Chapter Thirteen
The wedding between Jane Bennet and George Wickham occurred on a blustery day at the start of November.
It was attended by a delighted Mr. Darcy, who could not have been happier if he attended the wedding of his own children, and who perhaps was happier than he had been on the day of his own wedding.
Mr. Wickham’s father attended, still drunk from the previous night of dissipation, during which he had sobbed at the memory of his own wedding and how much he missed a woman who had while alive thought very little about him.
Additionally, Elizabeth, Georgiana, most of Pemberley’s servants, and divers friends of theirs from about the neighborhood sat in the cold pews to watch the vows made.
Submit Jones did not attend.
Even though Wickham had assured her of his affection the night before, and even though she looked forward to the position of housekeeper that she had been promised by Wickham, she was angry. She destroyed a vase that had the cost of more than two pounds and then hid the shards.
When the old familiar rector asked Miss Jane Bennet, “Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him,” there was a shockingly long pause.
She did not love him.
She could not say that she loved him. That would be a lie. A lie. She could not say it. She did not want to live a life where she must love and serve George Wickham.
Jane looked about desperately, wishing to be anywhere else.
But Jane was a seventeen-year-old girl who had generally been raised to do what she ought, and who had a terrible fear of disappointing people. She blushed; she went pale. She saw Wickham looking at her with something in his eyes.
She had to say it.
Mr. Darcy was looking at her. Wickham was looking at her.
The rector looked at her. Her eyes fell on Elizabeth, that black ribbon tied around her sister’s eyes.
Even though she had never said so much, Jane was quietly confident that Elizabeth would approve if she did not marry George.
But everyone else would be shocked and despise her.
She would be a tale for the next thirty years of the young woman who refused to say her wedding vows after everyone had assembled to hear them.
She opened her mouth to say it.
A memory of a piece of paper, the quill dripping down into the inkpot. Saying something that was not true, and then terrible things happened.
She shouldn’t lie. Saying the marriage vows would be a lie.
The rector prompted her again. “Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him?”
In a low voice that could barely be heard, Jane Bennet said, “I will,” and transformed herself into Jane Wickham.
Let us not judge Jane too harshly for this mistake. She was young, and her parents were dead, and all of the advice she had received had been poor. I doubt that many of us would have done better in her place.
Often though, the worst mistakes that we make are not like Jane’s mistake.
She was aware of her decision. She knew that she could have chosen differently, and she had not. No, the worst mistakes we make are those of inattention, where we do not think about something absolutely important until it is too late, and we must forever more ask ourselves ‘what if’.
There was something in Jane’s barely audible voice as she’d finished her vows that sent a knife of ice through Elizabeth’s soul.
She suddenly knew that she should have told Jane that Wickham had already violated their vows before they had even made them.
Elizabeth felt a deep sense of shame and wrongness.
Why hadn’t she?
Jealousy? Anger? Stupidity? Fear of making a spectacle of herself? Fear that Jane would not have listened?
If she had only thought to do so.
If only…if only.
Jane should have known. And marriage was forever.
At this time though, Elizabeth had great hope that Jane would be happy.
Hopefully she would never learn of what Wickham had done.
Perhaps Wickham would never do it again.
And even if he did, it was after all an ordinary thing for a gentleman to keep a mistress, and many of them were able to keep their wives happy at the same time.
But Elizabeth felt a sense of dread and shame for the whole of the wedding breakfast and a sense of guilt about having failed to care properly for her sister that would not leave her for a period of many years.