Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Blocked, Page 7
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Full-page panel. A low angle from just behind LIZZIE BENNET's shoulder. MS. DE BOURGH stands at her full imperious height on the flagstone path, framed against bright morning sky, trees and the flowering garden, one hand resting on the head of her thin dark cane and the other at her side. Her chin is lifted, her pale steel-blue eyes fixed and merciless, her silver-grey chignon immaculate. Lizzie's dark-brown half-up hair and olive-green shoulder fill the lower foreground, small against her. MS. DE BOURGH: 'Tell me at once. Is it true?'
Image description
Full-page low-angle shot of Ms. de Bourgh towering over Lizzie on the sunlit garden path, demanding to be told at once whether it is true.
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.