Lessons of Advantage

by michael sand

  Lady Anne’s fears about the admixture of ranks, might have been more rational than Mr Darcy had wished to credit; or perhaps that good man expected too much in thinking that Wickham would find his level, and that the two young men would fall into the same easy relation as their fathers had once done. Perhaps, too, he forgot that his son, from knowing nothing of the secret tie which bound them, had not the same motive of good will towards the Wickham family which he possessed. In the event, Mr Darcy’s benevolence did not prove so productive of general happiness as he had hoped.

  Mr Darcy had not been so heedless as to take a boy from a poor home into a wealthy one, without considering that some provision must be made for him. He thought no more honourable or befitting provision could be made than that he might one day succeed to his father’s office. But this prospect did not please the object of his benevolent intentions. The privileged state to which Wickham had been translated, had taught him to despise his origin, and had increased his resentment at the poverty of his parents’ house, produce of an improvident wife and a too-indulgent husband. The being educated to gain his livelihood in the sort of genteel position his father held, was by no means to his taste. He had learned to think himself above such employment, and to despise his father for not being gentleman — though the elder Wickham was more truly the gentlemen in both manner and address than many who made claim to the title. In this, Wickham shewed the same sort of weak-headed vanity so often betrayed by his mother.

  Mr Darcy had promised his old friend that his son should be provided with the same opportunity for improvement, which he had enjoyed when Mr Darcy had been a scholar. The two boys therefore went up to Cambridge together; but neither found much satisfaction in the arrangement. Wickham discovered, to his mortification, that where Darcy was entered in his father’s college, his schooling was to be undertaken at the hands of a local attorney. The mistaken expectation had been all his own: Mr Darcy had always been clear in his own mind, that George should occupy himself in pursuit of his vocation, as George’s father had done when they had dwelt at Cambridge. The fond memories of his college days retained by Mr Darcy, included the pleasure he had taken in passing on his instruction to his Mr Wickham; and how far he hoped that this history would be repeated, and that George’s education might be similarly broadened, is not easy to say. He must have perceived by this time, that the younger generation had not found an affinity, as the older had done before them; and while he had no reason to think the young men disliked one another, he must have seen that they were not friends.

  Wickham felt the distinction keenly, as a slight to those elevated expectations, in which, though of his own manufacture, he had come devoutly to believe. It was at this time that he began to break out into offences of a more serious nature. Perhaps removing from Pemberley had dissolved some restraint, for Wickham had been obliged to practice discretion in his local flirtations, conscious that he should lose Mr Darcy’s countenance for ever if any misconduct there came to light; but he might think Cambridge too distant for tales to travel back to Derbyshire; or that even if they did, such foreign adventures might carry less weight than if they had taken place at home. Darcy’s revulsion, when required to be rescuing Wickham from the consequences of his mode of life, was heightened by the consciousness that his victims were always such as youth and poverty made vulnerable to persuasion. However, the vexation of having Wickham within his sphere at Cambridge was offset for Darcy, by the satisfaction of his removal from Georgiana’s. Georgiana, fond of every body around her, and attached to her old playfellow, was too innocent to perceive the calculation which always actuated him. Darcy wished to put Georgiana on her guard, but knew not how to do it without injuring her candour. He therefore rejoiced at the circumstance of Wickham’s being so much less at Pemberley, which must increase her safety.

  Mr Darcy died without ever learning the worst about the young man whose good he had so earnestly wished to advance. At his death, the responsibility for Wickham’s welfare, — along with knowledge of the history, which explained why the obligation had been felt so strongly, — devolved upon his son, who understood then why Wickham had found in his father so stout a champion. Though Mr Darcy’s benevolence had not met with the success it deserved, his son honoured him for generosity of his impulse. But how Wickham’s welfare was to be rationally sought, was a puzzle which had long remained to plague him.

  Chapter Seven

  Mr Darcy knew the effrontery of the man with whom he had to deal; and before returning to the Crown the next day, he made certain arrangements which might prove necessary. “Well, Wickham,” he said, when they were met once again in the deserted parlour. “Have you considered of my proposal? Your debts to be settled, a commission in a regular regiment purchased, and three hundred a year to live on, in addition to your pay.”

  “I have, indeed, Darcy,” Wickham replied, sitting back in his chair, with a great shew of ease. “And I am prepared to accept, provided you make it eight hundred a year, and a commission in the Guards.”

  “I will not bargain with you, Mr Wickham. You know my terms. Reject them, and you shall find England too hot to hold you!”

  “But would you really go so far, when exposing me would oblige you to be sacrificing some one else’s character (nodding towards the ceiling)? I think you would hesitate to do any thing so ungallant.”

  “If you abandon Miss Lydia Bennet, she will have no character to preserve!”

  Wickham’s next reply shewed the gamester, prepared to chance all. “Ah! but if people hear evil reports of one young lady, is there not some danger that they might hear evil reports of another? You would not wish to be exposing her, — to have every Miss and Madam speaking of her. People are so apt to get hold of a wrong idea.”

  If Wickham had thought to provoke some sign of fear, he must have been disappointed. “It is true I should not like to have my sister spoken of,” Darcy replied calmly. “Though every one would know that she was an innocent, whom an unprincipled scoundrel had attempted to prey upon, without success. However, this history shall not get about.”

  “You certainly have the means to prevent its happening,” Wickham said, significantly.

  “I have the means to do more than that, Mr Wickham.” And taking from his pocket Mr Hodges’s bill, he held it up before Wickham’s blinking eyes. “You recognize this paper, I collect? How many others of this kind have you left in your trail? Defy me, and I set all the bailiffs in England on you!”

  Wickham looked pale, but recovered himself with an effort. “Set the bailiffs on the godson of Mr Darcy of Pemberley? Think of the injury to your father’s memory — the disgrace!”

  “You have already injured my father’s memory by shewing yourself unworthy of his generosity. Any farther disgrace will be your own. But you may yet escape it, if you choose.”

  Wickham vouchsafed no answer beyond a sardonic smile. A look of cold determination then came into Mr Darcy’s face. Stepping to the door, he called out, and when the waiter put his head round it, — “Be so good as to ask the officers to come up,” he said. A moment later, two rough-looking fellows shouldered their way into the room, and stood against the wall, fingering their caps. Darcy indicated Wickham. “This is the gentleman who may be to accompany you. Will you recognize him again?”

  With short nods of the head, the bailiff’s men asserted that they “should know the gentleman whenever they saw him.” Darcy thanked them, and bid them wait outside. When they were gone — “Perhaps now you may believe me when I say that being the godson of Mr Darcy of Pemberley will no longer protect you. Debtors’ prison will be your resort — unless you fly abroad; and what sort of existence you would lead there, may easily be guessed. I can imagine you, a miserable exile in Boulogne or some other continental town, cadging money from every English traveller who passes through, and happy in the end to marry your landlady, some blows widow with a hundred a year.”

  At this, Wickham’s pretence of composure collapsed, and he broke down
in tearful lamentation. Some part of this might have had its origin in remorse, but the chief portion sprang from self-pity. He had no friends, nowhere to turn — the world was against him. Why had no gentlemanly provision been made him? — Why had they given him a taste for rational pleasures, then denied him the means to enjoy them? To this litany of complaint and justification, Wickham conjoined a fervent appeal to the memories of their childhood and the adventures of their youth, (flatteringly altered to shew himself to best advantage,) — hoping to work upon the good nature of the man whose character he had never ceased to slander.

  Darcy listened with an expression of calm, but with spirits far from tranquil. The sense of obligation which Wickham had endeavoured to evoke, had indeed been called into operation, — but by stronger arguments than those Wickham had employed: his grandfather’s offence; his father’s responsibility for having introduced Wickham into society; and his own ill-judged actions in allowing himself in an indignation, which had obscured his vision, and made him unwilling to acknowledge the burden his grandfather had imposed upon his posterity. He had rejoiced when Wickham had accepted money in lieu of the Kympton living, thinking it worth the expenditure of even three thousand pounds if all intercourse between them might cease; and he had taken a righteous pleasure in casting Wickham off, when he had afterwards impudently demanded it. These had been mistaken indulgences: he ought to have done then, what he was obliged to do now — make some arrangement for Wickham’s maintenance which would put his evil tendencies under restraint. Instead, he had loosed Wickham upon the world, knowing him dangerous; and like the owner of a vicious dog, he must pay the damages.

  “My father felt an interest in you, Mr Wickham,” he said, when the flow of lamentation had faltered to a stop, “which was the product of his benevolence. In spite of your reprehensible conduct, I am willing to continue that benevolence. You shall not have wealth or importance — you have no claim to either; — but to security, you have a claim. Security — on condition that you marry Miss Bennet — is what you are offered. Will you accept it?”

  Of a sudden, Wickham’s distress was transformed into rage. “You have an interest in making me marry that girl!” he cried, “ — and well I know it!” Darcy felt the warmth flooding his cheeks, certain that they were within half a sentence of Elizabeth Bennet. But his fear vanished at the torrent of wild assertions which were then pouring out of Wickham. “He was no son of Steward Wickham — a man of no importance. Mr Darcy had been his father! — no other explanation could hold. Why otherwise had he brought him into his house? He was Mr Darcy’s son! That was why Darcy wanted to degrade him and marry him off meanly! — so that he could not take his rightful place in the world!”

  In the instant, the vast structure of Wickham’s self-deceit stood revealed, and Darcy perceived the nature of the delusion that had possessed the man and determined all his actions — the expense, the dissipation, the waste on vain exhibition — even to the maintaining of spongers and hangers-on. But whatever of pity Darcy might feel, soon gave way to feelings of anger, that any one should think his father capable of such vile conduct. “Wickham might have no regard for his mother’s principles,” he said. “But did he believe that Mr Darcy would dishonour his friend by fathering a child on his wife? — or that he would dishonour his own wife by bringing that child into his house! Could Wickham think so meanly of the man who had befriended him, and whose impulse of goodness towards him he was now repaying with the basest accusations?” A mind so deluded as Wickham’s was not to be swayed by appeals to reason; nor could the fantasies of a person willing even to traduce his parents and bastardise himself, in order to maintain a pretension to birth and rank, be argued away by demonstrating their palpable falseness. It was all mania and madness; and in the end Darcy was obliged to coerce Wickham into rational conduct by repeating his threat. — “He might take his choice. Ruin or security. Marriage or the bailiffs.” Perhaps some apprehension of the truth of Darcy’s words did penetrate the carapace of Wickham’s illusions; or perhaps his powers of resistance were at an end, worn away by endless perils and years of scraping by; for acquiescence soon followed.

  One farther condition was stipulated: Wickham was not to come near Pemberley. This condition was readily accepted; Mr Wickham had no desire to return to a place where his true character was so well-known. Finally, Darcy charged him with persuading Miss Bennet to remove to the Gardiners, when Darcy should have prepared them to be receiving her. To this also, Wickham readily agreed. He was beginning to tire of Lydia already.

  What a commencement to the felicities of married life!

  Mr Darcy’s feelings as he left the inn were none of the happiest. He had been obliged to use the power of his position in base ways: to bribe, bully, threaten and cajole; and the satisfaction he might have taken, in having rectified some part at least of the evils wrought by his family, was done away by weariness of mind. By obliging Wickham, for considerations of prudence, to marry a woman he could not possibly love, Darcy might be said to have avenged himself for the calumnies Wickham had spread against him. And yet, he had been no more than the mere instrument of justice in this: was it not fitting that a man who would corrupt women, should have a corrupt woman for his wife?

  Chapter Eight

  Mr Darcy was sitting in the breakfast-room the following morning when Colonel Fitzwilliam was announced. The Colonel had been surprised to get Darcy’s note; had thought he had been at Pemberley this fortnight or more. — “Yes, they had removed to Pemberley, but he had been obliged to return on business, — business in which the Colonel’s advice would be of the greatest assistance.”

  Colonel Fitzwilliam stared with amazement when he heard that Darcy wished to purchase an ensign’s commission in one of the Northern regiments. “If you are contemplating an army career, you ought to raise your eyes higher. I can hardly imagine you in any rank lower than general!” The Colonel immediately begged his cousin’s pardon: he had spoken with more astonishment than politeness; he knew the commission could not be for himself. —

  “You will be more astonished still when you learn who it is for,” Darcy said.

  The Colonel’s surprise was all that Darcy had foretold. — Wickham — that blackguard, Wickham — ! His cousin to be purchasing a commission for Wickham! —

  How Darcy was to make an adequate explanation, was then the question. There was much that needed saying, and even more that must be left unsaid. It pained him not to be more open with his cousin; but at that moment, he could not have confided fully in any human being.

  “He had encountered Wickham last autumn. His friend Bingley had taken a house in Hertfordshire, and Wickham had joined the ——shire Militia, then quartered in Meryton.” Wickham’s true character being unknown, he had been received into local society. It was there that he had made the acquaintance of Miss Elizabeth Bennet and her family. The Colonel would remember Miss Bennet. —

  “Of course! The vivacious Miss Bennet, Mrs Collins’s pretty friend.”

  Wickham’s regiment had gone to Brighton in June, and Miss Bennet’s youngest sister, Miss Lydia Bennet, had gone too, as the guest of Colonel Forster, — or, rather, of his wife. — “I shall shorten this painful history. Two weeks ago, Mr Wickham was obliged to leave Brighton hurriedly — for no creditable reason, as you may imagine, — and when he left, he took Miss Lydia Bennet with him.”

  This intelligence had been made known to him by chance. Miss Elizabeth Bennet had come to Derbyshire on a tour of pleasure with her aunt and uncle. They had taken dinner at Pemberly, and it was only because Darcy had called on them at their Inn the following day, that he had heard of the event. “Miss Bennet was alone when I arrived — had only that minute received the news. I am sure that she would have concealed it, had she had time to recover herself, but she was too much shocked. It was impossible to be guarded at such a moment.” He had learned that Wickham and her sister were fled to London, and that her father was pursuing them in hopes of discovery. “I thou
ght then, that Mr Bennet might have little success: there is no place so convenient as London for people who wish to conceal themselves.”

  It had occurred to him, that from superior knowledge of Wickham, he might succeed where Mr Bennet should fail; for he had instantly thought how likely it was that Wickham would seek refuge with Mrs Younge, his former confederate. This was proved correct; Darcy had come to London, and through the agency of Mrs Younge, had been able to discover where Wickham and Miss Bennet were hiding.

  “I suppose the villain has not married her,” Colonel Fitzwilliam said, in a tolerably grim voice. “Well, if you tell me where he is to be found, I shall find a way to pick a quarrel with him, and the world will soon be quit of a precious scoundrel!” (glaring with the utmost ferocity).

  Darcy was amused, in spite of himself. He had not known his cousin was such a fire-eater! He thanked the Colonel for his kind intention, but a living husband would be more to the purpose than a dead villain. In the event, other means had proved effective: for the price of a commission in the regulars, Wickham would marry Miss Bennet, and take up residence in the North, where he might be kept out of the way for years to come.

  But why, the Colonel wanted to know, should Darcy be charging himself with the expense? Surely that lay with her family. “If Miss Lydia Bennet has been so imprudent as to throw herself into the power of such a man as Wickham — ”