Chapter 57
Upon exiting the Gardiner's residence Darcy now felt the full weight of his previous actions. Wickham may not have been his responsibility, but Darcy realized that his own willingness to solve problems with coin had been Wickham's means to a debauched lifestyle and an unrepentant attitude towards those he had harmed. If he had not continuously provided the coin, he acknowledged that there was quite a number of people that would have been spared, had Wickham not been prevented from meeting with justice. Had he sat in a debtors' prison for his excess, he could have neither hurt his sister nor Elizabeth's, or the countless lives in between, or beforehand.
It had been selfish to bankroll Wickham's ill endeavors. However justifiable it seemed, every time he had intervened, he had assisted in creating new victims. His excuses had suited well enough each time. He did not wish to reveal the matter to his father, citing his wish not to disappoint the man, but Darcy understood now, what he had not before, that he feared the pain of his father's rejection. It finally hit him, perhaps because he felt secure in Elizabeth's love, freeing him to admit to his insecurities; but he could confess to himself now that he did not wish to be dismissed, appearing jealous of a servant's son, as had happened when they were adolescents.
Looking back now, Darcy knew that his father would have intervened with the first ruined girl, ensuring there would never be a second. Nor had Darcy need of paying his gambling debts. His father, though in the midst of the illness that would later take his life, would have still ensured it never happened again. At the time, he was concerned his father's spirits would sink further, but in truth, he needed to know the whole of Wickham's character. It may have rallied him with a sense of purpose, but either way, he had no right to make that decision by default, it was rightfully his father's decision to make. He would not have left a living to a man so ill-suited for life in the church.
He thought he was done with Wickham after the matter of the living had been dealt with. Never had he believed money had been so well spent but to keep that man from the church. Would he really have troubled himself to become ordained though, even with the promise of a living? It was unlikely that Wickham had even considered it, as he knew him well enough to know he would never put such a man in charge of a parish. Either way, he was not gone, and likely could have harmed Georgianna far worse had he remained so near their home.
After Georgianna's disappointment at Ramsgate, he was fearful of antagonizing such a man while his sister's reputation precariously remained respectable only by the virtue of that man's word. Knowing he was leaving open the door to extortion, especially when his sister came out, he could not do but what he had believed he must on her behalf, or so he thought; fear ruling his reason at the time. In retrospect, Wickham feared debtors prison enough, that had he made this apparent - that even a whisper of Georgianna's name and his together, whether it initiated with his mouth or not, and he would find himself in a cell, free to speak with whatever company he wished to keep there - would surely have been enough to silence the man.
He had been a selfish coward; he saw it clearly now, in a way he could not when he was a younger man. He regretted it most bitterly, as Georgianna and Elizabeth were the victims of it, not himself, who had faltered, where Elizabeth surely would not have, she would have stared George down and insisted his father do something. Their pain and shame were felt because he feared his father choosing another over him. How foolish he had been, a man in body but not in spirit. He would not do so again, whatever the cost, Wickham would not be given way to. His power to manipulate and extort the Darcy family was now at an end.
Hope you enjoyed your daily dose of classic, brooding Darcy.