Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

“What a feast for Caroline Bingley could she see me now,” he said, taking the handkerchief she held out.

“Just as well then that I sent her packing.”

He managed a watery laugh. “Yes.”

“Ned worked very hard for you,” said Elizabeth. “Jane is more settled now that she knows who murdered Lydia. Charlie has notified the Sheffield constabulary, and this woman Matcham and her minions will be arrested. If it were not for Ned’s work, we would never have known. I wish I could have thanked him, especially thanked him as my brother. So does Jane.”

“What are you writing?” he asked, to change the subject; it hurt to talk about Ned.

“Oh, just lists for Mary, who is orphanage mad. It was a way to fill in time until you awakened.”

He groaned. “Will orphanages be any easier to bear than a book about the ills of England?”

“Probably not, except that the worst Mary of all to bear would be an idle one. Poor Angus! He’s so deeply in love with her, and she won’t see it.”

He sat up, mopped his face, blew his nose. “I went to bed in all my dirt, and need a bath. Would you ask Meade to prepare it for me?” He looked at her, smiling. “We must talk, but not yet. After Ned is buried and things settle down. Our son was impudent enough to say that our children are tired of skating on the ice between us, and somehow we have to melt that ice. In a few days. Is that satisfactory?”

“Yes,” she said, rising and moving the table away. “I’ll leave you to your ablutions, my dear.”

“I love you, Elizabeth.”

“And I, you.”

“I only said I wished I had never married you to hurt you, to elicit some kind of response. It was a terrible thing to say.”

“Later, Fitz. Have your bath.”

She gave him a wonderful smile and went out of the room, her papers in one hand.

Jane and Mary were in the pink morning room, a delightful small apartment reserved for the ladies. Of Kitty there was no sign.

“Fitz is awake,” Elizabeth said, coming in. She tugged the bell cord. “I’m in need of coffee. Anybody else?”

Having ordered coffee for three, she sat down at the table, littered with papers. “Where’s Kitty?”

“With Georgie,” said Jane. “Today is how to be queenly, I think, or perhaps how to be charming.”

“She certainly needs tuition on both,” said Mary with a snort.

Of course the subject of Ned Skinner had already been talked to death, but it continued now Elizabeth had joined them.

“And to think how much I disliked him!” said Jane for the tenth time. “All the while, he was making his investigations on our behalf. Lydia can rest in peace now that her murderer won’t escape retribution. William says that England hangs many more felons than the rest of Europe combined, but they should hang if they kill innocent people. I just wish Father Dominus had lived to be hanged. Especially considering what he did to poor Ned.”

“Which reminds me,” said Mary, tired of Jane on the subject of Lydia and hanging. “You have eight children at Bingley Hall for the summer, Jane, yet it seems you spend your days and your nights at Pemberley. They’re already as wild as savages out of a jungle-what will they be like when finally you go home?”

Jane looked insufferably smug. “Oh, I’ve solved all of the difficulties inherent in children, Mary dear. When Lydia died I sent for Caroline Bingley. After Lizzie’s insult she couldn’t darken Pemberley’s doors, but she does so enjoy her summers here in the north. She has been staying with me since just after dear Lydia’s funeral. The children are petrified of her, even Hugh and Arthur. She spanks them! I can never raise a finger against them, I confess-they stand there looking so contrite and adorable! But that doesn’t wash with Caroline! Down come the trousers, and she spanks them hard ! Of course they are howling as if being killed before the first smack lands-it is the sight of her huge hands.” Jane sighed. “But I will say this. They are much better behaved after Caroline takes over.”

“Does she spank the older ones?” asked Mary, fascinated.

“No, she canes them.”

“And Prissy?”

“She makes her walk for hours with a book balanced on her head, or practising her curtsies, or conjugating Latin verbs.”

“Does this mean you intend to stay here?” Elizabeth butted in.

“No, just that I may come and go as I please. Caroline really enjoys disciplining children,” said Jane.

“Now why does that not surprise me?” asked Mary.

Looking after twenty-seven boys and eighteen girls sat so ill with the Pemberley servants that, after a week of it, they rebelled.

“I am very sorry, Mrs. Darcy,” said an anguished Parmenter to Elizabeth, “but Children of Jesus is a misnomer. Children of Satan would be far closer to the mark.”

Elizabeth understood much that her butler had not said, but decided to appear tranquil, unimpressed. “Oh, dear!” she said placidly. “Tell me what has happened, Parmenter.”

“Everything!” he wailed. “We have done precisely what you wished, marm, down to closing the ballroom shutters and limiting the number of candles. We took the cots for the extra summer servants out of storage, put fresh straw in the mattresses, and made them up with clean sheets, blankets, nice cotton quilts. The old nursery commode chairs have been put behind a screen that the children knocked down immediately. Every toy in the attics was brought down, and now lies in pieces. Truly, marm, nothing has been overlooked! We set up trestle tables and benches for them to eat at, with knives, forks and spoons. Glasses for lemonade. And our thanks? Bedlam, marm, I swear! They do not like the food, and throw it all over the place. And they will not use the commodes! They squat like stray dogs to do their business, then throw it at the walls! They pulled the mattresses off the cots and slept on the floor amid puddles of-of-I leave it to your imagination. Oh, marm, the filth ! Our lovely ballroom is ruined!”

“I assume that they refused to be bathed?”

“Absolutely, marm. In fact, they refuse to take off their robes, which stink to high heaven!”

“I see. In which case, Parmenter, lock every door and window opening into the ballroom, and do not unlock any of them until I am present and specifically instruct you.”

And off marched Elizabeth to find her sisters-but only after visiting Mr. Matthew Spottiswoode.

“Matthew, I do not care what you are doing, kindly abandon it!” she commanded, surging into his office.

As word had long spread of doings in the ballroom, he did not attempt to protest, simply folded his hands on his desk and gazed at her enquiringly. “Yes, Mrs. Darcy?”

“I want twenty of the biggest, hardiest nursemaids Lancashire can produce. I say Lancashire because I very much doubt that any big or hardy enough exist in Derbyshire. Offer them a king’s ransom to drop whatever they are doing and come to Pemberley at once-and I mean yesterday!”

“Certainly, Mrs. Darcy. Though I very much fear that, even for a king’s ransom, it will be some days before my quest bears fruit,” said Mr. Spottiswoode, eyes limpid, mouth perfectly straight, all laughter on the inside. “I take it you would like me to engage upon this myself?”

“Yes! And start in Manchester! Failing that, Liverpool.”

Alone among the sisters, Elizabeth had some appreciation of the causes underlying behaviour in the ballroom. She had no doubt that until their removal to Pemberley, the children had been closer to angels than mortal children usually are. Knowing this, everyone had expected the angelic conduct to continue. Whereas Elizabeth saw the last week as evidence of a new and different kind of terror. What, after all, did they know of any life save that which Father Dominus had inflicted upon them? And the many years of love would surely far outweigh the fear of him and Jerome that had come so very recently. If I were an eight-year-old Child of Jesus, she thought, walking Pemberley’s stunning cream-and-gilt corridors, what would I make of being bundled out of the only home I have ever known by a band of men, then locked inside an utterly alien environment? I think I would register my disapproval in every way at my disposal! And have we-Mary, Kitty, Jane, I-come near them since they arrived? No, we have not, doing what all women in our circumstances do-wait for servants to clean up them and any messes they make. But servants are-oh, a law unto themselves! If they dislike the work they are put to, they take out their spleen on whatever defenceless is at hand. In this case, the Children of Jesus themselves. No servile hand will have been raised against them, but one cannot say the same for servile tongues. They have been roared at, screamed at, reviled. I know it, I know it!