Darcy watched Mr Collins try to assemble his preparation, brought up unprepared against an instrument he had not, upon the road, been given any account of.
“Mr Ellison, sir. Sir, by your leave. I had not—that is, the patroness has not, in her correspondence with me, communicated the particulars of his lordship’s—by your leave, her ladyship had given me to understand that the offices of the family should, in the present matter, be at her own command; her ladyship has the offices, sir, the offices at her own table—”
“Mr Collins, you have heard Mr Ellison. You shall hear nothing further in the way of explanation. Her ladyship of Rosings has not the offices you have been given to understand she has, and shall not, upon the laying of any information against my wife, have any office whatever. You came up to Northmere, sir, in the office of a man who knew when he set out that the cooperation of my hand was the only path by which the present matter might be brought to the end you sought. You shall not have my cooperation. You shall return to Hunsford with what you came with: a paper that is no longer yours, and a patroness that is no longer at your back.”
Mr Collins’s mouth had begun to open and to close at intervals.
“Sir—by your leave—”
He did not get further than that, for the door opened.
She came in upon her own feet, in her own light step, with no person bringing her and no person announcing her. She had not knocked. She did not wait, when she had come in, for the company in the room to take notice of her. She let the door swing closed behind her. She took two steps into the room and laid her hand upon the back of the chair that stood at the long table opposite Mr Collins’s chair, and she stood with her hand there.
“Cousin Elizabeth—”
“You shall be quiet, Mr Collins.”
She said it in the voice she had given him on the gravel: the voice of the mistress of the house in which he had come up uninvited.
“Cousin Elizabeth, the matter that has been put before your husband shall, by every—”
“You shall be quiet a little longer. Mr Ellison?”
Ellison straightened. “Madam.”
“You shall take down what I propose to say to you in the next quarter of an hour. You shall take it down in such form as can be produced before any magistrate, at any quarter sessions, at any assize. You shall not, in the taking of it down, omit any clause. If I should speak too quickly for the form, you shall stop me, and I shall begin the clause again. I shall sign it when the matter is done. My husband and my uncle shall witness. Are you ready, sir?”
“Madam.”
She looked at Darcy for the first time. The look had in it no surrender to him and no question of him. She held him there only the half of a second before she turned back to her cousin.
“In the October of last year, after my father’s death, in the library at Longbourn, four hours before Mr Collins arrived from Hunsford for the reading of the will, I forged a paper. It was an acknowledgment of receipt of one hundred and forty pounds, given by my father, in my father’s hand, over my father’s signature, to Mr Hawkins of Meryton, lender. My father had not paid the sum. The sum had been called by Mr Hawkins three weeks before my father died. Mr Hawkins’s books were known to me; the form of my father’s hand was known to me; the four hours were known to me. I forged itknowing what I was doing.
“The matter following, Mr Ellison, you shall take down also. I had four sisters and a mother who would, on the strict reading of the entail and the call of the note together, have been on the road to the workhouse inside the week, my cousin Mr Collins having communicated by his correspondence with my mother, since the August previous, that any provision for the family upon his inheriting the estate should depend upon the family’s submitting to such offices as his patroness should think appropriate for women of straitened means. I have those letters at Longbourn. They shall be deposited with this office before the end of the present week.
“Mr Hawkins died seven days after my father. The paper devolved upon his son, who has held it since as a discharged debt; the debt has, since earlier this month, by what I have learned in the present quarter hour and not before it, been discharged in fact by my husband’s payment of one hundred and forty pounds and interest to Mr Samuel Hawkins. I shall have a word with my husband upon the not telling of it. I shall not have any quarrel with him upon the doing of it.
“That is the act. I do not, Mr Ellison, in any consideration of the present hour, repent of it. I forged the paper. I should do it again, in the same hour, on the same paper, and I shall not stand before any magistrate in this country and tell him I should not. I should be glad, sir, of any opportunity to say so before such a magistrate, in such court as should hear me, in such company as should be assembled to that hearing. That is what I have to say to my cousin this morning. Have you taken it down, sir?”
“Madam.”
“Read it back.”
Mr Ellison read it back. He read it back in fair, clear lawyer’s English, with the clauses falling where she had put them.
“That is what I said, Mr Ellison. I shall sign it when the present matter is at an end.”
She turned to Mr Collins.
“Cousin Elizabeth. You shall consider—”
“I have considered, Mr Collins. I have considered for several months.”
“You shall not, by the act of confessing in this form and in this company, transmute the act into anything but what it is. The act, by the law of England, is a hanging matter. You—”
“I am aware, Mr Collins, of the law of England. I learned the law of England in October last, between the cooling of my father’s body and the arrival from Hunsford of my cousin, the cousin in question being a man on whom no woman of my family had any right todepend for any kindness whatever. I forged the paper in the full understanding of what should befall me in any court of law that should be moved against me by the persons most concerned. I did not, Mr Collins, do it for myself. I have not the kind of leg, sir, to flee a country upon.”
“The leg, cousin Elizabeth. The leg, by your leave.”
