**Written for FanFic100!**
Ruined
071. Broken.
"This is a bad business, a bad business indeed," Miss Betsey Trotwood sighed. She was perched upon the seat of her fine old carriage, snapping the back of her grey pony, "for what may be the last time," she thought.
Miss Betsey did not happen to notice the townspeople, tradesmen, and truant boys diving out of the path of her chaise, for when that woman was deep in thought, she did not consider herself obliged to give much attention to the road or pedestrians. Particularly when her thoughts involved Mr. Dick, whom she had left at home, sobbing among the boxes they were soon to take away to London. "But he still has his kite and his memorial," she insisted, with a distinct unease, "and that will console him well enough."
Having by this time looked about her at her surroundings, Miss Betsey found herself in the shade of a certain Tudor house, and quickly checked the grey pony in its step. With her customary briskness, she made her way down the little walk she had travelled so often before – unchanged, except that it was now in view of a new office which had established itself in the garden, where no one wanted it, like a fungus that had grown up over night. Miss Trotwood allowed herself to sneer in its direction, knowing pretty well there was no one inside to-day.
We must betray a little secret of Miss Betsey's, which has some bearing on this episode. It is that, for some hours that morning, Miss Betsey had lain in wait in a butcher's shop on the main street, which happened to be situated opposite the town bank; and when she spied (from her station between a few sides of beef) the ugly, shambling figure of a red-haired gentleman enter into that bank, Miss Trotwood betook herself, with utmost speed, to Mr. Wickfield's home for a private conversation.
Now, she knocked imperiously on the front door, expecting Agnes to appear, pale and tired and smiling, no doubt, on the other side. She was surprised to find, after another knock, Mr. Wickfield himself instead. He went very white when he saw her, and silent – Miss Betsey took this opportunity to see herself inside. She hadn't a moment to spare – who knew when the creature that ruled this house would return?
"Miss Trotwood! This…this is an unexpected pleasure, to be sure!" the gentleman cried – sounding as much like his old clerk as Miss Trotwood did not care to hear.
"Thank you for that, Mr. Wickfield," she returned, "although I think we both know, you and I, that I am not here on pleasure. And I would appreciate plain speech today, if it is all the same to you."
He said "of course," in a faint tone, and Miss Betsey perceived he was unwell. But it could not be helped now.
"Where is Agnes?" Miss Betsey thought to ask presently.
"She – she is keeping her room. Shall I call her?" He looked almost eager to do so – as if she would help him to avoid the conversation now at hand.
"No, no, she does not need to hear our conversation; it is best she is left out of it entirely. Yesterday," Miss Betsey pursued, "I received a letter from your office. I had the satisfaction of knowing it was from you, at least – it was not written in that too-perfect, practiced hand – but it was written when you were unwell, which its appearance tells as well as its message." She drew from beneath her cloak the letter in question, and handed it to Mr. Wickfield. She saw, without satisfaction, that her suspicions were correct – it was plain he did not even remember writing it at all.
Miss Trotwood let him read it, and she let him respond to it, too, without so much as saying a word.
"I…I am at a loss," he said, at last.
"I am not surprised, sir. I think you have been rather regularly at a loss, of late. Whether you remember the letter or not, however, is of no matter now. The damage is done, without your claims of robbery and other things you write of which you have not done (not to me, at any rate), and which shall only incriminate you further if they were ever to be revealed. I suppose you wrote this letter at the time to lighten your burden of guilt, and I hope it helped you there, but now I think it is best we be rid of it, once and for all."
As she spoke, Miss Trotwood had marched into the little drawing room, Mr. Wickfield feebly following her, in search of a candle, but she found none, it being an early hour in the day. Now, spying a merry, innocent fire gurgling in the fireplace, she took the letter out of Mr. Wickfield's hand, and threw it into the red flames in one swift movement.
"Miss Trotwood!" Mr. Wickfield cried, regaining his senses at last. "What have you done!"
"I burned it." She said no more than that.
The letter sent little white flakes, like winter snow, up the chimney, and Mr. Wickfield's face seemed to relax – as if he thought, with the letter gone, all was over, and Miss Trotwood would go away.
But Miss Trotwood, for her part, was five thousand pounds lighter than she once was, and she felt that in exchange for that loss, she ought to be able to say something she had had on her mind for quite some time now.
"With Someone out of the way, for a little while longer, I think we can be free to have a conversation, Mr. Wickfield."
"Oh, Miss Trotwood!" Mr. Wickfield, his hand over his face, sat down in his chair by the fireplace. He was very weighed down, she could see; but she did not wish to sit, and remained standing over him. "I – you do not know what – what torment I have suffered."
"I have a pretty good idea, I imagine."
"He…I dare not speak of it! He is gone, and I can trust you to keep my secrets, and yet I dare not speak of it in my own house! How low my business has fallen since you first met me – how I have been brought down, by the clerk I raised up! He, who has professed so much humility these past ten years – he has humbled me, and I am powerless to stop him."
Miss Betsey listened to Mr. Wickfield divest himself of his sorrows, with her face only half-tinged by pity. She was quite silent, until he was finished, and was quiet a few moments more, before she made her reply to her old lawyer.
"Mr. Wickfield," she said, not without regret in her tone, "you speak of the wrongs that red-haired scoundrel has done you, and I know them well enough, and have seen him in his execution of them. But Uriah Heep is that breed of scavenging villain who preys only on those who have made themselves, of their own choices, weak enough for his control and twisting. I admit that I have put myself in his reach, and suffered for it, by entrusting my little worldly stock, quite gone now, into my poor weak manager's hands – and I have learned not to do it again. You, Mr. Wickfield, have weakened yourself, spirit and intellect, by means we both know. Uriah Heep may only continue to "corkscrew and serpentine" you so long as you are unable to resist him – and you alone have the means of defending yourself against his machinations, should you choose to do so. There now," she concluded, "what do you think of that?"
"Miss Trotwood – I suppose what you say is…is true. But you do not know the root of my weakness! These past twenty years, I have suffered in the loss of one who was so dear to me! " He pointed at the portrait of a fair young woman, hanging upon the wall. "It is in her death that my shortcomings are engendered. If wine were not my weakness, Miss Trotwood, my pain would take its place!"
Miss Trotwood looked at the picture, too; its effect on her, as it was on many people, was to put her in mind of someone else. She remarked, "You are not the only one who has had to persevere without Mrs. Wickfield's influence, sir." And she directed a short, sharp nod at the portrait on the wall. "I wonder what she would think of you, now?"
Mr. Wickfield could say no more, and Miss Betsey had said all she could. "You shall have to write to me in London," she told him, "for I have rented out my house, and henceforth I shall be staying with my nephew."
The poor broken man made some movement with his hand, by way of acknowledgement, and Miss Betsey, her own hand on the latch of the door, turned to him one last time. She said, in a gentler tone, "You have looked for the motives in every one you meet, Mr. Wickfield. All I ask is that you examine yours."
Miss Betsey let herself out. The old gentleman was still sitting by the fire as she drove away to the house where she had left her poor companion, and the few worldly possessions the old man's weakness had spared them.