Chapter Six
When he returned from Eton that summer, a month after Jane Bennet had achieved her fifteenth year, George Wickahm was a lad of eighteen years of age.
This is a time in a young man’s life when he is full of vigor, activity, a keen concern for the opinions of his friends, and, generally, an ever-present desire for the intimate company of the female sex.
Unlike many lads of his age, Wickham already had the charm to make women accept and enjoy his intimate company.
After this summer, Wickham would be sent up to Cambridge to begin the studies that would prepare him to take his future position as a member of the clergy of England.
In Cambridge he was to live as an addition in the same apartments that Fitzwilliam had taken in the town, and living with thick-stick-Fitz, as Darcy was referred to in certain circles at Eton, was not something Wickham looked forward to.
The pride of Mr. Darcy in his godson had led him to sponsor the young boy at Eton, and pay for his expenses there, and give him a small personal allowance in funds.
In Wickham’s time at Eton, he learned a great deal about the world, about the importance of being subservient to those who were socially superior, about how far his ready smile and easy manner could go to endear himself to persons besides Mr. Darcy, and about the limits of what he could gain from that endearment.
Participation in the pranks, games, and fights of his companions had left him with an ample familiarity with Eton’s famed birching block, but his cheerful smile and charm convinced the headmaster in ordinary cases to deliver that punishment with rather less harshness and number to the blows than would have been received by other students in a like case.
On a most memorable occasion when several of the older boys snuck out and brought a fifteen-year-old Wickham with them, he was introduced by one of the ladies at an inn in town to enjoyment of intimacies with the female sex.
After that date he was wild for intercourse with the fair ones and seldom permitted an opportunity to pass when either his purse or his tongue could gain him entrance to their gardens of delight.
Unfortunately, not being a great heir, he chiefly depended upon his tongue, as his purse was slender.
Mr. Darcy had not, in fact, considered the price of the finer sort of Lady of Pleasure when setting for Wickham the size of his allowance at school.
He had chiefly consulted what he thought was owed to his own consequence, which was already satisfied by paying Wickham’s considerable school fees, and thus Wickham found himself perpetually short of money, and begging small loans from his sundry friends to allow him to have a tumble at the inn or participate in a card game.
Fitzwilliam was aware at this time that Wickham’s habits were not what his father would have liked them to be, and that they certainly were not fitting with the dignity of the church, to which Wickham was intended.
The full extent of Wickham’s dissolution was still kept a little hidden from Fitzwilliam by that young man’s sense of prudence.
Wickham had gradually realized that Fitzwilliam’s unhappy reaction to his glowing account of his first visit to the inn was not due to jealousy but due to actual disapproval.
But, of course, such disapproval from his godfather’s heir could not control the behavior of a man like Wickham.
He refused to repress his tendency to drink, when possible, to gamble, when the masters had not yet found and burned the latest deck of cards, and to whore, when he had money and chance to escape.
Most of his friends at Eton, at least those from the better sort, would lend him bits of money from time to time with a full awareness that these ‘loans’ were in fact gifts that would never be paid back.
Such was the price of friendship with one who was beneath you in consequence.
Often necessary to pay the little fellow’s way if you were all going to enjoy a fun time together, and Wickham made himself useful in keeping everyone well entertained and in being the one who risked the worst beatings if caught.
As an aside, Mr. Darcy would have been quite surprised, and a little worried and disappointed, had he learned that his son almost never received the corporal punishment that had been a frequent part of his own schoolboy years.
Fitzwilliam was only birched twice while at Eton.
A rare case for a student present in those halls in that era, known for its fierce disciplinary practices, though this was still before John Keate would take up the post of headmaster.
Twice in the course of that gentleman’s long tenure he would be obliged to whip every student from an entire year.
Neither time when Fitzwilliam was whipped spoke ill of him.
In the first case he was punished because he had refused to bear witness against his fellow students for a prank that he was in no way involved in.
In the second it was because his new and much younger friend, Charles Bingley, was terrified of receiving a well-deserved birching, and thus Darcy acted in a way that compelled the headmaster to have him share the punishment with the younger boy, thus settling Bingley’s nerves enormously before his own whipping.
Charles Bingley’s behind would go on to receive the attention of the switch a great many more times at Eton.
It was not a matter of fear after his first trial of the punishment, and he was too friendly and companionable to avoid participation in the jokes and disobediences of his fellows.
However, he would never forget Darcy’s kindness to him, and it was for this reason, beyond any other, that he always held himself to be indebted to his friend, and viewed it as his solemn duty to cheer him, keep him in company against his will, and make sure that Darcy did not fag himself to death amongst books and Latin translations.
George Wickham knew that his godfather meant for him to marry Jane Bennet.
For a great many years this had simply been a fact of his life, like how he received most of the good things in life from Mr. Darcy, or like how his father was tired, constantly begging for his mother’s attention, and both unable and unwilling to do anything to punish those men who enjoyed Mama’s interest and favors more than he did.
When Wickham was of an age to marry, he would marry Jane Bennet.
And then Mr. Darcy would give him a good living in the church, and he would give Miss Bennet a good dowry, and Wickham’s life would be happily settled forever.
When he first saw her following Jane’s fifteenth birthday, Wickham’s eagerness for the scheme markedly increased.
Beyond her loveliness, perfection of face and figure, and beauty, there was that in Jane’s manner, deportment, and dress which proclaimed her to be a true lady, a daughter of a great man—Mr. Bennet had been a far greater man than George’s father was—she was to be one of those special charmed creatures who were the possessions of remarkable men.
Thus, George would prove himself to be a remarkable man, as his mother had always meant him to be, when he married her. With a wife of such particular and exquisite beauty every man would envy him.
Wickham imagined the look of green-faced jealousy mixed with awe that would be present on the faces of his friends, Clarke and Peake, when he introduced Jane Bennet to them as his wife.
She was wholly different from the whores who had been Wickham’s chief female companions. She could have no desperate desires. She would be soft, small, yielding, and wide eyed. He could not think of her as one of those women, nor treat her as such.
Yet…Wickham was determined above all else to not be an object of scorn, laughter, pity, and contempt like his father.
George Wickham loved his mother far more than he loved his father, yet it was the example of his father that drove him.
Old Mr. Wickham had no control over his wife.
He had no respect for himself. He did not defend his own honor.
He never acted in a vigorous or admirable manner.
He had never shot a man in a duel. All Papa cared about was finding the few small crumbs of attention or affection that he could receive from George’s mother.
When Wickham married, he would be the man.
He would never permit his wife any such indulgences.
He would show himself to be the superior.
He would be the one who enjoyed dalliances and caused her friends to think of her with pity.
He would beat his wife if she ever so much as looked at another man.
And then he would kill the man. He would not be laughed at by the childhood companions of his children.
He would not be sneered at. His wife’s free scattering of her favors would not be a matter of laughter amongst all in the neighborhood.
He would kill them all first.
George Wickham could stand anything, anything in the world, except being mocked.
While he desired Jane Bennet, Wickham knew what he owed Mr. Darcy and his own respectability as a gentleman precluded any attempt to seduce her.
One did not do such things with gentle-born maidens.
Perhaps a widow.
Wickham had heard about the lascivious nature of widows, and their need for young men to fulfill their desires. He rather hoped to find such a widow whose desires he might fulfill. But gentle-born girls of fifteen were special, sacred, and they remained sacred until married.
And then if you seduced one, and their husband was a true man, unlike Wickham’s father, he would shoot you in a duel.