Chapter One

Lady Catherine de Bourgh could not be expected to travel fifty miles in January to see her rector married. Her nephew, who was in town and had only four-and-twenty to go, could.

The chaise stopped at the gate of Lucas Lodge a little before three, and for as long as it took the servant to get down and open it, Mr. Darcy considered ordering it shut again.

His aunt’s letter was in his pocket, where it had been since Thursday; he had no need to take it out.

“I am excessively attentive to these things,” she had written, “and I will not have my rector married in a Hertfordshire village with nobody by to see it properly done. You are in town, and can have no engagement in the first week of January that signifies. You will hear the banns. You will attend the ceremony on Thursday. And you will tell me what the young woman’s family is; for Mr. Collins is pleased with everybody, and I must know whether they are such people as I can notice. The father is a knight, I am told. I should like to know how he came to be one.”

A packet for Mr. Collins had followed on Friday, sealed in three places, with a line to say that as her nephew was going he might carry it, and it would cost Mr. Collins nothing.

He could have answered that business kept him in London. He had gone so far as to mend a pen.

But his aunt asked little enough of him in the year; a rector’s marriage was a respectable occasion; and a man who had lived two months in a neighbourhood could hardly be supposed afraid of passing two nights in it. These were his reasons; he had gone over them all the way from town, and by the time the chaise left the high road they had very nearly the look of reasons.

The plan, at least, was a good one: two nights at the inn at Meryton, the banns to-morrow, and town again on Monday; then down on Thursday for the ceremony, and home before dark. It obliged him to dine with nobody; and that was a material point, when he was to give an account of these people afterwards.

Bingley had been above a month in his house, and in all that time had not once named Hertfordshire. He had named it this morning at breakfast, recollecting that Lucas Lodge was a very short walk from Longbourn, and attending very particularly to his tea.

“You will see them, I dare say, and you will tell me how they all do.”

“I shall be at the inn, and at church. I do not expect to see anybody.”

“No. No, to be sure.” And when Darcy was at the door: “All of them, you know.”

The gate was open; and the first person he saw was Sir William Lucas, who was down the steps without his hat before the horses had stopped.

“Mr. Darcy! My dear sir! You are welcome to Lucas Lodge; you are most heartily welcome. Such an honour to my daughter! Such a compliment, I may say, to the whole neighbourhood! Her Ladyship cannot attend, and her Ladyship is represented. It is quite in the style of the court, sir; I have seen it done at St. James’s.”

Darcy got down. The frost had held all day, and Sir William’s welcome went up before him in a cloud. He said what was proper, which was not much, and he had not finished saying it when the doorway was filled by a tall, heavy young man in black, whom he recognized without pleasure.

Mr. Collins bowed where he stood, and again upon the gravel.

“Mr. Darcy, it cannot have escaped your recollection that I had the honour of making myself known to you at Netherfield, in the month of November; on which occasion you were so obliging as to observe that Lady Catherine de Bourgh could never bestow a favour unworthily.”

Darcy remembered the remark: he had made it in order to be let go, and it had not answered then either.

“I have thought of it often. And I flatter myself, sir, that her Ladyship’s present condescension, in sending so near a relation to witness the happiest event of my life, is the fullest proof that her discernment has not, in the interval, been disappointed. I should be wanting in every proper feeling if I did not—”

“Mr. Darcy has been on the road since breakfast, sir,” said Miss Lucas to her father, from the hall, “and it is very cold. Will you not bring him in to the fire?”

Miss Lucas he remembered chiefly as the person Miss Elizabeth Bennet talked to. He was brought in, and in the hall he wished her joy.

“Thank you, sir. I am only sorry that it should cost you a journey in January.”

She said it without flutter; and it was the first thing said to him since the gate which required no answer. He recollected the packet, and had it out of his greatcoat a moment too late; for Sir William had the drawing-room door open, and was announcing him in a voice intended for a larger room.

He had been in the room once before, on an evening in the autumn when it was full of people; Sir William had then presented a young lady to him as a very desirable partner, and the young lady had drawn back her hand.

It held now Lady Lucas; a younger daughter, whose name he had forgotten; two girls not yet out, who shared the end of a sofa and a whisper; a boy of eleven or twelve; and Miss Elizabeth Bennet.

She was at the window for the light, with a bonnet in her lap and a length of white ribbon, and she rose with them still in her hands.

He had prepared himself to see her at church; he had settled how far off she would sit, and that a bow would be enough. He had not prepared himself for a bonnet.

“Mr. Darcy,” said she.

“Miss Bennet.”

It was all he could find to say, and Lady Lucas, who took a silent guest for a reproach to her drawing-room, began to apologize for it. He found them all in confusion, she was afraid, with Thursday so near; Eliza was so good as to do Charlotte’s bonnet, for nobody had her hand with a ribbon; and there would have been a better fire had they known his hour; and Maria, get up, child, and give Mr. Darcy that chair.

The chair was given up, and was not taken. He stood at the fire, where he had been put; Maria stood beside the chair; and it remained empty between them until the candles came.

The packet was still in his hand, and Mr. Collins had not taken his eyes from it since the hall.

“My aunt desired me to put this into your hands, sir.”

Mr. Collins took it in both of his, and read the direction aloud before he counted the seals.

“Three! Her Ladyship seals everything with her own hand. I shall not open it in a hurry, Mr. Darcy. It shall have the whole of my evening; and whatever her Ladyship designs for general hearing, I shall do myself the honour of reading to the family.”

“I hope her Ladyship has not forgotten the closets, sir,” said Elizabeth.

Mr. Collins assured his cousin that Lady Catherine de Bourgh forgot nothing.

Darcy did not understand her. Miss Lucas, who plainly did, looked at her friend, and then at the fire.

He had carried the packet from town without curiosity, and parted with it without regret; but it left him with nothing in his hands, and nowhere to look but the window.

He had told himself in town, as often as the subject arose, that memory flatters, and that a country neighbourhood will always lend consequence to the one clever woman in it; he should find, when he saw her again, a pretty young woman with nothing in her to trouble him. He saw her again, and memory had been tolerably exact.

“I hope Mr. Bingley was well, sir, when you left town,” said Elizabeth. She had sat down again to her ribbon. “And his sisters.”

“Perfectly so, I thank you.”

“They are all fixed in London for the winter, we understand.”

“I believe they are.”

“Then we are the more obliged to Lady Catherine; for it seems that nothing less could have brought any of you back.”

She said it very pleasantly, and drew her needle through. No answer occurred to him that was both civil and true, and he made none. Nor did he ask after her family. It was an incivility, and he knew it; but he could not ask after her family without asking after her sister.

It was the boy who relieved him. He had planted himself on the hearth, and had been examining Mr. Darcy from the boots upwards; he had now arrived at the face.

“Are you as rich as they say?”

“Harry!” cried Lady Lucas.

“I do not know what they say.”

“Ten thousand a year.”

“Then they are well informed.”

“If I had ten thousand a year, I should keep a pack of foxhounds.”

“And drink a bottle of wine every day,” said Elizabeth. “We have heard your plans, Harry, and my mother has promised to take away the bottle.”

She had looked up to say it, laughing. Her eye met Darcy’s, and she looked down again at her work.

“Do you keep foxhounds?” said Harry.

“I do not.”

“I should,” said Harry, and plainly thought the less of him.

Sir William hoped that Mr. Darcy would excuse the spirits of youth. He inquired after the roads, after London, and after St. James’s, and was as well satisfied with three short answers as he could have been with long ones. Wine was brought, and a cake, of which nobody ate but Harry. Lady Lucas named the hour of dinner, and was beginning upon the bedchamber, when Darcy found that he must speak.

“You are very good, madam; but I have written to bespeak rooms at the inn in Meryton, and I must not keep the horses standing. I shall do myself the honour of waiting on you to-morrow, after church.”

“The inn!” Sir William set down his glass. “My dear sir, it is not to be thought of. A nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh come into Hertfordshire for my daughter’s marriage, and lie at an inn! What would be said of Lucas Lodge?”

“And a room at an inn is never properly aired, sir, whatever they tell you,” said Lady Lucas. “The best bedchamber here has had a fire since Thursday, and I saw to the sheets myself.”

Mr. Collins begged leave to add his entreaties. He was persuaded that Lady Catherine de Bourgh, when she did him the honour of naming her nephew, had never contemplated an inn; he could not suppose that she would hear of it with composure; and he should think himself answerable to her Ladyship for every hour which Mr. Darcy passed under a public roof.

“You are to hear the banns at Longbourn to-morrow, I think, sir?” said Miss Lucas. “From the inn it is a mile there and a mile back. From this house you may hear the bell.”

“Pray do not press him, Sir William,” said Elizabeth, who kept her eyes upon the bonnet. “At the inn Mr. Darcy need speak to nobody; here he would be expected to talk to us all.”

He looked at her. She turned the bonnet upon her hand, to see how the ribbon lay.

“Miss Bennet doubts my being equal to it,” said he. “You are very good, Sir William. Until Monday.”

He had said it before he had at all determined to say it, and Sir William was shaking him by the hand and declaring that they should see about Monday. A servant was sent to Meryton to give up the rooms; the chaise went round to the stables; Lady Lucas went to look at a fire which had been burning for two days; and Mr. Collins congratulated Mr. Darcy upon his decision, in terms which gave the whole credit of it to Lady Catherine.

The candles were brought a little before four. Elizabeth put up her work, and said that she must be at home while there was light. Lady Lucas, returning, was sure that Harry ought to walk with her.

“Harry would much rather stay and look at Mr. Darcy,” said Elizabeth; and Harry did not deny it.

She put the bonnet into Miss Lucas’s hands.

“It will do very well, Eliza. Thank you.”

“It was nothing at all.”

Two women who had talked through every party of the autumn had grown, it struck him, remarkably civil. Then she made her curtsey to the room, wished them all a good evening, and was gone, and Miss Lucas with her.

The window was the whole length of the room from the fire. He was at the window. The lane ran down between hedges white to the top, and she was at the turn of it already, walking fast, with both hands in her muff.

When he turned, Miss Lucas had come back. She stood by the candles with the bonnet in her hands, and she was not looking at the bonnet.