Longbourn

by Jo Baker

  In the grey light of day, Mrs. Hill understood that she must find a way around this; a way of dealing with Sarah that was not head-on, but that slipped instead around the edge of her stubbornness and into the sweet and giving nature it defended. But even as Mrs. Hill was thinking this, she was scolding the girl, saying that she’d better lift her chin up before she tripped on it. The only reply she got was a long look and a stiffening of the shoulders, and a clattering-down of dishes.

  “I expect a civil answer when I speak to you.”

  “Speak civilly to me, missus, and you shall get one.”

  Mrs. Hill’s jaw dropped. She was about to step cleanly over the brink of her temper, but then James pushed in through the hall door, and she saw herself as she must appear to him—a bitter, frowning old scold—and she clamped her mouth shut. She would say something kind instead. Something soothing and considerate that would reconcile her with the girl, if she could but think what.

  Her efforts to summon something up were broken by a flurry of activity overhead. They heard the breakfast-room door flung open and slammed, then a race of light footsteps down the hallway and up the stairs. One of the girls, running to her bedchamber. Then more footsteps, heavier, going the opposite way to the first: Mrs. Bennet’s. She was heading to the breakfast room.

  In the kitchen, the four of them stood stone-still, heads cocked. James, on the threshold, pushed the door a little wider.

  “What is it?” Polly asked. “What’s going on?”

  “It’ll be Mr. Collins,” Sarah said. “He’ll have gone and proposed.”

  Polly was agog. “Who to?”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Really?”

  “Shhh.”

  Mrs. Hill and Sarah moved to stand by James; Polly crept up too, and then Mr. Hill shambled over to join them in the doorway, shaking his head. They listened to the low burr of voices.

  “What are they saying?”

  Sarah put her finger to her lips.

  They heard the breakfast-room door flung open again, and then Mrs. Bennet’s footsteps pounding down the hallway. She passed into their line of sight: they shrank, Polly ducking low, Mr. Hill stepping back, Sarah squeezing in behind James, and Mrs. Hill turning completely away, back into the kitchen.

  “I never knew she could move so fast!” Polly said.

  They saw her throw open the library door; Polly made big eyes at Sarah: she hadn’t even knocked!

  “Oh! Mr. Bennet, you are wanted immediately—”

  Mrs. Bennet pulled the door shut behind her, cutting off the noise. James took his weight off their own door, and let it fall closed.

  Sarah went back to the table, lifted the dishes. “Poor fellow.”

  “Poor fool,” James said.

  Mrs. Hill shook her head. “What an awful shame.”

  “Mary would have had him …” Sarah headed for the scullery.

  Then the library bell jangled. They stopped, watched it dance there on its spring.

  “I’ll go,” said James.

  “No,” said Mr. Hill. “They’ll want Miss Lizzy fetching down, so—”

  “I’ll go,” Sarah said.

  Mrs. Hill stepped back to let her pass. This was a disaster, and it hit her like a horse’s kick. Now he might marry anybody. Who knew what little ninny with a head full of fashionable nonsense he might pick up at Bath or Bristol or Canterbury, or wherever it was that clergymen went looking for their wives? But if—as Sarah had said—Mary might have him, could snag him, they would be so safe with her: Mary would not want novelty simply for novelty’s sake. With Mary in charge, the world below stairs would be as secure as anything in this world could hope to be.

  The two elder girls were sitting on their bed, heads together, hands clasped. They looked up in apprehension when Sarah knocked and poked her head round the door; they softened when they saw that it was just her.

  “You are wanted in the library, Miss Lizzy.”

  Elizabeth was not quite able to compose herself. She seemed to be on the verge of breaking into some outburst of emotion, though whether it would be laughter or fury or a wail of mortification, Sarah could not judge.

  “The whole household knows, then, I take it?”

  “Knows what, miss?”

  Elizabeth lifted up her eyes. “You little politician.”

  Jane kissed her sister’s cheek, and, when she got up to go, stayed her a moment with a hand.

  “You must remember, Lizzy, that he is a respectable man, and in proposing, he meant to do what he thought proper, and right. So do be kind to him, my dear.”

  “Not for all the world, Jane! We have come this far on the barest of civilities; I dare not think what might happen if I am kind!”

  Jane shook her head and smiled. “You do not mean it. You know you do not.”

  Then she glanced up at Sarah, and seemed to notice her properly, running her eyes down the length of her and back up again, noticing the limp yellowish-green poplin.

  “Do you not wear your new dress, Sarah?”

  Sarah curtseyed. “I am saving it, miss, for very best.”

  Sarah accompanied Miss Elizabeth down to the library, knocked and opened the door for her, while Elizabeth stood back, steadying herself. Inside, Sarah spied Mrs. B. standing by her husband’s desk, arms folded, glowering, and Mr. B. still seated there, in the act of removing his spectacles.

  “Come here, child,” cried her father as she appeared. “I have sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?”

  Sarah closed the door on the three of them.

  You saw it all the time, it not working out fair.

  Mrs. Hill carried coffee up to the breakfast room, where Mrs. Bennet, furious with her second daughter, was attempting to enlist Charlotte Lucas’s support in her cause, and where the other young ladies had gathered to gossip. It was like buying a pig-in-a-poke, marriage was; you just could not know what you were getting, and people were always trading badly. You saw beautiful young provincial girls on the arm of some elderly accountant, still hale and handsome men in their middle years with a wife already fat and faded. Whether this was a tragedy or not depended on where you stood within or in relation to it: one party maybe had got sold a pup, but the other did get to enjoy a splendidly good bargain.

  Mrs. Hill poured coffee and handed out the cups. Elizabeth took hers with a steady hand; she rewarded Mrs. Hill with a smile.

  Mrs. Hill thought, What it is to be young and lovely and very well aware of it. What it is to know that you will only settle for the keenest love, the most perfect match.

  The morrow brought no abatement in Mrs. Bennet’s ill temper or ill health; she complained of nerves, retired to her dressing room with Mrs. Hill and took nearly half a bottle of Cordial Balm of Gilead; it made her at first irascible, and then it made her mumble, and then it made her fall asleep, her breath reeking of Eau de Vie. The sisters—all but Mary, who preferred to stay at home—departed for a morning walk to Meryton, to escape their mother’s sufferings and Mr. Collins’s wounded pride, and to enquire after Mr. Wickham, who had been unforgivably absent from the Netherfield ball.

  Mrs. Hill and Sarah had no such opportunity for escape. Mrs. Hill spent more time than she considered healthy confined to Mrs. Bennet’s dressing room, adjusting stays and neckerchiefs and pillows. When she did escape, the first thing she did was knock on Mary’s door, making the girl stumble to a halt in the middle of E major. Mrs. Hill peered round the edge of the door, and Mary peered back at her, alarmed.

  “What is it, Hill?”

  “Excuse me, Miss Mary, but …” She came in. “Mr. Collins is all alone downstairs, and I thought maybe you should know.”

  “I was practising—”

  “Yes, but you did not know that he was quite by himself—you would not wish to be thought discourteous.”

  “He has proposed to my sister, has he not?”

  Mrs. Hill could only nod.


  Mary was silent for a long moment. Then, decided, she stood up and shook out her skirts. Mrs. Hill saw now that her eyes were rimmed with red. She had been crying. This boded very well indeed. The girl sidled past Mrs. Hill, and trudged towards the head of the stairs.

  “Only because I would not want to be thought discourteous, you understand.”

  Sarah, meanwhile, was kept running up and down stairs by Mr. Collins’s requests that she mend the fire, provide refreshments, and answer his enquiries as to the location of his copy of Fordyce’s Sermons. He feared he might have left it in Mr. Bennet’s library, and he was not certain that he wished to disturb that gentleman, who had shown such singular lack of right feeling towards his suit. Might Sarah go and see about it for him?

  She might, and did, Mr. Bennet only glancing up from under his bushy eyebrows as she tapped and nudged open the door. He held up the small brown volume wordlessly; she took it off him and curtseyed.

  Polly, however, was left more at her leisure, being unsupervised. She trundled around with her duster and a dreamy air, and then, a little before midday, she sloped off and could have been found—if anyone had gone out looking for her—playing at jacks by the stable wall with James. It pleased her so much when she won, that he became increasingly clumsy and cack-handed, the better to enjoy her crowing delight.

  Sarah passed Mr. Collins the little book.

  “You are a good girl,” he said. “I think you are good, you know, whatever they say.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “One thing I have found here—” He dropped his voice: “Rather puzzlingly, I have found that my position is quite similar to your own.”

  Sarah just looked at him. “Really, sir?”

  “I mean to say—” He glanced around him, as if afraid of being overheard, though the breakfast room was desolate at that time of day, and the house itself almost deserted. “One intends only what is right and good, one does what one sees to be one’s duty. And for one’s pains, one is rejected; one is found to be at fault. One is laughed to scorn.”

  “I’m sorry you are unhappy, sir.”

  “Thank you,” he said with genuine warmth. “Thank you, my dear child.”

  He was just a child himself, she saw. And lonely. He was the kind of man who probably always would be.

  “Would you like some cake?” she tried.

  His countenance brightened. He would like some cake, he realized. He would like some cake very much indeed; he would like it above anything.

  When Sarah brought a slice of fruitcake up on a pretty blue-rimmed plate, she found that Mary was now also in the breakfast room, sitting stiffly on an upright chair near the young clergyman; she looked round, heavy-eyed, when Sarah came in. Sarah had the distinct impression that she had disturbed not a conversation but a silence. Mary must be struggling to converse with him—Sarah could sympathize—too much time spent with books had not fitted her to be easy with herself, and other people. The young lady got up abruptly, and went to the window, and Mr. Collins got up too, looking relieved. He took the plate from Sarah and was profuse in his thanks, but then, with Mary there, did not know what to do with the cake after all.

  The girls were accompanied home from Meryton by two officers. Sarah, glancing out of an upstairs window, saw them coming down the footpath—the four young ladies, the two soldiers in red coats, all of them ambling easily along like old friends. They would reach Longbourn in moments, and would expect refreshments, and the house was all at sixes and sevens, and nothing ready or fit to be seen.

  She rushed up to the dressing room to warn Mrs. Hill, who closed her eyes, and set her jaw, and muttered something that was best not taken heed of. Then the housekeeper informed her mistress there were guests expected shortly, and plodded down to the kitchen. By the time the party was in the hall, Mrs. Bennet was found to be quite in spirits again, and properly attired, and on her way down to greet them. Sarah gathered cloaks and hats and went to hang them; Mrs. Bennet stayed Sarah with a hand.

  “But where is James?”

  “I do not know.”

  “But I want James. I don’t want you here. I do not see the point in us keeping a footman at all if we must have women waiting on us all the time.”

  Sarah could only agree. The guests now settled in the parlour, she ran down to the kitchen. Mrs. Hill set about the added inconvenience of tea; Sarah ghosted around her, trying to look helpful, since if she either did nothing, or got in the way, she’d get her head torn clean off.

  And then the outer door opened, and there was Ptolemy Bingley, fresh as butter from the dairy and with a direct look at Sarah that made her turn her face away, and made Mrs. Hill slap down the teapot on the tray, march over to him and demand, hands on hips, what it could possibly be that he wanted here this time.

  Sarah was supposed to disappear; anyway, the longer she stayed, the greater the chance was that he would let slip some hint about the carriage ride, or their encounter in the Netherfield demesne. She backed away towards the hall door as he bowed to Mrs. Hill and brought forth a note. He seemed deflated, somehow, Sarah noticed. Solemn.

  “For Miss Bennet.”

  Mrs. Hill snatched the letter, slapped it down on the tea tray and strode over to Sarah with the lot. Sarah took the chinking tea things off her. The letter was sealed with a pretty yellow wafer, and looked innocent enough. She looked up from it to Ptolemy.

  “Right, you,” said Mrs. Hill. “Get that lot upstairs.”

  Sarah left. Mrs. Hill turned her attention back to the mulatto. He lingered in the doorway, letting in the cold.

  “You expecting a reply?”

  He stepped across the threshold and shut the door behind him.

  “You are expecting a reply, then?”

  “I will take one certainly, if there is one.”

  Polly ambled into the kitchen, and edged past Ptolemy, giving him one of her long stares. In reply, he gave her a bow. Then, as if to point out the incivility with which he was being met, he crossed over to a fireside chair and sat down—Mrs. Hill would not mind it, he suggested, if he warmed himself a while.

  She did mind it. She minded it very much indeed, and she was just about to give him a piece of her mind—coming round here with his good looks and his nice clothes and his London ways, turning her girls’ heads—if Sarah had not clattered back into the kitchen just then, and seeing him there in the fireside chair, pulled up short like a pony. Mrs. Hill saw that their eyes met for just a moment; she did not like the way Sarah smiled to herself as she turned away. It was a far too private smile.

  She’d found she was not welcome in the parlour, Sarah told Mrs. Hill, for all she’d brought up the note from Netherfield. She’d been told to leave the tray and then run straight back down to the kitchen, and not return upstairs until the guests were gone.

  “Mrs. B. says we must send James up immediately to wait upon the officers.”

  Mrs. Hill flung out her hands. “Do you see him here?”

  Sarah looked around, shrugged.

  “I am up to my eyes, Sarah. If you want him, you go and find him.”

  “I don’t want him. Mrs. B. wants him. I just thought you might know where he is.”

  “Well I don’t.”

  “Oh,” Polly said. “That’s easy. I know.”

  Mrs. Hill rounded on her, snappish: “Well, where is he, then?”

  “He’s hiding.”

  Mrs. Hill and Sarah stared. Polly reached the jar down from the dresser and coolly helped herself to a piece of barley-sugar. She slumped into the other fireside chair, eyeing Ptolemy.

  “He don’t like soldiers,” she said, around the barley-sugar. “We saw the soldiers coming, so we hid. But then I got bored, and I thought you’d probably be cross if I was gone much longer, so I left him to it and came to help you.”

  Polly wriggled in her seat, self-satisfied: James was naughty; she had been good.

  Mrs. Hill waved all this away. “Nonsense. Don’t talk daft. Hiding!”

>   Polly began to protest: it wasn’t nonsense, and it wasn’t daft; they were hiding. And if it was nonsense, it wasn’t her nonsense, it was James’s, but she was briskly shushed. Sarah was very conscious of Ptolemy Bingley observing all this fluster and bad-humour from his seat, quiet though, his eyebrows raised. Sarah felt the urgent need to turn the conversation.

  “So is this a dinner or another ball, or what is it, Mr. Bingley?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The letter. An invitation, I expect?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not. It’s … We’re leaving.”

  “Leaving?”

  He nodded, his lips bitten tight between his teeth.

  “Leaving?” Sarah reached for a chair, drew it out, and sat. “Just like that?”

  “Mr. Bingley went up to London on business, and directly after, his sisters decided they would follow him … And Mr. Darcy, his friend who has been staying …” He paused a moment, just looking at her. “And so. We’re leaving. The whole shooting match.”

  “And you go too, to London.”

  It was not a question, but he nodded anyway.

  Sarah got up and moved across the kitchen. She opened a drawer, and stared down at its contents—jam-cloths, a scalding-dish, a few worn and fruit-stained wooden spoons. He was off to London, gone for ever, gone to see the plays and visit Astley’s and wander up and down the beautiful arcades.

  “And the house is to be quite shut up?” asked Mrs. Hill, who had left off her squabble with Polly, and now seemed to have forgotten, or to consider redundant, her edict that Sarah must absent herself from the mulatto’s company.

  “It is indeed, ma’am. Most of the staff have gone on already. We few are left to settle some remaining business, and follow afterwards.”