Page 136 of A Question of Character

Truth would prevail.

Elizabeth would see Wickham for what he truly was.

Until then, he would simply love her well enough that no disagreement could permanently divide them.

He believed it with all his heart.

seventeen

A Question of Judgment

For one week, Elizabeth’s life had been both the happiest and most bewildering it had ever been.

Mr. Darcy came often to Longbourn.

He came with Mr. Bingley; he came on horseback; once he came in an open carriage because Mrs. Bennet had declared that gentlemen who rode everywhere must be made to remember roads were invented for civilized people. He endured her mother’s attentions with a gravity Elizabeth found alternately touching and dangerous to her composure. He spoke with Jane kindly, listened to Mary with patience, answered Kitty’s questions about Pemberley without appearing to think them foolish, and occasionally received Lydia’s direct remarks with the air of a man who had wandered into a foreign country and intended to behave properly until rescued.

Elizabeth adored him for it.

She did not say so, even to Jane.

Courting, she discovered, was not so much a state of constant romance as a succession of small, astonishing permissions. She might walk with Mr. Darcy in the garden if Jane or Kitty remained in sight. She might speak to him longer than politeness required. She might receive his calls with visible pleasure. He might ask her opinion without disguising that he valued it. Their hands might touch when passing a book, and both could pretend it was accidental while knowing perfectly well it was not.

It ought to have been enough to make her foolishly happy.

It very nearly did.

Then Mr. Wickham entered the room, or Lydia mentioned him, or Darcy’s mouth hardened at a name no one else had heard, and Elizabeth’s happiness became tangled with doubt.

She disliked doubt. In other people she might call it prudence; in herself it felt like an affront.

The matter came to breakfast with Mr. Philips.

He arrived before the eggs had cooled, looking red in the face and unusually solemn. Mrs. Bennet received him with alarm, because nothing in her opinion justified a gentleman’s solemnity before tea unless someone had died, married badly, or ruined a gown.

“Brother! What has happened?”

Mr. Philips removed his hat and looked around the breakfast table. “I beg pardon for interrupting you all so early, but I thought Bennet ought to know at once.”

Mr. Bennet set down his cup. “That is a dreadful beginning. Sit, Philips, before my wife decides the militia has invaded.”

“There is no militia,” Mr. Philips said, taking the indicated chair. “Though I begin to think soldiers might create less mischief than gossip.”

Lydia, who had been spreading jam upon toast, went still.

Elizabeth noticed. Jane did too.

Mrs. Bennet sank into a chair. “Gossip? What gossip?”

Mr. Philips hesitated. It was not a natural condition for him, and its presence made the room attend more closely.

“It concerns Wickham.”

Lydia’s knife clattered against her plate.

Mr. Bennet’s expression altered slightly, but the bookish indolence disappeared. “Go on.”

“Whispers have begun in Meryton. Nothing plain enough for a man to seize by the collar and demand an explanation, but enough. That Mr. Darcy holds Wickham in contempt. That there was some shameful conduct in his past. That he is not to be trusted near respectable families. People are inclined to side with Mr. Darcy, of course. Ten thousand a year makes a man very persuasive, even when he says nothing himself.”