Page 70 of Dear Friend

Caroline returned to her chair. “Mr. Darcy, who can pass an entire evening in a ballroom without troubling himself to smile at half the women introduced to him, comes directly from Somerset into Hertfordshire and, upon his first introduction to an unknown country girl, dances three sets with her. Since then he has called repeatedly at Longbourn, sought her company whenever they meet, walked with her, danced with her again at Lucas Lodge, and apparently received confidences concerning this particular friend of hers.”

“When you arrange everything in that order, I grant you it sounds curious.”

“I have arranged nothing. Those are the facts.”

Louisa considered her for a moment. “And what do you suppose they mean?”

Caroline was silent.

That was the difficulty. She could see the pieces plainly enough, but she could not discover how they fitted together.

“I do not know,” she admitted at last. “But I no longer believe Mr. Darcy's interest in Miss Elizabeth began at the Meryton assembly.”

Mrs. Hurst gave a short laugh. “Then where do you imagine it began?”

“Somerset.” Caroline looked into the fire, dissatisfied even as she said it. “Perhaps he encountered Miss Harding there. Perhaps she spoke of Miss Elizabeth to him, or perhaps there is some other connexion I have not yet discovered. I do not know.”

“And you mean to discover it?”

Caroline's gaze returned to the flames. “I should very much like to.”

And that, she thought, was reason enough to begin.

Chapter Twenty-Six

6th November 1811

Longbourn

Elizabeth

The following morning, after their return from Netherfield, Elizabeth could not suppress a grimace when her father announced, with all the unconcern of a man communicating nothing more troublesome than the state of the weather, that he had received a letter from his cousin concerning an impending visit to Longbourn.

“He writes with such evident satisfaction at the prospect of coming that I confess I have not the heart to discourage him,” Mr. Bennet said, lowering his spectacles to survey the breakfast table. “Though I own I have not the smallest notion what to make of a man who requires two pages to announce a visit with scarcely two days' warning. At any rate, we are to have the pleasure of his company on Friday.”

“Mr. Collins? This Friday?” Mrs. Bennet set down her cup, the name alone sufficient to sour her expression. “What can that dreadful man want with us now, after all these years of silence? I hope he does not mean to come here and gloat over the entail, Mr. Bennet, counting the rooms he means to have for his own the moment you are cold in your grave.”

“I could not say precisely what he means by it, my dear, though his letter suggests a mind rather more given to obsequiousness than malice.” Mr. Bennet's mouth twitched with the particular amusement he took in his wife's alarm. “He writes at considerable length of his patroness's condescension, his own humility, and his earnest desire to heal whatever breach exists between our two branches of the family. There is, however, a rather pointed passage towards the end concerning my five daughters, which I have not yet determined whether to find promising or alarming.”

Elizabeth exchanged a glance with Jane across the table. She knew, of course, of the elder Mr. Collins who had stood to inherit Longbourn, and had heard only some months before that the gentleman had died and his son had succeeded to his place in the entail. Of the younger Mr. Collins himself, however, she knew nothing; neither she nor any member of her family had ever met him.

“What manner of passage, Papa?” Elizabeth asked.

“He expresses a wish, in language considerably more elaborate than the sentiment strictly requires, to make such amends as may lie within his power for the unfortunate circumstances of the entail.” Mr. Bennet's eyes glinted over the top of his spectacles. “I leave you to draw your own conclusions, Lizzy, as I confess I have already drawn mine and find them a great deal more entertaining than alarming.”

“He means to marry one of us,” Mary said, without looking up from her plate.

Mrs. Bennet turned towards her. “Marry one of you?”

“It would answer the difficulty rather neatly,” Mary replied, with the matter-of-fact solemnity she generally employed when she believed herself to have perceived what others had overlooked. “If Mr. Collins regrets that Longbourn must pass from Papa's daughters to himself, marrying one of those daughters would allow him to reconcile his inheritance with his professed desire to make amends.”

Mrs. Bennet's expression altered with remarkable speed. The indignation which had possessed it only moments before gave way to calculation, and she looked slowly from one daughter to another as though Mr. Collins's arrival had suddenly become a matter of considerably greater promise.

“Well. If that is his intention, I do not see why it should not answer very well indeed, whatever ill will I bear the man upon the general subject of the entail.” Mrs. Bennet's expression brightened considerably. “Jane is all but settled with Mr. Bingley, and Lizzy has Mr. Darcy paying her more attention than any mother could reasonably ask for, so naturally it falls to Mary. A clergyman with a good living and Longbourn to look forward to is nothing to be sneezed at, and Mary has always had a taste for sermons. I daresay the two of them shall get on famously.”

Mary looked up at last, her expression caught somewhere between surprise and the wounded dignity she generally displayed whenever the family's attention settled upon her without warning. “I have said nothing to suggest that I wish to marry Mr. Collins, Mama. I merely observed what seemed the most obvious course for him to take.”

“Well, you may as well be the one to take him, since neither of your elder sisters is likely to require him.” Mrs. Bennet returned to her tea, plainly satisfied that the matter required no further consideration. “A clergyman ought to value seriousness of mind in a wife, and you have always possessed a great deal of seriousness, Mary.”