Longbourn (41 page)

… the impudence of an impudent man
.

Jane scribbled a note, folded and sealed it. Sarah had been summoned from her morning chores; the dew was not yet burnt off the lawn: this was urgent.

“Would you take this to the post office, Sarah, dear, and send it? And, in a general fashion, ask if there are any letters waiting for us there?”

Sarah looked at the little packet. It was addressed to Miss Elizabeth, in Lambton, Derbyshire.

“Yes, miss. I always ask, miss.”

“Good girl; thank you.”

Jane gave Sarah one of her sweet smiles, and touched her on the shoulder. They were all still pretending that nobody actually knew about Lydia. From Jane’s queasy look, it could be guessed that she had some uneasy half-suspicion of what men and women might do together, if they were but given the opportunity: there was disgust there, as well as distress. Sarah, leaving her mistress, fetching her shawl and clattering down the servants’ stairs, realized that she was quite alone in envying Lydia: but it was something, it must be something, to be with the man you wanted. Even if it was just Wickham, there must be joy in it.

The postmistress shook her head at Sarah’s enquiry; there was nothing for the family yet today. Were they expecting something in particular? She could have the boy run over with it if a packet came on the later coach. If Sarah would just let her know from what direction they expected it, she would know it immediately, and would send it straight on to Longbourn, at only a little extra charge—

“That’s quite all right, thank you, missus. I can come back and check in the afternoon. Is there anything, though—” Sarah fumbled the words, knowing how strange they must sound, coming from her. “I wonder, do you happen, by any chance, to have anything for me?”

A snort of laughter. Sarah said nothing; she watched from under knitted brows as the woman’s expression changed. Realizing that the question had been seriously intended, she composed herself, and became business-like again.

“I’ll just go and see.”

Sarah thanked her; the postmistress turned to check the pigeonholes. It took barely a moment: she turned back again, empty hands turned palms up, like a stained-glass saint.

“There’s always the late coach, of course; as you say, come again in the afternoon. Though where are
you
expecting letters from now, I wonder?”

“You are a good girl, Sarah,” Jane told her, when she returned without the longed-for missive. “Thank you for your trouble. You may go now, and get on with your work.”

Sarah curtseyed. She closed the door softly behind her, leaving Jane to her dreadful imaginings.

He did trace them easily to Clapham, but no farther …

“You only had to look at him to know that it was bad. He was grey, he was. Positively grey.”

Polly was doing her best to be grave, but all attempts at solemnity were in vain; she was giddy with excitement. She had rushed to open the front door when Colonel Forster thumped on it, and had been thrilled to usher him into the house and show him to the breakfast room. She had remained in the hallway outside—just in case she was needed; that would be her excuse—listening brazenly while Colonel Forster delivered his news.

It had not been received with much restraint; Mrs. Bennet was not one to tiptoe around the edges of disaster, with one eye to the abyss and another to her own comportment: she plunged headlong in, and as she fell, took pains to enumerate the discomforts and inconveniences of the fall. Polly had, as a consequence, heard a good deal of what was said on the matter, and was quite ready to extrapolate the rest.

“So, what did the colonel say?”

Eyebrows arched, Polly whistled out a scandalized breath. “Well, it turns out Lydia—”

“No, but—” Sarah cut her off. “Was there any news of Mr. Smith?”

“Does the colonel know James?” Polly frowned. “How does he know James?”

“I was just wondering, maybe, that he might have heard, since he’s been asking around anyway—”

“Well, you’ll have to ask him yourself. What I heard was only about Lydia, ’cos it seems they are not gone to Gretna at all, but actually to London …”

There was a time when London had seemed the summit of all desires to Sarah, and now it seemed to matter not at all. What mattered now was that Colonel Forster was here, at Longbourn, and might have direct and immediate knowledge of James. One word from him could confirm her worst fears, or disperse them entirely to the winds. She might, this very day, come to know the truth of him. If he was a prisoner of the Militia, if he had been taken with them to Brighton. If he had been pressed back into the Army. If he had been flogged again.

If they had killed him.

But she would go to him, in a fingersnap, if he was still alive. If she could but find out where to go.

“So they are not married, because you can’t get married in London just like that, you don’t go there to get married like you do in Gretna!”

Mrs. Hill nodded along, chewing her lip.

“The colonel said that Lydia and Wickham changed carriages at Clapham, but he could find no trace of them after that, though he asked at every turnpike, he said, and at all the inns in Barnet and Hatfield.”

“And then what?” Mr. Hill asked.

“Well, the poor man, what a time he’s had of it, all that trouble looking for them, and then to have to suffer all the trouble here! He handed over a note Lydia had left for Mrs. Forster; they read it, Mr. B. and Mrs. B. did, and then Mrs. B. gave out this great big scream, and then there was the most almighty kerfuffle, and I thought I’d better hoof it—”

A pause. Polly looked from one to the other, delighted with her own importance.

“You should have seen Kitty, though! I saw her when I brought up the tea. She’s in
so
much trouble. It’s like she’s shrunk, actually shrunk. And then Jane rang for me to take this—
another
letter to the post …” Her voice dropped to a significant whisper. “And do you know! I do not think Mr. B. has spoke a single word since he read that letter of Lydia’s, that she left for Mrs. Forster.”

“Mrs. Hill,” Sarah said suddenly. “I shall ask the colonel. About James.”

The housekeeper went still, her top lip bit hard between her front teeth.

“I really don’t see why James would have anything to do with the
colonel.” Polly was cleaning her nails with a corner of Jane’s letter. “He hated the soldiers.”

“Shut up, Polly. I should ask him, though, shouldn’t I, Mrs. Hill?”

Mrs. Hill was still a moment longer. Then she reached out and tweaked the letter out of Polly’s hand.

“I’ll take that.” She knotted her shawl sturdily around her. “Sarah—”

“Yes?”

“Let me know how you get on.”

In the post office, Mrs. Hill handed Jane’s letter to the postmistress, who looked it over, and frowned.

“That’s ill wrote, that is. Where’s that going to? Is that an L? Is that Derbyshire? Is that to Lambton again?”

Mrs. Hill nodded.

“I can hardly make it out. I won’t vouch for that making its way there straight. Why two letters there today, anyway?”

Mrs. Hill was not in much of a position to judge the quality of the script. She was used, however, to the postmistress’s spinning of fine threads into substantial yarns of gossip, and did her best to snap her line of thought straight off.

“Oh, you know how it is, with sisters, when they are close.” She shrugged. “They do need to keep up their confidences, don’t they?”

“Secrets, eh.”

“No! Not secrets. They are good girls, my young ladies are.”

“Ah yes,” said the postmistress, leaning forward on the counter, resting her bony frame on her folded arms. “Yes, yes, of course they are, the Bennet girls, aren’t they? But that’s only half the point now; the other half is the young fellows, and you can’t be certain there at all.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you? You’ve not heard of the accounts left unsettled all over town, the gambling debts? Or that there’s barely a tradesman’s daughter who has not been”—here she dropped her voice to an insidious whisper, leaning so close that Mrs. Hill could almost taste her eggy breath—“
interfered with
.”

Mrs. Hill stiffened and stepped back. “I think that kind of talk is best left unrepeated—”

“Now, Wickham, that great favourite of the Bennet misses—”

“—because that kind of talk, it reflects well on no one; not the officers, nor the tradesmen, and certainly not the daughters, or, indeed, on the folk who do repeat it—”

“Well, I hope you are not suggesting—” She pushed herself upright.

“—because I always say, ‘Let them without sin, let them cast the first stone.’ ”

“Is that right, Mrs. Hill?” The postmistress folded her arms under her meagre bosom, with the manner of someone clinching an argument. “Is that what you say, now, is it, Mrs. Hill?”

No, she would not pass it on. It would help no one to hear it; it would only serve to worsen the general distress. So Mrs. Hill kept mum all that day. The postmistress was a wicked gossip, and knew nothing about anything, and everybody knew it. But that would not stop the story being repeated, and smoothed with handling, so that it seemed to acquire a patina of truth. One thing was certain, though: Mrs. Hill would not contribute to that handling. She would not gossip.

She would, however, partake of something of her mistress’s grief, though in quieter measure. Mrs. Hill had changed Lyddie’s nappies, wiped her snotty nose, had nursed her through colic and croup and chickenpox, all those childhood illnesses—and she was still just a child, a girl with a brown birthmark on her calf, a sweet tooth, a bold eye and an infectious laugh. Mrs. Hill felt at once desperate for her, and furious: what a poor, poor bargain she had made of herself.

When Mrs. Bennet began to stir and fret again, Mrs. Hill put an extra drop of laudanum, and then another, into Mrs. Bennet’s water, and helped her drink the mixture down, and she soon became quiet. Mrs. Hill stroked the faded ringlets off her mistress’s face, and then left her to attend on the gentlemen. She was a wearying, anxious being, was Mrs. B.; she was always so eager to solicit interest in her sufferings. But if her husband had loved her as a husband should—contentedly, generously, and without reserve—would she then have found it necessary to keep on seeking proofs of love, only to keep on being disappointed?

When she responded to the library bell, she found Mr. Bennet crumpled in his chair; Colonel Forster stood upright by the fire, an elbow on the mantelpiece, a picture of frustrated vigour.

“Will you pack for me?” Mr. Bennet asked.

“You are going to London, then.”

“Epsom, first, which is where they last changed horses. I shall speak to the postillions, and then … go onwards.”

“To find Lydia.”

“They must be married. I must make him marry her.”

Mrs. Hill nodded. “A week’s worth of linen?”

“I will find a laundress there, if my stay is prolonged beyond that.”

Her throat aching, Mrs. Hill dragged her old bones up to his dressing room, and packed his shirts and stockings and neck-cloths and included with them a sprig of rosemary, so that when he pulled out a clean shirt in whatever London lodging he happened to wash up in, the little scented twig would fall out, and cause him to remember, and consider the gap between what he was prepared to do for Lydia and respectability, but was not prepared to do for others, whom he had also professed to love, at other desperate times.

When Colonel Forster emerged from the library, Sarah was instantly at his elbow, pocketing her duster. He had a lost, enquiring air, so she dared to speak first.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Ah, yes. I was looking for the, eh, necessary—”

“Round the side of the main house, sir, and across the gravel. This way, here, let me show you.”

“There’s no need, no need, I can find my way.” He brushed past her.

“Sir—”

He stopped, glanced back.

“Sir, we had a footman here, sir, you might remember. James Smith, his name was; he had dark hair, and hazel eyes, and he was about this tall …” She held up a hand, marking the air beside her, six inches higher than her own head. And for just a moment she had conjured him up—the length of him, the curve of his arm, the angles of his face—the urgent elastic pull towards him that made her unsteady on her feet.

The colonel frowned. “What?” he asked. “What did you say?”

She brightened: a ripple of hope. “Our footman here, James Smith, sir, he left the night you left for Brighton and I—”

“What is this you are asking me?”

He came up close to her now; she was faced with his red coat, gilded buttons, braid. He smelt of horse and sweat and smoke.

“Sir, thank you, sir. If you have seen anything of him. If he was in … in company with you, or—”

“What do you take me for?”

“Sir, Colonel Forster, I—”

“That, when a young lady under my protection—puts herself in peril, that I would have the time, or the interest—”

“Sir—”

“That you dare solicit my assistance?”

“Sir.”

“You forget yourself.”

“I am sorry, sir.”