Mr. Collins’ heart is scarcely touched, but his vanity—thick-skinned as it is—has received a wound, for which, however, there is a speedy cure, since within three days he transfers his suit with the happiest result to Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte Lucas, who has not hesitated to plan this conclusion.
Elizabeth is amazed and hurt at the absence of right principle and feeling on the part of Charlotte, who has been so quickly wooed and won—nay, who has herself stooped to woo a man for whom she can have neither respect nor regard.
But in Jane Bennet’s remonstrances against the hard terms which Elizabeth uses when speaking of the marriage—in the emphasis with which the elder sister dwells on Mr. Collins’ respectable establishment as well as his unblemished character—above all, in the way in which Charlotte’s choice is made to turn out tolerably well for her in the end, we find that Jane Austen, while revolting at the conduct which she herself could never have practised, is inclined so far to endorse the reasoning of the prudent, steady gentlewoman who has offended against Elizabeth’s nobler instincts.
“Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony,” Jane Austen says of Charlotte Lucas, “marriage had always been her object: it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservation from want. This preservation she had now obtained; and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it.”
Poor Mrs. Bennet’s chagrin is complete. She is deprived of the opportunity of “marrying” one of her daughters very fairly. Lady Lucas is to have a daughter married first. And Charlotte Lucas is eventually to supplant Mrs. Bennet in her own house of Longbourn. Can the irony of destiny go farther?
The other new comer appears in a fresh officer who joins the militia regiment in Meryton. He is a Mr. Wickham, a young man of exceedingly attractive looks and manners, being as universally agreeable and sympathetic as Darcy is the reverse.
Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Wickham are mutually struck with each other on their introduction in the High Street of Meryton, and the impression at first sight is confirmed when they spend an evening in company together, at a tea and supper party given by Mrs. Philips, the Bennets’ aunt.
Wickham’s place in the round game of cards for the young people is between Elizabeth and her boisterous young sister Lydia, who would have proceeded to engross the gentleman had it not been for the rival attractions of the game of “Lottery Tickets,” and her zeal in acquiring mother-of-pearl fishes—the old counters.
Elizabeth and Wickham are permitted to talk together and to discover how their views and tastes coincide. Not the least bond of union is the confirmation of Elizabeth’s worst prejudices against Mr. Darcy. Wickham happens also to be a Derbyshire man, and he has actually been brought up in the most intimate relations with the Darcys. Wickham’s father was the confidential agent of Darcy’s father, who had been George Wickham’s godfather, and had charged himself with educating and providing for the lad. By appearing to respond unwillingly to the roused curiosity of Elizabeth, and by the flattery of giving her the idea that he is confiding in her alone, the young man manages, without seeming to be publicly proclaiming his wrongs, to convey to her the information of how badly he has been treated by young Darcy. This haughty, hard, unscrupulous man has defrauded his early companion of the church living bequeathed to him by his godfather. Darcy has a young sister, Georgiana, who had been very fond of her father’s favourite when he petted and played with her as a child, but her brother has infected her with the inordinate pride and selfishness of the family, and set her also against Wickham.
Elizabeth drinks in the whole story, which is a testimony to her own acuteness, is full of pity for Wickham and of wrath against Darcy.