“Oh! Where, where is my uncle?” cried Elizabeth, darting from her seat as she finished reading the letter, without losing a moment of the time so precious; but as she reached the door, it was opened by a servant, and Mr. Darcy appeared.

Her pale face and impetuous manner made him start, and before he could recover himself enough to speak, she hastily exclaimed, “I beg your pardon, but I must leave you. I must find Mr. Gardiner this moment, on business that cannot be delayed; I have not an instant to lose.”

“Good God! What is the matter?” cried he, with more feeling than politeness; then recollecting himself, “I will not detain you a minute, but let me, or let the servant, go after Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. You are not well enough; you cannot go yourself.”

Elizabeth hesitated, but her knees trembled under her. Calling back the servant, she commissioned him, though in so breathless an accent as made her almost unintelligible, to fetch his master and mistress home, instantly.

On his quitting the room, she sat down, unable to support herself, and looking so miserably ill that it was impossible for Darcy to leave her or to refrain from saying in a tone of gentleness and commiseration, “Let me call your maid. Is there nothing you could take to give you present relief? A glass of wine; shall I get you one? You are very ill.”

“No, I thank you,” she replied, endeavoring to recover herself. “There is nothing the matter with me. I am quite well. I am only distressed by some dreadful news which I have just received from Longbourn.”

She burst into tears as she alluded to it, and for a few minutes could not speak another word. Darcy, in wretched suspense, could only say something indistinctly of his concern and observe her in compassionate silence. At length, she spoke again. “I have just had a letter from Jane, with such dreadful news. It cannot be concealed from anyone. Lydia, my youngest sister, has left all her friends—has eloped; has thrown herself into the power of—of Mr. Wickham. They are gone off together from Brighton. You know him too well to doubt the rest. She has no money, no connections, nothing that can tempt him to—she is lost forever.”

Darcy was fixed in astonishment. “When I consider,” she added in a yet more agitated voice, “that I might have prevented it! I who knew what he was. Had I but explained some part of it only—some part of what I learned to my own family! Had his character been known, this could not have happened. But it is all, all too late now.”

“I am grieved, indeed,” cried Darcy; “grieved—shocked. But is it certain, absolutely certain?”

“Oh yes! They left Brighton together on Sunday night and were traced almost to London, but not beyond; they are certainly not gone to Scotland.”

“And what has been done, what has been attempted, to recover her?”

“My father is gone to London, and Jane has written to beg my uncle’s immediate assistance, and we shall be off, I hope, in half an hour. But nothing can be done; I know very well that nothing can be done. How is such a man to be worked on? How are they even to be discovered? I have not the smallest hope. It is every way horrible!”

Darcy shook his head in silent acquiescence.

“When my eyes were opened to his real character. Oh, had I known what I ought, what I dared, to do! But I knew not—I was afraid of doing too much. Wretched, wretched, mistake!”

Darcy made no answer. He seemed scarcely to hear her and was walking up and down the room in earnest meditation; his brow contracted, his air gloomy. Elizabeth soon observed and instantly understood it. Her power was sinking; everything must sink under such a proof of family weakness, such an assurance of the deepest disgrace. She could neither wonder nor condemn, but the belief of his self-conquest brought nothing consolatory to her bosom, afforded no palliation of her distress. It was, on the contrary, exactly calculated to make her understand her own wishes; and never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must be vain.

But self, though it would intrude, could not engross her. Lydia—the humiliation, the misery, she was bringing on them all—soon swallowed up every private care; and covering her face with her handkerchief, Elizabeth was soon lost to everything else.

Contributor

Jane Austen

From Pride and Prejudice. In 2013 the Bank of England announced it would replace Charles Darwin’s portrait on the ten-pound note with that of Jane Austen. Online threats of rape and death against high-profile supporters of the effort ensued, leading to two arrests. “If even a small thing like this, a nice middle-class debate,” asked a Times columnist, “causes a storm of abuse…what will happen when we get to the bigger issues?” Entered into circulation in 2017, the banknote features a quote from this novel, Austen’s second, spoken by the deceitful Caroline Bingley: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!”

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