by Jane Lark
“It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.” Mr Wickham hovered in Lizzy’s mind. Mr Wickham who had chosen not to come, so he might not embarrass Mr Bingley, their host, with any dispute.
“May I ask to what these questions tend?” He was not a man for games and he was done with them. He preferred her plain speaking.
“Merely to the illustration of your character…” Lizzy wished to capture him, a man who seemed so proud he would be mortally offended by immoral behaviour, and yet would cut a man who had been cherished by Darcy’s father, and had been promised a living by Darcy’s father. “I am trying to make you out.”
She would never succeed. Darcy was too closed up. Too self-conscious. Too afraid of appearing a fool to her. She was everything he was not—and Wickham was…
Anger stirred and growled inside Darcy. That man deserved no-one’s kindness or affection, and yet Wickham could win it so easily. If only a woman’s eyes could see into a man’s mind and heart.
Lizzy withdrew from him, into silence. She cared nothing for his clumsy attempts at conversation.
Yet once her dance with Darcy had come to a close, her desire to know Darcy’s side of the story Mr Wickham had told her whipped up into a whirlwind of irritation and it was piqued further by a stab from Miss Bingley. “So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George Wickham!” Lizzy turned. “Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand questions; and I find that the young man forgot to tell you, among his other communications, that he was the son of old Wickham, the late Mr Darcy’s, steward. Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr Darcy’s using him ill it is perfectly false; for on the contrary, he has been always remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated Mr Darcy in a most infamous manner…”
Impatience and intolerance whirled through Lizzy. The emotions clutched tight in Jane’s chest as she continued writing. The quill scratched across the paper. It had been a warning to Lizzy, but most importantly to Jane’s readers. Yet the only malicious content of the accusation that Lizzy heard was that Mr Wickham was the son of the late Mr Darcy’s steward.
“Insolent girl!” Lizzy exclaimed when Miss Bingley walked away. Miss Bingley had been influenced by the man she admired so highly, and wished to acquire—Mr Darcy. Of course she would take Darcy’s side.
Lizzy sought out her sister, Jane, who had been busy playing Lizzy’s investigator. Mr Bingley had also declared that Darcy’s behaviour had been everything expected of him, and beyond any doubt considered Darcy innocent of any fault. Mr Bingley also had good cause to trust the man he considered a close friend.
Lizzy disregarded all the evidence provided by the Bingley family; they were swayed by their relationship with Darcy, and not one of them had met Mr Wickham. They were judging him through hearsay—through Darcy’s view.
Jane turned over the pages which told how Lizzy’s family’s behaviour descended into crude reprimands, insulting comments, and prideful, and inappropriate displays, which drew the attention of everyone in the room.
The next day, when Bingley left Netherfield with Darcy and his sisters, Jane wrote a few lines to counter Darcy’s departure. Wickham walked Lizzy home from Meryton and met Lizzy’s mother—another woman to be charmed by his manners.
Though her sister, Jane, pined for Bingley, Lizzy thought nothing of Darcy going. She was glad that he had gone and that Mr Wickham might live without fear of meeting the man who had insulted him so abominably.
Mr Wickham soon became a regular visitor, invited by Lizzy’s mother, who was as partial and susceptible to a scarlet coat and eloquent conversation as any of her daughters.
Jane turned to the page where the Gardiners, Lizzy’s aunt and uncle, visited. Of course Wickham would be invited throughout their stay, as a handsome, entertaining man to dress Mrs Bennet’s table. In the way the footmen at Warwick castle must dress the Countess’s drawing room.
Mr Wickham’s preference each time he joined the Bennets at their table was to contrive to sit beside Lizzy. Her wit amused him, and Darcy’s obvious interest in her had poked at his most favourite desire—to irritate his less social and unpopular, former friend.
Mrs Gardiner watched the quiet conversations which passed between Wickham and Lizzy. The way they leaned towards one another when he spoke, and the look in Lizzy’s eyes as she constantly awaited the turn of Wickham’s eyes to her. Then at intervals there would be a high pitched laugh from Lizzy, or a low sound of satisfaction from Wickham.
After dinner, Wickham, knowing that Mrs Gardiner had been watching his behaviour, would seek Mrs Garidner out, and, with his skill for conversation, draw her into discussions about Derbyshire and Pemberley, where he, and she, had grown up. He spoke of her former acquaintances in that area and told her tales regarding those she had called friends. Yet she could not remember Mr Wickham.
She wished she could. She wanted to be able to recall the information which corroborated the story Lizzy had told her about Mr Wickham’s stolen inheritance, but she could not. Yet she supposed… perhaps, she had heard of “Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy formerly spoken of as a very proud, ill-natured boy.”
Mrs Gardiner was not such a fool, though, to be charmed by a pleasant voice and a handsome countenance. She had a vast experience of such gentlemen in town.
“You are too sensible a girl, Lizzy, to fall in love merely because you are warned against it; and therefore, I am not afraid of speaking openly. Seriously, I would have you be on your guard…”
It was too late for warnings, Lizzy knew herself to have fallen, or at least to be tumbling towards that fall. If Mr Wickham proposed to her tomorrow, she would say yes.
“I have nothing to say against him; he is a most interesting young man; and if he had the fortune he ought to have, I should think you could not do better. But as it is, you must not let fancy run away with you…”
Lizzy cared nothing for fortunes, only for fondness, and a mutual bond. “You need not be under any alarm. I will take care of myself, and of Mr Wickham too. He shall not be in love with me, if I can prevent it.” Lizzy teased. Yet at her aunt’s urging Lizzy went on to deny her own love too, but she would not lie, she admitted herself appreciative of Mr Wickham. He was the most agreeable man she had ever known.
The top of the quill brushed across Jane’s closed lips as her thoughts raced, and she awaited more words
Anger returned, spinning up once more. It was Darcy’s fault that Lizzy and Wickham could not unite. If Darcy had treated Wickham with honesty, Wickham would have had his living in the church and the income to support a wife, with no need to search out a woman with a dowry.
This was turning into a wonderful whorl of jeopardy. A smile pulled at Jane’s lips when she continued writing.
It was therefore no surprise when within weeks Mr Wickham’s interest passed on to a woman of fortune. Yet Lizzy did not even hold this fickle behaviour against him. He had no real choice. His income would not have supported them. She was kind to him, then, when she parted from him to travel to Hunsford to visit her friend Charlotte, now Mrs Collins, and he was just as pleasant as he had ever been to her. The liking between them had not diminished even if there was no future for it.
Jane wrote between the lines of the scene she had written the other night.
Wickham’s final parting gift of words was a reminder that Lady Catherine was a very proud woman, like all of Darcy’s family and Darcy himself.
Lizzy was in complete accord.
Chapter 20
Jane had no idea of the hour but she did not stop writing to look at the clock, her imagination let words flow like a river, falling from her mind through to her fingers.
Three months and more had passed since Wickham had moved on to find the fortune he would need through a more suitable prospect for a wife, and though Lizzy had thought a lot about Mr Bingley on her si
ster’s behalf, she had thought nothing of Darcy.
Jane turned the pages containing the scenes in Hunsford, in Mr Collins’s parsonage on the edge of Rosings Park. Lizzy had not previously cared about Darcy’s expected arrival. Yet now there was the emotion Lizzy carried for Wickham. Lizzy may think nothing of Darcy, and yet her feelings for Wickham were still vibrant and strong in her chest. So when she was faced again with the seemingly cold unapproachable man who had wronged Mr Wickham, her sense of right swelled as did her loyalty to the man she considered would have been hers, had fate not been so cruel it had given neither of them a fortune.
Colonel Fitzwilliam’s approachability and ease in conversation only acted as another marker to highlight how rude Mr Darcy was—how rude, proud and very likely to have wronged a poor man who had been promised much by Darcy’s father.
Jane reread a line she had already written when Lizzy was seated at the Pianoforte and Darcy stood beside it. “I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Mr Darcy, “of conversing easily with those I have never seen before.” She had not intended it before and yet as she read it, she heard Darcy think of Wickham, and he saw Wickham speaking with Lizzy in the street the first day of Wickham’s arrival in Meryton.
Jane turned over pages. Lizzy’s impatience with and dislike of Darcy whispered through every one of Jane’s written words as Darcy called upon Mr and Mrs Collins and sat in their parlour, mostly watchful and silent. Then continually interrupted Lizzy on the peaceful walking path she had told him she favoured for its quietness, and used daily.
He had become a nuisance to Lizzy and she believed none of Charlotte’s teasing that he had fallen in love. How could Lizzy believe a thing like that when he would treat a man like Wickham, who had held the affection of Darcy’s father, with such heartlessness? Darcy could not have a heart able to hold any sentiment.
The page Jane turned to finally was the one in which she described Lizzy’s walking alongside Colonel Fitzwilliam.
In her heart Jane knew the final twist, the last essence of jeopardy she wished to include. But when Darcy revealed the coup de grâce there must be a way for Lizzy to confirm it and the confirmation must come from Colonel Fitzwilliam.
Wickham’s condemnation of Miss Darcy as prideful, like her brother, hovered in Jane’s fingers as much as it would have hovered in Lizzy’s mind when Colonel Fitzwilliam spoke of her, and spoke of sharing the responsibility for her guardianship with Darcy. Yet the look on his face when Lizzy asked about Miss Darcy… The tip of the quill hurriedly scratched in words between the lines of their conversation about Bingley being saved from Lizzy’s sister Jane. “And pray what sort of guardians do you make? Does your charge give you much trouble? Young ladies of her age are sometimes a little difficult to manage, and if she has the true Darcy spirit, she may like to have her own way.”
As she spoke she observed him looking earnestly and the manner in which he immediately asked her why she supposed Miss Darcy likely to give them any uneasiness; convinced her that she had somehow or other got pretty near the truth. She directly replied—
“You need not be frightened. I never heard any harm of her…”
Jane turned the pages to Darcy’s misguided proposal.
Lizzy had hidden from him deliberately, too angry and hurting to face the man who bore the responsibility for breaking her sister’s heart.
Then to face him in the place she had sought sanctuary…
His eloquent proposal, confessing the intensity of his affection, the infatuation of the eyes that had watched her, and the passion of the heart that beat harder in her company, only made Lizzy think of her sister.
What of Jane? He had taken love from her. That act mocked every word he said, and Lizzy hated him more for the fact that he claimed the feelings he had cruelly denied Jane.
When her anger and accusations were related, there was no look of regret on Darcy’s face, or compassion, or guilt. He may claim to know how it felt to bear an intense depth of feeling, and yet when he had been told her sister had felt the same, he continued to consider his actions correct.
The anger Jane had felt when she had first written that scene many years ago in her light, bright bedchamber in Steventon, roiled up inside her, gathering like a storm building in the air. Only now Lizzy’s anger was not just carried like a standard for her sister, Mr Darcy had wronged twice in Lizzy’s knowledge. There was no longer one tale of evidence to throw at him but two.
“But it is not merely this affair,” she continued, “on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? Or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?”
The words struck Darcy as if she had slapped him—it was an unfair attack, and a cruel twist of fate that he had been slandered by a man whose reputation he had held his tongue silent upon. But equally it cut that she believed him capable of manipulation and dishonour.
He breathed in, then breathed out, as anger and a sense of betrayal laid heavy in his gut. “You take an eager interest in that gentleman’s concerns.“ Heat lifted in his cheeks as his colour rose. Wickham had tried to steal the affection of the two women most dear to Darcy. Wickham had failed with the first—but the second…
“Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?”
“His misfortunes!” Lizzy’s words stabbed the point of a sharp fencing sword through Darcy’s heart in riposte. Why was it that Wickham could so easily deceive, when Darcy could not even make himself liked? “yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.”
“And of your infliction,” cried Elizabeth with energy.
He had not come here to argue with her, he had come to begin a life with her. To no longer stand by and watch her company enjoyed by others, but to enjoy her company exclusively. To stand beside a pianoforte every evening and watch her play, not for a stranger but for a man he hoped she would hold some affection for after a period of time… He had not imagined to be turned away with anger and accusations. Shock and surprise were inside him along with anger, betrayal and—disgust. Disgust that she would believe Wickham’s words. She must see him as a very ill-mannered, mean-minded man.
She did not hold back in telling him so. Jane was smiling as she threw Lizzy’s words across the page at Darcy, who stood in silent aggrieved disbelief.
“You have reduced him to his present state of poverty—which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this! And yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule!”
Yes! The word yelled through Darcy’s head, but Jane did not write it on the paper, instead she wrote. “And this,” cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room, “is your opinion of me!” Based on the lies of a man who deserves no friendship. “This is the estimation in which you hold me!”
His anger came to the fore as he spoke, and possibly for the first time in his life he could not control it. He shouted. To be so misunderstood and ill-judged… He took a breath then continued. His anger turning sour—harsh. He could judge badly too. “I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps these offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.” He might not always speak the truth, when it might hurt others for it to be known, but he would not lie, and he w
ould not pretend. “Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just.” Jane read back the last words of Darcy’s tirade leaving them untouched. “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”
Jane read on. Darcy had become angry but Lizzy’s anger grew a dozen times greater. Lizzy had always remained polite and composed, but in this moment she could not remain unemotional in appearance, she did not care if she was rude in return. She wished to hurt him as he deserved. As he had hurt her sister Jane and Wickham.
Jane read more, even though she knew there would be no need for further reference to Wickham.
“You are mistaken, Mr Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern of which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.” Of course Lizzy had chosen the word, through Jane, to cut Darcy as deeply as she could. He considered himself above anything, a gentleman in all things.
Unable to believe the cruelty of her prejudice against him, and favouritism towards Wickham, Darcy’s silence in return now hovered with a very different level of intensity. Here was the jeopardy Jane had desired in her story.
“You could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”
Mortification assailed Darcy, a fear that he was at fault. That it was not Wickham’s words that had made her dislike him at all.
“From the very beginning—from the first moment, I may almost say—of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
