Chapter 29 #2
Wickham might not be satisfied by Georgiana’s death, but he was still detestable.
“You misused my sister and made her final year miserable, and, what is worse, you have no remorse for what you did to her, or that you betrayed your own godfather and benefactor in the process!” He took a calming breath and steadied his temper.
“It is a maxim of honour that requires me to defend my sister.” Darcy could convince himself that it was honour that required him to take revenge, that it was his sister’s due, and due his reputation as a gentleman.
“You mean that you will never allow me to make up my affairs with you?” Wickham’s voice raised in incredulity.
“Capias ad satisfaciendum. Do you remember any Latin? ‘You may seize to satisfy.’ You are here because I got a writ to put a debtor under arrest until my claim is satisfied.” Darcy put his hands on the table and leant down to look into Wickham’s eyes.
“And I assure you, I am nowhere near to satisfied.”
He turned to leave, and Wickham taunted, “I pity you. I may be in here, but I will soon befriend the men and bed the ladies. You never could drink, game, or swear with the gentlemen, or talk small and flirt with the ladies. You are alone in the world now.”
“I am married.”
The words came proudly, impulsively, and were, perhaps, not the wisest thing to admit when he wanted not to appear vulnerable. But rather than an insulting rejoinder against him or his wife, Wickham was struck dumb.
Elizabeth wanted him to come here to see Wickham.
She worried that some sort of wrathfulness, a harshness, would settle in his character if he allowed Wickham to die.
Darcy looked at him, and thought of the suffering in the Fleet, even in the master’s side.
He shook his head and went to the door without taking leave.
Elizabeth was mistaken about his character; it would do him no lasting harm to know that Wickham would die and he had done nothing to stop it.
Wickham stood and cried, “Do not leave! I cannot pay now, and I shall not make enough in any card or dice game to pay the fees on this side before I must go to the common side.”
“If you survive the typhus, I shall give you a box so you can beg by the grille and earn a few coins from passers-by.”
“Darcy, please!” Wickham clutched his sleeve, and his voice rose.
“Common-side prisoners are often confined to their own apartment and cannot associate with master’s-side prisoners.
They are allowed no visitors, no liberty of the Fleet.
I shall make no money to repay you by gaming with the beggars in the other building as I could here. ”
“You have less than five pounds to your name, and you owe me over two thousand.” Darcy pried Wickham’s fingers from his coat. “And two thousand pounds will never restore Georgiana to me.”
“So you will never allow me to make up my affairs with you?” Wickham’s eyes were wide with terror.
“There are no medicines furnished, no medical attendance in the Fleet at all. You are sentencing me to die from typhus! Is that the manner of man Mrs Darcy married, the manner of man your father raised? Are you truly so hateful?”
Am I a vindictive, vengeful man? Where was the line between justice and revenge?
Wickham was confined to the Fleet, and would likely die for want of a few coins.
By the end of September, the fever, rash, haemorrhage, gangrene, prostration, and delirium would come to its natural conclusion: a wretched death.
And Georgiana is still dead. His little sister was gone, united in heaven with her child and no longer in constant pain.
He gave Wickham a long, silent look. Darcy had always known he was the better man, not because of his wealth or his rank, but because he was the man of character. And now I must act like it. He had to be able to look at his own reflection and look his wife in the eye.
“Why do you stare at me so?” Wickham’s voice was low and fearful.
“I am puzzled to decide whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you never had any.”
Wickham’s expression turned contemptuous. “Of course! Turn your soul wrong-side outward, and there is not a speck on it.”
There was a speck, a blemish, a fault that he had to remedy, although he would not admit it to Wickham.
An unyielding temper. A resentful nature.
Those defects were always there, but his sister’s seduction and suffering at the hands of the undeserving man he had always disliked had brought them to the surface. I cannot let them rule over my nature.
“I am not going to let you die,” he said quietly.
The look of bewilderment returned to Wickham’s face. “What did you say?”
“I will pay your quarterly fees to remain in the master’s side for a year.
” It was thirteen shillings a quarter to keep Wickham from a certain death from typhus and in a place that was less squalorous.
“If you fall ill, you need only write and I will make certain a doctor sees you. If you wish to make up your affairs with me, so be it. You will gamble in any event, to your and my father’s shame, so you can win enough to then pay for your own fees.
If you ever earn half of what you owe me, I will consider your debt paid in full. ”
“How gracious of you.” Wickham sounded sarcastic, but he did look relieved. “It will take me years to earn a thousand pounds and pay my own fees. Do you expect me to fall at your feet?”
“Wickham, you have been falling short of expectations your entire life. I expect nothing from you, not even gratitude. I do this for my wife’s respect and my sister’s memory.
” He put on his hat and gloves. “Write to Colonel Fitzwilliam if you need a doctor, or when you can settle your affairs with me. I need never see your face again.”
Elizabeth had teased Darcy when they first approached Pemberley House in September.
They sat near to one another in the carriage, their knees touching as it swayed, and he eagerly pointed out the sights.
It was clear he wanted her approval, and when the house came into view he tentatively asked, “Could you be happy in such a home, Elizabeth?” She splayed her fingers across her chest, taking in a quick breath at the sight of the house.
She managed to say with an impassive face that it was a “tolerable cottage in a wood” and he gave a half-smile, but when she told him she would live anywhere so long as it was with him, Darcy had smiled radiantly and kissed her.
It sometimes struck her how Darcy had rejected Pemberley and London, independence and splendour, to remain in hiding with his pregnant unmarried sister.
While protecting their good name was his priority, he still left behind influence and status out of devotion and affection for someone who the rest of the world would have told him to shun.
Another gentleman of his sphere might have sent her away alone, or taken her child away regardless of Georgiana’s wishes.
He was a generous man, and just as generous in a leased, small lodge near Meryton as he was at his ancestral estate in Derbyshire.
She was at her writing desk in her chamber, mending her pen with her silver knife—with its scratched handle—when Darcy entered. “Which of your many sisters are you writing to before breakfast?”
“My aunt Gardiner, to tell her about my new home. I have not gotten lost, but I do not know my way yet to every room. I wrote that I have proposed your setting up directing posts at the angles of the corridors.” She noticed her husband looked rather striking today.
Elizabeth rose and was about to compliment his blue coat when she realised what caused the change: Darcy was not all in black.
“I think the black clothes, ribbons, and crepe cast a needless gloom over you, over all of us,” she said softly. “Georgiana would be the first to be glad to see you leave off mourning.”
He nodded once, not quite meeting her eye.
“Today is the tenth. She has been gone three months. You ought to start wearing other colours yourself.” He tried to smile.
“You look pretty in lavender, but I expect a dressmaker’s bill for something in white or yellow soon.
I very much would like to see you wearing that blue gown you had made from Georgiana’s habit. ”
“Does this sad anniversary have you thinking about Georgiana, especially now that you are at Pemberley where there is more to remind you of her?”
Darcy shrugged. “No, or rather, no more so than before. I am happy to be here with you. Between Georgiana’s absence from being sent to school, and the death of my parents, it has been a long time since I have shared Pemberley with anyone I love.”
She felt a surge of affection for him as she saw how he needed someone to love him.
He idly looked around her chamber, as though they had not slept in it together every night and he had not left it a few hours ago.
For someone who claimed to be pleased to finally be home, and who seemed ready to be finished with mourning, Darcy looked agitated.
“Does leaving off mourning make you think of what you saw in the Fleet? You have not much spoken of it.”
After returning from Fleet Prison, Darcy had only said that he would pay to keep Wickham in the master’s side for a time as well as for whatever doctoring he ever needed. When he did not answer, Elizabeth gently asked, “What made you change your mind about Mr Wickham?”
He pressed his lips together for a long moment before speaking. “There is, I believe, in every disposition a natural defect, one that I doubt that even the best education can overcome. I suppose that pride and a lack of concern for those outside my circle might have been my particular evil—”