Page 80 of A Quiet Affection

“Good,” Wickham said. “Then I’ll have time to properly aim. John, it is your turn to drop the handkerchief.”

“It would be murder if you shoot him without a gun,” Mr. Clarke said.

“I look forward to telling my wife about it,” was Wickham’s reply. “If you do not give the signal within a handful of seconds, I’ll just shoot Bingley without it.”

“Very well.” Clarke walked up to the location between them where Darcy had stood, holding the handkerchief high. He held it in his left hand, which seemed odd to Darcy.

Mr. Clarke looked at Wickham for what seemed like an eternity. Even though such cases never succeeded, Darcy had already decided that he would bring a prosecution for murder against Wickham and try to see him hung. The circumstances, most specifically that Wickham had threatened, with some seriousness, to kill his own wife, and that he knew that Bingley had not taken a loaded gun, might make the difference.

Someone should stop this. Someone should.

Wickham stared at the handkerchief while holding the gun down by his side, waiting.

Bang.

Wickham’s body jerked to the side and he started to lift his gun, but then he collapsed before it reached halfway up.

Darcy’s confused mind could barely understand what had happened at first.

Mr. Clarke stepped lightly towards the man who had once been his dearest friend, his own gun still out and pointing towards Wickham, a waft of smoke in the air about him.

He pushed Wickham’s body over to see if there was any light in it. “Already dead. I’d hoped he’d suffer a little. I had hoped to gloat.” Then the man dropped his gun and started to laugh maniacally. But his laughs turned to tears, and he lowered himself to the ground and clutched Wickham’s body to himself and sobbed.

As Mr. Clarke cried, the surgeon came out from the trees. “Oh, my,” he said. “Oh, oh.” He pulled the body away from Clarke’s unresisting arms and looked at the bullet wound. “It cut the chief artery to the heart. There was nothing to be done. Poor man. I am sorry for your loss.” The surgeon stood and wiped the blood from his hands off onto a hand towel he’d brought with him. He glared at Bingley. “Damned duels, damned gentlemen, always shooting each other.”

Bingley raised his hands weakly, “I didn’t—”

“Mr. Bingley shot into the air on the first round,” Mr. Darcy said to his own surprise. “It was only when Mr. Wickham insisted on them fighting for a second round that Mr. Bingley defended himself. It was a fair duel and a fair shot. There is no one to blame for Mr. Wickham’s death but himself. He was given every opportunity to retreat from the field alive.”

The surgeon looked at Darcy with a serious mien, and Bingley and Clarke looked at him with shock.

Darcy was shocked himself, though it did not show in his manner at all. He had just lied. A bold-faced, simple lie. And he knew that if he was forced to swear to what he had just said upon the Holy Bible and with an oath of honesty to the Almighty—and it was not impossible that he would be forced to make that oath—he would lie again.

The surgeon said, “Still damned stupid. Better to be called a coward than to kill a man.”

“I do not disagree, but it is no easy thing,” Darcy replied, “to act in a manner that will permit your fellows to despise you.”

Mr. Clarke closed Wickham’s eyes. “Should we take the body back to his house?”

“And force Mrs. Wickham see him this way?” Darcy asked. “No, we’ll have men called to take him to the church. He can be buried with proper care, and Mrs. Wickham will have a chance to see the body if she wishes to. Clarke, you were his second. It is your place to arrange such matters.”

Mr. Clarke had a quite startled expression, but then he took a deep breath, squared himself and went to shake Darcy’s hand. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.

Darcy shook the man’s hand firmly.

Bingley stared at them agog. Darcy grabbed his friend’s arm and pulled him back along the path into the forest.

They both were quiet for some time. Darcy began to wonder to himself if Mrs. Wickham would be pleased to hear what had happened or chiefly sad. He also wondered if she and Bingley would make a match of it eventually. He hoped that they would, and he hoped that the consequences of his lie would not prevent that from happening. But he did not know, and the whole of the situation was too astonishing to think clearly.

He chiefly wanted to hold Lizzy again, to kiss her, and to ask her what she thought.

A strange logical part of him that cared for nothing but the matters that had obsessed him when at university wished to consider the general philosophical implications of how he considered his lie to be undoubtedly just and necessary, even though he had always considered dishonesty to be a profound sin.

“I thought I would die. As Mr. Clarke stepped up, I was sure I was about to die.”

“I should have done it instead.”

“What?”