Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 52: What Mr. Darcy Did

Mrs. Gardiner's answer comes by return of post, and it is everything. This episode is the complete audiobook of Chapter 52 of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the chapter that quietly rewrites the whole Lydia affair: the family's rescue was not the family's doing.

It was Darcy who found the runaways, through the purchasable memory of Mrs. Younge; Darcy who argued with Lydia, who would not leave, and then with Wickham, who would not marry without inducement; Darcy who paid the debts, bought the commission, and settled money on the bride; and Darcy who stood in the church. His stated reason: his own mistaken pride, the reserve that kept Wickham's character a secret the world could not act on.

• The negotiation as her aunt reports it is grimly funny: Wickham had not given up hope of making his fortune by marriage in some other country, but was open to present relief, and Darcy priced it out item by item.
• Mrs. Gardiner's letter carries a second cargo in plain sight: her open liking of Mr. Darcy, her teasing certainty about his motive, and her hope of a drive round the whole of Pemberley park.
• Elizabeth's feelings end the letter in tumult, pride and gratitude and something warmer contending: he did all this for a girl he must despise, and a man he could never wish to meet.
• Wickham finds her in the shrubbery to test what she knows; her hints about Pemberley, Mrs. Reynolds, and the Kympton living land one by one, and she offers peace instead of exposure: come, they are brother and sister now, and shall not quarrel about the past.