Chapter 35
A lamp was needed to dress by since the sun was still just peeking over the hills. LizE stole out the front door and let herself onto the Rosings property through the front gate; she wanted to retrieve her pack but wished to avoid any of the Rosings family.
It was just light enough to see as she gingerly made her way up the driveway and then headed away from the house. It was cool and she shivered a bit but took in the change of scenery, illuminated differently by the first light of the early morning. Her trip went quickly and her equipment was where she left it, a shine of dew on the backpack but otherwise all okay and accounted for. She turned and headed back to the parsonage taking some lesser-used trails just in case Will Darcy might choose one last ramble before heading south.
She could see the fence, though not the house, when she heard him call her name. She turned to look, not seeing anyone. He called again and she noticed he was further down the fence along a small path. His posture spoke of a man in control of himself and she realized she could not run if she wished because he was between her and home. LizE could not fathom what he wished to say to her; she marched down the almost invisible path until she was a meter away.
He stood stiffly, his face unreadable, his posture that of the business man that she had met and loathed in the fall. "I had hoped to meet you before I left. Will you honor me by reviewing this?" And he held up a folded piece of paper. She looked at it with surprise. She could not recall the last time she had seen loose paper, a letter. Her father had a half dozen treasured old letters from ancestors, but paper had not been used in her or her father's lifetime to communicate. Her mind was a whirlwind as to what was on the paper; curiosity won out and she took it. He bowed, keeping his eyes all the time on the ground and then disappeared.
The letter was actually three sheets of mismatched paper, two plain and one with lines on it covered with a scrawling writing. Apparently somewhere in all that schooling of hisWill Darcy, future CEO, had been taught joined-up writing and not just printing as most schoolkids. Given the mismatched paper and the date of yesterday, she had to image he had ransacked Rosings House looking for paper and pen to compose a letter. But why? Why such an endeavor? Why not comm her like everyone else? The truth, she had to admit to herself, was that she would not have read any comms from him and most likely would have deleted the comm upon receipt of such a missive from him no matter how much he might plead in the first line for her to read it.
LizE turned back into Rosings Park and found yet another tree to perch beneath and began to read.
"Have no fear that I will repeat any offer or bring up any mention of feelings which were so disgusting to you. I do not intend to harm you nor do I intend to humble myself by ever repeating them. For both our sakes, let us forget them and that the event ever happened. I write to you in such an odd way as my sense of justice demands it. You accused me yesterday of two different offenses which I consider of very different magnitude. The first was that regardless of how either felt I separated Chaz from your sister. The second is that I had ruined, that I had deprived, George Wickham of all that was his due to him from me, my family and the Darcy Rail Company. Compared to ruining a man's entire livelihood, depriving him of his birthright and his future, separating two people who had only known each other a few weeks can have no comparison.
"The vehemence with which you argued your points was excessive and you have certainly laid a great deal of blame at my feet. My sense of justice requires that I account for my actions. I will apologize just this once if I say anything that offends you because of my need to defend my actions but I must speak my piece.
"Chaz was smitten with your sister. That much was clear quite as soon as we moved to Meryton. By the day of the party to celebrate his investments at the Netherfield Institute, it was obvious to all of us in the house that this was more than a mere flirtation. I had seen him in love before but never to such an extent. And, by that information given to me when Mr. Lucas stopped us while you and I were talking, I also realized some folks in town even thought them serious enough to consider marriage or some other equivalent (even on so short an acquaintance). All this surprised me because your sister had not struck me as being equally as interested in my friend. I realized I knew little about her and how she felt. Sure, she and I (and you) had been quarantined under the same roof, but she had been ill, and those first dinners at the house were in the early days. My impression of Juno had been of a woman quite devoted to her job and her career and to not much else. I remember Chaz complaining that she kept him to a clock for lunches when they were both at the Netherfield Institute on the same days. To me, this is not the symptom of a woman in love; she even cancelled a number of them.
"But that evening I observed the two of them; while Juno seemed friendly enough she did not appear to return Chaz' affection and interest with any display of feelings that equaled his. Her face and manner were always composed. She seemed a friendly work colleague, not a lover. There were a few other young women that night, especially a Ms. Long, who seemed far more interested in Chaz than your sister. This was my objective observation at the time; I did not set out to find these conclusions so that I might justify myself.
"I demonstrated to him my points and also pointed out the rather untamed, outlandish middle class behavior of your family. Your mother who, pardon me, never seems to hold her tongue, the twins who seem to have no sense of their power to destroy, and your younger sisters who are always running wild. Your family, forgive me, is an odd and eccentric one. But none of these arguments were valid to Chaz until I related what I overheard after the power outage. I had worked hard to step in and fill in all the little gaps a host needs to handle (and which Chaz forgot, as is so like him). After talking to you and concluding my observation of your sister and ensuring that your twin siblings had what they needed for their set-up, I sought out a small room for some solitude and reflection about my friend. Contrary to what you may think, I lay down on a couch and watched the stars outside as I pondered my friend's situation. When the lights went out I still did not move and decided, for once, to let the others handle it. I was joined by someone but did not know who until later; I was afraid I would spook the newcomer by rising up out of the dark. A third person joined us, his comm lighting his way, and it was then that I recognized your sister's voice as she greeted the man. Imagine my surprise when they kissed and embraced. The man said something about regretting being 'distant all week' and 'playing the fool' when he would rather have been close to Juno. There was silence then where I imagine they kissed again. He then told her about the break-in at the Institute and asked her to help and they departed.
"I had a heavy and uneasy talk ahead of me to tell my friend about his girlfriend two-timing him. I tried, that next morning, to simply discourage him from seeing her by persuading him she did not care that much for him but he was so much in love with her that he felt he had enough love for both of them. It was then that I shared what I overheard. He was devastated and it took me many weeks of careful attention to help him recover from such a blow. I enlisted the help of Caro and Lois in persuading him from further pursuit of your sister. I found that we were of like minds. I knew that Juno was in Los Angeles beginning in January, but I kept that from him, and for that I admit some qualms. Caro shared that with me that knowledge, but I felt that Chaz should be spared that tidbit. His devastation over her betrayal had been so great yet there still remains to this day an abiding love for Juno that had he the information she was a short drive away, he might not have been able to stay away and not reopen those wounds I worked so hard to heal. On this subject I have nothing more to say.
"On the far weightier subject of George Wickham I can only refute your accusations by laying out our entire connection. I have known George since we were boys. My father was CEO of Darcy Rail before me. George's father had the same position that Caro Van Hale has now: COO. George's father did his job fairly well but was often distracted by a sickly wife who spent time in and out of various hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. My father felt sorry for George and took him under his wing, doting on him to an extent like an indulgent grandson, even if he and I are only a year apart. I did not know the circumstances of Mrs. Wickham's illnesses until recently.
"It was in our teenaged years that I saw the true nature of George appear, a young man always eager for money, who made friends with a cross-section of people few of us ever wish to meet if it meant that there was a payout at the end. What began with street drugs and pharmaceutics grew into trafficking in body parts. Forgive me if I shock you. I realize you have led a rather sheltered life in Meryton. I had pleaded with my father not to send George to Europe with me but he did which allowed George to expand his contacts overseas. I believe with the Darcy Rail business (and even de Bour Shipping) that George built himself a niche in the buying and selling of body parts. I tried to keep an eye on him in college but my beloved father died and I had to return home. It was always assumed by both my father and his that George would assume his father's place in the company but I feared for his assuming too much control. But when Edward Wickham died in a rail accident (under suspicious circumstances), George came to me to say he wanted nothing to do with Darcy Rail but thought a cash-out would be fair. He agreed to $12 million and I thought I was done with him.
"Four years later after Darcy Rail had its best years in over twenty years I heard from Wickham again. He felt he had been cheated out of his portion of the company. You cannot fault me for sending him out the door. I hoped that would be the last. Some of the implications of his coming to see me were that he had either spent or gambled his money, or paid off his n'er-do-well colleagues. You cannot blame me for not giving him any more money. I now mention something that I wish to have always forgotten, and swear you to secrecy. By writing this by hand I know that I leave no electronic trail I need worry about, but I ask that you also destroy this letter. My sister GEO is ten years my junior and was often around when George and I were growing up. Her memories of George were of a happy, entertaining man, not understanding his vicious and ugly side. He was a willing companion when she was lonely. There was a small circle of cousins, but our parents often did not get along so we were sometimes forbidden to see each other. My mother had died of the Luxor virus like so many others when GEO was a toddler.
"Last summer, between high school and Uni, George was able to contact her and persuade her to have an affair. She felt she was in love and they ran away together. What he did, however, was use her body as an organ donation device. GEO no longer has her left kidney, left lung, or left arm. You see, the left arm has the F.I.D. band. I know now a lot more about what the government uses the F.I.D. band for and how closely they track people. The trafficking in human body parts sounded cruel, but I vaguely imaged that they removed an organ and sent the person on their merry way (perhaps with a cheap synthetic organ as a replacement) but I did not know that it was noted on the F.I.D. But without removing the F.I.D., removing the arm or killing the person, the trafficker cannot harvest the organs. George was not up to murder, he stopped short of that. He gave me back my sister with an artificial kidney, an artificial lung and no left arm.
"You know what society thinks about cyborgs. You know what society thinks about human body parts trafficking, what society thinks about people who would sell body parts for extra cash, so I hired on the black market the absolute best plastic surgeons and AI people that money could buy to restore my sister to a semblance of health, false health.
"She is a shell of her former self, emotionally. She is not the cheery and so often cheeky, young lady she used to be. She is barely passing any of her Uni courses and the trip home for Thanksgiving and Christmas, while doing her some good, has not restored her health and outlook on life. I fear she may never finish Uni and is at such a critical point in her life, at the apex of adulthood, that I wonder what will happen to her. She was destined to take on a role at Darcy Rail, but I fear she may never be fit to do that. My one consolation is her recent creative outlet in watercolors. She is able to paint with both arms, her 'real' and her cyborg arm and it has been the one thing that keeps her going.
"The above, LizE, has been a faithful account of every way George and I have been involved and if you do not outright dismiss it, I hope you will recant your accusations of cruelty to George Wickham. I do not know what he has said to you or the degree of your relationship and given that you could not know about his background as you are not a suspicious person by nature. If you wonder why this letter and why I did not speak up yesterday? It was because I was not in control of myself. If you insist on fact-checking you can ask Ned, he knows the truth about GEO, it was with his help, his contacts, that we were able to patch her up and restore her to health. Should you do so, please be sure to use secure comms.
Adieu, William Henri Gerard Darcy