“I shall give you the act itself, sir, plainly. She forged a paper. She forged it in her father’s hand, on the strength of his late acquaintance with our local lender, within a month of the laying out of the corpse and before the entail had been properly passed. The lender—by what I shall not call providence, sir, though others might—died two months after my late cousin; the paper was therefore not contested; and the debt that was the only call upon the estate at the time of my cousin’s death has stood since as paid, when by every truth of the matter it was not paid by a single farthing, and the sum of one hundred and forty pounds owing upon the note has not come to the hand of the heir to whom by every right of inheritance it ought to have come—that is, sir, to me.
“You shall apprehend that the matter does not turn upon the sum. The sum is, in proportion to my present circumstances, not contemptible; but I should not, on the sum alone, have undertaken the night mail. I have undertaken it because the act of forgery is,in the law of England, a capital matter; and because the perpetrator of the act has, since her father’s death, exercised every species of imposition upon every person who has had the misfortune to come within her sphere—including, sir, very particularly, your own.
“Moreover, she has put it about, by such means as I have learned only by the post, that she had broken her leg upon a path in your fields in January, and that you, sir, had assisted at her recovery under emergent circumstances and at considerable inconvenience to yourself. Indeed, sir, you must not have known of such a ploy, and I can only think such a report was put out to garner sympathy from the law. But it is plain to me that the leg was not broken in the manner reported. I have seen, this morning on the gravel, that the leg upon which she walked up your drive shows no impediment whatever; and I am sorry to say, sir, that this fact confirms what I had been told on the road. The leg was a fiction. The fiction was prepared for the express purpose of explaining her presence in your house to certain interested parties which could not have brought about by any honest means.
“I am here at the express encouragement of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, my patroness, who has the gravest concern in the matter. Her ladyship has, since the first reports of the lady’s residence at Northmere reached her a fortnight ago, communicated with me on the subject in such terms as to make plain that the affair is now beyond the ordinary discretion of a family scandal. Her ladyship has also, sir, taken counsel of her own London solicitor, who has advised her that a prosecution may be brought against the lady at the assize for forgery within the next session, unless the lady’s removal from your house can be procured by private arrangement.
“The private arrangement her ladyship has been so good as to lay out for my conveyance to you has two articles. The first is the removal of the lady from this house at the earliest, to a place where she may be properly placed. The Magdalen Hospital in London receives young women of her character upon application; a confidential placement could also be procured in Yorkshire under Mrs P—‘s direction, an arrangement of considerable advantage in retirement and modest cost. The second is the public discontinuance of the lady’s connection with the name of Mr Darcy of Pemberley, by a formal letter to be drafted under her ladyship’s supervision and signed in your own hand, which letter could be made known in the proper quarters in such a manner as to put the matter out of dispute.
“Should you undertake these two articles within the present week, I am authorised by her ladyship to indicate that the prosecution shall not be pressed at the assize. Should you decline them—as I shall hope, upon reflection, you should not—Iam instructed to indicate that her ladyship’s solicitor stands ready to assist mine in the laying of the case before the magistrates upon a private warrant.
“I beg, sir, you would consider what I have laid before you not as an importunity but as the office of a kinsman who has, at some cost, undertaken to bring you the truth that those nearer to you have not, by reason of their interest, been able to lay before you.”
He paused. He had begun to sweat at the temple in the warm room. He had given up his speech in the order he had prepared, and he had given it in his preparatory voice—confiding, paternal, weighed at every clause with the supposition that he was being heard by a gentleman who had been waiting for him to come.
Mr Ellison’s hand on the writing-pad of his lap had moved without interval through the whole of it. He set down his pencil.
Darcy turned from the window. “Mr Collins. You shall stop.”
“Sir? I had not, in the matter of the second article—”
“You shall stop, Mr Collins.”
Collins’ mouth dropped open. “Sir, I have not the pleasure of understanding you.”
“You have, in the course of the last quarter of an hour, made a great many representations to me concerning the character and the conduct of my wife. You shall not, in the next quarter, or in any quarter subsequent to it, make another.”
“Your—sir, you have used the word—”
“I have used the wordwife. She has been my wife since eleven o’clock this morning, by common licence of the Bishop of Lichfield, in the church of Northmere village, with her uncle to give her and my cousin to stand for me. I have used the word, Mr Collins, because the word is the truth. You have ridden seventeen hours and have set down upon this table a quantity of claims concerning her character. I shall not, this afternoon, listen to one further syllable of those claims, for I am done, sir, listening to a man insult my wife.”
“Mr Darcy. Sir.” Mr Collins had come up half out of his chair. “I shall—sir—I had not, by your leave—the office of a kinsman, even where the act has been, by the form of the ceremony, this morning accomplished—I had supposed—by your leave, sir, the ink upon the licence is not, by the hour, dry. The vicar at Northmere village is a clergyman, I gather, of no great consequence in the diocese, who upon the office of a fellow clergyman speaking to his conscience and to the present particulars of the case, may—that is, sir, a marriage executed within the hour, before the parties have had any opportunity, by a settling of the mind and a removing from such company as has, by certain influences brought to bear upon the lady, bycertain—”
He could not get the sentence to its end. He took another path.
“Mr Darcy, sir. You shall consider, by your leave, that her ladyship Lady Catherine de Bourgh is not a person who shall, upon the present intelligence, retain the family connection which she has at her own hand the granting and the withholding of. You shall consider, sir, that by the present act, by the very form of the alliance, you have made yourself her ladyship’s enemy. Her ladyship shall not, sir—I have it from her own hand—hesitate to see you brought down with the lady you have, this morning, married. She has the offices, sir, the offices in London, the offices at her own table, the offices that bear upon—”
“Mr Ellison.” Darcy had turned from the south window. He had not raised his voice. He said his solicitor’s name in the way he had said Mr Collins’s on the gravel.
“Sir.”
“Lay the case.”
Chapter Forty-Four
“MrCollins.Thematterhas 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 laidhis 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 officesat 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.”
