Friends & Fires
For a little while none of them spoke. The motion of the carriage, the softened rattle of the wheels, and the green narrowing of the world into hedgerows and overhanging boughs made speech feel unnecessary.
Elizabeth let her eyes travel, greedy in a quiet way, over what the park had hidden: a gap in the leaves where pasture opened; a stile half lost in grass; the quick flash of water where a small stream crossed the lane.
In town, even in a drawing-room, everything was arranged to be observed.
Here, there was nothing to look at but what simply was, and she found herself the calmer for it.
Mary broke the silence first, because she could never endure long without setting things in order.
“I do not think,” she said, carefully, “that Miss Bingley intends to be unkind.”
Jane turned her head, attentive at once. “No.”
“She is very civil,” Mary continued, civility plainly a subject to be weighed and classified. “Only… her questions were exceedingly particular.”
Elizabeth’s mouth curved. “Particular questions are still questions.”
Mary looked faintly reproving. “She wished to understand us.”
“She wished to place us,” Elizabeth returned, but without heat. “It is not a crime. Only a habit.”
Jane’s smile did not fade. “She spoke prettily of Georgiana.”
“She spoke prettily of everything,” Elizabeth said, and then glanced out again, because the lane had opened on a view of sloping meadow that made argument feel like a small, indoor occupation.
“Mrs Hurst, at least, will never trouble herself to place anyone. She will be content to agree that the country is pretty.”
Mary, in spite of herself, gave a short breath that might almost have been amusement.
They might have continued so, quietly sparring and soothing, if the air had not altered.
It was slight at first, only a heaviness beneath the summer sweetness, something like a lane that had passed too near a kitchen yard. Elizabeth would have dismissed it, had it not returned a moment later, sharper, with a faint sourness that did not belong to June.
Jane lifted her head. “Do you smell—?”
“I do,” Elizabeth replied, and leaned nearer the window, hoping clearer air might make the truth less unpleasant.
The carriage had turned into the narrower lane that led towards the cottage. The trees were thicker here, the hedges higher, and for a few moments the smell seemed to fade, no more than a stray breath carried from some distant hearth. Elizabeth began to chide herself for noticing it.
Then the horses slowed.
It was not abrupt, but it was deliberate; the sort of checked pace that meant the coachman had seen something he did not wish to rush towards.
The footman shifted on the rumble behind them.
Elizabeth heard, faintly, the murmur of a word exchanged above her head, and then the creak of leather as the reins were gathered shorter.
Jane’s gaze met hers, still calm, but suddenly sharpened.
They rounded a bend where the hedge dipped, and the lane gave a small view forward, only a slice of sky above the roofs.
Smoke rose there.
Not a great column, not anything that would justify a scream or a crowd, but enough: a grey smudge against the clean morning, drifting and thinning as it climbed, with that unmistakable look of something that ought not to be in the air.
Mary’s fingers tightened upon her reticule. “It is our direction.”
The carriage moved on again, but faster now, the horses urged with quiet authority.
Elizabeth’s mind began to run ahead in lists, as it always did when fear had no use for extravagance.
The kitchen was at the back. The chimney had been troublesome in spring.
Susan knew what to do. The neighbours were close enough.
Close enough, and yet her mother was away, Kitty and Lydia were away, and only Susan remained within the cottage to meet whatever had happened first.
By the time the wheels turned in at their gate, the smell was stronger, the air thick with it. Damp cloths hung over the lower hedge where someone had thrown them in haste. The windows stood open.
Susan met them at the door without waiting for ceremony, her cap askew and soot marking one cheek. Relief crossed her face so quickly it might have been missed.
“Thank God,” she said, and then caught herself, swallowing the rest of it into something more proper.
“It is all safe, Miss Elizabeth. It is contained. Only—” Her eyes went past them, to the lane, plainly expecting more arrivals.
“You must not go in through the kitchen. It never caught the timbers, but the soot went everywhere, and the water ran where water always runs, into the passage and under the parlour door.”
Elizabeth did not answer at once; she only took in Susan’s face, the soot, the damp, and the steadiness with which she stood between them and whatever misery lay within. Then she moved.
“Where is it worst?” she asked, already stepping past the threshold, her skirts gathered a little from habit rather than fuss.
“The kitchen. The chimney flared,” Susan replied, falling into pace beside her, words coming quicker now that there was something to do.
“I called out, but there was nobody near, and there was no time to go running after anyone. I smothered it as best I could and threw water on it till it died. It is out, Miss Elizabeth, truly out, only there was no way to drown it neatly. The smoke went up the back passage and into the little parlour, and the water has run everywhere. I have opened what windows I could.”
A sourness lingered in the air, sharp where the hall met the back passage. The boards underfoot were damp; a thin track of water had crept along the edge of the runner and darkened the hem of it. Somewhere deeper in the house, a shutter banged once and then settled.
“Very well,” Elizabeth said, and there was no tremor in her voice. “We do not go through the kitchen.”
She turned at once towards the nearer door and pushed it wider. A draught caught, dragging the smell with it.
“Jane, open the parlour window fully,” she said, without looking back. “If the hinges resist, do not fight them. Call me.”
Jane was already moving, calm as ever, taking hold of usefulness as though it were simply her place in the world. “Yes.”
Elizabeth turned to Mary. “You must go for help.”
Mary blinked, the permission to be practical seeming to startle her more than the smoke. “Where?”
“The Hardings,” Elizabeth replied at once.
“Tell Mrs Harding the chimney flared. It is out, but the house is full of smoke and water. Ask her to send two men, anyone who can lift and carry, and whatever cloths and pails may be spared. If Mr Harding is at home, beg him to send for a sweep as well. Go quickly.”
Mary gathered her reticule with the same solemn exactness she brought to her music, and was moving before Elizabeth had finished speaking.
Susan stopped short, plainly expecting to be questioned further, or reproached. Elizabeth caught her eye.
“And you,” she said, brisk but not unkind, “you did right. Now show me what has been wet, and what has been smoked. We will begin with what cannot be replaced.”
Susan let out a breath she had been holding since the gate. “This way,” she said, and led them into the back passage, where the air thickened, the boards shone with damp, and the work of saving what remained had to begin.
The front door still stood open behind them, letting in a strip of clean air, and in it the footman from Mr Darcy’s carriage, hat in hand, uncertain where to place himself in a house that was not his.
“Beg pardon, ma’am,” he said, low and steady. “May I be of use?”
Elizabeth did not pause to wonder at the propriety of it. “Yes. Open every window you can in the front rooms. If anything sticks, leave it and tell me. And keep clear of the kitchen.”
He bowed and moved at once, quick-footed and quiet, disappearing towards the little parlour.
“That is a fine help to have,” Susan muttered.
Elizabeth did not answer. The smoke was worse here, turning every breath into something to be measured. She kept her hand on the wall as they went, not from fear, but to steady her direction through the dimness.
Elizabeth moved from room to room with Susan at her shoulder, marking damage the way her father once marked passages: quickly, exactly, and without indulgence.
The little parlour had taken the worst of it.
Smoke clung to the curtains; water had crept beneath the sideboard and pooled where the boards dipped.
In the kitchen the hearth was dark and sullen, the stones still wet, the air sharp enough to sting the eyes.
The best room was merely tainted, standing too near the trouble and rebuked for it.
She had just turned back into the passage when voices sounded at the front, men’s voices, urgent but controlled.
Then the Hardings’ sons appeared in the doorway, with Mary close behind them.
Elizabeth went to meet them at once. “Mr Henry Harding—Mr Samuel Harding,” she said, relieved to recognise them both.
“Thank you. The fire is out, but the smoke has travelled and the water has run where it could, through the passage and under the parlour door. We must clear the little parlour first.”
Both men looked past her, took in the damp, and nodded without questions.
“Carry the chairs and the small table into the front room,” Elizabeth directed. “Then the bookcase, if you can manage it between you. Do not go near the kitchen. Susan will show you what is safe to lift.”
“Mrs Harding is arranging more help from Highfield,” Mary added breathlessly, her bonnet strings askew but her posture as straight as if she had been called upon in church.
“I can take the lighter things.” She reached at once for a stack of books, as though she had been waiting all her life to be useful in precisely this way.