Lessons of Advantage

by michael sand

  Lessons of Advantage

  by

  Michael Sand

  “You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous.”

  Mr Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice,

  Volume Three, Chapter Sixteen.

  Note: This novel begins immediately after the moment, (in Volume III, Chapter IV) when Elizabeth reveals that Wickham has eloped from Brighton with Lydia Bennet, which, in Jane Austen’s very exactly maintained chronology, occurs on Friday, August 7, 1812.

  Dedication: To Miss C. W.

  VOLUME ONE

  Chapter One

  One August morning in the year 18—, a gentleman emerged from the inn at Lambton in the county of Derbyshire, mounted his horse, and rode sombrely through the narrow streets of the little market town. Nothing in his countenance spoke the magnitude of the calamity which had just befallen him or the shattering despair that overwhelmed his spirits. Outwardly Mr Darcy shewed only his accustomary composure, but inwardly, all was dejection.

  His horse knew its way, and Darcy could surrender himself to unhappy meditation. Hope was over; any sanguine expectation he might have entertained of future felicity, any dream of attaching the true partner of his mind, had been extinguished at a blow. One image occupied his thoughts, a face ravaged by horrified emotion and made almost haggard by tears, though no less beautiful to him. He would never see that face, never behold Elizabeth Bennet again!

  Presently he turned off the highway into a lane bordered by trees, which led by back paths into the park of Pemberley. After a mile, the woods ceased to one side, and a vista afforded a view of fields and farm land. Darcy dismounted, threw the reins over a branch, and, seating himself on a great boulder issuing from the crest of the hill, gazed out over the scene below. It was a view which always gave him an equal portion of satisfaction and pleasure, but today he was almost insensible of it. The sunshine found no answering gleam in his heart. His chance of making Elizabeth Bennet his wife, if chance there had been, was destroyed for ever.

  And that the means of destruction should have been Wickham! —Wickham, who resented him and had sought to avenge that resentment by eloping with his sister; who had failed then, but had achieved his end now, — more thoroughly than he could know, — by eloping with the sister of the woman Darcy loved! That Wickham should accomplish his purpose without apparent design — for how could a design against him be supposed? — added materially to Darcy’s pain. To a serious mind, such a hairbreadth miscarriage of happiness must appear a judgement: a censure on his pride, and on the selfish arrogance he had allowed to take root in his behaviour. A heavy reckoning had been exacted! — and though his heart inveighed, his mind acknowledged its justice.

  Mr Darcy remounted and made his way through the park, entering the house by way of a side door. From the morning-room, came the sound of women’s voices — Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst, sitting over a late breakfast. As he made to go up stairs, his friend Bingley came out of the room, a napkin to his lips. “Darcy!” he exclaimed. “Is Mr Gardiner come? Are we to have some fishing?” Then, seeing his face, “Good heavens! What is the matter?”

  “Not now, Bingley,” was all the reply Darcy could make. “Not now.” And turning away, he quickly mounted the stairs, leaving Bingley looking after him with wonder and concern.

  He entered the library and closed the door behind him. This had been his father’s favourite room, and retained a strong impression of his presence. Darcy never entered it without feeling soothed by the recollection of that amiable manner; without feeling humbled, as well, for he knew that he could never equal his father’s unassuming goodness, the benevolence which had diffused on every one round him. Against the farther wall stood the desk where his father had been used to store his papers. Mr Darcy took a key from his watch chain, unlocked a drawer, and extracted a packet consisting of two documents tied up with black ribbon. The first was inscribed, “Last Will and Testament of Henry Percival Darcy”. This document reflected the just-mindedness of the man who had written it, and contained no whimsical bequests to bedevil survivors or forfeit their regard. The bulk of the estate was naturally left “to his beloved son, Henry Fitzwilliam Darcy”; the only reservation, a large one, being to endow the fortune of “his equally beloved daughter, Georgiana”. Since his daughter had been but ten years old at the time of writing, he had appointed his son and his nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, to be her guardians: these guardians to serve till such time as Georgiana Darcy should come of age or marry.

  Among the bequests, the sum of one thousand pounds, invested in the 4 per cents., had been set aside “for the use of Mr George Wickham, the son of his most esteemed friend and steward, the late Mr George Wickham, who had served him so long and faithfully.”

  The second document was a letter, a thick folio, which his father’s attorney had placed in his hands when the will was finished reading. It was inscribed: “For my beloved son, Henry Fitzwilliam Darcy: to be delivered to him on the event of my death”. Darcy restored the will to its place, but took the other, and carrying it to a chair next to a window, undid the ribbon. The sight of the familiar handwriting awoke his memory, and his father’s kindly voice seemed to address him once again.

  “Pemberley,

  “September 15, 18—

  “My dearest Son,

  “If you are reading this letter, then I am no more. I shall not say, do not grieve for me, for I am convinced, from the strength of your filial affection, that your grief will be genuine. Nothing reconciles me to the inevitability of this letter’s being some day read so much as the knowledge that I leave Pemberley to a fitting successor; one who will cherish its beauties; pass on its wealth uncurtailed to posterity; and dedicate the natural advantages, which the inheritance of so great an estate comprehends, to the benefit of every one connected with it. You have been a loving son, and will make a worthy and loving master of Pemberley.

  “I trust that you will feel no dissatisfaction with my testamentary arrangements. I know you too liberal to begrudge the provisions I have made towards others. In one respect, however, I have been obliged to leave matters in a state of some unclarity: my intentions in regard to my godson, George Wickham. I should like George established in some profession, where he may live safe and respectable. I promised his father I should do no less when he lay on his deathbed last year. (My reason for feeling so strong a motive of responsibility towards both father and son, you will shortly understand.) Of the professions suitable to a gentleman — law, the army, the Church, and medicine — my own preference should be for the Church; and if George is minded to take orders, I should like him to have the next presentation of the living at Kympton when the incumbent, Dr Stanley, retires. I would have you understand that the recommendation is conditional, since it is possible that George Wickham may prefer to pursue some other calling. I therefore leave to you, my son, the decision how best to promote his advancement. That this bequest places great responsibility upon you, I well understand; but I have the most unreserved confidence in your judgement.

  “I wish I were not obliged to burden you with intelligence of farther events, which might better be left among other forgotten scandals; I wish I could spare you knowledge which must give you pain; but justice requires that the transgressions of the past be acknowledged, and the new Master of Pemberley must assume the same unhappy consciousness that the old Master — myself — had once to do.

  “The family of Darcy, you should know, first rose to prominence under the Tudors, though of stock still more ancient, as the old spelling of d’Arcy shews. By our loyalty to the Stuarts, we first lost, then, after the Restoration, mightily regained, the position and estates which made us almost chief among the yeoman families of E
ngland. No less loyal to religion than to royalty, our family supported the Glorious Revolution, and continued to prosper during the reign of William and Mary. The events I am about to describe concern my own father, George Frederick Darcy. He was born in the year 1710, towards the hectic close of an age made glorious in English history by its victories abroad, but infamous by the contention of its statesmen at home. He was the only child of aged parents, people of fashion who passed their lives principally in London. These decrepit survivors were of a cold nature, as is often the case with those for whom the fashionable world is all in all. This seems to have been particularly true of the final years of Queen Anne, when a libertine society prevailed, in which the most elaborate courtesy was practiced amidst hatred and envy, and gallantry too often sank into license. The succeeding Hanoverians, though the salvation of the Protestant religion, contributed to the heartlessness of society by the internecine savagery of their family relations. Father hated son, son hated father, and the virtues of domesticity went unvalued.

  “Receiving scant attention from his parents, and abandoned to the care of tutors, George Darcy grew to manhood in a state almost of nature. Perhaps this neglect, and the coldness which surrounded him in childhood, explains why family attachment weighed so little with my father. Neither Pemberley nor the continuation of his line, meant much to him. He married late, and then less from love or any sense of obligation as from a fixed hatred towards the cadet branch, which would otherwise inherit. My mother, whom I never knew, for she died soon after I was born, came of a respectable county family, the Percivals. She was rich enough to make the match seem equal, but possessed none of that personal style — or to speak plain, wantonness of manner — which might have attached my father. Having done his reluctant duty by siring an heir, my father left Derbyshire, seldom to return.

  “I have been happy to observe, that the pleasures of the country seem as close to your heart, my son, as they have always been to mine. But my father was not a man disposed to find contentment in the trivial round. Rural life and the duties of a landlord did not satisfy him. He required the excitement only to be found in a great city, and therefore sought the luxury and depravity of London. By excitement, you may understand the over-indulgence of every sort of appetite. Food and drink, taken in the intemperate degree then common, are indulgences bad enough. There are worse I will not name. But the worst of all, to my mind, is gaming, where the losers are fools and the gainers knaves, and winning is a degradation little better than losing! My father, much addicted to this gentlemanly pursuit, often spent entire nights at the table, and he paid dearly for his addiction. Late nights of feverish play ruined his health, and nearly ruined the fortunes of his family. But by the goodness of providence, the folly of his fellow gamesters exceeded even that of my father, and this alone preserved our heritage. In the end, it was other men who lost their patrimonies, and by their loss, saved ours.

  “On his rare visits home, my father, with his inflamed face and bloodshot eyes, made a terrible figure, sitting stiff before the fire, groaning with the pain of his gout, the inevitable consequence of his ill-regulated mode of life. Happily, these visits were few. In his absence, I was left to the care of tutors, and to the same cold method of upbringing to which my father had been abandoned. But I had better fortune than he, finding in Mr and Mrs John Wickham, the tenants of Priory Farm, people who supplied the affectionate place of parents to me. To explain who these people might be, I should tell you that my father’s gout eventually drove him to try the waters of Bath. There he met a Mrs Sarah Harding, the widow of a doctor, once a fashionable practitioner. Her husband’s death had left Mrs Harding poorly off, but she was able to obtain occupation as a superior sort of attendant, assisting wealthy invalides who came to Bath for the recovery of their health. Despite his failings, your grandfather was a man to attach women, and Mrs Harding soon became more than his nurse. Having once, as he termed it, put his head into the noose, my father chose not to marry again; but he provided for Mrs Harding, and established her, as some of our royal princes have done, in what might be termed a regular irregularity. This state of things continued till nature, which, though shoved out the door, will yet find its way in by the window, created such a situation as could not be ignored.

  “My father was not entirely careless of opinion or lost to all considerations of propriety. He did not wish to flaunt a natural child before the world; nor, though he would not acknowledge her as a wife, did he wish to shame the woman he claimed to love, however much his conduct might appear more like the hap-hazard of selfish passion. In these circumstances, my father called to Bath a Mr John Wickham, one of his tenants-in-chief, who had, through no fault of his own, suffered such misfortunes as to endanger his tenure. My father proposed to clear his debts and make him his steward, if he would, in return, marry Mrs Harding, and take on the parentage of the expected child. Mr Wickham made two stipulations before he would agree. First, that my father and Mrs Harding should break off all connection; and second, that my father should give no indication that the child belonged to him, and so spare Mr Wickham the shame which is generally the share of men deemed complaisant — in the French, not the English, sense of the word. In return, Mr Wickham assured Mrs Harding that he should never reproach her with her life before they met. Thus it was agreed between the three parties, my father only asking that the child, if a boy, should be named George. To this Mr Wickham made no difficulty, half the male population of England being so denominated at that time in compliment to the King.

  “Prejudice would suggest that self-interest alone had actuated John Wickham to accept, and Sarah Harding to acquiesce in, so infamous a proposition; and morality might add, that two people so actuated must b. among the most degraded of mankind. But prejudice and morality would both misjudge. There never was a warmer-hearted or more motherly woman than Sarah Wickham, as she then became. She and Mr Wickham proved a united couple, and stood the best of friends to me. They were as good as parents, and their son George, three years my junior, became in some sort a brother to me, years before I learned that he had a just right to that title. George and I were inseparable as youths. We rambled about the park at Pemberley, fishing and swimming, and becoming acquainted with every tree and shrub in the plantation. Through Mrs Sarah’s influence, my tutors were changed for men who understood not only the subjects they taught, but the right method to engage the interest of their pupils. I was able so far to return her favour by insisting that George be made the companion of my lessons, as he was also of my more idle pursuits, and so should benefit from my instruction. Later, when I was sent to Cambridge, I petitioned for George to accompany me, which allowed him to continue his education, if only by proxy; for I came to a better understanding of my lectures by repeating their substance to him. George was apprenticed to an attorney of the town, it having been decided that he should be bred up to the law.

  “My father died soon after I came of age, and I entered into the estate. George Wickham then joined my service, ostensibly as attorney but more as confidential friend; and when Mr John Wickham eventually died, I was happy to install his son in his place as steward. I should have done so even had I not by then received from my father, in the form of a codicil to his will, the intelligence I now pass on to you. Till this moment, I have never revealed the truth of this connection to a living soul, keeping it a secret even from my beloved wife, your mother. No man ever had a more loyal partner than I had in Lady Anne Darcy; but I considered that I had no right to reveal my father’s secret. I lay no injunction on you in that regard; no secret can be kept forever, and reasons may arise to make the revelation necessary. I hope for your sake that you will take a wife who may be deserving of any confidence you choose to make in her.

  “The only fault I ever had to find in George Wickham, was that of a most ill-judged marriage. Augusta Wickham was a woman of mean understanding, dissatisfied with her lot, and always wishing for more. Vanity working on a weak mind will produce mischief; to maintain h
er self-importance, Mrs Augusta Wickham was prone to such a degree of expense as kept her husband poor. For my friend’s sake, I tried not to let my opinion appear, and I hope I so far succeeded as never to have given you cause to think more ill of Mrs Wickham than you might otherwise have done.

  “This, then, is a true account of the connection between our family and that of Wickham. My purpose in writing, is to explain why I have always wished to farther the prosperity of the elder George Wickham, and why I considered the prosperity of his son so much my concern that I took him into our household to be raised alongside my own, yourself.

  “Young people will always have matters they wish to keep from their elders. Still, it has been no secret to me that you never held so high an opinion of your George Wickham as I did of mine. You and young George grew up together as children, and I arranged that you should be educated together, as my half-brother and I had been. But no bond ever sprung up between you, and it is clear that your association was the result of propinquity, not choice. I have sometimes worried whether the favour I shewed young George may have given rise to a feeling of — I shall not call it jealousy; I believe you too magnanimous to feel jealous towards any person so much less fortunate than yourself — but disquiet. You need never have felt disquieted, if disquiet there was, for you were always dearest to my heart. But you will now understand why that favour was shewn, and why I have felt obliged to atone for our family’s past misdeeds with present charity. What remains to be doing on behalf of George Wickham is a duty which I must leave to you. I venture no advice, I make no requirement. I know I may rely in utter safety on your principles, and I do not wish to bind you in any way. I am wise enough to know that dead hands cannot control living events.