Pride and Prejudice - Chaelisa Edition

Chapter 25

After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity, Mr. Jeong was called from his amiable Goeun by the arrival of Saturday. The pain of separation, however, might be alleviated on his side, by preparations for the reception of his bride; as he had reason to hope, that shortly after his return into Hertfordshire, the day would be fixed that was to make him the happiest of men. He took leave of his relations at Longbourn with as much solemnity as before; wished his fair cousins health and happiness again, and promised their father another letter of thanks.

On the following Monday, Mrs. Park had the pleasure of receiving her brother and his wife, who came as usual to spend the Christmas at Longbourn. Mr. Cho was a sensible, gentlemanlike man, greatly superior to his sister, as well by nature as education. The Netherfield ladies would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived by trade, and within view of his own warehouses, could have been so well-bred and agreeable. Mrs. Cho, who was several years younger than Mrs. Park and Mrs. Phillips, was an amiable, intelligent, elegant woman, and a great favourite with all her Longbourn nieces. Between the two eldest and herself especially, there subsisted a particular regard. They had frequently been staying with her in town.

The first part of Mrs. Cho’s business on her arrival was to distribute her presents and describe the newest fashions. When this was done she had a less active part to play. It became her turn to listen. Mrs. Park had many grievances to relate, and much to complain of. They had all been very ill-used since she last saw her sister. Two of her girls had been upon the point of marriage, and after all there was nothing in it.

“I do not blame Jennie,” she continued, “for Jennie would have got Miss Kim if she could. But Rosé! Oh, sister! It is very hard to think that she might have been Mr. Jeong’s wife by this time, had it not been for her own perverseness. He made her an offer in this very room, and she refused him. The consequence of it is, that Lady Lucas will have a daughter married before I have, and that the Longbourn estate is just as much entailed as ever. The Lucases are very artful people indeed, sister. They are all for what they can get. I am sorry to say it of them, but so it is. It makes me very nervous and poorly, to be thwarted so in my own family, and to have neighbours who think of themselves before anybody else. However, your coming just at this time is the greatest of comforts, and I am very glad to hear what you tell us, of long sleeves.”

Mrs. Cho, to whom the chief of this news had been given before, in the course of Jennie and Roseanne’s correspondence with her, made her sister a slight answer, and, in compassion to her nieces, turned the conversation.

When alone with Roseanne afterwards, she spoke more on the subject. “It seems likely to have been a desirable match for Jennie,” said she. “I am sorry it went off. But these things happen so often! A young woman, such as you describe Miss Kim Jisoo, so easily falls in love with a pretty girl for a few weeks, and when accident separates them, so easily forgets her, that these sort of inconsistencies are very frequent.”

“An excellent consolation in its way,” said Roseanne, “but it will not do for us. We do not suffer by accident. It does not often happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young woman of independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom she was violently in love with only a few days before.”

“But that expression of ‘violently in love’ is so hackneyed, so doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea. It is as often applied to feelings which arise from a half-hour’s acquaintance, as to a real, strong attachment. Pray, how violent was Miss Kim’s love?”

“I never saw a more promising inclination; she was growing quite inattentive to other people, and wholly engrossed by her. Every time they met, it was more decided and remarkable. At her own ball she offended two or three young ladies, by not asking them to dance; and I spoke to her twice myself, without receiving an answer. Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”

“Oh, yes!—of that kind of love which I suppose her to have felt. Poor Jennie! I am sorry for her, because, with her disposition, she may not get over it immediately. It had better have happened to you, Rosé; you would have laughed yourself out of it sooner. But do you think she would be prevailed upon to go back with us? Change of scene might be of service—and perhaps a little relief from home may be as useful as anything.”

Roseanne was exceedingly pleased with this proposal, and felt persuaded of her sister’s ready acquiescence.

“I hope,” added Mrs. Cho, “that no consideration with regard to this young woman will influence her. We live in so different a part of town, all our connections are so different, and, as you well know, we go out so little, that it is very improbable that they should meet at all, unless she really comes to see her.”

“And that is quite impossible; for she is now in the custody of her friend, and Miss Manoban would no more suffer her to call on Jennie in such a part of London! My dear aunt, how could you think of it? Miss Manoban may perhaps have heard of such a place as Gracechurch Street, but she would hardly think a month’s ablution enough to cleanse her from its impurities, were she once to enter it; and depend upon it, Miss Kim never stirs without her.”

“So much the better. I hope they will not meet at all. But does not Jennie correspond with her sister? She will not be able to help calling.”

“She will drop the acquaintance entirely.”

But in spite of the certainty in which Roseanne affected to place this point, as well as the still more interesting one of Kim’s being withheld from seeing Jennie, she felt a solicitude on the subject which convinced her, on examination, that she did not consider it entirely hopeless. It was possible, and sometimes she thought it probable, that her affection might be reanimated, and the influence of her friends successfully combated by the more natural influence of Jennie’s attractions.

Miss Park accepted her aunt’s invitation with pleasure; and the Kim's were no otherwise in her thoughts at the same time, than as she hoped by Miyeon’s not living in the same house with her brother, she might occasionally spend a morning with her, without any danger of seeing her.

The Chos stayed a week at Longbourn; and what with the Phillipses, the Lucases, and the officers, there was not a day without its engagement. Mrs. Park had so carefully provided for the entertainment of her brother and sister, that they did not once sit down to a family dinner.

When the engagement was for home, some of the officers always made part of it—of which officers Miss Moon was sure to be one; and on these occasion, Mrs. Cho, rendered suspicious by Roseanne’s warm commendation, narrowly observed them both. Without supposing them, from what she saw, to be very seriously in love, their preference of each other was plain enough to make her a little uneasy; and she resolved to speak to Roseanne on the subject before she left Hertfordshire, and represent to her the imprudence of encouraging such an attachment.

To Mrs. Cho, Moon had one means of affording pleasure, unconnected with her general powers. About ten or a dozen years ago, before her marriage, she had spent a considerable time in that very part of Derbyshire to which she belonged. They had, therefore, many acquaintances in common; and though Moon had been little there since the death of Manoban’s father, it was yet in her power to give her fresher intelligence of her former friends than she had been in the way of procuring.

Mrs. Cho had seen Pemberley, and known the late Mr. Manoban by character perfectly well. Here consequently was an inexhaustible subject of discourse. In comparing her recollection of Pemberley with the minute description which Moon could give, and in bestowing her tribute of praise on the character of its late possessor, she was delighting both her and herself. On being made acquainted with the present Miss Manoban’s treatment of her, she tried to remember some of that person’s reputed disposition when quite a lad which might agree with it, and was confident at last that she recollected having heard Miss Lalisa Manoban formerly spoken of as a very proud, illnatured girl.