Chapter Two
Elizabeth walked hand in hand with her son down the long street. The boy was uncharacteristically silent.
A hot sun beat down on them, though there were hints of a storm coming on the horizon. The smell of sea air, and the cawing of gulls. Despite the summer heat, all was fresher and cooler than the summer stench of London walks.
About halfway, when the steeple of the church was clearly visible in the distance, George suddenly exclaimed, “So Mr. Darcy killed my father?”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. She took in a breath. “Yes. It was in a duel. There is nothing...nothing to avenge. It was—”
“Because my father did something mean to Miss Georgie?”
“Yes. That was why.”
“I like Georgie,” George immediately chirped. “She is nice. But we are now going to see my father.”
The mind of a child. “He is dead. It is just the body.”
George looked at Elizabeth scornfully. “I know what dead is. I’m not a baby like Emily.”
“You won’t ever—George, I so wanted for you have a papa. You have been asking about your papa, and how other boys you played with had papas. But he is gone.”
This did not bother her son at all. Instead, he took off at a run down the street until he reached the next crossing, and Elizabeth hurried after him.
When they reached the church the vicar was absent, but his curate met them. He was a balding, spare man who looked to be about thirty, with a hunch to his back, and a prominent Adam’s apple. He was flipping through an old chapbook with a collection of religious songs when she arrived.
The clergyman evinced some surprise when Elizabeth applied to him as Mrs. Wickham. “Two of you?”
Lines of brown wooden pews. The altar. Stained glass windows. The heavy stones of the church kept the room relatively cool, despite it being midsummer.
“Has another woman claimed to be the deceased’s widow?” Elizabeth asked with grim amusement. She picked George up, as she did not wish to have him wandering about the pews, tearing at the altar’s decorations, or trying to draw with his finger on the stained-glass windows.
The vicar tugged at his white collar. “She perhaps never introduced herself. But from her manner, I assumed her to be bereaved in such a way.”
Wicky, Wicky, Wickham.
Elizabeth had, of course, assumed that he was consorting with other women while absent from her.
So, there was a bereaved woman hanging about his body. Odd. That was a blow. She had known. Why did it hurt? It made no sense.
She saw him again in her mind’s eye. Brilliant smiling eyes. That way he would look at her: My heart will always be yours.
“I would like,” Elizabeth said to the clergyman, “to see him one last time, and George ought to see his father again. He was not old enough for the memory to make any impression the last time he saw Mr. Wickham.”
“It is not a pretty thing to see. The wound is uncovered at present—let me call someone to—”
“I want to see it!” George immediately exclaimed, and he squirmed out of Elizabeth’s arms. He was too heavy for her to carry him for more than a minute if he did not support his own weight.
“Young gentleman, of course as a man you can bear up under the sight,” the man said to George. “But the delicate sensibilities of your mother, or any lady, would revolt from such a thing.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “I do not cringe from blood or ghastly wounds. I have seen them aplenty. Though perhaps I shall react differently, as he was my husband.”
“Madam,” the curate replied. “You must allow me to be your superior in understanding the delicate feelings of gentlewomen.”
Elizabeth glared at him. “Take me to my husband.”
“Very well—though if you faint, I shall not be to blame.” They were led through the chapel to a room on the side.
He said, “We plan to bury him tomorrow. It is impossible to wait in this weather. But he’ll have a prominent plot in the churchyard.
That gentleman who shot him paid for all the rites, and to have him buried in a fine manner.
I suppose that is the gentlemanly way to deal with one whom you killed.
It seems that Mr. Wickham had no money whatsoever to pay for his remains—oh, but I forget. You are his wife.”
“I only know what the deplorable state of his finances was when he left us.”
They entered the room with Mr. Wickham. A slight smell of putrefaction, but not bad.
The shirt had been removed for the body to be washed.
The face was bloodless and unmoving. Someone had closed the eyes. Flashes of memory. So many memories. Miserable and happy.
George ran up and looked at the corpse with wide-eyed astonishment. He went to poke his finger into the small hole where the bullet entered.
“Do not do that,” Elizabeth said sharply.
“My papa. I get to. I get to. My papa. Let me poke it.”
“George.”
Half to Eliabeth’s surprise, the boy did not scream when Elizabeth grabbed his arm to make it impossible for him to poke the wound. When George nodded to her, she let his arm go. He cautiously touched the body’s arm.
George drew back in surprise. “So cold!”
Wickham looked peaceful. Damn. Damn. He still looked the same. Just as charming. Thinner. So not the same. Elizabeth did not know if that was due to the way the skin had relaxed now that he was dead or due to poor eating.
The curate bowed to them and said, “I shall leave you to your mourning.”
“Did the other woman sob when she saw the body?” Elizabeth asked.
“Very much.” He pulled at the collar and bowed again.
Elizabeth looked back at Mr. Wickham’s body. There was not much point to staying long. “I shall not. There is no need to give me privacy.”
There was a shadow of stubble on Wickham’s face; Elizabeth was rather surprised that vanity over personal appearance had not ensured that he shaved before the duel. She remarked as much.
The curate pulled at his collar and bowed to her once more. “The hair grows a little after a man dies. He was clean shaven when they brought him here.”
“Ah, of course. He would not forget that. No matter what else happened to him, he would not forget to care for his appearance. He could never forget that.”
Elizabeth wanted to reach out and stroke Wickham’s face, but she did not.
“The wound is so small.” George pointed. “How could it kill him when it is such a small hole?”
“Bullet wounds are much bigger where they come out,” Elizabeth said. “I dare say the other side is far uglier.”
At this information George struggled to push the arms up so that he could look at the back. With a shrug Elizabeth helped him. Yes, the exit wound was quite large, and likely the bullet had gone right through his heart, just as Mr. Darcy had said.
Damned, damned gentlemen.
It appeared from how George started from the sight that this was more than he could easily handle. The little boy was now quite pale.
Elizabeth let the body fall back heavily onto the bed.
“George, do you wish to look longer?”
“No, Mama.”
When she exited the room, Elizabeth curtsied to the sweating curate, who now held his chapbook again. “Thank you. You have been kind.”
He pulled at his collar again. “Think nothing of it. My condolences for your loss, Mrs. Wickham.”
Upon leaving the church, Elizabeth set out for the address that had been given to her by Miss Darcy.
The trip required her to inquire for directions from other persons on the street several times, and she reached the building as the late afternoon turned into the evening.
Due to the season, it would stay light for several more hours.
By the time she reached it, George had started dragging, and Elizabeth picked him up to carry for several blocks. Her arms and back ached from the weight.
Elizabeth knocked at the door.
She thought about how she had knocked a few hours before on the door of the house the Darcys were staying at. Her mood and emotions had been very different then.
A woman of middle years, but who had excellent looks for her age came down. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Hello, what’s your business.”
“I am Mrs. George Wickham, and I’ve been informed that my husband had his lodgings here before he’d met his end.”
The woman looked at Elizabeth with stark amazement. “No, you are not.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “I assure you, I am.” She picked up George again. “You may see the similarity in the face.”
The woman did study George, who studied her back, and then George smiled widely before he hid his face in Elizabeth’s chest.
“Just cuz he got a child on you, don’t mean you were married.”
“No,” Elizabeth replied tartly. “But just cuz we said our oaths in front of a blacksmith and two other witnesses in Gretna Green does mean we were married.”
The nasally voice of a woman from deeper in the building interrupted the conversation. “What is the matter, Sarah?”
A well-dressed woman whose face was red from half scrubbed tears came out to the hallway.
She had a good face, and otherwise clear skin, and Elizabeth thought she had a thing about her coloring and general height that was similar to Elizabeth’s own, and that showed her as having that type of female beauty that Mr. Wickham had always evinced a particular fondness for.
The woman who had answered the door turned to her and said, “She says she’s Mrs. Wickham. Seems he wasn’t a widower after all.”
The other woman gasped and stared at first Elizabeth, and then George. “This is his son? This is George?”
Elizabeth shifted him to the other side. George hid his face in Elizabeth’s bosom.
“He has the exact same smile,” the woman said, perhaps with spite in the tone.
“I take it,” Elizabeth said, rather suspecting that this was particularly true, “that you were friends with my husband. Both of you. Did he leave anything behind that might be of interest to me? If it is a debt for the room, I’ve nothing at present to pay you with, and I will make no effort to pay for anything contracted after he abandoned me. ”
The middle-aged woman who Elizabeth thought was a landlady cackled. “Oh, he paid me very well for the room. Mrs. Younge, here, might have her own sentiments on the matter. Not a widower at all.”
“So, the bitch wasn’t dead,” Mrs. Younge glared at Elizabeth. “But I know that you did not deserve him.”
This could only be replied to with a shrug. “Are you the one who was Miss Darcy’s companion?”
“Have you heard the story from that little girl?”
“In essentials. But your feelings clearly were not tormented either by compunctions about arranging for your charge to be ruined by a gentleman. Nor did you cavil at permitting a gentleman who I suspect you had a particular interest in to cavort with another woman. But for my part I have already become quite used to the thought of Mr. Wickham’s unfaithfulness, so I shall merely ask again.
Is there anything in your possession that was Mr. Wickham’s and which ought by right to go to his wife? ”
“You drove him to this. I know that much from him. No wonder he lied about you having died. You should have been dead.”
“I confess,” Elizabeth said as she placed George on the pavement, “that I would be more angered than you if I had been lied to about such a matter.”
“That is because you did not understand him. You did not love him.” The woman stared with an ache like longing after George as he started to examine the leaves in the gutter.
Elizabeth shook out her sore arms. “Since you think the worst of me, I shall directly ask. Is there any money left of his?”
“You are the damned woman who despised him when he was not rich. He told me of how you loved to spend his money, but when he did not have any, you blamed him for it; you despised him. You could not love him if he was not rich, and you taught him that he only had worth if he could dump money upon you. But he was worth more. He had a beautiful soul.”
“I rather think,” Elizabeth said, “that a man who does not provide for his two children cannot be of much worth, no matter how beautiful his soul.”
Mrs. Younge snarled at Elizabeth.
The landlady laughed again. “I’d wager a guinea that every penny he’s spent in the last three months came from Mrs. Younge. It was not a good investment. He couldn’t have even married the chit.”
“Yes, well.” Elizabeth smiled. “I would have been shocked if there had been money. But I felt obliged to ask. Mrs. Younge, I can hardly expect that you would lend to me on such terms as you lent to my husband. But I hope that you will forgive me if I cannot make return to you for any arrears he may have accrued.” Elizabeth curtsied to them. “Come along, George. Come along.”
Elizabeth stepped away from the building. But before she had taken twenty steps, Mrs. Younge followed out and shouted, “Wait.”
Instead of attending to Elizabeth, she however came to George, who now was in such a mood as to boldly meet her eye.
Crouching next to the boy, she pulled out a brass watch and held it out.
“This watch was your father’s. He would have liked for you to have it.
It is inscribed with his name. Never doubt that he loved you very much, and he often spoke of you, and the sadness he had because he was unable to raise you. ”
George solemnly took the watch. He held it and turned it over in his hands. “Thank you.”
Elizabeth of course recognized the watch, as it had been a birthday present that she had commissioned for Mr. Wickham’s first birthday after they had been married.
“Always remember your father,” Mrs. Younge said. “He was a very good man.”
Under what possible construction of the word ‘good’ could that be true?
George nodded seriously. Then he said, “All my playmates laughed at me because I didn’t have a papa.”
“You always did,” Mrs. Younge replied. “And he loved you very much.”
“Not,” Elizabeth said with some annoyance, “that your papa ever did anything due to that affection that was of much benefit to you, or to anyone but himself.”
And suddenly Elizabeth pressed her hand against her face to keep the tears from starting. Oh. Oh, oh.
Mrs. Younge glared at Elizabeth. But perhaps something about Elizabeth’s expression softened her, and she began to cry again, and that made it impossible for Elizabeth to control herself. And though she hated doing so, she started to cry as well.
“I always thought he’d come back someday,” Elizabeth said. “But tears never do anyone any good.” Handkerchief out. Pressed against her eyes. Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheek.
Tears never do anyone any good. Tears never do anyone any good.
George looked at her with concern.
Elizabeth patted him on the head. “Put that watch in your pocket and keep careful care of it. You’ll always have it to remember your father by.
” She then turned to Mrs. Younge, slightly curtsied to the woman, who returned the politeness, and then Elizabeth went back up the street towards Mr. Darcy’s house.