Pride and Prejudice and Kitties, стр. 26
Mr. Darcy remained silent.
Caroline ought to have remained silent herself, but her jealousy made her reckless. She went on, “I particularly recollect your saying one night, Mr. Darcy, after the Bennets had been dining at Netherfield, ‘She? A beauty?!—I should as soon call her mother a purebred!’”
“Yes,” Mr. Darcy hissed sharply, “but that was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest cats in the country.”
He then went away and Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself. Indeed, she would have preferred a shot from the vet to the sting of Mr. Darcy’s words.
Elizabeth soon saw that she was herself closely watched by Miss Bingley, and that she could not speak a word, especially to Miss Darcy, without calling her attention. This observation would not have prevented her from trying to talk to the latter, had they not been seated at an inconvenient distance; but she was not sorry to be spared the necessity of saying much. Her own thoughts were employing her. She expected every moment that some of the gentlemen would enter the room. She wished, she feared that the master of the house might be amongst them; and whether she wished or feared it most, she could scarcely determine.
. . .
While thus engaged, Elizabeth had a fair opportunity of deciding whether she most feared or wished for the appearance of Mr. Darcy, by the feelings which prevailed on his entering the room; and then, though but a moment before she had believed her wishes to predominate, she began to regret that he came.
ELIZABETH HAD BEEN disappointed during their visit to Derbyshire not to have received any letters from Jane. But she was rewarded on the third day of their stay by two fat letters from her sister. The first began with an account of balls (especially a knitted one acquired by Mrs. Philips, which had fresh catnip inside), bird hunts, and other delightful summer schemes. But the second letter contained intelligence of an alarming nature.
An express had come to Longbourn at midnight the night before, with news that Lydia had run away, had thrown herself utterly into the claws of—Wickham! They had not gone to Gretna Green, where they might have frolicked respectably, but were thought instead to be hiding in London!
An express came at midnight.
Poor Mrs. Bennet, imagining wild dogs, dark alleys, and all manner of dangers befalling her beloved kitten, had gone into hysterics upon hearing the dreadful news and taken to her bed (the covered one, where she felt safest).
“My father has gone off to London to recover Lydia,” wrote Jane, “and my mother is terrified lest Mr. Bennet and Wickham get into a cat fight, and Wickham attack him with a fatal bite!”
Jane concluded her letter by urging Elizabeth and the Gardiners to hurry home as soon as possible, as they were all in a terrible uproar, and Mrs. Bennet screeched and howled from morning until night.
Elizabeth was about to run out in pursuit of her aunt and uncle when the door opened and who should walk into the room but Mr. Darcy!
He looked startled at seeing her agitation, for Elizabeth was trembling more violently than she had when a strange human once picked her up whilst she was rambling on a country lane near Longbourn.
Mr. Darcy looked at her with deep concern.
“I must go at once to find my aunt and uncle!” cried Elizabeth.
“You are not well enough to go!” said Darcy. “Let me get the servant. May I fetch you a bowl of milk for your present relief?”
After a servant had been sent for her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth related the dreadful news of Lydia and Wickham.
“They are gone,” she cried, “and Lydia is lost to her friends and family forever—concealed no doubt, in the shadowy corners of London with that whiskered menace, Wickham. Oh, if only I had communicated to my family what he really was! It is entirely my fault,” mewed Elizabeth mournfully, “and now it is all too late!”
Darcy looked at her with more feeling than he was sensible of expressing.
“How is such a cat as Wickham to be worked on?” cried Elizabeth. “Lydia has no papers, no pedigree, nothing to tempt him. He will surely abandon her to the streets and sewers and she will be lost to us forever!”
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner soon returned, and, with one last grave look, Darcy hastily bid Elizabeth goodbye.
I will never see him again, thought Elizabeth. And she had never felt, until now when it was too late, that she could have loved him. Fate, reflected Elizabeth, as she and her aunt and uncle climbed into the carriage to return to Longbourn, is even more perverse than cats!
Darcy made no answer. He seemed scarcely to hear her, and was walking up and down the room in earnest meditation; his brow contracted, his air gloomy. Elizabeth soon observed, and instantly understood it. Her power was sinking; every thing must sink under such a proof of family weakness, such an assurance of the deepest disgrace. She could neither wonder nor condemn, but the belief of his self-conquest brought nothing consolatory to her bosom, afforded no palliation of her distress. It was, on the contrary, exactly calculated to make her understand her own wishes; and never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must be vain.
UPON REACHING LONGBOURN, Elizabeth eagerly