Page 30 of Moments of Truth
Having thus cleared the first point, I turn to the second—the heavier accusation, because it touches my honour. You have been taught to believe that I, from base jealousy or malice, deprived Mr. Wickham of the means of advancement. That you should think so ill of me, after so brief an acquaintance, has wounded me deeply, but I must submit my account of the truth to your candour.
Mr. Wickham is the son of a most respectable man, long steward to my father, who honoured him with unmerited regard. My father’s affection extended to the son, and he became godfather to the child. That partiality, I admit, sometimes excited in me a boy’s jealousy, but it never lessened my sense of duty. In his will, my father recommended the young man to my protection, bequeathing him a sum of one thousand pounds, and signifying a wish that he should enter the Church, in which he had provided him a valuable living.
Mr. Wickham, however, soon declared his resolution to decline holy orders. He expressed a wish to study the law instead, and represented that the legacy left him would be insufficient for his support. Out of regard for my father’s memory, I consented to give him, insteadof preferment, the sum of three thousand pounds. He accepted the exchange with every appearance of gratitude, and all further claims between us were understood to be cancelled.
For three years, he lived at leisure on this sum, pursuing no profession. At length, impoverished by dissipation, he applied to me again—this time entreating the very living he had renounced. My refusal he represented to others as cruelty and injustice, but could I, in honour, accede to his demand? Having once renounced his claim for a pecuniary equivalent, his pretension was groundless. From that hour, he has not ceased to traduce me wherever credulity or idleness would listen to him.
But even this, painful as it has been, I would have left to time. There is, however, a later event which no longer allows of silence, though I speak of it with extreme reluctance. It concerns the dearest object of my care—my sister Georgiana. A year ago, she, then but fifteen, was placed under the charge of a lady whose character we had no reason to doubt. Mr. Wickham, through her connivance, obtained admission to her intimacy and, by every art of flattery and design, persuaded her to believe herself attached to him. He even prevailed upon her to consent to an elopement—an elopement, Miss Bennet, designed not only to secure her fortune of thirty thousand pounds, but to wound me in the tenderest point.
Happily, my sister’s candour saved her. At the very last moment, she confided in me. I hastened to her, and the scheme was frustrated. The whole affair washushed up, for her sake; but the misery it caused, the disgrace which might so easily have ensued, I leave you to imagine. Of his character, you may now judge for yourself.
These, madam, are the circumstances which you had no means of knowing when you reproached me with cruelty. My desire is not to compel your esteem, nor even to solicit a reconsideration of your refusal; it is only that you may not continue to think me the worst of men. If, after reading this, your opinion of me remains unchanged, I shall bow to it as unalterable. Yet I could not bear to leave you under misapprehensions so injurious to truth.
I ask nothing of your compassion; I solicit only your justice.
I remain, with the sincerest respect,
Your obedient servant,
Fitzwilliam Darcy
Elizabeth’s curiosity was insatiable, yet the weight of the letter was almost oppressive to her spirits. She found herself pausing midway through sentences, her eyes fixed upon the page while her mind laboured to absorb the meaning. At other moments she returned to entire paragraphs, compelled to retrace every line until the sense was firmly secured.
The composition was clear, the hand uncommonly even, the arguments laid out with precision, yet there was too much to be taken in at once. Darcy’s unexpected confession—so wholly unlike what she had anticipated—supplied a dreadful kind of clarity, overturning with relentless force the very foundations on which her judgments had rested.
She pressed herself to continue, but as the catalogue of facts unfolded before her—his admitted errors, his undeniable pride—a painful light was cast upon her own conduct. Elizabeth saw herself guilty of hasty conclusions, of credulity where caution was required, of trusting the charm of one man while condemning the reserve of another. She had prided herself on a discernment superior to that of many around her, imagining her judgment a shield against deceit, and yet she had been deceived—deliberately, artfully—by Mr. Wickham. If Darcy’s fault was pride, her own had been prejudice, and she felt in her bosom which of the two had produced the greater mischief.
Nearly two hours passed as she wandered the quiet alleys of the park, reading and rereading, until every sentence seemed engraved upon her memory. The breeze stirred the branches above, scattering blossoms at her feet like pale confessions from nature itself, and the fragrance of lilac seemed to mingle with the sharp pangs of her remorse. Each line of his defence, each recollection it awakened, pressed more heavily upon her heart. She could not deny that Wickham’s tale, so plausibly told, had been believed with an eagerness almost wilful; and now she must suffer the mortification of owning herself unjust.
At length, when she folded the letter and placed it carefully within her reticule, a kind of clarity, hard won, arose in her mind. It was accompanied not by relief, but by a sober, trembling resolution. She could no longer deny the sincerity that breathed through Darcy’s words, nor dispute the truth they laid bare regarding her own failings. Her prejudice, once worn as armour against disappointment, now lay upon her like a chain she longed to break.
As she turned her steps toward the parsonage, her pace was measured, her countenance thoughtful. The evening sun fellthrough the trees in slanting beams, as though nature herself would illuminate the path she was now resolved to tread—a path toward humility, and, she dared to hope, toward a truer comprehension of Mr. Darcy’s character. With every step she inwardly vowed to regard him henceforth not as the proud tyrant of her imagination, but as a man whose faults, though real, were balanced by virtues of equal magnitude. And if in time her new understanding might lead to forgiveness—of him, and of herself—Elizabeth thought it would be the first true victory over her own heart.
FIVE
For the first time in five weeks, the nearness of the park to the Parsonage felt like a cruel deception. As she arrived at the entrance, Elizabeth drew in a deep, uneven breath, her only prayer being that no one might cross her path to observe the tumult written on her countenance. She hastened up the narrow stairs, closed the chamber door with trembling hands, and pressed her back against it as though the wooden panel might protect her from the storm within. With hurried fingers, she retrieved the letter from the volume she had carried into the park, its folded pages now seeming to burn with the power of all they contained.
Tears welled unbidden as she read, and when at length she had perused the whole once more—indeed, for the third time—Elizabeth’s eyes were red and swollen from weeping. Never in her life had words upon paper wrought such anguish and such illumination together.
What have I done?The thought rose like a cry from her heart, overwhelming her with regret. She had been prejudiced—unthinkingly, obstinately prejudiced—against Mr. Darcy, and worse, she had treated him with injustice. His letter furnished an answer to every charge she had laid at his feet. The bitterest truth of all was that, as she examined his words, she found minor fault in them. Her pride longed to resist, yet her conscience whispered that his actions, however stern, were not undeserving of defence.
At first, she had bristled at his remarks on her family. The tone seemed severe, and in the first flush of indignation, shehad been tempted to resent them. Yet upon the second reading, she could not but acknowledge their justice. With painful clarity, she recalled that evening when her mother’s high spirits—heightened by more wine than prudence allowed—had betrayed her into speeches uncommonly free before strangers. Elizabeth’s cheeks had burned with shame at the time; her remonstrances and Jane’s gentle hints alike had gone unheeded. Could she then wonder that Mr. Darcy, less bound by filial affection, should judge even more harshly what she had suffered to witness with mortification?
Irony pierced her heart. Mrs. Bennet, whose every thought was bent upon securing advantageous matches for her daughters, might well have undone the very happiness she desired to ensure. If her mother’s heedless volubility had truly endangered Jane’s chance of felicity, how grievous would the knowledge be to one who thought of little else but her children’s settlement? Elizabeth, for her part, felt a measure of relief that she was not the cause of Jane’s pain. Strange comfort! That the destruction should be wrought not by her hand, but by the failings of those nearest and dearest.
Yet even amidst her anguish, a small consolation gleamed. Darcy’s explicit apology to Jane softened Elizabeth’s spirit. It bespoke not only candour but a delicacy of conscience which she had once denied him. A tender hope stole over her—that this acknowledgement might, in some providential way, restore Jane’s happiness with Bingley. Elizabeth smiled faintly, picturing her sister’s gentle countenance illumined once again with joy, but the smile vanished almost at once, chased away by a darker tide of guilt.
A wave of shame rushed over her. To think that she, Elizabeth Bennet—who had prided herself on penetration, onreading hearts with ease—had been deceived so entirely by Wickham! She resisted Darcy’s testimony at first, believing his words were but a self-serving defence.How could the engaging, open, gallant Mr. Wickham be guilty of such baseness?Yet as she calmed her spirits and compared each account, the fabric of Wickham’s tale began to unravel. Memory furnished gaps she had too carelessly overlooked: his absence from the dance when discovery might have imperilled him, his artful attentions directed wholly toward herself, his manner of securing her confidence with every studied phrase. What she had once ascribed to chance she now discerned as design.
The deeper she thought, the more glaring grew the inconsistencies. She could not but confess that Wickham’s attentions, which had once flattered her vanity, bore every mark of calculation. She had been chosen, not cherished; singled out, not esteemed. To own herself so misled was bitter indeed, and her anger turned not on Darcy, nor even on Wickham, but upon herself. She who had thought herself clear-sighted had proved most blind.
And yet—here was the humbling of her life. Darcy, whom she had treated with disdain, had met injury with forbearance, restraint with dignity, truth with generosity. She pressed the letter to her breast as if by that act she might atone, whispering a silent, hopeless wish that it had never happened—that she had never spoken, never wounded, never been so unpardonably unjust.
When she reflected on how rude and prejudiced she had been towards Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth scarcely refrained from weeping afresh. She sat upon her bed, the letter spread before her, while tears fell thick and fast upon the page, blurring the ink like a punishment written by her own hand.
In that moment, she longed for nothing more than to fly out of the parsonage, to run after him, to beg forgiveness. The impulse was wild and hopeless, yet it throbbed within her with an urgency she could neither quell nor gratify. How blind she had been—to mistake a good man for a proud one, to trust the words of a scoundrel while closing her ears to sincerity. She had believed a tale so convenient to her resentment, never pausing to grant Mr. Darcy the smallest chance of explanation, nor allowing herself the humility of doubt.
Elizabeth rose unsteadily from the bed, pressing a hand to her aching breast. Her eyes were sore and swollen; each tear had seemed wrung from a conscience newly awakened, and the torment was yet unspent.
