“Nor marriage the same as happiness,” Mr. Bennetsaid. “A distinction which, if properly observed, might spare society half its errors and novels all their plots.”
Jane smiled; Mrs. Bennet declared this was not a time for joking; Lydia asked what better time there could be; and Kitty, uncertain whether to laugh or inquire further, did a little of both. The room, which a moment earlier had contained only the usual occupations of a family morning, was now animated by all the pleasant agitation of new conjecture.
Mr. Bennet hardly refrained from slapping his forehead. He did not do so only because the gesture, however just, would have produced more explanation than satisfaction.
“My dears, you are forgetting one essential thing. No one invited you to Hunsford, and you cannot go there uninvited, can you?”
This plain objection had the merit of instant effect. Mrs. Bennet, arrested at once in the middle of imagining visits, dinners, and enquiries, muttered something unintelligible other than accepting Mr. Bennet was right. It was not submission exactly, but a temporary suspension of campaign.
For a few moments the conversation dispersed into lesser murmurs. Jane resumed her work, though with a more thoughtful countenance; Elizabeth, though she looked again at her book, read nothing; Mary began to speculate aloud whether Cambridge necessarily formed a man for the pulpit; Lydia and Kitty, no longer discussing whether they should go, now discussed what sort of person a man must be to displace Mr. Collins in Lady Catherine’s favour; and Mrs. Bennet, having renounced immediate invasion of Kent, turned instead to wondering what description of appearance the name Wickham might imply.
Mr. Bennet, amused by all, reopened the letter and glanced once more at its contents. There was in the whole businesssomething too neat to be entirely ordinary, and if he did not yet suspect design, he was at least alive to peculiarity.
“George Wickham,” repeated Elizabeth quietly, as though testing the name upon her own mind.
“Yes,” said her father, overhearing her. “You may keep it, Lizzy. I perceive already that this gentleman has secured a place in my house without having crossed the threshold.”
“At least he has done something Mr. Collins never managed,” Elizabeth returned.
“Which is?”
“To interest us before speaking, Papa.”
Mr. Bennet laughed. “Then he begins with an advantage over half the clergy in England.”
Thus the name of Mr. Wickham, introduced by mere accident of correspondence, obtained in that single morning a degree of importance at Longbourn which many gentlemen, after weeks of visits, might have failed to establish. No one among them yet knew whether he was to prove agreeable, dangerous, ridiculous, or merely useful as a topic; but curiosity, once awakened in a family so variously disposed to indulgence, reflection, vanity, moral censure, and amusement, was not likely soon to be extinguished.
As the family continued to speculate about the mysterious new vicar, Elizabeth found her thoughts consumed by the enigma that was George Wickham. She could not help but wonder at his background and qualifications, as well as the nature of his character. Was he truly a man of substance and integrity, or merely a charming façade? Try as she might, shecould not suppress the curiosity that had been kindled within her.
Mrs. Bennet muttered something unintelligible, which, though it conveyed no clear meaning, served at least to indicate that she submitted to her husband’s reasoning only because it could not be immediately overturned.
Jane, who had listened with attentive composure, at length said, “Papa, I fail to understand the purpose of Mr. Collins’s letter. Why should he trouble you with intelligence which, if uncertain, can only give rise to confusion?”
“You are right to ask, my dear,” Mr. Bennet replied, lowering the letter and regarding her with an expression in which patience and quiet irony were very agreeably united, “and if I were permitted to conclude my account without interruption, the matter might perhaps be rendered intelligible even to those who do not immediately seize it.”
Mrs. Bennet was sensible that the allusion was not without reference to her own situation; yet, disdaining to appear affected by it, she arranged her features into a look of indifference, which, though carefully maintained, was not entirely free from constraint.
Mr. Bennet waited for that clamour to subside, and then resumed, “Mr. Collins appears to have been informed of his misfortune by a source at once immediate and, to him, entirely unexpected. A former college fellow—a gentleman whose civility has not been without consequence—has taken it upon himself to communicate the intelligence. It would seem that Lady Catherine de Bourgh did not think it necessary to announce the matter herself.”
Elizabeth, whose interest had been more than commonly awakened, asked, “Then why should we give credit to his college fellow, Papa, if Lady Catherine herself has not written?”
“Because, my dear,” her fatherreturned with a composure that only imperfectly concealed his amusement, “that obliging correspondent is none other than Mr. George Wickham.”
This declaration produced a general stir; Jane expressed her surprise with gentle warmth, Elizabeth’s eyes brightened with a more searching curiosity, and even Mrs. Bennet, whose understanding of the matter was still incomplete, felt that something of importance had been added to it.
“And Mr. Collins believed himat once?” Elizabeth said, after a moment’s reflection, in which her interest had evidently deepened.
“He believes Mr. Wickham sufficiently to be uneasy, and not sufficiently to be convinced,” Mr. Bennet replied; “in short, my cousin doubts where he had hoped, and hopes where he has little reason to expect.”
“That is a most uncomfortable state,” Jane observed, with her usual kindness.
“It is also a most characteristic one,” Mr. Bennet replied.
“Then Mr. Collins cannot be certain that he has lost the living?” Mrs. Bennet asked eagerly, catching only so much of the argument as served her purpose.
“My dear,” Mr. Bennet explained, “he is tolerably certain that he has lost it, but not so entirely persuaded as to prevent his acting as though he had. He proposes to proceed to Hunsford, to present himself in the character already assumed, and to trust that the reality may yet accommodate itself to his expectations.”
“That is perfectly right!” cried Mrs. Bennet, whose spirits rose in proportion to the possibility of contradiction, “for one cannot be driven away by every idle report. People are forever mistaken, and it is always best to insist upon what is proper.”
