by Jo Baker
“Mr. Smith?” she asked.
“I thought perhaps he might have gone to Brighton too, or been—took. I thought perhaps Miss Lydia might have heard tell of him there, or seen something of him.”
Elizabeth frowned, half shook her head. “I’m sorry. Of whom?”
“Mr. Smith. You must remember him?”
Elizabeth’s eyebrows crept up; Sarah had moved closer, her hand was reaching out: she had forgot herself. She remembered now, and brought her hand back to clasp the other.
“I am sorry, miss. I really am, but he was here just a little while ago, and so much in our lives. A fine young man, your father said so. Everybody said so. A fine, upstanding young man.”
Elizabeth’s expression cleared. “Oh! Smith! You mean the footman!”
“Yes.”
“You called him Mr. Smith, that’s why I misunderstood you; I thought you meant someone of my acquaintance. I thought you meant a gentleman.”
“I am sorry I was unclear.”
“Yes. He did leave quite abruptly. Perhaps he heard of more remunerative work. But you think for some reason he has maybe gone to Brighton?”
It was something, Brighton: it was a word, a place, a possibility. “He may have.”
“Well then, I shall mention it as you ask, when next I write to Lydia. And I shall let you know if she has anything to report of him. But I fear her thoughts are so occupied with officers that it will be unlikely she would spare much notice for a footman.”
“Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend!”
On Midsummer Day, Mrs. Hill betook herself into Meryton to settle the accounts, and bring back something cold from the pork-butcher’s for dinner. She went in much state, with a very proper bonnet on her head, the ribbons knotted with her own particular firmness, and her old linen fichu pinned underneath her chin, so that no unnecessary eighth-of-an-inch of skin would be exposed to sunshine or view. She marched along the path, a stout and upright figure with a solid tread, under a hand-me-down parasol. She was a respectable sort of a person, was Mrs. Hill. They knew it in the kitchen; they knew it in the household. And the whole world knew it, on quarter days, when she went into Meryton to settle the accounts.
Sarah, though, was now able to see through the matter of fichus and bonnets, to the flesh and its betrayals. While Polly and Mr. Hill slept, the housekeeper and housemaid had stumbled their way through the truth of it, hands reaching out to clasp across the scrubbed table. Sarah’s shock had soon melted into understanding—she knew of course what it was to be young, and wanting, though it was hard to imagine Mr. Bennet so—and then bubbled up to anger: all those years.
“But you, Sarah—” Mrs. Hill had rubbed her nose, and sniffed. “Are you likely to be—in the breeding way yourself, do you think?”
Sarah had run a nail along the grain of the tabletop, where the pith had been scrubbed away; she shook her head: she had already bled.
After a moment, Mrs. Hill spoke. “It’s probably for the best.”
With Mrs. Hill absent on her seasonal migration, the kitchen was briefly shining and quiet. The ashes were sinking in the grate, and the flour and lard were laid out on the table for the making of scones, and Mr. Hill was off elsewhere on the estate about his unfathomable business. Sarah and Polly sat silent, caught up in their own thoughts, and unwilling to shatter the peace. Sarah gnawed at her finger, thinking, I should just go looking for him; I should pack a bag and go—and then, equally pressingly—I must just sit tight and wait for him; here is the only place he knows that I will be; where he will, when he can, come looking for me.
These thoughts churned and tumbled, refusing to curdle into anything of substance.
“I miss him too, you know,” Polly said.
Sarah nodded; she knew.
“What will you do?”
Sarah shunted herself away from the table and set to work, bundling a couple of muffins, left over from breakfast, into a tea-cloth, paring slices from a cheese. She went into the still room and filled a bottle with small beer, and corked it.
“Right,” she said. “Get your bonnet.”
Polly, who had watched all this activity blankly, suddenly brightened. “Where we going?”
“We’re going for a walk. I want to go and see something. See if it’s still there.”
Polly grinned.
They ambled down the track, and Polly was soon chattering happily, gathering flowers. She exclaimed over dog roses and bees and butterflies, and the rabbits that flitted away at their approach. The track took them downhill, and then across a wooden cattle bridge over the river. Then they climbed up the far hillside, and through the woods, right up to the edge of the trees, and the tip of the hillside down into the next valley. A wide sweep of pasture lay before them, and clusters of sheep; the whole was fenced around with willow hurdles.
“This used to be common land,” Sarah said. “There were houses here.”
Sarah climbed the fence, digging her toes into the slats; then she took Polly’s hand to help the girl down. Beyond, the sheep had cropped the grass to a short nap, and there were dry lines in the turf, where the soil was thin over stone. Sarah traced her way along the marks: four tumbled walls, a line across that divided the dwelling in two; a gap that used to be the doorway, where the hens had scratched.
“I was born here,” Sarah said.
Polly looked up from her posy of wild geranium, and buttercups, and dog daisies. “What, here?”
“At least, I think so. One of these. I remember the line of the hills. The edge of the woods. These were weavers’ cottages. My father was a weaver.”
“Well,” said Polly, “there’s nothing here now.”
The two girls climbed back over the fence, and walked a little way, and then sat down on a bank, and toed off their boots, and Polly lay back and gazed through the flicker of leaves and laced branches up at a sky as blue as forget-me-nots. Then she curled onto her side, head pillowed on an arm, and blinked slowly, and fell asleep. Sarah sat awake for a long time, with the sound of bees and flies buzzing through the woodland flowers, haunted by the memory of happiness, of the woman in a faded red dress, who walked away from her through the long grass, against the wide blue sky.
The Gardiners staid only one night at Longbourn, and set off the next morning with Elizabeth in pursuit of novelty and amusement.
Mrs. Gardiner seemed, by anyone’s reckoning, to be very ready to abandon her children to other people’s care, and to other people’s servants her infant’s stinking nappies to scrub. It was to be a three-week tour for her husband, her good self and her niece Elizabeth. They were to see Derbyshire from the comfort of the Gardiners’ carriage, and examine the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth, Dovedale and the Peak.
Elizabeth left without a word for Sarah; either she had not yet written of the matter to Lydia, or she had not yet had any reply, or the reply had conveyed nothing pertinent to Sarah’s plight, or, simply, she had forgotten all about it. Sarah chewed her nails, and watched the carriage roll away.
Mrs. Hill did what she always did when things were difficult: she buried herself in her work. And there was plenty to be had of it, for all they were rid of two young ladies and their laundry. What with the there-and-back of it, there was to be the best part of a month with the Gardiner children in the household, and that meant a deal of extra trouble, and noise, and meals, and washing. The shitty nappies, the wetted beds: the work.
Life was, Mrs. Hill had come to understand, a trial by endurance, which everybody, eventually, failed.
… neither her virtue nor her understanding would preserve her from falling an easy prey.
The express came at midnight. The boy hammered at the bolted door, bringing Mr. Hill down the back stairs with a guttering candle, sucking his few remaining teeth and grumbling; Mrs. Hill followed straight behind with her hair in long grey braids. Sarah flew down, scudding past them, night rail streamin
g, a shawl falling loose where she had thrown it about her shoulders, her feet bare on the boards.
It must be James. It must be news of him at least.
Polly crept down after them, blinking sleepily.
They found Mr. Bennet standing in the lobby with his bedside candle and an opened letter in his hand, his face white as his nightcap, and his wife hanging off him. Kitty, Mary and Jane were ranged upon the stairs; the Gardiner children, high up in the old nursery, had slept through the noise. Beyond the open front door all was moonlight and blue shadows. The express—a young lad of maybe twelve with a mop of dusty blond hair—leaned sleepily against the flank of his tall horse.
“Pay the boy, would you, Mrs. Hill?” asked Mr. Bennet.
Mrs. Hill ran to the console for the purse; she counted coins onto her creased palm; all the time, Mrs. Bennet was pulling at her husband’s arm, asking what Sarah, though she burnt to, could not.
“What is it, Mr. Bennet? Oh, pray make haste and tell me! Oh, is it one of my dear girls?”
On the gravel, Mrs. Hill handed the boy his money; he pocketed it, and clambered back up into the saddle, and turned his horse’s head. He clopped exhaustedly away into the dark, easy prey for thieves and highwaymen. A nightingale sang. It was a beautiful night. Mrs. Hill came back in and shut the door on it.
“Who is it from? What is it, Mr. Bennet? Is it Lydia? Or Lizzy? Oh, if some thing has befallen them I don’t know what I shall do! I cannot bear it if they are harmed.”
Mrs. Bennet buckled at the knees, clutching at her husband.
“It is from Colonel Forster,” he said.
Sarah moved forward, eager. “What does he say?”
Mr. Bennet noticed her then, and Polly, and Mr. Hill: all the servants gathered there, all witnesses to this disgrace.
“Assist your mistress, Mrs. Hill; help her back to bed.”
“But then it is my Lyddie! My little girl!” Mrs. Bennet was desperate to know; she shrugged Mrs. Hill away. “What has happened to her? Oh, pray tell me, do!”
“I do not think,” Mr. Bennet said, “that we need share this with the whole household.”
He folded up the letter.
“Sarah, Polly, get back to your beds. You are not wanted here.”
Lydia was gone. She had thrown herself upon the mercy of that villainous young man. Whatever was she thinking? Mrs. B.’s words came out choked and broken by sobs. Mrs. Hill just held her mistress for a while, murmuring the words you murmur to a child. It will be all right, shhh, all will be well, things will seem better in the morning, just you wait and see. She let go of Mrs. Bennet only to pour water, and drop laudanum into the glass, and then, when that had left her distress still unsoftened, to half-fill a glass with Cordial Balm of Gilead, and hold it to her mistress’s lips. The lady sipped the brown liquid, with its whiff of brandy and herbs. She looked so broken. Mrs. Hill had not seen her like this since the time of her mishap, all those long years ago. Fogged by poppy and by grape, she grew quieter. Mrs. Hill drew a blanket over her, and left her slumbering on the sofa.
Polly dragged herself back up to bed, but Sarah, rather than returning to the hot closeness of the little attic room, and the stale smell of the shared bed, trod her feet into her boots, and shuffled out across the yard, and climbed up to the stable loft where James no longer was, and huddled down in his bed, and pulled his sheets up to her face, and tried to catch the last scent of him there.
… the impudence of an impudent man.
Jane scribbled a note, folded and sealed it. Sarah had been summoned from her morning chores; the dew was not yet burnt off the lawn: this was urgent.
“Would you take this to the post office, Sarah, dear, and send it? And, in a general fashion, ask if there are any letters waiting for us there?”
Sarah looked at the little packet. It was addressed to Miss Elizabeth, in Lambton, Derbyshire.
“Yes, miss. I always ask, miss.”
“Good girl; thank you.”
Jane gave Sarah one of her sweet smiles, and touched her on the shoulder. They were all still pretending that nobody actually knew about Lydia. From Jane’s queasy look, it could be guessed that she had some uneasy half-suspicion of what men and women might do together, if they were but given the opportunity: there was disgust there, as well as distress. Sarah, leaving her mistress, fetching her shawl and clattering down the servants’ stairs, realized that she was quite alone in envying Lydia: but it was something, it must be something, to be with the man you wanted. Even if it was just Wickham, there must be joy in it.
The postmistress shook her head at Sarah’s enquiry; there was nothing for the family yet today. Were they expecting something in particular? She could have the boy run over with it if a packet came on the later coach. If Sarah would just let her know from what direction they expected it, she would know it immediately, and would send it straight on to Longbourn, at only a little extra charge—
“That’s quite all right, thank you, missus. I can come back and check in the afternoon. Is there anything, though—” Sarah fumbled the words, knowing how strange they must sound, coming from her. “I wonder, do you happen, by any chance, to have anything for me?”
A snort of laughter. Sarah said nothing; she watched from under knitted brows as the woman’s expression changed. Realizing that the question had been seriously intended, she composed herself, and became business-like again.
“I’ll just go and see.”
Sarah thanked her; the postmistress turned to check the pigeonholes. It took barely a moment: she turned back again, empty hands turned palms up, like a stained-glass saint.
“There’s always the late coach, of course; as you say, come again in the afternoon. Though where are you expecting letters from now, I wonder?”
“You are a good girl, Sarah,” Jane told her, when she returned without the longed-for missive. “Thank you for your trouble. You may go now, and get on with your work.”
Sarah curtseyed. She closed the door softly behind her, leaving Jane to her dreadful imaginings.
He did trace them easily to Clapham, but no farther …
“You only had to look at him to know that it was bad. He was grey, he was. Positively grey.”
Polly was doing her best to be grave, but all attempts at solemnity were in vain; she was giddy with excitement. She had rushed to open the front door when Colonel Forster thumped on it, and had been thrilled to usher him into the house and show him to the breakfast room. She had remained in the hallway outside—just in case she was needed; that would be her excuse—listening brazenly while Colonel Forster delivered his news.
It had not been received with much restraint; Mrs. Bennet was not one to tiptoe around the edges of disaster, with one eye to the abyss and another to her own comportment: she plunged headlong in, and as she fell, took pains to enumerate the discomforts and inconveniences of the fall. Polly had, as a consequence, heard a good deal of what was said on the matter, and was quite ready to extrapolate the rest.
“So, what did the colonel say?”
Eyebrows arched, Polly whistled out a scandalized breath. “Well, it turns out Lydia—”
“No, but—” Sarah cut her off. “Was there any news of Mr. Smith?”
“Does the colonel know James?” Polly frowned. “How does he know James?”
“I was just wondering, maybe, that he might have heard, since he’s been asking around anyway—”
“Well, you’ll have to ask him yourself. What I heard was only about Lydia, ’cos it seems they are not gone to Gretna at all, but actually to London …”
There was a time when London had seemed the summit of all desires to Sarah, and now it seemed to matter not at all. What mattered now was that Colonel Forster was here, at Longbourn, and might have direct and immediate knowledge of James. One word from him could confirm her worst fears, or disperse them entirely to the winds. She might, this very day, come to know the truth of him. If he was a prisoner of the Militia, if he had been taken w
ith them to Brighton. If he had been pressed back into the Army. If he had been flogged again.
If they had killed him.
But she would go to him, in a fingersnap, if he was still alive. If she could but find out where to go.
“So they are not married, because you can’t get married in London just like that, you don’t go there to get married like you do in Gretna!”
Mrs. Hill nodded along, chewing her lip.
“The colonel said that Lydia and Wickham changed carriages at Clapham, but he could find no trace of them after that, though he asked at every turnpike, he said, and at all the inns in Barnet and Hatfield.”
“And then what?” Mr. Hill asked.
“Well, the poor man, what a time he’s had of it, all that trouble looking for them, and then to have to suffer all the trouble here! He handed over a note Lydia had left for Mrs. Forster; they read it, Mr. B. and Mrs. B. did, and then Mrs. B. gave out this great big scream, and then there was the most almighty kerfuffle, and I thought I’d better hoof it—”
A pause. Polly looked from one to the other, delighted with her own importance.
“You should have seen Kitty, though! I saw her when I brought up the tea. She’s in so much trouble. It’s like she’s shrunk, actually shrunk. And then Jane rang for me to take this—another letter to the post …” Her voice dropped to a significant whisper. “And do you know! I do not think Mr. B. has spoke a single word since he read that letter of Lydia’s, that she left for Mrs. Forster.”
“Mrs. Hill,” Sarah said suddenly. “I shall ask the colonel. About James.”
The housekeeper went still, her top lip bit hard between her front teeth.
“I really don’t see why James would have anything to do with the colonel.” Polly was cleaning her nails with a corner of Jane’s letter. “He hated the soldiers.”
“Shut up, Polly. I should ask him, though, shouldn’t I, Mrs. Hill?”