Chapter Ten #2
And Elizabeth thought her difficulty in writing was shameful.
There was a task in front of her. A simple task.
She had decided to write a simple letter to her father.
She would simply ask for help. A little amount of help.
A reasonable amount of help. No one, she thought, would claim that this was an unreasonable request.
No, no. There were unreasonable persons, and one of them lived within Elizabeth’s own mind, who claimed that this was an unreasonable request.
Elizabeth could not.
Once more, Elizabeth discovered that while there were similarities between her true character, and who she thought herself to be, there was only similarity.
That night, after Elizabeth had been woken to change Mr. Darcy’s bandage, he asked, “Mrs. Wickham, I beg you to tell me what has made you so unhappy today.”
“You think something has been upon my mind?”
“You stand to the side and frown. You took such a long walk, you refused the chocolate that you always drink, and your eyes often have been staring to the side. Are you filled again with grief about him?”
Elizabeth blinked. “Do you mean my husband—Mr. Darcy, you think more about him than I do—I may become jealous of his affections.”
Mr. Darcy laughed.
“I dare say you loved him as much as I, or even Mrs. Younge.”
“Mrs. Wickham, mercy.”
Elizabeth was happy to see that his recovery had progressed sufficiently that Mr. Darcy’s handsome laughter did not leave him groaning in pain, though he did wince.
Mr. Darcy then took Elizabeth’s hand. “I have no right to demand anything of you, but if it would relieve you to speak what lays upon your mind, I dearly wish to know. We have become friends. When I say that, I do not mean as an useful fiction, but in sober reality. It is strange that we can be friends. It does make little sense. But we are.”
“I...” Elizabeth swallowed.
She felt a strong surge of emotion and a desire to cry. She felt supported.
Darcy still held her hand. His hand was large, warm, and soft. Elizabeth did not think that any other man had held her hand that way. Certainly no one had since Mr. Wickham had abandoned her.
Elizabeth brushed tears away with her free hand. “It is nothing, it’s nothing. It is stupid. I simply am—oh, I’m so stupid.”
“You know that you are not.”
“And tears do not help anything.”
“You know that is not true either,” Darcy replied softly.
“I ought to at least find something useful to do. At least I ought to go to sleep.”
“You need not always be in motion. Elizabeth—” a confused expression crossed Mr. Darcy’s face. The candlelight flickered. She should remove her hand from Mr. Darcy’s.
The moment hung.
“I apologize.” Darcy closed his eyes. When he opened them, he said, “Mrs. Wickham, you do not need to busy yourself ceaselessly. Everyone who knows you, knows that you seek to be useful. I wish you would allow yourself to be helped.”
“I do, I am, I have.”
“You have what?”
Elizabeth stood and pulled the hand from Darcy’s. Her heart hammered. Tears were falling, and they really did not help anything.
“I tried to write a letter to my father...” Elizabeth took long slow breaths. She shut her eyes for several seconds. She wished to run away. “Why is this so difficult.”
“It affects you deeply. Whatever it is. It speaks to the soul of who you wish to be and who you think you are.”
“Yes, yes—you know me well.”
Mosquitoes buzzing. Mr. Darcy’s breathing.
Her own breathing. The candle made a soft painting of the room.
Elizabeth sat back down. She wanted to take and squeeze Mr. Darcy’s hand again, but that would be too forward.
Maybe a little bit too much like Mr. Wickham.
No, worse, much worse, it would be too much like the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth who’d eloped with Mr. Wickham.
“I wished to ask my father for a little help, not much, certainly not enough to burden his estate—I plan to ask for a thing that I believe he will happily do…If I understand his character and his feelings correctly. Perhaps, I presume. Perhaps I do not. But that is not the fear that stopped me…Just…”
“Breathe, Elizabeth.”
“I cannot ask for help. I —” Elizabeth closed her eyes. “I cannot.”
Darcy asked, “Mrs. Wickham, why do you hate so much the notion of receiving help from those who love you and owe you support?”
“Do you not hate receiving help?”
“No. I love it when those who love me show their affection to me. And I trust that when they are in need, I shall give them what aid they require.”
“Simple for you. You can always give more aid than you receive.”
If Elizabeth strained her ears she could hear in the distance the rushing surf, the sound of a sailor drunkenly singing, and the sea gulls.
“Mrs. Wickham, you reduce so many of human matters, things of importance, into a matter of money. Your sufferings have caused you to misunderstand much, many things that I think you still deep down understand. Things that I know your better soul understands.”
“It is easy for you! You need not worry about money.”
“I dare say that I would find it more difficult to ask for help if I could not always and easily pay my debts. Yet, I think—there is more substance to this matter for you. There is some additional reason that you deeply despise depending on others.”
An image came into Elizabeth’s mind, another memory of Wickham. He had happily talked people into giving him loans. He could talk himself into nearly anything. He never paid his debts.
But this distaste for using of other people was something deeper and earlier. Perhaps something she gained from her father who never borrowed money, even if it required a great argument with Mama when she begged for whatever would have required it.
“I like to pay my debts,” Elizabeth said.
“I always pay my debts as well,” Mr. Darcy said looking at her intently.
She needed to be careful. There was something like a promise of help in the way that Mr. Darcy looked at her.
She could not let herself ask for his help.
“It is simply wrong,” Elizabeth said. “I made a choice. I have no right to ask for anything. He must, in truth, despise me.”
“You claimed that he said the opposite. Perhaps, and this is the proverbial pot referring to the blackness of the kettle, but perhaps it is not your father’s judgement of your mistakes that you are thinking of.”
So strange.
Elizabeth started crying again. She took Mr. Darcy’s hand now once more. He’d taken her hand, so she had a right to take his hand for comfort.
That favorite phrase of hers echoed softly in her thoughts, ‘tears never help anyone’. Elizabeth ignored that voice. She wanted to cry.
She pressed Darcy’s hand against her face and kissed the back of his hand. She did not know why she did that. After a while she found that she had finished crying and properly wiped at her eyes. She looked at Darcy, and he was looking at her with a warm smile.
They both then yawned at the same time and smiled at each other because of that. Elizabeth felt a glow inside, as though everything really could be good. “Thank you,” she said before going to sleep.
“I always wish to be present when you need comfort,” he replied.
The next morning Elizabeth waited until Darcy’s bandage had been changed, and everyone had their breakfast—Mr. Darcy got a small slice of ham this morning, which he ate with a relish that would have been appropriate towards a legendary ambrosia.
Then Georgiana took George and Emily to look at the sea from the promenade before going down to the beach.
She was accompanied by a footman from Pemberley and Sally.
As Darcy’s recovery was expected to take a full month, permanent servants belonging to his house had been sent for and brought in, no doubt at great expense.
The Pemberley servants treated Elizabeth with respect, but there was a sort of curiosity and suspicion from them.
When Elizabeth at last had full leisure she sat down at the writing desk.
Mr. Darcy was observing her, while Colonel Fitzwilliam had gone to the opposite end of the room, and sat down to write his own letter to a member of the administration about the backwardness of the war department in providing sufficient ammunition to his troops for drill with live weapons.
The writing desk itself had become a friend.
The white sheet of paper stared up at her.
“Mrs. Wickham,” Darcy said when she had stared at the paper for some minutes. “You shall be doing your duty when you write the letter. I am glad to see you doing it.”
Elizabeth let out a long gust of breath. She smiled at him. And at last, she set the quill to the paper.
Papa, I first must announce that Mr. Wickham is dead.
I am presently in Ramsgate where he was shot in a duel after involvement in a scheme to defraud a young heiress of her fortune by enticing her into a bigamous marriage.
He had, in fact, abandoned us two years ago, shortly before Emily was born.
When you wrote that you planned to visit London last year, I pretended that I was not in town, because I did not wish you to know any of this, due to the shame I felt on the matter.
I ought to feel even more shame about Mr. Wickham, but in truth, though I have some sadness at his death, I am mostly relieved to be free of him. That is sad, is it not?
You must wish to know how we have survived the past two years, and the simple answer is that I sold all of the jewelry and most of the clothes which I had, imposed upon friends for lodging, and I have engaged in various forms of labor, many of which lacked respectability—which is to say I engaged myself to copy out legal documents, served as a hired nurse, and briefly tutored a child with the minimal Latin I remembered from when I begged you to teach me—but none of my efforts were immoral.
You had warned me, and quite correctly, that I could not rely upon Mr. Wickham. I remember clearly how you said that in the end I would gain no support from him. So it proved.
Much as I despise the necessity of now asking for help, I do hope to get a little from you.
Before I write on, permit me to make this clear: I do not wish for you to give me any money, and I would refuse any that you send me. I shall not allow my mistakes to take from my sisters that which ought to be theirs.
I am presently serving as the sick-nurse for a gentleman who is recovering from a gunshot wound, and this is not the first time that I have worked in the position of a sick-nurse.
The wages for this form of work can become quite substantial once a person has a reputation in the field.
My current plan is to take as many such engagements as I can over the next years, and by doing so I think I can accumulate enough funds to have George set up in a respectable profession and to provide Emily with a modest dowry sufficient for our situation.
The chief difficulty with pursuing such employment is that it is impossible to keep the children with me at such a time.
I hope that I might return home once my current duties are done and stay for a few weeks.
Once I have done that, I would like to leave little George and Emily to be raised by you while I am in employment.
I shall have no fears upon their account then.
Perhaps I should mistrust your capability in raising children, since my education went so badly amiss, but I do not.
I remember my childhood as being a time of happiness, and I fully believe that a great deal of the adult is produced by the innate character of the person, and that the education can only modify matters a little.
This consideration frightens far more than it comforts, since both of my children have Mr. Wickham’s blood, and I would wish for neither of them to have his defects.
In any case, if you are amenable, I do not worry that it will place an insupportable burden upon your resources or harm the interests of my sisters.
The food for the both cannot reach five pounds per annum, and their clothes cannot be more than twice that sum, even if they are to be dressed very well.
I would seek as much as possible to avoid having talk of my being in employment from reaching the neighborhood.
I could, if necessary, wholly avoid returning to the vicinity of Meryton, and only meet the children in London at times when they visit the Gardiners.
I am, however, absolutely determined to not be a burden. If you wish me to pay for their lodging I shall be able to manage that as well.
Elizabeth stared at the paper.
She was half tempted to wholly throw the paper away and begin again. It was quite likely that Papa would be deeply offended by what was written there.
This was why she did not wish to write to him at all. This was why she did not wish to have anything to do with him. Because her mode of life was so utterly different. And there was also a resentment.
Longbourn was supposed to be worth two thousand a year. It could in no way be difficult for him to save for respectable dowries, apprenticeship fees for George, and everything else, and still maintain their consequence. Just a little economy would be necessary.
Damn him. Damn all men.
All useless, awful, terrible.
Maybe Mr. Darcy was not so bad, so far as she could perceive. His chief defects were a propensity to hate himself and to shoot useless husbands.
Elizabeth crossed out the last sentences. Thoroughly, with several lines through them. It would take Papa some work to read what had been there before.
She finished the letter: I miss you, Papa, and I wish I had not married against your advice.
After that Elizabeth signed her name, packaged the letter up, sealed it with the fine wax kept in the desk, and gave it to the footman to be mailed out. There was no question of her being the one to pay the postage, so she said nothing about that matter.
Mr. Darcy was looking at her, and his manner was approving.
A week later Elizabeth received a reply. A short letter, fitting her father’s habits:
Elizabeth, I miss you. I want to see you again, and the children.
We will talk about other matters when you come home.
I deeply regret having impressed on you the sense of your responsibility to your sisters more firmly than I should have.
It is my duty to care for my daughters. For all of them.
For you as well. I see you adopting a mulish and proud expression when you read that.
So, I shall write no more, you know I do not take pleasure in writing long letters.
Lizzy, please come home as soon as you can.
Your loving father