Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Mutual Friends, Page 3
By Suha · Published
Log in to see this page
Page 3 of Mutual Friends is for signed-in readers. Logging in brings you straight back here — and an account is free if you do not have one.
Transcript
Two stacked panels in a cozy, warm cottage interior. Top panel: Mr. Collins — doughy build, sweaty sheen, tight shiny slate-grey suit, lilac shirt and a loud patterned tie, hair combed over a bald spot — presents a set of tasteful curtains with one raised hand, beaming with a too-wide toothy smile. Mr. Collins: 'Ms. de Bourgh chose these curtains herself.' Bottom panel: Charlotte (glasses, knit sweater) stands just behind him and shares a flat, knowing sidelong glance with Lizzie (olive-green jacket). Charlotte: 'She chooses everything.'
Image description
Mr. Collins proudly gestures at cottage curtains, beaming; below, Charlotte and Lizzie exchange a flat, knowing look.
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.