“You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room,” says Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.
“Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld,” vows Bingley, with effusion. “But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you who is very pretty, and I daresay very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.”
“Which do you mean?” asks Darcy, and, turning round, he looks for a moment at Elizabeth, till, catching her eye, he withdraws his own, and coldly says, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other young men. You had better return to your partner, and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”
Was ever heroine so put down in her own hearing? Elizabeth, we are told, remains with no very cordial feelings towards the offender, but, being the bright young girl she is, she makes stock of the incident by telling the story with great spirit among her friends; and for the superb Mr. Darcy there is a proper punishment preparing.
Mr. Bingley’s sisters are drawn with a few fine touches. They are fashionable, stylish-looking women, each possessing a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. They have a great opinion of their own claims, and a corresponding disdain of what they reckon the greatly inferior claims of others. With all their polish and savoir faire, which enable them to be entertaining when they like, they are always arrogant and ill-bred, and can be insolent when provoked.
Yet even Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley are attracted by beautiful, gentle Jane Bennet, and drawn into the semblance of a friendship for her. They are too independent and too far removed, as they conceive, from such rivalry, to experience any jealousy, or to take alarm on their brother’s account, till matters have gone a considerable length between Bingley and Jane.
Among other minor characters in the book are the Lucas family, who occupy the next county house, and are the nearest neighbours of the Bennets, and on intimate terms with them. Charlotte Lucas, the eldest daughter, a plain-looking, but sensible and agreeable young woman of seven and twenty, is Elizabeth Bennet’s great friend after her sister Jane. Charlotte’s father, Sir William, has been in trade, from which he has retired on the accident of receiving the honour of knighthood. He was always civil and obliging, and from the great era in his life he became elaborately courteous, with bourgeois fine manners. He is profuse in good-natured—sometimes mal-à-propos—compliments. Thus, at a large party at Lucas Lodge, the host blandly praises Darcy—for his dancing of all things, and then, struck with the notion of doing a gallant thing, arrests Elizabeth Bennet, who is passing them: “My dear Miss Eliza, why are not you dancing? Mr. Darcy, you must allow me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner. You cannot refuse to dance, I am sure, when so much beauty is at hand.”
Have we not all known, at some period in our lives, the well-intentioned, obtuse, complacent, slightly Brummagem Sir William, who can be terrible, without the slightest suspicion of it, on occasions?
Elizabeth draws back, and refuses the partner very decidedly, and her resistance does her no harm with the gentleman, though he has really not been unwilling to lend himself to Sir William’s clumsy move.
In truth, the stately, grave Mr. Darcy, after refusing to see anything worth the trouble of bestowing his notice in Elizabeth Bennet—after taking the greatest pains to convince all his party that she has not got a good feature in her face—becomes keenly alive to the charm of that face, and captivated by the animation and archness which neither fear his censure nor solicit his favour. For Elizabeth simply regards him as the man who makes himself disagreeable everywhere, and who has spoken slightingly of herself. She is happily careless of his pretensions. What are his birth, estate, intellect, and person to her? With her it is “handsome is that handsome does.”