Chapter 22
“Aunt and Uncle, you asked to see us,” Elizabeth said as she and Jane joined the Gardiners in the east parlour.
“We did,” Gardiner confirmed. He decided there was only one way and that was to attack the problem head on.
“You know, Lizzy, we used to think you intelligent, but the way you have allowed your pride to blind you seems to show that we were very wrong.” He ignored the scandalised look on Lizzy’s face and turned to Jane.
“And you, Jane, just because you want the world to be a utopia where there is no hurt or evil and one where no one is wrong, does not come close to making it so.”
“Me proud?” Elizabeth shot back. She was taken aback that her uncle would speak to her in such a way, but she was not intimidated.
Uncle Edward was wrong! And why did Aunt Maddie not say anything.
She had been so outraged by her uncle’s assertions that she had not heard what he had said to Jane.
“You must be confusing me with that proud, hateful, dishonourable Mr Darcy.” She stood, her arms akimbo.
Jane knew that she needed to see the world as a place with no evil, but she had never expected for her uncle to attack her way of thinking at all, never mind so directly.
“Lizzy, we love you, as we love all of our nieces, but your pride is as bad as what you accuse Mr Darcy of having, and at times worse,” Maddie insisted.
“Your vanity was hurt, and it coloured your every interaction with Mr Darcy. Now, let me guess. By the time that despicable Wickham poured poison in your ear, you were seeking any information which would confirm your poor opinion of Mr Darcy. You were so much looking for validation of your opinion that you ignored all of the contradictions in the man’s tale. ”
As much as she wanted to refute what Aunt Maddie said, there was much truth contained in her statement, and there was little Elizabeth could say in her own defence.
“I always thought you were sensible, but you were driven by pride when you listened to that man’s tales.
Let me ask you something, Lizzy. Had you not been desirous of learning something to bolster your prejudices against Mr Darcy, would you have allowed a man you met the previous day and of whom you knew nothing, to tell you such a personal tale? ” Gardiner enquired.
“But I saw honesty in his countenance,” Elizabeth responded lamely.
“And you, Jane. Did you not say that it must be a misunderstanding?” Maddie queried.
“You, who are always very proper, would you not point out the impropriety of the officer speaking of what he did to Lizzy upon first meeting him? Now, Jane, as far as the Bingley sisters go, were you so blind to the faults of others that you never identified the insults and barbs they flung at you and your family? The way they treated you actually may have ended up doing you a favour, but more on that later.”
“I know that Uncle Adam is a good friend of Mr Darcy’s. Is that why you are willing to defend him?” Elizabeth questioned.
“No, Lizzy. You can attempt to ignore what we are saying by mischaracterising our words,” Gardiner responded.
“We are not addressing Mr Darcy’s behaviour, but your own.
Also, we are in no way attempting to excuse his insult of you, or the way he held himself in the neighbourhood.
However, as two or more wrongs do not make a right, we are here addressing your bad behaviour.
A footman reported you argued with Mr Darcy during the dance.
It seems you were doing anything you could to provoke him. Is that so?”
“Yes. It was not my best behaviour, but I was so angry with him for the infamous way he treated poor Mr Wickham…” Elizabeth stopped speaking when she saw the look of fury on Aunt Maddie’s face. Jane too was taken aback. She had never seen her aunt so angry before.
“DO. NOT. DARE. DEFEND. THAT. MAN. TO. ME!” Maddie said deliberately. “Do you want to know what type of man you believed so completely that you ignored all of your vaunted intelligence and ability to sketch characters?”
For all of her determination not to be, Elizabeth felt intimidated. She nodded her head.
“Can Mr Wickham truly be so very bad?” Jane asked.
Maddie nodded to Edward. He stood and handed a letter to Lizzy. “Both of you need to read this,” he said before sitting down.
As she read, all of Elizabeth’s confidence in her ability to judge people fled. No wonder Aunt Maddie seemed to hate Mr Wickham. Elizabeth did not even realise it, but tears were rolling down her cheeks for the unmet Veronica Bellamey.
For her part, Jane had never been presented with such clear evidence of evil in the world. There was nothing she could do to make Mr Wickham look good. By the end of the letter, she was sobbing and holding onto Lizzy for dear life.
“I understand that Mr Wickham is a seducer, the worst kind of man, is that why Mr Darcy denied him the living that his late father had recommended be given to him?” Elizabeth questioned. All of her former self-confidence was gone from her voice.
“There is no doubt that reading my late cousin’s words was a shock to both of you.
For Jane it has destroyed the fiction she has created about the world.
Additionally, Lizzy, you finally understand what I was trying to tell you and that is that you refused to reconsider your opinions you had formed without ever knowing the whole of the story,” Maddie said gently.
“Lizzy, like all good lies, that profligate libertine wrapped his in a kernel of truth.” She paused and watched to make sure Lizzy was paying attention. She was.
“The only truths that man told you were the following: He did grow up with the current Mr Darcy; he was the late Mr Darcy’s godson; he was denied the living.
” Maddie did not miss the slight look of vindication in Lizzy’s eyes.
“Before you celebrate, you need to listen. What you were not told was that Mr Darcy paid him three thousand pounds to quit all claim to the living after the wastrel came to see him and declared he would never take orders. There was an additional thousand pounds old Mr Darcy left him. So now Lizzy, think of the lies you were told and add in the facts.”
“He refused to take orders but was paid for the living?” Elizabeth verified. “Goodness, I never considered that he had not taken holy orders! Had he, he could have been earning far more than as a militia officer.”
Both Gardiners nodded in confirmation.
“Darcy had no obligation to pay anything for the living. It was conditional on the miscreant taking orders, which he said he would never do. It was overly generous of Darcy to give him a penny, which he did only out of a sense of obligation to his father,” Gardiner related.
“After wasting all of his money in dissipated and debauched activities, just before Darcy awarded the Kympton living to your Uncle Adam, the blackguard returned and demanded the living, still without taking holy orders,” Gardiner added.
“So Mr Darcy did the only thing he could, he denied the request,” Elizabeth realised.
“There are no redeeming qualities in Mr Wickham, are there?” Jane asked.
“None, but there is more, and this will explain why Mr Darcy was in such a bad mood when he arrived. Before I say anything, I need your words of honour that you will never repeat what I am about to tell you to another living soul, unless one of those directly involved speaks to you about it.” Maddie looked at each of her nieces; both nodded.
“You know that Mr Darcy has a much younger sister, do you not?” More nods.
“She is not proud, Lizzy, only very shy, and that was before what I am about to relate. When Miss Darcy was fifteen…” Maddie told a concise version of the lead up to and what occurred in Ramsgate.
Elizabeth had thought she could not feel worse, but now she did. The tears were falling again, this time for what almost happened to Miss Darcy.
“Redemption is a central tenet of our faith, is it not.” Jane saw nods from the others in the parlour. “Is it not possible that by joining the militia Mr Wickham was trying to redeem his character?”
“That is very na?ve, Janey, especially with this particular man. You are not aware of it yet, but Lydia was not attempting to reach the ball like your father believed, she was on her way to an assignation…” Maddie told all about Lydia and George Wickham.
“Lizzy, if not for your letter in defence of George Wickham, Lydia would have been ruined, and we would not have arrived in time to stop all of you being ruined by association. It was right after we read the letter that we wrote to our men at Netherfield Park and others.”
“Then I am glad that our sister was saved because I finally plucked up the courage to write that letter to you,” Elizabeth responded.
“Lydia is but thirteen, and he is, what, close to thirty?” Jane bit out in indignation.
Anger was a new emotion for her. There was no more denying that there was bad in the world, and from what she had just heard, evil was personified by one George Wickham.
It seemed he was a man who would never seek redemption.
Rather than a child of God, he was an emissary of the devil.
Never in her twenty plus years had Elizabeth felt a bigger fool than she did at that moment.
Was she as much of a dunderhead as Mr Collins?
She had felt so smug when she wrote the letter which she had thought proved her points about Mr Darcy, but all it had done was show what a silly girl she was.
Aunt and Uncle Gardiner had tried to warn her, but Elizabeth had been too sure in the rectitude of her judgements.
Of one thing she was certain: if she was ever in Mr Darcy’s company again, she would have to eat humble pie and beg his forgiveness for taking the part of the dastard who had caused so much harm.