Cousin Emma
Page 27
Wickham, finally left to fend for himself, tried gambling until his last farthing was gone. Seeing he was shortly to become a beggar, he got a position as a footman in a house in London.
It was not a particularly well-bred house, though it was large and the owners were rich. They came from trade and were in the midst of attempting to transform themselves, not very successfully, into gentlemen and gentlewomen. He would have wished, if he must work as a footman, to find himself in a duke’s employ. However, he could not hide the scar that Darcy had made on his cheek with a horsewhip. The best people did not employ footmen with any sort of deformity.
The Delseys, his new employers, were a rather stupid group of people. They put on airs they could not carry off, their accents were atrocious, and they dressed with a sort of pomposity that bordered on the ridiculous. Mr. Delsey attempted to pass himself off as a grave elder statesman, though his conversation was generally absurd. Mrs. Delsey attempted a mien of grace and femininity, which was almost convincing until she opened her mouth. The daughter was spoiled and dull, the son prone to drink too much.
It was not long before Wickham, tiring of pretending to hold any sort of respect for the Delseys, seduced the wife, then the daughter, taught the son to gamble, convinced Mr. Delsey to invest in a shipping company that did not exist and pocketed the money and then, for good measure, made off with the silver. Where he went off to, nobody knew. The Delseys did not seek him out, as they were all rather ashamed of their interactions with George Wickham. It was presumed that wherever the man took himself, he eventually met a bad end, as those sorts of men always did.
Though Darcy, and Georgiana too, had found it no burden to be estranged from Lady Catherine, that individual had found that in having the last word, there were no more words to be had. Lady Catherine was exceedingly fond of words, particularly those emanating from herself, and so could not be happy with that particular state of affairs. She also found herself in the difficult position of now being related to a duke through Georgiana’s marriage, without being able to say that she had actually met him.
For those reasons, she launched a rapprochement, which was guardedly accepted. The Darcys and Lord and Lady Huntingdon had gone to Rosings and Lady Catherine had come to Pemberley. Relations found themselves on fair footing in the end.
That fair footing was primarily due to Lady Catherine’s own restraint. While she did not blink an eye over the idea of marching into a neighbor’s house and enumerating all the ways those persons had gone wrong in their arrangements, Elizabeth Darcy was another matter. Lady Catherine had already been firmly crossed by Elizabeth, and that when she had been a little nobody. She did not dare cross Mrs. Darcy, as that would be a battle she could not hope to win.
Emma and Mr. Knightley settled into Hartfield with Mr. Woodhouse’s glad consent. That gentleman was happy to acquiesce, as he did maintain a fear of the gypsies and had no confidence whatsoever in his ability to fend them off, should they attack the house. He did not understand why Emma and Mr. Knightley must marry, as Mr. Knightley could move in without that rash step taken, but Emma was insistent it must be so and he never could deny his daughter.
The gypsies never did swarm the walls of Hartfield, but it was a subject Mr. Woodhouse like to speculate on, as he did appreciate examining various ways things might end in disaster.
Emma did not entirely give up her meddling, though over the years she became more circumspect and her maturing judgment gave her more successes than failures. She found it quite impossible to view a lady of marriageable age and not look about her for a suitable match. Nor did she find it comfortable to note a young person seeking a situation without immediately writing letters and attempting to discover what might suit. And, heaven forbid, if she were to stumble upon a person experiencing a real difficulty, how could she stand not rallying the neighborhood to that person’s aid? Had she not raised a substantial subscription for Miss Bates so that lady and her mother might move into a more spacious house? Emma was generally so happy with her own situation, that she could not bear to see anybody else less so.
Elizabeth and Darcy visited from time to time, and it was always an interesting trip. Emma would have much to tell them that had transpired while they were gone, and there was generally some little intrigue or other unfolding while they were in residence.
Emma’s children, all four of them, were well-accustomed to her meddling. Little they did was not noted and examined and discussed. They grew up to be confidant and cheerful creatures, as everything they did was highly approved of by their mother, and then sprinkled with practicality and sense from their father.
Jane and Bingley got on well together, they taking a house in Derbyshire close by Pemberley. As Jane had been determined from the beginning, there were to be no secrets between them. Bingley did wonder, on occasion, if a secret might not be a more comfortable thing for him. Jane produced one son and four daughters, and with that many daughters in the house, there was no end to the secrets he must be told.
Bingley spent many a sleepless night worrying over this daughter’s childish heartbreak and that daughter’s despair over having been denied a style of dress deemed too bold and that other daughter’s remorse at having crept down to the kitchens in the middle of the night to empty the biscuit tin. It never failed to surprise and terrify him to discover all that went on in the female mind. Before he had married, he had thought women were all very happily sitting in their drawing room, sewing, or netting a purse. Now he knew that the interior life of a lady roiled with wishes, disappointments, joys and sorrows—and it all must be told to his wondering ears.
The girls adored their father and often pressed him to describe how he’d threatened to throw himself off a bridge if their mama refused him. They maintained high hopes that some gentleman would threaten the same on their own behalf.
In the end, it had been a letter that had so materially changed Elizabeth’s view of Mr. Darcy. A letter handed her at Lucas Lodge. Over the course of years, the letters from Mr. Darcy to Mrs. Darcy did not cease. Many a morning, after her husband had gone out early to hunt or see to some matter on the estate, Elizabeth would wake to find a folded missive on the pillow next to her own. These letters always began as the very first had done—
If you are reading this, I thank you for your courtesy.
From there, the letters veered off on their own course and did not at all resemble the first. Some of them were so delightfully scandalous that Elizabeth had a lock installed on her dresser so that they might be stored safely away from eyes not belonging to husband and wife.
Elizabeth often smiled to herself as she thought of how she could not have foreseen how her life would unfold. She could not have guessed that she would open her eyes on so many mornings to see a neatly folded paper addressed to Mrs. Darcy.
She did not know who her own children would marry, but she hoped the same happiness for them. She even, at times, felt an anxiety very like Mrs. Bennet had experienced, when she considered that they must all be settled. Elizabeth and Jane often discussed the futures of their children in hushed tones, half-delighted and half-terrified. Elizabeth once ruefully admitted that a mama’s care must be the same from generation to generation, much to the surprise of the daughters who’d found themselves the focus of it.
Elizabeth and Jane sometimes looked back and spoke of the wonder of the events that had transpired when their Cousin Emma had come to Longbourn. There had been confusion and misjudgments, false opinions and mistaken condemnations. And then finally, they had gone on happily, all because Charles Bingley had made the rash decision to let Netherfield and Emma Woodhouse had boldly departed Hartfield.
The End.
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