Chapter 8 Lady’s Maid
LADY'S MAID
The day continued quietly for me. I spent most of it with Jane, and she slept through the afternoon.
The swelling on her ankle subsided to bruises, and she took a few wincing steps to bathe.
The young housemaid and I did up her hair—rather elaborately, for we were bored—and wrapped her in a borrowed dressing gown.
Suddenly, beautiful Jane was smiling from the bed.
Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst came up and began a cheerful visit. I watched, wondering how Miss Bingley could be so nice to Jane and so vile to me. I suppose Jane’s good nature brought out the goodness in others. Wisely, I ignored what that implied about myself.
The gentlemen had been out riding, and they returned with a clamor: the thump of boots pried off by servants and laughing exclamations about horses and fields. Mr. Bingley came upstairs and inquired from the hallway. After a few shouted questions, I intervened.
“Mr. Bingley,” I called. “The sky will not fall if you enter. You have two sisters, myself, and a maid all here, and Jane is most presentable, sitting up in bed.”
“Are you sure?” his voice came back.
“You are the master of this household. Who will object?” His sisters applauded as if this were a bold game, so he came in.
He beamed at Jane and told her a funny and modest story about their riding. Jane, in her restrained way, beamed back. His sisters and I were quite irrelevant. It was charming, and I was relieved my mother was not here. She would have announced their engagement to the room.
Miss Bingley smiled at first, but her pleasure faded. When the Bingleys left to prepare for dinner, her farewell to Jane was brittle, and her smile did not reach her eyes.
Jane was tired after the visit and slept again, and the little maid helped me dress for dinner. While she worked to fasten my dress, I became curious.
“You are very young to be a housemaid.”
I moved a little to see her in the looking glass and saw her nod, her little face screwed up with concentration while she worked.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m lucky. I washed laundry before, and the lye in the water hurts.” She flexed her fingers in remembered pain. It must have been some time ago. She had the hands of a lady’s maid now, slender and smooth, a great contrast to the cracked, red skin of the Scottish woman.
“How did you become a housemaid?”
“A lady said I was pretty, ma’am.”
“What did your mother think?”
“Don’t have one. No father, neither.”
“Are you…” What was I trying to discover? “Who teaches you? Do you read?”
“I don’t have my letters, ma’am, but I’m taught how to wait, and curtsy, and speak properly to ladies and—” Her hands stopped, and her face became a picture of distress. “Am I doin’ it wrong?”
“No, you do it wonderfully.” She cheered up with the quick moods of a child, and I wondered if she was even younger than I had thought.
She began setting my hair, her tongue peeking out while her fingers pinned my curls. “Miss Jane is so pretty and nice,” she said. “Like… a flower, with yellow petals, that always smiles.”
“She is a wonderful sister, and so thoughtful that I do not begrudge her outshining the rest of us.”
“And you are like a tree,” she added decidedly. “One that is light and lively in the wind, but tough. Like an ash, but with dark leaves for your hair.”
“I believe you are a young poet,” I said, very seriously. “But I would make a short tree. A shrub, perhaps.”
“I mean, she does not outshine you, ma’am.” She took her hands away.
I had to move to see my reflection. She had set my hair higher than I would choose for dinner, more suited for a ball. But a few curls had been left down and loose, almost untouched. It had no recognizable style, but I would not have criticized her attempt even if I found a bird’s nest on my head.
“Eliza! How nice that you…” Miss Bingley’s voice stopped.
I had entered the dining room curious. I had never dined at Netherfield, even when it was kept by prior families.
The room was twice the length of Longbourn’s dining room.
Under a horrid clutter of ornamental china, the furnishings were fashionable and in good taste—not always the case when an estate was freshly leased.
I wondered who had chosen the furniture.
Not the sisters, who preferred elaborate dresses and often wore both earrings and jeweled necklaces.
And it was hard to imagine affable Mr. Bingley caring about décor.
Miss Bingley’s silence made me look over. That seemed to restore her voice.
“How nice that you are able to be our guest for dinner, at last,” she said tonelessly, her gaze locked on my hair.
So. It was to be insults at three paces. I examined her dress, choosing targets, but she simply indicated a chair, then sat herself as the others arrived.
Though we had breakfasted together casually, dinner began stiffly, which happens sometimes with the formality of servants and courses.
I tried for a topic but without much goodwill, as Mr. Bingley was the only one I honestly liked.
And every time I looked at one of his sisters—or at Mr. Darcy, who was seated opposite me—they seemed to be staring at me.
But Mr. Bingley was determined to thaw our party. “Darcy, for goodness sakes, speak, man! We have finished an entire course, and I think the only thing that has passed through your lips is soup.”
Mr. Darcy gave a curt nod, accepting his friend’s rebuke but oblivious to the irony of his silent response.
“I believe you scored a hit, Mr. Bingley,” I said before I could stop myself, for Mr. Darcy looked like a fencer acknowledging a touch, although I had only seen fencing on stage in Hamlet.
“Indeed, you are right!” Mr. Bingley said in a wondering voice. “You must be my witness, for it will never happen again.”
“Is he so hard to hit, then?”
“I fenced with him exactly once, and I have never been so humiliated.”
This prodded Mr. Darcy to speak. “You are overly kind. There are many at my club who beat me soundly.”
“His club filled with fencing masters, he means,” Mr. Bingley said with a laugh.
“How remarkable that you have such skill and never mention it,” Miss Bingley said. “I should adore to see you fence.”
“It is a skill for exercise and discipline, not performance,” Mr. Darcy replied.
“And for duels, surely. You have revealed yourself a hidden romantic.” Miss Bingley thrust her fork through the air, stabbing an unseen opponent.
There was general laughter. Mr. Darcy remained grave and still, so I only smiled.
“Of course, only men duel with swords,” Miss Bingley continued, and her eyes turned to me. “What was the inspiration for your hair, Miss Bennet?”
My sole surprise was that she had waited so long to attack. But as I opened my mouth to counter, I realized her scathing tone was missing. I changed direction mid-sentence but managed to say something about their young housemaid.
“She remembers from London, I suppose,” mused Miss Bingley. “It is most au courant.”
“Really?” I leaned to see around Mr. Darcy. There was a large mirror on the wall behind him, and my expression was dubious as I looked back at myself. The curls the maid had left loose almost touched my shoulders. “I thought it unfinished.”
“No,” Mr. Darcy said. I looked at him, expecting more, but that was all.
“I have a lady’s maid, of course,” Miss Bingley said. “Perhaps I should encourage this girl, too.”
“She should learn to read,” I said. Even for a housemaid, this was preferred, and a lady’s maid must handle correspondence.
“She cannot read? Ah, well.” Miss Bingley tossed her hand as if discarding a worthless card.
“I am sure she could learn.” I thought of the maid’s poetic description of Jane.
“Whatever for?”
“To become a lady’s maid. Or to better her mind. Or for enjoyment. I often lend books to our housemaids.”
“Do you?” Miss Bingley’s eyebrows had soared.
“It is unfair that she has no way to learn. She has no mother or father—she is an orphan, I mean. So there is no path for her, is there?”
I was receiving incredulous stares. I suppose Mary feels this way when she quotes a reformist at dinner, and we stare at her.
“There is the Society for Promoting the Lancasterian System,” Mr. Darcy said. “They are not active in Hertfordshire at this time. But they are sympathetic to education of the poor, and are establishing a program in the north.”
“I shall have to inquire about them,” I said. He nodded.
Mr. Darcy’s clothes were elegant and finely tailored. As were the sisters’ silk dresses. The large room around us shone with polished wood, damask-covered cushions, and gilded mirrors.
I was struck by a frustration I had never felt before. I was envious of wealth.
Not so I could lease an abandoned estate and fill it with expensive furniture. But imagine hearing someone’s bold plan to educate poor girls, and then telling them to proceed.
Mr. Hurst shifted ponderously in his chair. “Educating the poor would be a colossal waste of money. We are at war, you know. Wellesley does not need his men reading while they charge Napoleon’s guns.”
“I spoke of a young girl,” I said.
“She could sew uniforms,” Mr. Hurst said. “I don’t see why you are concerned. She has a roof over her head. Food every day. In London, there are hordes of girls worse off, filthy and swarming like rats for a crust of bread.”
He was not wrong. But I found myself rigid with anger. Furious.
In another moment, I would have said something extremely impolite, but the butler entered with a letter on a silver tray, addressed to me in my mother’s hand.
As I broke the Longbourn seal, I realized that, delivered at this hour, it might be grave news. My heart leaped to my father, and I wished I had left the room to open it. But when I unfolded it, I relaxed, then became mystified.
My mother wrote:
“Dear Lizzy,
I am sure this is no loss. Such a poor creature hardly merited the cost of upkeep. But Lady Lucas is violently distressed, and it has made my own nerves flare terribly.
Your mother.”
She enclosed a letter from Charlotte, addressed to me at Longbourn. I broke the seal and read in growing shock, then looked up at the concerned expressions around me.
“The Lucases’ tunnelworm—their bound draca—is dead.”