Mrs. Jennings bravely endured the rest of Mrs. Edmonton’s visit. There was never a lapse in the conversation because only one person spoke, and she did so in one unending, unpunctuated sentence.
For the duration, I heard only a meaningless babble because I was taken up with wondering whether I had indeed been duped by the chandler. The possibility struck me as highly plausible, and I resolved to do better even as I sincerely hoped my remaining days at Lambton were not spent in a haze of burning sheep’s fat.
This, however, proved too much to hope for.
More than an hour later, Mrs. Edmonton finally heaved herself out of her chair and departed, and I went to the little alcove off the kitchen that served as a stillroom. There, I tore open the paper on one of the bundles and pulled out a gray-colored taper that clearly smelt of the barnyard. In summer it would droop—no doubt about it—sputtering and belching smoke meanwhile. My only consolation, though miniscule and petty, was that Mrs. Burke would have to suffer the consequences of my ineptitude while I was back at Longbourn enjoying the luxury of beeswax.
This was only one of the many setbacks I incurred in my first week as Mrs. Jennings’s itinerant housekeeper.
My tenuous relationship with Mrs. Jennings’s cook suffered an apparently irreversible blow when I returned from the butcher with a chicken. He had assumed an air of affront when I asked for a fresh hen, and upon examination of my offering, Mrs. Smith exclaimed bitterly that the bird was indeed so fresh it was practically a chick. She had never seen a smaller chicken, she observed repeatedly, and did not know how she would stretch its meager nourishment across a full week. The pork bones I offered up as consolation were equally disparaged, and besides—she told me grimly—she did not make the restoratives. Mrs. Burke was solely responsible for boiling the bones and making a neat little jelly that was favored by the mistress. I could use the stove and pots in the afternoons after she had gone for the day.
I eyed the stove warily, having never in my life cooked anything. But really, how hard could it be?
“Very well,” I said with brave indifference in the face of this intimidating tactic. “Perhaps you might show me how to use this particular stove after you have finished with…that?” I did not quite know what to call the concoction she was stirring.
Mrs. Smith stared at me in disbelief. “You use it just as you would every other stove, miss,” she exclaimed.
My courage failed me. I would have demeaned myself then and there, hung my head, confessed I had never once stood before a cook stove much less cooked anything, and begged her to make pork jelly. However, I had suffered one too many reversals, and my self-opinion was too bruised to endure more abuse. I gathered my dignity, turned on my heel, and went back to the front of the house and Mrs. Jennings.
Yet, even that amiable lady, of whom I had assumed full charge, was a bit wearying.
“How do you do?” she asked when I arrived in the parlor.
“Very well, Mrs. Jennings. I am sure you remember I am Elizabeth Bennet from Hertfordshire?”
“Yes, yes,” she replied with a smile, but her eyes darted around as though she were searching for some clues as to why I was in her house.
“I am Mrs. Gardiner’s niece, come to stay with you while Mrs. Burke is away.”
“Oh yes, of course! Mrs. Gardiner, I so wished you would come to me!”
“I am not Mrs. Gardiner,” I gently explained.
“No, of course you are not. Who is Mrs. Gardiner?”
Chapter Four
Lambton, like so many villages in England, was built up on both sides of a long road. The village high street had once been a mere track from coal beds to the market town of Chesterfield. The mines—long since stripped of coal, lime, and lead ore—had been abandoned. But the settlement continued, having survived by means of the quarrying of limestone and the production of milk and cheese as well as the occupations of commerce required wherever people settled. Naturally, anywhere prosperity was sufficient, a church was built—in Lambton’s case, the All Saints Church—and where there was a church, houses sprang up around it like mushrooms surrounding a stump.
Unfortunately for me, Mrs. Jennings’s house was situated on the main road at the tail end of the village itself, north of the church, the shops, and the market. This made for a long walk no matter where I went, and since the widow did not keep a carriage or even a donkey cart, I went everywhere on foot.
Perhaps I should have sent Smith. I am certain Mrs. Burke did so. However, after sending him to the post office and seeing him return three hours later with one letter from Aunt Gardiner for Mrs. Jennings, but having forgotten to enquire for my own, I chose to go myself.
I was, after all, a habitual walker, and daily errands offered me an escape from my confining circumstances. Lambton, however, was fast curing me of my love of this particular form of exercise. For one thing, it was December. By the eighth day since my arrival, it had rained for eight days together. The dreary wet days and frigid nights, compounded by a perpetually damp coat, hems, boots, and bonnet, were more miserable than they would have been had I been exploring the wooded hills that overlooked the town.
My arms, used to carrying little more than a sprig of juniper or a clump of wildflowers, often ached from the weight of baskets and parcels as I lumbered from the shops to the last house in the village where Mrs. Jennings lived. For whatever reason, the town had grown in all other directions save the one toward which I so often went, which left us with only one neighbor on the south side and no one across the road. It was perhaps just my poor luck that our only neighbor was Mrs. Edmonton, who sat at the window in her parlor all day to make note of my comings and goings.
I passed her with a basket of baked goods in a drizzle on Friday afternoon and wished I could stick my tongue out at her as would my youngest sister. Burdened by cabbages and eggs, I passed her again in a rare lull between cloudbursts after the Saturday morning market. Inevitably, our neighbor arrived at Mrs. Jennings’s door within ten minutes of seeing me walk past in order to remonstrate with me on the quality of bread I chose or to wonder aloud why I did not send Smith to the market with the barrow.
I made that error once and had a root cellar full of sad carrots, spongy potatoes, and a wheel of cheese caked in mold as a result. But Mrs. Edmonton never gave me the opportunity to explain even that much, for she talked continuously. That was bad enough, but the woman also had the poor manners to enquire as to the smell of the house when she visited.
I coolly blamed the candles, which led to a quarter of an hour of being told she had predicted our troubles in that regard; but in truth, sheep’s fat was not the cause of the smell in the house.
I had early on opted to send us all to bed at dusk, rather than burn tallow. I had a modest purse of coins at that time, counterbalanced by a hefty degree of pride, both of which deterred me from the degradation of returning to the chandler to be laughed at as a fool and charged a premium for wax. Besides, I was in a constant state of physical exhaustion, and poor Mrs. Jennings became truly pitiful once night set in, for she did not really know where she was or who had the care of her. Thus, we lived in a state that bordered on perpetual darkness.
But with regard to the true cause of the lingering odor Mrs. Edmonton found so objectionable and that still clung to the rugs, curtains, and carpets, I was too mortified to confess to our neighbor that I had tried my hand at making pork jelly.
Only the stench coming from the chandler’s rivaled that of the vile concoction over which I had perspired for five full hours. In the end, I did not have sufficient cruelty to make Penny scrub the pot and sacrificed both pot and contents to the sustenance of the ancient mastiff that lurked behind Mrs. Edmonton’s house.
