Chapter Six #2
Wickham’s mother always counseled him to never, ever, give serious cause for offense to Mr. Darcy.
Wickham obeyed this command, knowing that his future prosperity depended upon fulfilling it.
Trifling with Jane, seducing her, even for the sake of encouraging the marriage to occur sooner, would make Mr. Darcy angry at him.
It would disappoint Mr. Darcy. And he did not think that Mr. Darcy would forgive him for that, even though he knew that the man would forgive him a great deal else.
But Wickham did, in conversation with Mr. Darcy, go so far as to mention his great impatience for the future, when he would be settled as a gentleman, and his fear that the living promised to him would not become available in a good time, and he said that he looked very much forward to settling down and becoming a married man when the time came.
Wickham said all of this in such a manner as to convey clearly to his patron that he was chiefly thinking of Jane in this.
Mr. Darcy smiled and said encouragingly, “Do not worry about that at all. The time will come. You are so young still. Very young. So much in a hurry you young are. But enjoy your time at university. One ought to be wild and free while there—not too wild, always remember that I am known as your patron, and your behavior reflects upon my name—but you must enjoy yourself. But as for the future…well, let us not speak too directly upon something that cannot yet be settled, but I promise you that you shall not need to wait forever to be settled with a home from which you can marry. Once you have finished your years at university and achieved your degree, I will give you enough for you to have independence while waiting for Kympton.”
This was as much as Wickham had ever been able to hope to hear, but knowing that it would make his patron smile, laugh, and ruffle his hair as though he was a child, Wickham grinned at him and said whiningly, “But it is soooo long.”
“Patience my dear boy, patience,” Mr. Darcy said, ruffling Wickham’s hair as though he was still a child. “All good things come to those who wait.”
The long summer days were filled with thinking about Jane, smiling at her, gaining chances to hold and kiss her hand and delicate skin, making her blush and making her laugh.
But beyond Jane, Wickham naturally had other occupations.
He found little to do with Fitzwilliam, except sitting about fishing with him in the river several times when Mr. Darcy did not keep Fitzwilliam busy reading estate documents or riding about every field.
However, Wickham many times went fishing and riding with Clarke and Peake and his other friends about the neighborhood.
He helped his mother arrange her assignations, and he listened to a half dozen of his father’s doleful lectures upon the importance of proper behavior, took part in obscene theatricals that a collection of young gentlemen put on two towns away, and frequently indulged in rude thoughts about Jane’s scarred and blind sister as she always hung around Fitzwilliam, endlessly pestering him.
These were thoughts that Wickham knew well enough not to speak aloud, for they would have shown ill breeding.
Wickham also enjoyed the favors of one of the kitchen maids at Pemberley.
Submit Jones was a woman who had been raised by a fanatical dissenter family who lived on a farm near Lambton, and while her fear of severe paternal beatings had remained with her when she entered service, that fear was permanently ended by her father’s happily untimely death.
At this time, she began to do that which she had always longed to do— anything that the old man would have despised.
For this reason, even though she came from a respectable family of tenant farmers, when she caught young Master Wickham looking at her in such a way, she looked back at him in a way as to show her happiness at his attention.
Matters proceeded quickly from there.
Likely if she had not begun her intrigue with George Wickham, who was in fact two years younger than she was, Submit would have chosen a new name for herself and taken a day to walk to Derby to find employment that she would have found more congenial than cleaning pots and pans in one of the brothels of the town.
Instead, she fell in love with the young quick-talking and easily smiling gentleman who had a delight in defiling, as he described it, the various nooks, crannies, and rooms of Pemberley.
Wickham thought that in conducting such an affair, he was doing something dangerous that must be kept particularly secret.
Mr. Darcy would not be particularly upset with him for his dalliances with women of ill repute near Eton, and the advice to be wild, but not too wild, promised Wickham freedom to pursue similar intrigues around the college town.
However, Mr. Darcy would look upon his affair with a maid employed in his own house differently.
Submit was implicitly under Mr. Darcy’s protection, and she was from a family of good repute.
George sometimes imagined them being caught and hauled before Mr. Darcy.
He thought he could talk his way around it, sweeten his godfather into saying that all was forgiven, and gain perhaps a few smiles about youthful high spirits and behaviors that were never to be repeated.
That was what he thought in any case, but Wickham was by no means certain that he would not receive punishments that he would greatly dislike.
Most centrally, Wickham much feared that if he was widely known to have seduced a maid in the house, that Mr. Darcy would reconsider his plan to give him a living and to have him marry Jane.
The living promised an easy income with very little work.
Perhaps, he’d be given a commission in the regulars, or made to study law if it was decided that he could not be given a church living.
But Jane. Losing Jane would hurt. Wickham needed the glory of marrying the woman who was already halfway to being recognized as the greatest beauty in the county.
Caution on Wickham’s part, reinforced by Submit’s good sense, meant that they avoided those behaviors that might lead to pregnancy, and the girl’s virginity was left intact should that ever become a question of importance.
Instead, they engaged in crimes against nature that would have shocked Mr. Darcy or Submit Jones’s father far more greatly.
Despite their efforts at secrecy, which successfully concealed their intrigue from the housekeeper, the butler, George’s own father, Mr. Darcy, Miss Bennet, and Submit’s fellow servants, there was one other person who knew.
Elizabeth Bennet’s sensitive ears, and ability to quietly creep about the house provided her with new revelations about human nature when she found a place from which she could listen to a liaison between George Wickham and Submit Jones.
They were quiet as they went about their pleasures, as they knew that discovery would be disastrous, but they were not quite quiet enough to escape the ears of the blind.
Elizabeth had never particularly liked George Wickham, and since he had returned to Pemberley she had liked him less.
It was clear enough that he thought little of her, considered her an annoyance, and that he hated those times, much as he pretended otherwise, when he was obliged by Jane or Mr. Darcy to lead her on a path about the house.
That he always hung about Jane and talked to her constantly in that false, flattering manner made Elizabeth dislike him more.
Elizabeth’s memory of how Wickham had looked the last time she saw him did suggest that he had a handsome face to match his smooth voice.
But there was a proprietary manner in the way that he spoke to Jane that Elizabeth did not like.
Without considering the question of whether it would ever happen, Elizabeth suspected that George hoped to marry Jane one day.
And from something that she overheard Wickham say once when he was talking to his friend John Clarke, Elizabeth considered him to be one of those despicable persons who wished that she had died so that Jane could have inherited her fortune.
In this Elizabeth was for once a fair judge. George Wickham had a very good notion of how many interludes with women of ill repute three thousand pounds could buy, and he sincerely resented Miss Elizabeth for robbing the woman he would marry of half the fortune that ought to be his.
Yes, everyone would look at him with envy once he’d married Jane.
And, yes, Wickham’s birth meant that marrying a woman with a fortune of three thousand was the most that he could reasonably expect.
But Wickham also knew that if he could marry a startlingly beautiful woman with six thousand, the other young men at Eton would be deuced impressed with him.
At this time Wickham did not have any notion that he ought to marry a less beautiful, but wealthier woman. The idea that he could marry anyone but the woman his godfather had chosen for him did not occur to Wickham until after he was already married to Miss Bennet.
It did occur to Elizabeth that the fact that a kitchen maid who laced her conversation with a great many biblical references—Papa would have made sport of her for that—was engaged in carnal relations with Wickham was a great piece of gossip.
She could get Wickham very much in trouble.
And she was sure that he would deserve that trouble.
But, when Elizabeth seriously considered informing Mr. Darcy about his godson’s behavior, it became impossible.
Mr. Darcy was too solemn, and he would wish to know why she snuck about so that she could hear such things.
It would raise questions about her own behavior.
He would think that hearing a couple engaged in illicit amorous activities was a stain upon Elizabeth’s own character.
He would tell her to stop behaving in such a way, since she would be a burden upon Jane.
Further, Elizabeth considered it deeply unwise to make a serious enemy of George. Her blindness made her particularly vulnerable to the sorts of mean pranks that she suspected George to be an expert in.