Chapter Seven
During this time George Wickham and Fitzwilliam lived in the same apartments, and George managed to lose all the considerable respect and affection that Darcy had held for his childhood companion. Darcy considered him a man of dissolute character, poor judgement, and dishonest habits.
The death of Wickham’s mother occurred while he was Cambridge. She died as she had lived, in a drunken accident while her lover raced a friend with her in the curricle.
George Wickham was struck by grief, but it passed soon enough.
I do not blame him for this. It is the place of the young to move on from the deaths of their parents.
They should remember with respect, love, fondness, and occasional tears, but the future belongs to the child, and they must think upon this future.
This is how young Mr. Wickham behaved after his mother’s death.
George knew that his mother would have wished him to think of her with happiness and delight, and so he did, when he remembered her.
His father was struck by the death of his wife far more severely than his son. Old Mr. Wickham went through his duties to Mr. Darcy in a slow, stiff manner, and when he ate it was in the manner of one who had to remind himself to do a task that brought him no pleasure.
When Darcy finished his time at university, he was determined, among other things, to soon find an opportunity to speak with his father about Wickham’s future.
The promise to both educate and provide for Wickham could not be undone.
That was a matter of honor, and it must be fulfilled.
But the church was no proper place for that gentleman.
Wickham should be given the support to study law or enter the army.
While Darcy thought that his childhood friend would prove to be a stain and a discredit to any respectable profession, the peculiar role and nature of the clergy made it of the first importance that men of particularly poor character be kept from it.
After the receipt of his baccalaureate, Darcy was only present at Pemberley for a handful of days before setting off on a tour of Sweden, Denmark, and Russia that his father insisted he take, as it would do more to give him the polish and awareness of the manners of other nations than a short tour around the lakes and peaks that many had preferred since access to France was impossible at present.
His friend Bingley was to accompany him, interrupting his own schooling to enjoy a more important planned year of adventure. Darcy noticed that when they arrived at Pemberley, his friend was most struck by the appearance of Jane Bennet.
However, this progressed towards nothing at the time, as Bingley was rather shy with the pretty girl, and much too young to have a serious thought about any girls in any case, and their residence at Pemberley only lasted a brief time.
Darcy only had a few opportunities to speak with his father, and in none of them was there a natural moment to begin the discussion of a matter that would be painful and difficult to speak of.
Therefore, the need to explain what he had learned of Wickham’s character remained in Darcy’s head as an unfinished thing, bothering him until he’d halfway crossed to Sweden.
There was in fact no hurry. Mr. Wickham would not graduate for two years, and it would be only then that the choice of his future profession would determine the young reprobate’s next steps.
Papa looked different, thinner than he’d seemed at Christmas. He was more easily tired, and his hair was turning white. He several times pressed his side in a manner that suggested pain. But when Darcy had asked his father about this, he had received sharp rebukes.
Darcy could not believe that his father would send him away—for it was Papa’s idea that his son travel—if there had been anything seriously amiss with his health. But seeing Papa so much older than ever before was painful.
There was also a conversation with Lizzy that he found difficult.
She was nearly fifteen and she had begun to bloom into a woman. When she gave him her ordinary embrace upon his arrival at Pemberley, he became particularly aware of this. The realization that this friend of his childhood was no longer a child herself made him uncomfortable.
Lizzy had changed.
While she still had enthusiasm, confidence, and spirit in her manner, she had also become more demure; she showed more of the manners of a young lady, and also the sweetness of one.
She no longer wished to climb trees, to muddy herself in streams, and she told him that she had ceased to sneak about the estate at night.
When Lizzy spoke with Miss Bennet, as Darcy had at some point begun to think of Jane, they often discussed fashion and clothes.
The occasional tantrums and childish eruptions had entirely disappeared.
Lizzy dressed well, and from how well chosen her colors were, one could not guess that she had no ability to see what they were.
He was proud to see how well she had grown, thinking that the regular letters they had shared for the last three years had played some important part in forming her character.
Certain things must, however, come to an end.
“Lizzy, it would be best if you do not send me any letters while I am in Scandinavia,” Darcy told her the day before he departed, while they sat together on a brick planter next to a rosebush.
“What?—ouch.” Elizabeth turned so suddenly away from the rose that she had been sniffing that she caught her finger against one of the thorns and started to suck it. “Whatever do you mean? We always share letters.”
“You are not a child anymore. By the time I return, you will be a young Miss. It would not be proper for us to continue to correspond.”
She did not reply.
“I am saying this for—”
“No, but what do you mean? You cannot mean that we will not write. No, no. I was already unhappy that you would not be here for the summer. You cannot mean that.”
“I hope,” Darcy said, “that you will continue to send me greetings in the letters from Georgiana, and I certainly shall send you messages with my letters to her, but—”
“No, no, no. I’ll not stand for that. No. There can be no purpose. No. What are you speaking of? What has propriety now to do with anything? No. No. No.”
“You will be fifteen.”
Darcy was almost surprised that Elizabeth did not simply understand the rightness of what he was saying. It was obvious.
“No.”
“You certainly will be fifteen, and Miss Elizabeth, you must behave as such.”
“Or else I’ll be a worse burden on Jane?” Lizzy snapped back.
“You owe it to yourself to act in a manner that you will never be ashamed to confess to all the world. It is not proper for a single gentleman to correspond with a single woman without an engagement. You know this.”
“Nonsense. I’m never going to marry. Why does it matter?”
“Of course you shall marry one day.”
“No, no, I shan’t. I shall be a burden forever. Jane’s burden, that is what she is determined for me to be. And who would marry me? I know that I am hideous. I don’t even want to marry.”
“Of course you will wish to marry; if not now, then you will in a year or two.”
“What I want is to continue writing letters to you. I…you know that they are important to me. I would miss them—I am your father’s ward. I am nearly your sister, am I not? And I am Georgiana’s second favorite person in the world, after you, and so there can be nothing improper.”
It was hard for Darcy to reply, because he noticed that there was something in him that did not consider Lizzy to be his sister. It was, in fact, that consideration and realization that had awakened him to the need to end their correspondence.
He also noted that Lizzy thought that Georgiana preferred her to their father, and he had no doubt that it was true.
“Well, do you agree? There can be nothing improper.” Lizzy challenged him. She stood, hands on hips. The black ribbon around her eyes stared at him. She would be beautiful.
“I hate to make you sad. But my honor and my duty require this.”
“Oh, damn you.” Lizzy said and then she started to sob.
Darcy put an arm around her shoulders. “Poor Lizzy. My poor, dear friend.”
“What, you’ll still call me Lizzy, not Miss Elizabeth?” She stood stiff, but then suddenly, when Darcy started to move away, she tightly embraced him and she cried into his coat. “You do not need to worry. I’ll never marry.”
“You will, I know it.”
“I am ugly.”
“You are not. And you are not a burden, and you know that you are not.”
“You will write something nice to me in every letter you send to Georgiana. Do you hear? In every single one.”
“I will.”
“Every single one! And I know I should not have used that word which girls are not supposed to use. You are thinking that, I know. But I am that sort of girl who knows the sorts of words that gentlemen and servants try to hide from us gentle-born girls. So you see, I really will never marry.”
“You shall, and I would not wish for my dear, dear friend to be anything different than she is.”
“Well, I would like to see once again, we are different in that. I would change myself at least a little.”
Darcy laughed.
“And I wish I wasn’t so ugly and scarred—”
“You are not.”
“Please do not try to convince me upon this point—but I shall happily accept that long familiarity makes it so you do not find me to be a particularly shocking sight. It is strange. I didn’t care at all about the scars when it first happened. But now I do.”
“You were a child, and now you are becoming a young woman.”
“Which proves,” Lizzy replied laughing, “the whole point you wished to make. I understand. I do. Oh, but I hate it. I hate change. Even before the fire I depended upon our correspondence. You’d send so many letters to Papa, do you remember?”
“I do.”
“I hate anything of loss. I have lost enough. Why must everything I like always change and disappear?”
That did not deserve a reply, and they both knew it.