Chapter Sixteen #2
He rushed out of the room, to where he remembered a chamber pot was hidden. He barely reached it in time, hurling the door to the closet open and then bending in front of the pot as he vomited up everything he had eaten all day.
He stared at the filthy, foul liquid on the bottom of the pot.
He vomited once more.
No sangfroid. This was not how a gentleman handled thoughts of brutal violence.
A soft hand was placed on his back. “Are you ill?”
He looked up at Elizabeth.
He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.
Elizabeth regarded him with concerned eyes. Georgiana stood behind her, as did Colonel Fitzwilliam and Emily.
“I am well. It was…my thoughts.”
Both Elizabeth and Georgiana looked confused, but his cousin nodded with a grim face. “I understand. You must stiffen your sinews. Your honour demands it.”
“No.” Darcy shook his head. “Honour demands it, but I think—for the first time in my life, I think I see that there are greater demands on me than those imposed by honour. Richard, I cannot do it. I know that all will look upon me as a shameful man, but it is not a choice I can make.”
“You don’t need to shoot him,” Colonel Fitzwilliam replied. “Just stand there and accept the fire.”
Emily pointed at the chamber pot. “Papa threw up?”
“Yes, I did.”
She giggled. “Papa threw up!”
Darcy picked her up and held her tight against his body. He took several deep breaths. “I do not have a right to risk the fight. My life is not my own, not any longer. Perhaps it never was.”
To admit it was a clean feeling.
The sick heaviness in his chest, the anger, the vileness in his body, it seemed to be draining away.
He felt empty but healthier. It was like recovery after a long illness.
He had been so angry, so filled with viciousness since he had witnessed his wife and Wickham in an intimate embrace. Perhaps the viciousness had been in him since he had realised that he had made Mary miserable and that he himself had been unhappy because of her.
Darcy looked steadily at his cousin.
Georgiana said, “George would never shoot at you. He would not.”
“Perhaps you are correct,” Darcy replied. “But it is not my right to risk the chance.”
“The deuce,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “You cannot be serious! Jove, are you to become a Quaker? Why did you not realise this before you challenged him to a duel and announced that he had tupped your wife? Jove! You have no business with an attack of conscience now. Buck up. Eight chances out of ten you will be well, even if he shoots at you. He never had a good aim.”
Darcy looked at Emily.
The girl had such a similar face to his own, especially in portraits of himself as a child.
She smiled at him sunnily. “You threw up!”
“I did,” Darcy replied.
“Did you really not throw Mama from the balcony?”
“I really did not.”
“Why did George say such a thing?” Georgiana asked. “Why would he lie about the matter?”
“To hurt your brother,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “And to spread slander and lies. Do you not see that you must shoot him because he said that?”
Darcy replied, “No one can think that what he said is true.”
Elizabeth coughed slightly. She covered her mouth to hide a smile. “It was, without Mr. Wickham’s words to encourage it, taken as the undoubted truth in the neighbourhood until we became engaged, at which point it became a scurrilous piece of gossip which no one had ever believed.”
Darcy sighed. He could not feel the anger he ordinarily would.
“Darcy, you cannot be serious,” the colonel said. “I scarce believe it—you cannot mean to avoid the fight.”
“I do.”
“It is a shameful thing.” His cousin glared at him, and Darcy felt the full force of his judgment.
Perhaps it was cowardly to fear the consequences to Emily and Georgiana if he died. Perhaps it was weak to not intend to kill his man instead.
Darcy calmly held his cousin’s eyes until the colonel let out an unhappy gust of air.
“You are still my cousin,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “By Jove I wish you had not vomited out the fire in your belly.” He looked at Elizabeth and Georgiana. “This is why one should not listen to women. I seldom do.”
“Why would you fight George?” Emily asked.
“Because he was not nice to me,” Darcy said.
“But we must always be kind to everyone,” Emily replied.
The group returned to the drawing room.
Mr. Phillips had arrived while they had been absent. That gentleman had a genial look to him, even though he frowned most severely. “I have heard of a great to-do. Fighting, duels.” He chuckled. “Not very respectable, things of that sort.”
Elizabeth frowned at her uncle. “Papa needs you to help with the settlement documents. We are to marry this evening—shall we still marry this evening?”
Darcy nodded.
He wondered what had made her wonder whether he had changed his mind. “Yes, certainly. There is no benefit to waiting.”
“Very good, very good.” Mr. Phillips took the leather case from the table next to Mr. Bennet and began to read through the papers in it, making ‘hmm’ sounds several times a minute.
Georgiana and Elizabeth returned to the pianoforte; Darcy assumed his sister wished to speak at greater length to Elizabeth.
He watched them surreptitiously.
They whispered together, then Georgiana started crying, and tears dripped onto the keys as she played a lovely reel.
Darcy approached the instrument.
“I know he’s not good!” Georgiana exclaimed to him as he came close. “Must you force me to say it?”
Elizabeth hugged her. “I only care that you know it.”
“Did he really…?” Georgiana asked. “How do you know?”
“It is not an appropriate matter to describe in detail.”
She smashed the keys down. “Lord! I hate that! Hate it! I deserve to know, not to be…be coddled. Treated like a soft pillow. I must know! What are the details? It was all Mary’s fault, depend upon it—I would not have been unhappy with you, even if you had thrown her from that balcony.
Do you really mean that you will not fight him? ”
“I shall not fight Wickham, but you must understand that he is an immoral, untrustworthy man whom you cannot speak to again.”
“How did you find out? He said that he never did it. Did Mary tell you?”
“No.” Darcy shook his head. “I saw them. In a…a particular kind of embrace that…that only a man and a woman…and wife… Married. Only a pair who have been married are supposed to engage in it. It was out of doors, and from a distance, and I did not know for certain that it was them until Mary came out of the trees and Wickham walked the other way. I do not think Wickham ever knew how I found out.”
Georgiana’s face was crimson.
Darcy suspected that his face was equally as red.
Elizabeth, though, had a sympathetic expression. She put her hand on Darcy’s arm. “That must have been terrible for you.”
He nodded.
Georgiana started pounding the keys again.
None of them spoke for a while.
Then Georgiana said, “I trust you, not him. It is just—I miss George. I miss him so much.”
Darcy could not understand the sentiment.
He had ceased to think of Wickham as a particular friend long before he discovered how his former playmate had betrayed him.
Elizabeth turned the page for his sister.
As she played, Georgiana said quietly, “He always had time for me. He always played with me. He let me ride on him like a horse when I was a little child. We all laughed when he was about. Even Mama was kind and smiling when he was there. I miss that. I miss him. He made me…he made me feel like you do, Lizzy. As though I am not a terrible disappointment, deficient, a waste of breath and space.”
Darcy was horrified at the idea that Georgiana had ever felt that way. He stared at his sister with wide eyes.
“My dear Georgie,” Elizabeth began, asking the question that was on Darcy’s mind as well, “how could you ever think such a thing about yourself?”
“You like me. You do not mind that I am shy, that I do not easily converse with those I do not know well—and you talk with me so naturally. George is like that. He does not mind that I am the way I am.”
Georgiana suddenly began a different piece, a melancholy sonata by Beethoven.
Darcy could not find his voice.
He realised he also thought of himself as deficient. His father had never, ever been proud of him. Even when he was dying, the old man had never said that he was proud.
Mary had also disliked Darcy’s character very much.
Did Elizabeth?
Elizabeth said, “That George has been your friend, a good friend, a friend who helped you—it is sad. He was kind to you—perhaps he still… But he did wrong to your brother. A great wrong.”
“It was all Mary’s fault! She was the one who betrayed Fitzwilliam! Oh, I wish I had never seen George again. I had half forgotten how…how…”
Georgiana looked at Darcy, then she blushed and fell silent.
Darcy ought to pursue this line of questioning—was his sister in love with Wickham? That would explain much of how she had acted after the scoundrel had been banished from the house for mysterious reasons, and her behaviour today.
Elizabeth put her arm around Georgiana again. “I know.”
“It is impossible.” Georgiana leaned against Elizabeth and stopped playing.
“Wholly,” Elizabeth agreed. “And it would not be good, if possible.”
Georgiana wiped her eyes.
Elizabeth squeezed her side.
Mr. Phillips came over and said to Darcy, “We are prepared to sign. There are no important issues with the document. You have been exceedingly generous towards my niece and her family.” He said to Elizabeth, “I shall especially note that Jane’s well-being and support is carefully assured, no matter what should happen to you or to Mr. Darcy. ”
“I know,” Elizabeth replied. “Mr. Darcy promised, and I trust him to always fulfil his promises.”
That she had said such a thing—simply, without ceremony—filled Darcy with a sensation that was an odd mix of terror, warmth, and determination to always fulfil his promises.
After the settlement documents were signed, with Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Phillips standing as witnesses to their validity, the rector of Longbourn parish was called.