“PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.”[13] (continued 2)

Elizabeth hastily acquiesces, begs him to apologise to Miss Darcy, and adds a miserable entreaty that he will conceal the unhappy truth as long as possible—she knows it cannot be long.

He readily assures her of his secrecy, again expresses his sorrow for her distress, wishes it a happier ending than seems probable, leaves his compliments for her relations, and with only one serious parting look, goes.

As Darcy quits the room, Elizabeth feels how improbable it is that they two will ever see each other again on the happy terms which have marked their meetings in Derbyshire. But though the consideration is full of pain, the loyal girl has no time to spare for her own loss, in the calamity[16] which has befallen her family.

The Gardiners, returning, are ready with the utmost sympathy and regret. They promise every assistance in their power, including the immediate escort of Elizabeth to Longbourn, after which Mr. Gardiner will join Mr. Bennet in London.

“But what is to be done about Pemberley?” exclaims Mrs. Gardiner. “John told us Mr. Darcy was here when you sent for us. Was it so?”

“Yes; and I told him we should not be able to keep our engagement; that is all settled,” cries Elizabeth, hurrying out of the room in a fever to set off.

“What, is all settled?” repeats the other; “and are they on such terms as for her to disclose the real truth? If I only knew how it is!”

IV.

In as short a time as fresh horses can convey them, the party are at Longbourn. Mr. Gardiner repairs to London, and induces Mr. Bennet, whose researches have been fruitless, to return home.

At last, after a period of wretched suspense, the news reaches Longbourn from Mr. Gardiner that he has discovered the couple. For Lydia’s sake, little as she has deserved it, they are married from Mr. Gardiner’s house. Certain stipulations have been made on Wickham’s part, that the bride shall in time inherit her share of her mother’s few thousand pounds; that her father shall allow Mrs. Wickham a hundred a year during his lifetime; that Wickham’s debts shall be paid, and a commission procured for him in “the regulars.” Withal, little real happiness could be expected from such a marriage. Wickham has only turned to Lydia when he was repulsed in other quarters. His debts have been the compelling cause of his flight from Brighton. Her fondness for him is made up of giddiness and a foolish passion on which she has put no restraint.

But Mrs. Bennet is as elated at having a daughter married at last, and married at sixteen, as if the marriage had come about in a more honourable way.

Mr. Bennet views the matter in a different light. He is satisfied that his brother-in-law has kept back the amount of money furnished by him to Wickham, which Mr. Bennet must somehow, sooner or later, repay.

Her father has told Kitty, in the driest of sore-hearted jesting, that no officer is to be allowed to enter his house again, or even to pass through the village. Balls are to be absolutely prohibited, unless she stands up with one of her sisters; and she is never to stir out of the house till she can prove that she has spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.

Kitty has received those threats in a serious light, and begins to cry.

“Well, well,” cries the incorrigible humourist, “don’t make yourself unhappy. If you are a good girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of them.”

At first, Mr. Bennet refuses to permit a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Wickham before he shall join his regiment in the North; but, on the earnest representations of his two elder daughters that to withhold the forgiving countenance of Lydia’s family from the young couple will be to lessen their slender chances of respectability, he allows the culprits to come for a short time to Longbourn, on their way to Newcastle.

The arrival of the Wickhams is in perfect keeping with what went before it, and is a splendid bit of serio-comedy. Jane blushes and Elizabeth blushes; but the cheeks of the two who cause their relations’ confusion suffer no increase of colour. Lydia is Lydia still, untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless. Wickham is not at all more distressed than herself; but his manners have always been so pleasing that, had his audience not known his character, the smiling ease and grace with which he claims their relationship would have delighted them all. Elizabeth had not before believed him quite equal to such assurance, but she resolves thenceforth to draw no limits to the impudence of an impudent man.

I hope I may be pardoned for drawing particular attention to the exquisite truthfulness of the couple’s behaviour. The correct definition of it is specially valuable at a time when slightly-altered versions of such conduct are classed differently, and passed off on inexperienced and thoughtless readers, to the grave detriment of their standards of good morals and good taste.

Lydia, in her total want of proper feeling and modesty, cries out, “Oh, mamma, do people hereabouts know I am married to-day? I was afraid they might not; and we overtook William Goulding in his curricle to-day, so I was determined he should know it, and so I let down the side glass next to him and took off my glove, and let my hand just rest upon the window-frame, so that he might see the ring, and then I bowed and smiled like anything.”

When the family party go in to dinner, Lydia, with eager parade, walks up to her mother’s right hand, saying triumphantly to her eldest sister, “Ah, Jane, I take your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a married woman.”

After dinner the bride retires to show her ring, and boast of being married, to the housekeeper and maid-servants.

When the ladies are all together again in the breakfast-parlour, which a hundred years ago did duty as a drawing-room, unless on state occasions, Mrs. Wickham patronises her whole family by giving them a general invitation to Newcastle, where she hopes there will be balls, and she will take care to find good partners for her sisters. After her father and mother go away, one or two of the girls may be left behind, when their chaperon expresses a sanguine hope that she will get husbands for them before the winter is over.

“Thank you for my share of the favour,” says Elizabeth, “but I do not particularly like your way of getting husbands.”

“Sour grapes! spiteful thing!” we can imagine Lydia saying, hardly below her breath. Do we not see her before us, as large as life, in all her native colours, the pert, hoidenish, vulgar-minded girl—as destitute of delicacy as of dutifulness, or sweet unselfishness, or gentle affection—who has become, by some strange, sad chance, a favourite in the literature of the day? I appeal to my readers—Is she not still the same, though the fashion of her dress, or the manner in which she wears her hair, and a few of her phrases, may be altered, and though—alas! for the lower tone of much modern English fiction—she is now held up to approbation instead of reprobation.

In the course of her shameless boasting about her marriage, Lydia lets out before her sisters that Mr. Darcy was present.

“Mr. Darcy!” exclaims Elizabeth, in utter bewilderment.

“Oh! yes, he was to come there with Wickham, you know. But, gracious me, I quite forgot! I ought not to have said a word about it. I promised them so faithfully. What will Wickham say? It was to be such a secret.”

“If it was to be such a secret,” says the honourable Jane, “say not another word on the subject. You may depend upon my seeking no farther.”

“Oh! certainly,” says Elizabeth, though burning with curiosity, “we will ask you no questions.”

“Thank you,” answers Lydia coolly, “for if you did I should certainly tell you all, and then Wickham would be angry.”

Elizabeth has to run away from the temptation. She has one resource, however; she can write and ask a private explanation from her kind aunt.

Elizabeth learns the whole truth, though Mrs. Gardiner does not conceal her surprise that the information is required in such a quarter. After Darcy’s parting from Elizabeth in Derbyshire, he had gone immediately to London—and, in fact, done everything. It was he who, through his previous acquaintance with Wickham’s habits and associates, had discovered the couple, and brought them to Mr. Gardiner’s knowledge. It was Darcy who had conducted all the negotiations—in fine, it was Darcy who had insisted on paying the necessary money—a thousand pounds for Wickham’s debts; another thousand to be settled, in addition to her own, on Lydia; and the purchase-money for her husband’s commission. The reason which Darcy had urged for being allowed to take the lead in the matter, and to furnish the money, was that it had been through his own unjustifiable reserve, and want of consideration for others, that Wickham’s character had not been known, so that he had been received and noticed in respectable society.

But Mr. Gardiner would not have yielded up his right of making some sacrifice for his niece—or, rather, for her family—had he not been persuaded that Mr. Darcy of Pemberley had even a nearer interest in the affair, by being either actually engaged, or on the point of being engaged, to Lydia Bennet’s sister Elizabeth. Indeed, Mrs. Gardiner is still so convinced of the truth of the impression, and of the happy prospects of one of her favourite nieces, in a marriage with a man of much worth, as well as of great social consideration, who only wants a little more liveliness—which a judicious choice of a wife may supply—that, in closing her letter, she gaily begs Elizabeth not to punish the writer’s presumption by excluding her from Pemberley, since she can never be quite happy till she has been all round the park—an expedition for which a low phaeton, with a nice pair of ponies, would be the very thing.

Elizabeth is greatly moved by the efforts and the sacrifices of feeling—still more than of money—which Darcy has made on Lydia’s behalf. It could not have been for Lydia alone. But when Elizabeth asks herself, Were the Gardiners right in arguing it was for her—Elizabeth’s—sake? she is met by the humbling reflection that the assistance he has rendered must, and ought to be, the last tribute paid by Darcy to a loyal, disinterested regard, which has proved in every way unfortunate. The idea of the proud, sensitive master of Pemberley voluntarily seeking to become the brother-in-law of Wickham, the son of his father’s steward—the man who has so wronged him and his, who has outraged Darcy’s every principle and instinct—the man whom of all others Darcy most abhors, and has reason to abhor—is not to be thought of for an instant. Yet Elizabeth is half-pleased, in the middle of her pain, to see how confidently her uncle and aunt have reckoned on her marriage with Darcy.

Mrs. Bennet is consoled for the Wickhams’ departure by the news, which quickly circulates in Meryton, that Mr. Bingley is coming down to Netherfield for the shooting. At once she resumes all her former projects for her eldest daughter, and poor Jane, in addition to the conflict in her own heart, has to submit to her mother’s pointedly looking at her, smiling at her, or shaking her head over her, every time the tenant of Netherfield’s name happens to be mentioned—which, for the present, is incessantly.

The old argument as to Mr. Bennett’s calling immediately at Netherfield is renewed.

Mr. Bennet stoutly refuses. “No, no; you forced me into visiting him last year, and promised me if I went to see him he should marry one of my daughters. But it ended in nothing, and I will not be sent on a fool’s errand again.”

In the middle of the doubts as to what brings Bingley back, and whether he comes with or without his friend’s gracious permission, Elizabeth thinks in her own merry way, “It is hard that this poor man cannot come to a house which he has legally hired without rousing all this speculation. I will leave him to himself.”

On the first morning after Bingley’s return into Hertfordshire, Mrs. Bennet has the joy of seeing him, from her dressing-room window, riding up the paddock to Longbourn House. She calls her daughters to share her exultation. Jane sits still. Elizabeth, to satisfy her mother, goes to the window; she looks, she sees Mr. Darcy with his friend, and sits down again by her sister.

“There is a gentleman with him, mamma,” says the unconscious Kitty, and then adds the next moment, “La! it looks just like that man who used to be with him before, Mr. What’s-his-name? That tall, proud man.”

“Good gracious! Mr. Darcy; and so it does, I vow. Well, any friend of Mr. Bingley will always be welcome here, to be sure; but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him.”

These are some of the many expressions of dislike to Darcy and misconception of his character, for which Elizabeth has partly herself to thank, since she had helped largely to originate them. She has now to listen to them in silence, while she alone is aware of the benefits he has conferred on the whole family, and that he has saved her mother’s favourite daughter from destruction.

Elizabeth had meant to watch closely Jane’s first interview with Bingley on his return; but the attention of the young watcher is sadly distracted by her own position and that of Darcy, while she has nearly as many doubts of Darcy’s intentions as of Bingley’s. Darcy’s coming there at all might have been supposed to have only one significance, but Elizabeth will not be sure.

As it happens, the double awkwardness of the situation is so great that all those most concerned in it labour under the greatest constraint—a constraint which, unhappily, is only too likely to be misconstrued.

Jane is pale and sedate.

Bingley is looking embarrassed as well as pleased.

Darcy strikes Elizabeth as more like what he used to be in Hertfordshire than as he had seemed in the pleasant days in Derbyshire.

Of Elizabeth’s own unwonted gravity, naturally she can have no just conception.

Matters are made worse by Mrs. Bennet, whose fulsome civility to Bingley, on the one hand, contrasted as it is with her cold politeness to Darcy, on the other, fill both her elder daughters with distress and mortification; though it is only Elizabeth who suffers agonies of shame from Mrs. Bennet’s most mal à propos dwelling on her youngest daughter’s marriage, and her hit at Darcy when she reflects, in reference to Wickham, “Thank Heaven! he has some friends, though, perhaps, not so many as he deserves.”

In the vehemence of youth, Elizabeth Bennet is persuaded that years of happiness—supposing they should ever come—could not make Jane and her amends for moments of such painful confusion. The first wish of her heart, Elizabeth declares to herself, is never more to be in the company of either of the gentlemen again. “Let me never see either one or the other again.”

Yet Jane Austen remarks with quiet fun, in the very next sentence, the misery for which years of happiness were to offer no compensation received material relief when Elizabeth was able to observe how speedily Bingley’s admiration for her sister was reviving in her presence. No doubt, also, Elizabeth derived some pleasure from the fact that both visitors engaged themselves to dine at Longbourn, on Mrs. Bennet’s eager invitation.

“Mrs. Bennet had been strongly inclined to ask them to stay and dine that day, but though she always kept a good table she did not think anything less than two courses[17] could be good enough for a man on whom she had such anxious designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride of one who had £10,000 a year.”

After the visitors are gone, Elizabeth asks herself again, “If he came only to be silent, grave, and indifferent, why did he come at all?”

The dinner brings no satisfaction and enlightenment where Elizabeth’s private affairs are concerned. Bingley, no doubt, is renewing his attentions to Jane beyond the possibility of mistake, so that Mrs. Bennet may be almost excused for fully expecting him to come and propose next day; though the sensible and amiable Jane still nervously assures herself and her sister Elizabeth that any apparent partiality to her only proceeds from Bingley’s pleasing manners; and that, as for herself, she has become most desirably and comfortably indifferent with regard to his sentiments. But Darcy at the dinner-table is entirely separated from Elizabeth, and seated at the right hand of Mrs. Bennet, with whom he only exchanges an occasional formal word. In the drawing-room he does show an inclination to stand by Elizabeth, at the table where she and Jane are making tea and coffee, in the old, pretty, genial fashion; but the mere accident of the ladies of the party gathering about the table, and of a girl moving closer to Elizabeth with the stage whisper, “The men shan’t come and part us, I am determined; we want none of them, do we?” is sufficient to cause him to walk away. His tongue may have been tied, and yet his eyes might have spoken; but as far as Elizabeth could discern he looked as much and as earnestly at Jane as at herself, both on this occasion and on that of his call. It is all a tormenting puzzle.

V.

Bingley calls again without his friend, announcing that Darcy has gone to London, but will return to Netherfield in ten days. From this date Bingley’s wooing thrives apace. He makes daily engagements to shoot, or dine, or sup at Longbourn.

Mrs. Bennet practises the most transparent manœuvres to leave him alone with Jane, so that he may have the opportunity of saying “Barkis is willin’,” or some equivalent phrase, since Barkis had not yet made his model proposal. For a short space Jane and Elizabeth defeat these arrangements.

At last, one evening when Elizabeth has gone out of the room to write a letter, believing that all the others, including Bingley, are safely seated at cards, the indefatigable matchmaker contrives to dissolve the party, sends Mary to her piano, and carries away Kitty to sit with her mother in her dressing-room, while Mr. Bennet is, as usual, ensconced in his library. Elizabeth, returning to the drawing-room, where she expects to find the family, discovers that her mother has been too ingenious for her. On opening the door she perceives her sister and Bingley standing together over the hearth, as if engaged in earnest conversation, and had this led to no suspicion, the faces of both, as they hastily turn and move away from each other, would have told all. There is a momentary awkwardness, till Bingley leaves the room to seek Mr. Bennet, when Jane is ready to proclaim herself the happiest girl in the world.

Elizabeth smiles at the rapidity and ease with which an affair that has cost them so much suspense and anxiety is finally settled. “And this,” she says to herself, “is the end of all his friend’s anxious circumspection, of all his sister’s falsehood and contrivance,—the happiest, wisest, most reasonable end.”

If Jane Bennet is the happiest girl, Mrs. Bennet is the happiest woman, according to her ideas of happiness. Lydia and Wickham are superseded; Jane is promoted, beyond comparison, her mother’s favourite child.

Meryton soon hears the tale, and after having, only a few weeks before, when Lydia ran away, pronounced the Bennet household marked out for misfortune, now declares them the luckiest family in the kingdom.

One morning, shortly after Jane’s engagement, a chaise and four drives up to Longbourn House. The equipage and liveries are not familiar. The horses are “post.” It is too early for visitors.

Amidst the speculation thus aroused, Jane and Bingley retreat into the shrubbery, leaving Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth, and Kitty to receive the strangers, whoever they may be.

In a few minutes Lady Catherine de Bourgh is shown into the room. With the same arrogant ill-breeding which had distinguished the great lady’s behaviour at home, she now conducts herself in another person’s house, merely bowing to Elizabeth—the only member of the family with whom she has any previous acquaintance—sitting down, and in return for Mrs. Bennet’s fluttered attentions, putting her through a series of impertinent questions, and finding fault with the park and the sitting-room.

Elizabeth is at a loss to account for the unsolicited favour of her ladyship’s company, unless, indeed, she comes with a message from Mrs. Collins, but none is given.

At last Lady Catherine proposes that Elizabeth should take a turn with her in the wilderness, to which the girl accompanies her visitor, followed by an anxious direction from her mother to show her ladyship the different walks and the hermitage. As the couple go out, Lady Catherine opens the doors of the dining-parlour and drawing-room, and after a short survey, allows that they are “decent-looking rooms.”

The carriage stands at the door with Lady Catherine’s waiting-woman in it, announcing that Lady Catherine is on a journey taken with a set purpose.

Elizabeth leaves her companion, who is more than usually insolent and disagreeable, to begin the conversation, which she is not slow to do. “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.”

Elizabeth professes her unaffected astonishment and entire ignorance.

“Miss Bennet,” says her ladyship angrily, “you ought to know that I am not to be trifled with.” Then, with a little preamble on the sincerity and frankness of her own character, she informs Elizabeth that a report of a most alarming nature had reached her two days before. “I was told,” says Lady Catherine, “that not only your sister was on the point of being most advantageously married, but that you—that Miss Elizabeth Bennet—would in all likelihood be soon afterwards united to my nephew, my own nephew, Mr. Darcy. Though I know it must be a scandalous falsehood, though I would not injure him so much as to suppose the truth of it possible, I instantly resolved on setting off for this place, that I might make my sentiments known to you.”

Filled with resentment as Elizabeth is, she remains mistress of the situation. “If you believe it impossible to be true,” says the high-spirited, quick-witted girl, “I wonder you took the trouble of coming so far. What could your ladyship propose by it?”

“At once to insist on having such a report universally contradicted.”

“Your coming to Longbourn to see me and my family,” says Elizabeth, with cool shrewdness, “will be rather a confirmation of it, if indeed, such a report is in existence.”

“If! Do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not been industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know that such a report is spread abroad?”

But Elizabeth is a match for her absurd inquisitor. The girl is neither to be insulted nor browbeaten into giving Lady Catherine such satisfaction as she has not the smallest right to require, or into submitting to her tyranny.

In vain Lady Catherine presses her as to the report and its origin; Elizabeth will neither confess nor deny the implication.

“This is not to be borne!” exclaims her ladyship. “Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied. Has he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?”

“Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible,” replies Elizabeth, with demure imperturbability.

“It ought to be so,” her ladyship protests, hotly; but then—as she hints, broadly—Elizabeth’s arts and allurements may have made the young man, in a moment of infatuation, forget what is due to himself and his family. She may have drawn him in.

“If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it,” Elizabeth answers.

Lady Catherine brings forward another imperative reason why such a proceeding can never take place: Mr. Darcy is engaged to her daughter.

“If he is so,” says the unshaken Elizabeth, “you can have no reason to suppose he will make an offer to me.”

Lady Catherine is forced to hesitate, and to condescend to an explanation. The engagement is a family arrangement, based on perfect suitability of rank, fortune, and character. It had been planned by the two mothers, when the cousins were still children in their cradles. Can Elizabeth, a young woman of inferior birth, and of no importance in the world, be so lost to every feeling of propriety and delicacy as to disregard the wishes of Mr. Darcy’s friends, and presume to alter the destiny which, from his earliest years, has united him with his cousin?

Yes; Elizabeth is intrepid enough to do it, and to tell the domineering woman that if there were no other objection to her—Elizabeth’s—marrying Lady Catherine’s nephew, she would certainly not be kept from it by knowing that his mother and aunt had wished him to marry Miss de Bourgh.

It is useless for Lady Catherine to threaten the penalties which the outraged family will inflict, ending in that direst indignity of all, that Elizabeth’s name will never be mentioned by any one of them; Elizabeth assures the speaker, almost airily, that though these may be heavy misfortunes, the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness, that upon the whole she could have no cause to complain.

No wonder the incensed great lady is reduced to the somewhat undignified alternative of calling Elizabeth names—“obstinate, headstrong girl;” to telling her she is ashamed of her; to sitting down and crying—well-nigh piteously, waxing childish and maudlin, like many another baulked, irrational tyrant—that she will carry out her purpose; she has not been used to any person’s whims; she has not been in the habit of brooking disappointment; and it is not to be endured that her nephew and daughter are to be divided by the upstart pretensions of a young woman who, if she were sensible of her own good, would not wish to quit the sphere in which she had been brought up.

Elizabeth ventures to suggest that she is a gentleman’s daughter.

“True,” grants Lady Catherine; only to add, “but who was your mother? who are your uncles and aunts?”

“Whatever my connexions may be, if your nephew does not object to them, they can be nothing to you,” says Elizabeth. She could not have been without a tingling recollection that he had objected to them pretty strongly, though she had just been marvelling how she could ever have imagined a resemblance between him and his aunt—the fact being that Lady Catherine presents a striking caricature of Darcy’s original defects, without any of his redeeming virtues.

“Tell me, once for all, are you engaged to him?” demands Lady Catherine.

Though Elizabeth has no cause to oblige Lady Catherine by giving a reply, her own candour and self-respect compel her to answer, “I am not.”

Lady Catherine shows herself pleased. “And will you promise me never to enter into such an engagement?” She pursues her advantage with determination. “I will make no promises of the kind,” Elizabeth refuses point-blank, and Lady Catherine’s short-lived satisfaction is dashed to the ground. She resumes her reproaches. She is shocked. At last she is guilty of the meanness and cruelty of taunting Elizabeth with her sister Lydia’s misconduct, ending by crying, “And is such a girl to be my nephew’s sister? Is her husband—the son of his father’s late steward—to be his brother? Heaven and earth, of what are you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”

The extravagant theatrical declamation of her ladyship might have provoked a smile from Elizabeth, but she has already borne too much, and she winces under the last ungenerous stab. “You can have nothing further to say to me,” she exclaims, in her wounded feeling, with a simple dignity that contrasts well with the inflated pretensions of the other. “You have insulted me in every possible method; I must beg to return to the house.”

Lady Catherine is not to be taught a lesson: she has long outlived such a possibility. The thick skin of her arrogance and conceit is impenetrable. She assails Elizabeth with fresh abuse and importunity.

“Lady Catherine, I have nothing further to say,” Elizabeth contents herself with repeating. “You know my sentiments.”

Lady Catherine talks on till the carriage is reached, when she finishes her prolonged attack very characteristically. “I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet; I send no compliments to your mother; you deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.”

The interview between Lady Catherine and Elizabeth, like the scene in which Mr. Collins proposes to the heroine, is a triumph of art. It is the perfection of true comedy, as opposed to the coarse farce which frequently stands for it, not only in its wonderful exhibition of Lady Catherine’s densely stupid egotism and self-importance, but in what is so successfully opposed to them in Elizabeth Bennet’s strong common sense, racy mother wit, and sterling truth to her lover and to herself. Where a weak woman might have been cowed—at least, into a show of yielding for the time—or a foolishly sentimental girl might have been betrayed by the false glamour of unnecessary and uncalled-for self-sacrifice, Elizabeth stands firm, and comes out triumphantly. The whole passage, in its genius and wisdom, is a protest against the bathos of mock heroism, which is occasionally in danger of entrapping unwary actors in the drama of life. It is still more apt to mislead the artists who picture life, and mistake soft, even silly submission for unselfish resignation, and self-martyrdom for true martyrdom.

Elizabeth Bennet is dutiful in all the relations of life; she is even scrupulous as to its proprieties; but she is not a puppet in the hands of a Lady Catherine.

There is a curiously parallel scene drawn by one of Jane Austen’s favourite authors—Fanny Burney, in her novel of “Cecilia”—where the heroine is driven by nearly similar arguments—employed, however, by the mother, and not merely the aunt of the hero, who has also been a true friend, to whom Cecilia was deeply indebted—to give up the lover to whom she is doubly bound. In spite of these differences in the situation, which are in Fanny Burney’s favour, the opposite results of the two chapters go far to prove the immense superiority of Jane Austen as a writer.

Elizabeth has undergone the ordeal without blenching; but the reaction is to come. No doubt Lady Catherine will see her nephew in passing through London—how far may not her prejudiced version of what has passed between her and Elizabeth, with a vigorous personal appeal to Darcy, sway him as he still halts between two opinions? It is said that a woman who hesitates is lost—on the other side of the question; but the same saying does not hold good of a man. Lady Catherine is Darcy’s aunt; he must view her in another light from that in which Elizabeth regards her. It is natural to suppose she has some influence over him, while Elizabeth is only too well aware how much weight he once put on some of his kinswoman’s violent objections.

Elizabeth makes up her mind that if Darcy does not return to Netherfield at the appointed date, she will know what to think.

In the meantime Elizabeth is summoned by her father to hear a letter from Mr. Collins read. In the tallest of tall language the writer solemnly congratulates the family on the brilliant prospects of his cousin Jane. Then, after referring to what is even the surpassing splendour of the alliance said to be within his cousin Elizabeth’s reach, Mr. Collins servilely and with nervous timidity states the unconquerable opposition of his revered patroness, and implores Elizabeth not to provoke Lady Catherine’s anger.

Mr. Bennet regards the report to which Mr. Collins has alluded, as the most preposterous mistake, and calls upon Elizabeth to laugh at it, as the best joke out. “Now, Lizzy, I think I have surprised you. Mr. Darcy, who never looks at any woman but to see a blemish, and who probably never looked at you in his life!”

Mr. Bennet is rather provoked because his daughter does not enjoy the absurdity of the idea as he had expected. “You are not going to be missish, I hope,” he says reproachfully, “and pretend to be affronted by an idle report.”

Poor Elizabeth! such incredulity is hard at this moment.

But Darcy returns punctually, and comes over to Longbourn with his friend; and in a walk undertaken by several of the young people, in which Elizabeth is Darcy’s companion, she musters courage to thank him as the only member of the family who knows how much they owe him for what he has done for her sister.

Darcy is surprised, but perhaps not sorry to have such an opening given to a shy man. “If you will thank me,” he says, “let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on I shall not attempt to deny; but your family owe me nothing, much as I respect them; I believe I thought only of you.”

Elizabeth is too embarrassed to say a word.

After a short pause her companion adds, “You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on the subject for ever.”

Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forces herself to speak, and immediately, though not very fluently, gives him to understand that her sentiments have undergone so material a change since the period to which he has alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances.

The happiness which this reply produces is such as Darcy had probably never felt before, and he expresses himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love could be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight diffused over his face became him; but though she cannot look she can listen, and he speaks of feelings which, in proving of what importance she is to him, make his affection every moment more valuable.

Various happy explanations follow. Among others he tells her Lady Catherine did visit him and relate the substance of her conversation with Elizabeth, dwelling on every expression of the latter which, in her ladyship’s opinion, denoted Elizabeth’s perverseness and assurance. But, unfortunately for his noble aunt, the effect of the communication proved the reverse of what she had intended. “It taught me to hope,” he says, “as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before. I knew enough of your disposition to be certain that had you been absolutely, irrevocably decided against me, you would have acknowledged it to Lady Catherine frankly and openly.”

Elizabeth colours and laughs as she replies, “Yes, you know enough of my frankness to believe me capable of that; after abusing you so abominably to your face, I could have no scruple in abusing you to all your relations.”

“What did you say to me that I did not deserve?” protests the ardent, magnanimous lover, and goes on to farther penitent and grateful confessions.

In reference to the engagement between Bingley and Jane, with which Darcy declares himself delighted, “I must ask whether you were surprised,” says Elizabeth.

“Not at all. When I went away I felt it would soon happen.”

“That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as much.” Elizabeth rallies the speaker gaily.

Though he exclaims at the word, she finds that it had been pretty much the case.

On the evening before his last visit to London, Darcy had honestly told his friend of his own attachment and proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, which rendered his former interference between Bingley and Jane Bennet “simply impertinent.” The speaker had also courageously acknowledged that he believed from his observation of the latter he had been mistaken in his impression of Jane’s indifference.

“Your assurance,” says Elizabeth, with half-smothered fun, “I suppose carried immediate conviction to him?”

“It did,” replies Darcy, in perfect good faith. “Bingley is most unaffectedly modest. His diffidence had prevented his depending on his own judgment in so anxious a case; but his reliance on mine made everything easy.”

Elizabeth longs to observe that Mr. Bingley has been a most delightful friend—so easily guided that his worth is invaluable; but she checks herself. She remembers that he has yet to learn to be laughed at, and it is rather too early to begin.

Here is one of Jane Austen’s characteristic touches. Elizabeth, in the middle of her love and admiration for Darcy, sees, as such a woman could not fail to do, his weak points, and is not only tempted to laugh at him, but with a grand faith in his sense and love, and true to the character which had won his regard, she contemplates subjecting him in time to the wholesome discipline of her kindly laughter. And she lives to put her purpose into execution, for we are told Darcy’s young sister, in her delight in the sister he has given her, is forced to wonder at the liberties Elizabeth takes with her husband. For Georgiana Darcy had to learn that a wise man will bear and relish from his wife what would be out of place and unwelcome from the sister fifteen years his junior.

Surely any man worthy of his salt would prefer to be so dealt with by the woman who in her heart of hearts dearly loves and heartily honours and obeys him, rather than receive the mawkish and fulsome—even when it is free from deliberate falsehood—flattery and submission, not of a friend and mate, but of a toy and slave.

Elizabeth, in her happiness, has still to suffer for the violent, unreasonable prejudice, so freely expressed, which had marked the commencement of her intercourse with Darcy. She knows what she has to expect when even Jane, who, through Bingley, understands something of Darcy’s really fine nature, and who is besides prepossessed in his favour by what she imagines his hopeless passion for Elizabeth, yet meets her sister’s news with something like stony incredulity. “You are joking. This cannot be! Engaged to Mr. Darcy! No, no; you shall not deceive me. I know it to be impossible.”

“This is a wretched beginning,” cries Elizabeth, lively in her very vexation. “My sole dependence was on you; and I am sure nobody else will believe me if you do not.”

“Oh! Lizzy, it cannot be. I know how much you dislike him.”

“You know nothing of the matter,” Elizabeth contradicts her indignantly. “That is all to be forgotten. Perhaps I did not always love him so well as I do now,” she submits to own, “but in such cases as these a good memory is unpardonable. This is the last time I shall ever remember it myself.”

“My dear, dear Lizzy, I would, I do congratulate you; but are you certain—forgive the question—are you quite certain that you can be happy with him?”

“There can be no doubt of that,” asserts the bride-elect, briskly. “It is settled between us already that we are to be the happiest couple in the world!”

Elizabeth has still to hear the ungracious epithets she herself had first applied bestowed liberally on her lover. So successful had she been in diffusing her ideas, that the faith in them—together with Darcy’s reserve—prevents even Mrs. Bennet, whose head is as full of lovers and future husbands as the feather-head of any extremely silly girl of sixteen, from viewing him in that light. “Good gracious!” she cries, as she stands at a window next morning, “if that disagreeable Mr. Darcy is not coming here again with our dear Bingley. What can he mean by being so tiresome as to be always coming here? I had no notion but that he would go a-shooting, or something or other, and not disturb us with his company. What shall we do with him? Lizzy, you must walk out with him again, that he may not be in Bingley’s way.”

Elizabeth cannot help laughing at so convenient an arrangement; still she smarts at the prolonged echo of her own idle words.

It is still worse when Darcy has asked Mr. Bennet for Elizabeth’s hand, on the understanding that she herself has accepted him, and Elizabeth is bidden go to her father.

Mr. Bennet is walking up and down the library, looking grave and anxious. “Lizzy,” he says, “what are you doing? Are you out of your senses to be accepting this man? Have not you always hated him?”

How she wishes her former opinions had been more reasonable, her expressions more moderate, that her pride and modesty might have been spared unsaying her own declarations on the one hand, and on the other making professions which are generally taken for granted. In some confusion she assures her father of her regard for Mr. Darcy.

“Or, in other words, you are determined to have him. He is rich, to be sure, and you may have finer clothes and finer carriages than Jane. But will they make you happy?”

“Have you any other objection than your belief in my indifference?” Elizabeth finds voice to say.

“None at all,” her father admits. “We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man, but that would be nothing if you really liked him.”

“I do, I do like him, I love him,” protests poor Elizabeth, with unwonted tears in her bright eyes, partly called forth by the trial of having to make such an awkward confession, partly provoked by the aspersions cast on Darcy, for which she was to blame in the first instance. “Indeed, he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable. You do not know what he really is; then pray do not pain me by speaking of him in such terms.”

In spite of this warm defence, Mr. Bennet, with an honourable disinterestedness that does him credit as a man, and with no lack of fatherly tenderness—which even goes so far as to hint at the rock on which his own happiness has been wrecked—continues to remonstrate with his favourite daughter. No doubt he has given Darcy his consent, he says, with a flavour of his usual sardonic humour in his speech, for he is the kind of man to whom he should never dare refuse anything which he condescended to ask. Her father will give the same consent to Elizabeth if she is resolved on having it. But, changing his tone, he implores her to think better of the step she is about to take. She will be neither happy nor respectable unless she truly esteems her husband—unless she looks up to him as a superior. Her lively talents will be a snare to her. “My child,” he ends with seriousness and feeling, “let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life.”

It is only after Elizabeth has entered into the fullest details of the progress of her love and Darcy’s, with the obstacles it has overcome, and after she has told all that Darcy did for Lydia, that Mr. Bennet is not merely reconciled to the match, but is duly impressed by the merits of his future son-in-law. “And so Darcy did everything, made up the match, gave the money, paid the fellow’s debts, and got him his commission! So much the better. It will save me a world of trouble and economy. Had it been your uncle’s doing, I must and would have paid him; but these violent young lovers carry everything their own way. I shall offer to pay him to-morrow; he will rant and storm about his love for you; and there will be an end of the matter.”

At last Mr. Bennet is in sufficient spirits to dismiss his daughter with the injunction, “If any young men come for Mary and Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure.”

Mrs. Bennet receives the announcement of her second daughter’s prospects in a very different fashion, for which Elizabeth is not responsible. Elizabeth takes care to tell the tale in the privacy of her mother’s dressing-room, after she has retired for the night. Here is the witty account of what followed. After remarking that the effect of Elizabeth’s communication was most extraordinary, the author enters into particulars:—

“Mrs. Bennet sat quite still, and unable to utter a syllable; nor was it until many, many minutes that she could comprehend what she heard, though not in general backward to credit what was for the benefit of her family, or that came in the shape of a lover to any of them. She began at length to recover, to fidget about in her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, and bless herself. “Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! who would have thought it? and is it really true? Oh, my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money! what jewels! what carriages you will have! Jane’s is nothing to it—nothing at all! I am so pleased—so happy! Such a charming man! so handsome! so tall! Oh, my dear Lizzy, pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy! A house in town!—everything that is charming. Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh, Lord! what will become of me? I shall go distracted!””

When Elizabeth escapes, she has not been in her own room three minutes before her mother comes after her. “My dearest child!” she cries, “I can think of nothing else! Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! ’Tis as good as a lord! And a special licence! You must and shall be married by a special licence! But, my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of, that I may have it to-morrow.”

Elizabeth dreads the next day, but after all, it goes off better than she has dared to expect; for, luckily, Mrs. Bennet stands in such awe of her intended son-in-law, that she does not venture to speak to him, unless it is in her power to offer him any attention, and mark her deference for his opinion.

Elizabeth turns for relief to write, like an affectionate young girl at the summit of human bliss, telling her Aunt Gardiner to suppose as much as she chooses, bidding her write again soon, and praise him (the one him for Elizabeth then) a great deal more than she has done in her last letter; thanking her for not going to the Lakes last summer; declaring the idea of the ponies is delightful. They will go round the park every day. She—Elizabeth—is the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but none with such justice. She is happier, even, than Jane; she only smiles, Elizabeth laughs. Mr. Darcy sends Mrs. Gardiner all the love in the world that he can spare from the writer. They are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.

Was ever a young bride’s letter more full of frank, girlish joy; natural exultation, and glad look-out into the future?

Darcy writes to Lady Catherine, and acquaints her with the impending catastrophe, and she replies in such terms as for a time puts a stop to all intercourse between aunt and nephew.

Jane Austen begins her last chapter in her most sarcastic vein. “Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what delighted pride she afterwards visited Mrs. Bingley and talked of Mrs. Darcy may be guessed. I wish I could say, for the sake of her family, that the accomplishment of her earnest desire in the establishment of so many of her children produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible, amiable, well-informed woman for the rest of her life; though, perhaps, it was lucky for her husband, who might not have relished domestic felicity in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally nervous, and invariably silly.”

The rest of the few remaining paragraphs are in a gentler strain, though they record that even Bingley’s easy temper and Jane’s affectionate heart discover a year’s residence in the immediate neighbourhood of Mrs. Bingley’s relations enough for them; though scrupulous mention is made of Miss Bingley’s paying all her arrears of civility to Elizabeth as Mrs. Darcy of Pemberley; and though a place is found for Lydia’s letter, wishing her sisters joy, and containing the impudent, mendacious request that, after they have become so rich, they will think of her and Wickham when they have nothing better to do. He would like a place at Court, and she does not think they have money enough to live on without some help.

The concluding paragraphs tell a little more which is pleasanter as far as human nature is concerned. Jane and Elizabeth’s darling wish is gratified by Bingley at last buying an estate in one of the counties next to Derbyshire, so that the sisters dwell only thirty miles apart.

Mr. Bennet misses his second daughter so much that he is frequently found, a welcome guest, at Pemberley.

Mary and Kitty—especially the latter—derive lasting benefit from their elder sisters’ marriages, and the superior society opened up to them.

Elizabeth and Georgiana Darcy love each other, like true sisters.

By Elizabeth’s intercession Darcy is reconciled to his aunt, Lady Catherine, who consents to revisit Pemberley, in spite of the pollution which its woods have sustained, not merely from the presence of such a mistress, but from the visits of her uncle and aunt from the city. For Darcy and Elizabeth show how true and lasting is their happiness by always testifying the most cordial esteem and gratitude to the friends who had been the means, by bringing her to Derbyshire, of uniting the couple.

Thus ends a novel which has for nearly a century been viewed, with reason, as one of the best novels in the English language, which has been the delight of some of the greatest geniuses of this and other countries. It must always remain a marvel that it was the work of a country-bred girl in her twenty-first year.

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