Page 122 of Hard Home

He was not ill in any way that Mr. Jones could have found or that a physician in Harley-street would have named; there was no hole in him and nothing had been taken; he was a healthy man of two-and-fifty with a good constitution and a bad habit of sitting indoors.

He was simply — going out. Steadily, evenly, without pain, the way a candle that has been burning a long while in a still room goes out: not because anything blows on it.

"Do stop doing that," said Mr. Bennet, without opening his eyes. "It is extremely uncivil and I have been aware of it for a full minute."

"I beg your pardon, papa."

"You have your mother's hands and my manners and Mary's eyes, and it is a great pity, because you would have done very well with any other combination." He opened his eyes and pushed his spectacles up. "Well? Am I dying?"

"No," said Elizabeth.

"That is a lie, and it is a very poor one, and I want you to know that I have never once in my life minded being lied to by you." He shut the book. "Netherfield is taken, I understand, by a gentleman who does not want it, in a county he has told everybody is unhealthy, for a shooting season in which he does not shoot.

"Sit down, Lizzy. Let us have twenty minutes before your mother finds us, and you shall tell me what you think he is coming for."

Chapter Fifty

They came on the Thursday morning.

Mrs. Bennet saw them from the dressing-room window while she was doing Jane's hair, and there was such a scene in the upper passage as Longbourn had not had since August; and by the time the two gentlemen were shown in, the whole family was arranged in the small parlor in an attitude of perfect unconcern, at a cost of about four minutes of undignified running.

Mr. Bingley looked at Jane before he had finished bowing to Mrs. Bennet.

Mr. Darcy said, "Mrs. Bennet," and sat down where he was put, which was at the far end of the room by the window, and said almost nothing for three quarters of an hour.

---

It was the worst three quarters of an hour of Elizabeth's life, and she had had a number of contenders that year.

Her mother was civil to Mr. Bingley in a manner so pointed and so fulsome that Jane's color did not go down once in the whole visit; and she was civil to Mr. Darcy in the manner of a woman discharging a duty to somebody she has been told is important, in about eleven words, and then not at all.

"You have taken Netherfield, I understand, sir."

"I have."

"Well. It is a very good house and Mr. Bingley was extremely comfortable in it, and I am sure I hope you will be." Mrs. Bennet turned back to Bingley. "Now, Mr. Bingley, you must tell me — how do you find the country? Is it not a great deal pleasanter than town? I always say—"

And that was the whole of it.

Elizabeth sat with her work in her lap and listened to her mother be gracious for forty minutes to a young man who hadonce made Jane cry for four months, and be barely tolerable to a man who had spent eight days in London in August and a piece of his own blood in a tavern in Aldgate; and she could not say one word, and would not be able to say one word for as long as she lived, and she looked at the carpet and thought about the Netherfield ballroom and the west window bay.

Once, in the middle of it, she looked up and found that Mr. Darcy was looking at her.

He looked away at once — and then, after a moment, looked back, and did not look away; and there was nothing at all in his face, and Elizabeth understood, with a small shock, that this was because he had been sitting at that end of the room for half an hour doing what she was doing, and had been perfectly aware of every part of it.

She got out of the room at last, when Bingley proposed a walk and was carried off with Jane and Kitty into the shrubbery.

---

Mr. Bennet sent for Darcy at eleven.

Hill came in with the message and delivered it in front of everybody, and Mrs. Bennet, who had not the smallest idea what to make of it, said, "Mr. Bennet wishes to — but he never sees anybody —" and then, recollecting herself and the ten thousand a year, said that she was sure it was very civil.

They went into the library: Mr. Bennet, Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth, Mary, and Lieutenant Denny, who had been fetched from the Philipses' at half past nine and had been standing about the passage since.

Mr. Bennet shut the door and turned the key, which nobody had ever seen him do.

"Sir," he said, "I am told I owe you my daughter, my name, and the whole of my family's standing in this county, and I am not going to speak about that this morning because I shouldmake a very poor job of it and I want my head clear. You may consider it said badly and taken as read.