Page 59 of Hard Home

"First," said Charlotte, walking. "At the Netherfield ball. You told me you did not know what had happened, and I believed you, and you have had four months since. What do you know now?"

Elizabeth told her. It took the length of the gravel walk and back, and she left out nothing, including the parts that made her look a fool; and Charlotte listened with her hands in her muff and did not interrupt once.

"Very well," she said at the end. "Second question. Do you know what is written in his pocket-book?"

"I have never seen it."

"I have. Not by asking; he reads it aloud to me, in the evenings, the way another man reads out the newspaper." Charlotte's voice did not alter. "It is her Ladyship's advice, set down verbatim, going back to the autumn. There are nine-and-forty entries. Twenty-two of them are about closets and drains and the poor of the parish and the proper feeding of a cow, and they are very sensible, Lizzy — that is a thing nobody tells you about her, she is extremely sensible about a cow."

"And the others?"

"The others are about people." Charlotte turned at the end of the walk. "Who ought to marry whom in this parish. Which farm ought to go to which son. There is an entry from November about a girl at Trelawny's who was not to be permitted to go into service at Bromley, with the reason given, and the reason is that her mother was a Naseby." She paused. "I looked up the Nasebys. There was an Accord in it, four generations back, and it is nearly out, and it is not entirely out."

"She is breeding them," said Elizabeth.

"She ismanagingthem," said Charlotte, "which is what she would call it, and which is what she has been doing since beforeeither of us was born, and I have watched her do it at four dinners now and I will tell you the most frightening part. She is not secret about it. She says it at table. She said to a farmer's wife in my hearing that the woman's daughter would do very well for the Dawlish boy and that she had considered it and it was settled, and the woman said thank you your Ladyship, and it will be." Charlotte's mouth was quite straight. "It is not a conspiracy. It is a hobby."

"And your third question?"

Charlotte stopped walking.

"To-morrow you will dine at Rosings," she said. "Her Ladyship will talk, and you will be asked forty questions, and Mr. Collins will be in a condition I cannot describe to you and you will see for yourself. And somewhere in the room there will be a young woman of about nine-and-twenty in a great many shawls who will not say one word from the soup to the carriages, and everybody will explain to you that her health is delicate, and Mrs. Jenkinson will build up her fire and cut up her meat.

"That is my third question, Lizzy, and it is the one I have been keeping for five weeks. I have nothing to do it with. You have."

"You want me to look at her."

"I want you to look at her," said Charlotte Collins, "and then I want you to tell me the truth, whatever it is, and if it is nothing at all I shall be extremely glad, and I shall sleep better than I have slept since Candlemas."

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Sir William stayed only a week at Hunsford; but his visit was long enough to convince him of his daughter's being most comfortably settled, and of her possessing such a husband and such a neighbor as were not often met with.

The invitation to Rosings came for the Tuesday.

Mr. Collins's triumph in consequence of this invitation was complete. The power of displaying the grandeur of his patronessto his wondering visitors, and of letting them see her civility toward himself and his wife, was exactly what he had wished for; and that an opportunity of doing it should be given so soon, was such an instance of Lady Catherine's condescension as he knew not how to admire enough.

"I confess," said he, "that I should not have been at all surprised by her Ladyship's asking us on Sunday to drink tea and spend the evening at Rosings. I rather expected, from my knowledge of her affability, that it would happen. But who could have foreseen such an attention as this? Who could have imagined that we should receive an invitation to dine there (an invitation moreover including the whole party) so immediately after your arrival!"

"I am the less surprised at what has happened," replied Sir William, "from that knowledge of what the manners of the great really are, which my situation in life has allowed me to acquire. About the court, such instances of elegant breeding are not uncommon."

Scarcely any thing was talked of the whole day or next morning, but their visit to Rosings. Mr. Collins was carefully instructing them in what they were to expect, that the sight of such rooms, so many servants, and so splendid a dinner might not wholly overpower them.

When the ladies were separating for the toilette, he said to Elizabeth,

"Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel. Lady Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us, which becomes herself and her daughter. I would advise you merely to put on whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest — there is no occasion for any thing more. Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved."

While they were dressing, he came two or three times to their different doors, to recommend their being quick, as Lady Catherine very much objected to be kept waiting for her dinner.

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They crossed the lane at half past four.

Elizabeth put her hand on the little green gate going out, as she had done on the first evening, and found it a gate; and then they were in the park, and it was like walking into a current.

She had expected to feel more of it and she felt less. That was the surprise. The leaning she had noticed in the parsonage garden — that steady few degrees of pull toward the house on the rise — did not increase as they climbed the slope. Itslackened, the way the noise of a river slackens when you get into it, and by the time they came up the steps to the hall she could not feel it at all, and understood that this was because she was inside it.

The hall, of which Mr. Collins pointed out with rapture the fine proportion and finished ornaments, they followed the servants through an antechamber to the room where Lady Catherine, her daughter, and Mrs. Jenkinson were sitting.