by Jo Baker
“Thank you, Mr. Bennet, sir.”
She bobbed a curtsey, and took her money up to her room, and put it away in her wooden box, along with the previous quarter’s pay. If she could find it, and it was writ in English, she would borrow Heraclitus from the library, at the next opportunity, since Mr. Bennet had not told her what he had said. She locked the box, and shoved it back under her bed, and then got up and went to her window. The moon was up, a pale wafer in the daytime sky. It was more than a year now since James had first come to Longbourn, and four months since he had left. How long could she wait without a scrap, a crumb?
The household was thrown into panic that Saturday morning by the arrival of a chaise and four, which had travelled fast: the horses were clearly post. On Mrs. Hill’s answering the front door, the passenger, a lady, demanded to know where the family were gathered, then swept past her without waiting to be announced. Stunned, Mrs. Hill ran back to the kitchen to boil water for tea, since some courtesy must be shown, however discourteous the visitor.
It was the old lady from Kent, Sarah was able to explain, back in the kitchen, having heard the description of the traveller. It was Mr. Collins’s patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who peered at your sewing and told you what you were doing wrong.
Sarah, crossing the yard a little later with the pig-bucket, saw Elizabeth passing the side of the house in Lady Catherine’s wake. They disappeared into the little wilderness. Sarah shifted the bucket from her right hand to her left, ran her sore palm down her apron, and then carried on towards the sty, where she would stay and watch the piglets play and scratch the sow’s ears, till she heard the chaise crunch away down the gravel, and could be sure that Lady Catherine had left.
And this was what money could do—it was a sort of magic. It turned thoughts into things, desire into effect: Lady Catherine had, for whatever reason, wanted to come here, and so she had just rung a bell, and spoken some words, and everything flowed from this. How many quarters’ pay would Sarah have to save, before she could turn any of her desire into anything at all?
Mrs. Hill watched Sarah drag herself and her empty bucket back across the yard, and felt for her. Work was not a cure; it never had been: it simply grew a skin on despair, and crusted over it. And the thing was, Sarah was still so very young, younger than even Mrs. Hill had been when she had lost her happiness. Sarah had, God willing, a good many years left yet to haul herself broken-winded through.
Something must be found for Sarah; something must be done.
Mrs. B.’s nightgown was warming at the dressing-room fire, and in the adjoining bedchamber, Mrs. Hill had already turned back the bed and slipped in the warming-pan. Mrs. B. held up her arms for assistance with buttons and laces. She had had a few celebratory glasses of claret. It made her calmer and more self-contained than usual.
Then there was a soft knock on the door, and Elizabeth slipped into the close little room. Mrs. Hill bobbed her curtsey and moved out into the bedchamber, leaving mother—only a little unbuttoned at the back—and daughter to their confidences.
The mistress at first struggled to comprehend what Elizabeth was saying, but Mrs. Hill, quietly tidying the bedchamber, understood perfectly. Elizabeth had made a spectacular deal, and the household was to contract still further. With three girls married, and the elder two becoming, on their marriages, suitable chaperones for unmarried sisters, the younger pair would soon hardly be at home at all. The Longbourn household was shrinking apace.
She and Mr. Hill were safe there, she knew: it was part of her own deal. The two of them could get old, and die there, and with no fear of being forced to go upon the parish. But the girls: they would not be kept on at Longbourn, not both of them, not when they were no longer needed.
“To Mr. Darcy?” Sarah asked, on being told the news.
Mrs. Hill had steered her into the scullery. “Yes.”
“Right. And is she happy?”
“Her mother says, a house in town, and a house in the country, and everything that is good. Carriages and the Lord knows what. Jane’s match, she says, is nothing to it.”
“But is she happy?”
“I think so. She says so.”
Sarah nodded. “Well, then. Good for her.”
Sarah went back to her work, her jaw tight. She would have been content with so little. She would have been content with just his company.
When Ptolemy Bingley next appeared in the kitchen, one morning before breakfast, and cast his beautiful eyes around, and found the room lacked Sarah, and therefore also lacked interest, Mrs. Hill was minded for the first time to overlook the misfortune of his breeding, since he could not help it, and look on him with some measure of compassion. She would enquire a little deeper into his prospects and his intentions. It could do no harm. It made sense to consider every possibility. One must—though the word grated even in her thoughts—be practical.
She had not expected him to open up to her the way he did, like a daisy in the sun.
“You have been almost a parent to her, I see that. You wish to protect her, which is admirable. I had myself hoped to win your good opinion.”
He had missed Sarah more than he had thought possible, he confessed. London and its amusements had afforded him but little pleasure, after that first brief stay at Netherfield. His thoughts were always returning here, to Hertfordshire, and to Sarah. Sweet, unworldly Sarah. There was not a girl like her to be found in all of London town.
He really had not expected it. It had not been part of his plan.
Mrs. Hill made him tea, and poured him a cup, and gave him milk and sugar too. He sipped his drink, and disclosed to Mrs. Hill the depths of his attachment, the heights of his hopes, the scope of his plans, and the steep trajectory that a woman, his wife, could expect to climb with him.
Because he would not be a footman for ever, oh no indeed.
Mrs. Hill watched him carefully. His manners were those of a gentleman: service at that level rubbed the rough edges off a fellow. She had no doubt that he would get on in the world. So in purely practical terms, in terms of security, he would be an excellent match for Sarah. With his charm and her industry, the little enterprise he proposed must thrive; they would put money aside; they would, by dint of effort and economy, become persons of substance, and have their names written up over the shop door: Mr. and Mrs. Bingley, Props. How fine that would be. They would themselves keep servants. It would be a match, in its own way, almost as brilliant as Elizabeth’s, in the degree to which Sarah would be raised up by it.
Mrs. Hill offered this all up to Sarah over breakfast later, like it was a present.
“He is quite, quite smitten.”
Polly slowed in the buttering of a muffin, looked from the housekeeper to the housemaid and back again.
Mr. Hill’s chewing ceased. He swallowed. “Shop?” he asked.
“He has it all arranged by now, I suppose,” Sarah said.
“That boy has a shop?” asked Mr. Hill again.
“Not yet. But he will have. He told you already, I take it, Sarah?”
“When he was last here. Before you forbad me seeing him.”
“He has his eye on a particular spot,” Mrs. Hill said, ignoring the latter remark.
“I forget where.”
“Spitalfields.”
Polly scraped at the butter with her knife, pulled a face. “Spittle!”
“Spital. As in hospital. Not as in slobber.”
“Oh.”
“He has money saved—” Mrs. Hill continued.
“Does he now?” Mr. Hill spoke around a new mouthful.
“Twelve pounds!” She leaned back from the table and folded her arms, and stared at Sarah, as though this clinched it. “Twelve pounds, three shillings and sixpence, to be exact.”
“Twelve pounds, three shillings and sixpence?”
“It will be more than that, come Lady Day; that’s when he plans to leave the Bingleys’ service and start out on his own.”
Mr. Hill whistled, spraying moist
crumbs.
Polly, watching one intent face and then another, helped herself discreetly to a second muffin.
“He is a man of ambition,” said Mrs. Hill. “He is a man who knows what he wants. He is a man who has twelve pounds, three shillings and sixpence, and he wants you, Sarah, dear.”
Mrs. Hill reached across the table, between the teacups and the plates, and took Sarah’s hand. “You must know that it would be such a comfort, to see you well settled, and safe in your own establishment. Whatever else we may have hoped for once. And, Sarah, consider this: think what it would be like to have your own home, and not to be ordered about, or be dependent on anyone’s goodwill.”
“Except my husband’s.”
“Yes, of course, except your husband’s.”
The library bell rang. They all flinched, then looked round at it, jangling there on its spring. Mr. Hill wiped his mouth and scraped back his chair. Mrs. Hill also started up, but he held up a hand to still her.
“You stay there, Mrs. Hill. Rest yourself a little longer.”
He made his tired old way out of the kitchen, and the door swung closed behind him. Unnoticed, Polly drew the greengage jam towards her. Mrs. Hill turned back to Sarah.
“My dear. Consider it, at least. It would be a—practical—solution to all this.”
Practical. There it was again, that gritty word; it made Mrs. Hill’s mouth feel unclean.
Polly dug the spoon deep into the jar, and lifted out a dripping heap of translucent green-gold preserve. She let it fall onto the upturned face of her muffin, spread it around with the back of the spoon, then popped the spoon into her mouth to clean it.
Sarah folded her arms, leaning back, a mirror of Mrs. Hill.
“Would you, Mrs. Hill?” she asked. “In my place? Would you marry him, knowing what you know now, having lived as you have lived?”
Mrs. Hill hesitated a moment, then lips pressed together, she nodded.
“No—”
“Yes. I would.”
“No.” Sarah faltered. “But—what about—”
“Love?” Mrs. Hill looked at the girl’s sore-looking, determined face. She lied: “You’d be surprised how little it matters in the end.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“He loves you. Isn’t that enough? He would be good to you. He is a good man.”
“But he is not James.”
Mrs. Hill closed her eyes, and let a breath go, and could argue no longer. Her boy James, there and gone, lost and found and lost again: a treasure far too precious for her to keep. The hopes that Ptolemy’s confidences had engendered in her now fell clean away.
“They’ll let one of you go,” Mrs. Hill said. “You know that, don’t you? We can’t go on like this for ever. There soon won’t be work enough for all of us.”
Polly bit into her over-laden muffin, looking from one to the other. She wedged her mouthful into her cheek. “Is that true?”
Sarah glanced at her. “You have jam by the corner of your mouth.”
Polly wiped at her lips ineffectually, swallowed. “You stay, then. You wait for James here. I can go and work for the Wickhams.”
“No, sweetie, you can’t.”
“It’ll be all right.”
“No it won’t.”
They sat there, in silence, each alone.
… he had yet to learn to be laught at, and it was rather too early to begin.
Packages now arrived daily for Jane and Elizabeth. It fell to Polly and Sarah to collect them from the post office—they went together when they could. These were quiet, companionable walks, through mist on the low fields and drifting autumn leaves.
Many of these parcels contained fine fabrics for the young brides’ trousseaux—silks and muslins and velvets, ordered by their mother from the London warehouses. Two new bonnets came in smart bandboxes from Mrs. Gardiner, who had been charged with their commission at a London milliner. One small square box, however, addressed to Miss Elizabeth, came straight from Nottingham. The paper was peeled apart, the pasteboard lid lifted with eager fingers; a beautiful silk-lace bonnet veil, with a pattern of falling leaves, and a delicately scalloped edge, lay inside.
“From Mr. Darcy,” Elizabeth said.
This must be tried: immediately was not too soon. The tissue-paper fell away. Laying it out on the bed, Sarah fastened the drawstrings around the crown of the bonnet, and settled the lace over the peak.
“It’s quite heavy,” Sarah said, lifting the bonnet and veil together, the drift of lace lying over an arm.
“The best stuff always is.”
Sarah set the bonnet on Elizabeth’s head, and let the veil fall; she bent to arrange its folds. Elizabeth’s neck stiffened.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Mr. Darcy is very generous,” said Elizabeth.
“He is.”
To Sarah, Elizabeth seemed a world away, and icy cold, with the veil hanging over her face. Elizabeth must have felt something of this too, seeing her reflection in the mirror—because she reached up and started to fumble the veil away. Then she paused, realizing the risk to the lace.
“Would you do that for me? Take it off, please.” Elizabeth folded her hands in her lap to keep them still. “I don’t want it spoilt.”
“Of course.”
The lace draped over one arm, Sarah lifted off the bonnet while Elizabeth sat stone still.
“What do you think it will be like, Sarah, to be married?”
Sarah’s eyes met Elizabeth’s in the glass. She could see her own reflection, standing behind the young mistress, a raw hand resting on a delicate shoulder, the other holding the lace and bonnet; her own mousy dress, her hair in need of a wash and scraped back under a work-cap.
“I dare say it shall be very pleasant indeed.”
Elizabeth nodded, her silky curls slipping up and down the nape of her neck.
People said that Mr. Darcy was marrying down, but Sarah could not see it that way at all. It all seemed to work out neatly, like the columns in a well-kept ledger: his wealth, property and standing were equal to, and offered in straightforward payment for, her loveliness. When you considered it like that, he did not stoop in marrying her at all. And when you considered it like that, it was no wonder to Sarah that she had nobody.
“I can see little glimpses of it,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, marriage; me being married and living there at Pemberley; Christmas, I can imagine that, and dear Jane and Mr. Bingley visiting in the spring perhaps. And I can see me, seated at the pianoforte with his sister.”
“It does sound pleasant.”
“But what I can’t see, what I have no idea at all of, is what it will be like day to day, day after day, just him and me. I am not certain of it—I find I am a little … nervous.”
Elizabeth’s soft fingertips rested on Sarah’s red hand.
“I want you to come with me.”
“What, miss?”
“To Pemberley. I want you to come too. You will, won’t you?”
“I don’t know, I—”
Elizabeth spoke hurriedly: “You see, I shall want something from home about me. It would be such a comfort. Mr. Darcy sees no harm in it, and Mama says that once Jane and I are married, she will not need you here any more.”
Sarah set the bonnet down on the bed and untied the drawstrings, loosening the fine creases in the lace. Everything had, it seemed, already been decided.
“The work would be light compared with what you are used to here; Pemberley is already well equipped with servants. You will not have to lug buckets or light fires. You will not have to mend stockings there. At least, not for the whole household. Just your own, perhaps, and I suppose mine.”
Sarah lifted the veil away, folded it, and laid it back in its box.
“You are afraid that you will miss your friends, of course you are, this is what you are used to. But at Pemberley, Mrs. Reynolds, the housekeeper, she would like you; she would be kind to you when she sees how proper and good and wel
l trained you are. And you would see a little more of the world, and you know you have always wanted to do that.”
The veil lay square in the box, like a sheaf of unwritten paper. Sarah shut the lid on it.
“So, is it settled? Are we agreed?”
Sarah turned back to the dressing table. Her mistress, expectant, watched her in the mirror. Sarah nodded.
“Oh, I am happy to know it. You will like it there, I am certain that you will.”
Sarah touched Elizabeth’s curls back into order. Her mistress had brightened, but now faded again, and was thoughtful. Perhaps it was not an easy thing, to be so entirely happy. Perhaps it was actually quite a fearful state to live in—the knowledge that one had achieved a complete success.
There were tears in the kitchen when she told them. Even Mr. Hill had to clear his throat and turn away and make himself busy, picking at the dripped wax on a candlestick. Just because they had seen this coming down the road at them—this dissolution—did not mean that any of them were really prepared for its arrival.
“If you hear anything,” Sarah said. “If you ever get word of him—if he returns—”
“I will write to you that same moment.”
“Polly, too—take care of her. Make sure she has some time to study. And to play with the village children.”
Mrs. Hill nodded, swallowed down the lump in her throat.
“She is very young,” Sarah said.
“I know.”
“And a proper little cuckoo.”
“Hey!”
She picked Polly up, squeezed her, pressed her face into her neck. “You are so gorgeous that I want to bite you.”
“Don’t,” said Polly, and wiped her eyes with the side of her hand. “Write to me, though, from Pemberley. I have got quite good at deciphering, you know.”
To Pemberley, therefore, they were to go.
The stagecoach deposited Sarah, along with Elizabeth’s trunks and portmanteaux, at the inn in Lambton, and then bundled on its way. She could see a few glowing windows, a church spire against the stars, the open dark of the green—then she was hailed by an old, angle-faced man carrying a candle-lamp. He gestured to a wagon, which the inn servants were loading with Mrs. Darcy’s things. She climbed up, and waited for him there, while he shook and tugged the canvas covering into place and lashed it down.