“I had such a dream.”
“I can well imagine,” Elizabeth replied as she undid the bandage on his chest. The intimacy of being so close to a gentleman while changing the dressing had never affected her before. Even with Mr. Denny, when she cared for Wickham’s gunshot friend, it had been a joke and awkward.
She had certainly not felt anything of attraction or a desire to touch him further.
It annoyed her. That Colonel Fitzwilliams slept on the couch, not snoring, made that worse.
“It was of the duel.”
“Your dream?”
“I do not know if it was dream, or a truth that goes deeper than the reality of our lives,” Mr. Darcy slowly said. “I think it was such a thing.”
“Did you dream that you were the one shot through the heart?” Elizabeth asked. “The terror of such a thing will be revisited by the fevered mind again and again.”
“No,” Mr. Darcy said. He caught her hand as she pulled the poultice soaked with blood and pus away. His hand was hotly fevered, yet soft and strong. “It was worse by far. You should despise me.”
“Mr. Darcy, I begin to think this is your ordinary late night mood. Have we not already established that you despise yourself enough for both of us?”
“He deloped, and then I shot him.”
For a moment Elizabeth was confused by this statement, for it was the opposite of what she had been told had been the course of the duel. “That is what you did within your dream?”
“Yes.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. She could not stop herself. “Mr. Darcy. You would not have done such a thing.”
“How do you know? I do not know. I think my cousin,” he gestured towards Colonel Fitzwilliam’s sleeping form, “would have.”
“Your cousin has many virtues. I can already perceive them. But an excess of the quality of mercy does not seem likely to be one.”
Mr. Darcy grunted.
Elizabeth placed the new poultice and tied it. She smiled at him, “Let me see if I can remember the line, ‘I have passed such a miserable night, sofull of ugly dreams and ugly sights, that I as a Christian man would not spend another such night.”
“What is that from?” Darcy asked.
“Richard III, when the Duke of Clarence is waiting his execution.”
“Oh, yes, yes. I remember now. I memorized part of the speech also—'ah, keeper, keeper, I have done these things that now give testimony against my soul.’ Quite proper for my situation. I wish…I wish beyond anything else that I could make it to have never happened.”
“And that is why I know that you would not have shot him if my husband had deloped.”
“It nearly was so. I think I would have preferred had he killed me.”
“You would not have. You would not have been able to prefer anything, being dead.”
“Do you not believe in heaven and in hell?”
Elizabeth snorted. “In truth, I do not. My father gave me a great fondness for the works of David Hume. I rather doubt that there is much truth to the claims of religion, though of course the actual atheists, who think that the whole world came to exist through some mysterious process that they cannot possibly explain are equally absurd. This whole world is a great clockwork mechanism, set in motion by a great creator, so that he might watch our great struggles. Like a boy might observe ants, for his own amusement. We can expect nothing good after death, nor anything bad. It is in this world that we must seek rightness, and justice.”
“That is a harsh view; what then is the purpose of moral behavior?”
“The purpose of moral behavior is so that we can respect ourselves and respect our own souls. The reason to do right is because it isright. Mr. Darcy, were you to know, beyond any doubt, that shooting Mr. Wickham did not imperil your immortal soul, would you cease to regret your actions?”
The gentleman was quiet for a long time.
“Idobelieve in the doctrines of the church.” He said at last, “It is through repentance and the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are saved, and that I can hope to be saved. I do repent my actions, andthat fervently. My immortal soul is in no additional peril. Yet I still wish that I had not done it.”
