Elizabeth climbed into the coach to bid her father farewell and extract a promise to write often and at length about his journey. There was a net of books beside him on the carriage wall, and a bag of all his various medicines under the care of Lieutenant Playford, who was to ride down with them. She could think of nothing more she could do for his comfort since they were to pick up newly warmed bricks at the inn, so they exchanged kisses and goodbyes and did their best not to think this might be their last meeting. Surprisingly, it was not difficult to do so. Mr Bennet looked frail, but he was not coughing, and his face shone with all the excitement of a boy on an adventure.
Then it was time to say goodbye tohim. When she climbed out of the coach, she saw him embracing his sister, who was weeping and trying hard not to. Their eyes met over her fair head, and he smiled and bent down to kiss the girl. “Now then, my dear,” he said gently. “You must let me say goodbye to my wife.”
Freed from his sister’s embrace, he came over to stand by Elizabeth. “It seems so unfair that I have to leave so soon,” he said.
“But if you had not had to leave so soon, we might never have…I do not want you to go.” She had not meant to say that.
“Neither do I, but I must.” He bowed low and kissed her hand. Then when he straightened, his breath hitched and, before she knew what was happening, she was in his arms. “I would give anything,” he muttered and kissed her.
Their noses bumped and she could feel the buttons on his greatcoat pressing into her, then he turned his head slightly and it was warm and wet and shockingly intimate. She clung to his shoulders, opened her mouth to him, and suddenly it felt as though she had lived all her life behind thick glass walls. Everything was nearer, brighter, louder and more alive. He tightened his grip, his tongue touched hers, and her throat filled with something unbearable but beautiful.
Then one of the horses stamped its foot and snorted, and the moment was over. They let go of one another, and it felt like something breaking. He kissed her briefly on the cheek and turned to do the same to his sister. As he turned to climb into the coach, she remembered. “Wait a moment,” she called and ran back into the house and returned a moment later with a soft bundle she thrust into his hands. “It is a comforter. I knitted it for you.”
Her father heard her, and from within the coach she could hear him laugh. “You knitted it? Must be a Job’s comforter.” And she knew her husband would be regaled with stories of her various failures in the womanly arts on his journey to Portsmouth. He, however, thanked her warmly and promised to wear it at sea.
And then there could be no more delay. He climbed into the carriage next to her father, and it drove off down the street,Georgiana and Elizabeth waving their handkerchiefs until the carriage turned the corner and was gone.
The house felt empty without him, but there was much to do, and if she did not keep them both busy, the pair of them would sit down and cry like babies. So she dried her eyes, shook herself, and took her new sister on a tour of their new home.
Mrs Darcy, who had scuttled indoors the moment she and Georgiana had arrived, had already possessed herself of the best of the two remaining bedrooms and had commandeered Maria to open the trunks that had been delivered the previous day. Elizabeth had intended the room for Georgiana, but that young lady was delighted with the remaining room and its view over the garden, so she let matters lie.
The piano nearly overset Georgiana’s composure, but she managed to master herself and finish the tour. She pronounced it the prettiest cottage ever, and Elizabeth wondered anew about Pemberley. What sort of a place must it be if Georgiana thought this substantial house merely a cottage?
Meanwhile, there was much to be done. Mrs Manning, the cook, wished to discuss the menus for the week; Anderssen announced that the roof of the room over the stables, where he and Puttnam were to sleep, leaked; and Mrs Darcy wanted something done about the smell of pigs, and so on and so on. Elizabeth had never been in sole charge of a household before and found the whole business much more complicated than she had thought. Hill and Cook had known their jobs perfectly well without direction and, in any case, Jane and her mother were there to do their part. Now she had to do it all herself, and for a moment she was daunted.
But only for a moment. Mrs Manning was requested to ragout the remains of last night’s joint, Anderssen was given half a crown to buy pitch and nails, and Mrs Darcy was informed that the pigs in the next-door garden were an unfortunate fact of lifeand would have to be borne. Once those matters were dealt with, Elizabeth settled down to the job of working out how to run a household.
Anderssen was of enormous assistance. It seemed that the man could turn his hand to anything, from mending the roof to rehanging a door. Within the week, every unsteady shelf, rattling window, and squeaking hinge had been dealt with. Although he was never impolite, he did not talk much, and when he did, the loss of his front teeth made much of what he said unintelligible, but he was willing and blessedly competent, and Elizabeth never had to worry about the house.
Puttnam, when he arrived, was much more loquacious and soon became something of a local curiosity, for instead of the traditional peg, he had replaced his missing foot with a carved wooden one with an ingenious hinge and could be heard stumping down the street with alternative footsteps of hobnails and teak. He tutted over the garden and the hen run, doubted they would ever produce much, prophesied cabbage root fly, black spot, yellow jackets, ravenous pigeons, and moles, then within three days had dug it all over and was promising that by summer they would never have to buy a vegetable again.
The days were busy, but Elizabeth found the nights uncomfortably long and quiet. Many nights found her lying awake in her enormous bed, wondering how she came to be there, a married woman without a husband, when only weeks before she had been single and afraid.
She could not help worrying until a letter came from Portsmouth. Her father, although tired, had arrived safe and sound. Since the wind was against them, they were putting up at a quiet hotel used by naval wives and families visiting the port. “I have come to believe that every travelling party should contain a naval officer,” he wrote. “Difficulties are sorted, landlords quelled, and post boys cowed. I do not think I ever have knowna less harassing journey.” Her husband was apparently busy arranging for the voyage, for there was but a brief note from him, assuring them of the whole party’s health and wellbeing. A note at the bottom added that he was wearing her comforter beneath his coat.
As the house gradually settled into its daily routine, callers began to appear. Elizabeth’s mother and sisters came over from Longbourn, Mrs Bennet full of complaints about the absence of Mr Bennet and Lydia and especially about her brother Gardiner’s tyranny with the housekeeping money. Elizabeth did her best to represent the need for economy without revealing she knew the funds were really under Jane’s control. As her mother and younger sisters ranged about the house exclaiming and comparing, Elizabeth and Jane managed a few minutes of mutual condolence on the difficulties of running a house alone.
The day after her family visited, Lieutenant Grace and his wife came to call. While they all drank tea in the parlour, she asked him where he had met her husband, and she was rewarded by a stream of reminiscence. “We were shipmates about the oldLincoln,” he said. “I was second, and he was a master’s mate. He could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen, but I was right glad to have him aboard. She were a nasty old ship, theLincoln.When she wasn’t hogging, she was sagging and crank nor you wouldn’t believe!”
“Lemuel,” said his wife reprovingly, and he looked up guiltily.
“Am I talking too much? Always did talk too much.” Elizabeth hurried to assure him that she very much wanted to hear, and he continued. “Well, she was a bad-tempered sort of ship—needed a lot of nursing or she’d turn on you. The captain was drinking himself to death, and the premier was a bl…a fool. Your husband and I kept that old tub afloat on the Toulon blockade until she was dismasted in a storm. We had far toomany landsmen aboard and not near enough right seamen, but we managed to get her back to port.” He laughed a little bitterly. “The surveyor took one good look and condemned her out of hand. I spent the next four years on the beach on half pay. You don’t get fat on four guineas a month and find yourself, let me tell you. Any road, for all he were nobbut a lad, your husband were a grand help. I’d never have done it without him.” He took a big gulp of his tea, and the next few minutes were spent with his wife patting him on the back and chiding him for drinking it too hot.
When they finally settled back in their chairs, Georgiana, who had been listening with shining eyes, asked the lieutenant how old he had been when he went to sea.
“Oh, I were twelve and wild to go to sea, like my cousin Frank. There were six of us at home and my mother at her wits’ end to know what to do with us all.”
“My brother was only nine, and that seems terribly young.”
“It is, miss,” he replied. “But your brother was lucky with his captain. He was on theIllustrious, a second rate.” Seeing her puzzlement, he added, “A powerful big ship. There’d be over a score of young gentlemen aboard, and Captain Hanning-Ward was always very particular about the way they was taught. Shipped his own cousin as schoolmaster and made sure they didn’t just learn navigation like usual. Always said he expected his young gentlemen to learn to write a decent letter or report and know what was going on in the world. That’s why they call him ‘Professor’—’cause there are a lot of captains who leave the mids to bring themselves up, and he wasn’t having any of that.”
This was at least a little consolation, but that night as she lay in bed, Elizabeth could not help but imagine her husband as a very small boy, surrounded by other larger boys, sitting at a long table, and practising the use of logarithms under the watchful eye of the captain’s cousin.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Christmas was a difficult time for Elizabeth, the first she had ever spent away from Longbourn, and since her aunt and uncle Gardiner and their children were staying, there was no room for Elizabeth and her new relations. Instead, they went to Longbourn for Christmas Day and returned that evening, finding the house quiet and rather dull after the bustle at her mother’s house. There was no letter from her husband or her father until the end of the year when one arrived announcing their safe arrival in Gibraltar.
It was her husband who had written, and the letter took the shape of a short journal, detailing their days at sea and how her father was managing the naval life. It began rather formally,Dear Madam,but continued in a more conversational tone.
