Death Comes to Pemberley

by P. D. James

  Darcy said, ‘We are expecting George Wickham to be conveyed here with his lawyer, Mr Alveston, this afternoon. In view of what you say I am confident that Mr Wickham will accept your brother’s offer with gratitude. I understand that the present plan of Mr and Mrs Wickham is to go now to Longbourn and stay there until they have decided on their future. Mrs Wickham is very anxious to see her mother and her childhood friends; if she and her husband do emigrate, it is unlikely that she will see them again.’

  Samuel Cornbinder was rising to go. He said, ‘Extremely unlikely. The Atlantic voyage is not lightly ventured and few of my acquaintance in Virginia have either undertaken, or desired to undertake, a return voyage. I thank you, sir, for receiving me at such short notice and for your generosity in agreeing to the proposal I have put before you.’

  Darcy said, ‘Your gratitude is generous but undeserved. I am unlikely to regret my decision. Mr Wickham may.’

  ‘I think not, sir.’

  ‘You will not wait to see him when he arrives?’

  ‘No sir. I have done him such service as I can. He will not want to see me before this evening.’

  And with those words he wrung Darcy’s hand with extraordinary force, put on his hat and was gone.

  4

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon when they heard the sound of footsteps and then voices, and they knew that the party from the Old Bailey had at last returned. Darcy, getting to his feet, was aware of acute discomfort. He knew how much the success of social life depended on the comfortable expectation of approved conventions and had been schooled since childhood in the actions expected of gentlemen. Admittedly his mother had from time to time voiced a gentler view, that good manners consisted essentially in a proper regard for the other person’s feelings, particularly if in society with someone from a lower class, an admonition to which his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, was markedly inattentive. But now both convention and advice left him at a loss. There were no rules for receiving a man whom custom dictated he should call his brother and who, a few hours before, had been condemned to a public hanging. Of course he rejoiced at Wickham’s escape from the hangman, but was that as much for his own peace of mind and reputation as it was for Wickham’s preservation? The dictates of decency and compassion would surely compel him to shake hands warmly, but the gesture now seemed to him as inappropriate as it was dishonest.

  Mr and Mrs Gardiner had hurried from the room as soon as they heard the first footsteps, and he could now hear their voices raised in welcome, but not the reply. And then the door was opened and the Gardiners came in, gently urging forward Wickham with Alveston at his side.

  Darcy hoped that the moment of shock and surprise did not show in his face. It was difficult to believe that the man who had found the strength to stand upright in the dock and proclaim his innocence in a clear unwavering voice was the same Wickham who now stood before them. He seemed physically diminished and the clothes which he had worn for his trial now seemed too large, a shoddy, cheap, ill-fitting garb for a man who was not expected to wear it for long. His face still had the unhealthy pallor of his imprisonment but, as their eyes met and for a moment held, he saw in Wickham’s a flash of his former self, a look of calculation and perhaps disdain. Above all he looked exhausted, as if the shock of the guilty verdict and the relief of his reprieve had been more than a human body could endure. But the old Wickham was still there and Darcy saw the effort and also the courage with which he attempted to stand upright and face whatever might come.

  Mrs Gardiner said, ‘My dear sir, you need sleep. Food perhaps, but sleep more than anything. I can show you a room where you can rest, and some nourishment can be brought up to you. Would it not be better to sleep, or at least rest for an hour before you talk?’

  Without taking his eyes from the assembled company, Wickham said, ‘Thank you, madam, for your kindness, but when I sleep it will be for hours and I am afraid that I am accustomed to hoping that I shall never wake. But I need to talk to the gentlemen and it cannot wait. I am well enough, madam, but if there can be some strong coffee and perhaps some refreshments …’

  Mrs Gardiner glanced at Darcy, then said, ‘Of course. Orders have already been given and I’ll attend to it at once. Mr Gardiner and I will leave you here to tell your story. I understand that Reverend Cornbinder will call for you before dinner and has offered you hospitality for the night where you will be undisturbed and can sleep soundly. Mr Gardiner and I will let you know as soon as he arrives.’ With that they slipped from the room and the door was quietly closed.

  Darcy shook himself out of a moment of indecision, then came forward with his arm outstretched and said in a voice which even to his ears sounded coldly formal, ‘I congratulate you, Wickham, on the fortitude you have shown during your imprisonment and on your safe deliverance from an unjust charge. Please make yourself comfortable, and when you have had something to eat and drink we can talk. There is much to be said but we can be patient.’

  Wickham said, ‘I prefer to tell it now.’ He sank into the chair and the others seated themselves. There was an uncomfortable silence and it was a relief when, moments later, the door opened and a servant came in with a large tray containing a coffee pot and a plate of bread, cheese and cold meats. As soon as the servant had left the room Wickham poured his coffee and gulped it down. He said, ‘Excuse my lack of manners. I have recently been in a poor school for the practice of civilised behaviour.’

  After a few minutes in which he ate avidly he pushed the tray aside and said, ‘Well, perhaps I had better begin. Colonel Fitzwilliam will be able to confirm much of what I say. You already have me written down as a villain, so I doubt whether anything I have to add to my list of delinquencies will surprise you.’

  Darcy said, ‘No excuses are necessary. You have faced one jury, we are not another.’

  Wickham laughed, a high, short, raucous bark. He said, ‘Then I must hope that you are less prejudiced. I expect Colonel Fitzwilliam has filled you in with the essentials.’

  The colonel said, ‘I have said only what I know, which is little enough, and I do not suppose any of us believes that the whole truth came out at your trial. We have awaited your return to hear the full account to which we are entitled.’

  Wickham did not immediately speak. He sat looking down at his clasped hands, then raised himself as if with an effort and began talking in an almost expressionless voice as though he knew his story by heart.

  ‘You will have been told that I am the father of Louisa Bidwell’s child. We first met the summer before last when my wife was at Highmarten where she usually liked to spend some weeks in the summer, and since I was not accepted in that house, I made it my habit to stay at the cheapest local inn I could find where, by luck, I could occasionally arrange a meeting with Lydia. The grounds at Highmarten would be contaminated if on occasion I walked there, and I preferred to spend my time in the woodland at Pemberley. I spent some of the happiest hours of my childhood there and some of that youthful joy returned when I was with Louisa. I met her by chance wandering in the woodland. She too was lonely. She was largely confined to the cottage caring for a mortally sick brother and was rarely able to see her fiancé, whose duties and ambition kept him fully occupied at Pemberley. From what she said about him I conjured the picture of a dull older man, anxious only to continue his servitude and without the imagination to see that his fiancée was bored and restless. She is also intelligent, a quality he would not have valued even if he had the wit to recognise it. I admit I seduced her, but I assure you I did not force her. I have never found it necessary to violate any female and I have never known a young woman more eager for love.

  ‘When she discovered she was with child it was a disaster for us both. She made it plain, and in great distress, that no one must know, except of course her mother who could hardly be kept in ignorance. Louisa felt she could not burden her brother’s last months, but when he guessed the truth she confessed. Her chief concern was not to distress her fa
ther. She knew, poor girl, that the prospect of bringing disgrace on Pemberley would be worse for him than anything that could happen to her. I could not see why a love child or two need be such a disgrace, it is a common enough predicament in large households, but that is what she felt. It was her idea that she should go to her married sister, with the connivance of her mother, before her condition became noticeable, and there stay until after the birth. The idea was that the child would be passed off as her sister’s and I suggested that she should return with the baby as soon as she could travel to show it to the grandmother. I needed to ensure that there was a living and healthy child before deciding what best should be done. We agreed that I would somehow find the money to persuade the Simpkinses to take the child and raise him as their own. It was then that I sent a desperate plea for help to Colonel Fitzwilliam, and when the time came for Georgie to be returned to the Simpkinses he provided me with thirty pounds. This, I imagine, you already know. He acted, he said, out of compassion for a soldier who had served under him, but no doubt he had other reasons; gossip Louisa had heard from the servants suggested that the colonel might be looking to Pemberley for a wife. A proud and prudent man, especially if he is rich and an aristocrat, does not ally himself with scandal, particularly such a commonplace and sordid little affair. He was no more anxious than Darcy would have been to see my bastard playing in the woodlands of Pemberley.’

  Alveston asked, ‘I suppose you never told Louisa your true identity?’

  ‘That would have been folly, and would only have added to her distress. I did what most men do in my situation. I congratulate myself that my story was convincing and likely to induce compassion in any susceptible young woman. I told her I was Frederick Delancey, I have always liked the idea of those initials, and that I had been a soldier wounded in the Irish campaign – that much was true – and had returned home to find my dearly beloved wife had died in childbirth, and my son with her. This unhappy saga greatly increased Louisa’s love and devotion, and I was forced to embroider it by saying that I would later be going to London to find a job, and would then return to marry her, when our baby could leave the Simpkinses and join us as a family. Together, as Louisa insisted, we carved my initials on the trunk of trees as a pledge of my love and commitment. I confess that I was not without hope that they would cause mischief. I promised to send money to the Simpkinses as soon as I had found and paid for my London lodgings.’

  The colonel said, ‘It was an infamous deceit, sir, on a gullible and essentially innocent girl. I suppose after the child was born you would have disappeared for good and that, for you, would have been the end of it.’

  ‘I admit the deceit, but the result seemed to me desirable. Louisa would soon forget me and marry her fiancé, and the child would be brought up by people who were his family. I have heard of far worse ways of dealing with a bastard. Unfortunately things went wrong. When Louisa returned home with her child and we met as usual by the dog’s grave, she brought a message from Michael Simpkins. He was no longer willing to accept the baby permanently, even for a generous payment. He and his wife already had three girls and no doubt would have more children, and he could never be happy that Georgie would be the eldest boy in the family, having precedent over any future son of his. Apparently, too, there had been difficulties between Louisa and her sister while she was with them awaiting the birth. I suspect it seldom answers if there are two women in one kitchen. I had confided in Mrs Younge that Louisa was with child, and she insisted on seeing the child and said she would meet Louisa and the baby by arrangement in the woodlands. She fell in love with Georgie and was determined that he should be given to her for adoption. I knew that she had wanted children but had no idea until then that her need could be so overwhelming. He was a handsome child and, of course, he was mine.’

  Darcy felt that he could no longer remain silent There was much that he needed to know. He said, ‘It was Mrs Younge, I suppose, who was the dark woman whom the two maids glimpsed in the wood. How could you bring yourself to involve her in any scheme relating to the future of your child, a woman whose conduct, as far as we know it, shows her to be among the most base and contemptible of her sex?’

  And now Wickham almost sprang from the chair. His knuckles on the arms were white, his face suddenly flushed with fury. ‘You may as well know the truth. Eleanor Younge is the only woman who has loved me, none of the others, including my wife, has given me the care, the kindness, the support, the sense of being important to her, as has my sister. Yes, that is who she is, my half-sister. I know this will surprise you. My father has the reputation of having been the most efficient, the most loyal, the most admirable of stewards of the late Mr Darcy, and indeed he was such. My mother was strict with him, as she was with me; there was no laughter in our house. He was a man like other men, and when Mr Darcy’s business took him to London for a week or more, he lived a different life. I know nothing of the woman with whom he consorted, but on his deathbed he did confide to me that there was a daughter. To give him credit, I must say that he did what he could to support her, but I was told little of her early history, only that she was placed in a school in London which was no better than an orphanage. She ran away when she was twelve and he lost contact with her after that, and when increasing age and responsibilities at Pemberley were becoming too heavy for him, he was not able to undertake a search. But she was on his conscience at the last and he begged me to do what I could. The school had long since failed and the proprietor was unknown, but I was able to contact people in the neighbouring house who had befriended one of the girls and was still in touch with her. It was she who gave me the first hints of where I might find Eleanor. And in the end I did find her. She was very far from destitute. There had been a brief marriage to a much older man who had left her sufficient money to buy a house in Marylebone where she received boarders, all of whom were young men from respectable families who were leaving home to work in London. Their fond mamas were immensely grateful to this respectable and motherly lady who was adamant that no young women, either as boarder or visitor, would be received in her house.’

  The colonel said, ‘This I knew. But you make no mention of the way your sister had lived, no mention of the unfortunate men she blackmailed.’

  Wickham had some difficulty in controlling his anger. He said, ‘She did less damage in her life than many a respectable matron. She was left no jointure by her husband and was forced to live by her wits. We rapidly grew to love each other, perhaps because we had so much in common. She was clever. She said that my greatest, perhaps my only, asset was that women liked me and that I had the trick of making myself agreeable to them. My best hope of avoiding poverty was to marry a wealthy wife and she thought I had the qualities to achieve this. As you know, my most promising and earliest hope came to nothing when Darcy turned up at Ramsgate and played the indignant brother.’

  The colonel had got to his feet before Darcy could move. He said, ‘There is a name which cannot be on your lips, either in this room or elsewhere if you value your life, sir.’

  Wickham gazed at him with a flash of his old confidence. He said, ‘I am not so new to the world, sir, as not to know when a lady has a name which can never be smirched by scandal and a reputation which is indeed sacred, and I also know that there are women whose lifestyle helps to safeguard that purity. My sister was one. But let us return to the matter in hand. Happily my sister’s wishes provided a solution to our problem. Now that Louisa’s sister had refused to take the child, somehow a home had to be found. Eleanor dazzled Louisa with stories of the life he would have and Louisa agreed that on the morning of the Pemberley ball Eleanor would arrive at the cottage with me to collect the baby and take him with us to London where I would be looking for work, and she would care temporarily for the child until Louisa and I could marry. Of course we had no intention of providing my sister’s address.

  ‘And then the plan went wrong. I have to admit that it was largely Eleanor’s fault, she was not used to
dealing with women and had made it her policy not to do so. Men were straightforward to deal with and she knew how to persuade and cajole. Even after they had paid over their money, men were never at enmity with her. She had no patience with Louisa’s sentimental vacillations. For her it was a matter of common sense: a home was urgently required for Georgie and she could provide one far superior to that of the Simpkinses. Louisa simply did not like Eleanor and began to distrust her; there was too much talk from Eleanor about the necessity of her having the thirty pounds promised to the Simpkinses. Louisa finally agreed that the child could be taken as planned, but there was always the risk that when it came to actually parting with her child she might prove obdurate. That is why I wanted Denny with us when we went to collect Georgie. I could be confident that Bidwell would be at Pemberley and every servant would be fully occupied, and I knew that there would be no problem with my sister’s coach being admitted through the north-west gate. It is astonishing how a shilling or two can ease these small difficulties. Eleanor had previously arranged a meeting at the King’s Arms at Lambton with the colonel for the night before in order to inform him of the change of plan.’