The next day Elizabeth looked forward to the assembly ball that night with more than her usual interest. However, while she expected to see much ofinterest, and despite her eagerness to see the man who Caroline was waving and even wildly flinging her bonnet towards — and to do anything she might to promote the match — Elizabeth did not expect to like Mr. Darcy.
She loved both Charles and Caroline dearly, but Charles could become the dearest friend of a rock, a babbling brook, or the worst sort of general misanthrope, and thushisapprobation gave no information.
As for Caroline’s opinion…
She was not, in Elizabeth’sownopinion, the shrewdest judge of character.
Chapter Three
The day he arrived at Netherfield, Darcy was obliged to already be social with the neighborhood. He rather wished that he had not been compelled by politeness to attend the assembly ball with Bingley and his sisters.
However, politeness was a curse that Fitzwilliam Darcy labored under, and there was no conventional escape. He had arrived at Netherfield amply early in the day, and there was no honest basis on which he could plead exhaustion from the journey.
Miss Bingley had proven already to be exactly what he’d expected her to be, a woman devoted to endlessly throwing herself in his path, and who wished to impress him by showing every way that she was dull, ordinary, and the same as every other girl educated in a fashionable seminary.
Ugh.
Fine enough woman, and all: Pretty, well educated, sister of his friend, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. All the right things — but were all the rest of the world but the two of them, to disappear, he’d give serious thought to allowing the extinction of the human race rather than mating with her.
The Meryton assembly hall was not an impressive building, but the rooms were large and spacious and there was ample floor for the large number of couples already taking a turn about.
As soon as Bingley’s party entered, a fine-looking woman of middle years, dressed in first-rate silk, and thickly buttered with more lace than reason accosted them.
She threw her arms around Bingley’s neck and exclaimed, “Charlie! My dear, dear Charlie! You missed the first dance! We were all very disappointed to miss you!” Then more sedately she waved at Mrs. Hurst before also embracing Miss Bingley. “Little Lina! You look more the fine lady every time I see you! — such a handsome hair piece. Lizzy told me how you had schemed upon it — you must be Mr. Darcy.”
This remark rather struck Darcy unpleasantly. He knew his manners to be reserved, and this sort of excess of exuberance in greeting someone, even a close friend, hinted of vulgarity.
Bingley blushed and smiled. “Let me introduce my friend to you — Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Bennet, I’ve told you that she was nearly a mother to me. And Mrs. Bennet, this is Mr. Darcy of Pemberley — a fine big fancy place in Derbyshire. He was my dearest friend at university.”
He bowed as stiffly as he could.
The woman detected no coldness, and took no reserve from his reserved manner. She laughed and smiled. “Lord! But I am delighted to meet you! Bingley always sung your praises. But heavens! Even so I could not expect you to besotall. Allow me to introduce my daughters to you — or those of them that are here. Kitty and Jane are at the dance already. Lizzy,” she looked around, and hallooed to a girl who was saying something to Miss Bingley while they both looked at him, “come here, Lizzy.”
Miss Elizabeth was a fine looking woman, with excellent eyes, and a light and pleasing figure. However Darcy, in his critical mood, could not help but notice there was something that struck of hoydenishness, and an excess of mischief in her expression, and that her face and form lacked perfect symmetry.
Only one of the cheeks dimpled with her smile.
She curtsied to him, while he made cold bow in return. But then she extended her hand and said in a perfectly civil and well-bred voice, “It is my delight to meet you, Mr. Darcy. And I hope very much that we shall be friends in time.”
He stiffly inclined his head once more in reply. But her calmness did not grate upon his nerves in the way her mother’s exuberance did.
Mrs. Bennet loudly introduced him to another of her daughters, a Miss Mary, who had a pinched and disapproving expression, and who seemed to be in no way the equal of Miss Elizabeth in either beauty, or interest.
All uncomfortable.
Darcy found himself less and less in the mood to dance as the minutes went on. That rage about Wickham… about what Georgiana had nearly done… about the necessity of protecting the family name from the scandal. How Wickham was now protected from his revenge.
No. He wanted no pleasure.
And in any case, Darcy was quite certain that Mrs. Bennet meant to throw one of her daughters at him as a potential partner in matrimony — every mother did. A woman who had gained such a significant increase in fortune — she had gone from a marriage portion of only five thousand, with her father a modest market town attorney, to being the wife of a man with a substantial estate of two thousand a year, and whose independent fortune was suggested to be in excess of a hundred thousand — such a woman must be of the most grasping, desiring, mercenary, and vulgar nature.
Bingley could not be permitted to impose upon him thefriendof his sister. He would accept such no more than he would with the sister herself.
Thus in quite the opposite of a good mood Darcy watched Mr. Bingley ask Miss Elizabeth to dance.
The two of them cheerfully walked to the line, grinning, elbowing each other, and looking like nothing so much as a pair of well-dressed rapscallions.
And Miss Bingleylookedat him with that eager hope, and with eyes that were too reminiscent of a puppy he’d once been very fond of, at least until it had peed upon his favorite boots, and then set to chewing up the softened leather.
