A fortnight after Darcy arrived at Netherfield, a letter from his banker arrived with the morning post. Darcy finished chewing a slice of bacon as he took the paper from Bingley's footman and sliced the letter open. Mr. Hoare's stationery was heavy and smooth to the touch. Darcy stared at the paper without unfolding it; he knew what news it would contain.
Miss Bingley and her brother squabbled about what Bingley had worn to a ball the previous season. Bingley laughed at Miss Bingley. "Nay, I swear I will wear buckskin and a riding jacket to Lady Rutledge's ball next season."
The letter was simple and businesslike. Mr. Wickham had taken possession of the thirty thousand pounds of Georgiana's dowry. The funds had been transferred to Child's Bank.
He had lost the money when Wickham and Georgiana found a blacksmith in Gretna Green to witness their vows. Darcy had accepted its loss already, but now it was really gone. Years and years. It would take years and years to recoup the funds.
Damn Georgiana. Damn her. He sent the money. Why didn't she send him a note which described how she fared?
Maybe Wickham prevented her. Maybe he beat her to gain an additional revenge.
Darcy crumpled the letter. He squeezed the spiky edges of the white ball into his palm.
Damn.
He wanted to pound the small ball against the table until something broke. Darcy closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe evenly.
"Is it bad news about Georgie?" Bingley set his fork and knife aside, and he looked at Darcy with a sympathetic frown.
Darcy stiffly nodded.
Miss Bingley exclaimed, "Oh! I hope she is well. Please, say she is. I was wrong before to despise her! She is a sweet girl who was taken advantage of by that vicious fortune hunter. She is still so young. I wish we could help her."
Darcy stared at her coldly. "So you decided that my fortune is worth such a sister?"
Miss Bingley had expected such a response to a sudden turn about. She had practiced in the mirror and wrinkled her face so tears came out. "Do not insult me so! I have feelings, Mr. Darcy, I do. I remember your sister. She is a shy thing, and she only wished to show and receive affection. I have been too blinded by what society says, but don't say I have no heart!"
Bingley and Darcy blinked at her, and Darcy pulled at the tight wrap of his cravat. "Miss Bingley, I apologize. Do not cry. My temper ran away with me, and I lashed at you."
Darcy almost said he was sure Miss Bingley did have a sincere affection for Georgiana, but while her tears made him guilty, he still thought she was lying.
Bingley said skeptically, "That is a fine performance. She may be a sweet shy thing, but Georgiana also is a damned fool. Darcy is there news of her?"
"Wickham has the money, all thirty thousand pounds."
"Oh." Bingley said, "After the dinner party at the Lucases tonight, we will drink ourselves insensible. What do you say?"
"That will hardly bring the money back."
"The point is to forget the money."
Miss Bingley said, "Does it bother you so? Please, I wish to understand. I know it is a great sum, more than my dowry, but Lady Anne had been the daughter of an earl."
"Four years. I have more debt than I did four years ago. It feels as though I have done nothing in that time."
Miss Bingley replied, "That is not true! You have done a great deal. There is that pretty mill, and the new breeding areas for sheep and cows, and you have repaired all the bridges about Pemberley. It will not take so long to pay this back. You can do it. That is what I admire about you — you always succeed. You shall again."
"I know. But it is hard." Darcy shook his head. He would not have believed Miss Bingley could say something which made him feel better.
Bingley stood up. "Enough of this. Caroline, you'll make me gag if you carry on in this manner. Darcy, we have a full day of shooting and drinking."
Once they were in the forest walking behind the gameskeeper, Bingley said, "You should not trust anything my sister says. She is like Father was, except without the intelligence. She'll say anything to get her way."
"That is not a kind way to speak of your sister. After all, she has a heart."
Bingley laughed. "She hasn't gulled you."
Miss Bingley had a dowry of twenty thousand pounds; the same amount he had borrowed from Bingley. It was a great amount of capital. It was worth years of the strictest economy. If he married her, he would no longer worry whether he could protect the estate.
The idea of actually marrying her now brooded in his mind, and Darcy could not force it away.
That evening Elizabeth arrived at Lucas Lodge with bubbly enthusiasm coloring her cheeks. She of course wasn't in love with Mr. Darcy. He did not like her appearance. However, he enjoyed her conversation, and he was as clever as he was handsome. Which was very.
This night Mr. Darcy frowned and seemed distracted. He said even less than normal, and he would occasionally rub his face and sigh. What was the matter? Had he heard something further about the sister who ran away with the steward's son? Was someone ill?
Miss Bingley stood near Darcy and spoke to him with sympathetic whispers. Unlike the other times Elizabeth had seen the two together, Darcy actually paid attention to her and showed real smiles.
Surely not.
Mr. Darcy was too clever to marry such a woman.
A quarter of an hour later, Charlotte convinced Miss Bingley to play for them. Mr. Darcy sprawled in a low red armchair in the corner of the room, and he stared at the piano with an unhappy frown.
Elizabeth hoped to make him smile, and she walked across the room and pulled a wooden chair next to his seat. Darcy nodded at her but continued to attend to the music. The strains produced by Miss Bingley were smooth and Elizabeth heard few errors. This corner of the room was dusty and a faint smell of paint lingered from when the Lucases recently redecorated.
Darcy recalled how Georgiana loved to play for him. Miss Bingley showed a well-trained stylistic perfection, but there was no passion for the music in her play. If he married her, the expensive piano purchased for Georgiana would not go entirely to waste.
Miss Elizabeth sat next to him, and he could not smile at her bright presence. She was right that he was too miserable, but he could not undo the tangled anxiety about his sister and his fortunes.
Elizabeth at last spoke, "Mr. Darcy, this is hardly such a piece to evoke such a deep sigh."
Darcy's eye was drawn to her. He saw the peach skin of her elbows, dim in the candlelight, between where the long formal glove bunched up around her wrists and where the sleeve of her dress began. She leaned forward. The folds of her dress outlined her knee. Darcy met her eyes and involuntarily smiled at the concern in them. "Miss Bingley plays — It is… played well."
"Please. Something bothers you. If 'tis not a matter which ought to be kept private, tell me what makes you sigh and scowl."
Miss Elizabeth smelled of roses. She had placed herself as close to him as was proper, and her perfume comforted him. Her yellow gloved hand rested on the arm of his chair.
Darcy surprised himself by telling the truth. "My sister has great skill with the piano. She loves to play very much. Many nights, once the business of the day was done, she eagerly displayed what she practiced that morning."
"Oh. You worry for her a great deal. It torments you that you can no longer protect her."
Darcy nodded. "Even though — It still seems natural to care for her — she behaved abominably, she betrayed me and my family name in the worst way possible, and she set herself outside the bounds of respectable society. But — I love her dearly. I have, ever since she was set in my arms as a crying babe and smiled at me."
Elizabeth ached for him and impulsively shot her hand out to squeeze his wrist, and then with a blush she released it and drew back.
The way Darcy softly smiled back at her made Elizabeth's stomach flutter.
He said, "Others think — I am told I should care nothing for her anymore — all of society, even my uncle, who has done so much for me. Yet, I will not."
He spoke like a solid rock that could not be moved. Elizabeth replied, "You should not. You should not — if society demands you think ill of one who nature has made dear, you — I admire you. You should still love her."
Elizabeth's praise embarrassed Darcy. He would send a letter to Georgiana. He did not know if Wickham would allow his sister to reply, but even though he despised Wickham. he would try.
"Thank you. It — perhaps it is odd, since I always trust my own opinions — your approval, it makes me more certain of myself. I had been unsure whether to mail Georgiana. Some part of me thinks she should return first, begging for forgiveness. But I need to know if she is well."
"I am glad you will. It is natural to care. To throw a fifteen-year-old girl who had been under your protection away from your affections would be unnatural and wrong."
"She is so young, I blame myself. I failed to supervise her, and I failed to raise her properly. I live an austere life. I did not indulge her enough because I wanted her to learn to be like me. I had not recalled how unpleasant it is to appear poorly before your peers."
Darcy's visible melancholy returned. He stared at his lap.
Elizabeth wished to embrace him, to hold him like she would hold her sisters or Charlotte when they were hurt. "You cannot — you cannot blame yourself for not knowing — you tried — you tried with everything to raise her well. It was ill luck, or your sister's own character — not a lack of affection or effort on your part."`
"My sister's character is not at fault." Darcy spoke almost sharply, "She was led on by a foolish affection — she was raised by our father to see Wickham almost as a brother. She is still just a child. When she found him in reduced circumstances… I should have known I could not trust Mrs. Younge. If I had hired a proper companion, the meeting never would have occurred."
"You could not have foreseen —"
"Her letter — the letter which told me she had married — it said, 'he needs me more than you.' I do not doubt that his needs are great, but — he swore vengeance against me. When I would not give him all he wished following my father's death, he swore to avenge himself. He has no affection for her. My poor sister — to love a man who cares nothing for her, who exploited her naivety, a man who will waste all her fortune on cards and other women, like he wasted every other resource given to him —"
Elizabeth briefly squeezed his hand again. "Mr. Darcy, do not make yourself miserable. Life can go on through unpleasantness. Happiness is a choice for her as much as for you"
"How can I choose to be happy when it is my fault. My guilt."
"Do not be ridiculous. She made her choice. If you cannot accept that, I will grow quite cross with you both. You should still love her, and forgive her, and even support her, if you can without letting Mr. Wickham abuse you, but at fifteen she knew what she was about. She is not a child any longer."
"But…" Darcy looked away from Elizabeth in discomfort. He was not sure if he saw Georgiana as she was, or if he could only see the affectionate child. The affection in her letter.
"Do you remember how you were at that age? Would you have obeyed your own reason or your father's judgement?"
Darcy smiled weakly. "I was foolish and I thought myself very adult, but I was wrong. She is my sister. A woman. It is a gentleman's duty to protect the weaker sex."
"Absurd fancy. The weaker sex. Do we seem so weak in matters of the heart? We shall make our own fool choices as surely as any young buck will. It is no favor to us to pretend we are insensible creatures not capable of that. And it is a vanity to pretend men are sensible. You should have chosen her companion better, and Wickham is a vile man, and I believe your sister to be as good a woman as a naïve girl of fifteen can be, but do not take more guilt upon you than is your due."
"Some guilt is my due then?"
"A little, I suppose. You would not believe me if I said you had no guilt. She was but fifteen and under your care. A girl of five and ten is no longer a child, but she is hardly full grown either. Far more guilt, in my view, belongs to the Church of Scotland which allows such marriages without a guardian's consent. But there is no benefit to agonizing about their role. Think on the past only as it gives you pleasure. When you have a daughter of your own, you shall not make the same mistakes. It does your sister no benefit for you to feel as much guilt as you do, to have the absurd belief it is entirely your fault, or even mostly, and if she is as good as you believe her to be, she would hate it if she knew."
"As a lad, after I discovered what my father was, I thought he would completely run out of money and have nothing left to care for her, and I would need to ensure Georgie was well. Miss Elizabeth, have you ever held a child in your arms and known you must protect her? When she was born — my mother laid Georgiana in my arms and told me I would need to be a man and help care for my sister. And then she smiled at me."
The concerto Miss Bingley played ended. She saw Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth sitting next to each other and she walked to them with a wide smile that did not reach her eyes.
"Miss Elizabeth — my performance? You must have noticed the little errors and fudges I made. I know you did, Mr. Darcy — Mr. Darcy is a great lover of music."
Darcy said, "On the contrary, I noticed no errors. Your technique is superb."
Miss Bingley said to Elizabeth, "I have heard you play a little — the piano is empty; I would dearly like to hear you perform again."
Likely. Miss Bingley hoped Elizabeth's performance would be lacking in comparison to her own. Elizabeth did not care. She was choked by emotion from her conversation. Nothing she said, none of the truisms or trite proverbs anyone could say would undo the brute fact that Mr. Darcy loved his sister dearly, and she had made a terrible mistake.
Elizabeth sat on the stool and leafed through the pieces of music on the piano until she found a song by Robert Burns whose chorus captured her emotion. Elizabeth sung with feeling.
Canst thou leave me thus, my Katy,
Canst thou leave me thus, my Katy;
Well though knowest my aching heart.