Longbourn (14 page)

“About a month ago I received this letter, and about a fortnight ago I answered it, for I thought it a case of some delicacy, and requiring early attention.”

With Jane and Elizabeth returned to the bosom of their family, and Sarah’s restoration to something like good health, Mrs. Hill might have allowed herself to hope that familiar routines would be resumed, that there could be a resumption of what might be thought of as normality.

If such an expectation had indeed blossomed in her heart, it was quashed entirely the following day, by an announcement of Mr. Bennet’s over breakfast. His cousin, Mr. Collins, was expected that very afternoon, and was to stay with them until the Saturday se’nnight following. Having imparted this information to his family, he left them with their crumbs and coffee dregs and retired to the library, the better to relish his
coup de théâtre
. His escape was not entirely successful, however. Mrs. Hill followed him to his place of refuge. She slipped round the door without knocking.

“This gentleman is to be stopping with us for twelve days, Mr. Bennet?”

Mr. Bennet nodded.

“And this being the very day that he is expected to arrive?”

Mr. Bennet shook out his copy of the
Courier
. “It is exactly as you observe.”

“You must know, sir, that I am not at all prepared for this.”

“And yet,” said Mr. Bennet, “barring acts of God or bandits, he shall be with us by four o’clock.” He lifted his watch deliberately from his waistcoat pocket and examined it. “And it wants but fifteen minutes till eleven. Tick tock, Mrs. Hill. Tick tock.”

“This is most unkind, sir.”

He slipped his watch away. “And that is unfair, Mrs. Hill. This is merely a question of practicalities, not kindness. All you have to do is what we employ you to do.” He tucked his chin into the folds of his neck-cloth, shook out the paper again. “And you had better be getting on, don’t you think?”

Mrs. Hill drew breath to protest, but then caught herself: it was—it always was—a waste of time to argue with him. This was a punishment. He had waited till this moment to dish it out, but she had earned it a couple of months ago by speaking her mind to him when James had first joined the household. If she made another objection now, he would just notch it up against her on that secret tally he kept, and bide his time. So let him enjoy this little victory: she would just get on with what must be done, and pretend it did not hurt her. She dropped him a curtsey and clapped the library door shut behind her, and clattered up the stairs to the guest room.

Mr. Bennet well knew what Mr. Collins meant to her, to all of them below stairs. They were safe at Longbourn only while Mr. Bennet’s heart kept ticking: beyond that, they were dependent entirely on this stranger’s will. And it had always been Mrs. Hill’s intention that, should that gentleman ever visit, she would take a month to plan the menus, she would take a fortnight to air and iron the best linen, she would spend days getting the guest bedchamber buffed up to the highest possible sheen with vinegar and good cold tea and her best wax.

Because Mr. Collins must, of course, be made to see how entirely necessary the current servantry were to the future enjoyment of his inheritance: he could, if he chose to, dismiss them all with a snap of the fingers once Mr. Bennet was dead, and this secure little arrangement would be peeled into its separate parts and flung to the four winds. Poor Mr. Hill would die of it, that much was certain. Little Polly would fall foul of something or someone, being far too young and far too daft to fend for herself, and Sarah was simply too trusting to be out alone in the world. James had only just joined them; she couldn’t let him be flung off like that, not when they were all getting so used to having him around.

Such were Mrs. Hill’s thoughts as she thundered up the stairs, as she swung open the door into the guest room, crossed the carpet, flung back
the shutters and heaved up the sash. The bitter November wind rushed in. No, there was nothing to be gained by protesting: the only thing for it was to spite Mr. Bennet’s spite. Mr. Collins would be impressed by the service here at Longbourn, if it killed her. If it killed them all.

In the wintery light, the bedchamber looked sad and neglected. The pallet was bare, the dressing table was filmed with dust; there was a fall of soot on the hearth. It smelt of damp.

By four o’clock it must be warm and bright and cheerful, and an excellent dinner must be waiting. Which had yet to be started on. And she already knew that there was not a decent bit of fish to be got today. She’d kill a hen; that would have to do. Sarah and Polly would sort out the room. Light the fire, dust, sweep, make the bed. A spray of evergreen and berries in a vase. Sarah was thorough, and could be trusted to keep an eye on Polly. James could carry the wing chair up from the library; a few masculine comforts of that kind would satisfy. The room would soon look well; with her little crew at work on it, it would be warm, and pleasant, and no longer smell of damp.

She would roast the hen with some parsnips. She’d make white soup; there would be nuts and fruit for dessert. There would not be so much as a ripple on the surface of things. Try as he might, Mr. Bennet would not get a rise out of her. Not again.

Sarah took her orders, and went to gather up the needful equipment: her blacklead, vinegar, the jar of cold tea leaves, her rags and broom; at times like this, you just gritted your teeth and got on with it. She carried her basket upstairs, and, with Polly, got down on her knees to roll the Turkey-carpet up. She swept out and blackleaded the grate, and then between them she and Polly dragged the carpet down the stairs. It was a cumbersome thing—why carpet-weavers had never thought to sew handles on the undersides, Sarah could not fathom—and they had to lug it through pinch points and round corners, grazing their knuckles on doorframes and bending their stubby nails against the dense warp and weft. They carried it down to the paddock and heaved it over the line, where they beat billows out of it, Sarah coughing in the dust, a hand to a stitch, finding herself still weak and easily tired.

Polly wiped her eyes. “He must be a bit special, this Mr. Collins.”

“I should say he is.”

Back upstairs, they left the carpet rolled at the door, and set about cleaning the bare floor. They shoved the bed up against the wall and piled the chair and washstand on top. Then they scattered their damp tea leaves as if they were sowing seed, whisking handfuls out into the air, the dark shreds showering down onto the boards. They chased them into heaps, then swept the heaps—clotted with dust, dead spiders, and shed hair—towards the door.

“What do you think?” Sarah asked, scanning the room for missed bits.

Polly nodded. “Good.”

James came upstairs with kindling and logs; Sarah slid past him and clattered downstairs with the sweepings. She came back up again with warm water, and poured in vinegar, for the windows and mirror. Polly continued her slow drift around the room with a damp rag.

As the clock chimed the three-quarters of the hour, Mrs. Hill, blood still on her apron, climbed up to check on their work. She slid a finger over the mantel, laid a hand on the snowy freshness of the linen, and ran a fingertip around the curlicues of the mahogany dressing table. She sniffed: beeswax, the tang of vinegar, soft woodsmoke from the crackling fire.

“Well done. Good girls. You should be proud of that.”

Sarah was not proud. She was terrified. They were all mustered on the front steps to meet him, this man who would be their future master, if they could but persuade him of the necessity of it. She had conjured a Mr. Collins so stern and exacting that she could hardly reconcile her notion of him with the soft, rather heavy-looking young man of twenty-five or thereabouts who clambered down from the seat of the hired chaise, performed a series of clumsy bows to the assembled Bennets, and then to Mr. and Mrs. Hill, to herself, James, and even Polly, who stared at him agog.

Sarah dug Polly in the ribs. “Curtsey. And close your mouth.”

It turned out that Mr. Collins was wonderfully ready to approve of everything he saw, from the size of the vestibule to the width of the staircase. He even commented on the serviceable nature of the guestroom
door. He was, James was able to report, having carried his bags up there for him, delighted by the cheerful comfort he found on the other side, and had enquired as to whom he owed his thanks for all these kind attentions.

“What did you tell him?”

“That it was all the housemaids’ work, Sarah and Polly, under your careful direction.”

“Good boy. Good. Sarah, don’t forget his hot water. He will want to wash before dinner.”

When Sarah brought the ewer up to him, Mr. Collins was at the window, hands clasped behind his back, rolling on his heels and then forward onto his toes, enjoying the view. She set her burden down on the washstand; he heard the chink of it, and looked round. He addressed her in a formal but kindly enough manner, asking if she was indeed one of the housemaids to whom he owed his thanks. She bobbed him a curtsey, nodded. He added how pleasant it was, after a long winter journey, to find oneself the recipient of such a warm—and he said this with a smile and nod towards the fire—welcome.

She was confounded by his notice of her: gentlemen did not make conversation with housemaids. At least, not in her experience; maybe they did in
Pamela
—but surely he did not intend that kind of thing? With his fat hands and his awkward gait, she could not imagine him chasing her around the room like Pamela’s Mr. B. Or, rather, she preferred not to imagine it.

“And the other bedchambers, tell me: are they all as handsome as this?”

She had no idea what to say. Lydia and Kitty’s shared room was a thicket of discarded clothing that she attempted from time to time to hack her way through. Mary’s was too small for the pianoforte that Mrs. Bennet had banished there, let alone the slithering piles of sheet music and books. Elizabeth and Jane’s was pretty enough, and relatively neat, but even there you’d struggle to shut the closet doors … And did he really, standing there in his clerical black, wish to discuss the young ladies’ bedchambers with her? And Mr. and Mrs. B.’s—a married couple’s bedroom—one did not offer one’s opinions on that, surely?

“They are all much of a muchness, I suppose.”

“Indeed! Delightful.” He rubbed his hands together. “Ah, hot water! How marvellous.”

A fox had got at the pheasants. Idiot birds: by now fully fledged, they still congregated around the nursery pens in the Bennets’ woods, expecting to be fed. The fox had left a dozen dead, killing them as they scratched and pecked, oblivious; it would have carried off maybe a couple more.

The ground was sodden, poached after the recent rains. Water churned and tumbled; the stream was in spate. James gathered up the corpses into a bouquet, their dead beaks gaping, bodies dangling. The remaining birds followed him around, making their little croaking sounds. He kicked them away: they were far too trusting. They needed to be much more fearful if they were going to survive long enough for the gentlemen to shoot them.

When he had gathered them all up, he dumped the fowls on a sack, their slack and bloodied bodies in a heap. Mrs. Hill would find a use for them, no doubt: they were destined ultimately for the pot, in any case; they had just arrived there rather sooner than expected. All that was lost was the gentlemen’s pleasure in killing them; the fox may have that, and be welcome to it, as far as James was concerned.

So why, then, did he feel sad?

Because he had fed them, he supposed; he had let them trust him, depend upon him. He had watched them peck and scratch and flap and squabble. He had got attached.

He looked up from their little bodies, ruffled and broken, and over towards the edge of the woods, to the tree-line, and the open hillside beyond, where the cool winter light gleamed through. A glimpse of distance, of the wide world beyond.

It didn’t do to get dependent. It didn’t do to get attached.

He scrubbed himself at the pump, then went up to his loft and dressed in his livery, changing his shirt, lifting his chin and closing his eyes to tie the neck-cloth right. Tonight was a simple family party, and as such
it was no great demand upon his nerves. There had been—and there would yet be—much more trying occasions than this. He pocketed his gloves, tugged his sleeves straight. He had not expected to encounter the Militia in this quiet place; he had certainly not foreseen such ready intimacy between the officers and the Bennet household. Neither had he anticipated how much Mrs. Bennet would like to show him off.