Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Mutual Friends, Page 1
By Suha · Published
Transcript
Full-page establishing shot. Morning light over a pristine pale-gravel drive leading through tall ornate wrought-iron gates toward a grand, cool stone-and-glass manor in the distance. Lizzie Bennet — dark-brown wavy hair in a loose low ponytail, olive-green utility jacket over a white tee, blue jeans and white sneakers — stands small in the foreground, a weekend duffel held in one hand at her side, looking up at the estate with a wry, bracing expression. Lizzie (to herself): 'Okay. Be nice.'
Image description
Lizzie Bennet stands alone with a weekend duffel bag on a pale-gravel drive, looking up at wrought-iron gates and a large cool stone-and-glass manor under a morning sky.
About this chapter
With Jane finally at peace and her own verdict on Darcy set in stone, Lizzie takes a weekend train out to visit Charlotte — now married to Mr. Collins and installed in a tidy cottage on the grounds of his employer's grand estate. Lizzie arrives braced to pity her best friend, certain she'll find her diminished and trapped. Instead she finds Charlotte quietly, unromantically content: she has carved out a livable arrangement, her own mornings and her own space, while Collins fusses over curtains and name-drops his imperious patron, Ms. de Bourgh. When the household is summoned to dinner at the big house, Lizzie meets Ms. de Bourgh herself — a cold, appraising matriarch who interrogates Lizzie's family and prospects and expects total agreement. Lizzie, politely, refuses to give it, and earns a startled, narrow-eyed once-over. By the end of the evening Lizzie has made her peace: Charlotte's chosen life is survivable, even good, and the visit is going to be fine. Then the estate's front door opens and the patron's newly arrived nephew steps into the hall — Fitzwilliam Darcy. The one certainty Lizzie came here to keep, that she was finally, permanently done with him, collapses on the spot. The mutual friend was him all along.