“I am perfectly ready, I assure you, to keep my engagement; and when your sister is recovered, you shall if you please name the very day of the ball. But you would not wish to be dancing while she is ill.”
“Oh! yes it would be much better to wait till Jane was well, and by that time most likely Captain Carter would be at Meryton again. And when you have given your ball,” she added, “I shall insist on their giving one also. I shall tell Colonel Forster it will be quite a shame if he does not.”
Mrs. Bennet and her daughters then departed, and Miss Elizabeth Bennet returned instantly to her sister, leaving her own and her relations’ behaviour to the remarks of the two ladies.
Darcy, however, could not be prevailed on to join in their censure of her, in spite of all Miss Bingley’s witticisms on fine eyes.
8
The next day, the invalid kept to her bed but continued, though slowly, to mend; and in the evening Miss Elizabeth Bennet joined the party in the drawing-room.
Darcy was writing, and thus continued, although he was very aware of her entering the room, and taking up some needlework.
Mr. Hurst and Bingley were at piquet, and Mrs. Hurst was observing their game. Miss Bingley, seated nearer to Darcy, had been watching the progress of his letter, and repeatedly disturbed him by calling his attention to her messages to his sister.
The perpetual commendations of the lady either on his handwriting, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, formed a conversation that increasingly began to irritate Darcy.
“How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!”
He made no answer.
“You write uncommonly fast.”
He wrote two more lines before replying, “You are mistaken. I write rather slowly.”
“How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of the year! Letters of business too! How odious I should think them!”
Again he continued writing for some time before saying, “It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of to yours.”
He hoped that she would then desist, but it was not to be.
“Pray tell your sister that I long to see her.”
He looked back at what he had already penned, and then said sharply, “I have already told her so once, by your desire.”
A few welcome minutes of silence then ensued. He even had some hopes that he might be able to finish the letter uninterrupted, and he paused, considering the last few sentences he had written. But Caroline Bingley’s voice was then again heard addressing him.
“I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you.”
When he did not reply, she tried again.
“I mend pens remarkably well.”
“Thank you—but I always mend my own.”
“How can you contrive to write so even?”
He was silent.
“Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp, and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss Grantley’s.”
By this time, Darcy’s temper was rising, and it was with difficulty that he remained civil, especially as he would much rather be conversing with Miss Elizabeth Bennet.
“Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? At present I have not room to do them justice.”
“Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?”
He began to wonder if there were any means by which Miss Bingley could be silenced.
“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,” she said.
“That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline,” cried her brother, “because he does not write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?”
Darcy was relieved at another person joining in the conversation, and said, more cheerfully, “My style of writing is very different from yours.”
“Oh!” cried Miss Bingley, “Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest.”
“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents,” said her brother.
At this point, an interruption very welcome to Darcy was made, as Miss Elizabeth Bennet said, “Your humility, Mr. Bingley, must disarm reproof.”
“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, with the intention of provoking her, rather than his friend, to say more, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”
He was unsuccessful, for it was Bingley who said, “And which of the two do you call my little recent piece of modesty?”
With Miss Bennet’s attention still engaged, Darcy was ready for a debate.
“The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance. When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that if you ever resolved on quitting Netherfield you should be gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of panegyric, of compliment to yourself and yet what is there so very laudable in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or any one else?”
After this, Darcy thought it certain that Miss Bennet’s lively mind would join her into the conversation. But Bingley was too quick.
“Nay,” he cried, “this is too much, to remember at night all the foolish things that were said in the morning. And yet, upon my honour, I believed what I said of myself to be true, and I believe it at this moment. At least, therefore, I did not assume the character of needless precipitance merely to show off before the ladies.”
“I dare say you believed it; but I am by no means convinced that you would be gone with such celerity,” said Darcy. “Your conduct would be quite as dependent on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you were mounting your horse, a friend were to say, ‘Bingley, you had better stay till next week,’ you would probably do it, you would probably not go and, at another word, might stay a month.”
At last, this provoked Miss Elizabeth Bennet to join in the conversation.
“You have only proved by this, that Mr. Bingley did not do justice to his own disposition. You have shown him off now much more than he did himself.”
“I am exceedingly gratified,” said Bingley, “by your converting what my friend says into a compliment on the sweetness of my temper. But I am afraid you are giving it a turn which that gentleman did by no means intend; for he would certainly think the better of me, if under such a circumstance I were to give a flat denial, and ride off as fast as I could.”
“Would Mr. Darcy then consider the rashness of your original intention as atoned for by your obstinacy in adhering to it?” Miss Bennet said to him.
“Upon my word I cannot exactly explain the matter, Darcy must speak for himself.”
“You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged,” said Darcy. “Allowing the case, however, to stand according to your representation, you must
