“It is obvious she passed a letter to Wickham. Foolish, foolish girl! How could she? Even as angry as she is, is she possessed of no prudence? No sense? No... no notion of the interest of her family?”
“Dear Lizzy.” Darcy took her hand. He understood this much of her manner. “You are frightened.”
“Lydia will elope with him. Or there will be a vast amount of talk. And in the end, you’ll have a vivid illustration of how desperately unworthy my connections are.”
“You need not fear anything,” Darcy said soothingly.
“No, I must fear,” Elizabeth replied. “I must – I...”
“I will not despise you, not even if your sister elopes with a wholly unsuitable man.”
She looked at him, and there were tears in her eyes. “Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
With a wet nod she took his arm again and held it tightly. “I trust you. Please, please... please be the man who I have come to know you are.”
Darcy swallowed, touched by a sense of tenderness for his wife. “You need not fear.”
“You may be required to remind me that I need not on occasion.”
“I will.” He then paused, and looked again at Lydia, who had progressed to being even further ahead of the group than before. “Though I will strive to keep your sister safe from what we’ve feared.” Darcy hummed contemplatively. “If your father is not a dragon for me to slay, perhaps Wickham is.”
She smiled at him and leaned her head on his shoulder. “My noble knight.” Elizabeth gnawed on her lips. “But beyond locking her into her room till she is dragged screaming to London, what can we do?”
“Colonel Fitzwilliam has,” Darcy said slowly, “expressed on various occasions an interest in seeing Wickham again. If my presence is not sufficient to frighten the gentleman, I think his will be.”
Having said that, as soon as they returned to Netherfield that evening, while Elizabeth went to her rooms to lie down for half an hour before dinner, Darcy composed a letter and sent it by messenger to Colonel Fitzwilliam, asking him if he might join the party waiting for Bingley’s wedding – in lieu of their abandoned plan to visit Lady Catherine in April.
The next day that excellent officer appeared at Netherfield in time for a luncheon. Georgiana squealed happily at seeing him, and hugged Colonel Fitzwilliam.
He bowed and shook hands with Elizabeth. “Mrs. Darcy, I am delighted to see you again. And to see that you and my cousin are both in good spirits.”
“He was complaining to me,” Elizabeth said, “about how you always hung about his apartments in town last month.”
Colonel Fitzwilliam laughed. “You know Darcy. He would be unhappy if he did not have anyone to bother him.”
With that laugh that Darcy knew he would never cease to love, Elizabeth said, “But it is chieflymyduty to annoy him.”
“Speaking of annoyances,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, “I hear that our dear friend Mr. Wickham is in this town. Let us seewhat we can do about the matter.”
While Colonel Fitzwilliam was not acquainted with Colonel Forster, one of his dearest friends had served as a captain in the same regiment that Colonel Forster had been a lieutenant in some ten years previous.
When they entered the officer’s room in the chief inn of Meryton, with the regimental standards displayed proudly on either side of his substantial desk, a collection of comfortable chairs, and a portrait of the monarch hung over the fireplace, the two military men shared wine and tales.
For fifteen minutes the two colonels discussed how excellent of a man Roberts was, contrasting the difficulties faced in command of a regiment of the militia with those of a regiment of the regulars — punctuated with frequent references to the fecklessness, poor decision making, and general incompetence of the leadership in parliament, the penny pinching ways of the treasury department that were always pound foolish, and the way that they would successfully serve the King, though every organ of government strove to make it difficult.
Colonel Fitzwilliam then broached the subject of the junior officers in the militia, and that he had heard that the lieutenants and ensigns were particularly worthless, as it had been necessary to ignore the property qualifications that were supposed to exist for a commission in the militia to find a sufficient number of them.
“It is the captains upon whom we depend. They are generally solid men,” Forster said. “But while they are notsobad, my ensigns are not the pick of England. I confess. They gamble, they drink, and half the time they are as undisciplined as the men under their command. But not so bad. I’ve heard of far worse.”
“I am sure most of them are creditable enough. But I had called in fact on purpose to discuss the nature of one of yours. Afellow by the name of George Wickham, who both Darcy and I have been acquainted with since we were children.”
“Wickham? -- he gambles badly but does not seem worse than the rest. I’d heard there was some unpleasantness subsisting between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham, but that is not a matter ofmybusiness.”
“No, no. I would not think it is,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said. “He is the sort who makes a habit of seducing the daughters of tradesmen, accumulating debts of all sorts – those of honor, those for services and goods rendered, and those of dishonor. But if he serves bravely, what is that to men such as us?” Colonel Fitzwilliam smiled. “I am sure he would be happily shot by the French when they land.”
“God preserve us from that fate.” Colonel Forster then rubbed at his forehead. “I am surprised to hear you say that Mr. Wickham is of a worse character than the usual run of these men. He is a general favorite, both among the men, and amongst the wives of the officers in the regiment. My own dear Mrs. Forster is particularly fond of him...”
