“My dearest Jane,” Captain Bennet said, embracing her sister, “How well you look! I must be very glad to have gone to the Corps. I would certainly have required a great deal of fortitude otherwise to be always outshone by my sister. Here, this is my darling Wollstonecraft: is she not lovely?”
“Oh! Yes,” Miss Bennet said, trying to smile despite trembling: only a very partial spirit indeed could have applied the epithet to Wollstonecraft, who added to the usual glaring orange eyes of a Longwing a slightly lengthened and vicious-looking snout framed between the yellowed spurs of bone whence the deadly acid came. Her upper teeth protruded around her lower jaw, producing an overhang rather like stalactites, and these were dangerously serrated. “Lizzy, she will not—she will not bite, will she?”
“Of course I will not bite,” Wollstonecraft said, “unless a French dragon should try and come this way: and in that case, I should spit, and not bite them, most likely. So you are Elizabeth’s sister? I am very pleased to meet you. Pray will you be sure that Elizabeth buys a very nice gown? I am fond of purple, myself, and I think she would look excellently well in it.”
Captain Bennet withdrew to her small private cabin to exchange her trousers and coat for a walking dress, and shortly the sisters walked out of the covert and into the town arm in arm. “So tell me more of this Bingley fellow of yours,” Captain Bennet said. “All I know from my mother’s last letter is he has five thousand a year and danced with you twice at the assembly, and that I am to wish you happy at any moment; and from yours, only that he is somewhere between sixteen and eighty years of age.”
“Oh!” Jane cried, coloring a little, “I do wish—I do wish that our mother might express herself with a little more circumspection. Of course she was writing to you, my dear Lizzy, and no one could ask her to be anything less than frank, but I fear she has led you astray. Mr. Bingley has been—is—extremely civil, but nothing more than that.”
“Is he handsome?”
“Anyone would call him handsome, I think. His manners are all that is pleasing, and I will say that he is the most charming gentleman of my acquaintance. But that is all.”
“Oh, that is all, is it! I see my mother has understated the case, for once,” and from this conclusion Elizabeth refused to be moved by her sister’s continuing protests. “Unless he is a great fool, he must love you, for he will not find anyone half so beautiful and so good-natured anywhere in the world, so if your heart is won, I must count you as good as lost. I can only hope he deserves you, dear Jane.”
She thus found herself glad of the ball after all, for its offering her the opportunity of looking Mr.
Bingley over more closely. Perhaps as a natural consequence of her now-settled independence, she had begun to think herself a protector of her sisters. Well aware of their mother’s single-minded devotion to their establishment, and privately mistrustful of her parent’s judgement, she feared to see Jane pressed to enter into a situation which could not give her true happiness.
But on this score she was soon relieved from care. The night of the ball arrived, Mr. Bingley was presented to her early in the evening, and she rejoiced to find him as Jane had described him, an amiable young man with easy and unaffected manners, ready to please and be pleased by his company. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet!” he cried, plainly not even noticing that she had mistakenly shaken his hand, rather than merely giving him her fingers to touch. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance at last. I understand you have been from home long?”
“I have made my home with my uncle these last nine years, sir,” Elizabeth said—not untrue, if one considered the Corps their mutual home—“and am only lately settled in Meryton, for a time.”
“Well, I am very glad to hear it,” Mr. Bingley said, with every appearance of meaning his words. “I know it will not fail to give your sister the greatest pleasure, and I hope we will see a great deal of you, as long as you are here.”
His warmth was amply recompensed by the cold bare civility of his sisters. “Your uncle is an aviator, I understand,” Miss Caroline Bingley said to Elizabeth, with an air of very faint incredulity, as though she did not care to believe it.
“He is,” Elizabeth said, and added with a little pardonable malice, “we have several officers, in our family.” She had endured a great deal of hissed whispers from her mother before the party on the need for secrecy, and the deadly danger to her sisters’ reputations if her own profession should become known to the company.
She was armored against incivility, however, by the knowledge that a dragon waited eagerly for her to return and give a full accounting of the gowns and jewels worn by every lady present. She did not feel unequal to her company: her gown was silk, her hair had been done up by her mother’s maid, and without attaching any great importance to the fact, she was comfortably aware she was in good looks.
She could not help but take a certain small satisfaction in having the young gentlemen of the neighborhood seek an introduction, and solicit her hand in one dance after another. But Captain Bennet was enough her father’s daughter to laugh at herself for this vanity, and to be amused rather than piqued when she overheard Mr. Bingley’s particular friend, a Mr. Darcy, describe her scornfully to that gentleman as “Tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me,” when Bingley would have presented him to her as a partner.
Others did not take the remark so lightly, however. “Oh!” Wollstonecraft said, her scarlet eyes widening when this incident had been recounted to her, in the spirit of sharing a joke. “If only I had been there! I should have given him a sharp lesson. Tolerable, indeed! My beloved Elizabeth, you must have been the most beautiful lady there, I am sure of it. Although,” she added broodingly, “I do wish you had agreed to buy some jewels.”
“No, my sister Jane was that,” Elizabeth answered, with real satisfaction, “and my family are not rich enough for me to go about buckled in jewels: a fine thing it would look for me to be in diamonds, and my elder sister with a string of pearls.”
“Diamonds,” Wollstonecraft sighed.
Elizabeth laughed. “I am very content with my ball, in any case. Jane has found herself a charming young man, I believe, who may be the only person in the world as amiable and accommodating as she is herself. They are very well matched. As for Mr. Darcy, I am told by my mother that he is past bearing with, and if she can say so, considering that he has a splendid estate in Derbyshire and ten thousand a year, that paints him a very monster indeed. I can well support the burden of his disapproval.”
She thought herself done once more with society, having endured this trial, but events were not to permit her so easy an escape. Having made arrangements to enjoy a country walk with her sister three days hence, Captain Bennet was disturbed to receive a short and ill-written letter from Jane early upon the prescribed morning with her excuses: she was at Netherfield Hall, and too ill to leave the house.
“She must be at death’s door to write me such a letter. I think I had better have a look in on her,”
Elizabeth said to Wollstonecraft. “Will you mind if I have Pulchria lift me over? We cannot go stampeding all Mr. Bingley’s game, and the lawn of Netherfield Hall is not large enough for you.” This was nearly true, but Elizabeth also thought it ill-advised to take Wollstonecraft anywhere she might encounter the unfortunate Mr. Darcy. The dragon had not ceased to mutter with indignation. “I will come back tomorrow midmorning, at the latest.”
“Of course not,” Wollstonecraft said, after a moment of visible struggle. “But I will just have a word with Pulchria,” she added, “in case you should see that Mr. Darcy,” confirming Elizabeth’s concern.
Pulchria, a Grey Copper, was one of their rear-wing-dragons, and only si
x tons; neither she nor her captain had any objection to the short jaunt. Captain Bennet was shortly deposited upon the lawn, and walked up to the house in front of an alarmed audience whose presence was betrayed only by the twitching of curtains in the windows. Thinking not at all of her appearance, she had worn her one other walking-dress, sadly outmoded, and her Hessian boots beneath, which had kicked up a great deal of mud onto her hem by the time she reached the door.
Mr. Bingley received her with great generosity and warmth despite having been called from his breakfast-table by a dragon at the door. The civility of his welcome was not matched by the rest of the scandalized party, who answered her own very perfunctory greetings with a few cold syllables, and as soon as Mr. Bingley escorted her to her sister’s room, they were quick to exclaim over her behavior.
“Well, Mr. Darcy,” Miss Caroline Bingley said to that gentleman, “I am sure you would not wish to see your sister astride a dragon, or presenting such a peculiar appearance.”
“Certainly not,” Mr. Darcy said, but as his astonishment caused his gaze to follow Captain Bennet as long as she was in sight, this response did not much satisfy Miss Bingley.
Quite unaware of this exchange, Elizabeth was disturbed to find Jane very poorly indeed, and the doctor, who was attending her, unsparing in his concern. “I am afraid I do not know the first thing about nursing, but if you can write me out instructions, I will see it done,” she said to that gentleman, and took herself back down to the sitting room, where Mr. Bingley had returned.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, in response to his sincere expressions of hope for Miss Bennet’s speedy recovery, “but I am afraid Jane is not well at all. However, if you will be so good as to lend me a few of your older maidservants, I trust we may contrive to pull her through the wind.”
She addressed Mr. Bingley, unconsciously, with the calm certainty which she was used to use with her own officers and crew. She had been encouraged in that mode early in her training by one of her commanders, Captain St. Germain of Mortiferus. “You’re too slight, m’girl,” that officer, who suffered not at all from the same complaint, had said, “and too pretty. You shan’t be able to bellow the fellows down as Roland or I can do; so you must make it sound there ain’t any question they will do as you wish.” At first hard-won, by now that assumed air of authority had become second nature in any circumstance where she felt herself in command, and she had not the least hesitation in taking charge of her sister’s care even in Mr. Bingley’s house.
Mr. Bingley himself did not take notice of her manner: he was too intent upon promising her any assistance she required, and directing his housekeeper to meet her requests at once. But Mr. Darcy regarded her across the room with renewed surprise, and as soon as Elizabeth had gone again, Miss Bingley once more cried out upon her. “What an abominable air of independence!” she said. “I declare I am ready to sink with shame on her behalf. It must be this excessive association with aviators. I would almost say it has destroyed her respectability.”
“I think it shows a very great consideration for her sister,” Mr. Bingley said, protesting, but he was quickly sunk beneath a storm of opposition from his sisters.
Elizabeth would have returned scorn for scorn, if she had known anything of Miss Bingley’s remarks.
But she was quite preoccupied, all the rest of the day, with her sister’s care. Miss Bennet was far more ill than she had wished to acknowledge even to herself, and her fever proved stubborn enough to hold until early in the evening. The third ice-bath at last broke it, and she was eased into bed weary but with slightly better color.
“There,” Elizabeth said, “you begin to look more like yourself, dear Jane. I think we have turned the corner, but I will not leave you until the morning. I hope Wollstonecraft will forgive me, but I am determined to bivouac at the foot of your bed tonight.”
“Dearest Lizzy,” Jane said drowsily, “I am so very grateful to have you, although I ought not say so, for I know you are neglecting your duty for my sake. But you must go down for dinner.”
“I hope not. They cannot want me, and I have nothing to wear.”
“You shall wear my clothes. Our mother sent some things for me, when she learned I could not leave directly. Pray do, sister. I cannot be easy in my mind when I have already so abused Mr. Bingley’s hospitality.”
Reluctantly, Captain Bennet went down in her borrowed gown and slippers, to face a company as unwelcome to her as she was to them. Mr. Bingley she thought better and better of, every moment, but of his sisters and friend she thought less and less. By nature independent-minded, her training and the company of aviators had increased her sense of scorn for condescension and the forms of polite society, when these were unaccompanied by real accomplishment and warmth.
“I hope dear Miss Bennet is better?” Miss Bingley asked her with a thin cold politeness, but as this was followed in close succession by her turning away and pressing Mr. Darcy for his opinion on the ragout of rabbit which had just been offered him, Captain Bennet was very little inclined to view it as evincing any real sentiment.
Her brother’s inquiries, when they had retired to the drawing-room, were more eager and more sincere. He repeated several times his hope that Miss Bennet should be wholly well soon, his determination she should not leave one moment sooner than this event, and his pleasure in Elizabeth’s own company.
“Thank you, sir,” Elizabeth said, touched by his kindness, although she could not feel herself a happy addition to the party. She did not play whist, and had to avow a lack of familiarity with the poets on whom Miss Bingley, with an air of great condescension, inquired for her opinion; and when Mr. Hurst expressed, with a grunt, his dour certainty of Bonaparte’s coming across the Channel one of these days, she was unable to refrain from answering with quick scorn, “Not while Mortiferus and Excidium are at Dover.”
“Eh? Who?” Mr. Hurst said, and she was recalled to her own indiscretion.
“The Longwings stationed at the covert there,” she said as briefly as she might, belatedly conscious she had arrested the attention of all the company.
“You mean the dragons, I suppose,” Mr. Bingley said, eager to pursue any line of conversation which should make his guest more comfortable, unaware that she would really have preferred any other. “I am ashamed to say I do not know the first thing about them. Are Longwings very large?”
Elizabeth could not refuse to answer, although she feared to betray herself at any moment. “Middle-weight, sir,” she said reluctantly, “but they are vitriolic—they have venom.”
“They can’t poison all the French coming over,” Mr. Hurst said, with a snort.
“A Longwing’s venom is capable of working through six inches of oak in ten minutes. A drop will kill a man at once. Bonaparte cannot come across with less than a hundred dragons, if then, so long as we have Longwings on the defense.”
Captain Bennet spoke decidedly and with pride. Although she would have been sorry to embarrass
Jane, not even that consideration could outweigh her loyalty to the Corps. But she was conscious of
putting herself forward, and she took the pause which her response brought as an opportunity to escape to the other side of the room and pretend to be perusing the books on the shelf there.
This brought her nearly to Mr. Darcy’s elbow, where that gentleman sat writing a letter, and in a minute Captain Bennet became aware that he had paused in his work and was sitting back in his chair, looking at her as though he meant to address her. She glanced at him with open inquiry, wondering why he did not speak, before she recollected that she ought not have taken notice. But by then he had flushed a little and ro
se to join her politely, much to her dismay.
“I suppose you are fond of Vauban,” he said, naming one of the authors on the shelf she regarded.
“I find he relies too much on mathematics, sir; in my opinion Coehoorn is more useful, as a practical matter,” she answered, thoughtfully, before she recollected too-late again that she ought know nothing of fortifications, and supposed that he had been meaning the remark as a jest at her expense.
Mr. Darcy, who had merely cast upon anything to hand on which to make conversation, was unaware of the sentiments he had provoked: he only recognized that her color heightened and her eyes were remarkably brilliant. “I have not made a study of such matters myself,” he said, and then was silent.
“I begin to fear you must think us very useless creatures, Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” Mr. Bingley called to her from the table. “And I cannot defend myself against the charge, but I assure you Darcy is a very sober fellow—at school he was forever at his books.”
“And bent upon studies more natural and appropriate to your station in life,” Miss Bingley said to Mr. Darcy, quick to interject herself into the conversation in his defense. “I am sure Miss Elizabeth will agree with me, will you not? After all, we cannot all be aviators.”
“By all means,” Captain Bennet said, still in a temper, which this sly remark did not improve. “It is not everyone who can occupy themselves with the business of defending the nation.”
She was sorry directly she had spoken; if Mr. Darcy and Miss Bingley chose to be uncivil, the same behavior was not pardonable on her part, having imposed herself upon her host. “The management of a great estate must be as difficult as that of dragons,” she added hastily, to take the sting from her words,
“and as necessary,” and offered Darcy a slight inclination of her head, as she would have made to a fellow-officer whom she had accidentally offended.
Darcy answered it in kind, and with Jane as her excuse, Elizabeth shortly made her escape from the drawing-room, feeling an equal share of mortification and disdain. “I must confess to you, dearest Jane,”