well as some guests, to weave; to read; to speak any number of languages; and to get the Koran by heart. Saira herself, when she was not wanted to translate between Hindy, Bengali, English, and Kutchee, was often imparting the dances and songs which she had learned from her mother, to some of the other women there: and she was glad of this impetus to try to recollect them.

Several warm, dry weeks succeeded the unusually cool and wet weather that had prevailed throughout the spring and summer seasons, and the autumn harvest was much better than any body had been anticipating. The wheat, the oat, and the potatoes, were all very good and abundant: and the Darcys obtained, in particular, an excellent price for the flax which they sold to the bleacher.

When the Darcys journeyed on to Pemberley in the winter, Saira declined to join them; nor did she wish to accompany the Gandjees in their return to Bombay. The salary she received, was now explicitly made out to her in remuneration of her work at the Home, where she had come to be a fixture; and her devotion to her post always did her credit.

Elizabeth was then left with the daunting task of replacing Saira in her capacity as lady’s maid. However, as she and her husband were not often in company during their first months at Pemberley, this was not an immediate necessity. Mrs. Darcy spent much of her first weeks in the country teaching the stillroom-maid to make athano, and trying to convince her cook that garlic did not need to be boiled in three changes of water before being used.

Pemberley was likewise Georgiana’s home, whenever Mrs. Darcy was there; and the attachment of the sisters was exactly what Darcy had hoped to see. They were able to love each other, even as well as they intended. Georgiana had the highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth; from her, her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way; and, with her help, she gained as much ease in company as was compatible with her temperament. If Miss Darcy’s adamant refusal to insult her sister cost her a few friends, they were such as were unlikely to be missed.

Mr. Blanchard soon found the younger Miss Miller to be in possession of all the originality he had admired in Miss Bennet, as well as less sharpness of judgement, and more sweetness of temper; and they were united in matrimony before another year had passed.

The East India Company’s monopoly was renewed for 1812, but dissolved in 1813, to the Gandjees’ considerable relief. The Hindoostane Coffee House was forced to close its doors in the same year, Sidi Mohammed’s purse not having been strong enough to withstand the test of public encouragement. He advertised his willingness to serve as a butler for any respectable gentleman in The Times, and was soon hired by Mr. Hurst—nominally in the post that he had requested, but really as head cook.

Lady Catherine was extremely indignant at learning that her nephew had defied her edicts respecting his marriage; and the language in the letter she then sent him was so abusive, especially of Elizabeth, that he vowed to have nothing more to do with her. After some years, when their first child was born, Elizabeth brought Darcy to send a letter sharing the news, and extending an invitation to come and see the baby. But her Ladyship declared that she never would countenance the child, unless it be removed from the pernicious influence of the mother; and this of course being impossible, all intercourse was thenceforth at an end.

The Darcys’ relations with Colonel Fitzwilliam were, at first, just as they had been at Rosings: the cousins were civil, and even friendly, as long as certain subjects were avoided. When Fitzwilliam, however, in spite of persuasion, exhortation, and entreaty, returned to aid the British in their renewed aggression against the Marathas in 1817, Elizabeth refused to admit him any longer into either of her homes; and the Earl and Countess, resentful at this slight against their son, also estranged themselves from the Darcys. It was not until the next generation that friendship was restored.

Lydia never lost the respectability belonging to her birth, and to her married state. Wild, brash, noisy, fearless, and selfish, she always remained; but her husband, who had been from the first attracted by her forthright manners, never lost all affection for her, and never treated her really ill. Mr. Braithwaite’s only sins, were a fondness of good living, and a disinclination to work, very unforgivable in any body not rich. Mrs. Braithwaite’s sisters were therefore often troubled with requests for money, but never with any renewed scandal, from that quarter.

Mr. Wickham eventually married a prosperous tradesman’s daughter: or, as may be more justly stated, married her twelve thousand pounds. He bothered to hide his character from her for about a year; and, as the time allotted for his tenancy on the Earth ran only for another three, her suffering was soon over. He made her, to be sure, very miserable—but not for very long.

Miss Harding never married. She lived, most of every year, at her own establishment in London; and, whenever Mrs. Darcy was in town, she was often in company with her. Her fussing over the pictures, draperies, and carpets, brought her continually to the Home for Asiatics, where she naturally ended in spending many hours in conversation with Saira Das. Saira’s reciprocal intimacy at Margaret’s home was soon established: and, as the house was within no inconvenient distance from ——— Street, it was not long before she made her permanent residence there. The friends lived together for some years, very mutually attached.

Lord Drummond was always perfectly civil to Mrs. Darcy, but rather cool. Miss Harding, once time had taken from old arguments all their power of wounding, once or twice teazed Elizabeth with not having pressed the advantage of his interest. It is true that, in ductility of temper, in political influence, and in his relative freedom from country-house affairs, Drummond was more nearly the man whom Elizabeth had once determined upon courting: but I hope the reader will acknowledge, that to contract a mercenary marriage, under such circumstances as she had found herself, would have been of a nature more angelic than human, and is too much goodness to expect of any mortal.

The Home for Asiatics never did receive any remittance from the East India Company, or from the British Crown. One or two other houses arose over the years, proposing to staunch the flow of Indian mendicants onto the streets of London: and these, because they imposed curfews, disallowed dancing, forbade hoakha smoking, and admitted missionaries, were the institutions favoured by officials of the Company and the senate alike. Some of the men and women in the Home therefore took to weaving, printing, painting, and embroidering silks and cottons, which they sold to local linen-drapers, in order to contribute to the Home’s support. Their production was always too small to threaten the Company in any significant measure; but the fabrics were very popular amongst the sort of person who purchased East India sugar.

The Home was never allowed to fall into disuse for as long as it was needed. It had many friends conscientious enough to understand the proper value of an endeavour, which could not cut the trammels of empire, but might contribute to softening its yoke.

FINIS.