Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Blocked, Page 15
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: The warm Bennet kitchen — cream shaker cabinets, open shelves of jars and crockery, the butler sink under the window, a low dome pendant lamp over the heavy dark-wood table. LIZZIE BENNET stands alone at the table with both palms flat on the wood, staring at nothing, replaying the conversation. Panel 2: Extreme close-up of Lizzie's dark-brown almond eyes and the freckles across her cheeks as the thought arrives. LIZZIE (thought): 'Somebody told her something.' Panel 3: Medium close-up of LIZZIE straightening up under the pendant lamp, breath caught, one hand still on the table, astonishment beginning to break across her face. LIZZIE (thought): 'Nobody forbids a thing that was never going to happen.'
Image description
Three panels in the warm kitchen: Lizzie leans on the table staring at nothing, an extreme close-up of her eyes as the thought lands, then she straightens as she works out what the visit meant.
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.