Pride and Prejudice and Kitties Page 6
ALTHOUGH ELIZABETH MARVELED that Charlotte could tolerate the irksome society of Mr. Collins, she soon discovered that he spent the chief of every morning hunting in his garden. His afternoons were spent sprawled on his desk dozing or gazing out of his window in hopes of glimpsing Miss de Bourgh’s phaeton. To her credit and sense, Mrs. Collins encouraged her husband in all these activities. Thus, Charlotte spent many hours in contented solitude.
Mr. Collins and Charlotte ambled to Rosings almost every afternoon and were occasionally favored by a visit from Lady Cat herself. This great lady pried into every aspect of Charlotte’s domestic arrangements. She poked into every corner, sharpened her claws on the furniture, meowed for refreshment, and then sniffed suspiciously and walked away with her ears back when it was served.
As Easter approached, Mr. Darcy and his cousin, Colonel Fitz-william, were expected at Rosings. Elizabeth looked forward to observing Mr. Darcy’s behavior towards the sickly Miss de Bourgh, for whom he was destined and who had been throwing up hair-balls all week. If, as Lady Cat remarked, it hadn’t been for the hair-balls, her daughter would have been a picture of feline loveliness and health.
On the day Mr. Darcy and his cousin were to arrive, Mr. Collins paced eagerly back and forth in the lane within view of Rosings. As soon as he spotted the carriage, he ran home to proclaim the great news of the arrival of these two esteemed cats.
This great lady pried into every aspect of Charlotte’s domestic arrangements.
That very afternoon, Mr. Darcy and his cousin came to visit the parsonage, much to Charlotte’s amazement.
“I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy would never have come so soon to wait upon me,” she said.
Mr. Darcy, however, was as grave and silent as ever. Probably, Elizabeth conjectured, he was recalling her muddy paws when she came to visit the ailing Jane at Netherfield or obsessing about her inferior pedigree.
Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly; but his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time without speaking to any body. At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to enquire of Elizabeth after the health of her family. She answered him in the usual way, and after a moment’s pause, added,
“My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never happened to see her there?”
She was perfectly sensible that he never had; but she wished to see whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed between the Bingleys and Jane; and she thought he looked a little confused as he answered that he had never been so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet. The subject was pursued no farther, and the gentlemen soon afterwards went away.
COLONEL FITZWILLIAM MADE himself most agreeable to all the party at the parsonage, but it was a full week before they received another invitation from Lady Cat to visit Rosings. And then, when they arrived, she greeted them coolly and mainly purred to her two nephews. Colonel Fitzwilliam, however, engaged Elizabeth in chasing a piece of fluff under a chair and the two frolicked with such spirit and flow that Lady Cat insisted on joining them, nearly spoiling their sport.
After catnip tea, Colonel Fitzwilliam reminded Elizabeth of her promise to pounce on the piano, and though Elizabeth acquitted herself with both grace and animation, Lady Cat scolded her for not practicing more and meowed loudly all through Elizabeth’s performance.
“How well Anne would have performed,” she proclaimed, “if only she had the strength to jump on the keys. I, too, would have been a great proficient,” she added, “if I’d made the slightest effort.”
While Elizabeth was performing, Mr. Darcy walked magisterially up to the piano, where he could command a full view of Elizabeth who, however, refused to be intimidated. Instead, she playfully exposed Mr. Darcy’s true character to Colonel Fitzwilliam by relating how, at a country gathering in Hertfordshire, Darcy refused to chase a feather, though there were many cats willing to romp with him.
I didn’t make a fuss when they threw me out of their bedroom for a minor indiscretion.
“I have not the talent,” replied Mr. Darcy, in his defense, “which some cats possess of frolicking easily with those I have never encountered before. I cannot catch their easy playfulness or appear interested in their favorite brand of cat food, napping routines, or method of enslaving their owners.”
“I, too,” replied Elizabeth, “have often fallen short in my ambition to enslave my owners, but then I have always supposed it to be my fault because I didn’t make a huge fuss when they threw me out of their bedroom for a minor indiscretion.”
“We, neither of us,” said Mr. Darcy, gazing deeply into Elizabeth’s eyes, “perform well to strangers.”
“You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me? I will not be alarmed though your sister does play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.”
“I shall not say that you are mistaken,” he replied, “because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know, that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own.”
Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said to Colonel Fitzwilliam, “Your cousin will give you a very pretty notion of me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am particularly unlucky in meeting with a person so well able to expose my real character, in a part of the world where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of credit.”
. . .
Here they were interrupted by Lady Catherine, who called out to know what they were talking of. Elizabeth immediately began playing again. Lady Catherine approached, and, after listening for a few minutes, said to Darcy,
“Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss, if she practiced more, and could have the advantage of a London master. She has a very good notion of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne’s. Anne would have been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn.”
Anne would have been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn.
ELIZABETH WAS CLEANING herself in solitude one morning when she was startled by the entrance of Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy, likewise, seemed surprised at finding her alone. However, he promptly sat down and commenced washing his face.
After a little conversation and many long silences, Mr. Darcy commented that Mr. Collins appeared fortunate in his choice of a mate. Elizabeth agreed that, in general, Charlotte was a wise and sensible cat.
“And she is but fifty miles from her home,” observed Mr. Darcy. And then, moving closer to Elizabeth, he began to purr. “I think you would not want to be so close to Longbourn always?”
Elizabeth looked surprised. Mr. Darcy seemed to recollect himself and promptly sat down on a newspaper and stared steadfastly into a corner of the room until Charlotte and Maria appeared.
“What can be the meaning of this?” asked Charlotte, as soon as he was gone. “My dear, Eliza, he must be in love with you, or he would never have called on us in this familiar way.”
When Elizabeth, however, described Mr. Darcy’s long silences, even Charlotte was doubtful.
Perhaps, the two agreed, Mr. Darcy was merely bored, for the field sports were over and he was for the present consigned to being a house cat.
It was plain to them all that Colonel Fitzwilliam came because he had pleasure in their society, a persuasion which of course recommended him still more; and Elizabeth was reminded by her own satisfaction in being with him, as well as by his evident admiration of her, of her former favourite George Wickham; and though, in comparing them, she saw there was less captivating softness in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s manners, she believed he might have the best informed mind.
ELIZABETH OFTEN ENJOYED prowling around the park while she was at Hunsford. She encountered Mr. Darcy more than once in the wood during these walks, which perplexed her. The circumstance struck her as perverse, even for a cat, because she was perfectly sensible of the fact that Mr. Darcy took little pleasure in her company. Yet he persisted in sniffing the same shrubs she sniffed, climbing the same trees she scampered up to avoid him, even pouncing on the very insects she intended to capture for herself. His curiosity further expressed itself in questions about her home in Hertfordshire, what she thought of Mr. and Mrs. Collins’s union, and whether she looked forward to exploring the great rooms of Rosings. Towards what could these questions tend?
On one such a solitary ramble, Elizabeth met not Mr. Darcy, but Colonel Fitzwilliam. He accompanied her back to the parsonage, and in the course of their conversation revealed that Darcy had lately saved a friend from the inconvenience of a most imprudent match by disentangling him from the velvet claws of a “certain country cat.” That the friend was Bingley, and the certain “country cat” her sister Jane, Elizabeth could not doubt.
Back in her own room in Hunsford, Elizabeth was so agitated by the pain Mr. Darcy had caused Jane by separating her from Mr. Bingley that she began shedding profusely and was suited by neither humor nor hair to present herself at Rosings. The Hunsford party, thus, went on without her.
During the course of the evening, Elizabeth pondered what Mr. Darcy could have objected to in her sister. She settled the matter by deciding it was nothing more than the Gardiners’ residence in Cheapside, and Mr. Gardiner’s propensity to hunt rats in his own warehouses in London.
She was engaged one day as she walked, in re-perusing Jane’s last letter, and dwelling on some passages which proved that Jane had not written in spirits, when, instead of being again surprised by Mr. Darcy, she saw on looking up that Colonel Fitzwilliam was meeting her.
. . .
“I imagine your cousin brought you down with him chiefly for the sake of having some body at his disposal [said Elizabeth]. I wonder he does not marry, to secure a lasting convenience of that kind. But, perhaps his sister does as well for the present, and, as she is under his sole care, he may do what he likes with her.”
“No,” said Colonel Fitzwilliam, “that is an advantage which he must divide with me. I am joined with him in the guardianship of Miss Darcy.”
“Are you indeed? And pray what sort of guardians do you make? Does your charge give you much trouble? Young ladies of her age are sometimes a little difficult to manage, and if she has the true Darcy spirit, she may like to have her own way.”
As she spoke, she observed him looking at her earnestly; and the manner in which he immediately asked her why she supposed Miss Darcy likely to give them any uneasiness, convinced her that she had somehow or other got pretty near the truth. She directly replied,
“You need not be frightened. I never heard any harm of her; and I dare say she is one of the most tractable creatures in the world. She is a very great favourite with some ladies of my acquaintance, Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley.”
WHEN EVERYONE HAD gone, Elizabeth employed herself in batting about Jane’s letters (which of course, put her in an even worse humor with Mr. Darcy). Thank goodness he would soon be leaving Rosings!
A moment later, Elizabeth was startled by the sound of the doorbell. She scooted under the couch in an instant, where she always fled when the doorbell rang. (As distressing were her reflections on Jane’s heartbreak and Mr. Darcy’s heartlessness, they were nothing compared to the ringing of a doorbell.) Perhaps, thought Elizabeth, peeking out, it was Colonel Fitzwilliam. But instead, to her amazement, Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Darcy only, walked into the room.
He appeared quite distracted, but catching sight of Elizabeth’s tail waving under the couch, thought to inquire after her health. Venturing out of her hiding place, Elizabeth answered coldly and immediately commenced licking her paw.
A long silence followed, during which Mr. Darcy hopped onto a chair, hopped down and then back up again, then began:
“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stopped licking her paw, stared at him, and was silent.
This Mr. Darcy considered sufficient encouragement, and he went on with gentlemanly trills and cat calls to communicate what he had long felt. He was most articulate, but not only about his passionate attachment to Elizabeth. He also dwelt with warmth on all the reasons their union was a degradation to him by virtue of Elizabeth’s common pedigree on her mother’s side, and inferior connections, particularly her rat-hunting uncle in Cheap-side. He made it abundantly clear that if he could have resisted her, he certainly would have. But, as he had not been successful in repressing his feelings, he fervently hoped she would put him out of his misery and accept his paw in marriage.
Arching her back, Elizabeth composed herself as best she could. She then made it clear that though she wished she could feel grateful for the honor of his offer, she must refuse him.
Leaping up to the mantle, Mr. Darcy stared at her in disbelief.
“Cat got your tongue?” asked Elizabeth archly.
Darcy recollected himself. “And this is all the reply which I am to have the honor of expecting?! I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little endeavor at civility, I am thus rejected.”
“And I,” replied Elizabeth, “might as well inquire why, with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that your regard for me rubbed your fur the wrong way! And what about the unhappiness you caused my dear sister Jane by separating her from Mr. Bingley?”
Mr. Darcy did not deny it.
“And the injuries you inflicted on poor Wickham?” went on Elizabeth.
“His injuries!” snarled Mr. Darcy. “Oh, it was a cat-fight indeed. But Wickham has no injuries to resent.”
“You have deprived him of at least six of his nine lives, and of that independence which is both the will and wish of every cat.”
“And this,” Mr. Darcy said after a pause, “is your opinion of me?”
Elizabeth hissed.
A moment later, mortified and ashamed by what his feelings had been, and by Elizabeth’s censure and scorn, Mr. Darcy hastily quit the room.
The scene left Elizabeth in a pitiful state. When she thought of all that had just passed between Mr. Darcy and herself, the confusion and tumult of her mind was great. A moment later, she heard Lady Cat’s carriage in the lane, and reflecting how little able she was to present herself to Charlotte’s scrutiny, she hastily retreated upstairs to her room, her ears flattened against her head.
“Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections?” [said Darcy] “To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”
Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every momen
t; yet she tried to the utmost to speak with composure when she said,
“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.”
She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued, “You could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”
Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on.
“From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that groundwork of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”