Since Mr. and Mrs. Wickham's marriage, Lydia had given birth three times; first to their daughter Evelyn, the next year to their son Alan, and five years after that to the twins Claudia and Rita.

"MO-O-O-M! Make Claudia give me back my face powder!"

"Rita, let go of my arm!"

"Ow! Mom, Claudia bit me! She bit my arm!"

"Hey! Ow! Stop kicking me, Rita!"

"Girls, settle down, you're breaking the furniture again!" Mrs. Wickham pleaded

In the next room, Mr. Wickham rolled his forty-seven-year-old eyes and groaned. Twenty years after their wedding, his wife Lydia was still the emotionally weak and insensible woman he married. Each child that Mr. and Mrs. Wickham had was exponentially more prejudiced, more proud, and more senseless than the last. In the case of the twins, though, Mr. Wickham thought, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

"The twins are just so awful, Dad," seventeen-year-old Evelyn Wickham said to her father. "At least Alan had enough of a brain to be able to put back together whatever he dismantled half the time."

"Yes, and he had the good sense enough to run away to Prussia and rid us of his vexing tinkering. There won't be a single clock or music box between Poland and France that won't escape his toolkit," replied Mr. Wickham soberly. "Of course, I deserve every second of the last twenty years."

"Right; we've already talked about this," said Evelyn. "Anyway, we should be getting ready to head south for the reunion. We'll be leaving tomorrow morning, right?"

"That's the intent," agreed Mr. Wickham.

Late the next afternoon, the Wickham family climbed into the family carriage.

"Claudia, if you hadn't taken so long to find your shoes, we could've left early this morning like we were supposed to!"

"Rita, you're the one that didn't get out of bed 'till lunch time!"

When the Wickhams arrived at Pemberley, the site of the Bennet family reunion, the twins rushed out of the carriage as if a swarm of hornets had just escaped. Lydia Wickham followed after, reciting her futile appeal for them to "please settle down!" Mr. Wickham and Evelyn stepped out last.

Mr. Darcy came to welcome them, saying, "Although our previous shared experiences predisposes me to despise you, Wickham, my position as host of this reunion obliges me to welcome you personally." Lowering his voice, Darcy added, "I do hope you can keep your girls on a tight leash today. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's hearts are becoming quite weak, as you know. At least let those sufferable little demons spare this party of their destructive fits of idiocy."

"Heaven knows I deserve it far more than anyone else present," Wickham responded.

At this point it would have been proper for Mr. Darcy to return to the main body of guests, yet instead he remained in front of Wickham. After a thoughtful pause, Mr. Darcy remarked, "Nothing can override the severity of the damage you have incurred upon my family and the Bennet family all those years ago, and as such I will always recall you without fondness for your egocentrism, lack of responsibility, and disrespect towards those who mean you well. Even so, I will say that you have shown exceptionally strong resolve in fulfilling your post as head of this family of yours, which quite clearly causes you so much woe. In fact, your resolve is such that I feel I must inquire as to what on Earth could possibly compel you to remain with Lydia."

Darcy's complement stunned Wickham. "Ah, but you see, my old friend," Wickham answered, "if I were to annul my marriage to Lydia, not only would I disgrace all the wonderful people here today, but I would also condemn myself to eternal punishment."

Wickham's comment seemed to intrigue Darcy, who asked Wickham to elaborate further.

"Well, it all began with the incident twenty years ago," Wickham began.

"You mean your elopement with Lydia."

"Yes, the elopement," Wickham continued. "I came to realise that it was absolutely imperative that I marry Lydia. I was so infernally deep in debt that the only way that I was ever going to be able to settle my debts was for you to pay them for me—for which I am still immensely grateful."

"I hope you realise that the only reason I made use of that absurdly large amount of money to pay off your debts was because my love for Elizabeth is greater than my resentment towards you."

"Ah, now that gives me hope."

"It would not if you could fathom the extent of my love for Elizabeth."

Wickham was becoming frustrated. "Let me continue my account. After I married Lydia and after you settled my debts, Lydia and I went on our honeymoon to Scotland. It was during our travels through the northern countryside that I came to know just what a buffoon Lydia is. Whenever we came to a town or even a minor hamlet, Lydia rushed in, searching for shops from which to purchase expensive new dresses and balls to which to wear them. Just a few days into the trip, our finances ran short, but Lydia insisted that we continue our journey across Scotland. Upon our return to the south I was again in debt, a loathsome condition that I have not escaped for any duration of consequence since then."

"Enlighten me as to how Lydia's stubbornness influenced you."

"You see, it was from Lydia that I learnt that I never really wanted to spend the rest of my life with any of the women I have ever pursued. Once I knew of the dread responsibility that invariably comes with marriage, I shuddered at having ever sought any women at all. Lydia's gross over-spending and crude behaviour convinced me that all of the silly women I had known were similar to her. Thus I sought the one career in which one absolutely never interacts with such silly women."

"You already were a soldier," Darcy said, "unless that too was one of your deceptions."

"Indeed I was already a soldier, but it was through my career as a soldier—indirectly, of course—that so many silly young women came to the dashing young man in the handsome regimentals in pursuit of mutual ruin. Rather, after wedding Lydia, I turned towards the path that I was meant for all along."

"So you chose the clergy. Again, I note your resolve: you have remained with the Church every day since then."

"As a Christian man, I was of course already familiar with reconciliation, but it wasn't until I entered the full immersion in ecclesiastical thought that I fully understood the word. Reconciliation means spending the last sixty or so years of your life with the most insensible woman on Earth as penance for having eloped with her and spoiling the reputations of myriad other innocent young women, tainting each of their lives and hurting their sisters' chances of finding eligible young men. Reconciliation means having a son that tore apart half the estate just to find out how various mechanisms worked before running away to the continent to study mechanics. I have two twin daughters that physically and verbally abuse each other daily while draining my savings with their incessant over-spending. My old friend, I have spent the last twenty years in agony, yet it is an agony I must endure if I am to redeem my place in Heaven."