Chapter 56

It was a morning about a week after the engagement of Bingley and Jane had been settled. Bingley and the ladies of the family were sitting together in the dining room. Then the sound of a carriage made them all look suddenly toward the window. A carriage drawn by four horses was coming across the lawn. It was too early in the morning for visitors. Besides, the carriage did not belong to any of their neighbors. The horses were hired from a posting inn. Neither the carriage nor the coat of the servant who rode ahead of it was familiar to them. Still, it was certain that someone had come. Bingley soon persuaded Miss Bennet. He said that they should not stay shut up with such an unwelcome visitor, and that the two of them should go out and walk in the shrubbery. After the two of them had gone, the three who remained went on guessing without getting any answer. At last the door was thrown open and the visitor came in. It was Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Of course they were all prepared to be surprised. But the surprise itself was greater than they had expected. It was so even for Mrs. Bennet and Kitty, who did not know her at all. The surprise that Elizabeth felt was greater still.

Lady Catherine came into the room with an air even less friendly than usual. She answered Elizabeth's greeting only with a slight bow of her head. Then she sat down without a word. She did not ask to be introduced. Even so, Elizabeth had told her mother the visitor's name as she came in.

Mrs. Bennet was greatly astonished. But she was flattered by a visit from so great a lady, and she received her with the utmost politeness. Lady Catherine sat for a while without speaking. Then she said to Elizabeth in a very stiff voice.

"I hope you have been well, Miss Bennet. Is that lady your mother?"

Elizabeth answered shortly that she was.

"And that, I suppose, is one of your sisters?"

"Yes, Lady Catherine," said Mrs. Bennet, who was delighted to be speaking with Lady Catherine. "She is the one just above my youngest. My youngest of all was lately married. And my eldest is walking somewhere near here with a young man who will soon be one of the family."

After a short silence Lady Catherine said. "Your park here is very small."

"It is nothing beside Rosings, Lady Catherine. But I assure you it is much larger than Sir William Lucas's park."

"This must be a most uncomfortable room to sit in on a summer evening. The windows face full west."

Mrs. Bennet assured her that they never sat in this room after dinner. Then she added.

"May I take the liberty of asking whether Mr. and Mrs. Collins are well?"

"Yes, they are very well. I saw them the night before last."

Elizabeth now expected that she would bring out a letter from Charlotte. That seemed the only reason Lady Catherine could have for calling. But no letter appeared. Elizabeth could make nothing of it at all.

Mrs. Bennet very politely offered her some refreshment. But Lady Catherine refused, firmly and rudely, to eat anything at all. Then she rose and said to Elizabeth.

"Miss Bennet, there seems to be a rather pretty little wild garden on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you will favor me with your company."

"Go, my dear," cried her mother. "Show Lady Catherine the different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage."

Elizabeth obeyed. She ran to her own room for her parasol. Then she went downstairs with her noble guest. As they passed through the entrance hall, Lady Catherine opened the doors of the dining parlor and of the drawing room. After a short look, she declared them to be rooms of a decent appearance. Then she walked on.

Her carriage still stood at the door. Elizabeth saw that her waiting woman was inside it. The two of them walked in silence along the gravel path that led to the little wood. Elizabeth had decided to make no effort at conversation with a woman who was now more proud and more disagreeable than usual.

Elizabeth looked at Lady Catherine's face and thought. "How could I ever have thought that she was like her nephew?"

When the two of them entered the little wood, Lady Catherine began.

"Miss Bennet, you cannot fail to understand the reason for my coming all this way. Your own heart and your own conscience must tell you why I have come."

Elizabeth looked at her with a face of plain surprise.

"You are quite mistaken. I have not been able to guess at all why I have the honor of seeing you here, Lady Catherine."

Lady Catherine spoke in an angry voice. "Miss Bennet, you ought to know that I am not a person to be treated lightly. However insincere you may choose to be, you will not find me so. My character has always been famous for being truthful and open. In a matter of this weight I shall not give up that rule. Two days ago I heard a most shocking report. I was told that your sister was about to make an extremely good marriage, and that you, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, would very likely be married to my nephew before long. To my own nephew, Mr. Darcy. I knew that it could only be a foul lie. I did not wish to insult my nephew by allowing it to be possible. But I decided to set out for this place at once, so that I might make my feelings known to you."

Elizabeth colored with surprise and scorn as she spoke. "If you believed it to be impossible, I wonder that you took the trouble of coming so far. What did you mean to gain by it?"

"I mean to require you to deny to all the world at once that any such report is true."

"Your coming to Longbourn to see me and my family," said Elizabeth coolly, "will rather be a confirmation of such a report, if indeed one exists."

"If one exists? Do you pretend to know nothing of it? Has it not been busily spread about by your own family? Do you not know that such a story has gone all over the world?"

"I have never heard any such thing."

"And can you also say that there is no foundation for it at all?"

"I do not claim to have as open a character as you have, Lady Catherine. You may ask questions. But I may not choose to answer them."

"This is not to be endured. Miss Bennet, I demand a satisfactory answer. Has my nephew made you an offer of marriage?"

"You have declared that such a thing is impossible, Lady Catherine."

"It ought to be so, and it must be so while he keeps his reason. But your arts and your temptations may have clouded his mind for a moment and made him forget what he owes to himself and to all his family. You may have drawn him in."

"If I had done so, I should be the last person in the world to confess it."

"Miss Bennet, do you know who I am? I am not used to being spoken to in this way. I am almost the nearest relation he has in the world, and I have a right to know all his most serious concerns."

"But you have no right to know mine. And behavior of this kind will never make me answer plainly."

"Understand my meaning exactly. This marriage that you presume to desire can never take place. No, never. Mr. Darcy is engaged to my daughter. Now what have you to say?"

"Then I shall only say that you can have no reason at all to think that he will make me an offer."

Lady Catherine hesitated a moment and then answered.

"Their engagement is of a peculiar kind. From the time they were infants they were meant for each other. It was the dearest wish of his mother and of mine. While the two of them still lay in their cradles we planned the marriage. And now, at the very moment when the wishes of both sisters are to be fulfilled, is the marriage to be stopped by a young woman of low birth, of no importance in the world, and with no connection at all to our family? Have you no regard for the wishes of his friends, or for his silent promise to Miss de Bourgh? Have you lost all sense of decency and delicacy? Have you not heard me say that from his earliest years he was meant for his cousin?"

"Yes. I have heard it before. But what is that to me? If there is no other obstacle to my marrying your nephew, I shall not be stopped by knowing that his mother and his aunt wished him to marry Miss de Bourgh. You and his mother did everything you could in planning the marriage. The making of it depended on other people. If Mr. Darcy is bound to his cousin neither by honor nor by his own heart, why should he not make another choice? And if I am that choice, why may I not accept him?"

"Because honor, good manners, and prudence forbid it, or rather, because interest forbids it. Yes, Miss Bennet, interest. For do not expect to be noticed by his family or his friends, if you go against the wishes of them all. You will be blamed, slighted, and despised by everyone connected with him. A connection with you will be a disgrace, and not one of us will so much as speak your name."

"These are heavy misfortunes," Elizabeth answered. "But the wife of Mr. Darcy is certain to have great happiness belonging to her position, so on the whole she would have no cause to complain."

"What a stubborn and willful young lady you are! I am ashamed of you! Is this your gratitude for the attentions I paid you last spring? Do you owe me nothing for that? Let us sit down. Miss Bennet, you must know that I came here with the firm resolve to gain my purpose. No one will turn me from it. I have never been used to giving way to anyone's whim. I am not in the habit of bearing disappointment either."

"Then your own situation will only be the more to be pitied, Lady Catherine, but it will have no effect on me."

"Do not interrupt me! Hear me in silence. My daughter and my nephew were born for each other. On the mother's side they come of the same noble line, and on the father's side they come of respectable, honorable, and ancient families, though without a title. The fortune on both sides is splendid. Everyone in each family has settled that the two of them belong to each other. What, then, is to divide them? The presumptuous greed of a young woman who has no family, no relations, and no fortune, and who aims at a sudden rise in the world! Is such a thing to be endured? No, it cannot be and it shall not be! If you knew your own good, you would not wish to leave the class in which you were brought up."

"In marrying your nephew I should not think that I was leaving that class. He is a gentleman, and I am the daughter of a gentleman, so in that respect we are equal."

"True. You are the daughter of a gentleman. But what was your mother? Who are your uncles and your aunts? Do not imagine that I am ignorant of their condition."

"Whatever my relations may be," said Elizabeth, "it is nothing to you, Lady Catherine, if your nephew does not object to them."

"Tell me once and for all. Are you engaged to him?"

Elizabeth would not have answered merely to satisfy Lady Catherine. But after a moment's thought she could not help saying.

"I am not."

Lady Catherine seemed pleased.

"And will you promise me never to enter into such an engagement in the future?"

"I will make no such promise."

"Miss Bennet, I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a more sensible young woman. But do not deceive yourself into thinking that I shall ever give way. I shall not go away until you have given me the assurance I demand."

"I shall certainly never give it. I will not be frightened into anything so wholly unreasonable. You wish Mr. Darcy to marry your daughter. But would a marriage between them be one bit more likely if I made the promise you want? Supposing that he loves me, would my refusing his hand make him wish to offer it to his cousin? Allow me to say, Lady Catherine, that the arguments you have used to support this unreasonable demand are as small as the demand itself. You have greatly mistaken my character if you thought that I could be worked upon by such persuasion. How far your nephew might approve of your meddling in his affairs I cannot tell. But you have certainly no right to concern yourself in mine. I must beg you, then, to trouble me no more on this subject."

"Do not be in such a hurry. I have not finished at all. To all the objections I have already made, I have one more to add. I know the whole of your youngest sister's shameful running away. I know it all. That young man's marriage with her was a thing hastily pieced together with your father's money and your uncle's. And is such a girl to be my nephew's sister-in-law? Is the son of the steward of his late father to be his brother-in-law? Good heavens! What in the world are you thinking of? Are the woods of Pemberley to be defiled in this way?"

"You can have nothing further to say," Elizabeth answered in anger. "You have insulted me in every possible way. I will go back to the house."

She rose as she spoke. Lady Catherine rose too. The two of them turned back. Lady Catherine was greatly enraged.

"You have no regard, then, for the honor and the good name of my nephew! You heartless and selfish young lady! Do you not think that a connection with you must disgrace him in the eyes of everybody?"

"Lady Catherine, I have nothing further to say. You know my mind."

"So you are determined to have him at any cost?"

"I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in the way that I believe will make me happy, and I shall not consider you, or anyone else who has nothing at all to do with me."

"Very well. You refuse, then, to grant my request. You refuse to do what duty, honor, and gratitude require of you. You are determined to ruin him in the eyes of all his friends and to make him the laughingstock of the world."

"In this matter neither duty, nor honor, nor gratitude has any claim upon me," Elizabeth answered. "None of those principles would be broken by my marrying Mr. Darcy. As for the anger of his family or the outrage of the world, if his family were truly angry at his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's concern. And people in general would have too much sense to join in any such contempt."

"And this is your real opinion and your final resolve! Very well. I shall now know how to act. Miss Bennet, do not imagine that your ambition will ever be satisfied. I came to try you. I hoped to find you a reasonable young lady. But depend upon it, I will carry my point."

Lady Catherine went on talking in this way until they reached the door of her carriage. Then she turned suddenly around and added.

"Miss Bennet, I shall not say goodbye to you. I shall send no greetings to your mother. You do not deserve such attention. I am displeased in the most serious way."

Elizabeth made no answer. She did not try to persuade Lady Catherine to come into the house again. She walked quietly home by herself. As she went upstairs, she heard the carriage drive away. Her mother was waiting impatiently at the door of her own room. She asked why Lady Catherine had not come in again to rest.

"She did not choose to," said her daughter. "She said that she must go."

"What a very fine-looking woman she is! And how vastly polite of her to call here! She came, I suppose, only to tell us that Mr. and Mrs. Collins are well. She must have been on her way somewhere. And since she was passing through Meryton, she thought she might as well look in on you. Lizzy, I suppose she had nothing particular to say to you?"

Elizabeth was forced here to give in to a small lie. To own the substance of the conversation between them was impossible.