Chapter Text
Mahomet was a man of superior genius; in writing his pretended revelation, he borrowed much from the Sacred Scriptures; he endeavoured to adorn his work with all the imposing charms of human eloquence, and cultivated language; and he appealed to the perfection of his compositions, as a proof of their divine original. Such an appeal would have little served his cause in a critical and enlightened age. The learned of such an age would reject a prophet who in the relation of events, past and future, is seen to contradict, or add strange extravagant conceits to the credible and well-attested revelations of former times.
In the Koran, which admits the heavenly origin and divine mission of Jesus Christ, he is represented as returning to the earth, marrying, begetting children, and embracing the Mahometan doctrines; and this is said plainly and without figure or mystery; and the reasons are plain why it is so said.
— John Chappel Woodhouse, M. A., A Dissertation, in which the evidence for the Authenticity and Divine Inspiration of the Apocalypse is stated, and vindicated from the Objections of the late Professor J. D. Michaelis; 1805
The day which saw the Gandjees’ call on the Darcys, was the same day on which Mr. Collins was called from his amiable Charlotte by the necessity of making some preparations for the reception of his bride; and therefore Elizabeth and Jane, returning with the Gandjees to Meryton on the Monday two days afterwards, had the misfortune of missing him again.
Saira, upon being questioned as to her preference, had resolutely refused to be parted from Miss Elizabeth. She had no objection to travelling wherever Miss Elizabeth and Shrimati Gandjee pleased to go, but she would not be left behind; and so she, and the small valise of personal effects, which she had acquired in London with an advance of her wages, were loaded onto the back of the carriage beside Carter and her things, and transported the twenty-two miles to Longbourn.
When they arrived, Mr. and Mrs. Gandjee were received by the family with a number of kisses and tearful exclamations proportional to the years which had separated them. The children must be examined and fussed over, every body’s looks must be admired, and the tumult of embraces, which had just subsided, must be renewed and completed at least twice more.
The Gandjees’ next order of business was to distribute presents—though whether these offerings were intended as Christmas gifts, or were merely given on the occasion of their travels, they left to their recipients to determine.
Twenty minutes later, as Mr. Bennet flipped through a Hindy translation of the Hitopadesha, and Mary tentatively plucked at the strings of her new kamaisha, Mrs. Gandjee was entreated by Mrs. Bennet, Kitty, and Lydia, to describe the newest fashions of London, as she had seen them. In this endeavour she called more than once upon Elizabeth as an aide-mémoire. She was also queried about the colours, cuts, and patterns lately worn by the modish ladies of Bombay; upon which Kitty and Lydia, not much interested in any thing which affected them so little, allowed their attention to drift back to their newly acquired wares: but Miss Bennet was polite, and Elizabeth really interested.
The next part which the Gandjees had to play was a less active one. Mrs. Bennet had much to boast and to complain of: and as it was by no means certain which mode of speech she most excelled at, it was some time before her auditors had more to do than to smile and hum in sympathy.
“—and a daughter on the point of being married! I would, you know, have had two, but that horrid Mr. Collins was so above himself, it was not to be endured. To imagine that, in order to be worthy of the honour of being his wife, Mary ought to bend to his whims! No, indeed! As though my girls, in possession of gentility, and money, and beauty—though, to be sure, Mary is not so handsome as the rest—to imagine that my girls should be begging after him! Well, Mr. Bennet was so good as to say that he did not care so much about the match after all—and so we told Mary never to mind about it. The only thing that vexes me about it now, is that it has got Lady Lucas so frightfully puffed up—as if she has taken some great prize from us! No, indeed! Well, I just told her that if her daughter could feel right about taking other people’s husbands, then she was very welcome to him—though I am sure it is just what I would never do.
“But however, I have one daughter about to be married, and to such a rich, handsome, agreeable gentleman—Charlotte’s is nothing to it! And when you return to London, I hope that you will see what you can do with Lizzy in that way: for, really, I am about ready to wash my hands of her. You won’t have known any thing about it,” continued she, forgetting that she had thoroughly canvassed the subject in two or three letters over the years, “but she has already sent away one or two of the local young men, who had very promising inclinations—not but that they were too poor and too low for her, anyway—and I am not at all certain that she will not end in doing the same to poor Mr. Wickham, who has been asking after her this past week and more, and who is so very handsome and charming. But no, no, nobody is good enough for Miss Lizzy! Not but that Lizzy is a very good girl—but you just be sure to tell her that with her complexion she cannot afford to be too dainty about the business, and to find her some respectable officer, or clergyman, or Company man, and see her safely settled down.”
Elizabeth, engaged in attempting to learn a new style of zari work for which she had been gifted the materials, affected not to hear. Lydia, who had been waving about her new peacock-feather fan, despite the coolness of the weather, in order to hear her new delicate golden bangles chime together, now approached and fluttered it over the table, so that the shorter lengths of gold wire were scattered; Elizabeth huffed in pretended offence, but, after a moment, the sisters laughed together heartily.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Gandjee made her sister a slight answer, and then, in compassion to Elizabeth, turned the conversation. When alone with Elizabeth afterwards, she spoke more on the subject:—
“We talked before, Lizzy, of your good sense; and I hope that you have too much of it to mind what your mother says. You are a markedly pretty girl: besides which, no reasonable man cares about these things—certainly no body you would want to marry. And, indeed, you need never marry at all, if you do not like it. You know that you have friends—Jane, and your uncle and I—with whom you will always have a home.”
Elizabeth assured her of her perfect indifference; but Mrs. Gandjee nevertheless resolved to speak to her sister-in-law about guarding her tongue at the earliest opportunity that presented itself.
After dinner, Elizabeth applied to her father for any aid he might give her in learning Hindy herself. Mr. Bennet, long accustomed to Elizabeth’s intellectual curiosities, readily agreed: and if the lesson he gave were disorganised and not really suited for a beginner, Elizabeth was so quick that it hardly mattered.
“I am glad to see, by the by,” said he, as she rose to leave him to his own studies, “that you have not by your stay in town acquired any bad habits. I was not sure that I would not find you desiring to eat dinner barefoot on the floor.”
“There is yet time, sir.”
Christmas dawned dull and grey; the provisory frosts, which had covered the lawn overnight, had melted by morning. Miss Bingley and the Hursts were yet in London, but Bingley, having completed his business in town, had arrived in Meryton the afternoon before, and intended to spend Christmastide with the Bennets and Gandjees. Karim and Manoj made good their escape from the nursery and the schoolroom, delighted to have a holiday to which they were not usually entitled.
Most of the family were crowded into the large drawing-room when Bingley was announced at Longbourn. Mrs. Bennet was busy with the housekeeper, revising her menu yet again; but Mr. Bennet sat in a corner of the room, lending his countenance to the gathering. Kitty and Lydia were arguing over a trade, which one of them wanted to make, and the other did not; and Elizabeth and Jane were sat on the floor, teaching the children how to play at cat’s-cradle. Mary had retreated to the quiet of her own room.
Bingley cheerfully greeted every body present, and shook hands with Lizzy and Jane with especial warmth; and then gave each child a little bag of nuts and dried figs. As the boys opened the bags to ascertain their contents, a surprised “Thank you, sir!” and its echo were heard; and Manoj, as the elder and therefore the emissary, went to ask Mrs. Gandjee whether they might not have some now.
“You are very welcome!” replied Bingley, smiling brightly. “It is not every day that our Saviour is born!”
“Who is our saviour, mami?” asked Manoj, through a mouthful of candied almonds; meanwhile sitting beside her on the sopha, the more properly to receive their caller.
Bingley, becoming conscious of his faux pas, coloured deeply; but the Gandjees, who were well-practiced in the art of syncretism, were untroubled—and Mrs. Gandjee told Manoj, that he was already aware of who Isa was. Manoj and Karim, eager to show off their learning before the man who was to become their bhai, and to prove themselves worthy of their sweets, chattered happily about the wife of Imran and her daughter Maryam, to whom Jibril brought news of a son, and that son was Isa, and he performed many miracles, and he was a masih:—“but I beg your pardon, sir,” concluded Manoj, “for I do not know the English.”
“Messiah,” supplied Mr. Gandjee; and the children tested the word to themselves.
Mr. Bingley gave the boys the praise which they were wanting, and told them that they must be very clever and diligent to have remembered so much; he was sure that he had never been such a diligent student himself.
“I think you are too modest,” said Jane. “I am sure that you always did well.”
“Yes, Bingley,” returned Elizabeth—“you see that your reputation is under Jane’s protection: therefore you must not say any thing against it.”
To this succeeded a general conversation, to which the children for a while seemed attentive: but eventually Karim laid his bag aside and applied to Manoj for a recommencement of their game, which they could by now carry on pretty well by themselves. They spent some time in recreating the figures they remembered, then began to invent new ones.
The day passed amidst the alternating periods of calm and chaos which seven inhabitants, four guests, and a dozen servants must occasion in a house of moderate size. That night, when Saira began to help her undress for bed, Miss Elizabeth handed her a small box—
“I know that you don’t celebrate, yourself,” said her lady. “But I noticed that you had pierced ears, and no ear-rings.”
Inside the box was a pair of pretty garnet ear-drops in a pinchbeck setting.
“Oh! Thank you,” cried Saira, forgetting herself so far as to leave off helping her mistress, and instead bend down slightly to don the ear-rings in the vanity’s mirror. She twisted her head this way and that, to admire their effect in the candlelight.
Miss Elizabeth laughed. “Well! I am very happy you like them, Saira. Now, why don’t you retire for the night? I shall manage the rest very well for myself.”