Never would the Darcys have engaged in such suggestive banter in anyone else’s presence, much less Jane’s. In reality, had Jane been there to hear them, it is unlikely that she would have been embarrassed. This was not because her sensibilities were not easily ruffled, but because in all probability she would have been compleatly unwitting of their inference. Circumstances had not altered all that much with Jane and Bingley. Even Elizabeth knew that Jane may have at last found erotic satisfaction, but odds were she found it in the figura veneris primi position.
***
The kindness of Charles Bingley’s heart rivalled that of Jane’s. Open and artless, Charles Bingley was not of illustrious birth, but the son of a wealthy merchant. Neither his birthright nor his pocket mattered to Jane. His single drawback was that included in the baggage which he carried with him to Hertfordshire were his two older sisters. Louisa was married to a Mr. Hurst, an indolent man more of fashion than fortune. Miss Caroline Bingley had an elegant figure and an air of decided fashion, one that she kept aloft through a habit of spending more than she ought of her own fortune of twenty thousand pounds. Both sisters treated those they supposed beneath them with an air of superciliousness and were inclined to think well of themselves and meanly of everyone else.
Despite his sisters’ opposition, it had been love at first sight for both Bingley and Jane. And although the path to wedded bliss had not been without its occasional rut, they had been happy beyond telling. Indeed, they were well matched in temperament and understanding. When they came to their nuptial bed, Bingley was no more experienced than his wife.
Although Bingley had been infatuated many times, however fevered his blood, he had never had the courage to take liberties with a young lady. When he and Jane became engaged, he was still quite young and inexperienced. Hence he was as much an innocent as his virginal bride upon their wedding night. What his connubial technique lacked in proficiency, however, he hoped to remedy with enthusiasm. It took several nights of concentrated effort and random prodding to accomplish the act of generation, but Jane remained unvexed. To her mind, the primary obstacle had been merely locating the correct orifice. Once that was remedied, further proceedings would go more smoothly.
And in practice they had. (Although Bingley had whimpered a great deal, Jane’s primary response had been one of puzzlement.) As she was not afforded the pleasure singular to this act, each successive encounter had become nothing more than a means to an end. And that end was to bear her husband’s children. Because Jane fell with child with remarkable regularity, all seemed well. But because Bingley had been relegated to the office of breeding stock, any pride in that fact never quite flourished. As it happened, he was allowed into Jane’s bed so seldom that he never really mastered the peripherals. Hence, despite the pleasure Jane took in his kisses, the nights he came to her bed were for her less an indulgence than a duty.
Mrs. Bennet was happy to direct Jane in the manner that she received her husband’s attention. Through her instruction, Bingley was banned to his own bed except when Jane was actively seeking impregnation. That excluded those times of menstruation, parturiency, nursing, fatigue, and Sundays. Therefore, it was no small miracle that she had birthed four children in five years. Initially, Jane had thought herself altogether happy. What she had not been witting, she could not desire. She had learnt, however, that Elizabeth’s marriage bed witnessed acts of lovemaking that resulted in exultations of a most passionate nature. That was somewhat troubling to Jane, but as she did not think herself dissatisfied, she was inclined to let sleeping dogs lie—as it were.
Those who knew how very dearly Bingley loved Jane would have been quite astonished to learn that he had strayed to the arms of another woman. To those of a more cynical persuasion, however, it was not altogether unfathomable that deprivation drove him to seek that relief. But the reasons men wander from their wives are as diverse as the arms they betray—whether it be in search of love, money, self-aggrandizement, or simply because they can. Bingley did for none of these reasons. His rationale was far too immediate. He was not lustful. He simply sought to relieve a palpable pain in his nether-regions. His may have been more understandable than the average adultery, yet it was no less unforgivable. And that it was unforgivable meant that it had been altogether unknown by even his closest acquaintances.
Although they were quite good friends, Darcy was older than Bingley by nearly a half-dozen years. Darcy was the oldest sibling in his family, Bingley the youngest. Their friendship replicated that element. Darcy conducted their friendship as if Bingley were a younger, more naïve brother, one in need of his counsel and guidance. Having suffered the loss of his father as a very young man and been compleatly in the company of his two sisters, Bingley was in desperate need of instruction in the manly arts. Darcy provided what education he could, but Bingley had not Darcy’s inherent mistrust of human-kind. His affability and open manner led him to form friendships that were not always in his best interest. Employing considerable tact, Darcy had pointed out this failing to him, but while he may have listened with polite attention, he did not heed those warnings. Those few privy to his fall from grace believed that a lack of discrimination in those he chose to befriend may not have been the chief evil that led him into doing a grave injustice to his marriage vows, but it played a part.
Even Bingley was astonished with himself. He loved Jane without measure. How he had come to betray her as he had, he could but shake his head in wonder. As for Jane, she knew her husband well, and if he had been unfaithful, she knew that it had not been by design. She did not ask of, nor did he offer, the particulars. It was over. He vowed, and she believed, that he would never again breach her trust. Total unification, however, was not quite so expeditious.
With time, the proverbial silver lining displayed itself in a most unusual manner. For as keenly ashamed and remorseful as Bingley had been for his adulterous disportment, it had not been without its enlightenments. And there was considerable room for enlightenment.
He had never set out to know any other woman in the biblical sense. Indeed, he could not recall just how it all came to pass. What he did remember of the young woman with whom he became entangled was, while she was by no means a trollop, she most definitely was not a virgin—even as unschooled as he was he knew that. Indeed, when it came to coition, she knew more about what went where than he had ever imagined. That may have been the single reason he saw her after that first grave transgression. Instruction was not a defence he would ever be foolish enough to proffer, but that was what had lured him back. The entire affair had been altogether illuminating.
32
Waif
At the age of six and ten, Sally Frances Arbuthnot’s manner had not altered from the courteous demeanour and modest attitude of her childhood. Although she seldom minced words, she was never truly rude. But she had an odd inflection to her speech owing to a haphazard upbringing and a travelling nature, which upon occasion would inspire a listener to reckon from just what part of England she hailed. Upon this subject, she was unusually curt.
“I was born in hell and raised in purgatory,” said she, with a snap and a dismissive shrug of her shoulder which allowed no room for further discussion.
She could just as easily have said it was Seven Dials from whence she came. It was spelt differently but there was not a hair’s-breadth difference in their drift.
Born on the wrong side of the vestry in the bowels of perdition to an indifferent mother and a tempestuous father, Sally’s beginnings were more than a little ignominious. Inasmuch as those were her beginnings, it did not bode well that her upbringing would improve her straits. The general improvidence of her birth was mitigated by one happy occurrence. For the two features that haunted a happy outcome for her eventual handsomeness (prominent ears and florid complexion) in her babyhood were ultimately out-distanced with each passing year. Indeed, it may have been tardy, but fate had eventually levelled its smile
upon Sally. Hence, in the mere bud of young womanhood she was rendered quite a pretty little snip of a girl. Yet, overwhelmed as she had been with the daily tribulations of endeavouring to remain alive, she did not immediately understand the implication of that favour.
What distinguished Sally Frances Arbuthnot from the mass of teeming humanity struggling for existence in the East End was that she refused to allow her past to define her future.
***
On a street where working men rarely did work, washer-women never had clothes-lines, and pick-pockets were considered skilled workers, Nell Arbuthnot was considered by her neighbours an upstanding citizen in that she struggled to do an honest day’s work. There were so few men of wages about, she had achieved an additional modicum of respect because of her son’s occupation. He was Seaman Archie Arbuthnot, the Royal Navy’s most venerable servant, brave attendant of the ninety-gun dreadnought, Galatea.
Nell, however, was not particularly happy about her granddaughter’s mother’s distinction.
“Worthless wanton whore of the devil” was a frequently heard impeachment.
It may have been an overstatement, but it was hard to argue the facts.
Sally’s mother, heavy with another’s man’s child, had decamped without ceremony and seemingly little thought to her and her little sister, Sue. Both were far too young to be forced into pitched battles with life’s atrocities, but that mattered not. The specific brutality life chose to throw in their path was the loss of their mother. But had she merely died, that would have been a kindness compared to the bewildering fact of outright abandonment.
Indeed, she had simply vanished—no kiss upon their foreheads, no word of good-bye. Sally had been barely old enough to remember her as merely a flash of red hair and the odour of gin.
Her parents had not been officially united in holy matrimony, but they presented a near enough semblance of it for him to beat her without fear of a visit by the constabulary. Sally knew that her mother’s name was Abigail, but her image was lost forever—as was her father’s. Although rough hands and stagnant breath was all she truly recalled of him, she knew his name well—Archie Arbuthnot. Not only did she know his name, but who he was. This was a given in that she and her young sister, Sue, were left in Archie’s mother’s care by default.
She had a single recollection she cherished. That memory was of her beloved brother, John Christie. He was but a half-brother, born to her mother long before she came to Archie’s bed. Nevertheless, from those first lonely nights with Nell when she nestled next to her sister and struggled to find warmth beneath a tatty counterpane, Sally’s mind’s eye desperately sought a sustaining comfort. When at last she slept, it was of her brother she dreamt.
John Christie was not of Archie’s loins and that fact was a hopeless carbuncle on the posterior of Archie’s manly pride. Archibald Arbuthnot was but one of the many men who were of the mind that the measure of one’s virility could be determined by the production of male offspring. Poor Abigail had the misfortune of presenting him with two daughters after bearing a son by another man. (This, of course, had informed Archie and the world at large that his potency was compromised.) Indeed, he was not at all happy to allow his wages to feed the personification of another man’s virility. This affront was made clear unequivocally to one and all, but he never quite drove John off. John was a good earner on the streets. (So long as he was, Archie was not inclined to question just how he came about his contribution to the family’s keep.) Regardless, Archie’s displeasure was not compleatly appeased. When he took to drink (which was not infrequently), his rage was vented first on the woman who did not bear him a son and second on the son whom he did not beget. By the time he got around to punishing his detested daughters for their sin of gender, sometimes he was too spent to do much more than curse. Regrettably, oftentimes he was not.
It was Archie’s misfortune that he could look upon John with nothing but a jaundiced eye. For the boy who was not his son evidenced a form of manhood foreign to their neighbourhood. Indeed, he was but a long-legged rail of a boy, but John Christie shook an upraised fist in the face of the hulking Archie Arbuthnot as if daring him to thrash him. Upon occasion, Archie did. Upon others, Archie simply fell face-forward upon the bed, wholly insensible to the world and all its contemptible inhabitants.
Once Archie snuffled and snored, Abigail came forward and with her son took to setting upended bits and pieces to right. Sally and Sue always sat in numbing fear whilst John and Abigail went about making their alterations. As the little girls were far too young to be other than unlearnt about the sheer depth of drunken repose, they sat with their hands steepled, praying that this noise would not awaken Archie. When the table and benches were again at the ready, Abigail sat down to partake of a bit of drink on her own. John looked upon his mother’s form with glum acceptance. Thus, his eyes took on a glazed expression, as if only then did he see true defeat. History told him that she would not stop until she was in no greater possession of her senses than Archie.
Sally recollected her brother turning away from their mother’s ruin and to them, hiding beneath the bed. His countenance was etched in her memory as surely as if it had been but days rather than years. His eyes had been wide—but not with fear, for he was long past that. His expression begged them to come to him. Humbly, stealthily, like lost little whipped pups, they crawled from their sanctuary and scampered to him. Whilst their mother found considerable interest in the amber liquid before her, his sisters clung to John’s legs as he stirred the ashes of the fire back to life. When they were comfortably situated, he had sung lullabies. Summoning a ridiculous falsetto, he sang the silly little ditties, the sillier the better. He sang first one, then another until they sang all they knew and then they started over again.
Although her brother had been well aware that their lot was preordained, it would take a number of years for Sally to have that wisdom. But her time on the street explained to her that weathering poverty demanded copious amounts of spirits. Copious amounts of spirits begat violence. It was a maddeningly sorrowful circle from which few had the wherewithal to liberate themselves. Her brother was brave and good but was as powerless to save them from their destiny as was she. Their only hope was for the morrow. For the sun would rise on a new day and Archie would be back to sea—this her brother promised. And Archie did return to his ship, and as John had promised, all was good again.
Then one day it was not.
It had been an abrupt departure. There was no foreshadowing or omen. One day her brother was watching her mother stirring pottage in their lodgings on Buck’s Row, the next both were gone. Gone like ghosts.
Nell managed to fend for herself through a steady mending business. That small leverage against want was obliterated the morning she found Sally and Sue sitting patiently upon her stoop. One mouth to feed on her scant income was doable; three looked to be a catastrophe. Still, when faced with her duty, pragmatic Nell shouldered the responsibility with little more than a shrug of her bony shoulders and watched helplessly as the careful balance that she had kept between want and need was upended. Indeed, within months after inheriting her granddaughters, privation crept into their simple lodgings like a noxious tenant. Young as they were, they recognised the storm-clouds building. Archie’s ship would soon return to port.
Despite his intemperate ways, Nell did not suffer Abigail’s carousing behind Archie’s back with much tolerance. She had made it her business to stop by their lodgings just to raise an occasional objection. Early morn or late, invariably, she would only find Abigail’s son, John, looking after the little girls. When confronted over her faithlessness, Abigail had protested her innocence offering a long, winding account as to why she was so often out all night. Nell was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she knew a bald-faced lie when she heard it. Hence, she was not only well aware that her son’s wife had a penchant for libations and adultery, she was quite witting that
she was also high in the belly again—and not by Archie.
“She’s got another’s bye-blow up the spout, she do.”
His beloved mother or not, Nell still had fully meant to lay low when Archie reappeared. She could see him then, sea locker perched on his shoulder and his hat cocked at a dangerously acute angle—thus announcing he was expecting forthwith to be rewarded by his woman’s faithful embrace (few male libidos bore a year at sea with any part of impassivity). At one time, Nell rejoiced that her son returned from sea. Once he had been a source of pride, bringing her trinkets from faraway lands. Now that it was she who would answer to his temper, her heart grew cold at the thought of him.
Even the neighbours knew that after Archie was released from his ship only to learn that his wife had taken surreptitious leave (and wags snickering that she left heavy with another man’s child) he would need someone not only to cook his meals, but to endure the rage of his injured pride. It would to be a precipitous fall in spirits. Seven Dials was thick with wives, mothers, and daughters beaten more commonly thrice a day as thrice a week. Archie thrashing his mother, therefore, would not be an uncommon occurrence.
Late that night the old woman stole away in the dark. She did not, however, take her leave alone.
She took Sally and Sue with her.
There was little time to devise a plan, leaving it light on design and heavy on risk. Nell had but a few coins to her name and the street and all its plagues were to be only a bare improvement from the sting of Archie’s belt. Nell was not a prideful woman, but she refused to allow herself to be beaten by her own son. If it had been another man, she might have poisoned his food, but she could not, in all good conscience, murder her own blood. Hence, without a roof over their head, the little family huddled together that first night for warmth, their toes tucked beneath them lest the rats take interest. Making their way along the dusty walkboards the next day, the unhappy situation was apparent. When once they were merely amongst the poor, now they would abide in the absolute bowels of hell. It was the one place that Archie would not venture to find them.
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