by Jane Lark
Wickham’s character, the unknown man in the portrait on the stairs, with his handsome looks and unshakable manner, must let something slip when a woman whom he thought he had enchanted slipped free of his hold. “He looked surprised, displeased and alarmed; but with a moment’s recollection and a returning smile, replied.”
Wickham’s responses were tentative and searching.
“…I think Mr Darcy improves on acquaintance.” Jane’s smile grew as she wrote the words for Lizzy, striking Wickham with the first inference that Lizzy’s opinion, and her knowledge, had significantly changed.
“And pray you may I ask…“ Wickham’s voice carried a note of shock in Jane’s thoughts, when he first replied, yet he controlled it in an instant, stopping himself and lifting it to a gay humorous pitch, slipping back into the confidential, slanderous manner he had always used when discussing Darcy with Lizzy. “Is it in address that he improves!” Wickham would know Darcy incapable of conversing easily in a such a situation. “Has he deigned to add aught of civility to his ordinary style?—for I dare not hope,” Wickham’s voice dropped to a lower tone as he whispered, “that he is improved in essentials.” Then he smiled, in a glib manner.
“Oh, no!” Lizzy refused to play his games, she kept her tone polite but dry—as she responded with what she hoped would make him fear what might have been said and think twice of insulting a man worth a hundred of him. “In essential, I believe, he is very much what he ever was.” An honourable man who she had misjudged appallingly by Wickham’s misleading.
Wickham was confused by her words, and he listened, “with an apprehensive and anxious attention…”
More words ran from Jane’s fingers in a stream—Lizzy’s moment of vengeance. “When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that either his mind or manners were in a state of improvement, but that, from knowing him better, his disposition was better understood.”
Jane imagined that Lizzy might now even be able to forgive Darcy a little for his having separated Bingley and Jane, he may have done wrong and hurt Jane, but he had not done it out of malice. He had done it out of misconceived honour and goodwill towards his friend. He had done it because he cared for his friend, as Lizzy cared for her sister.
Darcy was not a bad man.
Wickham was.
“I must rejoice that he is wise enough to assume even the appearance of what is right…” Wickham tried to draw himself out of the hole he had dug. In vain. He knew himself no longer well-liked by one of the Bennet sisters at least.
Yes. That was exactly it. Jane’s jeopardy. Wickham had all of the appearance of good nature on his side, but it was merely that, a façade like Darcy, and behind that… There was the truth. Just as there was behind Darcy’s shy, stiff exterior—which hid a nature as prized as gold.
The next day Wickham left, as Lydia did, for Brighton, with the regiment.
Jane laid down the quill and turned the pages, glancing at the words, and smiling at the meanderings of her mind.
How might her mind suddenly throw such insightful ideas at her one day, and nothing the next? She would neither deny, nor question the workings of her imagination, though; she was only too happy to hear it speak again. Wickham was a perfect addition. He added the exact element of suspense her story had lacked. Jeopardy. The word now made Jane smile.
But there was another appearance for him to make, before the story would be complete.
Chapter 23
The first light of dawn turned the bedchamber from grey to a light orange and yellow. Jane glanced across to look out of the window. The sky had hues of red and pink as the sun must have peeked over the horizon beyond the east side of the house.
Jane had only a few hours left before she would be travelling.
She turned to the scene in the inn near Pemberley when Lizzy heard of Lydia’s deceit in a letter from her sister Jane.
She picked up the quill and dipped it in the ink once more. The eagerness of her characters cried out for everything in her thoughts to be captured so the words would not be lost.
When Lizzy received the letter telling her of Lydia’s appalling error in judgement, Lizzy now knew Darcy as a different man. A man who might be trusted. A man known for his honour, integrity and upstanding nature. She also knew, having had the pleasure of meeting with his sister, that he was capable of love, and that what many called proud was instead intense shyness, both in the sister and the brother, though it was expressed in a different manner by each.
Jane Bennet’s written words sent chills through Lizzy, and there was a returning sense of the emotions in the moments Jane had written them, the desperation of Lizzy’s family. The weight of helplessness, shame, and a certain knowledge that the entire family would suffer due to Lydia’s thoughtless actions… Only now… Lydia had not eloped with Denny, but with Wickham. A man whom Lizzy had known the true character of. There was guilt then, as well as anger. Lizzy might have prevented this.
Jane read through the scene full of Lizzy’s distress, and Darcy’s compassion on his arrival. His wretchedness had been written initially to have been solely caused by the sight of Lizzy’s distress. But how much more wretched would he feel now that it was Wickham that Lydia had eloped with?
Jane crossed out words and wrote above them.
“I am grieved indeed, grieved—shocked. But it is certain—absolutely certain?” Darcy was almost lost for words. Even he would not have believed this of Wickham. The Bennet girls had no dowries, and there was certainly nothing to be gained by marrying the youngest—therefore there was no reason for Wickham to marry her at all.
Damn him! Darcy’s internal yell rang through Jane’s head as she made the amendments that were needed. The quill’s tip scurried across the paper, as she hurried against the press of time.
Darcy enquired about what was being done; to receive another tirade of desperate misery.
“It is in every way horrible!” Jane read.
Those words cut Darcy far deeper. His entire spirit revolted at the sight of Lizzy’s distress, and this distress was caused by him.
“When my eyes were opened to his real character—Oh! Had I known what I ought, what I dared to do! But I knew not!—I was afraid of doing too much. Wretched, wretched mistake!”
Yet it was his mistake not hers. He should have spoken. He should have condemned Wickham and then Miss Lydia Bennet would not have been in danger. Darcy paced the room, back and forth while Lizzy spoke. His mind in a whorl. In the scene Jane read, he was thinking how he might bear influence upon the situation and help her family, but with this twist, with Wickham the perpetrator, he had a just cause to become involved. Nay, a duty to play his part.
Darcy knew Wickham too well, and Wickham knew of his involvement with the Bennets and quite probably his preference in that direction. Damn! There was one way in which Wickham might have seen a financial gain from this situation—if he believed that honour would bring Darcy to find him with the income that he lacked.
Damn him again!
But Darcy said none of this to Lizzy. He must solve it. That was the only thing to be done. He could not speak of his thoughts to her, it might increase her distress and he would not do that, nor give her false hope. No. He must find Wickham, and therefore, he hoped, Miss Lydia Bennet, and return her to her family a married woman. That would be the only thing to heal Elizabeth Bennet’s distress.
There were many crossings-out of Denny’s name, and Wickham’s to be added instead, as Jane’s heartbeat thumped away in a steady excitement while her fingers raced against the sunrise to capture the words.
There was her aunt Mrs Gardiner to be told of the true nature of Wickham, and Denny now as a friend of Wickham declaring that he believed it entirely unlikely that Wickham intended to marry. Yet he denied any knowledge of his friend’s plan.
It was Kitty’s voice that confirmed Darcy’s suspicions, though he did not hear her words, and Lizzy did not understand them. Wickham’s affection for Lydia, a
nd his focus upon her, had begun in Brighton—after Lizzy had made Wickham think that perhaps she had learned to return the affection Darcy had for her. Wickham had seen how that might benefit him, with the prospect of a full purse.
Jane sighed out a breath. Wickham’s true nature had become apparent to everyone, without the need for Lizzy to say a word. Those who had thought him the most genteel of men, now declared him a villain. He had left debts in Meryton and created more in Brighton. The life of vice which Darcy had always known Wickham lived had caught him up, like a spotty Dalmatian carriage dog snapping at his heels.
So Wickham and Lydia lived in London, in hiding, while Wickham waited for Darcy to act, and Lizzy remained at Longbourn not knowing the truth, held in the suspense Jane hoped her readers would feel.
The knowledge that it was Wickham Lydia had run away with intensified the shame weighting Lizzy down. Darcy had said to her, “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?” What did he think now?
Jane had learned what it was to fall so low in society’s recognition in the days she had spent in Trim St. She never wished to acknowledge those days again. She understood far more about the shame Lizzy felt than she had done before.
Lizzy knew nothing of Darcy’s feelings, though, nothing of his shame and guilt, and nor did Jane’s readers, Jane held that knowledge to herself, and held her readers suspended in the belief that Lizzy’s and Darcy’s affair of the heart was over.
Lizzy kept all her guilt to herself too, believing that Darcy had given up any desire for her acquaintance, but she did not blame him—she blamed herself, for not warning her family to avoid Mr Wickham.
Darcy was not inactive, though, and he condemned himself more strongly than Lizzy for having not spoken out and thus prevented this possibility. Anger raged in his blood as he desperately searched through the cheaper areas of London, looking for Wickham’s accommodation. He could no believe that Wickham would stoop as low as to use another young woman to attack him, out of greed. Yet he had done so. The man had not made himself easy to find, and yet if Wickham wished to be sure that Darcy paid, he had to thoroughly ruin Lydia Bennet so that Darcy’s honour would place him under an intolerable level of obligation.
The manuscript remained unchanged as gossip of Lydia’s elopement reached Mrs Collins, and therefore Mr Collins and Lady Catherine.
The sensations Mr Collins’s letter provoked ran through Jane.
Lizzy’s fingers itched to rip the letter up and throw it on the fire. Then there were more letters, from Mr Gardiner, explaining over and over again how hard he looked for Wickham (amended from Denny). There was news that Lizzy’s father was to come home. He believed he could do no more in town.
The thoughts of Darcy that Lizzy had been affected with before her journey into Derbyshire, and her trip to Pemberley—anger first, and then embarrassment—were now something very different. Lizzy’s feelings were far more greatly involved since their meeting at his home, where his manner had been easier. It was not Lydia who she mourned the loss of…
Jane added an amendment to Mrs Gardiner’s thoughts when she left Longbourn to send Mr Bennet back in the family’s carriage. She had seen the personal attention Darcy had shown Lizzy during their stay near Pemberley and she had seen the glances and smiles shared. He had even introduced his sister, and following their stay Mrs Gardiner had expected Lizzy to receive a letter—and yet “Elizabeth had received none since her return that could come from Pemberley.”
Jane whipped up the story, like a spinning top, making no more mention of Darcy. She wished her readers to believe that Darcy had been that proud man of Lizzy’s first knowledge, and Lizzy’s second judgement the error. Jane cast him as a man who would have nothing to do with a family living in shame. She wished her readers to think, like Lizzy, that Lizzy’s burgeoning hope for a repeated offer had no foundation.
Lizzy persuaded herself, in her thoughts and words to her sister Jane, that Darcy may have set aside all pride but his sense of honour could never forgive such behaviour as Lydia’s—especially as the other party involved in Lizzy’s tale of woe was Wickham.
Then the letter came. The letter that said Lydia and Wickham had been found.
Lizzy and Jane rushed out to see their father and hear the news. There was no mention of Darcy’s involvement.
Jane crossed Denny’s name out again and wrote Wickham, as Lizzy’s father spoke of his fears. Wickham would not have settled and married Lydia for the sums mentioned in Mr Gardiner’s letter. So how much had Mr Gardiner truly paid? Mr Bennet was in a severe debt to his brother-in-law, a debt he could ill-afford with four daughters to keep.
When Jane had first written about Lydia’s settlement, she had had no notion of debt. Now she knew all about a lack of money and the weight it would put on Mr Bennet’s shoulders.
As the bedchamber flooded with full daylight, Jane turned over page after page, the cut feathered end of the quill brushing against her cheek. The story fitted, it was only to change Denny’s name to Wickham’s that she lifted the quill.
Wickham came to Longbourn with Lydia, and again, the scene that Jane had written before grew in its depth of meaning. Wickham’s character as the villain added an element of tension that Jane’s original story had barely touched. The previous draft had paled entirely in its quality.
Lizzy knew the whole truth about Wickham, and he might fear it, but he did not know.
Lydia gloated about her marriage uncaring that she had caused anyone pain. Her character suited Wickham’s perfectly, though they had not been meant for one another. Lydia would be Wickham’s atonement and Jane’s vengeance on a character who was intended to be disliked—to imagine their marriage continuing as it had begun the day Lydia strolled back into Longbourn.
Then came the moment when Lydia declared Darcy’s involvement. She let it slip with no subtlety, but with the pride Lizzy had once seen in those outside her family, but now saw within it.
When Lydia recounted her wedding she declared that when Mr Gardiner had disappeared she had worried that he might not be back in time to give her away, “However, I recollected afterwards that if he had been prevented going, the wedding need not be put off, for Mr Darcy might have done as well.”
The words sliced through Lizzy. Jane remembered the shock she had felt on Lizzy’s behalf as she had written those words, they had been a past moment of inspiration. “Mr Darcy!”
“Oh, yes!—he was to come there with Wickham, you know.”
Jane changed the name from Denny to Wickham. The sense of Lizzy’s shock rose. For Darcy to be involved in Lydia’s rescue from Denny was one thing—for Darcy to attend Wickham’s wedding… It was a wonderful twist, which she had stumbled upon.
Jane’s heart pounded as Lizzy’s might have done.
His involvement was a very clear sign to Lizzy that Darcy was worthy of all the love growing in her heart. She did not know for certain if he had helped her family for her sake. Yet words whispered saying that may be the reason, wishing that to be the reason. Did he still have some feeling for her?
That sense of hope swelled in Jane’s chest, on Lizzy’s behalf, as she continued reading through the scene.
It would have been unbearable for Darcy to stand beside Wickham. The image of both men’s faces at the moment of their first meeting in the story, one pale, one red, both expressing their shock in silent engagement, hovered in Jane’s mind, and therefore Lizzy’s. How could those two men have come to stand together as groom and groomsman at her sister’s wedding?
Lizzy’s disbelief was a dozen times greater now that the groom was Wickham. Jane had struck upon an idea as powerful as a storm blowing in.
Mrs Gardiner told Lizzy the whole of Darcy’s part. He had been the one to find Wickham. He must have gone to London almost the minute Lizzy had left Derbyshire, and ever since he had sought to relieve the shame of her f
amily.
Darcy had become a very grand hero lifting out of Jane’s pages. A knight in the brightest armour.
Jane had done it. Or perhaps the unknown man in the portrait had achieved it. He had given her a story that had so much strength, a love affair with such a thrust of emotions, blindness, stubbornness and feeling, that it must surely achieve some success.
Jane smiled widely as she carried on reading through the last scenes.
Darcy returned to Netherfield and brought Bingley with him, though it may have seemed the other away about—Lizzy’s wondrous knight returning, bearing his gift, displaying the trophy of the trials he had faced in order to win her heart. Yet Darcy hardly spoke to Lizzy. Away from Pemberley he was once more the tongue-tied silent man who watched a dozen times more than he spoke.
His character had to be consistent, it would not have changed merely because Lizzy had visited him at Pemberley on a couple of occasions. The smile pulled at Jane’s lips.
Lizzy was surprised, but unlike the day of his proposal—it was a wonderful, exhilarating surprise. “Her astonishment at his coming—at his coming to Netherfield, to Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again, was almost equal to what she had known on first witnessing his altered behaviour in Derbyshire.”
Lizzy’s excitement and frustration kept Jane turning the pages, looking for elements that may need to be added. At any minute the maid might arrive to help Jane dress. She was not ready. She wished to capture every emotion and thought; otherwise the pace might be lost forever.
Fear crept up and whispered across her shoulder. Jane did not want to leave Stoneleigh Abbey without capturing these final moments in the story in case when she left, all her inspiration ebbed away once more.
The pages swept over with a crisp sound, like leaves stirring in response to the kick of her short boots when she had walked within the woods near Steventon each autumn.
Lizzy’s sister Jane saw Lizzy’s awkwardness, yet in Darcy she only knew, “a man whose proposal she (Lizzy) had refused, and whose merit she had undervalued.” It was so much more. “He was the person to whom the whole family were indebted for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded herself with an interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just as what Jane felt for Bingley.” Lizzy’s heart beat within Jane’s, with shame for the error of the judgement she had made previously, but with hope too.
