Page 31 of The Marriage Articles

“The silk itself is enough,” Elizabeth said. “Cut it plain, and let the opera supply the drama.”

Madame Foucault’s chin lifted a fraction, and she looked upon Elizabeth with the sudden, sharp approval of a tradeswoman who recognized a customer of true discernment.

Hours passed. Elizabeth chose fine silks and fine muslins, and kept every line simple. Smith confirmed each choice with a small nod or a quiet “very good, ma’am,” no more than that, and in a room full of pins and flattery the one plain voice was worth more to her than any fabric on the shelves. Assistants’ hands never stopped. Chalk whispered against fabric. Tape came round her waist and was read out in numbers.

“When is all this to be accomplished?” Elizabeth asked Madame Foucault, when the last bolt had been carried away.

“The walking dresses and dinner gowns within the week, madame. The rest by fittings a fortnight apart, the ball gown last. It is quick work for so large an order. But for Mrs Darcy, nothing is impossible.”

“So I am to be remade in stages,” Elizabeth said. “Let us hope, then, that I improve as the work goes on, or the ball gown will have been bestowed in vain.”

Chapter Seventeen

Elizabeth ran her finger down the column of coal entries while her mind drifted backwards to a Bond Street looking glass. A fortnight in this house, and she still woke some mornings expecting the Longbourn stair to creak under her. Instead there was Georgiana at the piano every afternoon, the door in the west passage that stuck unless one lifted the latch, and the window in the upper corridor that let in the cold no matter what was done to it. She knew the servants’ names now. Which footman sneezed at the silver polish was also known to her. It was a small estate of knowledge, but it was hers, and she had come to Mrs Fenwick’s room on the housekeeper’s book day meaning to enlarge it.

The room smelt of ink and leather, and of the lavender Mrs Fenwick kept among the folded linen of her shelves. The quarter’s end fell tomorrow, a circumstance Mrs Fenwick had announced at breakfast with the heavy foreboding usually reserved for an approaching storm, and so this week’s books were to be squared before anything else in the house was attempted.

“It appears we consume a prodigious quantity of coal,” Elizabeth remarked, turning a page with more boldness than she felt.

“The east rooms, ma’am. Mr Darcy will have the library warm whatever the cost, and Miss Darcy’s sitting room faces the wrong way for the sun.”

“Then the coal is admirably employed.” Elizabeth read on. Candles, soap, lamp oil, a quantity of oranges that argued someone in the house shared her own weakness. She came near the bottom of the page, her eye catching an irregularity she scarcely knew how to name. “Mrs Fenwick. Here is Hartley’s bill for the stair rods, under stores. And here, four lines down, is Hartley’s bill again, under repairs. The same sum to the shilling. Are we paying for the stair rods twice, or have the stairs been repaired with such enthusiasm that the bill itself was doubled?”

Mrs Fenwick did not bristle, which Elizabeth had half expected and wholly respected her for avoiding. “You have a quick eye, ma’am. I marked the same two days ago. A note went to Hartley through the usual channel, and the query was copied into the query book with the date. His answer is expected by Thursday.”

“And if the answer is unsatisfactory?”

“Then the sum is struck from the quarter, and Hartley learns that this house reads its bills.”

Elizabeth turned the page, trying hard to impress the lesson upon her memory. So that was how a great house handled a cheat, without heat, without accusation, with only a dated line in a query book and an answer expected by Thursday. She thought of her mother, who would have told the whole of Meryton that Hartley was a thief, and achieved nothing but the telling. There was a pleasure in this other way of doing things that she had not anticipated, and it was hers now, the plain satisfaction of competent work.

They went through the provisions and the wages. Elizabeth found herself obliged to verify her totals with care, unaccustomed to sums of such magnitude, yet Mrs Fenwick answered each enquiry with the steady patience of a servant assisting a new mistress through her first trials. It was nearly an hour before the housekeeper closed the last book and folded her hands upon it, and Elizabeth let out a private breath of satisfaction that she had acquitted herself tolerably well.

“There is one further matter, ma’am, if you will permit me. Smith was sent up from Pemberley as a provisional arrangement, until such time as you might employ a lady’s maid with more experience of a fashionable house. If you wish it, I can make enquiries. There are women in London who have dressed the first ladies in the kingdom.”

“And would such a woman know what to do with a mistress who walks in the mud and loses her gloves?”

“She would pretend not to notice, ma’am, which is a great part of what one pays for.”

“Then I would rather keep Smith, who notices everything and forgives it.” Elizabeth closed her own notebook. “We are both country ladies, Mrs Fenwick, and we get along very well. I should like her to stay, if she is willing.”

“As you please, ma’am.”

Elizabeth was learning the inflections of that sentence. She took it for the loyalty it was, to the house above any person in it, and was not offended. “Thank you. I will speak to Smith myself.”

“As you please, ma’am,” said Mrs Fenwick again, and this time there was perhaps a degree more warmth in it, or perhaps Elizabeth was learning to hear warmth in smaller quantities.

The first crates came up from Bond Street in the middle of the afternoon. Elizabeth heard the commotion from the landing, two footmen breathing hard under a deal box between them, and Smith standing above on the stairs directing the delivery with a steady, unhurried authority that brooked no argument. “Mind the newel post, Thomas. It is older than you are.”

The crates were set down in Elizabeth’s own chambers, the footmen withdrew, and it was only the two of them with a great deal of wrapping paper. The late light came in at the windows and lay across the bed where Smith had spread the first of the gowns. For a moment Elizabeth only stood and looked.

Smith lifted each gown out of its paper as though the muslin might bruise. She smoothed a seam here, checked a hem there, held a morning dress up to the light and examined the modiste’s stitching with a critical eye that found, Elizabeth gathered, very little to forgive. “She has done well by you, ma’am.” The walking dress was hung in the wardrobe room, in the space where one trunk had lately stood and looked rather lonely. A morning gown of cambric followed it.

“Smith.” Elizabeth sat down on the edge of the bed, among the wrapping paper. “I spoke with Mrs Fenwick this morning. I told her I wished you to stay on permanently, not as a loan from Pemberley but as my lady’s maid, if that is what you wish. You may say no. London is a long way from Derbyshire, and I am not the easiest woman to dress.”

Smith paused with a folded petticoat in her hands. “Ma’am, I would be very pleased and honoured. There is nowhere I would rather be.”

“Then it is settled.”