Longbourn (20 page)

How could they possibly stand it?

Her envy puffed up into smoke and was gone on the wind. She turned away. So what if she could not have this? She did not want it. She felt light of heart and almost giddy with the sense of release.

She was just passing the shadow of the first trees, when she saw a red speck in the darkness. She could make no sense of it, could not tell the distance; it seemed to be hanging all by itself. Then—making her start—it swung up a foot or two higher, glowed brighter, hotter, for a moment, then fell, fading, and hung again just a few feet from the ground.

Then it clicked into sense: the burning tip of a cigarillo, held in a man’s hand, lifted up to his lips. As she realized this, the man himself came towards her. Tol Bingley, peering at her out of the darkness.

“Hel-lo. Who is that?”

“Good evening, Mr. Bingley—”

“Is that young Sarah?”

“It is.”

“Well, well. Did you come to see the party?”

“I did, yes.”

He came out into the moonlight; closer now, she could make him out better: he fumbled inside his breast-pocket, drew an object out and sloshed it at her; he smelt of strong drink.

“May I offer you some refreshment?”

She hesitated. What she really wanted was to be back in the kitchen at Longbourn, with a warm fire and a cup of tea.

“Hospitable place this, Netherfield.” His voice was over-careful, with a tendency to slur.

“I think I’ve probably—”

“Plenty more where that came from,” he said. “Go on, just a taste.”

She took it from his hand.

“ ’S rum,” he said. “Bingley’s finest, straight off the plantation.”

She uncorked the flask and lifted it to her lips. The burn of liquor caught at the back of the throat and flared up her nose.

“Good stuff, eh?”

A wave of laughter washed out of the bright rooms, and over them, the pair of them there together, in the shadows.

“They’re having a high old time tonight,” he said.

He stumbled a little; she passed the flask back to him.

“You’d think, wouldn’t you, that there was nothing to do in all the world, but to dance and drink and laugh and eat and wake up at midday tomorrow and open another bottle of wine and do it all over again.”

She peered up at him. Her legs were whipped around with petticoats, her feet were cold in their damp boots, the wind chilled her cheeks and teased her hair into tats and made her eyes wet and blurry. He seemed to be onto something here.

He dragged on his cigarillo, blew away smoke. “Beasts, they are, the lot of them, don’t you think? Just animals.”

She blinked. The blink seemed strangely slow, and when her eyes were closed, her head reeled, and her gorge rose. She swallowed the burn of it back down.

“To be milked and fleeced and made into bacon,” he said.

He tipped the flask towards her again. She shook her head to try to clear it: it was as if the lid had been lifted off an ordinary stone jar, and a cloud of flies had come seething out, and now were buzzing all around her.

“You and me, though, Sarah—you and me—we know what’s what.”

His arm slid around her waist, and it tugged her to him, and crushed her up against him. He was going to kiss her. This was the moment when the world would change. Because Ptolemy Bingley was something. He was brilliantly something. He would move in a different world, a world of London streets and dancing and entertainments and tobacco and faraway places where the air was like a warm bath and you’d never catch a chill. And if she kissed him now, she’d go there with him; she could swim in that world too, like a fish swims in water.

He breathed smoke and liquor into her face, looming close. Then his
mouth was on her mouth, wet, and there was the taste of smoke and liquor and teeth and onions, and the crush of his lips—how to breathe, while being kissed?—and there was the music and the clutter of voices from the big house, and the wind shoving and pulling at them, and she thought, I want this, I know I want this. This is how you get from one world to the next.

… if encouraged to read and improve himself by such an example as her’s, he might become a very agreeable companion
.

The family stumbled down to breakfast looking grey; even Mr. Collins, who, as a clergyman, might have been expected to be moderate in his pleasures, was green about the gills. Sarah did not feel entirely well herself: it seemed that somebody had jammed a knife into her head, and every so often decided to flick its handle with a finger.

Her stomach churned as she waited on table: the shovelling and chewing and rolling of food down throats, and the grinding of jaws, and the swilling of tea and coffee. His words came rearing back at her through the fug and forgetfulness of drink:
beasts, they are; to be milked and fleeced and made into bacon. You and me, though, Sarah—you and me
. It made literal sense to her now: the way they peered and grabbed and snuffed at each new platter of toasted muffins, bacon, buttered eggs.

She should not have made Sarah sit up late, Mrs. Hill realized; the girl needed a firm hand, no doubt, but she also needed her sleep. This was a truth to which Sarah’s debility today bore witness. Mrs. Hill herself had had little benefit from her early night: she had lain awake for hours, listening to the house sounds, to Sarah tidying around below (she was a good girl, after all, when she wasn’t being led astray), to the mutter and thrash of Polly dreaming across the narrow landing, to the scuttle of the mice in the wainscot, the wheeze of her husband’s breath, to the wind pummelling the roof and howling in the chimneys. When she did finally sleep, she was still somehow aware of the wild night beyond; she dreamed that she was waiting up for the carriage, and that
when it returned, and she opened the front door, a litter of piglets scurried in, dressed in muslin evening-gowns and dancing shoes.

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.