CHAPTER 26 #3
His manner was easy, as it usually is when his purpose is not.
He spoke of my present occupation in London, of my altered circumstances, and of the necessity, as he was pleased to call it, of finding some means of being useful after all that has passed.
He did not speak plainly, but implied enough to make me believe he has heard something of my present employment and is endeavouring to learn more.
I gave him no names. I confirmed nothing. Yet I cannot be certain what he already knows, nor from whom he has heard it.
I have no means of limiting his influence while my father continues to prefer the assurances of Wickham Senior, his son, and Mrs. Wickham to the testimony of those who should have had some claim upon his trust. I write that sentence not in anger, though I do not pretend to be without it, but because it is the practical fact on which every danger now depends.
I do not ask you to renew an effort which has already been answered as it was.
I ask only that, if any report of Wickham’s movements reaches you, or if you learn where he is received, by whom he is supported, or what names he is using, you will let me know.
Preparedness is not protection, but it is more than ignorance.
I remain, with gratitude for more kindness than I have been able to repay,
Your affectionate nephew, F. Darcy
He read it once.
There were sentences in it that might be softened. There were others that might be strengthened. He distrusted both impulses. Softness would make the matter less true; force would give anger more space than use required.
He sanded the sheet, folded it, and sealed it before he could revise himself into either cowardice or rhetoric.
Then he took a fresh sheet and wrote to Richard.
This note was shorter and less careful, though not less urgent.
Wickham had called. Darcy wished to know whether his cousin had heard any fresh report of his lodgings, companions, or the houses where he was received.
If Richard learned that Wickham had begun attaching Darcy’s name to any new story, Darcy wished to be told at once.
He named no lady.
Richard would understand the omission better than an explanation.
When the second note was sealed, Darcy sat for a while with both letters before him. The wax cooled under his hand. The room was very quiet. Somewhere below, Mrs. Naylor’s household had settled into evening order; a door closed, a step crossed the passage, and then even those small sounds withdrew.
He looked once toward the abandoned papers.
They waited. Leases had that advantage over men: they could be neglected for an hour without inventing fresh malice.
Darcy rose, stirred the fire, and stood before it until a reluctant flame caught. The heat came thinly at first, then with more steadiness. He ought to go back to the table. He ought to prove, if only to himself, that one smiling visit from Wickham could not disorder the work by which he lived.
Instead he remembered Miss Bennet saying, You are expected.
Not with softness. Not with invitation beyond the words. She had said it before Mrs. Westbrook and her nephew, with perfect composure, as if his place in the room were established by prior arrangement and needed no defence.
He had been a professional appointment. A man of business. A useful interruption.
He had been expected.
Darcy closed his eyes briefly.
There were troubles a man could answer with clauses, notices, signatures, and ink. There were others that came smiling into his rooms and looked about for what might still be taken.
He could not claim Miss Bennet’s confidence beyond what she chose to give. He could not seek shelter in her house, her fortune, her kindness, or the dangerous warmth of being useful to her. He could not allow Wickham to make her name another instrument in an old injury.
But neither could he retreat.
Retreat would protect nothing. Wickham would read it as guilt; Miss Bennet, if she noticed it, might read it as indifference.
Worse, she might not notice at all. Her life was widening.
It would continue to widen with or without him: rooms opened, relations admitted, friends invited, music played, tiresome young men endured and perhaps laughed at after they had gone.
Darcy wanted that life for her.
He wanted to be near it.
The truth stood there, neither dignified nor avoidable.
Thursday at four was not a promise. It was not preference. It was not safety.
But it was a place.
Darcy returned to the table, gathered the papers into a neat pile, and set them aside.
For tonight, they might go on being disagreeable without him.
He placed the two sealed letters where they would be sent first thing in the morning, extinguished one candle, and left the other burning. Then he stood for a moment in the diminished light, listening to the city beyond the glass, and felt, not comfort, but the steadier thing beneath it.
He would not presume.
He would not disappear.
And if Wickham had begun to look toward the door of Portman Square, Darcy would be there when it opened.