In fact, Mr. Darcy is clever, proud, fastidious—conceiving himself entitled by his many undeniable advantages, which, however, he does not wear generously and genially, to his pride and fastidiousness.
A man in a similar position may very well be tempted to corresponding faults still, but even with a later code of manners disfigured by laziness, self-indulgence, and superciliousness, such arrogant haughtiness as Darcy betrayed, could hardly now be entertained by a man of Darcy’s sense and worth, and even if entertained, would no longer be openly exhibited in modern society. Local magnates were formerly permitted the tone of small sovereigns, and even when they were from home they were not required to come down from the heights of their overweening dignity and exclusiveness.
It is at so early a stage of their acquaintance as this important Meryton assembly that Bingley, accessible and agreeable to everybody, and dancing every dance, as a young man ought, shows his admiration of the sweet young beauty of the room—Jane Bennet, of Longbourn—by distinguishing her among his partners. He dances twice—one may say four times, with her—for we must remember that the old social, quaintly-performed, quaintly-named country dances were generally arranged in double sets. The couple who danced down the first were landed, so to speak, at the bottom of the second, up which they had to work their way, and then dance down a second time. A very respectable portion of time was thus employed. There were natural and graceful opportunities afforded for making friends, and for engaging, while still in a crowd, unexposed to invidious notice and comment, in cheerful or sentimental, more or less brilliant conversation à deux, but not so much à deux that the speakers could not fall apart and talk by way of variety to the ladies and gentlemen, whom the couple were pretty sure to know, standing above and below them in the set. Jane Austen repeatedly uses these country dances as a means to the speedy acquaintance of her young people. We have it on record that she herself had a hearty enjoyment in dancing, and was, like Anna Maria Porter and Susannah Blamire, a proficient in what was then held a peculiarly elegant accomplishment for a young lady. She was not, therefore, likely to undervalue the merely graceful exercise of dancing. Still, dancing must have been to her, as no doubt it was to her heroes and heroines, a fitting excuse for conversation—sensible as well as sprightly, serious enough sometimes, without any consciousness of incongruity in being in earnest in the middle of a country dance.
I may be told that there is an ample and better provision for a tête à tête in the conspicuous or the secluded saunter between the rapid whirls of round dances, but to my mind the earlier mode was the more daintily decorous, the freer from compromise, not to say the more social. One is tempted to wish back again the old English country dances, in which fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, often stood up in the same dance, and went with merry method through the intricate mazes with the suggestive names, “The White Cockade,” dating from the Jacobite rebellion, “The Wind that Shook the Barley,” of Irish origin, “The Country Bumpkin,” an English measure, “Petronella” and the “Boulanger,” like the Cotillon, of French descent. Will they not return, with the Queen Anne furniture and the Gainsborough costumes, and take their places along with the time-honoured “Sir Roger de Coverley?”
Mr. Bingley’s promising preference for Jane Bennet in these significant four dances is artlessly enough hailed by all her friends and neighbours, and ingenuously owned by herself to her dear sister and confidante, Lizzy.
It is at this ball, too, that Darcy makes that slighting speech within earshot of Elizabeth, which starts their acquaintance on an entirely wrong footing.
Elizabeth Bennet, with her own unapproachable gifts of eyes, and tongue, and toes, is a belle only second to her sister, and it is an unwonted experience for her to be sitting down during a couple of dances for lack of a partner. As if that were not enough, she has the mortification of hearing the repulse given to the well-disposed but rash assault which Bingley at that moment makes on his impracticable friend standing near her.
“Come, Darcy,” cries the amiable, indefatigable dancer, “I must have you dance. I hate to have you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance.”
“I certainly shall not,” declines Darcy. “You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner.” He adds that Bingley’s sisters are engaged, and that there is not another woman in the room with whom it would not be a punishment to him to stand up.
Bingley cries out at his friend’s fastidiousness, and maintains he has never met so many pleasant girls in his life as on that evening, and there are several of them uncommonly pretty.