Chapter 44 #2
“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 it knowing 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 to depend 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.”
Mr Collins had recovered the thread that he had thought, three minutes ago, had been taken from him. His hands came back up to the edge of the table.
“You have spoken of your leg. We have all of us, by the report of the post these many weeks, spoken of your leg. I have seen, this morning on the gravel, that the leg upon which you walked up your husband’s drive shows no impediment whatever.
The whole of the report—circulated through the post, to garner the sympathy of the connection and the credit of the family—is plainly a fabrication of a piece with the paper that you have, just now, in such terms of self-satisfaction, confessed to.
You are, cousin, a creature of repeated deceit.
Your present confession shall not, by any law of England or by any judgment of any magistrate, redeem a single article of your conduct; for a woman who has lied upon the matter of her body shall not—”
“Mr Collins.” Darcy moved from the south window and went round the long table to his writing desk in the corner of the study. He took the key out of his waistcoat pocket and opened the lower-left drawer of the desk.
He took out a small package wrapped in plain paper and tied with twine. He carried the package round the long table and set it down upon the table before Mr Collins, between Mr Collins’s two hands.
Mr Collins, with a hand that had begun to tremble, untied the twine and folded back the paper.
What had been wrapped in the paper was a long strip of silk, of the colour that had been the colour of Mr Darcy’s second-best waistcoat; which colour the silk could no longer be said to have, for the silk was stiff and dark with what was dried upon it.
Mr Collins did not understand what he was looking at.
Darcy looked at Elizabeth now, only because in the half-second after the paper had come back from the silk she had drawn a breath that was sharp and brief and quite involuntary, the breath he had heard her draw in November on the bank, before he had been able to get to her side.
Her eyes were upon the silk. She had not known.
He could see it on her face. She had reconstructed what she could, from her own half-memory and from what she had been told by Mrs Reeves and by Dr Aldridge and by the chambermaid; but the cloth that had bound the leg to the stick was a cloth she had supposed lost in the wash or burned with the bandages or discarded after.
The cloth had not been lost. The cloth had been in the drawer of his writing desk since January.
She looked up from the silk at him. She did not say anything.
“That, Mr Collins, was a piece of my second-best waistcoat.
It was upon my person on the eleventh of January.
It was, by the falling of the light upon a hillside on the boundary between my estate and the lake, the article nearest to my hand, the lady having broken her leg upon a fall in the snow, and being unable to walk, and I being upon the field with no other article.
I tore the waistcoat into strips. I bound the leg to a stick.
I carried her up from the field to the house in such manner as could be afforded by a man who has not in the course of his life been a soldier, and has not by his trade learned how a body must be moved when the bone is out of place.
“I kept what is upon the table, sir, first because I should not, that night, throw it away. I kept it afterwards because the lady’s recovery, which Dr Aldridge had not permitted himself to hope for, was, in its progress, a recovery on which I should have liked, in due course, to be able to give evidence.
The leg recovered, sir. The bone re-set.
The skin closed. The lady walked, in the third week of February, upon her own feet, upon a leg that should not, by every consideration of medicine practised in England, have been a leg at all.
I do not pretend to have a medical explanation for it, but that is what is upon the table, sir. ”
Mr Collins’s hands had come down from the silk. He had not, in the last minute, been able to look at it.
“Sir—by your leave—I had not—that is, the patroness, in her instructions, had not been given the present particulars of the case—had her ladyship known—that is, the article concerning the leg, sir, had been given me upon such report as I had had from—sir, I beg I might be permitted to lay before her ladyship the present—that is, the new—by your leave, sir, the circumstances of the matter having so substantially altered—”
“Mr Collins, you shall sign the paper Mr Ellison gives you, and you shall convey it into her ladyship’s hand.”
Mr Ellison drew a clean sheet from his pad.
He copied out, in fair lawyer’s hand, what Mrs Darcy had said in his hearing.
It did not take him three minutes. He laid the paper before Mrs Darcy.
She took the pen and signed at the foot.
Mr Ellison signed below her as the solicitor present.
Mr Darcy signed below Mr Ellison. Mr Ellison laid the paper before Mr Collins and the pen across it.
“The paper does not absolve my wife. She has set down that she forged the paper your patroness has sent you up to prosecute, and she has not pretended otherwise. Nor shall I.
“What the paper does set forth is the duress under which she acted. The duress was your own correspondence to her mother, written from Hunsford on her ladyship’s instructions, in which you laid before Mrs Bennet the conditions of submission should you come into the estate.
Those letters are presently in her keeping, to be deposited with Mr Ellison’s office within the week.
Her ladyship’s correspondence to you in this matter is at Mr Stanley’s chambers at Doctors’ Commons in fair copy.
The chain runs, sir, from her ladyship’s hand to yours to my wife’s act.
“Should you persist, and should her ladyship persist, this paper shall be brought before a magistrate whose offices are upon Lord Matlock’s call.
The magistrate shall read in it my wife’s confession; he shall read in it the duress; and he shall read in it your name as the source of the duress.
Your living shall not survive this paper read in open court.
Your standing in the family connection shall not survive it.
Her ladyship’s patronage shall not save you from it.
“Should you drop the matter, and convey to her ladyship that the matter is dropped, the paper shall remain in Mr Ellison’s case. It shall not see daylight. You shall return to Longbourn and continue without further trouble from me. Sign it, Mr Collins.”
Mr Collins read the paper through. He read it through again. He looked at the three signatures already upon it. He looked at the pen.
“Sir—there are matters you do not—sir, the matter—that is, by my hand—”
“Sign it, Mr Collins.”
He swallowed, then signed.
Mr Ellison took the paper, blotted it, and laid it inside his leather case.
Darcy did not look at Mr Collins again. He went to the door and opened it. The colonel was on the other side.
“Take him out.”
The colonel came in and took Collins by the collar of his coat.
Collins began to speak louder. He spoke of the patroness, of his legal inheritance, of letters yet to be written, of the great inconvenience of the night mail and the considerable expense to himself.
The colonel gave him no time for any of it.
He had Collins out of the chair, out of the study, and into the passage.
Mr Gardiner closed the door behind them.
Collins’s voice came through the door for half a minute more. Then it was gone.