CHAPTER 37 #2
Elizabeth was very still.
The picture formed itself too easily. A great house grieving, proud, accustomed to service.
A master who believed loyalty because he needed it.
A woman whispering old obligation into every doubtful moment.
A steward becoming indispensable by appearing to carry burdens no one else would stoop to examine.
“And the son?” she asked.
“George Wickham was nearly my age. My parents made him their godson. He was not raised as my equal, but he was raised near enough to equality to resent the difference. He had school, university, introductions, indulgence — all the instruments by which a young man learns to mistake expectation for right.”
“Were you friends?”
“No.” He paused. “Not enemies either, at first. We were boys in the same house, then young men in the same world. He was easy where I was reserved, pleasing where I was merely correct, quick to attach himself to whatever company liked him best. We were educated with much the same liberality, though never with quite the same understanding of what was owed in return.”
“You studied together?”
“At times. We were at university in the same period. He knew enough of my habits to imitate them when useful, and enough of my reserve to make any denial sound proud.”
Elizabeth understood then, before he said it, that the story had been arranged around his very nature.
A more open man might have defended himself noisily and been believed vulgar.
A more charming man might have laughed off what could not be proved.
Mr. Darcy, grave, proud, young, and accustomed to being misunderstood in small ways, had been placed where misunderstanding became a weapon.
“What happened?” she asked.
“When university ended,” he said, “or near enough to its end for the distinction to matter little, my father received evidence that I had incurred considerable debts of honour, gamed recklessly, and lived in company no gentleman ought to keep.”
“And you had not.”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
“Signatures had been copied. Notes acknowledged in my name. Witnesses produced. Accounts arranged with sufficient skill that every falsehood had a place to stand upon.”
“Mr. John Wickham?”
“He verified them.”
“Of course.”
The sharpness of her own voice surprised her.
Mr. Darcy looked at her for a moment, and something in his expression eased and suffered at once.
“My father did not at first believe it. Or he did not wish to. He sent Mr. John Wickham to inquire, because the steward knew the places, the men, the accounts, and because he was thought too grateful, too trusted, too bound to Pemberley ever to deceive it.”
“And he returned with confirmation.”
“In every particular.”
Elizabeth’s hand curled slowly around the edge of her chair.
“It was not only debt,” said Mr. Darcy.
The words seemed to lower the temperature of the room.
“That would have been easier to answer, or at least easier to name. There were women named in those papers whom I had never seen. Supposed letters. Testimonies. Statements written with just enough misery to make denial appear brutality. I was made to seem not merely foolish or dissolute, but cruel. Predatory. A man who had injured where he ought to have protected, and then relied upon rank to escape consequence.”
Elizabeth could not speak.
His voice remained even, but the effort of evenness was terrible.
“They had contrived the charges so that innocence sounded like contempt. If I denied knowing those women, I was cold. If I denied the letters, I was a liar. If I demanded proof, I was using position against helplessness. Every answer had been prepared before I was permitted to make it.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth softly.
It was not enough. Nothing would have been enough.
He looked toward the fire.
“George did not appear first as my accuser. That was the cleverness of it. He came as a friend distressed by what friendship had forced him to see. We had been boys together at Pemberley. Educated near one another. Sent into the same world. He represented himself as unwilling to speak, but unable in conscience to remain silent.”
Elizabeth’s breath caught.
“He had heard whispers,” Darcy continued. “Seen papers. Recognised my hand. Known my companions. Pitied the women injured by my supposed conduct. Every sentence was shaped to sound reluctant. Every hesitation made him more credible.”
“And when you denied it,” said Elizabeth, “his grief became another witness against you.”
Mr. Darcy turned to her.
“Yes.”
She felt suddenly cold.
“That is why he spoke as he did last night.”
“What did he say?”
“He did not accuse you plainly. That would have given me something clean to reject. He grieved over you. He implied knowledge he could not honourably reveal. He spoke as if old friendship pained him, as if concern for me forced him to say what delicacy would otherwise conceal.” Her mouth tightened. “And then he told me I was young.”
Something changed in Mr. Darcy’s face.
It was not anger alone. It was recognition.
“He used the old shape of it,” said she.
“Yes.”
“Only this time he wished me to become the proof.”
His silence answered.
Elizabeth rose and crossed to the fire, not because she was cold, though she was, but because she needed motion. She stood there with one hand on the mantel and looked down into the coals.
“That is worse than I thought,” she said.
“I am sorry.”
She turned back at once.
“No.”
“Miss Bennet—”
“No. Do not divide his offences for him.”
He stilled.
“You warned me against him. You did not send him to the musical society’s rooms. You did not make him in his cups enough to grow bold, nor vain enough to approach me, nor cruel enough to use your ruin as conversation.
If there is any part of last night for which you are to blame, Mr. Darcy, I have not yet found it. ”
His expression altered so quickly that she almost regretted the force of it.
Not because she withdrew the judgment. Never that. But because he looked as if plain justice were more difficult to bear than sympathy.
“My father believed him,” he said after a moment. “Believed them. The papers, the steward who confirmed them, the son who grieved over them, and Mrs. Wickham, who wept over what my mother would have felt had she lived to see her son become such a man.”
Elizabeth’s hand left the mantel.
“Your mother was dead.”
“Yes.”
“And they used her.”
“Yes.”
The word was almost without sound.
For the first time, Elizabeth thought she understood something essential in him.
Not merely that he had suffered injustice.
Not merely that he had been cast out. But that every tender thing in his life had been converted against him: his mother’s memory, his father’s love, his own reserve, even the honour which made accusation unbearable.
“What did your father do?” she asked, though she feared the answer.
“He said that vice might perhaps be repented. Falsehood could not. He told me I had disgraced my name and then disgraced it again by denying the truth before injured persons. He ordered me from Pemberley.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes.
Only for a moment.
When she opened them, Mr. Darcy was watching her not with expectation, but with the look of a man accustomed to having the worst part of a story change every room it entered.
She would not let it change this one against him.
“And you went?”
“I was twenty-one. Proud enough to be silent where I ought perhaps to have raged. Wounded enough to think explanation had already failed. My paternal uncle — my father’s younger brother — did not accept all he was told. You may remember I spoke of him once.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. “At Christmas.”
“He could not persuade my father, but he helped me preserve what was legally mine through my mother. She had left me five thousand pounds. Not a great fortune for the life I had been bred to expect, but enough to keep me from dependence.”
“The judge uncle,” said Elizabeth.
A faint surprise touched him. “Yes.”
“I am glad to give him a better name than ‘somebody not sufficiently thanked.’”
This time, a shadow of warmth passed across his face.
“He did more than I can easily repay. He directed me toward the law. Gave me letters, advice, the use of his judgment. Since I could not recover my father’s belief, I was left to make some kind of life where belief was less necessary than proof.”
“That sounds like you.”
“It was a poor second choice.”
“But a real one.”
He looked down.
“Yes.”
His hand tightened again upon the arm of the chair.
“There is another injury I must name, because it is not only mine. I have a sister, much younger than I am. Her name is Georgiana. When this happened, she was a child. Afterward I was forbidden all real contact with her.”
Elizabeth sat very still.
“Not always by written prohibition,” he continued.
“My father did not need writing where household obedience would do. Letters delayed, visits discouraged, servants instructed, every approach made difficult before it could be refused. I do not know what she has been told of me. I do not know whether she thinks of me with fear, pity, dislike, or nothing at all.”
The fire shifted. Somewhere below, a servant crossed the hall and a door closed with ordinary care. The house went on being a house. Elizabeth had never been more grateful for its steadiness.
“And my mother’s family did not help,” he said. “Lady Catherine condemned before understanding. Lord Matlock regretted before acting. My aunt and uncle found distance prudent. Richard remained kind, but he is a younger son and a soldier. He can believe me. He cannot restore me.”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “But he can know what is true.”
“That is not nothing.”
“No. It is not.”
Silence settled between them.
Elizabeth thought of Wickham at the musical society’s rooms: handsome, easy, warm with wine and confidence, speaking of Mr. Darcy as if sorrow gave him a right to injure. She thought of the cold tea leaving the cup. The splash. The silence after. Miss Hall’s dry approval.