CHAPTER 45
Better Intelligence
Judge Edward Darcy wrote in a hand as severe as his judgments and rather warmer than either.
Darcy had expected no extravagance from his uncle.
He would have been alarmed by it. Edward Darcy did not waste feeling in ink merely to prove that he possessed it; he set down what he meant, left out what did not require saying, and trusted the recipient to understand that brevity was not indifference.
Even so, Darcy read the note twice before breakfast.
My dear Fitzwilliam,
Your news gives me more satisfaction than I can easily express without violating several habits by which I have long preserved my character. Accept, therefore, my warmest congratulations in their plainest form.
I am very glad for you.
The third Thursday in March shall be kept free. If the court will not arrange itself conveniently, then the court must suffer my absence for a few hours. I shall attend the wedding.
You have chosen, from all I can gather, with judgment as well as affection. I have no better wish to offer you than that you may find yourself as wisely chosen in return.
Your affectionate uncle,
Edward Darcy
Darcy lowered the paper and looked for some time at the signature.
His uncle had never called him blameless.
That was not his way. He had asked questions, examined dates, sent for papers, advised silence where speech would only feed scandal, and anger where silence would become surrender.
He had helped Darcy begin again after Pemberley had closed upon him, but he had never pretended that help restored what had been taken.
This note did not restore it either.
Yet there was something in the sentence, I shall attend the wedding, which steadied Darcy more than he wished to examine.
A man could live a long while on proofs no one else could see.
He had done it. He knew the economy of such a life too well.
But the public attendance of one respectable relation was a different kind of evidence.
It said, without argument: this man has not been wholly abandoned by those whose judgment should carry weight.
Mr. Brentwood’s note arrived an hour later and did nearly as much harm to Darcy’s composure.
It was longer than his uncle’s, because Brentwood did not possess the same judicial suspicion of adjectives; and kinder than Darcy had expected, because Brentwood, though scrupulous in all matters of professional conduct, had never believed that kindness weakened a man’s understanding.
My dear Mr. Darcy,
Your letter gave me sincere pleasure. I had formed, from little enough observation and rather more report than you perhaps intended to supply, an opinion of Miss Bennet which makes me think your happiness in excellent danger of being governed by uncommon sense.
That she has accepted you after seeing something of your circumstances does her judgment credit.
That you have chosen her before certainty or victory does yours.
I do not congratulate you upon having escaped difficulty; I know you have done no such thing.
I congratulate you upon having found a companion with whom difficulty may become less solitary.
If there is any service I may perform before the wedding, you have only to command me. If none is required, then allow me the simpler office of wishing you joy.
Yours very sincerely,
Thomas Brentwood
Darcy read that note once, placed it on the desk, took it up again, and disliked himself for being moved by the phrase less solitary.
He had not asked to be pitied. Brentwood had not offered pity. That was perhaps why it reached him.
By noon, the two letters lay side by side beside a draft concerning a Manchester Square renewal, three Cotton Lane memoranda, and a list of fittings Mr. Terling believed necessary before Mr. Harding’s yard could be distinguished from trespass with any hope of future peace.
Darcy had done less work than he ought and more feeling than was his habit. The imbalance made him restless.
He was in the act of correcting a clause on repairs when Richard was announced.
His cousin entered with his usual appearance of having been admitted less by servants than by a treaty long ago concluded between himself and all doors. He looked first at Darcy’s face, then at the letters on the desk.
“You have had news.”
“Several kinds.”
“Good?”
Darcy hesitated.
Richard’s brows rose. “Good God. You are trying not to look pleased. It must be excellent.”
Darcy handed him his uncle’s note.
Richard read it, and for once his amusement softened into something nearer tenderness.
“Edward will attend.”
“Yes.”
“That is very well.”
Darcy inclined his head.
Richard put the note down with more care than he used for most objects. “And Brentwood?”
Darcy gave him the second letter.
Richard read that one too, more slowly. “Less solitary,” he said, and glanced up. “A dangerous phrase to use upon you.”
“I did not request commentary.”
“You never do. That is why everyone must be so inventive in supplying it.”
Darcy recovered the letter before Richard could continue to examine him over it.
“I have other intelligence,” Richard said, settling into the chair opposite as if he had come to stay just long enough to be inconvenient. “Of a less elevated nature.”
“Wickham?”
“Your instincts are improving.”
“They had little room to worsen.”
Richard’s mouth quirked. “Wickham is not appearing in public.”
Darcy stilled. “Has he left London?”
“No.”
“Has he been arrested?”
“Not precisely.”
“Richard.”
“He has acquired a black eye.”
For a moment Darcy said nothing.
Richard seemed to take that silence as invitation. “A considerable one, by all reports. One of his creditors, or rather one of the men employed by one of his creditors, appears to have mistaken urgency for method. Wickham has therefore developed a sudden preference for privacy.”
Darcy set down his pen.
“That is confirmed?”
“As far as any report of Wickham’s face may be confirmed without calling upon it.
My brother heard it at his club, where the matter was received with less grief than might satisfy a moralist. It seems the injured party had been persuaded, for too long, that patience was a virtue chiefly useful to other men. ”
Darcy looked toward the window. The day beyond was pale and hard, the light thin upon the glass.
“He is only inconvenienced,” he said.
“Yes. Not reformed, not silenced, not converted, not taken up into heaven in a chariot of unpaid bills. Merely bruised.”
“It may keep him quiet for a few days.”
“A providential bruise.”
Darcy’s mouth tightened. “Providence has an unfortunate choice of agents.”
“Very true. But one must take one’s agents as one finds them.”
Darcy did not smile. He should not have been pleased. He was not, precisely. Violence was disorder, and disorder had a habit of collecting interest. Yet relief moved through him all the same, grim and unhandsome. Wickham checked by his own debts was not justice. It was not safety. But it was time.
Richard watched him more closely than was comfortable.
“You did not arrange it,” he said.
“No.”
“I know. You look much too disapproving.”
Darcy’s eyes returned to him. “I would not set a creditor’s man upon Wickham.”
“I did not suppose you would. I only thought you might be blaming yourself for not having prevented a blow you did not anticipate, delivered by a man you do not know, on behalf of a debt you did not contract.”
Darcy gave him a look.
Richard leaned back, satisfied. “There. Now you look natural again.”
Darcy took up the Manchester Square clause, then put it down without reading it.
“The date is fixed,” he said.
Richard’s expression altered at once. “Ah.”
“The third Thursday in March.”
“So soon?”
“Not too soon.”
“No,” said Richard, and his voice lost its mockery. “No, I do not think so.”
Darcy waited for him to add something foolish. Richard, with unexpected mercy, did not.
Then, because mercy in Richard had limits, he said, “I shall need a coat.”
“You own several.”
“Not one suitable to watching you look grateful in church.”
“I do not intend to look anything in church.”
“That is why it will be so affecting.”
Darcy turned back to the papers, though he no longer saw them clearly.
Richard rose after a few minutes, having satisfied himself that Darcy had eaten breakfast, received two decent letters, and not mistaken Wickham’s black eye for deliverance.
At the door he paused.
“Fitzwilliam.”
Darcy looked up.
“I am glad.”
Darcy held the words a moment before answering.
“So am I.”
Richard left looking rather pleased with himself, which was the natural condition of Richard after having extracted sincerity from a reluctant man.
Darcy remained at his desk, the morning’s letters before him, Wickham’s humiliation somewhere in the city, and the wedding date now spoken aloud to one more witness.
He had meant to spend the afternoon in work. He lasted less than an hour.
By three o’clock he was in the carriage to Portman Square, carrying Judge Edward’s note and Brentwood’s approval in his breast pocket, Wickham’s temporary retreat in his mind, and a kind of cautious brightness he hardly trusted.
He had good news for Elizabeth.
It was not complete happiness. Complete happiness did not belong to a man whose father still believed him dishonourable, whose sister remained beyond easy reach, whose enemy could be made quiet only by creditors and accident, and whose future wife had been obliged, before marriage, to make trustees sign away his access to her fortune.
But it was still good.
His uncle would attend. Brentwood approved. Richard knew the date. Wickham, for the present, was keeping out of sight.
He had not expected, on entering Portman Square, to find Elizabeth looking as if the day had already spent itself upon her.