Page 6 of Hard Home

Elizabeth was not impressed by ten thousand a year, having decided some time ago that she was not the sort of person who would be, and was rather pleased with herself for it. But she watched him, as everyone watched him, and she saw what everyone saw: that he danced only with Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley; that he declined to be introduced to any other lady; that he walked about the room, and spoke occasionally to one of his own party; and that his face throughout wore an expression of such fixed and total absence that it was very difficult to interpret as anything but disgust.

He was, by the middle of the evening, the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and everybody hoped he would never come there again.

Mr. Bingley, by contrast, had danced every dance, was angry that the ball closed so early, and talked of giving one himself at Netherfield. He had danced twice with Jane. He haddanced twice with Jane, and he had asked, before the second, whether she would object to it, which nobody in Meryton could remember a young man doing in ten years, and Jane had said no, she would not object, and had gone the color of the inside of a shell.

Two dances is not a promise. It is not even the shadow of one. But the hands do meet, gloved, six times in the figure, and a little of what a person is passes through the glove whether they intend it or not, and everybody in the room counts. Mrs. Bennet counted. Lady Lucas counted. Elizabeth, who despised the counting, found that she had counted.

---

She was sitting down, two dances having been wanted for want of partners, when Mr. Bingley came off the floor to press his friend to join the dance, and Mr. Darcy was standing near enough for her to hear every word.

"Come, Darcy," said he, "I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance."

"I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this, it would be insupportable."

"I would not be so fastidious as you are," cried Bingley, "for a kingdom! Upon my honor I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see uncommonly pretty."

"Youare dancing with the only handsome girl in the room," said Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.

"Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you."

"Which do you mean?" and turning round, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, "She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me."

Mr. Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off.

And Elizabeth, who had been raised to be civil and had a temper that had never once in two-and-twenty years done as it was told, looked at him as he went.

---

It took no effort. It never did. She had described it once to Jane as being like the difference between hearing a man speak and hearing a man speak in a language you happen to know.

What she saw was this: a great and sustained pressure, held down hard.

There was no ease anywhere in him. Every part of him was engaged in keeping something in. It was not the vacancy his face advertised; it was the opposite of vacancy; it was a man standing in a small room with both arms braced against the walls, and it had been going on, she understood, for the whole two hours he had been in the building, and for a considerable time before that.

There, thought Elizabeth, with a satisfaction so complete that she did not examine it for even a moment.There it is.

For she knew what pressure was, in a man of that sort. She had seen it in Sir William Lucas after his knighthood, in small; in her aunt Philips's husband when he had money; in every man who has been given a thing he did not earn and must spend his life holding it above the heads of people who have not got it. It is contempt with the lid on. It is the labor of not saying aloud, at every hour of every day,do you know what I am.

Ten thousand a year. One of the first four Accords in England. And two hours of standing in a room full of Hertfordshire.

She had him. She had him entire, in eleven seconds, from across a room, and she was so pleased with the neatness of it that she got up and went to tell Charlotte, and made a very good story of it, and told it again to her mother, and again to Lydia, and again the next morning to her father, who laughed until he had to take off his spectacles.

---

The story served her all week. It was, by common consent, the best thing anybody had brought out of the assembly, and Elizabeth had the great pleasure of hearing it repeated back to her at Lucas Lodge by a woman who had not been present and did not know she was telling it to its author.

Only Charlotte, who was seven-and-twenty and had given up a good deal in exchange for seeing things clearly, said anything.

"You looked at him," she said. It was not a question. "Lizzy. You looked at him, and then you laughed. You have never once done those in that order."

"I do not know what you mean."

"You look, and then you go quiet, and then some days later you say something dreadful and accurate at the dinner table." Charlotte turned a card over. "Tonight you looked and laughed at once. Which means you found what you went looking for."

"He is proud, Charlotte."

"I dare say he is. He has every right to be." Charlotte set the card down. "I only observe that a man who is proud is at his ease, and by your own account that man was not at his ease for a single moment of the evening."