Part I
Archivist's Note: Homosexual theme is explored.
I feel him coming down that little provincial High Street, and I know, instantly, that it is he. I have not even glanced in his direction -- my eyes are firmly on the handsome chit I'm being introduced to -- but I don't need to look. And none of the rational objections, that there can be no reason for him to appear in this part of the country, that I chose it precisely so that I would not be known, hold any force, because I know without looking just how he keeps his seat, how he holds himself erect -- and everything else will follow. There will be some explanation for how he comes to be in this part of the country, why he happens to be ambling down this High Street this very moment -- all that will come -- but this is the truth, that I know him without looking, and that he will never know how well I know him. And as he comes closer, he sees me, and he stiffens -- I can feel that ramrod spine -- and there is cold acknowledgement in his eyes -- but I did not need to look to know any of this.
He moves on, and he will manage to forget me -- oh, he'll keep his eye out and I need not fear that I will see much of him again, but he will not injure his dignity on me. I can say what I will of him without fear of contradiction, as a nobody in a sea of nobodies, and I am absurdly injured to be beneath contempt. Have I ever sought anything other than his contempt? His friendship got me nowhere. I used to think when we fished and swam and ran about and played amuck at Pemberley that I wanted to be him -- my godfather's son and heir of all we surveyed. Jealousy I could have lived with, but jealousy it was not. I wanted him -- I wanted him joined to me in agony and pleasure as I inextricably was to him -- as I knew I always would be when we wrestled over chestnuts on the green by the smithy in Lambton. The last time we fought in friendship -- the only time I let him take me down. That summer I seduced the blacksmith's girl -- I often caught her staring at us with those large eyes, absurdly like his, they were, for a simple-minded girl, and she was ripe and waiting to be plucked -- and there was nothing easier than to flatter her. I had her on that very green, and she was in transports of pain and ecstasy, and all I could see was him. I should have given it up altogether had he not caught me at it. It was that haunted look in his eyes which finally put me over the edge -- though the transcendent light in her eyes, so much like his, so expressive, I would have said, had I thought that simple-minded chit capable of any depth of feeling -- had done nothing to move me. And I knew then that I had the power at least to injure him, and that power I coveted. And though I knew that I had fallen in his eyes, we were bound together at least in conspiracy, to keep this from my father and his.
But it was not so every time, though I never quite realized that in following this path I had left redemption behind. I never sought redemption in his eyes, for what notice even would that have won me? I grew all the more reckless -- by the time we were at Cambridge there was gaming and drinking and whoring to add to my sins. Of course there were debts -- debts of honour as well as those with common merchants -- for my meagre allowance was not designed for such luxuries. But his was more than equal to it, and if he insisted on living cloistered like a monk then at least one of us should have had some fun, or tried to, at least. The conspiracy remained, for he would not permit his father to know of my debaucheries, but it was no longer a conspiracy of equals. In his eyes, I was culpable. There was nothing I could do to return the favour. There was nothing I could anymore to evoke even disappointment. I was angry, for what right did he have to judge me, or my actions? But I knew that I had given him that right by caring for his opinion. I had let him judge me, and I set myself up to fail in his eyes.
The whoring was perfunctory, and the bespoiling of maidens, and all of that. I could hardly have refrained, in my position. The whores knew this well, though my comrades-in-arms did not. It was a whore -- a scrawny creature with tight little buttocks -- who told me to find myself a lad. I convulsed that night at the very thought of it, though not just any lad, of course. Even my imagined pleasures were not free of the taint of him.
They were surprisingly easy to find, once I knew where to look for them. And not just the ones who wanted ready cash for their labours either. Any number of fresh-faced boys straight out of public schoolboys like he had been, with their dark eyes and polished diction, ready to bend over and take what I could give them. Of course he caught me at it -- I wanted him to, naturally, and I had to be utterly flagrant at it, since he found ways to avoid me more often than not these days. But I let him find me at it with one of the freshers in his charge -- even now the recollection of that look sends tremors through me
I didn't see him for months after that. He avoided me assiduously, even when I took pains to put myself in his way. Then one day, well after I had stopped even trying, I found him in my chambers late one evening. He had come to tell me that old Mr. Darcy was dead. We traveled together to Pemberley for the funeral. We did not have a word to say to each other for the whole coach ride. Derbyshire was dark and grim. We were orphans, both of us. Even Reynolds had turned against me. I thought of the stoic silence in the coach, those shuttered eyes that could not even allow me to enter to share grief and desolation. And I realized that the conspiracy had ended. We had no one to perform to any longer, and he abhorred disguise of any sort. I thought of the lonely parsonage of Kympton, where I would fester in his scorn and disdain. And then I thought of the dark eyed lads, and the dissipations and debauches of London, where a man could lose himself for a lifetime. I took my three thousand pounds and left. Redemption could wait a few years.
For three years I managed to lose myself in London. I lived exactly as I had anticipated, amidst all the pleasures I could pay for and some that I could not quite afford. I made many acquaintances and few friends. For the short while that I had the money, I could forego pleasing and allow others to please me. Few did it successfully. Of course I took the sporting chances I needed to increase my fortune and keep me in funds, and obviously I understood that there were risks involved. I was penniless long before I had foreseen it. I did not have a chance to find an heiress to keep me in funds, as I had intended to do, or perhaps I had never properly intended such a thing. Derbyshire was calling. I had not seen him in three years. I longed to see him, lord of the manor, sitting in his pew at my church while I sermonized. The living at Kympton had fallen vacant, or so I had heard. My time had come.
He threw me out of his study before my petition was completed. The endless bounty was exhausted. It would have cost him next to nothing to oblige me in some small way. I would have thrown such consolation in his face. But there was nothing at all that he offered. Nothing except for the outrage in his eyes, that I had dared to come through those doors again. I fed on that anger for weeks.
It took me a few more years to throw myself in his notice again. Years of misery -- I scrounged for myself in anyway I could in the netherworld of London that I had come to know so well. I sold myself often in any capacity I could, and all too often I sold myself cheaply. But sometimes even cheap transactions can buy loyalty, and there is a sort of honour, or perhaps it is simply an instinct of mutual self-preservation, among thieves and wretches. I made a friend with whom I devised the perfect plan of revenge, and it was after months of careful plotting that I found myself in Ramsgate.
My part of the charade was easy enough to play. It was no great feat to play a fool in love. Georgiana was nearly the undoing me. She had those features -- so striking in his face, but not quite so balanced in hers. She was growing fast, and large for her age, but not quite womanly in her figure yet. I could easily have taken her for a boy. But she did not have those eyes. I looked for them again and again in such a face, and she would look up to me in innocent wonder, delighted to have earned such devoted perusal. She never knew what it was I looked for. I knew what I wanted, and I did not mean to be cruel to the child. I do believe she might even have been happy for a while. But he arrived, just days before we were to carry through our elopement, and of course dear Georgiana confided all in her loving brother.
He wrote to me, offering a suitably archaic challenge. I was tempted, more than I thought I could be. I have dreamt of it often -- sometimes it is a sword, and then it is an elegant ending, for I have never been the swordsman that he is, even now with all my training. Sometimes it is a bullet that does the trick, and then it is luck that tilts the scales in his favour, but the ending is always the same. He is towering over me as I lie in a pool of blood, and the look in his eyes, is masterful and satisfied, yet haunted. I can think of worse ways to go.
Perhaps I was not brave enough. Not brave enough to kill him, certainly, and not brave enough to die. Or perhaps not brave enough to even imagine honestly. Would he take even grim satisfaction in my end? More likely, he would not end it at all, for all the skill and luck at his disposal. He would not sully his hands on the likes of me -- too many awkward questions. Just teach the scamp a lesson and never think on him again. I did not give myself the opportunity to find that out.
Part II
But I am lying even now, that I did not expect to see him, or that I would wish to stay away. I had to see him - to be in his orbit somewhere - England is not large enough for us to be strangers to each other, though he would not let me go to Scotland to be his brother. Yet brothers of a sort we are even in his eyes - and I am Cain to his Abel, no doubt - and only in my eyes can I wish to be a different sort of keeper.
So I lie about him for no reason, knowing even that my tale will not get around just yet, that this chit is not the gossip her sisters are. And yet I have a peculiar sense of achievement that she should believe me, and lap up what I have to say about this man that she has never liked, who could never unbend so much as to bring himself to like her. I haven't felt this way since I lied to Georgiana, and when she looks at me I could keep on lying forever. There is something in those eyes, flashing quicksilver - they are nothing like his, and yet there is a power in them that keeps me turning back. When I look in his I can never look away.
But I hear from my fellow officers that he favoured her with a dance at the ball, and I am absurdly disappointed in him, for sinking so low. Is he to have his head turned by quicksilver eyes in a moderately pretty face? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted? That night I realise that I am playing at being a soldier - I shall not last at this, as I have not done at any honest occupation. And I find myself the scrawniest shop-girl I can find, and a couple of boys for good measure. And I attach myself to a freckled, boyish creature with ten thousand pounds to my name. The officers will start talking soon enough, I know, and they will realise that they cannot have me in their midst. In the meantime, I shall leave my mark, though never so effectively as I am marked myself.
And then I hear that he is gone, and my disappointment is more profound than I could have expected, because I know, somehow, it was she, not I, who chased him away. I lie indiscriminately now, wanting to hurt him in any way I can yet knowing well that the ill will of these provincials will never cost him a pang. The months pass; I learn that he was in Kent visiting his aunt, and I realise that spring has come and gone. And I hear again that in essentials, he is as he ever was, but the righteous indignation that might have amused me in a different set of circumstances is quite overcome, because I know exactly what she means, and what it means for me.
I'm almost disappointed to find that we leave Meryton before I am exposed, though not before my fiancée's guardians see fit to separate us, but I know that for now I have no business leaving the regiment before it sees fit to leave me behind. And besides I'm tempted to leave a trail behind - as long as I am with the militia he will always know in a corner of his mind where to find me.
Brighton is every bit as tedious, and I run through my funds much faster in the more varied entertainments here, growing ever more reckless as I feel the noose tightening around my neck. The dreams come more often now, but even they are infected, and I see hints of that quicksilver when I look for his eyes. When even the whores start avoiding me I know my time is running out. And that is when I turn to that silly little chit, the favoured friend of the Colonel's wife. A little too buxom for my tastes, but who am I to choose? At least her eyes are nothing like her sister's.
We leave together under cover of dark, and make good time to Bromley, and from there to London. By now I imagine the Colonel is on our trail, but there is no place in the world where a man with friends like mine can better hide himself. Or more cheaply, for that matter, though even the careless Miss with me is appalled at the squalour of our rooms. Was she expecting Pemberley?
From what we hide ourselves I know not. I do not fear her father or protectors, after all. I'm not sure how long I'll let her stay; I find myself curiously entertained by the prospect of watching her credulity stretch until the final threads fray. Otherwise my days are unoccupied, though I revive some old friendships out of sheer boredom, to find myself out of her sight for a few hours at least.
And then one day he appears at my doorstep, wielding his pocketbook and wearing a scowl, and I know that somewhere behind this are the quicksilver eyes. And I sit down to drive a hard bargain, as though I cared for settlements, or a place in the regulars, or anything, in fact, beyond a quieting of that ache that has gnawed at me for so long that by that sensation I know I am alive. And all things considered, I come off quite well. Heiresses, after all, are more trouble than they're worth, and the lord of the manor before me may throw ten thousand pounds before me to suit his own ends, but for my purposes will hardly give me the time of day.
Ten days later I wait at the end of the aisle while the ridiculously self-important little miss walks up on her uncle's arm. And though I say my vows I hardly mark her; my notice is all on the other side. Perhaps he thinks I look at him to find a chance to flee, but I would never leave this position if I could. It amuses me absurdly to have him stand up for me. Our fathers would have been proud.
And I know that within three months he will have his love, for who would dare to deny him anything for which he should condescend to ask? And the shades of Pemberley will be polluted, not only by a mistress with quicksilver eyes, but also the occasional presence of my wife, for he is too honourable a man to deny his wife the company of her sister. And after all my adventures, I will call him brother, after all. What other name could I give that unknown want?
Author's Note: Title pinched from John Donne.