Page 114 of Hard Home

"Give me the reason," he said. "Not the delicate one. I am a plain man in a plain way of business and I have been fitted up with a great deal of delicacy since Thursday and I should like the reason."

"There are two and you may have both.

"The first is that if it is known in Hertfordshire that I have done it, then within a month it will be said in every parlor in Meryton that Mr. Darcy of Pemberley bought a Bennet out of a scrape in London; and within two months it will be said that he did it because he means to have one of them; and Miss Elizabeth Bennet will be a woman who was got by obligation. She refused me in April, sir, in terms that left nothing standing, and she wasentirely within her rights, and I have no intention of making it impossible for her to go on refusing me."

Mr. Gardiner looked at him for a moment.

"And the second?"

"The second is that I have known what that man was since the summer before last, and I said nothing, and he walked into your sister's drawing-room in November on my silence." Darcy's voice did not alter. "I am not paying a debt of honor, Mr. Gardiner. I am paying a bill. A man who has run up a bill does not get to have his name on the receipt as well; that is having it both ways, and I have had it both ways for fifteen months and it has cost other people a great deal."

Mr. Gardiner turned that over.

"That is a better answer than the first one," he said.

"It is the true one. The first is also true."

"Yes." Mr. Gardiner got up and went to his writing desk. "Very well. I shall lie to my own family in my own hand and I shall be thanked for it, and I hope you understand that I am doing it because of the second reason and not the first, because the first is the reason of a proud man and I have no patience with it."

"I understand you."

"And Mr. Darcy — one thing more, and then I shall write. My niece Elizabeth is not a fool, and my wife is a great deal less of one than I am." Mr. Gardiner cut his pen. "You will keep this for about six weeks."

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The letter reached Longbourn on the Monday morning at ten, and the household had it by five past, because Hill was in the hall.

My dear Brother,

At last I am able to send you some tidings of my niece, and such as, upon the whole, I hope will give you satisfaction. Soon after you left me on Saturday, I was fortunate enough to find out in what part of London they were. I have seen them both.

Mrs. Bennet came down the stairs.

She had not come down since the Monday before. She came down in her wrapper with her hair anyhow, holding on to the rail, and got into the small parlor and sat on the edge of a chair and said, "Read it again, Jane. Read it from the beginning and read it slowly."

Jane read it again.

They were found. They were not married, but they would be married; Mr. Gardiner had seen them; Mr. Wickham's debts were to be discharged; a sum was to be settled upon Lydia; there would be a wedding, and it might be very soon indeed, and it wanted only Mr. Bennet's consent and a very little money — a hundred pounds a year, no more, secured after his death.

Mrs. Bennet did not say one word for about half a minute.

Then she got up off the chair and stood in the middle of her own parlor and began to cry in a way that none of her daughters had ever heard, which was not the crying she did about her nerves or about Mrs. Long or about the entail; and Jane got to her and put her arms round her and she went on for a considerable time.

"My dear, dear Lydia!" she said at last. "This is delightful indeed! — She will be married! — I shall see her again! — She will be married at sixteen! — My good, kind brother! — I knew how it would be — I knew he would manage every thing. How I long to see her! and to see dear Wickham too!

"But the clothes, the wedding clothes! I will write to my sister Gardiner about them directly. Lizzy, my dear, run down to your father and ask him how much he will give her. Stay, stay, I willgo myself. Ring the bell, Kitty, for Hill. I will put on my things in a moment. My dear, dear Lydia! — How merry we shall be together when we meet!"

Jane looked over her mother's head at Elizabeth, and Elizabeth looked back, and neither of them said anything at all.

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Mr. Bennet read the letter twice in his library with the door shut and then sent for Elizabeth.

"Sit down," he said. "How much do you suppose your uncle Gardiner is worth?"

"I have no idea, papa."

"Nor have I, precisely, but I have a fair notion, and it is not this." He put his finger on the second sheet. "Wickham's debts in Brighton alone will not be under a thousand, and there will be more in Meryton — there is always more in Meryton — and his commission is to be sold and another bought, and there is a settlement of a thousand pounds on Lydia and a hundred a year besides. Your uncle has four children of his own and a business that wants capital in it, and I have known him five-and-twenty years, and if he had ten thousand pounds lying loose in the world he would have lent me some of it in 1798 when I asked him and he could not."