Chapter 15
WICKHAM'S GAMBIT
Lydia did not come to the table, and Mrs Bennet was fretful and cross, snapping at Kitty to cease coughing, and at Elizabeth for laughing ‘so loudly’ at a quip of her father’s as they spoke of Much Ado About Nothing.
When the soup had been taken away and the meat and vegetables laid out upon the table, Mr Bennet said, “I am afraid that Lydia has chosen to defy me yet again, and so I have determined that she lacks the sense and decorum necessary to attend adult entertainments. For so long as the militia remain in the neighbourhood, she is not to leave the estate without my personal escort, or in the company of both Jane and Lizzy, with my express permission.”
“Mr Bennet!” his wife cried. “You said she was not to go to the ball! This I accepted, though I liked it not. But now she is to be a prisoner upon the estate? It is too cruel! You cannot separate her from all her friends!”
“She may see her old friends at church, or when they call here, or she may call upon them with her eldest sisters, if they will take her and I feel she has acted well enough to deserve an excursion. As for her new friends who wear red coats, she will never see them again. On that point, I am immovable,” he said.
“I have already instructed Hill that the only officers who are to be admitted to Longbourn henceforth are colonels and admirals.”
Mrs Bennet bemoaned the barring of so many unmarried young men from her parlour when she had several daughters to get rid of, and once she had exhausted her store of complaints, Mr Collins held forth on the wisdom of plucking the weed of disobedience before it could flower and spoil the whole garden.
In such a manner, they passed the rest of the meal.
Elizabeth left the parlour, and a further recitation of the immortal words of Fordyce, later to join her father in his study. He welcomed her with weary pleasure and invited her to sit with him before the fire, going so far as to give her a small glass of watered port.
“Was there a note?” she asked at last, while they toasted their toes by the fire-guard. “Or did your inspection reveal some other transgression?”
“It is kind of you to assume it was not both,” he replied sardonically. He sipped his brandy and sighed. “There was a note. She was engaged in penning a reply when I burst in upon her. Both have been burnt, for their discovery by another would spell her ruin, and that of all my children.”
“Will you tell me what it said?”
“Balderdash,” he said with a snort. “It was dated the day after your aunt Philips’s party; he must have carried it about with him until he saw her again.
He called her his only friend in Hertfordshire now that Mr Darcy and his loyal cousin have lied about him to all and sundry, a consequence of the previous Mr Darcy’s devotion to him.
There was an implication that he is old Mr Darcy’s natural son, though I trust Lydia is too stupid to understand the meaning of his insinuating words. ”
Elizabeth gasped. “Is he so determined to blacken Mr Darcy’s name that he would paint his own father as a fool and his godfather as a scoundrel?”
“So it would seem. It may even be true,” Mr Bennet added with a shrug, “but unless he has absolute proof, he would judge better to remain silent. To make such claims with nothing to support them is unlikely to benefit him.”
“Why would he spin his tales to Lydia, of all people?”
“Few others would believe him following Colonel Fitzwilliam’s testimony. I imagine he hoped she would spread his tale, as she surely must have done had Kitty not exposed her, and that gossip might sow doubts he could later exploit.”
“There will be gossip about him, but I do not think he shall like it,” Elizabeth said. “Mr Bingley told us that the proof of Mr Wickham’s debts had arrived, and was to be presented to Colonel Forster today.”
“Let us hope Forster is able to keep him in line, then. Unless he does something that warrants his expulsion from the militia, he will be nearby until they move to their summer quarters in May. I do not know if Mr Darcy could have him prosecuted for debt while he is a member of His Majesty’s forces, but I doubt he would try.
He might have done so at any time in the past years, after all. ”
“I wonder why he has not.”
“Debtor’s prison is a terrible place, child. Crowded, filthy, rife with disease, and the only escape for many is death. I do not blame Mr Darcy for being unwilling to condemn his father’s godson to such a fate, as convenient as it might have been for us.”
Rain came in the night, a heavy, soaking fall that persisted for several days, restricting the inhabitants of the area largely to their homes.
Bingley began to fret, and his sisters to hope, that the ball might have to be cancelled.
This confinement allowed Miss Bingley many opportunities to flatter Mr Darcy and display her prowess as a hostess by creating amusements to keep them all entertained indoors.
Most of these games were to be played in pairs, strangely enough, and she was successful in attaching herself to him for the duration far more often than he liked, despite the efforts of Bingley and Fitzwilliam to claim him.
This led to the cousins spending a prodigious amount of time in the billiard room, and to Fitzwilliam’s play improving so greatly that he began to tease Darcy that only the lack of a house of his own had heretofore prevented him from trouncing his cousin.
Darcy, too used to Fitzwilliam’s ways, and too conscious of having nearly lost him to be at all offended, allowed that it was likely so.
“It occurs to me,” Fitzwilliam said as they wrapped up a game two days before the ball, “that now that Wickham is a military man, we might be able to remove him from England.”
“You wish to send him to the Continent, to fight against Napoleon,” Darcy said flatly.
“I do wish that, yes, but I know you would never agree. No, I was thinking of my old friend Parker. I think you met him at Cambridge?” When Darcy nodded, he continued.
“He is a colonel now, too, and I ran into him in London shortly before we came here. His regiment is being sent to India in January. Parker is no fool, and a commission in his regiment might finally teach old Wicky the value of hard work and honesty.”
“So, you propose we send him to fleece the merchants and despoil the daughters of one of our colonies rather than of England itself?”
“I have met men who served in India; it is no soft berth. He will be very busy with his duties, the natives are likely to be unfriendly unless he is spending coin, and the English who make their lives there are sharp men, or else they do not last long. And if he attempts to trifle with a fellow officer’s wife or daughter, his reward will most likely be a bullet.
With a commanding officer aware of his history as well, I think he shall have little enough chance to ruin any life but his own. ”
Darcy considered the idea. Sending Wickham across the globe had obvious advantages, not the least of which would be the man’s inability to continue to use his connexion to the Darcys to secure credit.
Life in India, particularly in the army, would involve some danger, but Darcy was privately amazed that Wickham’s debts and liaisons in England had not yet got him killed.
And rather than serving as some Frenchman’s target practice, he would be guarding England’s economic interests.
Darcy thought his father would approve of that.
“How do we convince him to do this?” he asked.
Fitzwilliam grinned at this capitulation.
“We offer him a commission in the Regulars, promising that we will find a regiment bound for India rather than for the war, and remind him that the pay will be better than in the militia. In return, he must understand that you will call in his debts if you find him once again in England without the protection of an active commission. He will imagine himself courting the daughter of a nabob and living in a palace once he is wed, and the whole business will be accomplished quick as a wink.”
“Very well. We shall seek him out as soon as the roads are passable.”
Lydia pouted and sulked for a full day, hardly deigning to speak to anyone, before arriving at breakfast in her usual high spirits, though she yet refused to acknowledge Kitty’s presence.
Mrs Bennet, too, had been unusually quiet the previous day, though she had set aside some time to complain of her nerves and of people who seemed intent upon trying them.
On this morning, however, she and Lydia chattered on about whether the rain would affect the soldiers’ training, and whether it might be hoped that a fresh stock of ribbons would arrive at the milliner’s on Monday.
Mary and Mr Collins were absorbed in a convoluted discussion of the variances between the gospels of Luke and of John, but the rest of the family beheld the cheerful conversation between Mrs Bennet and her youngest with some bemusement.
Lydia had nothing to say to her sisters when they assembled in the parlour, spreading the contents of her sewing box across the work table and holding scraps of fabric and ribbon up to the light until she had assembled a small pile.
Cutting out what appeared to be the pieces of a new reticule, she sat in the chair next to her mother’s and, once Mrs Bennet joined them after her daily conference with the housekeeper, they spoke of neighbourhood gossip and of the officers, as though all were as it had been three days before.
The reason for Lydia’s good humour emerged later in the day, when Jane ventured to praise her for accepting her punishment with good grace.
“La!” the girl exclaimed, tossing her head, “Papa will have forgot all about it by Tuesday. How silly I should feel then if I had not made ready! Do you not think this reticule I am making will go well with my green ballgown?”
Jane was entirely at a loss for how best to respond, that was clear. Elizabeth ventured, in as mild a tone as she could manage, “I do not think my father is likely to allow you to attend.”
Mrs Bennet replied sharply, “I have been married to him for three and twenty years, Miss Lizzy. I think I know him better than you do. He becomes cross about some trifle or another, blusters about, and then his mind turns back to his books, and it is as though there was never a quarrel at all. Lydia shall attend the ball.” She turned and beamed at her youngest. “I think it probable that Mr Bingley will invite some of his friends from town. It may be that you will meet your future husband there!”
Lydia giggled. “Only if his friends are officers! I shall not marry any man who is not in a red coat, I am determined. Still, it may be that I will dance with my future husband at Netherfield, for the officers here like me very well, you know.”
Mrs Bennet heartily agreed and Elizabeth, with some effort, held her tongue. It would do no one any good to anger Lydia now, and besides, she was not entirely certain that her father would hold fast in the end.