Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Blocked, Page 16
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: The same warm Bennet living room from the same angle as the chapter's first page. LIZZIE BENNET stands at the tall window with a mug in one hand and the other on the sill, looking out through the parted patterned curtains at the now-empty leafy street. JANE BENNET sits on the cream floral sofa behind her, hands in her lap, watching her sister. JANE: 'What did she want?' Panel 2: Close-up of LIZZIE at the window in the warm amber light, freckles across her nose, a slow astonished smile spreading across her face. LIZZIE: 'To make absolutely sure I would never say yes.' LIZZIE (thought): 'Which means he might still ask.'
Image description
Mirroring the opening page: Lizzie stands at the living-room window with her mug looking out at the now-empty street while Jane asks what the visitor wanted; below, a close-up of Lizzie's slow astonished smile.
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.