Longbourn (48 page)

“I think—” she said, and then swallowed, and steadied her voice. “I think that he is dead. But I do not know.”

“What if I told you, that I do know.”

She looked round at him. The noise and bustle, the other servants, the kitchen, Pemberley—everything—reeled away and all was silence, and stillness. Just his dark eyes fixed on hers.

“Tell me.”

“He’s alive.”

“You saw him?”

“Or he was, a few days since.”

“Where did you see him?”

His jaw set, he looked at her a moment longer, and then he turned away. And as he spoke, his hand brushed the tablecloth, gathering up crumbs into a heap, then sweeping them out again.

“We were crossing the sands from Ulverston. Just a few days ago, this was, on our way here, at the end of their tour of the Lake Country. And he, the footman from Longbourn, Smith; he was crossing the sands, only he was going the other way, heading north—”

“You saw him.”

“I saw him. He was with road engineers—a whole troop of them, and all their gear, a trail of wagons crossing the sands. It was just a moment, as we were passing, but I knew it was him, and he knew me too. It was just a moment, and then we were past and gone.”

Her hand came up; it covered her mouth.

“Well,” he said. “I thought you should know.”

After a moment, she touched his arm. “You are quite, quite certain it was him?”

He looked down at her fingers, dimpling the white cotton. “I am. I knew him. I am sure.”

Then he lifted his arm, so that her hand fell away from him. He turned, and cleared his throat, and addressed himself to his other neighbour again, and did not look at Sarah any more, and they never spoke again.

Lady Day. A day of engagements and dismissals, of endings and beginnings; a day when change is woven into the very fabric of the creeping hours; a day that demands the totting up of accounts, the
consideration of what has been bought and sold and at what cost; a day when one is obliged to consider if any of it was worth the price that has been paid.

Mrs. Darcy’s desk had been drawn out from the window into the middle of her parlour. She was already seated behind it, in a sober day-dress and draped shawl. The servants waited their turn at the door, lined up in decent silence. The mistress looked beautiful and nervous and tired. She had a ledger open in front of her. Mrs. Reynolds stood a convenient distance away, should assistance be required. This was, after all, just a first attempt.

The accounts of previous quarters were all in Mrs. Reynolds’s precise hand: Mrs. Darcy’s handwriting was by no means as neat, but she worked conscientiously at it, the tip of her tongue poking out while she pored over her sums, and wrote out names; she smiled as each servant made their mark, and as she bestowed on them their small stack of coin. Elizabeth was doing her very best, Sarah could see that. She was being what she was required to be.

The weight of Sarah’s pay dipped her hand; she bobbed her curtsey.

Elizabeth gave Sarah one of her lovely smiles; jewels glittered on her fingers as her pen moved to make the tick in the Paid column. She made the downstroke for the tick, and Sarah’s lips parted, and she spoke.

“Forgive me, madam.”

Mrs. Darcy’s smile settled in, patient. “Yes, Sarah?”

“Madam. I hope it won’t inconvenience you too much, but I wish to make an end of this.”

“To make an end?”

“To cease employment here.”

“But—” Mrs. Darcy’s smile stiffened now. “Why?”

“Is there a problem, madam?” Mrs. Reynolds moved closer, peering in.

Mrs. Darcy lifted up her hands. “She wishes to leave!”

Mrs. Reynolds turned on Sarah: “Are you not well-treated? Are you not shown every kindness here?”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “Yes—you are all very good to me indeed.”

Mrs. Darcy sat back; she shook her head.

“Is the work not light enough for you? Surely,” Mrs. Reynolds asked,
“this is the most comfortable situation you have ever found yourself in, and are ever likely to?”

Sarah nodded. This was certainly true.

Mrs. Darcy seemed amazed, and quite perturbed. “You are not wanted back at Longbourn, perhaps? Does Mother want you, or Mrs. Hill?”

“Even if they did, they should have applied to you first, madam.”

“Are you perhaps”—and with this, Mrs. Darcy’s countenance darkened, and she leaned closer, and dropped her voice, as if even the possibility of this was shameful—“somehow, unhappy? Are you … homesick?”

“Yes,” said Sarah, “yes, I think I am.”

She persuaded the stable lad to give her a knapsack in exchange for her old wooden box, so that her belongings would be that much easier to carry. The poor fellow was inconsolable that she was leaving, but thrilled to have her ask a favour of him. He muttered incomprehensibly when he handed it over, and she kissed his smooth cheek to thank him.

A path skimmed the grounds behind the house; it then rose towards the western edge of the park. From there, it climbed up through the woods to join a packhorse route, which trailed out over the hills, heading in a direction that was generally agreed to be northwesterly. Sarah could follow that, from one town to the next, as far as Chester. And from Chester, she could take the long flat road to Lancaster, and thence to the sands, which she could cross on foot to the north country beyond. The Bingleys’ coachman volunteered this last nugget of information, having driven this road himself so recently. He looked at her like she was fit for Bedlam, though: a young girl like her off on the tramp, choosing the cold and the empty road and all its dangers over ease and safety, and Pemberley.

Alone in her room, she tried the knapsack on her shoulders. Without the box to weigh them down, her little things seemed to weigh almost nothing at all.

There would be others out there, on the tramp. There always were, around the time of hiring fairs and quarter days; these great tidal shifts and settlings of servants around the country. She would find some
other women and girls to travel with, and go in company as far as they were going.

Mrs. Reynolds opened the attic door without knocking.

“The mistress wants another word.”

In the morning room, Mrs. Darcy was sewing something tiny and white. She dismissed Mrs. Reynolds, but did not move from her seat in one of the pair of winged armchairs by the fire. She looked a little pale, and nervous—her hands gripped her work, and for a moment she just looked at Sarah and did not speak, and then she looked away, and said something so quietly that Sarah could not hear it. Uncertain, Sarah waited where she was, in the middle of the complicated carpet. Then she saw to whom Mrs. Darcy had spoken: Mr. Darcy was sitting in the chair opposite his wife; it was only when he leaned forward, and spoke a word in reply, that Sarah saw him; he had been hidden by the high back and wings of the chair. Now, he rose from his seat, like a statue come to life.

Sarah shrank. Fixed for the first time on her, his gaze made her dwindle to the size of a salt-cellar. He strode briskly up, stopped just a shade too close; she had to fight the urge to take a step back, to get a better angle on him, to make more space between her and his flesh. But she stayed put, and held her head up; she set her eyes on his starched cravat—they washed very white at Pemberley—while he studied her in a puzzled, faintly irritated manner, as if she were an unconsidered household item that had abruptly ceased to function, and on which he now found himself obliged to have an opinion.

“My wife had expected to keep you with her at this time.”

Sarah addressed herself to his cravat. “I am sorry, sir, to go against her expectations.”

“
I
expect you to remain with her.”

“I am afraid that I cannot.”

“You
cannot
?”

Sarah nodded.

“Am I not a good master? Is she not the best of mistresses?”

“I think you must be, sir. Both of you.”

“Well, then. Sense dictates that you stay.”

“No.”

He loomed closer. “This is your answer?”

Sarah squared her shoulders. “You have had it already, sir: I cannot stay.”

“But you are
wanted
here.”

This from Elizabeth, who was getting to her feet, then came across towards them. She moved slowly, without her former elasticity of step. She seemed somehow weighted now.

“You are so good with little ones, Sarah. You always were, with my sisters, even when you were just a girl yourself.”

Sarah looked again at the sewing, still clutched in Elizabeth’s hand. A tiny thing, a newborn’s cap. There had been no rags to soak and scrub from her, Sarah recalled; not for these past months. If she had thought about it at all, it was to think that it must have fallen to somebody else to clean them. But it was clear now that Mrs. Darcy was expecting her first child—her skirts skimmed the cusp of her belly; her breasts, where they rose above her bodice, were full and veined with blue. She was facing her first confinement, and with all the usual fears. Sarah felt a tug of sympathy, but—

“My staying here will not really help you, miss.”

Elizabeth would just have to go through it; every breeding woman did. If she survived this once, then she would just have to do it all over again in the full knowledge of its horrors—and then again, and again, because a man like Mr. Darcy would need his sons.

Endure and pray, that was all that could be done.

“I can’t help you, miss. I am sorry.”

“Madam,” Mr. Darcy said.

“Madam, yes.”

“You are determined, then?”

Sarah risked a look straight up at his big handsome face, the meat of him: the sheen of cheekbone and nose, the gloss of eyes, the smooth rubbery flesh of his shaved lip. He was descended from a race of giants; he must be.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then,” he said. “This is quite baffling.” He turned away from Sarah, and addressed himself to his wife: “I find there is, after all, nothing we can do about this. If the girl wishes to go, however foolish
this might be, however austere and dangerous the life she chooses, and indeed uncertain its continuance, she has every right to choose it. This is England, after all, and she is not a slave.”

Elizabeth came close now, and grasped Sarah’s hands, still clutching the sewing; the needle pricked Sarah’s skin so that when her mistress came to take up her needlework again, she would see that it was spotted with dark blood.

“But where will you go, Sarah? What can a woman do, all on her own, and unsupported?”

“Work,” Sarah said. “I can always work.”

She left Pemberley quietly, unattended, by a servants’ door. Bag on her shoulder, she crossed the stable yard, and took the path that led from the back of the house, away across the park. It wound along the stream, and soon she was walking past clumps of pale daffodils, and then was climbing up through the woods. She reached the edge of the park, where there were stone steps set into the boundary wall. She climbed up. The treads were glossy with the years.

From here, she could see the path shear away across the open hillside to join the packhorse way. From here, too, when she turned her head, she could still see Pemberley, standing silent and self-contained, its eyes silvered by the cool spring light.

She gathered up her skirts, and stepped over, and slithered down the other side.

“That is all settled.”

It is not, perhaps, an entirely happy situation after all, to gain something that has been wanted for long years. The object itself, once achieved, is often found not to be exactly as anticipated. It has perhaps become tired and worn over time; flaws that had been overlooked for years are now all too apparent. One finds one does not know what to do with it at all.

This did not apply to Mrs. Bennet, however: Mrs. Bennet’s happiness was pure, perfect and unalloyed. With her elder girls brilliantly well married, her youngest at least convincingly so, Mrs. Bennet could find nothing to complain of; indeed, she had so much good news to share over cards and teacake that some of her acquaintance began to find her company rather wearing. The ladies, who had condoled so thoroughly with her during her time of grief, found it rather more difficult to participate in her happiness, which takes a true and proper friend indeed. Mrs. Bennet had the good fortune to notice none of this, but if she had, she would have pshawed and waved a hand and laughed and said she did not care a fig: for her, all unhappiness was done away with, and, feeling confident of her children’s security, she could now herself be quite content.

Kitty, too, was happy; she now spent much of her time with her elder sisters, and this was much to her advantage and her taste.

Mary, being the only child remaining now at home, found that she became overnight what she had always struggled and jostled to be, which was, quite simply, important. It was Mary’s company that was required now by her mother; her opinions were solicited on every subject. And with no other daughters at home to empty her purse for her, Mrs. Bennet
was now determined that Mary must be bought clothes, and bonnets, and ribbons, and even new sheets of music if she really must have more of the stuff. But she was a clever, talented child, her mother now discovered, and Mrs. Bennet was determined to share this revelation with everyone she met. It was extremely provoking, Mary told Polly, who now assisted her with her toilette, that she must be dragged away from her studies so very often, to drink tea, or look at a fashion plate, or drive out on a morning call.