Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Blocked, Page 12
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: MS. DE BOURGH in three-quarter close-up on the garden path, one hand on her cane, delivering the words with icy contempt. MS. DE BOURGH: 'You would be censured, slighted and despised by everyone connected with him.' Panel 2: Close-up of LIZZIE BENNET listening, entirely unflinching, the corner of her mouth beginning to lift. Panel 3: LIZZIE in medium close-up among the sunlit flowers, hands in her jacket pockets, calm and almost gentle. LIZZIE: 'Those would be heavy misfortunes. Being with him would come with better ones.' Panel 4: Tight close-up of MS. DE BOURGH gone white with rage, mouth a thin flat line, unable to find an answer.
Image description
Four panels: Ms. de Bourgh threatens Lizzie with being censured and despised, Lizzie listens unflinching, answers that being with him would come with better things, and the old woman is left speechless.
About this chapter
Two days after Jane says yes to Charles, a long black car noses up the flagstone path of the Bennet house and does not belong there. Out of it steps Ms. de Bourgh — Darcy's aunt, the imperious matriarch of the estate where Lizzie once refused him — who has driven all this way on the strength of a rumour: that her nephew is about to be engaged to Elizabeth Bennet. She dismisses the household, marches Lizzie out to the garden, and lays out the case with surgical contempt: the family's disgrace, Lydia's patched-up marriage, a match that was planned for Darcy since he was a boy. Then she asks for a promise — never, under any circumstances, to accept him. Lizzie, who has spent weeks certain she'd already lost him, refuses. Not because she has any claim on him, but because she will not be told whom she's allowed to want. Every threat de Bourgh throws — censure, exile from his world, being despised by everyone connected to him — Lizzie meets and out-argues, until the old woman leaves in cold fury, taking no leave and sending no compliments to her mother. Lizzie stands in the wreckage of the conversation while her mother demands to know who that was, and then, at the kitchen window, watching the car dwindle down the leafy street, the real meaning arrives: nobody drives two hours to forbid a thing that was never going to happen. Somebody told that woman something. Which means Darcy has not, after all, closed the tab on her.