Not As I Am
XXVII
The letter came on a Tuesday, with the Aberdeen post.
Jane’s handwriting on the outside, which was ordinary, but something different in the weight of it — thicker than usual, written across in a second hand Elizabeth did not immediately recognise as her mother’s.
She took it upstairs and read it in the library with Falstaff’s head in her lap and the October light coming grey through the narrow windows.
Jane first. The usual careful warmth, the news arranged in order of consequence, her mother’s health, Kitty’s new bonnet, Mary’s sermons progressing. And then, in Jane’s most considered hand — the hand she used when she had decided exactly what to say and was saying it as gently as possible:
You will be surprised by what follows, dearest Lizzy, and I cannot pretend it is otherwise.
Mama’s note will tell you more than I can here, only know that we are all well and that I hope, or I must believe that she will be happy.
She has always been headstrong, and she has chosen for herself, and there is nothing more to be said of it now.
Her mother’s letter was four pages and took considerably less time to read because it said the same thing many times. Lydia was married.
Married! Could Elizabeth believe it — little Lydia, the first of her sisters truly to be married, for of course Lizzy’s wedding hardly counted, none of them had been there to see it, and a marriage one’s own mother had not witnessed was barely a marriage at all — and to such a man, a handsome man, an officer, a man they had all liked very well when he was quartered at Meryton.
It had been sudden, yes, but what was youth for if not suddenness, and Lydia had always known her own mind even if she had not always known how to apply it, and there was the five thousand pounds of course which made everything quite different from what it might otherwise have been—
The letter continued in this vein for the remaining three pages.
Elizabeth read it twice. Then she folded both letters and put them in her pocket, and blew out the candle for dinner.
Angus had told him at noon that he had got down a volume of Paley for the lady from the high shelf in the library, and was the laird wanting it after her, and Darcy had said no, the lady was welcome to it, and had been thinking about Paley ever since.
He knew what Elizabeth would do with Paley. He knew which paragraphs she would mark in her head and how she would deliver them across the table tonight. He took the passage half-impatient for it, and knocked, and went in to the dark.
Two weeks ago, before he had properly found his chair, she had announced that the author of the natural philosophy in the library was a fool.
“He is not a fool,” Darcy had said. “He is merely wrong in print, which is a lesser offence.”
“No, he is wrong in principle. He thinks the accumulation of facts must necessarily produce understanding. By that rule, Mrs MacLeod’s stillroom is the wisest room in Scotland, as it contains more labelled jars than any library shelf and is equally resistant to contradiction.”
He had said the author was making a claim for ordered inquiry, not pantry shelves.
She had answered at once that ordered inquiry was only accumulation taught to dress for company, and by the time he had found the answer to that, she was already laughing under her breath because she knew she had struck somewhere live.
He had conceded, finally, that accumulation and understanding were not the same thing, merely frequent companions.
He picked up his glass and waited for whatever Paley argument she had spent the day rehearsing.
“I had a letter from my sister this morning,” she said.
Not Paley, then. He set the glass down a fraction less easily than he had picked it up — pleased that she had a letter, and a little disappointed that the evening had been claimed by something other than what he had come for. Both at once. He found himself a little surprised at the disappointment.
“My youngest sister is married.”
“I did not know she was engaged.”
“Nor did anyone, I think. It was very sudden.” Her voice carried warmth and something more guarded beneath it, the two running together in a way she had not quite sorted out.
“She is only sixteen, which is younger than one would wish. But she has always been the sort of person who does things before anyone has quite prepared for them. He is a militia officer we had known in Hertfordshire, very well liked. Mama is entirely delighted.”
Hertfordshire? Then… he must know the man. Denny? Saunderson? Lydia Bennet had flirted shamelessly with both. He sipped his wine carefully. “And you?”
“I am… I do not yet know what I am.” She ate for a moment. “I am glad she is provided for. The rest I will have to work out.”
“What was he called? This officer.”
She said the name without hesitation, and it hit him before he had braced for it.
George Wickham.
He had not thought about Wickham in months.
He had thought about the clerk, the manifests, Richard, Georgiana, the shape of the problem.
He had thought about Elizabeth — the evenings, the argument about Hume, the sound of her on the headland with the dog.
Wickham was a solved problem. A man who had been paid fifteen thousand pounds to go away and had gone away.
The five thousand pounds he had put in Erskine’s letter in July — Lydia Bennet, five thousand, to secure her future — had seemed a small practical addition to the offer.
He had done it because the alternative arrangements for her sisters were bad and he knew it.
He had done it because Elizabeth had accepted him entirely for her family’s sake and he had wanted to deserve that.
He had not thought about what five thousand pounds in the hands of a sixteen-year-old girl in reduced circumstances looked like to a man like Wickham.
He knew now.
She was talking — his pleasing manner, the neighbourhood’s regard for him — and Darcy sat in the dark and listened to her describe George Wickham with warmth. The cold of it went all the way down.
“You seem very pleased,” he said, “to have a girl of sixteen married on so short an acquaintance.”
She put her fork down. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your youngest sister.” The whisper was inadequate before he had finished the sentence — too low, too controlled, nothing in it that matched what he needed it to carry.
“Sixteen years old, seduced by a militia officer of a few months in the neighbourhood. What do you actually know of this man beyond that he is charming and your mother is delighted?”
“I know he is a gentleman, and that he was well regarded by everyone who knew him, and that my sister chose him.” Her voice had gone sharp — full-voiced, unhesitating, every word landing with the force she intended.
“At least her family can form some picture of her situation, have some acquaintance with her husband, which is considerably more than most women can say of their marriages.”
Those words stung. Darcy had to swallow his first response and force a breath or two. He could not dare address that remark, so he chose the easier one. “His being well regarded by a country neighbourhood is not a character reference.”
“And what would constitute a character reference, in your estimation? A letter of introduction? A recommendation from someone of sufficient consequence?” She pushed her own chair back. “You speak as though you know something against him.”
The whisper had nothing to offer her. There was no version of what he knew that could be said in this voice, in this room, without unravelling everything.
“Do you?” Her voice changed — direct and fully present, pitched towards him across the dark. “George Carlisle. Do you know something against this man?”
“I know the type of man—” He stopped. Started again, quieter. “The type of man who pursues a girl of sixteen with five thousand pounds and very little family to protect her.”
“You know the type.” She was on her feet now, and her voice went with her — full and bright and carrying.
“You are very certain of the type from the darkness of this room, having never left it. Having never met my sister, or her husband, or anyone of our acquaintance. You read a single letter, and you know the type?”
“I know—” The whisper snagged on what he actually meant, and he had to force the rest out carefully, low and controlled, stripped of everything it needed.
“I claim the advantage of my sex. No lady of gentle birth can possibly comprehend the reaches of the minds of certain men when there are five thousand pounds—”
“You assume that was the extent of my sister’s charms!
You know nothing! You say you had me ‘looked into,’ but you know nothing about my family.
You know nothing about what we have been through this year, or what Lydia’s situation was, or what she was facing, or why a man who showed her kindness when she had precious little of it might look very different to her than he does to you — sitting here in the dark, untouchable, without a single thing at stake—”
“That is not—” The whisper broke on the second word, and he caught it, pulled it back, held it down. She could not hear his full voice. She could not hear the words he wanted to put to her, because he knew what she would hear in them. He fisted his hands on the table and made himself breathe.
“Not what? Not fair?” She heard the break — of course she heard it, she heard everything.
“Then tell me what I have wrong. Tell me something true about yourself for once and use it to make your case against him, and I will listen.” He heard her move — the quick, decisive step of someone rallying to advance, to press her point…
not retreating. “Or stand there in the dark and say nothing useful, as you always do, and let me be glad for my sister in peace.”
He stood up.
“Where are you—”