Elizabeth stepped away from the building. But before she had taken twenty steps, Mrs. Younge followed out and shouted, “Wait.”
Instead of attending to Elizabeth, she however came to George, who now was in such a mood as to boldly meet her eye. Crouching next to the boy, she pulled out a brass watch and held it out. “This watch was your father’s. He would have liked for you to have it. It is inscribed with his name. Never doubt that he loved you very much, and he often spoke of you, and the sadness he had because he was unable to raise you.”
George solemnly took the watch. He held it and turned it over in his hands. “Thank you.”
Elizabeth of course recognized the watch, as it had been a birthday present that she had commissioned for Mr. Wickham’s first birthday after they had been married.
“Always remember your father,” Mrs. Younge said. “He was a very good man.”
Under whatpossibleconstruction of the word ‘good’ could that be true?
George nodded seriously. Then he said, “All my playmates laughed at me because I didn’t have a papa.”
“You always did,” Mrs. Younge replied. “And he loved you very much.”
“Not,” Elizabeth said with some annoyance, “that your papa ever did anything due to that affection that was of much benefit to you, or to anyone but himself.”
And suddenly Elizabeth pressed her hand against her face to keep the tears from starting. Oh. Oh, oh.
Mrs. Younge glared at Elizabeth. But perhaps something about Elizabeth’s expression softened her, and she began to cry again, and that made it impossible for Elizabeth to control herself. And though she hated doing so, she started to cry as well.
“I always thought he’d come back someday,” Elizabeth said. “But tears never do anyone any good.” Handkerchief out. Pressed against her eyes. Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheek.
Tears never do anyone any good. Tears never do anyone any good.
George looked at her with concern.
Elizabeth patted him on the head. “Put that watch in your pocket and keep careful care of it. You’ll always have it to remember your father by.” She then turned to Mrs. Younge, slightly curtsied to the woman, who returned the politeness, and then Elizabeth went back up the street towards Mr. Darcy’s house.
Chapter Three
Mr. Darcy woke from a nightmare where he’d shot Wickham, but the blood spurted and spurted from his own chest. It did not stop, like it had after the doctor bound the wound up.
A terrible sharp pain came from his chest as he woke up and instinctively tried to sit up.
“Don’t struggle, don’t get up. There, just keep lying here peacefully. Very good.”
Darcy blinked at the half-familiar female form in front of him.
She put her surprisingly strong hands on him and pressed him back to the couch. They felt cold and refreshing on his skin.
His fever was higher than it had been earlier in the day.
The reddish light of dusk came through the windows. A soft sound of Georgiana’s music came from the piano. And then a discordant bang of random piano keys being smashed. Darcy looked around and saw that Georgiana sat at the stool with Mrs. Wickham’s little girl on her lap.
“It’s time to change your bandages.” Mrs. Wickham smiled at him, but there was something thinner and more ragged in her manner than earlier in the day.
It made him wish to throw up. He had killed her husband. He had committed an even graver sin in killing Wickham than he had realized at first.
The boy, Mr. Wickham’s son, looked at Darcy now that he had woken with some interest. His hands were full of blocks that he was stacking into a tower.
“Water,” Darcy croaked.
Mrs. Wickham poured a glass, and then she carefully dripped out a dose of laudanum into it that was much smaller than what his father had habitually taken to deal with the pain during his long final illness.
After the first dose let him sleep, despite the aching pain in his chest, Darcy no longer had the will to fight the medicine. He’d refused it because he wanted to hurt. He deserved the pain.
Even now when he was faced with Mr. Wickham’s widow, there was a thing in him that exulted in his success. He had avenged the crime against his sister’s virtue. He had proven, in the most profound way possible, that he had a right to call himself a man of honor.
