CHAPTER 41 #3
“Mr. Wickham has debts enough to inconvenience him, but not one tidy sum by which he may be conveniently disposed of. His creditors are of several kinds. Some are tradesmen who have been persuaded to wait by old promises of Derbyshire support. Some are men connected to gaming rooms. Some are less easily described in a lady’s solicitor’s office. ”
“I am not made more delicate by your furniture, Mr. Hartwood.”
“No. But I am made more cautious by my profession.”
“Very well. Continue cautiously.”
“He has been assisted before,” said Hartwood.
“Not regularly, not openly, and not always by the same hand. There are patrons, if one chooses to use a polite word for impolite arrangements. Men who cover him, delay pursuit, or make his difficulties less immediate when it suits them to have him at liberty.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened upon her reticule.
“And what do they receive?”
“Favours.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that improves no one by being named unnecessarily.”
She thought of Wickham’s smile, his easy address, his claim of old friendship, his attempt to speak Darcy’s name as if it were a thing he might handle before strangers.
She thought of Darcy sitting before untouched tea, hollowed out by old wrong.
She thought of Georgiana, still within that machinery.
“Then he is not merely troublesome,” she said. “He is useful.”
“Sometimes.”
“By whom?”
“I do not yet know enough.”
“But you may?”
“If they move.”
“And will they?”
“That depends how valuable Mr. Wickham remains to them.”
Elizabeth understood him then.
“You mean to make them show themselves.”
“I mean first to make Mr. Wickham busy.”
There was something in his tone which Mrs. Marwood would have approved: not triumph, not anger, but the dry satisfaction of a mechanism correctly applied.
“I have spent some money,” said Mr. Hartwood.
Elizabeth looked at him with increased interest.
“How much?”
“Enough to make several men more attentive to their own injuries than they had lately found it convenient to be.”
“You have paid his creditors?”
“Certainly not. I have no desire to improve Mr. Wickham’s circumstances.”
“Then what have you bought?”
“Their attention.”
Elizabeth sat back.
Mr. Hartwood continued, “I have encouraged certain creditors to be less gentle, less patient, and more persistent than they have been. I have not invented claims. I have not purchased false zeal. I have only removed some of the softness around him.”
Elizabeth felt, for the first time since Friday night, something like pure satisfaction.
“Good.”
Mr. Hartwood inclined his head.
“Mrs. Marwood used to say that many a bad man survives because everyone around him finds patience cheaper than action.”
“She was right.”
“She often was.”
“And now patience has become dearer?”
“To several persons, yes.”
Elizabeth looked at the papers on his desk.
“Could enough of the debt be secured to put him in prison?”
Mr. Hartwood’s brows rose only a little. He had known Mrs. Marwood too long to be easily shocked by a young woman considering the practical uses of confinement.
“Perhaps,” said he. “Not usefully.”
“Because his patrons would rescue him.”
“If they require him at liberty, yes. A single prison door gives them one problem to solve. Several creditors, newly impatient, give him many.”
“And if someone pays them?”
“Then we learn who still thinks Mr. Wickham worth preserving.”
That was better.
Elizabeth stood and went to the window. The street below was moving with ordinary Monday purpose: a boy carrying a parcel too large for him; a woman negotiating fiercely with a driver; a gentleman stepping around a puddle with insufficient dignity; two clerks laughing before they remembered they were clerks.
London went on. It had no notion that Mr. Wickham was, at last, to be made uncomfortable.
“Can he still approach me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Can he still speak?”
“Yes.”
“Can he still lie?”
“Almost certainly.”
She turned back.
“Then what have we gained?”
“Time, pressure, and witnesses. A man pursued by creditors has fewer leisure hours for musical societies. A man whose credit trembles must choose his rooms more carefully. A man obliged to seek assistance teaches us where he expects assistance to be found.”
Elizabeth liked the answer because it did not pretend to be more complete than it was.
“And the law?”
“The law may come later, if he gives it a cleaner handle. Gentlemen like Mr. Wickham are seldom first governed by law. They are governed by credit, inconvenience, exclusion, and the fear of doors closing before they have secured another room.”
“Mrs. Marwood would have approved that.”
“I learned some part of it from her.”
There was no boast in it. Only truth. Elizabeth looked at him, and for a moment she saw not merely her solicitor, nor Mrs. Marwood’s surviving instrument, but a man who had spent years translating one formidable woman’s principles into papers, warnings, refusals, and quiet protections.
“I am grateful,” she said.
Mr. Hartwood accepted this with a small bow.
“You should not mistake it for safety.”
“I do not.”
“Mr. Wickham may become angry.”
“I had not supposed inconvenience would make him virtuous.”
“No. Only occupied.”
“And if he grows desperate?”
“Then we shall know sooner rather than later.”
Elizabeth returned to the chair.
“Does Mr. Darcy need to know the particulars?”
Mr. Hartwood considered.
“He should know that measures are being taken, and that Mr. Wickham may be pressed by creditors. He need not know today every channel through which Mr. Wickham has made himself serviceable to worse men.”
“No.”
“Unless those channels threaten him directly.”
“Then he will be told.”
“By you?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Hartwood folded the papers again.
“Good.”
Elizabeth watched his hands tie the packet. It occurred to her that happiness, if it meant to remain happy, required a remarkable quantity of unpleasant work performed by sensible people in brown rooms.
She did not resent it.
Indeed, she was beginning to think it one of the proofs that happiness was real. A fancy could float above consequence. A life could not. A life required settlements, letters, trustees, creditors, rooms, fires, meals, and the careful placing of pain where it would do least harm.
Mr. Darcy was waiting somewhere beyond the wall, submitting himself to Mr. Beaker’s particulars.
Mr. Wickham, though he did not yet know it, was being remembered by men who had been paid to recall him with vigour.
Mr. Bennet would soon receive a letter asking him to be kind before he was clever.
Mrs. Albright, in Portman Square, was very likely measuring curtains with the gravity of a general before battle.
Mrs. Doddridge and Pom-Pom waited in the outer office, keeping the whole of the law respectable by being bored in its presence.
It was not, perhaps, the common dream of a newly engaged lady.
But Elizabeth had never found common dreams particularly well furnished.
When she rose, Mr. Hartwood rose with her.
“I shall write when there is movement,” he said.
“About Mr. Wickham?”
“And about the settlements.”
“Excellent. I prefer all my difficulties properly labelled.”
“Then you are very much Mrs. Marwood’s heir.”
Elizabeth paused with her hand upon the door.
“No,” she said, after a moment. “Not only that.”
Mr. Hartwood’s face softened by the smallest degree.
“No,” he agreed. “Not only that.”
In the outer office, Mr. Darcy looked up as she entered.
Whatever Mr. Beaker had asked him, whatever particulars had been required, whatever restrictions had been set down in ink, he rose when he saw her as if the room had altered.
Elizabeth felt the full foolish warmth of it and allowed herself, for the span of one breath, not to govern it.
Then Mr. Beaker shut his notebook.
“I believe,” he said, “that we have done as much damage to disorder as one morning permits.”
Mrs. Doddridge rose at once. Pom-Pom sat beside her in his dark-blue coat, looking as if he had formed a low opinion of several clerks and all written instruments.
“Has Lord Pomington behaved?” Elizabeth asked.
Mrs. Doddridge looked at the dog.
“He has been present, miss.”
“That is a very careful answer.”
“Yes, miss.”
Mr. Darcy took Pom-Pom’s wrapper from the chair before Elizabeth could reach it and held it open with a gravity that did credit to them both.
Pom-Pom permitted himself to be wrapped.
Elizabeth, watching Mr. Darcy perform this solemn office in Mr. Hartwood’s outer room, thought that some settlements were made without paper.
Mr. Darcy offered her his arm.
She took it.
By the time they left Mr. Hartwood’s office, their engagement had acquired what every astonishing happiness required before it could be trusted in London: witnesses, restrictions, correspondence, and enemies made busy elsewhere.