Chapter 32
Before beginning what was likely to be a protracted and emotion-filled discussion, Elizabeth and Darcy decided to dress and join their son for breakfast. It had become a daily ritual that Darcy said he would not forgo for anything.
When they had finished eating, he quickly met with his steward to tell the man he would be not be at his disposal for the remainder of the day.
Elizabeth told Mrs Hobbs and Nurse Harriet that, barring emergency, she and Darcy were occupied with important matters.
They settled in the sitting room adjoining their bedchambers, and for a moment, neither knew how to begin. Darcy spoke first.
“In this letter”—he gestured towards the one she had left for him the previous night—“you said that I tossed you away as though you were nothing. Before anything else, I must tell you, never were you nothing. You were, and still are, everything. It was only my exceedingly great agony over what I feared was happening that led me to wish for a brief separation from you.”
“So you planned to send me away for just a short time?” Elizabeth asked carefully. It still caused her a stab of pain to refer to that time. Even speaking the phrase ‘send me away’ was extraordinarily hurtful, but she forced herself through it.
“Such was my despair at the time, it is difficult to recall my precise thoughts and plans. When I reached the decision to send you to Yorkshire, it was born from the notion that I could not think on our situation with reason when I was seeing you day in and day out. I believe I thought that I would find out the truth from Wickham—which I did, though not in the way I expected—and then you and I would resolve the problem between us. I also thought if you were with child, then we would be better able to hide it.”
“Hide it… Except it was your own child.”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth felt a pulse of anger that she strove to maintain control over. “Did it ever occur to you—ever, even once—that you should ask me? You waved handkerchiefs at me and acted as though I should know things, but I had no notion of who George Wickham was!”
“I did not wish to ask you because…because I assumed you would lie. In any case, it all seemed so…so plausible.”
“Your sister lied. Caroline Bingley lied. You had no reason to assume I would lie.” Elizabeth’s hands began to shake, and she struggled to remain calm. “And plausible? How did you think it plausible?”
“No! I…I was very confused and distressed, and I was not thinking clearly.”
“How was it plausible that I, who had never corresponded with a man, kissed a man, allowed a man to touch my bare hands…how was it suddenly plausible that I might have had this illicit love affair?”
Darcy raked his hands through his hair. “I only meant it seemed plausible because we had not known each other very long. I knew hardly anything of you or your past.”
“My past?” Elizabeth cried. She stopped herself a moment and breathed deeply, trying to gain control. “How is it plausible that you believed you had married a scheming, adulterous trollop? That I shall insist on knowing.”
“This is coming out wrong,” Darcy muttered. “I only meant plausible in the sense of me not knowing you and imagining you could be a different person than I had thought you were when I married you. Back then, I could only think that perhaps I had been deceived.”
“What about my father’s reluctance to allow us to marry? If I, and my parents with me, had schemed to trap you into marriage, would you not suppose he would have eagerly granted his consent?”
“That is very true, but alas, I did not think of it,” Darcy admitted. “Not at that time. I did think of it later, after I knew the truth, and it was yet another thing I felt stupid for.”
Elizabeth rose from her seat, feeling the need to pace a bit. “What if you had never learnt the truth? What if it had been years? Would you have left me in Yorkshire forever?”
“I do not know,” Darcy said, looking miserable.
“I had no clear sense at that time what I was doing. There was no plan, I was only reacting. Please, darling, just think of it this way: when I began acting as I did, did you not have moments of doubt? Did you ever think I was a different person than the one you married and wonder whether you perhaps had been deceived?”
That did give her pause. As much as she was angry and upset, she wished to be fair and consider the situation from every perspective, including his.
Yes, she had to admit that she had believed he was a different person—a worse person.
She remembered worrying that she had made a dreadful mistake in marrying a man she scarcely knew, and she had those twinges of conscience where she thought her father had been correct.
“I did, several times, when I saw you acting so very differently from the man with whom I had fallen in love. But Fitzwilliam, that was based on your actions, not on falsehoods and stories from others. It was based on you.”
“I know.” Darcy lowered his head, his gaze on the rug at his feet.
“My entire life I have feared that those around me would seek my friendship for only their own gain. In you, I believed I had found someone who truly loved me for me alone. To hear it was not so, shattered me and very quickly caused all my old fears to take control of my mind. It is so difficult, when we believe we see our greatest fears coming true, to put emotion aside and think rationally and sensibly. I was in agony, and I could hardly think for all that I felt.”
Elizabeth considered his words for a moment.
Of course, everyone had those deep-seated fears and worries.
For herself, it was what her mother had always said—that she was neither so beautiful nor so good tempered as Jane.
Although outwardly, she dismissed those words, inside, it did always trouble her just a bit.
What if someone she trusted had come to her and told her Darcy was secretly in love with Jane, perhaps had even betrayed her with Jane?
Could she have behaved rationally if faced with that?
She put such thoughts aside for later consideration. “But how could it be that you said you loved me yet thought so poorly of me? So very poorly, that to even question such lies was not considered. How could you believe such nonsense without the least attempt at verification?”
Darcy was silent for a moment, looking pensive, before finally admitting. “Mostly because I was too afraid to hear you say it was true.”
How ironic it was, that when at last Elizabeth wished for these answers, he felt so inadequate in giving them to her. Her. It was never about her, was it? It was him and George Wickham and the tangled, dark web that had always been around them.
He began slowly, wanting to get it just right. “George Wickham and I share a complicated and difficult history, full of betrayal and me being taken advantage of for my wealth and station.”
“But I am your wife. Surely my character should have accounted for more than history with a childhood friend.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Except that in this case, you were the young woman I had married but scarcely had taken the time to know, and he was the reprobate whose cruelty I had known most of my life.
“Wickham’s father came to Pemberley to serve as steward when I was ten and George was nine.
He was younger, but he seemed older somehow.
He was adept at skipping rocks, he could jump on a horse, and he was permitted quite a bit of freedom—all very exemplary qualifications for a friend when you are a young boy, particularly a boy like me. ”
She asked, “What sort of boy were you?”
“I was shy. I never had an easy time making friends and preferred the company of my father above anyone my own age. I was eager to call George my friend, even with his frequent instances of unkindness. He was my confidante on one hand, but on the other, he would meanly tease me, blame me for his misdeeds, play pranks on me, and engage in unduly rough play, that sort of thing. But I cared not. I was just glad to be included even if it meant withstanding his abuse.”
“Your parents did not see the truth of it?”
“My parents pitied him, and his father too. His mother was a horrid, vulgar woman, who abused George abominably in both word and deed. She often told him he was stupid and useless, she chastised him endlessly, and I had never heard a kind word from her directed at her son—or anyone else for that matter. George had had an older brother who had died when he was five, and she would frequently tell George she wished it had been him instead.”
Elizabeth gasped. “How awful!”
“She beat him for anything and everything—I once saw her hold his head underwater in the horse’s trough, screaming that she meant to kill him.
I learnt later it was for the offence of not finishing his dinner.
He once tore a new pair of breeches, and she told him that if he meant to act like a wild animal, she would treat him as such.
Then she tied him outside in the pen with an old, mean sow and left him to fend for himself overnight.
My father learnt of it from one of the stable hands and went out and untied him, then brought him into the house to spend the night.
In the morning, he sent a note to Mr Wickham to retrieve him.
All of this was only what I was witness to.
George never spoke of it, and my parents and I never discussed it. I was too young.
“Soon it came time for me to go away to school, and I was distressed—I did not want to go. I begged my parents to send George with me, and so they did. Looking back, I believe they might have also wished to remove him from his home situation, but it was mostly at my instigation.