Swipe Left on Mr. Darcy — Are You Sure?, Page 4
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1. Lizzie sits flat and steady on the end of the bed, holding Jane's eyes, not smiling. LIZZIE: To Mr. Darcy. Panel 2. Tight close-up of Jane. The laugh is gone completely, lips parted, eyes wide. Panel 3. Jane sits up straighter, shaking her head slightly, searching her sister's face for the joke. JANE: No. No, you're teasing me. Panel 4. Jane leans in, gentle and bewildered, brows drawn together. JANE: Lizzie. You hate him. Panel 5. Lizzie looks down at her own folded hands in the lamplight, open and unguarded. LIZZIE: I did.
Image description
Five panels at night in the bedroom. Lizzie names Mr. Darcy and Jane refuses to believe her, insisting she is teasing and reminding her that she hates him. Lizzie answers quietly that she did.
About this chapter
Lizzie comes home from the leafy lane engaged to the one man nobody in that house would believe she could want, and discovers the hardest part is not saying yes: it is being believed. Jane laughs, certain it is a joke, until the whole reordered story comes out in the dark of their bedroom, and asks the one question Lizzie has never let herself answer out loud. The next morning Darcy is at the front door in his charcoal overcoat asking, of all people, for her father. Behind a closed living-room door two men have a conversation Lizzie is not in, while her mother speculates about lawsuits and Mary offers wisdom nobody requested. Then it is her turn, and Mr. Bennet, dry and unbothered for twenty-two chapters, is not dry at all: he wants to know whether his sharpest daughter has sold herself to a rich man she cannot respect. So Lizzie tells him everything, including the part that was never hers to tell, and says the words she has never once said about anybody. Her father takes off his glasses. Downstairs, Mrs. Bennet goes silent for three unprecedented seconds before the house detonates, and the chapter closes where it opened: the same porch steps at golden hour, except she is not walking up them alone.