Pride, Prejudice & Secrets (36 page)

Conversely, none struck a spark in Georgiana, who had the example of her brother’s choice of wife and their happiness together as the mark against which she judged and found these eligible young men lacking. She received their attentions pleasantly but could give none of them any encouragement, and one by one, they correctly interpreted the signs and dropped their pursuit.

Georgiana was moodily contemplating whether she had the desire to hazard another attempt at a Season when Darcy and Elizabeth gave a dinner to welcome Charles Bingley to the neighbourhood. Bingley had given up the lease on Netherfield six months after Darcy’s wedding and then sought the aid of his friend in finding a suitable estate, hopefully within visiting distance of Darcy’s home in Derbyshire. “Now that you are an old married man and soon to be a father,” Bingley observed in his usual ebullient manner, “I doubt I will see you more than a few times a year unless I can find a place for myself close to Pemberley.”

Darcy was pleased to be of service, but it was the autumn of 1814 before a suitable property within thirty miles of Pemberley became available. This dinner marked the first time Georgiana and Bingley had been in company in almost a year, and Georgiana found the open and agreeable manner of her brother’s friend a refreshing change from those young men who had attended her during her Season. Though well acquainted, both young people seemed to see each other through different lenses than ever before, and this chance meeting led to the appearance of Bingley in Darcy’s study a week later. Darcy had been advised by Elizabeth of what she had discerned, and he was thus prepared for the blushing and hesitant Bingley to ask his permission to pay court to his sister. He gravely granted Bingley’s request, informed his sister, and then he and his wife sat back and viewed the short but intense courtship with interest and more than a little amusement. Within two months, Georgiana traded the title of Miss Darcy of Pemberley for Mrs. Charles Bingley of Chatham in the next county. She eventually presented her husband with four sons, the youngest of whom courted and won the hand of the youngest Darcy daughter, and the Bingleys visited often at Pemberley and Matlock. Thus, the former Miss Caroline Bingley saw what had once been her fondest wish come to fruition, but given the degree to which her own life had changed, it was no longer the source of triumph she might once have imagined. Now it was only one more source of joy to one who wept blessed tears of happiness as she embraced a new sister.

Mr. William Collins was nearing fifty and the oldest of his children was already married when he finally inherited Longbourn. He had been the parson at Hunsford for more than twenty-three years since Lady Catherine had not retaliated after he failed to do her bidding and expel Elizabeth Bennet from his home. In fact, she had appeared to forget the transgression and was soon inviting him and Charlotte to tea and instructing him in his sermons as though the episode had never happened.

Charlotte was more pleased to be close to her eldest brother, who held possession of Lucas Lodge, than she was to be mistress of Longbourn. Inheriting Longbourn had been her husband’s desire, not hers, since she could not think of the place without remembering it had originally been Elizabeth’s home. But it was pleasant to consider that it would be inherited by Stephen, her eldest son.

And that will bring an end to the entailment of Longbourn since the tail was established by William’s father for three generations,
she thought. Stephen will be the third generation, since both he and his father are aware that renewing the tail might cause our family to lose Longbourn in the same way the Bennet family did.

Charlotte loved Elizabeth like a sister, but she was far too sensible to chance any injury to her family in order to right a wrong to Elizabeth’s family, especially with all the Bennet girls safely and, with the exception of Lydia, happily married.

Except for two occasions, George Wickham never again intruded on the life of Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Neither intrusion was a personal one, for Darcy never again saw the man, and the first occurred when Richard visited Pemberley with his wife and daughter after Waterloo.

He and Darcy were idly walking some twenty or thirty yards behind their wives, as Elizabeth pointed Caroline’s attention to a fast-rushing stream, where a trout had just made his presence known by jumping completely out of the water.

“I ran into George Wickham recently,” he said, watching the lovely form of his wife and marvelling at how she had so effectively regained her figure after the birth of their daughter.

“Really?” Darcy said, with little interest, for he was engaged in similar thoughts of his own wife. “I assume he was probably prowling the streets of London as he was when I last saw him.”

“Actually, it was near a little village called Nivelles, just south of Waterloo, in Belgium,” Fitzwilliam said. “I remember your telling me of his disappearance from that town near your wife’s home, but it seems he must have gone into the regulars.”

“The regulars! And at Waterloo? That is beyond astonishing.”

“At Waterloo,” confirmed Richard. “And he must have had a rather exciting time of it. Wellington was touring the field shortly afterward, and I came upon Wickham reporting to his colonel. He was all blackened — face, hands, and uniform — as you get from the powder smoke with his arm in a dirty sling and wrapped in a bandage. And he was a captain, which is even more remarkable than his mere presence.”

“Remarkable? How so?”

“First there was the fact that he was an officer in the regulars, because I found it almost impossible to believe he could have ever had the funds to purchase a commission as a lieutenant.”

“He did elope with a young lady who had a modest fortune, I remember,” Darcy mused. “Perhaps he used those funds to purchase a commission.”

“Wickham? Purchase a commission in the regulars, especially in the Second Battalion of the Thirtieth Foot? That is difficult to believe, yet I must, because he was a captain. It must have been a non-purchase promotion, too, because I flatly refuse to believe he could have purchased a captaincy. That would have cost more than two thousand pounds even in the regular infantry.”

“That does sound improbable, but then so does everything I am hearing.” Darcy frowned in thought.

“But there is more, Darce. I did not recognize him at first; he was just another survivor of the battle, all black and scorched, but then I heard his colonel call him ‘Wickham.’ That made me pull up suddenly right behind him. When I recognized him, I was quite close behind him, and I eavesdropped shamelessly as his colonel told him what a fine job his company had done and that he was promoting him as a brevet major in command of a half-battalion just in case Napoleon still had more fight in him the next morning.”

Darcy looked sharply at his cousin at hearing such an astonishing tale, and Fitzwilliam continued. “Of course, this colonel informed Wickham he probably would not be able to keep the rank, which is true enough. But it is a mark of distinction almost unbelievable that Wickham, of all people, would receive such praise.”

“It
is
remarkable,” Darcy said slowly. “Wickham at Waterloo! Did he see you? Or say anything?”

“Actually, he did see me, but he could not salute, his arm being in the sling. But he came to attention and bowed. We exchanged greetings, and then I passed on and did not see him again.”

Darcy did not know what to think of this revelation, remembering their history, and he wondered whether the man could have somehow rehabilitated himself. Since the last he knew of him was his elopement with that girl from Meryton and his subsequent disappearance, he had to wonder. But he gave the subject little more thought since
his
thoughts were diverted along similar lines to those of his cousin, looking on his wife with admiration; he wondered whether he could somehow convince Elizabeth to return to the house and then entice her into his bedroom…

The second intrusion was also an impersonal one, this time occasioned by Darcy stumbling onto an obituary in the October 27, 1854, edition of
The Times:

Lately, George Wickham, Col., RA (ret), of Braintree, Essex, formerly of the Second Battalion, Thirtieth Foot. Col. Wickham served on the Peninsula (1812-13) and was at Waterloo (1815). Survived by his wife, Mary, five children, and twelve grandchildren.

Intrigued, Darcy remembered his previous conversation with Richard almost thirty years earlier when Richard described seeing Wickham after Waterloo. Clearly, he had remained in the regulars and eventually been promoted to Colonel, probably by seniority, much as Richard was eventually promoted to Major General. Darcy kept the paper until Elizabeth returned from another excursion through the woods and showed her the obituary. She read it silently, her brows knitted, then looked up at him.

“I always wondered what happened to him after he eloped with Miss King and resigned from the militia. I guess he remained with her, which is surprising, considering his character when I knew him.”

Darcy thought so as well, and he hoped his erstwhile childhood friend had repented of his dissolute early life. Despite what could have happened, his family had suffered no lasting harm other than an expenditure of a few thousand pounds.

It appears he might finally have become a man my father could be proud of,
he thought.
I hope so. God bless both of them.

Neither Elizabeth nor Darcy could know that the former Mary King, held closely by her eldest son in the blue uniform of a Commander in the Royal Navy, wept bitter tears at the graveside of her beloved husband. She never knew of the guardians appointed by her late uncle to watch over and ensure Wickham’s proper conduct, and she necessarily was completely unaware that they long remained true to their task, even after their employer passed on to his reward. By the time the last of them abandoned his watch, when the solicitor responsible for administering her uncle’s estate ran through the funds set aside for that purpose, George Wickham had been long living the life of a retired gentleman officer. Esteemed and respected in his neighbourhood for many years, he was so used to playing his part that he never would have considered deviating from what had become his usual manner. So he had well and truly earned the tears his wife shed for the honourable man and faithful husband with whom she spent her whole adult life.

George Wickham kept his secrets and eventually became the man he pretended to be.

Complete frankness and sharing every secret, especially those in the past, is a subject often fraught with untold dangers and must be handled with the utmost discretion and wisdom. Elizabeth Darcy was possessed of both attributes and she thus never saw any reason to inform her husband of those intemperate and often erroneous emotions that had so clouded her outlook aeons ago before she accepted the man whom she once considered to be the last man in the world that she could have ever been prevailed upon to marry. And what would have been the purpose of informing him that she had heard him tell Bingley that she was tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt him? He had proven countless times how wrong he had been; what would be served by grinding his nose in his mistake?

And had she known of the secrets her husband did not share, such as his part in separating Bingley from Jane, she would have felt similarly. She knew they had kept no secrets from each other since they married. Who could ask for more? She also knew she had always been loved and cherished, and she herself could hardly remember a time when she did not reciprocate such emotions in full measure.

And Darcy’s forecast — made so early in their life together — that she would someday tire of him and they would become a comfortable old married couple, never came true. In over fifty-one years of marriage and six children, she never did get enough of the best man she had ever known.

Finis

Author’s Q&A

Q
Why does Darcy sign his name “F. Darcy” in his letter to Elizabeth after he leaves Rosings? It seems incredibly impersonal.

A
Actually, in Regency times, signing the first initial as he did is what was done when writing to people who were close friends or intimates. Signing the full name is the more formal manner when writing to people with whom there is only an impersonal relationship. For example, in Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth in
Pride and Prejudice
, he signs his name as “Fitzwilliam Darcy” because their relationship will be a distant one rather than the close connection he desired. By contrast, in Mrs. Gardiner’s letter to Elizabeth informing her of how Darcy found Lydia and arranged the marriage with Wickham, Mrs. Gardiner signs her name as “M. Gardiner.”

Q
Did the backstory of Wickham’s service in the army have any real basis in fact, or was everything just made up?

A
It would have been easier to make up all the background about Wickham’s service rather than basing it on actual events in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo. That is what C. S. Forester did with his Horatio Hornblower stories; he never had Hornblower involved in any actual large-scale naval battles such as Trafalgar, thus it was not necessary to meld his actions into the historical record. But I considered that reforming such a wastrel as Wickham was going to take something more drastic than side actions such Bernard Cornwell used in his Richard Sharpe series. So I put Wickham right smack in the middle of some of the most horrific battles of the Napoleonic Wars with the idea that, if it didn’t kill him, it might cure him. But I could only go so far; I was trying to write a romance, after all, and not a historical novel. So there really was a Second Battalion of the Thirtieth (Cambridgeshire) Regiment of Foot, and it really did fight in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo. But I cheated a bit by having replacement companies formed to replace battle losses in the Second Battalion. There’s no record of that happening, though the 2/30 battalion was withdrawn from the Peninsula in 1813 because it was one of the most weakened battalions in Wellington’s army. By the way, the First Battalion of the Thirtieth was sent to India, and they missed most of the war. It was normal for the different battalions to be employed differently; it was quite unusual for the whole regiment to be used together at the same place and time.

Q
Aren’t you cheating by having Darcy and Elizabeth dance the waltz at a ball at Pemberley? Don’t the Jane Austen references say that the waltz was not accepted in England until well after the Regency? What gives?

A
It’s correct that the great majority of Austen-related sites are quite firm about the waltz not belonging in any novel related to the Regency and is absolutely unthinkable any earlier than 1815-16. In fact, one site on ‘Myths of the Regency’ listed the idea of the waltz being danced at a ball near the top of the list of myths. Nevertheless, I included it, despite some trepidation at going against the tide of informed opinion. When I first came up with the idea, I wasn’t aware of all this, which initially discouraged my desire to see Fitzwilliam Darcy whirling his Elizabeth about the dance floor.

However, further investigation led to the discovery of some interesting facts that make the generally accepted view on this subject somewhat dubious and raise the definite possibility that Darcy and Elizabeth could waltz at Pemberley in 1814. Those reasons include:

• Musical arrangements for the waltz were printed as early as 1806. Now, if someone was going to the expense of printing music, there had to be someone interested in buying such music.
  
• Dancing masters, including Thomas Wilson, one of the most famous dancing masters of the time, were teaching the waltz.
  
• Lady Caroline Lamb wrote a private letter in 1812 saying that the waltz was being danced at private balls of the fashionable set, though it was excluded from public balls.
  
• Lord Byron, well known for his extravagant lifestyle, wrote a private letter in 1811 complaining about the dance being immoral and castigating the nobility for dancing it.
  

So, it’s correct that no mention is made of the waltz in any of Austen’s books, and it’s equally true that she never danced it herself. It’s also true that most of the Regency and Austen-related sites I consulted tended to get a little huffy about daring to speak of a waltz being danced before 1815-1816, when visitors from the continent, as well as Wellington’s officers returning after Waterloo, introduced the dance to London society. But it seems tenable that the waltz might be danced at private balls before that time even if it was regarded as too scandalous for public balls until later. However, the waltz was derived from a country dance, and I was dismayed to find that my vision of Darcy and Elizabeth whirling across the floor to the strains of “The Blue Danube” had to be tempered somewhat by reality. Oh, well. Maybe next time…

Q
Is Darcy’s statement about bloodletting
—
when he called Dr. Palmer a fool for bleeding Anne de Bourgh
—
really believable? Wasn’t bloodletting the accepted treatment to let out the bad humours?

A
It’s correct that bleeding a patient to cure infirmities such as leprosy, plague, pneumonia, and other illnesses has a long history, dating back thousands of years. Considering the idiocy (at least to our modern eyes) of draining life-essential blood from an ailing patient, it will come as no surprise that the procedure killed more people than it cured. But the procedure continued to be prescribed well after the time of this story since physicians were reluctant to abandon an accepted practice. For example, France imported forty million leeches in the 1830’s for the purpose of bleeding patients, and the procedure was even recommended in a medical textbook as late as 1923.

Nevertheless, there is adequate history for progressive scientists and physicians to discourage the draining of blood earlier than the period of this story since William Harvey, an English physician who was the first to describe completely the pumping of blood through the body by the heart, disproved the basis of bloodletting as early as 1628. So I think that this story’s Dr. Ian Douglas might well have prescribed against it and convinced his good friend Fitzwilliam Darcy of the same.

Q
Why didn’t Darcy put an announcement of his engagement in the London papers? Marriages were always announced in
The Times
or
The Courier,
but what about engagements?

A
In doing research on another topic, I stumbled across the fact that marriages were almost always announced in the newspapers but engagements were not. The engaged couple were supposed to inform their family and friends, but the sources I found stated that they had never found an engagement announcement in one of the London papers. By contrast, as Mrs. Bennet says in
Pride and Prejudice
, it was essential that a marriage be announced, and she complained that the announcement of Lydia’s marriage was inadequate since it said nothing about her father or her home.

Q
Why was the Earl of Matlock’s son introduced as Viscount Henry Fitzwilliam? And why was his wife introduced as Lady Cynthia Fitzwilliam, while his mother was simply Lady Matlock?

A
This one took some research, and I sure hope I got it right. As the eldest son and the heir presumptive to his father’s earldom, Henry gets a courtesy title as the next lower ranking peer to an earl, which is a viscount. And, since I assumed the Earl of Matlock did not have any other noble titles (such as Baron of
Blan
shire), Henry’s courtesy title became Viscount Henry Fitzwilliam. And, since I also assumed that his family matched their eldest son with the daughter of a duke, Cynthia became Lady Cynthia Fitzwilliam, since she had a courtesy title from her father, who ranked higher in the order of precedence than an earl. Otherwise, she would have been simply Lady Fitzwilliam. Phew! Tough interpretation for an ignorant American engineer!

Q
Why do you say that Wickham makes almost nothing as a militia officer? Surely, there must have been some kind of pay or else he wouldn’t have used what little money he had left to buy a commission.

A
In Regency England, the regular army would normally be tasked with the mundane chores of suppressing insurrection and rioting, but that task fell to the militia in time of war. A form of conscription was used to fill the ranks of the ordinary soldiers (as the British called their enlisted men), with each parish drawing up lists of adult males, who were then selected by ballot to serve. Officers, however, came from the local land-owning gentry and were directly related to the amount and value of the property they or their family owned, and their commissions were not purchased as were those of the regulars. They drew an allowance, but this was to cover expenses since their primary source of income would be derived from their property. I always wondered how and why Wickham joined the militia since he would thus not be paid. I can only suppose it was yet another temporary stopgap for a man without means since he would be assumed to be from the gentry and could thus live on credit for a period of time. But Austen must have had a reason, since one of her brothers was in the militia, even if she never states that reason explicitly.

Q
Why do you think Mr. Bennett would not have invested any of his meagre monies in The Funds?

A
In Mr. Bennet’s case, he admits in
Pride and Prejudice
that he spent all his income instead of providing a dowry for his daughters, so he really didn’t have any spare change to invest. But, from what I gathered when researching the point, it appears that very few gentlemen with money invested in the Funds did not draw their income. The concept of compound interest was just getting started, as was the idea of people from the upper classes making their money in something other than property, which was the classical indication of wealth. But the Industrial Revolution was just around the corner, and many people (and not all of them wealthy) made fortunes by investing in the new inventions that made Britain an industrial powerhouse and funded the transition from being an isolated island to a worldwide empire.

Q
Why wouldn’t Bingley accompany Darcy to Netherfield where he might find Jane desirable as he did in
Pride and Prejudice
? It seems rather like he didn’t ever care for her, which seems contradicted by the original events.

A
In this story line, Darcy doesn’t learn of his mistaken opinion of Jane’s affections. He logically concluded she was disinterested, and he has learned nothing to change his opinion. He makes the offer to Bingley to go to Netherfield with him, but Bingley, believing what Darcy said of Jane’s indifference, sees no reason to accept Darcy’s offer. [In Austen’s novel, Darcy confesses the error of his interference and persuades Bingley to accompany him so he can observe Bingley in company with Jane and confirm what Elizabeth told him during her vituperative comments at the Parsonage.]

I don’t see Bingley as a man of deep passions like Darcy, who clearly agonized for months over his rejection by Elizabeth. That’s not a terrible description, since I also see Bingley as being capable of finding happiness with any number of amiable young ladies, which certainly fits the description of Georgiana Darcy.