19. A Difficult Truth
nineteen
A Difficult Truth
Mr. Wickham came to Longbourn on a morning thick with mist, the sort that transformed the hedges into dark shapes and made every familiar path look as though it belonged to some older, quieter country.
Mrs. Bennet disliked such weather on principle and declared it unfit for callers, which did not prevent her from brightening the moment Hill announced Mr. Wickham.
Lydia brightened more.
She had been sitting with unusual diligence over a shirt she had promised to mend for one of the tenant children, though her stitches were not improved by the frequency with which she glanced toward the window.
At Mr. Wickham’s entrance, the needle pricked her finger, and she dropped the shirt with a gasp so dramatic that Kitty looked up in alarm.
“It is nothing,” Lydia said, putting her finger to her mouth and coloring at once. “Merely treacherous linen.”
Mr. Wickham bowed to Mrs. Bennet, greeted the ladies, and crossed to Lydia with concern sufficiently restrained for propriety and sufficiently visible to please everyone who loved her. “Miss Lydia, I hope you are not injured.”
“Mortally,” she replied, recovering herself. “I may never sew again.”
“Then the nation suffers.”
“It does. I was becoming excellent.”
Kitty snorted. Mary looked up from her book with the faint disapproval of one who believed excellence ought to require more evidence.
Elizabeth, seated near the hearth with her own work, accepted her appointed office with resignation.
Jane was above stairs with Mrs. Bennet, examining some household linen; Mr. Bennet had retreated to his library; and Elizabeth, by virtue of age, affection, and a growing reputation for sense, had become chaperone.
It was a curious post from which to observe courtship. She was near enough to hear every word, distant enough to permit conversation, and far too interested to pretend her attention was wholly upon the stocking in her lap.
Mr. Wickham took the chair opposite Lydia, rather than the one beside her, and accepted tea when Hill brought it. The simple propriety of the choice did not escape Elizabeth. Very little escaped her lately, though she no longer trusted that faculty with quite the confidence she once had.
“You have come from my uncle’s office?” Elizabeth asked.
“I have, Miss Elizabeth. Mr. Philips sent me with a note for your father and another for Mrs. Bennet. Nothing alarming,” he added quickly when Lydia sat straighter. “It is an invitation to dine next week.”
“Oh.” Lydia relaxed. “That is very well. Aunt Philips always has excellent syllabub.”
“Then I shall endeavor to deserve an invitation myself.”
“You already do,” Lydia said, then seemed to remember Elizabeth and became suddenly intent upon smoothing the edge of her sleeve.
Mr. Wickham’s smile came and went, warm without presumption. “Mr. Philips has been very generous to me. More generous than I had any right to expect.”
“He likes you,” Lydia said. “That is why.”
“He has promised to aid me if I continue diligently. In time, if I prove worthy, he believes I might take a greater share in the practice. Perhaps even become partner one day.”
Lydia’s face lit. “There. I knew it.”
“You knew it before I did?”
“Of course. I always know important things before gentlemen do. They require ledgers and consultations and years of effort. I merely decide.”
Elizabeth lowered her head over her work to hide her amusement.
Mr. Wickham accepted this pronouncement gravely. “Then I must be grateful for the authority of your decision.”
“You should be. I have decided you will make a name for yourself.”
“That is a formidable burden.”
“No, it is encouragement.”
“There is a difference?”
“There is when I say it.” Lydia leaned forward, all warmth and earnestness now, the playfulness slipping into something more sincere.
“You work very hard. Uncle says so, and Papa says Uncle is not easily deceived in business, though Mama says Papa thinks everyone is trying to deceive him whenever they ask for money. And you study even when you might come here sooner.”
“Your uncle’s books are less charming than Longbourn.”
“But more useful.”
“Painfully so.”
“Then it must all come to good.” Lydia picked up the abandoned shirt again, though she did not resume sewing. “It must. People cannot work and work and be good and have nothing come of it.”
Elizabeth’s needle paused.
The words were very Lydia: absolute, tender, and somewhat reckless. They were also not foolish.
Mr. Wickham looked down into his teacup for a moment before answering. “I hope you are right.”
“I am,” Lydia said.
“Then I shall endeavor not to disappoint you.”
“You could not.”
“Ah.” His tone lightened, but just barely. “Now you go too far.”
“No, I do not. You might make mistakes, but that is not the same.”
Elizabeth glanced up then.
Mr. Wickham was looking at Lydia with an expression stripped of performance. Pain, gratitude, affection, and caution all met there, and for the first time Elizabeth understood, not merely that he admired Lydia, but that her faith in him frightened him a little.
A man bent upon deception would have been pleased by such confidence.
Mr. Wickham looked humbled by it.
Darcy’s account pressed hard against the scene before her.
A spendthrift. A man of charm and falsehood. One who took affection and converted it into advantage.
She had tried to fit those words over Mr. Wickham as he sat in her mother’s drawing room, speaking of office hours, legal practice, and the slow hope of usefulness.
The shape would not hold. Either the man had transformed himself beyond recognition, or Mr. Darcy’s insistence had seized upon the past and made it answer for the present.
And then there was Ramsgate.
Always Ramsgate.
Elizabeth’s eyes moved to the window, where mist gathered along the glass.
If Mr. Wickham had not been there, why did Miss Darcy believe he had?
If Miss Darcy had not named him, why had she nodded when Darcy supplied the name?
Elizabeth disliked this part most of all because it gave her no comfortable side to occupy.
Miss Darcy had seemed too timid, too tender, too young in London to be dismissed.
Darcy loved her, and his fear for her had been real.
Elizabeth could not make light of that injury.
Still, an injury could be real and the accused man innocent of it.
The thought had begun as a whisper in her mind. Now it came whenever Wickham behaved well, whenever Lydia grew more thoughtful under his influence, whenever Darcy’s anger hardened before inquiry could enter.
Lydia rose abruptly. “I must fetch the sampler I told you of. Kitty ruined the border by insisting blue thread could be charming where green was required.”
“I did not ruin it!” Kitty called from across the room.
“You altered its destiny,” Lydia replied. “That is much the same.”
She hurried out before Elizabeth could object, leaving the parlor in a state just within the limits of propriety. Kitty remained in the room, though absorbed at the side table with ribbons. Mary sat near the pianoforte, reading. The door stood open. No one could object to a few civil remarks.
Mr. Wickham seemed to know it too. He did not move closer.
Elizabeth folded her work and laid it in her lap. “Mr. Wickham.”
He bowed. “Miss Elizabeth?”
“I hope you will forgive me if I am impertinent.”
His expression grew alert, though not defensive. “That depends upon whether you are about to ask my opinion on Miss Lydia’s sampler. In that case I am prepared to say it is beyond criticism.”
“I wish to speak of Mr. Darcy.”
The humor left him.
Across the room, Mary turned a page. Kitty hummed to herself under her breath.
Mr. Wickham set his cup upon its saucer with care. “Then I shall answer what I may.”
“Mr. Darcy holds certain beliefs about your character.”
“So I have gathered.”
“He has known you a long time.”
“Yes.”
“And I think you know he does not distrust lightly.”
Wickham’s mouth twisted, though there was no bitterness in it. “Darcy does few things lightly.”
Elizabeth smiled. “That is true.”
He rested his hands upon his knees. “Mr. Darcy has reason to distrust me, Miss Elizabeth. I will not sit in your father’s house and pretend our past was amiable.
It was not. I behaved badly in my youth.
More than badly, at times. I disappointed his father.
I offended Darcy. I wasted opportunities that would have transformed another man’s life had he received them with proper gratitude. ”
The frankness of it disarmed her.
“He says he gave you money in lieu of a living.”
“He did. His father left me the promise of a family living. By the time it fell vacant, I had no business entering the church. I knew it. Darcy knew it. I asked for money to study the law instead.” His fingers flexed once against his knee.
“If he believed then that I would squander it, he had reasons from experience. But I did study. I have had no dealings with the Darcy family since that arrangement.”
“None?”
“None.” He met her eyes. “I swear it.”
Elizabeth looked toward the doorway. Lydia had not returned.
“You are trying to reform.”
“I am.”
“I can see it.”
His shoulders eased a little, but he did not smile. “That is more comfort than you know.”
“I wonder,” Elizabeth said, choosing each word with care, “what occasioned so great a change.”
Mr. Wickham looked down. The question had reached somewhere more private than his earlier admissions. For a moment she thought he would refuse to answer, and she would not have blamed him.
Then he spoke.
“I had a friend. Or a man I called friend.” His voice remained low enough not to carry across the room. “He used me most abominably. Worse, he used my name. Debts, introductions, a promise or two I never made. Nothing that could be easily untangled once done. When I confronted him, he laughed.”
Elizabeth’s fingers tightened around her folded work.