Pride and Prejudice: An Amorous Retelling

3 :: Gatherings

The morning after the assembly brought Miss Charlotte Lucas and her mother to Longbourn to talk over the ball, an absolute necessity among these close neighbors.

The Lucas family lived a short walk from Longbourn. Before they'd moved into Hertfordshire, Sir William Lucas had been a mayor of a small market town and made a tolerable fortune in his trade. Then he'd risen to the honor of knighthood through an address he made to the king.

Feeling the distinction perhaps too strongly, he grew disgusted with his business and his town and moved his family to a house a mile from Meryton that he named Lucas Lodge. Here, he occupied himself being civil to all the world. Fortunately, his nature was inoffensive, friendly, and obliging so his presentation at St. James's made him courteous to everybody rather than supercilious. Lady Lucas, being a good kind of woman and not too clever, made a perfectly valuable neighbor to Mrs. Bennet. They had several children, Charlotte being the eldest at twenty-seven. She was sensible, intelligent, and Elizabeth's intimate friend.

"You began the evening well, Charlotte. You were Mr. Bingley's first choice," Mrs. Bennet said civilly to Miss Lucas.

Charlotte replied, "Yes, but he seemed to like his second choice better."

"Oh, you mean Jane. Because he danced with her twice. To be sure, that did seem as if he admired her. And I understand he said something..."

Charlotte knew what Mrs. Bennet was hoping she would say and was perfectly happy to oblige her. "Perhaps you mean what I overheard him say. Didn't I mention it to you? He was asked how he liked our Meryton assemblies, whether he didn't think there were a great many pretty women in the room, and who he thought the prettiest. And his answer was, 'Oh! The eldest Miss Bennet, beyond a doubt. There can't be two opinions on that point.'"

Mrs. Bennet beamed. "Oh, well that seems quite decided of him."

"My overhearings were more flattering than yours, Eliza," Charlotte said to her friend. "Mr. Darcy isn't nearly so worth listening to as his friend, is he? Poor Eliza—to be only just tolerable."

Elizabeth gave a good-humored smile to her friend to show she was unaffected.

Mrs. Bennet huffed. "I beg you wouldn't put into Lizzy's head that she ought to be upset about his ill-treatment. He's so disagreeable, I'd consider it a misfortune to be liked by him. I heard he was resentful to even be spoken to last evening!"

Jane, desiring to soften her family's opinion of the gentleman in question, offered, "Miss Bingley told me he never speaks much unless among his intimate acquaintances. With them he's remarkably agreeable."

"I don't believe a word of it," Mrs. Bennet replied. "He's simply eaten up with pride."

"His pride doesn't offend me so much as pride often does. He's a very fine young man with family, fortune, and everything in his favor. Doesn't he have some right to be proud?"

"That's true, Charlotte," Elizabeth acknowledged with her usual candor and cheerfulness, "and I could easily forgive his pride if he hadn't mortified mine."

"No, no," Mrs. Bennet insisted, "the conceit of that man won't do. Why, he didn't say three words to anybody all evening!"

"That doesn't bother me. I only wish he'd danced with Eliza," Charlotte said. She suspected, for all of Elizabeth's cheerfulness, that her friend had been injured by the gentleman's ill-founded pronouncement last evening.

"Lizzy," Mrs. Bennet declared, "I wouldn't dance with him if I were you."

Recalling his words and doubting the man would ever ask even if she were to say no, Elizabeth easily assured her mother, "I believe, ma'am, I can safely promise you I'll never dance with him."