Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
“Mr Collins. The matter has been in the hands of this office, on Mr Darcy’s instruction, since shortly after the eighteenth of February. I shall give you the case as it stands at this hour.
“The marriage licence was granted by the Bishop of Lichfield upon Mr Darcy’s affidavit made and sworn at Derby earlier in the present month, and was issued through Mr Pearce, surrogate, of the diocesan office.
The ceremony was conducted this morning at the parish church of Northmere village by the Reverend Mr Brewster, who holds the cure under the bishop’s faculty and is in every respect canonically qualified to solemnise.
The parties stood before two witnesses of the canon’s requirement: Mr Edward Gardiner of Cheapside, the lady’s uncle, who gave her; and Colonel the Honourable Richard Fitzwilliam, who stood for the bridegroom.
The register has been signed in the proper hand and lodged with the parish.
The marriage is, in the law of England, complete.
It cannot be unmade by the consent of the parties to it; it cannot be unmade by the offices of any clergyman upon any pretext; it cannot be unmade by any party whatever, save by the death of one of them or by an act of nullity for which, sir, there is no ground in fact and no ground in law. The matter is closed.
“From Mr Gardiner’s letter of the present month, and from such further enquiry as this office has been able to make at Meryton through Mr Gardiner’s agent, the paper in the matter is an acknowledgment of receipt of one hundred and forty pounds, given in October of last year by the late Mr Bennet of Longbourn to Mr Hawkins, lender, of Meryton.
Mr Hawkins died seven days after Mr Bennet.
The paper devolved upon his son, Mr Samuel Hawkins, who has held it since as a discharged debt.
Earlier in the present month the sum of one hundred and forty pounds, with such interest as Mr Hawkins’s books should have rendered owing had the paper not stood as paid, was conveyed to Mr Samuel Hawkins by Mr Gardiner’s agent acting upon the instruction of this office.
The paper was, at the same hour, purchased back; it is presently in this case.
” He laid his hand upon the leather bag.
“Mr Hawkins’s son has, by his receipt of the money, no further interest in the paper of any kind.
He was the only person in England with standing as injured party in the matter.
He has been satisfied. The clerk of Mr Hawkins’s establishment, who, you have given Mr Darcy to understand, came of late to suspect the genuineness of the receipt, is not an injured party; he may not, in the law of England, lay an information upon the strength of a suspicion regarding a paper to which he has no title and which is no longer in his late master’s house. The matter, sir, has no prosecutor.
“As to the lady’s injury, sworn affidavits in proper form have been made, and are at this office in Derby in fair copy, by Dr Aldridge of Bakewell, who attended the lady from the night of the eleventh of November last; by Mrs Reeves, the housekeeper of this house, who received her from Mr Darcy upon that night; by Mr Hadley, the steward of Northmere, who assisted in conveying her into the house and was present at her removal from the field; and by Bessie Lawton, chambermaid, who attended her in the bed-chamber through the night of the eleventh and the day following.
The affidavits may be produced to any court at any hour.
The injury was a clean break of the right tibia some four inches above the ankle.
The bone protruded through the skin. The lady was carried up from the field upon a rough litter constructed by Mr Darcy and Mr Hadley in such time as could be afforded by the falling of the light and the falling of the snow.
She was not expected, by Dr Aldridge upon his first examination, to walk again upon the leg.
“Her ladyship Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Mr Stanley of Doctors’ Commons holds, since earlier in the present month, copies of the correspondence by which her ladyship, in her hand and over her seal, conveyed to you between the latter days of January and the early days of February the instructions under which you have acted in the present matter.
The correspondence shall be deposited with counsel in London upon the receipt of any information laid against Mrs Darcy at any quarter sessions or assize within the realm.
Counsel has been retained, sir, to bring against her ladyship an action for malicious prosecution upon the laying of any such information, and to bring against you, sir, a like action upon the same instant.
“His lordship the Earl of Matlock has written to her ladyship, through his own solicitor and hers, earlier in the present month. Her ladyship’s solicitor has answered, and the answer is in this case.
His lordship is the elder brother of her ladyship and, by every consideration of family weight and family standing, the senior person of the connection.
His lordship has communicated to her ladyship that any further proceeding in the present matter shall be regarded as a breach of the connection, and that the offices at his lordship’s disposal—which are not contemptible, Mr Collins, and which include offices that bear upon the diocese of Rochester and upon the cure of Hunsford—shall be exercised accordingly.
Her ladyship has not, by her solicitor’s correspondence of last week, undertaken to overrule his lordship’s view.
“You, sir.” He turned a page upon the pad.
“You shall not, by my hand, leave the present matter without instruction. Anything you have spoken in this room shall be considered as having been spoken under privilege. The privilege ends at the door of this study. Any repetition of the claims you have laid before Mr Darcy this morning, in any quarter of the realm, in any speech, in any correspondence, before any company assembled or before any single hearer, shall be the ground of an action against you for slander upon the name of Mrs Darcy of Pemberley. The action shall be brought at the next assize, by counsel already retained upon Mr Darcy’s instruction.
The cost to you, sir, of defending it shall not be borne by her ladyship.
Her ladyship’s counsel has, in his correspondence with this office of last week, made plain that her ladyship shall undertake no further legal expense in your behalf.
The cost shall be borne by you. Your living shall not bear the cost. The parsonage at Hunsford shall not bear the cost. I have, sir, taken the further liberty of putting before counsel the question whether the present journey, undertaken in the night mail upon her ladyship’s correspondence, may be matter for the attention of the bishop of Rochester.
Counsel has answered in the affirmative.
That, sir, is the case as it stands at this hour. ”
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.