Chapter Nine #4
“I was covered in snow, freezing. I had no idea where I was or what to do. After perhaps a mile, I saw a barn. The door was not latched. I slipped inside. There were horses—it was warmer than outside, but not by much. I climbed into the hayloft and buried myself in the hay, hoping to survive the night.”
“The Longbourn barn,” Darcy said softly.
“Yes. The next morning, Miss Lydia found me. She was chasing her cat. She screamed when she saw me, and her sisters came running. They gave me dry clothes and hot tea and—” Her voice broke entirely.
“They saved my life, Fitzwilliam. Had they not found me, taken care of me, I would have frozen to death in that hayloft.”
Darcy held her as she wept. His mind was turning over every thing she had told him.
The forged signature. The assault. The escape.
The injuries to Wickham's hand suddenly possessed a grim logic. The conflict of emotions was so intense it was nearly physical. Gratitude for Richard’s foresight warred with a sickness that such knowledge was ever required.
She had possessed the presence of mind to use what Richard had taught her.
Yet beneath the gratitude lay a black rage that she had ever needed such knowledge.
The world required a fifteen-year-old girl to know how to defend herself against assault.
His own failures had placed her in circumstances where she had been forced to fight for her life.
He was proud of her courage, even as he loathed the necessity that had demanded it.
“You are safe now,” he said, his voice rough. “That villain will never touch you again. I swear it on my life.”
She nodded against his chest, her tears soaking through his waistcoat.
They stood there in the cold garden for a long time, whilst Darcy held his sister and silently turned over in his mind every method by which he might destroy George Wickham.
Attend to her Welfare
The letter arrived with the morning post. Darcy recognised Richard’s hand immediately and broke the seal.
My dear Cousin,
I write with intelligence respecting the matter we discussed before my departure. You will, I think, find the particulars both illuminating and somewhat extraordinary, though whether they will afford you satisfaction or uneasiness I cannot determine. Perhaps a mixture of both.
I returned yesterday to the lodgings in question, furnished with the information you entrusted to me.
I informed the person concerned that we were fully apprised of recent transactions—the irregular proceedings, the falsified papers, and the unfortunate business in H—shire.
I made it plain that her share in these affairs leaves her in a situation of considerable legal danger.
She attempted, at first, to persist in professions of ignorance. But I was in no humour to indulge such pretences. I mentioned that I had already taken the opinion of our family’s legal advisers upon the charges that might be brought. This had the desired effect upon her spirits.
She then acknowledged that our mutual acquaintance is indeed under her roof, and has been so since his hasty retreat from H—shire, though she was most anxious to represent herself as an unwilling instrument rather than a confederate. I did not consider it worth the trouble to contest her story.
Here the affair takes a curious turn. The woman had the effrontery to demand payment for his board and lodging. She declared that he arrived without means, that she has maintained him at a loss, and that he now requires medical attendance which she cannot, as she says, afford to procure.
I rejected her claim at once, as you may imagine. The idea that we should contribute to the restoration of the gentleman’s health appeared to me insupportable.
As I was leaving, however, it occurred to me that there might be some advantage in knowing the exact nature of his case.
If he is indeed ill, the particulars might not be without use.
I therefore returned and informed her that, although I would put no money into her hands, I would engage a medical man to see the patient and report to me.
She agreed with a readiness that could leave no doubt of her anxiety. It convinced me that the patient’s condition is more serious than she had at first allowed.
I applied to Mr. Bartholomew Greene, a surgeon of very respectable character, and begged him to examine the gentleman and make me acquainted with every circumstance of importance. He visited the house this morning and has now delivered his account.
The gentleman, it seems, has received an injury to his right hand which has become grievously inflamed.
According to Mr. Greene, the wound has mortified.
The corruption has spread up the arm in what he calls an exceptionally alarming manner.
He strongly advises immediate amputation of the hand, and perhaps part of the arm, according to what he should find upon laying it open.
The patient has refused, in the most positive terms, to submit to any such operation.
Mr. Greene reports that he became violently agitated when the proposal was made, insisting that he should do very well without it.
The surgeon represented to him, as plainly as might be, that without timely assistance the mortification must almost certainly prove fatal. But he could not prevail.
The landlady supports him in this folly, though Mr. Greene believes her zeal springs rather from a dread of the expense than from any rational hope of his recovery.
Mr. Greene has employed poultices and such remedies as the case admits, but he was open with me that they are not likely to be of much service.
In his judgement, the patient may have a week, perhaps a little more, before the corruption advances beyond all remedy.
After that, it will be merely a question of time.
I have remunerated Mr. Greene for his attendance, and desired that he should see the patient again in three days, and keep me informed of any material alteration.
My own feelings on the subject are somewhat divided.
There is, I confess, a sort of melancholy justice in the gentleman’s suffering consequences for his late behaviour—consequences which, if we are right as to dates and circumstances, may be traced to the efforts of the very person he sought to injure.
In this there is a propriety which even my sense of compassion cannot wholly condemn.
Yet I find I am not entirely disposed to rejoice in the prospect of any man’s death, however well he may have deserved it.
I have seen men carried off by such complaints before now, and it is no gentle passage.
The fever, the wandering of the mind, the gradual wasting—it is a miserable close to a life, even such a life as his.
Since, however, he persists in rejecting the only means that might save him, I must leave the event to his own obstinacy. I do not mean to urge him further, nor to enlighten him more fully as to the probable consequence of his refusal. He will learn it soon enough.
I shall shortly rejoin my regiment, but have arranged that Mr. Greene continue his visits and forward his reports to you. Should the patient’s resolution change, or his strength fail suddenly, you will be informed without delay.
In the meanwhile, let me entreat you to turn your thoughts rather to your sister’s recovery. She has undergone an ordeal that would have broken many young women twice her age, and yet she begins to mend. There is more strength in her than I, at least, had understood.
Attend to her, and do not suffer your mind to dwell too much on events in H—. The gentleman’s fate rests now in his own hands—or, if Mr. Greene prevails, in the one that may shortly remain to him.
Yours,
R. F.
Darcy read the letter through twice before he laid it down. His hand, as he did so, was not quite steady.
The meaning of Richard’s guarded expressions could not be mistaken. Wickham was dying. Dying slowly and painfully, and doing it with typical perversity, from an infection brought on by Georgiana’s desperate bite.
His first sensation was one of fierce, almost savage satisfaction. Wickham deserved to suffer. He deserved to pay for what he had done, and for what he had meant to do. If the price were his hand, his arm, his life, Darcy could hardly call it more than just.
Yet beneath that instinctive gratification there rose something more complicated.
A kind of disgust—not at Wickham’s pain, for there his feelings were obdurate—but at the waste of a life so squandered.
The man had enjoyed every advantage: education, opportunity, the favour and generosity of Darcy’s own father.
He had thrown it all away on idleness, spite, and low indulgence.
And now he would end his days in a shabby London lodging, too vain or too foolish to submit to the operation that might preserve him.
There was, besides, a grim astonishment that Georgiana—gentle, shrinking Georgiana—should have dealt what might prove a mortal hurt. She had bitten with such desperate strength that, weeks afterwards, the wound still festered and the poison crept along Wickham’s arm.
Richard had taught her to defend herself. He had taught her, perhaps, more effectually than any of them had realised.
Darcy folded the letter and placed it in his breast-pocket. For the present, he would say nothing to Georgiana. Indeed, he did not know whether he ought ever to tell her.
The point was far from simple. On one side, there seemed no necessity that she should bear the burden of Wickham’s death, if death it proved to be.
She had acted in extremity, with no weapon but her own slight strength, in defence of all that was most dear to her.
There was no guilt there that any reasonable mind need acknowledge.