Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Blocked, Page 6
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: MS. DE BOURGH has stopped and half-turned on the flagstone path among the flower beds, both hands resting on the head of her thin dark cane, staring down her straight nose with pale steel-blue eyes. The porch of the Bennet house is behind her. MS. DE BOURGH: 'A report of an alarming nature reached me. That you are about to be engaged to my nephew.' Panel 2: Tight close-up of LIZZIE BENNET, freckles across her nose, eyes wide and lips slightly parted — completely blindsided. LIZZIE: 'That is an incredible rumour.'
Image description
Ms. de Bourgh stops on the garden path, both hands on her cane, and states the rumour that Lizzie is about to be engaged to her nephew; below, a stunned close-up of Lizzie.
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.