Chapter Sixteen
As no objection was made to the young people's engagement with their aunt, and all Mr. Collins's scruples of leaving Mr. and Mrs. Bennet for a single evening during his visit were most steadily resisted, the coach conveyed him and his five cousins at a suitable hour to Meryton; and the girls had the pleasure of hearing, as they entered the drawing-room, that Mr. Wickham had accepted their uncle's invitation, and was then in the house.
When this information was given, and they had all taken their seats, Mr. Collins was at leisure to look around him and admire, and he was so much struck with the size and furniture of the apartment, that he declared he might almost have supposed himself in the small summer breakfast parlor at Rosings; a comparison that did not at first convey much gratification; but when Mrs. Philips understood from him what Rosings was, and who was its proprietor, when she had listened to the description of only one of Lady Catherine's drawing-rooms, and found that the chimney-piece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt all the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented a comparison with the housekeeper's room.
Mr. Wickham was the happy man toward whom almost every female eye was turned, and Elizabeth was the happy woman by whom he finally seated himself; and the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into conversation, though it was only on its being a wet night, and on the probability of a rainy season, made her feel that the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.
The card tables were placed, and Mr. Collins sat down to whist with a good grace, and lost his money with a better one, and was informed by Mrs. Philips that it did not signify in the least.
Elizabeth did not play. She took the fish-counters and the ivory box and kept the reckoning at the round table, which was thought a great service to everybody, and Mr. Wickham drew his chair a little toward her and said that he thought her employment infinitely the pleasantest in the room.
She had taken off her gloves for it, because one cannot count fish in gloves.
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He did not begin upon the subject at once. He began upon Meryton, and the regiment, and the ball at Netherfield, and he asked how long Mr. Darcy had been staying there.
"About a month," said Elizabeth; and then, unwilling to let the subject drop, added, "He is a man of very large property in Derbyshire, I understand."
"Yes," replied Wickham; — "his estate there is a noble one. A clear ten thousand per annum. You could not have met with a person more capable of giving you certain information on that head than myself — for I have been connected with his family in a particular manner from my infancy."
Elizabeth could not but look surprised.
"You may well be surprised, Miss Bennet, at such an assertion, after seeing, as you probably might, the very cold manner of our meeting yesterday. — Are you much acquainted with Mr. Darcy?"
"As much as I ever wish to be," cried Elizabeth warmly. — "I have spent four days in the same house with him, and I think him very disagreeable."
"I have no right to give my opinion," said Wickham, "as to his being agreeable or otherwise.
I am not qualified to form one. I have known him too long and too well to be a fair judge.
It is impossible for me to be impartial.
But I believe your opinion of him would in general astonish — and perhaps you would not express it quite so strongly anywhere else. — Here you are in your own family."
"Upon my word I say no more here than I might say in any house in the neighborhood, except Netherfield. He is not at all liked in Hertfordshire. Every body is disgusted with his pride."
"I cannot pretend to be sorry," said Wickham, after a short interruption, "that he or that any man should not be estimated beyond their deserts; but with him I believe it does not often happen.
The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence, or frightened by his high and imposing manners, and sees him only as he chooses to be seen. "
"I should take him, even on my slight acquaintance, to be an ill-tempered man."
Wickham only shook his head.
"I wonder," said he, at the next opportunity of speaking, "whether he is likely to be in this country much longer."
"I do not at all know; but I heard nothing of his going away when I was at Netherfield. I hope your plans in favor of the ——shire will not be affected by his being in the neighborhood."
"Oh! no — it is not for me to be driven away by Mr. Darcy.
If he wishes to avoid seeing me, he must go.
We are not on friendly terms, and it always gives me pain to meet him, but I have no reason for avoiding him but what I might proclaim to all the world; a sense of very great ill usage, and most painful regrets at his being what he is.
His father, Miss Bennet, the late Mr. Darcy, was one of the best men that ever breathed, and the truest friend I ever had; and I can never be in company with this Mr. Darcy without being grieved to the soul by a thousand tender recollections.
His behavior to myself has been scandalous; but I verily believe I could forgive him any thing and every thing, rather than his disappointing the hopes and disgracing the memory of his father. "
Elizabeth found the interest of the subject increase, and listened with all her heart; but the delicacy of it prevented farther inquiry.
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Mr. Wickham began to speak on more general topics, Meryton, the neighborhood, the society, appearing highly pleased with all that he had yet seen, and speaking of the latter especially with gentle but very intelligible gallantry.
"It was the prospect of constant society, and good society," he added, "which was my chief inducement to enter the ——shire.
I knew it to be a most respectable, agreeable corps, and my friend Denny tempted me farther by his account of their present quarters, and the very great attentions and excellent acquaintance Meryton had procured them.
Society, I own, is necessary to me. I have been a disappointed man, and my spirits will not bear solitude.
I must have employment and society. A military life is not what I was intended for, but circumstances have now made it eligible.
The church ought to have been my profession — I was brought up for the church, and I should at this time have been in possession of a most valuable living, had it pleased the gentleman we were speaking of just now. "
"Indeed!"
"Yes — the late Mr. Darcy bequeathed me the next presentation of the best living in his gift. He was my godfather, and excessively attached to me. I cannot do justice to his kindness. He meant to provide for me amply, and thought he had done it; but when the living fell, it was given elsewhere."
"Good heavens!" cried Elizabeth; "but how could that be? — How could his will be disregarded? — Why did not you seek legal redress?"
"There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest as to give me no hope from law.
A man of honor could not have doubted the intention, but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt it — or to treat it as a merely conditional recommendation, and to assert that I had forfeited all claim to it by extravagance, imprudence, in short any thing or nothing. "
He turned a fish-counter over in his fingers.
"And it was not, Miss Bennet, only a living.
I do not know how much you may know of such matters, and it is not a thing one likes to explain, because it sounds so exactly like a man complaining of a fortune he never had.
But at Pemberley the incumbency carries with it an office — the wardenship of the western ground — and the office carries a bond.
Not the Accord itself; nobody supposes such a thing; a share of it.
A thread. Enough that a man may feel the boundary he is set to keep, and be answered a little when he speaks to it.
" He smiled slightly. "It was the whole of my education.
From four years old I was walked over that ground twice a week by a man who loved me, and taught the marks of it, and taught what to do at the two places where the wall is thin, and told — by him, in his own words, a hundred times — that it should be mine to keep.
And when he died, his son gave it, within the twelvemonth, to a gentleman from Kendal who had never in his life set foot in the county. "
"That is quite shocking," said Elizabeth. "He deserves to be publicly disgraced."
"Some time or other he will be — but it shall not be by me. Till I can forget his father, I can never defy or expose him."
Elizabeth honored him for such feelings, and thought him handsomer than ever as he expressed them.
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"But what," said she after a pause, "can have been his motive? — what can have induced him to behave so cruelly?"
"A thorough, determined dislike of me — a dislike which I cannot but attribute in some measure to jealousy.
Had the late Mr. Darcy liked me less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father's uncommon attachment to me irritated him I believe very early in life.
He had not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood — the sort of preference which was often given me. "
"I had not thought Mr. Darcy so bad as this — though I have never liked him, I had not thought so very ill of him — I had supposed him to be despising his fellow-creatures in general, but did not suspect him of descending to such malicious revenge, such injustice, such inhumanity as this!"
After a few minutes reflection, however, she continued, "I do remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the implacability of his resentments, of his having an unforgiving temper. His disposition must be dreadful."
"I will not trust myself on the subject," replied Wickham; "I can hardly be just to him."
Elizabeth was again deep in thought, and after a time exclaimed, "To treat in such a manner, the godson, the friend, the favorite of his father!
" — She could have added, "A young man too, like you, whose very countenance may vouch for your being amiable" — but she contented herself with "And one, too, who had probably been his own companion from childhood, connected together, as I think you said, in the closest manner! "
"We were born in the same parish, within the same park; the greatest part of our youth was passed together; inmates of the same house, sharing the same amusements, objects of the same parental care.
My father began life in the profession which your uncle, Mr. Philips, appears to do so much credit to — but he gave up every thing to be of use to the late Mr. Darcy, and devoted all his time to the care of the Pemberley property.
He was most highly esteemed by Mr. Darcy, a most intimate, confidential friend.
Mr. Darcy often acknowledged himself to be under the greatest obligations to my father's active superintendance, and when immediately before my father's death, Mr. Darcy gave him a voluntary promise of providing for me, I am convinced that he felt it to be as much a debt of gratitude to him, as of affection to myself. "
"How strange!" cried Elizabeth. "How abominable!"
"The ground never took to me," said Mr. Wickham.
He said it quite lightly, looking at the card table, and it went past her as such things do.
"I beg your pardon?"
"It is nothing. It is a thing that is said of me — was said of me, when I was a boy — by people who wished me out of the house, and I have never been able to get it entirely out of my head.
Old servants are great believers in that sort of talk.
A boy runs about a park for eighteen years and the park is not obliged to have an opinion about him.
" He set down the counter. "But the old man ought to have insisted.
That is my whole quarrel with the world, Miss Bennet, if you will have it plainly: he ought to have insisted, and he was too gentle, and he let it be said, and his son heard it said, and made a wall of it.
A great house will always find a reason to keep out the steward's boy.
They do not even have to invent one. They only have to wait until the boy is old enough to be told that the walls do not like him. "
Elizabeth looked at him.
She had not meant to. It was rude, and he was a pleasant man telling her a painful thing, and she would have been ashamed to be caught at it.
She did it because his voice had altered on that last speech — the polished thing had gone out of it — and because two-and-twenty years of a gift that came unbidden had taught her nothing at all about not using it.
And she saw straight down into the middle of him, and it was true.
Not partly true; not true as men's grievances are true, with a bruise at the bottom and a great deal of decoration over it.
It was true: a genuine wound, dealt young, still open, still bleeding at the edges after eighteen years, and no more capable of dissembling itself than a broken arm.
He believed every word he had said to her.
He believed it the way she believed her own name.
Elizabeth Bennet sat back in her chair with the ivory box in her lap and felt the last piece of the thing drop into place, and knew, with the complete and settled certainty of a woman who has looked and seen, exactly what Mr. Darcy of Pemberley was.
She was right about everything she had seen.
Her mistake — and it would cost her a good deal, and cost other people more — was a small one, and it was this: she had asked her gift whether the man was lying, and her gift had told her that he was not, and she had understood that to be an answer to a question about Mr. Darcy.
She had not asked, because it had not occurred to her that there was any such question, whether a man may be perfectly sincere about a door, and still be the reason it was shut.
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Their attention was called off by Mr. Collins, who had discovered from Mrs. Philips that Lady Catherine de Bourgh was Mr. Darcy's aunt, and who was in a state of considerable agitation about it.
"It is a most extraordinary circumstance," he said, "that I should have been in the same room with the nephew of my patroness and not have known it. I shall make my apologies to him at the very earliest opportunity."
"You will find him," said Mr. Wickham pleasantly, "much easier to apologize to than to speak with."
The evening broke up at eleven. Elizabeth went home with her head full of Mr. Wickham, and could think of nothing else the whole way, and told Jane the entire history before she had her stays off.
She slept badly and woke with a headache and was heavy and cross until noon, and put it down to the negus and the lateness of the hour, and thought no more about it at all.