17. A Question of Judgment
seventeen
A Question of Judgment
For one week, Elizabeth’s life had been both the happiest and most bewildering it had ever been.
Mr. Darcy came often to Longbourn.
He came with Mr. Bingley; he came on horseback; once he came in an open carriage because Mrs. Bennet had declared that gentlemen who rode everywhere must be made to remember roads were invented for civilized people.
He endured her mother’s attentions with a gravity Elizabeth found alternately touching and dangerous to her composure.
He spoke with Jane kindly, listened to Mary with patience, answered Kitty’s questions about Pemberley without appearing to think them foolish, and occasionally received Lydia’s direct remarks with the air of a man who had wandered into a foreign country and intended to behave properly until rescued.
Elizabeth adored him for it.
She did not say so, even to Jane.
Courting, she discovered, was not so much a state of constant romance as a succession of small, astonishing permissions.
She might walk with Mr. Darcy in the garden if Jane or Kitty remained in sight.
She might speak to him longer than politeness required.
She might receive his calls with visible pleasure.
He might ask her opinion without disguising that he valued it.
Their hands might touch when passing a book, and both could pretend it was accidental while knowing perfectly well it was not.
It ought to have been enough to make her foolishly happy.
It very nearly did.
Then Mr. Wickham entered the room, or Lydia mentioned him, or Darcy’s mouth hardened at a name no one else had heard, and Elizabeth’s happiness became tangled with doubt.
She disliked doubt. In other people she might call it prudence; in herself it felt like an affront.
The matter came to breakfast with Mr. Philips.
He arrived before the eggs had cooled, looking red in the face and unusually solemn. Mrs. Bennet received him with alarm, because nothing in her opinion justified a gentleman’s solemnity before tea unless someone had died, married badly, or ruined a gown.
“Brother! What has happened?”
Mr. Philips removed his hat and looked around the breakfast table. “I beg pardon for interrupting you all so early, but I thought Bennet ought to know at once.”
Mr. Bennet set down his cup. “That is a dreadful beginning. Sit, Philips, before my wife decides the militia has invaded.”
“There is no militia,” Mr. Philips said, taking the indicated chair. “Though I begin to think soldiers might create less mischief than gossip.”
Lydia, who had been spreading jam upon toast, went still.
Elizabeth noticed. Jane did too.
Mrs. Bennet sank into a chair. “Gossip? What gossip?”
Mr. Philips hesitated. It was not a natural condition for him, and its presence made the room attend more closely.
“It concerns Wickham.”
Lydia’s knife clattered against her plate.
Mr. Bennet’s expression altered slightly, but the bookish indolence disappeared. “Go on.”
“Whispers have begun in Meryton. Nothing plain enough for a man to seize by the collar and demand an explanation, but enough. That Mr. Darcy holds Wickham in contempt. That there was some shameful conduct in his past. That he is not to be trusted near respectable families. People are inclined to side with Mr. Darcy, of course. Ten thousand a year makes a man very persuasive, even when he says nothing himself.”
Elizabeth’s stomach gave an unpleasant twist. “Who has said it?”
“That is the difficulty.” Mr. Philips rubbed one hand over his brow. “No one knows. Everyone heard it from someone else, and each someone else heard it from a lady who was told in confidence.”
Mrs. Bennet bristled. “That is always the worst sort of lady.”
Mary folded her hands. “Uncharitable speech may do more injury than open accusation, for the hearer supplies whatever guilt the speaker withholds.”
“Thank you, Mary,” Lydia said, too sharply.
Mary looked hurt.
Jane leaned forward. “Uncle, has Mr. Wickham heard?”
“He has heard enough to know something is wrong. Two clients were suddenly unable to keep their appointments yesterday. Mrs. Carter crossed the street rather than speak to him. He says little, but I know what I see.” Mr. Philips then spoke to Mr. Bennet.
“I came to ask what is to be done. I will not have my office made unfit for business because some high gentleman takes a dislike to my clerk.”
Lydia pushed back her chair. “Mr. Darcy has no right.”
“Lydia,” Mrs. Bennet warned, though without much conviction.
“No, Mama, I will speak. If anyone at this table can give evidence that Mr. Wickham is anything other than what we have seen, then I shall listen. Has he neglected his work? No, Uncle says he is excellent. Has he gambled? No, he refused cards twice in public. Has he pursued fortune? No, for I have none. Has he behaved improperly here? No. He waits, and he asks Papa’s leave before taking liberties, and he never speaks ill of Mr. Darcy even when Mr. Darcy walks into our house and treats him as if he were dirt beneath his boots. ”
“Lydia,” Jane said gently.
Her sister’s eyes flashed with tears and temper. “I am not being foolish. I know everyone thinks I must be because I like him. But liking him does not make me wrong.”
No one answered at once.
Elizabeth, who had braced herself for girlish protest, found herself moved by the sense in Lydia’s argument. It was uneven, passionate, and perhaps too loyal, but it was not empty.
Mr. Bennet regarded his youngest daughter over the rim of his cup. “You have made a better case than your tone promised.”
Lydia blinked. “Thank you, Papa. I think.”
He nodded at Mr. Philips. “You have seen his conduct in business.”
“I have,” Mr. Philips said firmly. “He is the best clerk I have ever had. Quick, diligent, civil to clients, and not too proud to do dull work. I had a man once who could write a fair copy but thought stamping papers beneath him. Wickham will stamp papers, fetch records, draft a letter, walk a widow home if she is distressed, and then sit up half the night studying. If that is villainy, I should like three more villains before Michaelmas.”
Kitty nodded vigorously. “He mended Mrs. Harker’s lease question.”
“I do not know what that means,” Mrs. Bennet said, “but it sounds useful.”
“It was useful,” Mr. Philips replied.
Jane’s voice entered, with its usual power to lower the temperature of a room. “Then perhaps charity requires we judge him by what we know, while remaining attentive to what we do not.”
Mary nodded. “That is a more balanced expression of my earlier point.”
Lydia looked at her. “Your earlier point sounded like a sermon.”
“It was from a sermon.”
“That explains it.”
Mr. Bennet lifted a hand before the quarrel could become domestic instead of serious. “We shall stand by Mr. Wickham for now. If he proves himself unworthy, we shall act then. Until that time, I will not cast a man from my house upon rumors no one will own.”
Relief broke across Lydia’s face so openly that Elizabeth had to look away.
Mr. Philips exhaled. “That is my feeling as well. I will not lose him. Meryton may whisper if it likes. Time will show whether the man before them is good.”
Mrs. Bennet, who had been unusually subdued, sat straighter. “Then he must come to dinner tomorrow. That will show everyone.”
“It will show everyone we have dinner,” Mr. Bennet said.
“And that we are not ashamed.”
“That too.”
Elizabeth stared at the toast upon her plate and could not make herself eat another bite.
Who had spread the rumors?
Darcy had promised caution. He had been fierce, yes, and certain, and too ready to condemn. But she did not think him petty. She did not think him the sort of man who would whisper through Meryton to damage another man without putting his name to the accusation.
Unless he had not considered the effect.
Unless his disdain had been overheard.
Unless someone at Netherfield had chosen to repeat what ought to have remained private.
Miss Bingley’s face came to mind, sharp with displeasure at the assembly, sharper still when Darcy crossed a room to speak with Elizabeth.
A headache began behind Elizabeth’s eyes.
She excused herself soon after breakfast, though not before Lydia caught her hand in the passage.
“You believe him, do you not?”
Elizabeth looked at her sister’s anxious face, the bravado stripped away now that the family council was over.
“I believe Mr. Wickham deserves fairness.”
“That is not the same.”
“No,” Elizabeth admitted. “It is not.”
Lydia swallowed. “I love him, Lizzy.”
The words were whispered, frightened by their own seriousness.
Elizabeth squeezed her hand. “Then we must be very sure we protect you.”
“You mean protect me from him.”
“I mean protect your happiness from everything that might threaten it.”
Lydia looked unconvinced, but she nodded and went upstairs.
Elizabeth took her bonnet from the peg in the hall before anyone could ask where she meant to go.
She did not know, precisely.
Just that she must see Mr. Darcy.
The day had become windy, with clouds moving quickly over the sun and leaving the fields alternately bright and shadowed.
Elizabeth walked fast at first, anger pushing her beyond her usual pace.
By the time she reached the lane near the old stile, the first heat of it had cooled into something worse: disappointment.
Mr. Darcy had asked for her trust.
He had been given more of it than he knew.
If he had injured Wickham by careless speech, if he had allowed his belief in Wickham’s guilt to become cruelty, what did that say of the man she had begun to love?
She found, to her surprise, that the thought of seeing him no longer brought uncomplicated pleasure.
Until now she had looked forward to their meetings with an eagerness she scarcely acknowledged even to herself.
Today she wished he would not appear at all, for she did not know whether she wished to defend him—or demand an explanation.
She stopped beside the stile and pressed one hand to the rough wood.