Chapter Twenty
Richard and I pursued him back to Meryton, for that seemed the first place to look for him, given it was where he was meant to have returned to.
We could not talk much on the ride, obviously, not on horseback, but I did tell Richard the content of my conversation with Elizabeth, and he said, “Yes, but we know she would deny it, Will. We have been over this.”
I tried to explain that it was different, and he said that I knew she was capable of it, that he knew it, too, and that there was a reason I had been jealous of her.
“This is not the way you presented it before,” I said to him stonily.
“Well, I would never have acted on it, but she acted as though she would have,” he said. “She is a loose sort of woman, and I think that is why I was drawn to her at all.”
“Drawn to her,” I repeated. “This is not what you said before.”
“God in heaven, Will, let us ride,” he said.
So, we rode.
I assumed that Wickham would not be with the regiment anymore, for he must be certain I would be seeking him.
After all, if a man claims to have had another man’s wife, he is asking for some kind of retaliation.
Wickham, having heard my cousin’s threat, would have disappeared, hopped a ship across the seas to India or America or some such far destination.
But no, he was there.
Perhaps I only wanted him to have gone.
Perhaps I did not wish to kill a man.
I never had, though I supposed that Richard had done it in the war.
I had ordered it done, though, watched it done, though not in this same way, I supposed, because it had not been at all personal in those situations, only the sort of thing that had to be done.
At the tender age of eight years old, my father first made me accompany him to a hanging, and he had a peculiar way of doing these things, keeping them quite private, not making much of a spectacle of it.
People came to my father to settle scores, to mete out justice, that sort of thing.
The tenants who lived on our lands looked to him as the man who would make things right for them.
That was what being a landlord was, it was to have responsibility to those who worked the land that you owned, that was what my father told me.
Now, if it were a trifle of some kind, two tenants fighting over whether someone else had stolen the other’s pigs or some such, my father might direct them to the courts and say to them that they must sue each other and have some judge arbitrate the matter, that it was too petty for him to concern himself with.
But in cases like horse thieves or clear violence done to children or women, my father would often simply string the man up. He would do it without fanfare, and there would be no gathered crowd to watch it. It would be quick, clean, and grim.
It was one of these hangings to which I was first brought as an eight-year-old boy, and my father explained to me how it must be done.
“It is on your word, Fitzwilliam, do you understand? And you take it on your shoulders, even if it is the work of more than just you to hang the noose and throw it over the tree bough and fit it around the man’s neck.
It is not nothing to take a man’s life, but one man’s life balanced against the lives of all the people on your own land? You choose them. You protect them.”
So, in this way, I had killed men.
Not often. Twice. One man had stolen horses from my stables, wounding several of my servants in the meantime.
Another had been caught doing awful things to a crippled boy, one of the sons of a tenant.
The child was touched in the head, and I suppose the man thought he could get away with it for that reason, because the child did not speak.
This was different, though.
I tried to tell myself it was the same, that it was a kind of justice, and that I was doing it for others, for the people who Wickham had trespassed against, that I must prevent him from further trespass in the future, but…
I knew it was because I hated him for what he had done to me. I knew it was vengeance, not justice, and I knew that vengeance and justice lived close together, bedfellows perhaps, but they were not the same thing. Justice was purer and what I sought to do was less clean.
However, I could not see anything for it.
I could not allow Wickham to do this sort of thing to me with no consequence. He had within himself the means to ruin my sister, and he could go about spreading rumors of himself and Elizabeth, regardless of their truth. If he had gotten a child on my wife, then…
I could not let these sorts of insults go unpunished.
It was not what a man did.
Richard and I watched him in the encampment with the regiment.
“If we are witnessed,” he said, “we shall have to publicly challenge him, and he doesn’t deserve it that way.”
“No,” I said. “Furthermore, it would only cast aspersions, and I will not have that. He does not get to trespass against me further, nor against the women in my life further.”
“Indeed,” said Richard. “So, we shall wait to get him alone. You will wish to confront him, I suppose.”
Did I wish that? Would that be a triumph for me, or would it only be some way for him to further injure me? I could just imagine his sitting in front of me, jeering me, telling me things about the way Elizabeth sighed under his touch or something horrific.
Lord knew, I kept imagining it.
Maybe I wished to simply shoot him from far off, maybe I didn’t wish for him to see it coming, maybe I wished it to be over.
Was that cowardice on my part?
I eyed my cousin and wondered what he would say to it.
“Perhaps we can get the truth from him,” said Richard.
“Oh, how?” I said. “No, he’s likely to simply twist everything up and lie through his teeth, and I shall never know which way is up. Likely, she is correct, and he has never touched her, and I shall spend the rest of my life seeking Wickham’s features on my own child’s face.”
“Monstrous,” muttered Richard.
“Even after I kill him, he still triumphs.” I thought of what Elizabeth had said. It was a scheme worthy of Iago, in the end, wasn’t it? A Shakesperean sort of tragic knot, no way out of it.
How had Iago tricked Othello into thinking Desdemona had been with Cassio, anyway? Something about a handkerchief, had it not been?
I did not even have that sort of evidence to sway my thinking. Perhaps it was better for him, easier to convince me with nothing but his say-so. If there had been something tangible—
Hmm.
Well, that was an interesting thought, was it not? I was beginning to have an idea.
I turned to Richard. “Maybe there is a way to get the truth from him.”
“Is there?” he said.
“Let me tell you what I’m thinking,” I said, and I began to explain.
I thought we’d have trouble convincing Wickham to come off with us into the dark wood, but I was wrong about that as well. I began to think that perhaps everything that was wrong with Wickham began and ended in the fact that he had no ability to think things through.
He did not think that things could ever go wrong for him and every time they did, he was shocked and horrified and behaved as if he’d had no notion such a thing could happen.
Perhaps he truly did not.
Perhaps he was simply blind to the future.
What other man would do the things he had done, really? A man who could see consequences coming would know better.
This was not an excuse for him, of course, but I thought it made it seem more likely he was lying. It was much easier to tell a lie than coax a woman into bed, after all, and if he did not have any thought to consequences, it was a lie he would readily tell, simply to get under my skin.
At any rate, there we were, all standing amongst the trees.
Wickham had come easily enough, even going to procure a lamp from his tent so that we could see each other while we spoke.
He chattered the whole way into the woods about how it was good that we’d seen the way through to give him his money.
“After all, you would not wish me to go out and spread stories, I suppose,” he said.
Well, there went my theory. He seemed quite capable of thinking of the consequences for me. Could he really be so blind as to think that everything would simply work out for him and only him? He was incredibly arrogant, I supposed.
“So, let us haggle it out, gentlemen,” he said, smiling at us, in the scant light of the lamp, which sat on the grass between us.
“I actually wished to speak to you of something else,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“This is, erm, well…” I looked to Richard.
“I had been sort of shocked by it, and too apprehensive to say a word to anyone, really, but then after you said what you said, sir, I realized that you would be in the unique position to give me your thoughts. I spoke to Colonel Fitzwilliam here and he agreed that I must take advantage.”
Wickham furrowed his brow, glancing back and forth between us. “I’m quite confused, I must say.”
“Are you?” I said. “Well, you must have seen it.” I nodded at him.
“Seen what?” said Wickham.
“Oh, you know of what I speak,” I said. “You say you have been with my wife in that way, so you know what I’m talking of.”
Wickham’s eyes widened. There was a long, long pause. Eventually, he spoke. “Oh,” he said in another voice. “Yes, erm, that.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s… odd.”
He nodded slowly. “Odd is a way to describe it, certainly.”
“How would you describe it?” I said. “I find it difficult to know how to speak of it at all.”
Wickham licked his lips.
I raised my eyebrows, waiting. “Well? You have seen my wife without her clothes, have you not? So, you’ve seen it.”
“Obviously, yes, I have,” said Wickham.
“What do you think it is?” I said.
“I… haven’t any notion,” said Wickham.
I waited.
He said, his voice getting shrill, “You obviously have no notion either.”
“I wonder, though, if it means she is sort of worthless, in general, as a wife, and that you, by corrupting her, have perhaps done me a favor. I mean, after seeing it, I found it quite difficult to… with her at all.”
Wickham’s eyes widened even further. He looked back and forth between myself and the colonel again.
“Was it easy for you?” I said. “You’d shove your prick in anything, I suppose.”
“You…” Wickham folded his arms over his chest. “No one speaks of his wife that way.”
I smirked at him.
“You’re making it up.”
“You’ve never seen my wife without her clothes,” I said, nostrils flaring.
“Well, all right, no, I haven’t.”
“Or my sister,” I said.
“No, what do you want from me? Clearly neither of them was going to allow me those sorts of liberties!”
I glared at him, thoroughly disgusted.
He hung his head.
“We should shoot him anyway,” I said to Richard. “He’s a waste of air.”
“Shoot me?” said Wickham, raising his face in horror. “You wouldn’t shoot me, Fitzwilliam! We grew up together, practically like brothers.” He was in a state of agitation, utterly shocked. He made to try to get away.
Richard stepped into his path.
Wickham raised both of his hands. “All right, all right, I went too far. I see that now. It was a mistake. I shall never do it again. Please.”
“You will not come near my sister or my wife or any woman that I look at,” I said.
“No,” he said. “No, I shan’t. Of course not.”
“You will not speak of the women in my life, either. You will cease calling my sister ‘proud’—”
“I never said that!”
“You did,” I said. “Do not deny it. You will not speak of my wife, of Mrs. Darcy. Her name will not fall from your lips, you worm.”
“I suppose she doesn’t have some odd thing on her,” he muttered.
I glared at him.
He sighed. “I shall not speak of your wife.”
“And you will stop telling people I cheated you out of that rectory position,” I said.
He flinched. “Oh, I did not say that exactly, truly, what I said was—”
“You will cease talking about me entirely,” I said. “I am no calling card into society for you. I wish nothing to do with you.”
Wickham swallowed. “Yes, all right, I see.”
“And we will shoot you next time,” said Richard with a wide smile. “So, have a care there is no next time, Mr. Wickham.”
Wickham swallowed again. “Yes, yes, of course. I shall do exactly that.”