Page 42 of Hard Home

Mr. Collins looked mildly surprised at so simple a question having so much made of it.

"Because her Ladyship recommended it," he said. "Her Ladyship was most particular. She said — I have it in my pocket-book, and I could show you the very entry — that a private ball in a house lately warded, if the county be present and the two first dances properly secured, is in some parishes considered as good as a settlement, and that it would save the expence and delay of a license, of which she has a very poor opinion, licences being in her Ladyship's judgment a modern contrivance and a great encourager of imprudent matches."

"And you did as she said."

"I always do as her Ladyship says," said Mr. Collins simply. "It has never once turned out ill."

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Elizabeth sat very still.

She had woken that morning with the whole of Tuesday flat and strange in her mind, and had spent an hour of the night persuading herself that a hot room and a bad partner and a great deal of negus will produce a giddiness in anybody; and she had very nearly succeeded; and it had all come apart now in about ninety seconds, in the little parlor at Longbourn, over a piece of needlework, with the pigeons on the roof outside.

He had done it deliberately.

That was not, she found, the frightening part. The frightening part was that he had done it deliberately and did not know what he had done — that a woman two counties away had written a line in a pocket-book, and a foolish man had carried it into a warded room and performed it exactly, the way he had put up the shelves in his closets; and that if Mr. Darcy of Pemberleyhad not been standing at the west end of that room for reasons of his own, she would this morning be —

She did not finish the sentence. She never afterwards finished it, in eleven years.

"Mr. Collins," she said, and her voice came out perfectly steady, which surprised her very much, "you forget that I have made no answer. Let me do it without further loss of time. Accept my thanks for the compliment you are paying me. I am very sensible of the honor of your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than decline them."

"I am not now to learn," replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the hand, "that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favor; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long."

"Upon my word, Sir," cried Elizabeth, "your hope is rather an extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. — You could not makemehappy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who would make you so. — Nay, were your friend Lady Catherine to know me, I am persuaded she would find me in every respect ill qualified for the situation."

"Were it certain that Lady Catherine would think so," said Mr. Collins very gravely — "but I cannot imagine that her Ladyship would at all disapprove of you. And you may be certain that when I have the honor of seeing her again I shall speak in the highest terms of your modesty, œconomy, and other amiable qualifications."

"Indeed, Mr. Collins, all praise of me will be unnecessary. You must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the compliment of believing what I say. I wish you very happy and very rich, and by refusing your hand, do all in my power to prevent your being otherwise. In making me the offer, you must have satisfied the delicacy of your feelings with regard to my family, and may take possession of Longbourn estate whenever it falls, without any self-reproach. This matter may be considered, therefore, as finally settled."

And rising as she thus spoke, she would have quitted the room, had not Mr. Collins thus addressed her,

"When I do myself the honor of speaking to you next on this subject I shall hope to receive a more favorable answer than you have now given me; though I am far from accusing you of cruelty at present, because I know it to be the established custom of your sex to reject a man on the first application, and perhaps you have even now said as much to encourage my suit as would be consistent with the true delicacy of the female character."

"Really, Mr. Collins," cried Elizabeth with some warmth, "you puzzle me exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear to you in the form of encouragement, I know not how to express my refusal in such a way as may convince you of its being one."

"You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that your refusal of my addresses is merely words of course. My reasons for believing it are briefly these: — It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable. My situation in life, my connections with the family of De Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances highly in my favor; and you should take it into farther consideration that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no means certain that another offer of marriage mayever be made you. Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females."

"I do assure you, Sir, that I have no pretension whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you again and again for the honor you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart."

"You are uniformly charming!" cried he, with an air of awkward gallantry; "and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the express authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals will not fail of being acceptable."

To such perseverance in wilful self-deception Elizabeth would make no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew.

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She did not go to her mother, whom she could hear in the hall already, nor to Jane, who would have been kind about the wrong thing.

She went up two flights to the cold little room over the porch, where Mary Bennet sat with her feet on a footstool and three books open on the bed, and shut the door behind her.

"Mary. I want to know about Tuesday, and I want the whole of it, and I am not going to laugh, and if anybody calls up the stairs we are not going down."

Mary put her finger in the page.

She did not look pleased, exactly. She had waited a long while to be asked something, and now that it had come, she was frightened; and she said, in her flat voice, "You had better sit on the bed, then. It takes a while."

It took forty minutes.

The essential of it was short, and Mary gave it first, because she had discovered at nineteen that people will not wait for the reasoning: an acknowledgment is not a contract and cannot be made by accidentcomplete. What had begun on Tuesday had not finished. Elizabeth was not bound. Nothing had been given away.