II.
In the following spring Elizabeth Bennet accompanies Sir William Lucas and his daughter Maria, travelling post, to pay her old friend Charlotte a visit in her Kent parsonage.
Any little awkwardness and coolness—there never was estrangement—between the friends have died out; “a good memory is inexcusable in such a case.” Elizabeth only recollects that she was Mr. Collins’ first choice when she has a passing comical impression that he is showing off his excellent garden and comfortable house, not without a design of letting her feel all she has lost.
But Mr. Collins is well content, as he may be, with the sensible, good-tempered wife who, in making the best of the home she has secured for herself, fully recognises that it is for her dignity to keep up his; though she encourages him to spend a great part of his time in working in his garden, and has her sitting-room at the back of the house, since, if it had commanded a view of the lane, and the passers-by, it would have been apt to entail on her a large portion of her husband’s spare time and company.
Elizabeth has the honour of being included along with the Lucases in the Collins summons, twice a week, to relieve the dulness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s family party at Rosings, and of being patronised and dictated to by Lady Catherine, a domineering, self-sufficient woman, who tells Mr. Collins how to manage his parish, Mrs. Collins how to keep her house and rear her poultry, Elizabeth how to practise her music, and Maria Lucas how to pack her trunk.
With the exception of Charlotte and Elizabeth, the recipients of these favours are overwhelmed, and awed into the humblest gratitude and obedience. Charlotte looks over Lady Catherine’s foibles, because they belong “to a superior woman and kind neighbour,” exactly as the judicious young matron takes care to value at the highest rate all the advantages of her position, and to ignore as far as possible its drawbacks, thus contriving to remain tolerably satisfied with her lot.
Elizabeth, entirely undazzled by the assumption and splendour which prevail at Rosings, amuses herself with detecting a resemblance between Mr. Darcy and his aunt, and feels satisfied that Lady Catherine’s only child, Miss de Bourgh, a sickly, supercilious girl, with a large fortune, who is designed for her cousin, will make him a fit wife.
Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam, another nephew of Lady Catherine’s, arrive on a visit at Rosings, while Elizabeth and Maria Lucas are still staying at Hunsford Vicarage, which is only divided by the lane and the park palings from the great house.
Naturally, the two young men, whatever the aristocratic trammels under which they labour, are attracted daily to the more congenial society of the parsonage. For that matter, Colonel Fitzwilliam, though the younger son of an earl, is agreeable and unassuming, likely to make himself happy among any fairly well-born and well-educated young people, and especially with a pretty, witty young girl like Elizabeth Bennet.
But even Darcy, under stress of circumstances, thaws considerably. He pays his homage unmistakably in the same quarter as that which attracts his cousin, and betrays considerable annoyance and shame when his aunt’s impertinence is directed at Elizabeth.