Chapter 9
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Bennet was woken from a very deep sleep by a loud knock on the door to her bedchamber. “Miss Elizabeth! This is Mr. Darcy. There is a fire; are you awake?”
“Oh!” she answered, “Yes!” She hurried to the door and peeked out.
Mr. Darcy spoke rapidly and with such authority that she instantly felt as if he was both the master of Netherfield and the captain of the town’s fire brigade, even though he was in fact neither.
He said, “Get dressed enough to be warm outside at night, with shoes, close your windows, close this door as you leave. I have knocked on your sister’s door, but I hope you can take responsibility for ensuring that she and her maid are dressed and shod, that her window is closed, and that she shuts the door behind her.
Go outside, far from the building, but where I can easily find you, and try your best to keep your sister warm. ”
“And your own sister, Mr. Darcy?” Elizabeth asked. She closed the window and started grabbing garments and blankets.
He had already half turned away, but he shouted back, “I alerted her and her maid, she is likely halfway down the stairs already. But if you can find each other outside, that would be well.”
And then he was gone.
As Elizabeth followed his instructions, some of which she did not understand—why did it matter if windows and doors were open or closed? she wondered—she could still hear the rumbling of his voice as he continued to give calm orders elsewhere.
Jane had been alerted to the danger before Elizabeth but was understandably more confused. Elizabeth grabbed armfuls of warm layers for her sister and asked Molly to ensure that the window was closed. Soon they left the room, closing the door before hurrying down the hall.
Once they reached the front door, and then the chilly November night, Elizabeth became aware that a bucket brigade had formed.
She could not see flames, but she smelled smoke.
She knew better than to clog the front door, and she hurried Jane and Molly down to the gravelled drive.
She looked around for Georgiana, and soon spotted her huddling with two maids.
Georgiana’s features were pinched, but when she saw Elizabeth, she seemed to gather her inner strength and greeted her calmly.
Elizabeth said, “Georgiana, I dearly hope that my sister will not be overly chilled during this emergency. Do you think you can help me keep her warm?”
“Oh, yes, of course!”
All of the women worked together to spread a blanket on the ground, as far from any of the buildings as they could manage, and they positioned Jane in the middle of the blanket, bundling her up with the scarves and feather beds Elizabeth had grabbed.
Then Georgiana, Elizabeth, and the three maids sat around her, lending their own body heat, as they arranged blankets to keep the entire group warm.
Elizabeth felt uncertain if she should be doing more, although Mr. Darcy seemed to be excellent at organising things, and she was in fact doing what he had asked of her.
She now saw that the smoke was coming from the kitchen area, and that there were two lines of men and some women handling the buckets; one line aimed at dousing the fire itself, and the other at wetting down the transition area between the kitchens and the rest of the house.
She saw with admiration that Mr. Darcy was not only organising the bucket brigades, and continuing to delegate—she saw him confer with someone before sending him off towards Meryton on horseback—but he was also doing hard physical work.
He raced back and forth to the well with buckets, covering the areas far from the targets of the bucket brigade, areas on which sparks had landed.
One time, he put down an empty bucket in order to use a long pole to knock down a burning beam before it could spread the fire to the rest of the roof, and several times he ran to clear materials—a stack of crates, one time, and a bundle of rags, a bit later—out of the path of the fire.
Elizabeth wondered vaguely where Mr. Hurst and Mr. Bingley were.
She tore her eyes away from Mr. Darcy in order to search the men manning the buckets, and she did not see them.
Finally she spotted Mr. Hurst comforting his wife, who was weeping.
Miss Bingley stood with them, talking—complaining, it sounded like—in a shrill voice.
Mr. Hurst seemed to vacillate between remaining with the women and helping to fight the fire, and she called to him.
“Mr. Hurst! If the ladies want to come here with us, we can stay safe together.”
“Thank you, Miss Elizabeth!” he called back. But Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley did not approach them; they seemed to be arguing with him before he stalked away and joined the bucket brigade.
Elizabeth shrugged. It would have been unpleasant having Miss Bingley’s string of grievances voiced among their little huddle, so she was just as glad that the Bingley sisters did not deign to join them.
She never did spot Mr. Bingley. She certainly hoped he was well.
All the work of wetting the roof adjacent to the fire seemed to be effective; from what Elizabeth could see, the fire did not spread.
She watched with horror as Mr. Darcy went back inside the house, through the front door, and she felt compelled to keep her eyes on the door until he returned, carefully holding a box.
He gently laid the box down next to a woman and two small children, and Elizabeth watched, stunned, as one of the children flung herself at his legs.
Mr. Darcy bent down, gave the child a hug, and stayed in his squat for a few more seconds, apparently saying something to the child.
Elizabeth saw the woman and the other child reaching into the box and lifting tiny kittens to hold on their laps.
When Mr. Darcy left the children, he took long strides back to the kitchen area, but Elizabeth had a sense that the emergency was largely over.
There was still some smoke, but considerably less, and it looked grey rather than black.
Mr. Darcy went from group to group, talking to people, shaking hands, directing people as they started to clean up the area and put away the buckets.
She realised that she was staring at Mr. Darcy when he strode away from the house, towards them. She dropped her eyes in embarrassment, but he was soon right in front of her. “Ladies, it is safe to go back inside. We should all try to get some rest, because tomorrow will be difficult.”
Mr. Darcy’s clothing was bedraggled and sooty, and his face and hands were blackened. His dark hair was speckled with ash, and he looked sweatier than anyone ought to look on a November night.
In some ways, he had never looked better. Elizabeth blushed at the thought and forced herself to speak normally: “Thank you. For…everything. You…seemed to know exactly what to do.”
“Thank you for following my instructions,” he replied.
Jane spoke up with her raspy voice: “Is Mr. Bingley well? I do not see him.”
A brief frown crossed Mr. Darcy’s face. “He was not in a condition to fight the fire, but he will be well by morning,” he replied.
He smiled reassuringly and then turned to his sister, saying, “I would help you back to your chambers, Georgie, but I need to clean up before I do anything else. Will all you ladies look after one another as you go back to your beds?”
Georgiana lifted her chin, “Of course we will. I hope you can get some sleep, as well, Brother.”
“I hope so, Poppet,” he returned. He smiled at everyone, bowed, and moved towards the well and the pump.
Elizabeth took the majority of the blankets in hand and thanked Georgiana and her lady’s maid for grabbing the rest. Molly and the other maid supported Jane’s walk to the house and slow ascent of the stairs. Elizabeth trailed everyone else, feeling a bit responsible for the group as a whole.
She was quite shocked to see two servants supporting—really, practically carrying—Mr. Bingley into the house.
He looked very clean, compared to Mr. Darcy, wearing a spotless dressing gown.
His lack of ability to walk was shocking, and she worried briefly that he had somehow inhaled a great deal of smoke.
But when she heard him ask, “An’ you’re shhhure it’sss safe ’n’ everythin’?
” she was convinced that he was inebriated.
No wonder he had not been able to help fight the fire!
Elizabeth felt a pang of disquiet about Mr. Bingley’s character, on behalf of her sister Jane, who seemed to like him exceedingly well.
But, again, she pushed away the thought and concentrated on settling her sister back in bed.
She checked in with Georgiana, too, and the girl gave her a long, emotional hug.
That hug was interrupted by a tap on Georgiana’s sitting room door; Georgiana opened the door, and Elizabeth saw that it was Mr. Darcy, newly scrubbed and in fresh clothes.
Both Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy blushed, for absolutely no reason.
Well, Elizabeth reasoned, we are near a bedchamber, in less than formal dress, in the early morning hours.
“Good night, Georgiana, Mr. Darcy,” she said, and then she hurried down the hall to check Jane one last time on her way to her own bed.
But when she laid there, looking up at the canopy over her bed, Elizabeth found that sleep eluded her.
She kept picturing a soot-smeared, sweaty Mr. Darcy in contrast to an immaculate Mr. Bingley who was in his cups.
She adjusted her pillow and pulled up her covers and resolutely closed her eyes, and still she saw images, a contrast between two men: Mr. Darcy giving calm orders and then working as hard or harder than servants to deal with an emergency, and Mr. Bingley slurring his words and only thinking of his own safety.
She switched to her other side, rearranged the covers, fluffed up her pillow, and tried again to blank out her mind. She was, once again, unsuccessful.
The thing was, for slightly more than a month, Elizabeth had fully believed the narrative that Mr. Bingley was everything a man should be: cheerful, open, eager to meet people, and happy to think well of them.
The narrative went on to paint Mr. Darcy as the exact opposite: he was, everyone said, dour, more prone to frowning than smiling, rude and officious and arrogant.
And it was not merely that “everyone” said those good things about Mr. Bingley and those bad things about Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth felt it keenly, the realisation that she had said all of those things herself. Often. She may have instigated some of the narrative; she certainly had furthered it.
Now that she was friends with Georgiana, Elizabeth felt sorry that she had participated at all. Like everyone, both men were more nuanced than hero versus villain.
Elizabeth still liked Mr. Bingley’s happy smile and friendly manner, but she felt he was weak when it came to reining in his younger sister.
Miss Bingley made multiple guests at Netherfield feel uncomfortable, and Mr. Bingley should step in and insist that she perform her duties as hostess better.
If she did not, he should send her away to a relative or to her own establishment.
Not only did he not step in on behalf of the comfort of guests, Elizabeth was not even sure if he ever noticed his guests’ distress.
As for Mr. Darcy, his love and care for his younger sister; his consideration towards Jane and herself; his leadership, knowledge, and willingness to work during an emergency all showed him to be a good man.
He was still quiet and often serious, but he was also highly intelligent and surprisingly thoughtful.
Of course, she had been bemused about Mr. Darcy’s seeming inability to stand up against Miss Bingley.
What was it with that woman, that men allowed her to act badly with impunity?
She could tell that both men found her tiresome, and certainly Mr. Darcy made it clear several times a day that he disliked pretty much everything about her.
Still, watching Mr. Darcy in action tonight had taught her that he certainly was not a weak man, either physically or mentally.
Again, she worried that Miss Bingley knew something, possibly something about Georgiana, that she was threatening to divulge if Mr. Darcy did not do as she asked. It sounded like something out of a novel, but she wondered if Miss Bingley was attempting a blackmail against Mr. Darcy.