Chapter 19 #2
"Well, Mrs. Darcy." He looked at her over the spectacles.
"I have had your husband in this room twice this visit.
He asks my advice. I have grown so unaccustomed to being of use that it took me both times to notice he means it.
" He took the spectacles off, which meant the joke was over.
"Before your wedding, he stood where you are standing and asked me how a man earns your respect.
I told him I did not know, having held it twenty years without earning it.
I find I owe him an answer still, and I find I have one, so I will leave it with you to deliver.
" His eyes were bright, and he did not pretend otherwise, which from him was a temple offering.
"Tell him: I have watched you read faces since you were six years old.
You have never once held a wrong one for long.
Tell him he has already earned it, or you would not look at him the way you look at him.
There. Now go away, child, before I say something unguarded. "
She kissed his head, where the hair was thinning, and left him with his book. Behind the closing door, the pages did not turn.
They walked back to Netherfield the last morning, she and Darcy, down the Meryton road. She had asked for the walk, and he had asked no questions.
The cottage came up on the left past the second milestone, stone walls and a cold chimney, the shutters latched now, somebody's new tenancy bill posted on the door.
Elizabeth watched it come, and her pulse stayed ordinary.
Three months ago her whole life had bent around that single room.
Now it stood in the weak March sun being what it was: four walls on a road she had walked all her life.
In that room, one man had told the truth about himself, and another had ridden down a hill.
She did not stop. She did not need to. She put her hand through her husband's arm, and the cottage went by like a milestone, and was behind them.
They were past the milestone. The village was in sight when a figure came out of the public house on the Meryton road, settling his hat against the wind. He wore a brown traveling coat now, ordinary and a little worn. The face above it arranged itself into pleasure the instant it found them.
"Mrs. Darcy." Wickham swept the bow with his old grace, the full courtesy, hat to his chest. "And Darcy. I had heard you were in the county. I am glad, very glad, to see you both well."
Darcy's arm went rigid under her hand. She pressed it once, lightly, and kept walking. They stopped. Wickham had planted himself on the path with the confidence of a man who expected the world to stop with him.
"I leave for Edinburgh on Thursday," Wickham said.
His smile found its old groove, warm and rueful at the edges, the wronged gentleman, all forgiveness.
"A fresh start, I am told. I should thank you for arranging it, though I confess I never pictured you as a man who tidied up after other people.
But I find the terms are generous, and I am not too proud to say so. "
Elizabeth and Darcy let the silence answer. Wickham's gaze moved to Elizabeth. The head tilted, the tilt she had watched him use on her aunt, on Mrs. Long, on Charlotte's mother over the card table.
"I hope you will forgive the awkwardness.
Whatever the county has made of the business, you and I know it was more complicated than the story that survived.
I wished you well then. I wish you well now.
" He delivered it simply, every word placed, his eyes coming to hers at the finish.
She had heard it once on a village walk in October.
Charlotte had heard it the night before at her father's card party, the same words, the same placed pause.
It was a built thing, built for a purpose.
"Mr. Wickham," Elizabeth said. Her voice was level, unhurried.
It cost her nothing. "You wished me well in a cottage with witnesses on the road and a speech prepared for my ruin.
You wished my husband's sister well at Ramsgate with a carriage ordered for Scotland.
You wish everyone well, sir. It is the most reliable thing about you, after your coat. "
The coat line landed. Behind his eyes, the fast arithmetic of a man discovering the audience had changed and the old performance would never play again.
He turned to Darcy and tried the last card.
"We were boys together," Wickham said. His voice had dropped, found its quieter register, the one he saved for the old man's grave and the name he could never be given. "Whatever else has passed between us. Your father loved me. That, at least, is true."
Darcy looked at him for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was the one Elizabeth had heard in the book room, on the hill, in the gallery. Plain, unhidden. A man who had stopped holding still.
"My father was kind to you. My father was kind to everyone, and you have made a career of mistaking kindness for debt. I have paid the debt, such as it was. I have paid it twice. There will be no third accounting." He paused. "Go to Edinburgh, Wickham. There is nothing left for you here."
Wickham held the look a moment longer, searching for the old Darcy, the one who flinched behind glass and let people walk away and called the letting dignity. He found someone else.
"Well." Wickham put his hat back on and adjusted the brim. "I see marriage agrees with you. You are very nearly forthright." He bowed again, a shallower bow, already a man measuring the distance to the next town. He walked toward the village with his face forward.
Elizabeth and Darcy stood in the road and watched him go. He looked the same from behind: same height, same walk, same set of the shoulders. But the road was just a road and the man on it was just a man. The county would forget his name by Easter.
"That coat has seen better days," Elizabeth said.
Darcy looked down at her, and the line at his mouth was the one she meant to have painted.
"Home on Friday," she said. "I want to be there when Ashford comes. And Georgiana will have worn out the new music by now."
Home. The word had a direction now, and the direction was north, and the man beside her was watching the road ahead with his face wide open, like the avenue gates.
"Home on Friday," Darcy said, and put his hand over hers on his arm, and they walked on.