Page 99 of Hard Home

I have written all this to Lieutenant Denny at Brighton and told him the dates and asked him one question, which is whether anything was done or said in that camp on the Saturday night; and I have not had an answer and I do not expect one before Friday.

Now I shall stop writing what happened.

Lizzy, everybody in this house is saying that he will not marry her. My mother has been in her room since Monday saying that he will not marry her. Colonel Forster says that Denny said he never meant to. Jane says she cannot think so ill of him and my father said nothing at all in the carriage and has not spoken since Sunday dinner except to ask Hill for a candle.

They are all wrong and I am the only person in England who knows it and I have nobody to say it to, so I am saying it to you.

He will marry her.

He will marry her as fast as he can find a room and a man in orders, and everything else — the running, and the hackney-coach at Clapham, and the not going to Scotland, and letting Denny say what Denny said — is because a man who is doingwhat he is doing wants three weeks in which nobodyis looking for a wedding.

You know why. I have written it in the still-room in March and you did not believe me then and your aunt Gardiner explained to you very kindly why I was a foolish girl with a book, and I have thought about that a great deal since Sunday.

There is exactly one door and it is braiding. Not seduction, not an elopement, not living with her, not ruining her: none of those things gives him one single thing he wants and all of them are a great deal easier than what he is doing. He wants her name said over him in a church with the words in it.

And when it is done it cannot be undone by her, or by my father, or by any court in this kingdom, or by God.

I am going out again at half past six.

Your affectionate sister,

M. Bennet

P.S. I have not told anybody about the forty-two yards. I do not know who to tell. My father is in London.

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Elizabeth got as far as the door and had to put her hand against the frame.

"Lizzy!" cried her aunt, coming in. "Good God, what is the matter? — Where is your uncle? — My dear child, sit down—"

"He will marry her," said Elizabeth.

"What?"

"They are all praying that he will marry her, and my father has gone to London to make him marry her, and Colonel Forster is at every turnpike in Hertfordshire hoping to hear of a wedding, and that is theworst thing that can happen—"

And then the door opened, because Mr. Darcy had been shown up, and he had heard the last nine words of it from the landing.

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Elizabeth was past caring.

She had had, in some earlier part of that morning, an intention of receiving him with composure; and she had been intending since Thursday to be shy of him, and had constructed a whole small apparatus of manner for the purpose; and all of it went, and what she said, in a hurried unnatural voice, was:

"I must speak to you at once. Aunt, will you find my uncle — please — he is at the river, they will know at the desk—"

Mrs. Gardiner looked once at her niece's face and once at Mr. Darcy's and went out and shut the door, which was, as Elizabeth reflected long afterwards, the single most sensible thing anybody did that week.

"Read these," said Elizabeth.

He read Jane's first, standing, in about ninety seconds. Then he read Mary's, and he read Mary's twice.

When he had done he laid the three sheets down on the table and squared them, and stood with his hands flat on either side of them, and said, in a voice from which everything had been taken out:

"Forty-two yards in two nights."

"Yes."