If Elizabeth strained her ears she could hear in the distance the rushing surf, the sound of a sailor drunkenly singing, and the sea gulls.
“Mrs. Wickham, you reduce so many of human matters, things of importance, into a matter of money. Your sufferings have caused you to misunderstand much, many things that I think you still deep down understand. Things that I know your better soul understands.”
“It is easy for you! You need not worry about money.”
“I dare say that I would find it more difficult to ask for help if I could not always and easily pay my debts. Yet, I think—there is more substance to this matter foryou. There is some additional reason that you deeply despise depending on others.”
An image came into Elizabeth’s mind, another memory of Wickham. He had happily talked people into giving him loans. He could talk himself into nearly anything. He never paid his debts.
But this distaste for using of other people was something deeper and earlier. Perhaps something she gained from her father who never borrowed money, even if it required a great argument with Mama when she begged for whatever would have required it.
“I like to pay my debts,” Elizabeth said.
“I always pay my debts as well,” Mr. Darcy said looking at her intently.
She needed to be careful. There was something like a promise of help in the way that Mr. Darcy looked at her.
She could not let herself ask for his help.
“It is simply wrong,” Elizabeth said. “I made a choice. I have no right to ask for anything. He must, in truth, despise me.”
“You claimed that he said the opposite. Perhaps, and this is the proverbial pot referring to the blackness of the kettle, but perhaps it is not yourfather’sjudgement of your mistakes that you are thinking of.”
So strange.
Elizabeth started crying again. She took Mr. Darcy’s hand now once more. He’d taken her hand, so she had a right to take his hand for comfort.
That favorite phrase of hers echoed softly in her thoughts, ‘tears never help anyone’. Elizabeth ignored that voice. She wanted to cry.
She pressed Darcy’s hand against her face and kissed the back of his hand. She did not know why she did that. After a while she found that she had finished crying and properly wiped at her eyes. She looked at Darcy, and he was looking at her with a warm smile.
They both then yawned at the same time and smiled at each other because of that. Elizabeth felt a glow inside, as though everything really could be good. “Thank you,” she said before going to sleep.
“I always wish to be present when you need comfort,” he replied.
The next morning Elizabeth waited until Darcy’s bandage had been changed, and everyone had their breakfast—Mr. Darcy got a small slice of ham this morning, which he ate with a relish that would have been appropriate towards a legendary ambrosia. Then Georgiana took George and Emily to look at the sea from the promenade before going down to the beach. She was accompanied by a footman from Pemberley and Sally.
As Darcy’s recovery was expected to take a full month, permanent servants belonging to his house had been sent for and brought in, no doubt at great expense.
The Pemberley servants treated Elizabeth with respect, but there was a sort of curiosity and suspicion from them.
When Elizabeth at last had full leisure she sat down at the writing desk. Mr. Darcy was observing her, while Colonel Fitzwilliam had gone to the opposite end of the room, and sat down to write his own letter to a member of the administration about the backwardness of the war department in providing sufficient ammunition to his troops for drill with live weapons.
The writing desk itself had become a friend.
The white sheet of paper stared up at her.
“Mrs. Wickham,” Darcy said when she had stared at the paper for some minutes. “You shall be doing your duty when you write the letter. I am glad to see you doing it.”
Elizabeth let out a long gust of breath. She smiled at him. And at last, she set the quill to the paper.
Papa, I first must announce that Mr. Wickham is dead. I am presently in Ramsgate where he was shot in a duel after involvement in a scheme to defraud a young heiress of her fortune by enticing her into a bigamous marriage. He had, in fact, abandoned us two years ago, shortly before Emily was born. When you wrote that youplanned to visit London last year, I pretended that I was not in town, because I did not wish you to know any of this, due to the shame I felt on the matter.
I ought to feel even more shame about Mr. Wickham, but in truth, though I have some sadness at his death, I am mostly relieved to be free of him. That is sad, is it not?
You must wish to know how we have survived the past two years, and the simple answer is that I sold all of the jewelry and most of the clothes which I had, imposed upon friends for lodging, and I have engaged in various forms of labor, many of which lacked respectability—which is to say I engaged myself to copy out legal documents, served as a hired nurse, and briefly tutored a child with the minimal Latin I remembered from when I begged you to teach me—but none of my efforts were immoral.
You had warned me, and quite correctly, that I could not rely upon Mr. Wickham. I remember clearly how you said that in the end I would gain no support from him. So it proved.
