Chapter Six The Gospel of Clay #2
As Greene and I rode in, a patriotic bunting of mud still clinging to Jupiter's flanks, heads turned. Whispers followed. A cluster of matrons outside the milliner's shop paused their gossip, their fans frozen mid-flutter, as though I were a theatrical villain making an unscheduled entrance.
At the timber yard, Mr Higgins was measuring a plank. He was a man of few words and many splinters, his apron a map of every board he had ever sawn. I reined in Jupiter with what I hoped was a heroic flourish, sending a small avalanche of dried mud cascading from my boots onto the ground.
"Higgins!" I called, my voice bright as polished brass buttons. "Five hundred feet of seasoned oak and the same in pine—by Friday, if you please!"
He glanced up slowly, as one might regard a persistent fly.
His eyes travelled from my sweat-dampened hair, down the ruined coat, to the boots that now resembled nothing so much as two very unhappy loaves of rye bread.
He did not smile. He did not frown. He simply exhaled through his nose with the force of a small bellows.
"Seasoned oak for transient tenants?" He returned to his plank as though it had asked a more interesting question. "Scarce, sir. Very scarce."
I dismounted—nearly slipping in the process, Jupiter giving an indignant snort—and produced my pouch of gold with the air of a conjurer revealing the ace of spades. Coins glinted in the July sun, bright enough to buy forgiveness—or so I hoped.
"I stay for the century, Higgins! Not a tenant—a fixture! A permanent fixture! Now, oak and pine, or I shall take my business elsewhere."
Higgins snatched the pouch, weighed it in his palm, and muttered something about "sudden fits of permanence" under his breath. He relented—grumbling, of course, as though parting with wood were akin to parting with a firstborn—but the order was taken.
We moved on.
The hardware merchant, Mr Potts, was polishing a horseshoe. He looked up, saw the mud, and his polishing slowed to a funeral pace.
"Drainage supplies, Potts!" I announced. "Stone, gravel, the works! Netherfield is going to be the envy of the county."
Potts regarded me as if he had just discovered that his best customer was also his worst nightmare. "Hope it sticks better than you do, sir." He nodded at the flakes of clay drifting from my breeches. "One of the tenants before you promised the same. Left us with a half-dug ditch and a bill."
I laughed—too loudly, perhaps—and slapped a handful of coins on the counter. "Then consider this a deposit on my soul, Potts. I am staying. I am deepening. I am... draining!"
He took the money, but his sigh could have inflated a hot air balloon.
The stonemason next door was worse: a wiry man with a perpetual squint, who eyed my boots as though they had offended his craft.
"Drainage, eh?" He scratched his chin. "Hope it holds better than your last resolution to winter here. We still talk about that one at the Green Man."
By now a small crowd had gathered—women with baskets, children peeking from behind skirts, even the butcher wiping his hands on his apron to watch the spectacle.
I kept my chin high, mud flaking off me like badges of honour.
Every step left a print that said, I was here.
I am here. I am staying, confound you all.
I was a walking advertisement for perseverance, if perseverance were sold in the form of a very dirty gentleman on a very patient horse.
The whispers grew: "...back again..." ".
..a ploughman's mud..." "...thinks gold fixes everything.
.." I smiled at them all, waving as though they were cheering instead of judging.
One small boy pointed and laughed outright.
I winked at him. He hid behind his mother's skirts, but I swear I saw a grin.
Finally, we reached Mr Philips's office. I dismounted, handed Jupiter to Greene, and marched in, trailing dirt like a comet's tail. The bell above the door gave a startled tinkle, as though surprised to see me.
Mr Philips looked up from his desk, his spectacles slipping down his nose. He blinked once, twice, as though trying to reconcile the ledger before him with the apparition now filling his doorway.
"Mr Bingley." His voice came measured. "You bring the outdoors with you."
"Drainage demands it!" I beamed, shaking his hand (he winced slightly at the mud transfer). "I wish to purchase Netherfield outright. Contact my London solicitor—fast! I am here to stay, Philips. Permanently. Indefinitely. For the century, if the century will have me!"
He rose slowly, poured a glass of water from a cut-glass pitcher, and offered it with the careful politeness one reserves for the recently escaped from Bedlam. "Constancy is valued here, sir."
"Constancy is me!" I declared, taking the glass. The water was tepid, but it tasted of victory.
Then the door burst open with the force of a cannon shot.
Mrs Philips swept in, her cap quivering as a storm cloud about to unleash, her eyes sharp as dressmaker's shears. She stopped dead, taking in the scene: her husband, the muddy gentleman, the glass of water, the general air of mayhem.
"Mr Philips!" she exclaimed, her voice pitched to shatter crystal. "I was informed we had a visitor from Town! A visitor who has returned after vanishing in November!"
"Mrs Philips—" I began, attempting to rise, but my legs—still recovering from the trench—wobbled like a newborn foal's.
"Do not rise, Mr Bingley." She advanced, her skirts hissing with the sound of serpents. "The mud claims you already. How unfortunate you ignored it last autumn. The ground was just as deep then, though perhaps not quite so... à la mode."
I opened my mouth. Nothing emerged.
She turned to her husband. "Do not let this young man waste too much of your time. He is liable to disappear mid-sentence. He has proved it."
I felt the barb land like an arrow in a target labelled Charles Bingley. "I buy Netherfield!" I protested, my voice cracking only slightly. "I stay!"
"Buying a county to buy a soul?" Her laugh was brittle as winter ice. "Extravagant! Very extravagant. Now, if you will excuse me, I have actual business to attend to."
She swept out, leaving behind only the faint scent of lavender and the heavy silence of utter defeat.
Mr Philips resumed his seat, his face once more a mask of professional calm. "I shall write to your London solicitor by Monday. Good day, Mr Bingley."
I stood, my boots leaving one final, muddy imprint on the carpet as a parting signature. Outside, Greene waited with the horses, his expression carefully neutral.
"She is quite formidable, sir," he gestured to the retreating figure of the lady.
I mounted Jupiter, my pride smarting, but my resolve hardened. "I persevere, Greene. Until she invites me to tea. And if she does not... well, I shall bring my own teapot."
We rode back towards Netherfield, the village whispers fading behind us.
Depth through dirt was my gospel, etched in clay, and signed in mud.