Chapter Twenty-Four
Darcy waited the whole night with Bingley. For the first hour he endeavored to convince his friend to not fight. But at last Darcy gave up the effort. There was no hope of success in that. His friend had the notion in his head that he was not a coward, and thus he must appear for the duel.
Continuing to argue on this point would not change Bingley’s mind.
Now Darcy tried to convince his friend to aim to hit Wickham. That notion was also rejected by the young man. He would not kill a man.
They got to the clearing first, and Darcy had some vague hope that Wickham had slept past the appointed time, or lost his nerve, or had tripped and fallen into a ditch, or been trampled by a horse on the way.
None of those events had come to pass, and Mr. Clarke arrived five minutes later with Mr. Wickham.
“Wickham,” Darcy said, “Mr. Bingley insists that he has spoken in no unbecoming manner with your wife. There is no need to engage in this fight.”
“She likes him. That damned wife your father made me marry likes him. I had it out of her last night. She enjoys his conversation more than mine. Because she cannot lie. She likes the look of him, because she’ll not lie, and she has to obey when I tell her to say something.
She thinks very highly of Bingley, and she cannot lie.
I’ll show her Bingley’s corpse. That will be fair.
Let my wife like a man more than she likes me?
She can like the corpse. I’ll not have this.
I’ll not be like my father. I won’t be laughed at.
I won’t let a woman mock me! I make a mockery of women. ”
“You certainly do that,” Mr. Clarke said.
“As much as I would wish the situation to be otherwise, Mr. Wickham has stated to me that he will not accept any apology from Mr. Bingley, as the chief matter which offends him is that he believes Mrs. Wickham to be unacceptably fond of Mr. Bingley. Mr. Bingley, it is not my place, but if you do not intend to shoot at Mr. Wickham, I would advise you to not step to the line. I certainly will not consider you a coward if you refuse to fight a man who wishes to shoot at you because his wife knows him well enough to dislike him.”
“Damn you, Clarke,” Wickham sneered. “You are here to be on my side.”
Mr. Clarke did not reply to that.
Bingley wiped his hands on his pants. Then he said, “I—I am not a coward. I will not avoid this.”
The guns were loaded, and each second examined both guns before they were handed over.
Bingley looked at his gun, and he smiled. His hands were not shaking now.
The paces were counted out, and Bingley and Wickham sent to stand at the chosen lines.
Wickham’s hands were shaking, and Darcy hoped that would ruin the man’s aim.
It was decided by a flip of the coin that Darcy would release the signal, so with his own gun on his belt, he walked over to a spot between the two gentlemen, but sufficiently out of the line of fire to be safe.
He raised a white handkerchief high.
Then he let it loose.
The handkerchief fluttered down.
Two gunshots rang out.
Bingley had pointed his gun in the air, and he smiled serenely.
Wickham was swearing. “That tree. That damned tree. I hit the goddamned tree.”
Darcy closed his eyes and let out a relieved sigh. Thank God.
“Well, that is that,” Darcy said. “Now that you have both had the opportunity to shoot, I believe that honor has been satisfied.”
“Deuced damn, no!” Wickham shouted. “I mean to kill him. I am going to kill him. My honor will be satisfied when Mrs. Wickham has sobbed over the corpse, and not before. We agreed on firing for three rounds. Clarke, give me the other pistol.”
“You are such a coward,” Clarke said. “You only are willing to face a man who you know will shoot in the air.”
“Give me the gun,” Wickham replied. “Isn’t that your duty? Don’t gentlemen care about duty? Does anyone care in this world, still, for the honor of the English gentleman? Give me the gun, so we can shoot again.”
“Bingley,” Darcy said to his friend. “Do you consider yourself satisfied? You have proven that you were not a coward, and there is no reason to fight another round.”
“He is a coward if he doesn’t let me shoot at him again,” Wickham shouted. “Bingley, you are a coward, if you go away before we’ve shot all the rounds; I will tell every man you know about how cowardly you are. Are you a worm? Are you a dog?”
Bingley stared at Wickham. He appeared deeply conflicted.
“Ignore him,” Darcy said. “He is a mad dog.”
Wickham glared at Darcy. “I want blood. I want blood. I’ve hated you. For so, so long. I have hated you. If you don’t let me kill Bingley—You are so happy with your blind whore. Did she ever tell you what she did to me? How she tried to seduce me?”
“I believe I have heard a true accounting of those events.”
“Damn you. Damn you. Bingley, I will beat my wife to death, that slut who loves you more than she loves me, I swear, I will beat her till the brains bleed out if you do not face me.”
“That would be murder,” Darcy said with calmness he did not feel. “And they would hang you certainly.”
“Why should I care! Why? I would be rather dead than let every man see that I cannot control my wife. I will not be mocked!”
“I tell you,” Bingley said, “Mrs. Wickham did nothing that you might criticize her for, and—”
“She likes you!”
A bird that had settled back in its nest after the first gun shot was startled into flapping away once more.
“Now get to the line,” Wickham said, “and let me shoot you. Just two more rounds. Maybe I’ll miss.”
Bingley walked over to the stump that had been paced off as his place to fire. Wickham followed him, sneering.
“Bingley, come back here,” Mr. Clarke shouted across the clearing. “You do not even have a loaded weapon.”
“I have no need for one,” Bingley replied, not moving.
“Good,” Wickham said. “Then I’ll have time to properly aim. John, it is your turn to drop the handkerchief.”
“It would be murder if you shoot him without a gun,” Mr. Clarke said.
“I look forward to telling my wife about it,” was Wickham’s reply. “If you do not give the signal within a handful of seconds, I’ll just shoot Bingley without it.”
“Very well.” Clarke walked up to the location between them where Darcy had stood, holding the handkerchief high. He held it in his left hand, which seemed odd to Darcy.
Mr. Clarke looked at Wickham for what seemed like an eternity.
Even though such cases never succeeded, Darcy had already decided that he would bring a prosecution for murder against Wickham and try to see him hung.
The circumstances, most specifically that Wickham had threatened, with some seriousness, to kill his own wife, and that he knew that Bingley had not taken a loaded gun, might make the difference.
Someone should stop this. Someone should.
Wickham stared at the handkerchief while holding the gun down by his side, waiting.
Bang.
Wickham’s body jerked to the side and he started to lift his gun, but then he collapsed before it reached halfway up.
Darcy’s confused mind could barely understand what had happened at first.
Mr. Clarke stepped lightly towards the man who had once been his dearest friend, his own gun still out and pointing towards Wickham, a waft of smoke in the air about him.
He pushed Wickham’s body over to see if there was any light in it.
“Already dead. I’d hoped he’d suffer a little.
I had hoped to gloat.” Then the man dropped his gun and started to laugh maniacally.
But his laughs turned to tears, and he lowered himself to the ground and clutched Wickham’s body to himself and sobbed.
As Mr. Clarke cried, the surgeon came out from the trees.
“Oh, my,” he said. “Oh, oh.” He pulled the body away from Clarke’s unresisting arms and looked at the bullet wound.
“It cut the chief artery to the heart. There was nothing to be done. Poor man. I am sorry for your loss.” The surgeon stood and wiped the blood from his hands off onto a hand towel he’d brought with him.
He glared at Bingley. “Damned duels, damned gentlemen, always shooting each other.”
Bingley raised his hands weakly, “I didn’t—”
“Mr. Bingley shot into the air on the first round,” Mr. Darcy said to his own surprise.
“It was only when Mr. Wickham insisted on them fighting for a second round that Mr. Bingley defended himself. It was a fair duel and a fair shot. There is no one to blame for Mr. Wickham’s death but himself.
He was given every opportunity to retreat from the field alive. ”
The surgeon looked at Darcy with a serious mien, and Bingley and Clarke looked at him with shock.
Darcy was shocked himself, though it did not show in his manner at all.
He had just lied. A bold-faced, simple lie.
And he knew that if he was forced to swear to what he had just said upon the Holy Bible and with an oath of honesty to the Almighty—and it was not impossible that he would be forced to make that oath—he would lie again.
The surgeon said, “Still damned stupid. Better to be called a coward than to kill a man.”
“I do not disagree, but it is no easy thing,” Darcy replied, “to act in a manner that will permit your fellows to despise you.”
Mr. Clarke closed Wickham’s eyes. “Should we take the body back to his house?”
“And force Mrs. Wickham see him this way?” Darcy asked. “No, we’ll have men called to take him to the church. He can be buried with proper care, and Mrs. Wickham will have a chance to see the body if she wishes to. Clarke, you were his second. It is your place to arrange such matters.”
Mr. Clarke had a quite startled expression, but then he took a deep breath, squared himself and went to shake Darcy’s hand. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.
Darcy shook the man’s hand firmly.
Bingley stared at them agog. Darcy grabbed his friend’s arm and pulled him back along the path into the forest.
They both were quiet for some time. Darcy began to wonder to himself if Mrs. Wickham would be pleased to hear what had happened or chiefly sad.
He also wondered if she and Bingley would make a match of it eventually.
He hoped that they would, and he hoped that the consequences of his lie would not prevent that from happening.
But he did not know, and the whole of the situation was too astonishing to think clearly.
He chiefly wanted to hold Lizzy again, to kiss her, and to ask her what she thought.
A strange logical part of him that cared for nothing but the matters that had obsessed him when at university wished to consider the general philosophical implications of how he considered his lie to be undoubtedly just and necessary, even though he had always considered dishonesty to be a profound sin.
“I thought I would die. As Mr. Clarke stepped up, I was sure I was about to die.”
“I should have done it instead.”
“What?”
“Shot Mr. Wickham.”
“Jove! The way he acted—he was not quite sane, was he?”
“No, not for a long time. Perhaps he never was.”
“Why did you say that I was the one who shot him?”
The question rather surprised Darcy, as he had thought it would be obvious. “If you shot him, it was a duel. Juries almost never convict gentlemen for killing a man in a duel. If Clarke shot him, it was murder, and he might be hung for it. Never, never, never tell anyone what truly happened.”
“Oh—wouldn’t there be clemency though? Due to the circumstances?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Best not to test the matter.”
The two gentlemen continued up the path.
As they exited the woods and now looked out onto Pemberley’s park, with the house sitting at the seat of its valley, the hill rising up behind it, and the stream in front, Bingley said, “I wish…I would like for Mrs. Wickham to know. But…no. One must not be selfish.”
Darcy thought about this. He wished to tell Lizzy.
But also, a secret shared by many people was hardly a secret.
“I think, so long as we tell very few people…Lizzy could tell her sister. I do not think you should ever be heard to suggest aloud that you were not the one to shoot Wickham. But the chief point is that should there ever be a prosecution for any reason, we will all swear that you were the one to shoot him.”
“This is unlike you, to insist on a lie, Darcy.” Bingley was quiet for a dozen steps. “It also is very much like you in essentials, to insist on that which will protect those who deserve to be protected.”