Page 2 of Mrs Darcy’s Dilemma

“You paint an alluring picture indeed, but you must know that a life devoted to pleasure only will soon lose its savour. I have energy; I must be doing; and I want to be useful. You talk as if you had not the example of my father, always doing good works, before you.”

“Oh, yes! I only want you to be happy and not have a dreary life.”

“Upon my word, Jane, you are more solicitous for my enjoyment than I am myself. Depend on it, a man wants work.”

“Well! I am glad I am not a man and have to have a profession. I should not like it at all.”

“But you will have a profession, Jane, surely; you will marry.”

“Marry! I suppose I must; but I should much rather live in your parsonage and keep house for you. I cannot care about any man more than I do you, Henry; and I am sure I do not want any lovers. They will only be interested in my fortune.”

“That is a consideration, to be sure,” said Henry seriously, “but my father and my mother will introduce you only to young men whose intentions and ambitions cannot be suspected. Now that you are home from school, you will soon be out; and I promise to waive a brother’s right to quiz his sister and not expose you to unfeeling raillery about how many hearts you will break. ”

“Thank you, Henry. Yes, Papa is to give us a ball at Pemberley, and then we will have the season in London. Only think, I am to be presented at Court. I wonder if I will see the Princess Victoria.”

“She is only about your age,” said Henry thoughtfully, “and with such a burdensome prospect before her, for so young a woman. How should you like to be in her place?”

“Not at all. But I should like to see her, very much indeed. Well, Henry, do say you will go to London with us. Even if you are in orders, you will dance, won’t you?”

“With the greatest of pleasure. Indeed, being a clergyman shall not prevent me from dancing, I am determined; I do not think I should be one if I could not dance. I have often heard our cousin, Mr. Collins, name dancing as a harmless activity, not incompatible with a clergyman’s duty.

Have you heard him, Jane? It is too bad to make fun, but really my cousin Collins is priceless. ”

“Oh, yes! So great and so fat as he is, to think of him dancing is very ridiculous. It is tiresome when he comes to Pemberley. I am fond of Cousin Charlotte, though, and the young cousins.”

“They are a very respectable family.”

“It is so absurd, the way Cousin Collins is for ever sermonizing about my aunts. I wonder what he means by it. When I was a little girl, he used to tell me to attend to my book and not be like my Aunt Lydia. And last time we visited in Kent, he preached about purity in young ladies, and he took as his text Aunt Mary’s favourite saying—oh!

how often I have heard her say it!—that ‘the loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable, and one false step involves her in endless ruin.’ Goodness, I nearly gaped, I wanted to laugh so much. ”

“That does sound like dear Aunt Mary,” said Henry, smiling.

“Oh, yes. I am so glad she lives at Longbourn with Grandpapa and we only see her at Christmas. That’s quite bad enough; it’s a horrid season to have to listen to her gloomy prosing. Oh! I hope she won’t come this Christmas.”

“Now, now, have compassion, my dear Jane,” said Henry mildly. “Aunt Mary is a poor old widow, and probably looks forward to coming to Pemberley all year. And she is very good to our grandfather.”

“Oh, I know. But now, do tell me what our Aunt Lydia is like. I have never seen her since I was a baby and don’t remember. She cannot resemble Aunt Mary and Aunt Kitty at all. Is she so very wicked? Is that why Mama and Papa never have her to Pemberley?”

“What, now you are a young lady, you expect to be told all the family secrets, do you?”

“Oh, are you going to be a prig, Henry, since you are to be a clergyman? I should think you might tell me, if it is not very indelicate. And I do have a reason for asking, indeed I have.”

“Have you? Very well, then, I shall not insult you by dissembling. And I will make you a confidence, though I hope you will not distress my mother and father by speaking of it. You are grown up enough now to know, I think, that my aunt eloped as a girl with Uncle Wickham, and the family disapproved of it very much.”

“Why? I know he was not rich.”

“No, quite poor; and what is worse, profligate. A very bad sort of man, Jane, gaming, playing, spending … and I believe he has been unkind to poor Aunt Lydia.”

“Oh! Then, I am sorry I spoke lightly. But it makes me more curious than ever about what my mother meant, when she asked me if I should like to see some of my cousins. Do you know, I think she intends to ask one or another of them here, on a visit.”

“Are you sure, Jane? Aunt Lydia has a large family—eight children, you know—and she has never brought them to Pemberley. I believe my father thinks it best that we not be mixed in with any of that set.”

“Perhaps he has changed his mind, now that we are older. I am sure I hope so; I should like to see my wicked cousins. Do you think they are as wicked as their parents? Oh, I should so like to see somebody wicked, somebody really wicked.”

“Now, Jane, you know you don’t mean it. You would not like it at all, believe me. Wickedness is not a virtue. But has anything definite been said, about a visit?”

“No, but I shall tease my father and find out.”

“What an indiscreet girl you are growing. Consider; my dear parents do not keep secrets for their own amusement.”

Mr. Darcy and his wife had indeed been contemplating, for some time, the question of a visit from some of the young Wickhams. The event that had precipitated this discussion was a letter from poor Lydia.

She often wrote to Mrs. Darcy, generally in a baldly begging strain; and her sister usually obliged by sending money or clothing, for she knew well the desperate want and misery, the poverty, in which Lydia spent her life.

Mr. Wickham, once a remarkably handsome, prepossessing young man, was lost to drink; he had coarsened, grown careless of appearance and manners, and Elizabeth even thought, from the number of times Lydia had written of illnesses and injuries, that he might be suspected of doing her some harm.

This latest letter, however, had no such catalogue of griefs to report.

It was in a different strain entirely, for it described her elder children and pleaded their case, to her great sister and brother.

“My dear Lizzy will, I know, feel pity, when she knows how worried to death I am about all my dear children. I am sure I am quite ill from thinking about them. Life has gone very hard with me, but it always is so for mothers, I do believe. Since our eldest boy, George, went into the shipping office in Southhampton, he never sends a farthing home from one year’s end to another, the ungrateful wretch.

I write him very constantly and order him to do so, but it is all parties and pleasure with him, I daresay.

Charles is at sea, and I am sure it was good of Mr. Darcy to speak to the Admiral and get him such a berth, but his voyage to the South Seas is a four years’ business, and we can expect no help from him.

Then there are the girls, Betty and Cloe, and they are as just as good and pretty, one as the other.

Betty was named after you, you know, and I should think you wouldn’t forget your own goddaughter, now she is near twenty years old and the handsomest young lady that ever was seen.

I can’t think why she isn’t married yet; Lord knows I was a mother twice over by her age.

But there are not enough young officers here in Newcastle for her, and to say the truth, I do not care for her to marry one.

They are all very fine when they are young and handsome, but later on it is something else; they grow dirty and drunken and lazy and cruel, and it is a misery having any thing to do with them.

You can’t think what I suffer, for Betty has no nice clothes, and the miserablest life you ever saw for a young lady.

I am quite in despair, and ready to marry her to the very next shop-clerk that offers, only in hopes that Mr. Darcy might be yet prevailed upon to do somewhat for her.

And her sister Cloe is nearly as handsome and deserving, and seventeen, and all that, though she has not such spirit as Betty, and is insipid enough, and as stubborn as the devil.

The younger ones worry my life out, though Tom has his apprenticeship, and poor Sam is quite dead, you recollect, since the scarletina took him off, and you kindly sent linen and jellies.

Then Sally is old enough to help round the house but is too bad–tempered, and the littlest ones are at school.

So, you see, I am quite beside myself with so many mouths to feed and no help at all from Wickham, who I confess is so married to the bottle he has little care for me or the poor young ones, and I am sure I am quite forlorn unless you, dearest Lizzy, can come to the aid of,

“Your poor sister, Lydia.”

“Oh, such a letter!” exclaimed Mrs. Darcy, reading it again and putting it from her with pain. She and her husband were reunited, after their morning’s avocations, in her dressing room, a favourite time and place with them for private conferences.

“My dear, I do not know why you torment yourself. You know very well what that letter contains. Why, then, examine it again? Your sister’s style of writing can hardly be any inducement,” said Mr. Darcy.

“No, I should say not; Lydia’s ignorance and illiteracy have always been shameful. But they are nothing beside such want, such forlornness—more than even Lydia deserves. And you have helped her so much already. ’Tis too much to ask. I will put the letter away, before it provokes me.”

“I think you had better, my love,” said Mr. Darcy thoughtfully, “and yet, I doubt you will be easy. These Wickhams are an eternal worry to you.”