Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AN INCONVENIENT GUEST
“ W here might I take you?” I asked tentatively, for I could not fathom who in Meryton Mary King planned to visit. Try as I might, I could not bring myself even to think of her as Mrs Wickham, and the thought of mentioning that name in conversation caused my stomach to clench into a knot.
“My house, if you would be so kind,” she said.
Then it fell to me to explain that her uncle had sold the house and all that was in it months ago. I had not the heart to point out that I now had her ponies, and I pulled to a wide spot in the lane when she began to weep.
“My mother’s house?” she cried. “He sold her house?”
“Apparently it was his to sell,” I softly explained, “for he held the deed.”
“It cannot be true,” she wailed.
Very shortly thereafter, I concluded she must see for herself that her home was occupied, and as she alternated between staring blankly at the road and brushing the tears away as they streamed down her cheeks, I directed June and July towards their once-familiar stables, and we came around the lane to pass slowly by the front door. There were no blatant signs that the house was now owned by a retired deacon known to Mr King. However, a vacant house has about it an unmistakable aura of loneliness, and by the little signs of life within—the wisp of smoke from the chimneys and a pair of curtains open to allow in the morning light—she could not deny the truth.
I thought she may again begin to cry. Instead, she spoke in a deadened voice. “I am done for.”
I had heard this sentiment from time to time but never with such a degree of believability.
“Surely not,” I said kindly.
She glanced at me and said, “But I am. He will kill me, you know.”
“Mr Wickham?” I asked in disbelief.
She only nodded her head. “I had hoped to gather a few things to sell in order to buy coach fare to my uncle’s house.” She had then continued to speak in a dazed, dreamlike manner. “I suppose that was a silly plan, but it was all I could think to do.”
At the time, I refrained from expressing my doubts her uncle would receive her, for she looked so careworn and exhausted, I was afraid she would fall ill then and there.
Instead, I spoke briskly to try to keep her spirits up at least temporarily. “Well, you must be very tired. Come to Longbourn, will you? You should have a pot of tea and a rest before you think of a new plan.”
She had only nodded with the deep resignation of the doomed while I ignored an unmistakable sense of foreboding at having extended the invitation. On arrival to Longbourn, I justified bringing her through the kitchen because we were both so mud splattered. In reality, however, my decision to be secretive was just as much an instinct of guilt.
“Mrs Hill,” I said, quickly leading the lady by the hand past the ovens because only the housekeeper was there, and I did not wish to linger lest someone else see us. “I have brought my friend for a visit. Might you make up a tray? I shall come down to fetch it in a moment.”
We climbed the steep stairs at the back of the house, came out on the upper floor, and I quickly deposited her at the end of the hall in the small, sparsely furnished room my mother had declared unfit for hospitality for anyone save Mr Collins. I then dashed back downstairs to the kitchen to speak to the housekeeper.
I addressed Mrs Hill as casually as I could, given the degree of mounting anxiety I felt. “Perhaps it would be best if you did not mention to my mother that I have a guest.”
“The one as run off with the soldier?”
I sighed. Mary King’s hair would forever rob her of anonymity. “Yes, and it will not do to make it known to anyone she is here, and besides, Mama would not like it. But the lady was—well, she is desperate, Hill.”
Our housekeeper did not like this plan, but she was so loyal to my mother that she conceded on the basis of preserving her mistress’s peace.
“The maids will know soon enough,” she warned.
I accepted this, made some glib reply that my visitor would be gone before they did, then I went back upstairs with the tray. I slipped into the room and looked appraisingly down at my guest sitting at the little table by the window.
“I am looking forward to a piping hot cup of tea,” I said quietly, “since the sun has again abandoned us. ”
Miss King ate and drank with a silent concentration that suggested she had not done so for many hours. I sat with her, observed her in silence, and having come to stillness so abruptly, sitting across from her as I was, I suddenly faced the enormity of my decision to shelter this particular woman, of all the people in the world in need of help!
“Why do you believe your husband might harm you?” I asked, startling myself for how bluntly I spoke of such a delicate subject.
Mary King was not an imaginative speaker, and thankfully, she was too exhausted to take offence. She did not cry as she explained her situation in a few broad strokes.
Mr Wickham had not taken hold of the entirety of her fortune, for her uncle had thrown many obstacles in his way. He had, however, borrowed against the expectation from a money-lender, before losing nearly all of it in a gaming hall near where they had lodgings. They were encamped in London proper at a boarding house run by Mrs Younge, a lady who disliked her instantly and who, with her husband’s blessing, had constantly harassed and belittled her.
Mrs Younge and George Wickham were apparently cast from the same mould. Both were greedy and constantly seeking ways to make use of her money through various unsavoury means. Quite soon after her elopement, Mary King felt herself to have fallen into a prison, robbed of every comfort, and facing escalating hostility as though the blame for her uncle’s obstinance was hers to bear.
“Did he beat you?” I asked, for I saw in my mind’s eye the scene she so plainly described and knew already the answer I would hear.
“Oh yes, as did she from time to time,” she said impassively .
“And you believed you would eventually be pushed down the stair?”
“Perhaps. But I felt he would rather kill me of a purpose and would not risk that I might survive a fall. He thought of taking me to the river and drowning me after making it generally known on our street I had run away from home. I overheard him talking of it to Mrs Younge. He would put off his creditors by marrying again and had even met the woman.”
“What?” I cried, incredulous.
“She was lame, and they laughed about how they would keep her in the attic.”
“But she was rich?”
“I believe she had a portion of three or four thousand pounds, and her father, a merchant who wished to sail to America to add to his fortune, was desperate to marry her off to be rid of her.”
I sat in the reverberating silence of my shock.
“And you heard all this?”
“Oh yes. I had the habit of listening, you know, because if he came home in a rage, I sometimes escaped him by hiding in the privy.”
After another spell of silence, I then asked rather tentatively, “And what might you do now?”
“I do not know, but if you do not help me,” she said with little emotion in her voice, “I will not live out the month, for I have in fact run away from home and made his plan easier.”
I could not then and there commit to helping her and instead, I said, “You must be tired. Would you like to rest?” She nodded and seemed to comprehend the need for discretion. “Perhaps it would be best if you were quiet, for the name Wickham is abhorrent to this family for reasons I cannot share. I would prefer no one knows you are here just yet.”
I unbuttoned her dress, brought her a clean shift, nightdress, pitcher of water, and an old brush Lydia had left behind.
Then I went in search of my father.