Friends & Fires #2
Mr Henry Harding and his brother had the chairs out in moments, Mary following with an armful of books and Jane’s calm directions coming from the front room. Elizabeth turned away and went into the kitchen.
The air was sharper here, smoke and damp together. Water lay in shallow pools on the flags, streaked with ash. The hearth was blackened and wet, the iron still beading. Above it, the chimney-mouth looked disturbed, soot dragged down in clumps along the brick.
On the shelf by the back door lay a slim book, its cover buckled, its pages swollen. Mr Bennet’s notes blurred at the edges.
Elizabeth did not move at once.
She stood with her hands at her sides and looked at it, as though looking long enough might undo what water had done.
There were pages she knew by sight, places where his pencil had pressed harder, small, impatient strokes in the margin that had once made her smile.
Now the ink ran, and the paper had taken on that soft, ruined thickness that could not be flattened into sense again.
She swallowed, once, and bent to lift it.
The cover gave a little under her fingers. She set it down again more carefully than before, as though gentleness might be any remedy at all, and turned away, because there were other things that could be saved.
Jane’s calm directions carried from the front room, steady as a metronome; the scrape of furniture and the soft thud of feet made a rhythm of their own.
“Miss Bennet?”
Elizabeth froze with the pail in her hands as a familiar voice carried from the hall, careful, controlled, and sharpened by the smell in the air.
“I came up the lane and smelt it,” Mr Ashton said. “Is anyone hurt?”
Jane answered at once, clear and perfectly polite. “No one is hurt, sir. The chimney flared, but it is out.”
“Thank God.” His relief was brief; the next moment his tone shifted into decision. “Where may I be of use?”
Before Jane could do more than turn, he had already moved towards the little parlour, labour evidently the only proper response to trouble.
Elizabeth set the pail down and worked as though work alone could keep the kitchen from becoming real: lifting a sodden cloth from the hearthstones, wringing it hard, wiping soot from the edge of the table where it had settled like fine powder.
She moved the smaller things first, then the necessary ones, breathing through her mouth when the air stung.
Only when her hands began to shake with fatigue did she stop. She straightened, listened, and looked.
Voices in the front room. The scrape of furniture. Jane’s steady direction. Mr Ashton’s measured steps. Smoke everywhere, and water where the passage dipped, and the cottage suddenly too small to contain it.
For a moment the kitchen swam: smoke in her throat, water underfoot, the sting in her eyes, and the absurd thought that she could not dry a whole house by will alone.
Then wheels on the lane. Voices at the door. Heavy steps.
Mr Harding came in first, coat thrown on in haste, two men at his back with pails and cloths. Behind them, Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley appeared at once, with two of the Pemberley men carrying what looked like a sweep’s kit and a hand-barrow.
For one foolish instant, Elizabeth wanted to lean her forehead against the door-frame and let them all take it from her.
Instead she straightened, set the pail down with care, and went forward to meet them.
Mr Darcy did not ask what had happened; he looked once, took in the damp boards and the open windows, and spoke to his men in a low, practical tone. Mr Bingley went straight to Jane, his concern plain even as he tried to wear it lightly.
Elizabeth did not wait to be managed. “The upper rooms,” she said to no one in particular, already turning. “If the smoke has risen…”
Upstairs, the air was warmer and closer. Soot had kissed the white of the linens, creeping through every crack it could find.
Elizabeth moved along the landing with the careful speed of someone who meant to see everything before she allowed herself to feel any of it.
Lydia and Kitty’s door stood wide, as though someone had meant to air it and forgotten the decency of a latch.
Their coverlets had taken the worst of the drift, dulled at the folds, and the little shelf where Kitty kept her ribbons smelt of smoke, held too near a candle for too long.
She opened the windows before moving on.
Mrs Bennet’s room was shut fast. Elizabeth opened it and was met by warm, trapped air, perfume turned sour beneath soot.
Nothing was blackened, nothing destroyed, and yet everything felt tainted: the curtains, the gown folded on the chair, even the pillow where her mother’s head had lately rested. She opened the windows here too.
She opened the linen-press. The first sheet she drew out held the smell in its folds, sharp and stubborn, and she put it back with a steadiness that cost her more than she would have admitted.
At the end of the passage she paused, listening.
Below, voices rose and fell, the scrape of something heavy being shifted, Mr Harding’s brisk instructions, Jane’s calm reply, Mr Bingley’s anxious warmth.
Over it all, a quieter current: Mr Darcy’s voice, low, certain, giving orders as though disorder were merely another thing to be arranged.
She turned into her and Jane’s room next.
The door was ajar, so Pudding could come and go as she pleased.
Elizabeth stepped inside and shut it to a narrower gap, more from habit than thought.
The room smelled less of smoke than the others, though it was there, faintly caught in the curtains.
Pudding sat upon the bed with the air of an offended guardian, her tail flicking once at the intrusion.
“Hush,” Elizabeth murmured, and ran her fingers along the mantel. A pale smear came away.
She crossed to the washstand and lifted the cloth. It was damp from the air, not from water, and that, at least, was mercy. Still, the thought settled with quiet certainty: they could not sleep in this house tonight.
She went up to the top floor. The doors here had been kept shut, and the damp did not follow her; the boards were dry beneath her steps. There was only the lingering taint of smoke, thinner now, spent for the most part on the lower rooms.
Mary’s room was, as always, exact in its neatness, and yet even here a fine dusting of soot dulled the bedcover at the folds. The guest room was much the same—nothing soaked, nothing warped, only that faint grey film that would not be dislodged by airing alone.
Elizabeth shut the last door and stood for one breath, her hand on the wood, hoping the pressure of her palm might keep the smoke from travelling further.
Then she turned back towards the stairs, because whatever was to be saved would be saved best by those already at work, and what remained was the question no one had yet spoken aloud.
Elizabeth went down more quietly than she had come up, her hand skimming the banister where the polish was dry and reassuring. At the foot of the stairs she stopped, for voices carried from the front room.
Mr Harding’s voice came first, brisk with thought. “My wife will take Mrs Bennet and the two youngest without a moment’s hesitation, but we cannot receive you all properly.”
Mr Darcy replied, quiet and certain. “Then let the rest come to Pemberley. My sister will be glad of it; Mrs Younge is with her, and there are already ladies in the house. It will be perfectly proper, and it may be done at once. Only tell me what will be least inconvenient to Mrs Harding.”
Elizabeth stood in the passage and heard every word as though it had been spoken for her alone. Proper. Immediate. Least distress.
She looked down at her wet hem, the blackened hearth, the open windows that had turned their cottage inside out, and felt the cruel simplicity of it: they would go where they were told, because there was nowhere else to go.
Jane’s voice answered softly, somewhere beyond the parlour door.
Elizabeth drew a steady breath and stepped forward, to consent as though consent were the same as choice.