Longbourn (21 page)

“What is it, Hill?”

“Excuse me, Miss Mary, but …” She came in. “Mr. Collins is all alone downstairs, and I thought maybe you should know.”

“I was practising—”

“Yes, but you did not know that he was quite by himself—you would not wish to be thought discourteous.”

“He has proposed to my sister, has he not?”

Mrs. Hill could only nod.

Mary was silent for a long moment. Then, decided, she stood up and shook out her skirts. Mrs. Hill saw now that her eyes were rimmed with
red. She had been crying. This boded very well indeed. The girl sidled past Mrs. Hill, and trudged towards the head of the stairs.

“Only because I would not want to be thought discourteous, you understand.”

Sarah, meanwhile, was kept running up and down stairs by Mr. Collins’s requests that she mend the fire, provide refreshments, and answer his enquiries as to the location of his copy of Fordyce’s
Sermons
. He feared he might have left it in Mr. Bennet’s library, and he was not certain that he wished to disturb that gentleman, who had shown such singular lack of right feeling towards his suit. Might Sarah go and see about it for him?

She might, and did, Mr. Bennet only glancing up from under his bushy eyebrows as she tapped and nudged open the door. He held up the small brown volume wordlessly; she took it off him and curtseyed.

Polly, however, was left more at her leisure, being unsupervised. She trundled around with her duster and a dreamy air, and then, a little before midday, she sloped off and could have been found—if anyone had gone out looking for her—playing at jacks by the stable wall with James. It pleased her so much when she won, that he became increasingly clumsy and cack-handed, the better to enjoy her crowing delight.

Sarah passed Mr. Collins the little book.

“You are a good girl,” he said. “I think you are good, you know, whatever they say.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“One thing I have found here—” He dropped his voice: “Rather puzzlingly, I have found that my position is quite similar to your own.”

Sarah just looked at him. “Really, sir?”

“I mean to say—” He glanced around him, as if afraid of being overheard, though the breakfast room was desolate at that time of day, and the house itself almost deserted. “One intends only what is right and good, one does what one sees to be one’s duty. And for one’s pains, one is rejected; one is found to be at fault. One is laughed to scorn.”

“I’m sorry you are unhappy, sir.”

“Thank you,” he said with genuine warmth. “Thank you, my dear child.”

He was just a child himself, she saw. And lonely. He was the kind of man who probably always would be.

“Would you like some cake?” she tried.

His countenance brightened. He
would
like some cake, he realized. He would like some cake very much indeed; he would like it above anything.

When Sarah brought a slice of fruitcake up on a pretty blue-rimmed plate, she found that Mary was now also in the breakfast room, sitting stiffly on an upright chair near the young clergyman; she looked round, heavy-eyed, when Sarah came in. Sarah had the distinct impression that she had disturbed not a conversation but a silence. Mary must be struggling to converse with him—Sarah could sympathize—too much time spent with books had not fitted her to be easy with herself, and other people. The young lady got up abruptly, and went to the window, and Mr. Collins got up too, looking relieved. He took the plate from Sarah and was profuse in his thanks, but then, with Mary there, did not know what to do with the cake after all.

The girls were accompanied home from Meryton by two officers. Sarah, glancing out of an upstairs window, saw them coming down the footpath—the four young ladies, the two soldiers in red coats, all of them ambling easily along like old friends. They would reach Longbourn in moments, and would expect refreshments, and the house was all at sixes and sevens, and nothing ready or fit to be seen.

She rushed up to the dressing room to warn Mrs. Hill, who closed her eyes, and set her jaw, and muttered something that was best not taken heed of. Then the housekeeper informed her mistress there were guests expected shortly, and plodded down to the kitchen. By the time the party was in the hall, Mrs. Bennet was found to be quite in spirits again, and properly attired, and on her way down to greet them. Sarah gathered cloaks and hats and went to hang them; Mrs. Bennet stayed Sarah with a hand.

“But where is James?”

“I do not know.”

“But I want James. I don’t want you here. I do not see the point in us keeping a footman at all if we must have women waiting on us all the time.”

Sarah could only agree. The guests now settled in the parlour, she ran down to the kitchen. Mrs. Hill set about the added inconvenience of tea; Sarah ghosted around her, trying to look helpful, since if she either did nothing, or got in the way, she’d get her head torn clean off.

And then the outer door opened, and there was Ptolemy Bingley, fresh as butter from the dairy and with a direct look at Sarah that made her turn her face away, and made Mrs. Hill slap down the teapot on the tray, march over to him and demand, hands on hips, what it could possibly be that he wanted here this time.

Sarah was supposed to disappear; anyway, the longer she stayed, the greater the chance was that he would let slip some hint about the carriage ride, or their encounter in the Netherfield demesne. She backed away towards the hall door as he bowed to Mrs. Hill and brought forth a note. He seemed deflated, somehow, Sarah noticed. Solemn.

“For Miss Bennet.”

Mrs. Hill snatched the letter, slapped it down on the tea tray and strode over to Sarah with the lot. Sarah took the chinking tea things off her. The letter was sealed with a pretty yellow wafer, and looked innocent enough. She looked up from it to Ptolemy.

“Right, you,” said Mrs. Hill. “Get that lot upstairs.”

Sarah left. Mrs. Hill turned her attention back to the mulatto. He lingered in the doorway, letting in the cold.

“You expecting a reply?”

He stepped across the threshold and shut the door behind him.

“You
are
expecting a reply, then?”

“I will take one certainly, if there is one.”

Polly ambled into the kitchen, and edged past Ptolemy, giving him one of her long stares. In reply, he gave her a bow. Then, as if to point out the incivility with which he was being met, he crossed over to a fireside chair and sat down—Mrs. Hill would not mind it, he suggested, if he warmed himself a while.

She did mind it. She minded it very much indeed, and she was just about to give him a piece of her mind—coming round here with his good looks and his nice clothes and his London ways, turning her girls’ heads—if Sarah had not clattered back into the kitchen just then, and seeing him there in the fireside chair, pulled up short like a pony. Mrs. Hill saw that their eyes met for just a moment; she did not like the
way Sarah smiled to herself as she turned away. It was a far too private smile.

She’d found she was not welcome in the parlour, Sarah told Mrs. Hill, for all she’d brought up the note from Netherfield. She’d been told to leave the tray and then run straight back down to the kitchen, and not return upstairs until the guests were gone.

“Mrs. B. says we must send James up immediately to wait upon the officers.”

Mrs. Hill flung out her hands. “Do you see him here?”

Sarah looked around, shrugged.

“I am up to my eyes, Sarah. If you want him, you go and find him.”

“I don’t want him. Mrs. B. wants him. I just thought you might know where he is.”

“Well I don’t.”

“Oh,” Polly said. “That’s easy. I know.”

Mrs. Hill rounded on her, snappish: “Well, where is he, then?”

“He’s hiding.”

Mrs. Hill and Sarah stared. Polly reached the jar down from the dresser and coolly helped herself to a piece of barley-sugar. She slumped into the other fireside chair, eyeing Ptolemy.

“He don’t like soldiers,” she said, around the barley-sugar. “We saw the soldiers coming, so we hid. But then I got bored, and I thought you’d probably be cross if I was gone much longer, so I left him to it and came to help you.”

Polly wriggled in her seat, self-satisfied: James was naughty;
she
had been good.

Mrs. Hill waved all this away. “Nonsense. Don’t talk daft. Hiding!”

Polly began to protest: it wasn’t nonsense, and it wasn’t daft; they
were
hiding. And if it was nonsense, it wasn’t her nonsense, it was James’s, but she was briskly shushed. Sarah was very conscious of Ptolemy Bingley observing all this fluster and bad-humour from his seat, quiet though, his eyebrows raised. Sarah felt the urgent need to turn the conversation.

“So is this a dinner or another ball, or what is it, Mr. Bingley?”

“Sorry?”

“The letter. An invitation, I expect?”

“No,” he said. “It’s not. It’s … We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?”

He nodded, his lips bitten tight between his teeth.

“Leaving?” Sarah reached for a chair, drew it out, and sat. “Just like that?”

“Mr. Bingley went up to London on business, and directly after, his sisters decided they would follow him … And Mr. Darcy, his friend who has been staying …” He paused a moment, just looking at her. “And so. We’re leaving. The whole shooting match.”

“And you go too, to London.”

It was not a question, but he nodded anyway.

Sarah got up and moved across the kitchen. She opened a drawer, and stared down at its contents—jam-cloths, a scalding-dish, a few worn and fruit-stained wooden spoons. He was off to London, gone for ever, gone to see the plays and visit Astley’s and wander up and down the beautiful arcades.

“And the house is to be quite shut up?” asked Mrs. Hill, who had left off her squabble with Polly, and now seemed to have forgotten, or to consider redundant, her edict that Sarah must absent herself from the mulatto’s company.

“It is indeed, ma’am. Most of the staff have gone on already. We few are left to settle some remaining business, and follow afterwards.”

“Of course, of course. And Mr. and Mrs. Nicholls will stay, to keep an eye on things.”

“When do you go?” Sarah could not look at him.

“Later today.”

“And when,” Sarah shifted the folded muslins into a corner, then lined up the wooden spoons so they now lay in a neat row, “when will you return?”

“No more this winter, I believe.”

Mrs. Hill nodded approvingly. To hear of domestic matters so well arranged—and so conveniently to her wishes—was very satisfying. But to Sarah this was desolation: a whole winter to wear out at Longbourn, without interest, or pleasure, or respite. She bit her lip. Spring was such a long while off. If he ever came back at all. If he did not stay in London, and open up his shop. Because who would come back here, if you had all of London at your doorstep?

“Well, we will all miss you here, I am sure,” said Mrs. Hill. “But don’t let us detain you. You must have plenty still to do.”

He pushed down on the arms of the chair, getting up. “And all this, just as I was getting accustomed to the mud.”

Sarah felt choked by sheer thwartedness. She shunted the drawer shut, making the spoons rattle out of order again, remembering the reeling sensation of that night, the kiss, the taste of smoke and onions, the press of his body against hers, which had seemed to promise something. All of it over now, and there was no point to any of it at all.

“Look me up, eh, sweetheart,” he spoke low, when he passed by her, so that only she could hear. “Whenever you’re in town.”

The officers did not stay long after Miss Bennet’s receipt of her letter. Jane slipped away as soon as she could, looking white and sick and making Sarah feel a lurch of sympathy for her. Jane had expected something of the other Mr. Bingley—she had, at least, hoped.

Sarah brought the gentlemen’s cloaks; while they swung them on and fastened them, Polly waited, balancing a cockaded hat on either hand, in awe of the moment and her participation in it. A handsome officer—who was, it turned out, the fabled Mr. Wickham—gave her a small coin in exchange for his hat. She grinned and thanked him and pocketed it, and bobbed him a curtsey. Then he took off his glove, and touched her cheek. Struck, as people sometimes are, by a child’s sheer loveliness.

… she bewailed it as exceedingly unlucky that the ladies should happen to go away, just as they were all getting so intimate together
.

Jane bore it well, considering that she would have to just sit and wait. Sit and wait and be beautiful, and wan. Sit and wait and be in love. Sit and wait until Mr. Bingley shook off his sisters and returned to claim her. That was how things worked for young ladies like Miss Jane Bennet.

Sarah’s position was quite different. She did not have Jane’s loveliness, or her gentleness, or her one thousand pounds in the four per cents. She did not have in her thoughts that one clear and certain word, which seemed to be the answer to all questions and the end to all uncertainties—even if it did not bring happiness, and remained for ever unspoken—love. She had nothing, in short, that she could cling to; nothing that she could rely upon to entice a man away from the delights and opportunities that were offered elsewhere. But what she did have was an invitation to go after him.