Page 40 of Hard Home

She said nothing, and they went down the other dance and parted in silence; and on each side dissatisfied, though not in an equal degree, for in Darcy's breast there was a tolerable powerful feeling toward her, which soon procured her pardon, and directed all his anger against another.

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They had not long separated when Miss Bingley came toward her, and with an expression of civil disdain accosted her.

"So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George Wickham! — Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand questions; and I find that the young man forgot to tell you, among his other communications, that he was the son of old Wickham, the late Mr. Darcy's steward. Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Darcy's using him ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has always been remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner. I do not know the particulars, but I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the least to blame, that he cannot bear to hear George Wickham mentioned, and that though my brother thought he could not well avoid including him in his invitation to the officers, he was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself out of the way. His coming into the country at all, is a most insolent thing indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it. I pity you, Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favorite's guilt; but really considering his descent, one could not expect much better."

"His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same," said Elizabeth angrily; "for I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward, and ofthat, I can assure you, he informed me himself."

"I beg your pardon," replied Miss Bingley, turning away with a sneer. "Excuse my interference. — It was kindly meant."

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Elizabeth was then joined by Jane, who came to her with a cheerful look which showed her better satisfied with their visitors than Elizabeth. Bingley knew nothing of the particulars, she said; he could not vouch for the terms, only for his friend's excellent character; he was confident Wickham had by no means deserved so much notice.

Elizabeth was silenced. She was, and remained, entirely of her own opinion, and she was also — for the first time in three days — a very little tired of holding it.

The rest of the evening brought her little amusement. She was teazed by Mr. Collins, who continued most perseveringly by her side, and though he could not prevail with her to dance with him again, put it out of her power to dance with others.

She had at first intended to sit down; and she was prevented by an unaccountable reluctance, which she did not choose to examine, to remain seated in that room.

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The rest of the evening passed as such evenings pass. It was made memorable to Elizabeth chiefly by the conduct of her family, of which she afterwards remembered every particular with the greatest exactness.

Mr. Collins, on learning that Mr. Darcy was Lady Catherine's nephew, presented himself in due form and at great length, and was heard with an air of distant civility that stopped nothing.

Mary, invited to sing, sang.

She sang three songs. Her voice was weak and her manner affected, and she had chosen a difficult air because she had practiced it, and the room talked over the whole of the first and most of the second. Elizabeth stood at the side and watched her sister at the instrument — a young woman of nineteen, singing correctly, in a room that would not stop talking, for the fourth time that year — and could not this evening find any part of it amusing.

"That will do extremely well, child," said Mr. Bennet at last, aloud, when she had finished. "You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit."

Mary, though pretending not to hear, was somewhat disconcerted; and Elizabeth, sorry for her, and sorry for her father's speech, could do nothing but go and stand by the pianoforte, so that her sister should have somebody to walk away with.

"I found it, though," said Mary, under the noise.

"You did," said Elizabeth. "You were the only person in this house who found anything at all. I shall want to hear about it to-morrow, and I mean it."

Mary looked at her once, quickly, and then at the floor, and said nothing whatever the whole way home.

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Mrs. Bennet spent the supper hour in speaking to Lady Lucas, freely, openly, and of nothing else but her expectation that Jane would be very soon married to Mr. Bingley; and Elizabeth, sitting at the same table, saw that Mr. Darcy was near enough to hear the whole, and blushed, and blushed again, and could not stop her mother by any means.

"What is Mr. Darcy to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? I am sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged to say nothinghemay not like to hear."

At last the carriages were called, and the Bennets were the last of all the company to depart, Mrs. Bennet having contrived, by a manoeuvre of Mr. Collins's, a quarter of an hour's wait for their coach 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. Mrs. Bennet, undaunted, pressed Mr. Bingley to a family dinner at Longbourn, and he was all obliging thanks, and engaged himself readily for the day after his return from town, whither he was obliged to go the next morning for a short time.

Mr. Darcy stood by the door of the room while the last of it went on.

He had been standing somewhere very near a door or a window frame all night, and now he stood by the last of them, with his hand behind him and his shoulder against the wood, saying good night to a hundred and four people in a voice that got quieter as the evening went on; and everybody who passed him thought him the proudest and coldest man in England, and Mrs. Long said so in the porch, and Sir William Lucas said something kind about him that nobody attended to.

The last carriage went at three.

At ten minutes past, when the servants had begun on the candles, Mr. Bingley came back into the ballroom to look for his friend and found him sitting on the floor in the window bay at the west end with his coat off and his back against the wall.