His lone figure, however, was still a sombre sight. Not only did he forsake Elizabeth’s company, he refused to be attended at all. Silently, she fretted for his despondency. Aloud, she insisted that it was unsafe for him to ride about thus.
“Pray, should your path be crossed by some misfortune…”
“Misfortunes occur to the most healthy of souls, Lizzy. I should think I would be merely saved the ordeal of hearing it befall me.”
Though she was miffed that he disregarded her upon that matter, she was recompensed.
For within his disability, they did discover a previous delight. By reason of opportunity, an ancient adage was proven true. The absence of one of the five senses did enhance the others. Two impaired was an exultation of sensory riches. The pier glass was unearthed from its hiding place beneath their bed and put to good use reflecting innumerable capital acts. Conversation was not needed for any of them.
Beyond those connubial, however, pleasure was not his companion. Tolerance for his self-perceived ridicule made him increasingly fractious. Alas, the inadvertent gun blast and resultant injury could not have happened more incommodiously. In his cotton-headed vulnerability, he had little to do but stew. And of the vast pool of possible vexations a man of Mr. Darcy’s standing could select to gnaw upon, his mind seized upon but a single perplexity. That of the paternity of John Christie.
Other than once wanting rather dearly to wring his neck, Darcy had not given the lad a thought. He cowered about so, had Georgiana not taken the notion to school him, Darcy was uncertain he would have recognised his visage. Perchance that is why no one ever remarked upon a resemblance. John rarely allowed himself within the same eye-line as his employer.
Upon Darcy’s commencement of a surreptitious study of the boy, a disconcerting revelation was uncovered. Clearly, John Christie was a tall, dark-haired, taciturn fellow and carried himself with a graceful amble of a walk. Even Darcy could not deny that, except for a more purposeful gait, it was the very description that might have been used to particturalise himself. Once one accomplished the feat of overlooking grimy fingers, crude garb, and common speech, it could be noted that John’s features and figure were remarkably regular and straight. Even noble. Close observation and cautious interrogation of Edward Hardin revealed to Darcy that John was also industrious, honest, and bright.
Imperceptibly, Darcy began to feel a swell of pride. Many men of station (and almost all those royal) could not claim such fine attributes. Breeding will out, he concluded. The august Darcy blood overcame all manner of nurturing deprivation.
Few men would be able to compleatly abandon a certain conceit on behalf of the potency of their loins. It was the most primitive of instincts. However he might have wanted to believe otherwise, Darcy was no exception. Who should not want to bask in the glow of begetting a strong, handsome boy-child? Even in silent self-satisfaction, Darcy would not. When he realised he had leapt from speculation to acceptance, the smugness of those particular deliberations were roundly quashed in favour of less heady ones.
If it were true that the boy was of his seed, it was his duty to acknowledge him. Was he to do just that, it might well be the most shocking thing to come to pass in Derbyshire since the passing of the Duchess of Devonshire. Howbeit to Darcy’s way of thinking a significant scandal it would be, as far as aristocratic indiscretions were concerned, it was rather minor. More gentlemen than he cared to name had harboured intrigues or kept paramours. If discreet, offspring resulting from such liaisons were tolerated amongst society. Seldom, however, were they acknowledged.
There lay the infamy.
Gentlemen dallied and society turned a blind eye so long as such peccadilloes did not become public. Darcy respected the lessons of the station to which he was born; however, his notion of honour was a little weightier in scruples than most. Holding the generally unpopular belief that public and private disgrace were one and the same, he wrestled relentlessly with his conscience. Could he cast all decorum aside and openly claim a bastard child of his chambermaid as his own son? Give him the Darcy name? His father’s name?
Notoriety, particularly for sins of the flesh, was indefensible. As abhorrent as he held a rupture of his privacy, Darcy’s private mortification eclipsed even that. There was nothing upon which he prided himself more than self-discipline. Although he had never quite reached a reckoning with his unequivocal surrendering to the fever of his youth, he had believed it was an ancient imprudence. Admittedly, when he married Elizabeth, he was not an innocent. But if he had once succumbed to the call of his libido, he had truly believed his reputation was unsullied by any, shall we say, lasting evidence of it. Except for that unguarded initial frolic into carnality, he had been meticulous about how and with whom he bedded. Hence, the appearance of this particular misbegotten bairn thrust unknowingly upon his doorstep (if memory served, literally upon the inception of his wedding), proclaimed itself unto Darcy as a harbinger of judgement. He saw it clearly as a condemnation of his early sins of the flesh. And if it was not divine, the difference was indiscernible.
Tormented with guilt, he wrestled with how best to announce to his wife, his family, his friends, and society in general that he was no better that Henry Howgrave’s father. How could he find the moral courage to deliberately besmirch his father’s memory in such a vulgar manner? After weeks of vacillating, he knew he must make a move, for he was out of humour far too frequently. However, he wanted to reach a decision uncluttered by sentiment before burdening Elizabeth with his public disgrace.
Ere that opinion could be reasoned, fate intervened.
It was a perfectly lovely afternoon for midwinter. Not a finer day had been had for weeks. It was then Mrs. Reynolds chose to board a waggon for Kympton to personally berate the costermonger for the unacceptability of their most recent delivery.
The old woman issued orders to bring the waggon about whilst complaining bitterly about the necessity of having to endure the fallowness of winter at all.
“Was it not such a dry autumn, the cellars would be full. There would be no need for such flummery as this!”
Just outside the steps of the house, Mrs. Reynolds checked a sheet of paper with her index finger, methodically reviewing what appeared to anyone else as hen-scratching. Evidently, the costermonger’s sins were so numerous as to need explicit delineation. Once that was accomplished, she was impatient to light into the man and stood about in irascible wait for the waggon.
The footmen scurried about, none anxious to invoke her wrath, which led to undue hastiness in preparation. The harness needed adjusting. But as Mrs. Reynolds was getting testier by the minute, a dirk that was both too long and too dull was produced. It fell to John Christie to employ it. Had Mrs. Reynolds glowered less relentlessly or the wielder been more experienced, greater caution would have been observed. But as it was not, the knife slipped, gouging John’s hand nearly to the bone just below his index finger.
The geyser of blood that erupted caused the usually unflappable Mrs. Reynolds to shriek, thus alerting the house of the accident.
Georgiana and Elizabeth rushed to the scene, then ordered John whisked into the kitchen. Most knife wounds occurred there and, as a veteran of such mishaps, cook was charged with repairing his. This was neither a solemn nor a solitary procedure.
Surrounded by an assortment of scullery help, cook still set about this task with all the aplomb of a surgeon.
Howbeit Mrs. Reynolds covered her eyes, Georgiana observed the doings closely. So carefully did she watch, it appeared she might actually take the needle and thread from cook’s hand and compleat the operation herself.
Elizabeth was both mesmerised and repulsed by the ordeal. She noticed that the victim, however, was astonishingly stoic (the ladies were quite unwitting that it was their presence that bid John’s denial of pain). Indeed, during the close scrutiny of this process, Elizabeth considered howling upon his behalf. But as screaming in empathy was not an acceptable option and a chorus of “o-o-ohs�
�� erupted with each stitch taken, she busied herself shooing out unnecessary observers.
After the cut had been closed, Georgiana took over. She patted some cobwebs upon the wound, then swaddled his hand in muslin batting (in all honesty, it was a little overly swaddled) and led him outside. From thence, Elizabeth could hear her issuing strict instructions to Edward Hardin about keeping John’s hand elevated and dry. This instituted some stifled laughter amongst the other footmen, and it wafted indoors.
Elizabeth smiled to herself as she imagined John Christie’s mortification.
“Noble blood, to be so brave,” she remarked.
Mrs. Reynolds replied “As well he should.”
Cook had returned to her oven, and this inexplicable comment seemed to dangle in the air inexorably.
“He should?” Elizabeth bid.
“Why yes, I thought you knew, ’though I’m not so sure if the boy does.”
A profound sense of foreboding compelled Elizabeth to ask a question that she was not certain she wanted answered.
“Knows of what?”
“It was under this roof, it was, where she got with child.”
Elizabeth nodded patiently, anxiousness betrayed only by the rapid tapping one foot undertook. Knowing it a redundancy, she could think of no other query to further the conversation.
“His mother?” she asked.
“Yes. Abigail Christie. She was all of nineteen and should have known better. But she was quite an article. Flounced about beckoning every attention, she did. No wonder a young master’s head was turned. I ask you now, if grown men can’t resist such doings, how can a mere boy?”
At this revelation, Elizabeth felt the blood rushing to her head. At the resultant crimson of her face, she turned away, her heart racing.
“A mere boy?” she repeated, beginning, for all the world, to feel like a parrot.
“Yes. Although, I suppose, not that so much of a boy. Mr. Wickham.”
Momentarily, Elizabeth had half expected to hear the old woman speak Darcy’s name, but that notion vanished with the same dispatch whence it had come.
Incredulous, she asked witlessly, “Wickham is his father?”
“Yes, and wild Wickham turned out to be. I guess he began his life of dissolution with that strumpet.”
Interminable as the story was, Mrs. Reynolds’ loquacity was quite unwitting of its longevity and she chatted on.
“Abigail Christie was half-term gone when she left here. I told old Mr. Darcy that young George Wickham laid with her, but he did not want to believe it. Something bechanced later, I know not what, and he altered his opinion and dismissed her.”
Mrs. Reynolds looked out upon John walking out of the courtyard. Elizabeth’s gaze followed hers.
“He does favour Mr. Wickham, does he not? I always wondered if he knew of him.”
Elizabeth agreed indeed he did favour Wickham, but could find no opinion upon merit of the major’s information. However, she did have a notion as to who would.
Taking the most direct path from the kitchen to Darcy’s library wherein she knew him to be engrossed in a ledger, Elizabeth endeavoured not to run. Once there, she quieted, for she truly did not want to appear as anxious as she was to pass on gossip. Settling herself upon a sofa, she bade her husband come sit by her.
Her excitement was obvious, thoroughly intriguing his attention. Thus, he abandoned his figures. But he did not come and sit. Although his hearing had returned to a tolerable degree (though not yet his appetite), he stood before her, hands folded behind his back in wait. As soon as she saw that she had his full heedfulness, she launched her tale.
“You cannot imagine the startling news I have just learnt from Mrs. Reynolds.”
“The pigs are loose in the garden.”
“No, the pigs are not in the garden!” she said with mock irritation.
“A disappointment. It has been a quiet day…”
“Not in the kitchen. There was an accident, but that is all forgot now,” she brushed off the details of an incident that did not serve her story. “It was John, the groom. But his injury is not of what I came to tell.”
Darcy’s alteration in temper was immediate, but undetectable to Elizabeth. Hence, there was no hesitation before she made her announcement.
“Mrs. Reynolds told me that he was fathered by George Wickham!”
Never expecting any untoward display of astonishment from her husband, Elizabeth was not entirely surprised that at that pronouncement Darcy only emitted a mild, “Oh.”
He had turned away, highly engrossed in prodding the waning fire back to life. To his back, Elizabeth continued, “I knew the boy’s mother once worked here, but I had no idea Wickham was her lover. Did you?”
A lack of response influenced Elizabeth to believe he had not heard her enquiry and she waited patiently as he kicked some scattered wood back upon the hearth. Though his countenance was turned away from her, to Elizabeth his unease was obvious. As the conveyor of his disquiet, she harboured a certain amount of contrition that her own eager curiosity provoked the mention of despicable Wickham in the first place. But because that subject was already before them and could not be reclaimed with any facility, she quite shamelessly advanced her own investigation. The details would be entirely too salacious not to be savoured.
“Do you fancy Wickham knows he fathered a child here?”
In answer, Darcy shrugged his shoulders. The illogic that he had not heard her first question, but did the second, was lost upon Elizabeth. For, quite abruptly, she was embroiled in her own machinations of relation.
Had she not long felt affection for John, bashful and motherless as he was, romanticism might not have overtaken her sensible nature. In a flight of fancy worthy of Jane, she imagined John a love-bairn left undiscovered by his true father.
Certainly, his true father was a walking muckheap, but he was married to her sister. That this particular misbegotten son ended up working at Pemberley under her auspices, she believed fell to serendipitous chance.
A wrong to be righted.
Elizabeth’s speculation about this little peripeteia was relentless. Only by instituting the utmost self-restraint was she able to keep it to herself until they retired for the eve.
As they lay in bed, the flickering candlelight revealed Darcy resting the back of his hand across his eyes, seeming to block out some vision he did not want to see.
For his thoughts were not so illusory as Elizabeth’s. He had implied to her he did not know if Wickham had knowledge of his son (the shrug, which technically indicated uncertainty but upon occasion he used one in place of “I choose not to take part in this conversation”). The gesture was implemented at that time in both definitions, for Darcy did not know absolutely. Notion was another matter.
Wickham had to have known of the baby Abigail carried when she vacated Pemberley. Darcy had no doubt. He believed that Wickham had a hand in her hasty departure as well. Elizabeth’s words had much the same impact upon him had he been struck full in the stomach with a closed fist. It was impossible that Mrs. Reynolds was mistaken. That woman knew all. He shook his head at his own naïveté. His penitence had been so thoroughly embraced, he had not instituted his usually dependable logic upon the matter. Guilt, compounded by time, had beclouded his recollection of the relative briefness of the affair and the swiftness of Abigail’s departure. For only then did it occur to him that their assignations all befell within a se’nnight. His father spoke to him upon the seventh day and upon the eighth, she was gone. Had Abigail been impregnated by him, she would not have known it yet and neither would Mrs. Reynolds.
It was doubtful any man was of a more cynical nature than he. Yet, howbeit he understood Abigail had not been a virgin, he never once considered the possibility that her child had been fathered by another. Had fate not intervened, he might have committed a blunder of near biblical proportions. He would have given Wickham’s bastard son the Darcy name. It was the single most mortifying misapprehension a
man could make. Indeed, his notion of his own infallibility was mocked irrevocably. That his humiliation was evident only to himself was of no particular comfort. For it was by virtue of Wickham, he whose very name invoked treachery.
He was caught in a maelstrom of conflicted emotions. Unmitigated self-abasement was foremost, but the profound relief he should have experienced was compromised by guilt. For his conscience was not so kind as to allow him to dismiss the episode as a nerve-racking, but ultimately harmless, misunderstanding.
When another might have seen some amusement in being saved from such colossal misapprehension, Darcy did not. Suffice it to say he weathered his misjudgement not well.
But it was to be some time before he wearied of self-flagellation and concentrated on outrage at the reprehensible Wickham for abandoning Abigail and the baby he begat. As he did, Elizabeth lay so quietly at his side he had thought her asleep. Thus, it startled him when she spoke.
“Darcy, if Wickham is his father, John Christie is family.”
“Not of my family!”Darcy spit out before he could check the vehemence of his words.
“True. Not of your family, but of my own. For, if you recall,” she reminded him, “Wickham is married to my sister.”
Darcy removed his hand from his eyes and looked at her, anticipating just what she was thinking, “Certainly you do not intend to further this?”
Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites Page 50