Bingley's witticisms on FINE EYES.
Chapter 10
The day passed much as the day before had done. Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley had spent some
hours of the morning with the invalid, who continued, though slowly, to mend; and in the
evening Elizabeth joined their party in the drawing-room. The loo-table, however, did not
appear. Mr. Darcy was writing, and Miss Bingley, seated near him, was watching the progress of
his letter and repeatedly calling off his attention by messages to his sister. Mr. Hurst and Mr.
Bingley were at piquet, and Mrs. Hurst was observing their game.
Elizabeth took up some needlework, and was sufficiently amused in attending to what passed
between Darcy and his companion. The perpetual commendations of the lady, either on his
handwriting, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect
unconcern with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in
union with her opinion of each.
"How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!"
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He made no answer.
"You write uncommonly fast."
"You are mistaken. I write rather slowly."
"How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of a year! Letters of business,
too! How odious I should think them!"
"It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of yours."
"Pray tell your sister that I long to see her."
"I have already told her so once, by your desire."
"I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend pens remarkably well."
"Thank you—but I always mend my own."
"How can you contrive to write so even?"
He was silent.
"Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp; and pray let her know
that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely
superior to Miss Grantley's."
"Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again? At present I have not room to
do them justice."
"Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you always write such charming
long letters to her, Mr. Darcy?"
"They are generally long; but whether always charming it is not for me to determine."
"It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill."
"That will not do for a compliment to Darcy, Caroline," cried her brother, "because he does NOT
write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables. Do not you, Darcy?"
"My style of writing is very different from yours."
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"Oh!" cried Miss Bingley, "Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable. He leaves out
half his words, and blots the rest."
"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them—by which means my letters
sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents."
"Your humility, Mr. Bingley," said Elizabeth, "must disarm reproof."
"Nothing is more deceitful," said Darcy, "than the appearance of humility. It is often only
carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast."
"And which of the two do you call MY little recent piece of modesty?"
"The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider
them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not
estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is
always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the
performance. When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that if you ever resolved upon quitting
Netherfield you should be gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of panegyric, of
compliment to yourself—and yet what is there so very laudable in a precipitance which must
leave very necessary business undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone
else?"
"Nay," cried Bingley, "this is too much, to remember at night all the foolish things that were said
in the morning. And yet, upon my honour, I believe what I said of myself to be true, and I
believe it at this moment. At least, therefore, I did not assume the character of needless
precipitance merely to show off before the ladies."
"I dare say you believed it; but I am by no means convinced that you would be gone with such
celerity. Your conduct would be quite as dependent on chance as that of any man I know; and if,
as you were mounting your horse, a friend were to say, 'Bingley, you had better stay till next
week,' you would probably do it, you would probably not go—and at another word, might stay a
month."
"You have only proved by this," cried Elizabeth, "that Mr. Bingley did not do justice to his own
disposition. You have shown him off now much more than he did himself."
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"I am exceedingly gratified," said Bingley, "by your converting what my friend says into a
compliment on the sweetness of my temper. But I am afraid you are giving it a turn which that
gentleman did by no means intend; for he would certainly think better of me, if under such a
circumstance I were to give a flat denial, and ride off as fast as I could."
"Would Mr. Darcy then consider the rashness of your original intentions as atoned for by your
obstinacy in adhering to it?"
"Upon my word, I cannot exactly explain the matter; Darcy must speak for himself."
"You expect me to account for opinions which you choose to call mine, but which I have never
acknowledged. Allowing the case, however, to stand according to your representation, you must
remember, Miss Bennet, that the friend who is supposed to desire his return to the house, and the
delay of his plan, has merely desired it, asked it without offering one argument in favour of its
propriety."
"To yield readily—easily—to the PERSUASION of a friend is no merit with you."
"To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either."
"You appear to me, Mr. Darcy, to allow nothing for the influence of friendship and affection. A
regard for the requester would often make one readily yield to a request, without waiting for
arguments to reason one into it. I am not particularly speaking of such a case as you have
supposed about Mr. Bingley. We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance occurs before
we discuss the discretion of his behaviour thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between
friend and friend, where one of them is desired by the other to change a resolution of no very
great moment, should you think ill of that person for complying with the desire, without waiting
to be argued into it?"
"Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to arrange with rather more