The Road to Pemberley

by Marsha Altman

  But why should Darcy believe me now? Now, after all these years. Perhaps I’m going on a fool’s errand.

  Something like the exhaustion of sadness overcame me. I turned to the window and rested my head on it. And I felt the carriage rock beneath me, rock, rocking me away from the present and into the past.

  “No, I don’t believe I will give you the living at Kimpton,” Fitzwilliam snarled at me. “Good Lord, man, think you I don’t know about your scandals at Cambridge?”

  I stood, mute and confused, in front of him, in what was once his father’s study. From the wall behind Will, his father’s portrait looked down at me, his blue eyes softly benevolent and his smile that gentle one that he often gave me. Will’s father had been my father’s best friend, and had lured my father away from a lucrative practice as a solicitor to manage his great estate of Pemberley.

  It wouldn’t have been a hard thing to do. My father had been left recently widowed, with no one to look after a baby son, and facing letting that son grow up in cramped quarters in London with no supervision. George Darcy had offered him a chance to live in the country, in one of the most beautiful estates in Derbyshire, and to have his son share the nursery with Darcy’s own son. How could my father have refused? Oh sure, it was a diminution of prestige for him, but what did he care for that? George was not someone to hold to the social differences. My father had taken the offer and been contented with it. As had I, till that moment.

  Oh, I’d had some inkling before that not all was quite right. When his father paid for me to go to Cambridge with Will, both Will and I had been overjoyed. We were to have a shared lodging in Cambridge, and we were to take with us, as a joint valet, Curvin Smithen, who had grown up with us—well, as a boot boy—and who had just finished his training as a valet. It seemed to us, then, that we’d achieved our dream of adulthood—that we were finally to enter that marvelous world of privilege and that nothing but happiness awaited us. We were, you see, the best of friends. We were like brothers from the nursery onward. Between us, there was no awkwardness, no feeling of social difference.

  But shortly after we got to Cambridge, our friendship cooled. William seemed distracted around me, retiring. He no longer talked to me about his most intimate concerns—his thoughts and his fears.

  I recalled Smithen telling me, “Well, what can you expect now, Mr. Wickham? Surely you realize all his other friends here at Cambridge are far above you? Surely you realize that they have made fun of him for his friendship with you?”

  Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t this. It wasn’t Will, tight-lipped and pale, summoning me into the study right after his father’s funeral, and then announcing that he wasn’t giving me Kimpton.

  “Why? Why ever not?” I finally managed to say. “Why not give me the living your father promised? Why would you dishonor his memory?”

  Will’s lip curled, the way his lip had always curled since childhood when he was presented with a patent falsehood, an unworthy action, or someone he judged despicable. “Dishonor his memory, indeed. Yes, I would do that and more if I gave that living to you. No, Wickham, give over. I know you too well to entrust you with the souls of Kimpton. I’m not sure I would entrust you with the souls of Hades.” He pulled his father’s account book from the drawer. “Name your price for what you’d rather have, instead, and I’ll write you a note for it here and now.”

  He looked up. I was speechless.

  “Name your price,” he said. “Come on, while I feel generous. You must understand that now that both our fathers are dead, there is no occasion for you to come to Pemberley, and you must consider our acquaintance to be quite at an end.”

  I felt tears burning in my eyes. He would turn me out of the only home I’d ever known? I swallowed hastily, to avoid disgracing myself. “Will?” I asked, not quite sure what this meant. Was it some nightmare in which my childhood friend, my almost-brother became a malevolent stranger? I would presently wake up and be snug in my room in Cambridge, and Will would be sleeping in his room next door. I would wake him up and tell him of my strange dream, and we’d laugh about it.

  “Please don’t call me that. I will give you a note now, and you will cash it—I’m sure you have gambling debts aplenty, not to mention payments to many tradesmen’s daughters—and then you will consider all our acquaintance at an end.” He wrote as he spoke, with large, vivid flourishes. “Will ten thousand be enough? Surely, ten thousand will be enough. Good Lord, fortunes have been made on less. You will take ten thousand, and you will leave my home. We shall meet again only as common and indifferent acquaintances.”

  Numb, not believing any of this could be happening, I received the slip of paper with a hand that felt frozen.

  “I…I suppose I could study law,” I said. My voice cracked and failed.

  Will looked up, looked at me. There was not in his eyes any friendship, any hint of concern, though my pain must have been vividly etched on my face. “I do not care how you live or what you do,” he said. “So long as you be gone.”

  I don’t know how I stumbled from that office. I do not remember. I do remember standing in the vast, marbled hall. Darcy had my things packed. Smithen waited with them. He handed me my cane, my hat, and my cape, all curtly and without emotion. “You must know, sir,” he said. “You must be gone. He’ll have the law on you otherwise.”

  “The law? For what?” I asked, bewildered.

  “Why, sir, that note he gave you. Surely you know he’ll change his mind long before you cash it. He’ll say you extorted it.”

  “Why?” It was the question I kept asking and to which I got no answer.

  Smithen sighed. “I tried to tell you, sir, in Cambridge, but you would not believe me. Mr. Darcy has fallen in with an unsavory set. All those tradesmen’s daughters, the men demanding payment for gambling debts…”

  I remembered. There had been women running from our quarters as I approached. There had been men coming to look for me, asking for payment for gambling debts incurred in some drunken game. There had been men demanding I marry their daughters. In that regard, Darcy was right. I owed money everywhere. Save for one thing—I hadn’t done any of it. My days were spent studying or walking, my evenings often praying in the Cambridge chapel. I had no carnal knowledge of anyone and I certainly had never gambled.

  “He,” Smithen said, filling the word with meaning and significance, “gave your name when he went about his exploits.”

  And that I could see, suddenly. The whole thing became clear in my mind. Oh, Darcy and I look nothing alike. Not in a family type of resemblance. But we are, both of us, fairly tall men and dark haired; both of us have blue eyes. Similar enough to look the same in the darkened gambling dens around Cambridge, and to men too intent on their pleasure to care to fix a face in their memories. Similar enough to sound the same in the description a daughter gives her irate father.

  “But why would Darcy do that to me?” I asked Smithen. It was an innocent question, as of a child to an adult.

  His blue eyes looked sad, just like the eyes of an adult who has to explain a painful truth to a child. “Don’t you know, sir? Have you never suspected? Why, sir, he’s always resented the interest and kindness his father showed toward you, of course. Very proud, Mr. Darcy is.”

  And Smithen had to be right, though Darcy could only have become proud after arriving at Cambridge. But such things happened to people as they grew up. I should not think on it anymore.

  My heart broken, all of my worldly possessions in a small bag, I started making my way down the long drive of my childhood home for the last time.

  And then I saw her.

  At first, I thought that in my pain and grieving I was hallucinating an angel to console me. It was only on looking again that I realized that the angel was none other than Georgiana.

  Georgiana was Will’s sister and almost ten years younger. Her mother died birthing her, and while she was a small child in the nursery, both Will and I spent hours entertaining her and s
eeking to make her laugh. In those days, I supposed, I’d thought of her as something between a doll and a sister.

  But then at seven she had been sent away to an expensive and reputable school for girls. Mr. George Darcy had judged it prudent that his daughter should have a more feminine surrounding than a home where everyone but a few servants was male. Two years after she’d gone to school, Darcy and I had gone to Cambridge. I hadn’t seen Georgiana in eight years.

  And what I saw now took the breath from my lungs and the thought from my mind. Even my hurt was gone. All I could think was how beautiful she looked—this blonde lady I could not associate with the awkward child I’d once loved in quite a different manner.

  This young lady awakened in me feelings I hadn’t been sure of ever entertaining toward anyone. I wanted to fall on my knees and worship her. I wanted to hold her in my arms, protect her, and comfort her. I wanted to put a ring on her finger and call her Mrs. Wickham.

  She wore a dark dress—mourning, of course—and held a dark parasol open above her. The darkness only made her seem more beautiful, a statue made of ivory and sunlight. Her eyes were reddened. She would have cried for her father. She hadn’t attended the funeral, of course. Women didn’t.

  “George?” she said. And a small smile appeared on her grief-pale features. “George. You came for the funeral.” Then her gaze wandered to the valise in my hand. “But you mustn’t leave. You mustn’t leave so soon. You must stay and console Will and me. We three have always been quite close, have we not? You’re family. Family draw together in times of sadness.”

  I couldn’t tell her what had happened between Will and me. It sounded so insane, even to me. Perhaps Will was insane. Perhaps that was it. It wasn’t his fault. Just an illness, a sad event. “I…can’t stay,” I told her. “I wish I could, but business calls me away to… London.” I spoke quite at random.

  “London?” She smiled. “Oh, but then you must come see me. Will is setting me up in my own household with my own governess in Ramsgate. You must visit me, George. Promise you will. I will not be denied.”

  She looked so adorable. As imperious as her insufferable aunt Catherine, but with a whispering undertone of shyness and diffidence. How could I have refused her anything?

  I promised.

  As the heavens are my witness, I swear I thought I’d visit Georgiana in Ramsgate, and we’d make stilted conversation over tea that had brewed too long—as tea made by governesses is all too prone to doing. Then I’d leave and go about my business, as free of Georgiana as I was of her brother.

  I’d never cashed the promissory note—indeed, I dared not, because Smithen was probably right, and any man willing to treat an old friend the way Will had done would be capable of any villainy. I had no intention of being jailed for extortion. With Will’s word against mine, they’d surely choose his.

  Instead, I’d found menial work in a bookbinder’s, reading the final proof before text was printed. I was familiar enough, from Cambridge, with the Bible and all holy texts to catch mistakes efficiently. It paid me enough to keep me in clothes and food and a small room. I lived.

  And then I visited Georgiana. And in those moments in her tidy rooms, in the better section of Ramsgate, I was a gentleman. I was sir, and Mr. Wickham again. I was…what I had once been.

  I think at first that was the attraction, the reason I allowed Georgiana to invite me back, and then again. Georgiana was beautiful beyond compare, but what chance did I have with that angel? Despite this indisputable fact, something changed. I started going back…for Georgiana.

  I think it took me a full six months—as fall turned to winter and winter to shy, blushing spring—to realize I was in love. I was in love with Georgiana Darcy, who was far above my station—a seraphim sent to earth. I was enchanted with the turn of her arm, the movements of her hand, and her little crooked smile. I was besotted with the way her blonde hair curled at the nape of her neck. And not all the perfumeries of the East could create a scent to equal her fresh smell of soap and rose water.

  I dreamed of her during the day and then dreamed of her at night. My only hours of golden happiness were those spent in her lodgings, holding her hand.

  This is the only explanation I have for proposing to her. Surely, even at the crest of my emotion, I must have known it was foolish. Perilous. Insane. Not to mention self-destructive.

  And yet I proposed and she accepted. And then I needed to carry out my purpose—our purpose—without being interrupted. We had to marry before Darcy found us out. Once I was a legal member of the family, I would have some leverage; and if Darcy was truly slipping into insanity, there were excellent doctors of the mind. I could manage it and I would manage it, once we were truly related.

  Georgiana agreed to elope. Not happily, I explained to her how people might think, how they might say I wanted her only for her dowry. How certain tongues—those of the Misses Bingley, for example—might attempt to influence her brother’s opinion because he was of an impressionable nature. She accepted. She was in love with me. She accepted my explanation because she wanted to marry me as much as I wanted to marry her.

  I remember that other night of rain and darkness, and waiting inside the carriage for Georgiana and her packages.

  It was cold for a summer night, with thunder and rain and a blustery wind that whistled around corners. Georgiana looked giddy, in her pelisse and hat, as she ran down the steps. And stopped.

  There were hooves in the night and a horse drew up behind the carriage. Georgiana looked delighted. She ran toward where the horse had stopped.

  I believe I knew even then the identity of the rider. I felt no surprise when, after a brief talk with Georgiana, Will appeared at the door to the carriage. He was furious. I’d seen him that furious only a couple of times while growing up—once when his groom had whipped a horse severely, and then again when a gardener had beaten the young gardener boy without mercy. Both times, Darcy—only a stripling—had threatened to have the offender flogged.

  Now he was looking at me with a cold rage. He looked so pale that his lips appeared gray. “Eloping?” he asked. “You convinced her to elope?” His lips trembled and his gaze flashed with ire. “She is just sixteen.”

  “I love her,” I croaked. “I want to marry her.”

  “Oh, I am sure you love her,” Darcy said. “Which is why you want to destroy her reputation forever. Out of my sight, Wickham. Take this carriage to whatever miserable hole you huddle in.”

  “You can’t do that. Georgiana. I want to see Georgiana.”

  “Meaning you want to blackmail me over whatever billets-doux she was indiscreet and innocent enough to write to you. Very well, Wickham. I’ll send Smithen with a check, and you will send me every last scrap of paper you have of hers. Do you understand?”

  I tried to protest, but he slammed the door of the carriage, and I heard him order the coachman, “Drive on. Drive this villain whence he came.”

  And the carriage took off, bouncing and jostling through London streets.

  I never saw Georgiana after that. Smithen brought me a note, the contents of which I scruple to mention, and a check that I did not wish to—and did not dare to—cash.

  He took from me a letter written with an anguished heart and stained with my tears. It detailed, faithfully, all my dealings with Darcy and told Georgiana all that I would have liked to have spared her. It begged her, for the sake of the love we shared, to meet me the next day, at such and such hour, by the coachmen’s on Hay Street. I thought we’d rent horses and make our way to Gretna Green in Scotland, where we could marry immediately. I was hoping for a miracle—that Darcy would actually give Georgiana my letter, unread.

  Need I say she didn’t show up? I sat and waited, in the warm summer evening, by a horses’ trough, till the sky turned bright pink in the East. And then I went home with a broken heart.

  How I lived, how I survived those few months, I don’t know. I seized upon the recommendation of an acquaintance to join th
e militia. It seemed a good way to leave behind London, the scene of both my happiness and its shattering.

  I went to Hertfordshire, to a little place called Merryton. And there found, to my chagrin, that Darcy was a guest at a country house nearby. Neatherfield, it was called. And, as with any man who has ten thousand a year to his name, he was the subject of lively speculation among the mamas and the daughters of Merryton.

  Wishing to warn them all—but, for the sake of his father, not wishing to disgrace him publicly—I contented myself with warning one woman, a Miss Bennet, at whom Will was looking with particular intent. I realized my warning was most improper, but Miss Elizabeth Bennet seemed to understand it all.

  And then the militia moved to Brighton. I went, happy to get away from Will. Tradesmen in Merryton had been accusing me of seducing their daughters again, and there had been men coming for me for gambling debts I’d never incurred. And Smithen warned me that Will plotted my death. All of Will’s other behavior was perfectly normal, so it seemed that I was the only object of his dangerous, mad obsessiveness. I left, hoping it would all improve between us.

  But in Brighton, I was pursued once again for payment. Oddly, though Will had left Hertfordshire, I didn’t see him in Brighton. Not once. I had to assume he was there, though, because I once glimpsed Smithen from a distance, and Smithen was, after all, Will’s valet.

  The debts got so awful that the only thing I could do was go to London and cash those old promissory notes. I prepared to do so.

  That night, it was raining again. Seemed to be my fate whenever I had to travel by carriage. A note had arrived, informing me that this night I’d be thrown into debtor’s prison.

  It was not my intention to rot in jail for Darcy’s spurious debts in my name. Of course, I might very well end up rotting in jail by cashing a note he said was extorted from him. But it was a risk I had to take.