CHAPTER 1 #2
On the table beside her lay three things requiring her attention: Mrs. Bennet’s letter, not yet opened; a note from Mr. Hartwood, her legal counsel, concerning repairs to the upper rooms of two houses in the little street off Manchester Square; and a rent abstract from Mr. Beaker, who kept the books, watched the investments, and could make a half-year’s income look like a rebuke by folding it lengthwise and tying it with red tape.
Beneath the abstract, in Beaker’s narrow hand, lay a separate memorandum on Mrs. Marwood’s old marriage portion, put away when she was a bride and left so long to gather interest upon interest that Elizabeth understood the sum arithmetically and not at all in its power to astonish other people.
The roof tiles at Number Twelve were apparently loose, the tenant at Number Six wished to paint the shopfront at his own expense and in very poor taste, and the widow at Number Nine was three weeks late but had never before been late in twelve years.
Mrs. Marwood would have known at once whether mercy, roofing, or taste ought to be addressed first.
Elizabeth knew too, if she was honest. The roof must be done; Hartwood must see that the lease allowed no expensive improvisation; the widow must be written to kindly and watched.
Beaker must be asked whether mercy at Number Nine disturbed any larger pattern in the books, and the marriage-portion memorandum must be answered with a question about whether the newest interest ought to be left where it was. The shopfront must not be blue.
None of it was difficult. That was almost the insult.
She had inherited not chaos, but machinery: rents coming in, repairs going out, legal cautions passing through Hartwood’s warmer hand, figures and investments passing through Beaker’s colder one, servants waiting for instructions, money doing what Mr. Marwood had systematized and Mrs. Marwood had trained it to do.
Elizabeth could manage it. She had been taught to manage it.
She had, in fact, managed more of it during Mrs. Marwood’s last year than anyone outside the house suspected.
But being equal to a duty did not make it company.
Nor did being consulted make her quite free.
Hartwood was kindness in legal form; Beaker was caution in human form; between them they preserved Mrs. Marwood’s intentions with a fidelity Elizabeth respected and, on dull afternoons, resented.
They would not command her life. They would merely require every large decision to pass through enough paper to make impulse die of natural causes.
At her feet, Lord Pomington made a small sound of theatrical suffering.
He lay before the fire in a wrapper of pale green flannel trimmed with ribbon of a slightly deeper shade, which had once, in a more glorious form, lined one of Elizabeth’s older walking dresses.
His body, in its natural state, was an argument against optimism: mostly naked in inconvenient places, tufted in others, with delicate paws, a crest of pale hair, dark suspicious eyes, and a tail carried as if the world had disappointed him but he meant to remain visible above it.
He was a Chinese crested dog of such doubtful construction that his first introduction to the house had included no promise of longevity.
Elizabeth had loved him immediately.
This was not, in itself, unusual. Elizabeth had always been vulnerable to poor little creatures, particularly those with no beauty, no judgment, and no reasonable expectation of survival.
Mrs. Marwood had endured, over the years, injured birds in bandboxes, doubtful snakes in baskets, a rabbit of melancholy constitution who lived three weeks longer than anyone expected and died with more consequence than many Christians, a succession of beetles, moths, fledglings, and once a toad which Elizabeth insisted had character.
Portman Square had not encouraged indiscriminate rescue, but neither had it wholly prevented it.
Mrs. Marwood’s rule had been firm: if Elizabeth brought misery into the house, Elizabeth must take responsibility for it.
“Pity,” she had said more than once, while Elizabeth sat up beside some feathered invalid unlikely to reward the attention, “is not a household arrangement. If you bring it in, you keep it alive or bury it properly.”
Elizabeth had done both.
Pom-Pom, however, had been different. He had not been found in a hedge, lifted from a step, or rescued from the stupidity of a cat.
He had entered the house through a captain’s widow of Mrs. Marwood’s acquaintance, a woman who possessed, among other curiosities, two Chinese dogs, three lacquered screens, an opinion on every port between Canton and Portsmouth, and a habit of presenting unwanted difficulties as gifts.
The puppy, when he arrived, was so feeble that even the widow who relinquished him did so with the air of one sparing herself the inconvenience of his funeral.
He was partly bald, entirely offended, permanently cold, and possessed of such little interest in survival that Mrs. Albright, after one look, ordered hot bricks as if preparing not a pet but a medical campaign.
Elizabeth had loved him before the first brick was wrapped.
Mrs. Marwood had called him a disgrace to quadrupeds, a standing warning against maritime acquaintances, and the least persuasive argument for Providence she had ever seen.
She had nevertheless sanctioned his broth, blanket, hot bricks, physician, minced chicken, flannel wrappings, and ridiculous little wardrobe.
Between them, she and Elizabeth had brought him to health, or something very like it; and Pom-Pom, having survived by ill-temper and female determination, remained a delicate tyrant of settled habits and violent preferences.
He preferred Elizabeth. He had preferred Mrs. Marwood. He preferred warmth. He preferred being carried when the pavement seemed too emphatic. He preferred not to walk in wind, damp, strong sun, moderate sun, company, solitude, or any weather which had not been arranged around him beforehand.
Against all these things he maintained a principled resistance disproportionate to his size.
Mrs. Doddridge, seated near the hearth with a small workbasket at her side, was at that moment contriving for him a new throat-piece out of the remains of a blue ribbon that had once trimmed a bonnet and now, by the logic of long household custom, clearly belonged to Pom-Pom.
Mrs. Doddridge had lived in the house eight years, was entirely respectable, and possessed all the conversational force of a window curtain.
She neither offended nor instructed. She was simply there, as chairs are there, or as the umbrella-stand is there, or as certain very silent relations are there at Christmas whether anyone has invited them or not.
Yet in one matter she displayed a talent so unexpected as to suggest some error of distribution on the part of Providence: she made Pom-Pom’s coats, wrappers, caps, and seasonal contrivances with quiet ingenuity and perfect seriousness.
The dog was, in consequence, much better dressed than several gentlemen of Elizabeth’s acquaintance and vastly more difficult to please.
The rest of the house was governed by Mrs. Albright, the housekeeper, who had served Mrs. Marwood for nearly twenty years and had acquired, in that time, the terrifying economy of movement common to generals, executioners, and women who know exactly where every sheet in a linen-press ought to be.
She did not walk so much as arrive. Dust retreated before her.
Servants improved their posture at the sound of her keys.
Elizabeth had more than once suspected that Mrs. Albright was not entirely human, at least in the matter of efficiency.
Between Mrs. Albright and Mrs. Doddridge there existed a form of communication for which ordinary language was not required.
A glance from the housekeeper could produce a folded shawl, a closed door, or Pom-Pom’s warmer wrapper from Mrs. Doddridge with no spoken instruction passing between them.
Mrs. Marwood had approved this quality in both ladies.
Conversation, she had often said, was good in its place, but the best-run houses did not require every woman in them to announce intelligence aloud.
“Do you think,” said Elizabeth at last, still looking toward the wet square, “that if one were to die of suffocation from perfect domestic propriety, the coroner would say so plainly?”
Mrs. Doddridge did not raise her eyes from the ribbon.
“I should not suppose it likely, Miss Bennet.”
“No. They would call it something respectable and entirely untrue.”
Elizabeth turned from the window. She wore black still, but not the heavy black of the first weeks.
Mrs. Marwood had always despised theatrical mourning after the decencies were satisfied, and Elizabeth, even in grief, could hear the older lady’s voice asking whether excess crape had ever restored a Christian soul.
Her gown was very good wool, plainly made, with a narrow band of black silk at the cuff and collar; her hair was dressed without ornament; her slippers were worn enough for comfort and too well kept for neglect.
Nothing about her proclaimed wealth. Everything about her suggested that money, like fire, was serviceable when governed and ruinous when invited to perform.
She had learned that in this room.
It was not, precisely, obedience. Mrs. Marwood was past obeying.
But Elizabeth had discovered that grief has its own etiquette, quite apart from society’s, and that one may continue to dress for a dead woman’s approval long after one has ceased to believe she can see it.
The gown was not what Mrs. Marwood would have called excessive.
That was part of the trouble. Even sorrow, in this house, seemed expected to know its accounts.
“I am very tired, Mrs. Doddridge, of being behaved at by walls.”