XV The Devil She Did Not Know
XV
The Devil She Did Not Know
She was back by noon.
She came through the door and stood in the passage with her back against it, her eyes closed, just breathing, for perhaps ten seconds. Then she heard her mother’s voice from the next room and she opened her eyes and went in.
Mrs Bennet looked up from her chair. Jane was on the settle beside her, perfectly upright, her hands folded. She had been sitting with their mother all morning, which told Elizabeth everything about the kind of morning it had been.
“Well?” Mrs Bennet said.
“I met his mother.”
“And?”
Elizabeth took off her coat and hung it on the peg by the door. Jane was watching her and not asking.
“She is very devoted to him,” Elizabeth said. “She has a great deal to say about his qualities.”
“There, you see,” Mrs Bennet said. “A man his mother speaks well of—”
“He broke a glass at luncheon.”
Mrs Bennet blinked.
“A servant poured the wine incorrectly — too full, or the wrong glass, I could not see what. Mr Sibley came out of his chair. He swept the decanter and two glasses off the table, broke a plate against the sideboard, shouted in the footman’s face — not proper words, Mama, profanities and howls — and called the man a name I will not repeat in this room.
The footman stood with his head down and did not speak.
Mr Sibley’s mother told me afterwards, quite calmly, that he has very high standards.
That he has always been very exacting. That one learns to manage it.
” Elizabeth kept her voice even. She had worked at it all the way home.
“Half a minute later, Mr Sibley returned to his chair, laughed, took my hand across the table, and told me the household needed a lady’s hand because men on their own grew careless.
His mother laughed with him. I did not.”
“Well!” Mrs Bennet sniffed. “There you are. He just needs a woman’s influence.”
“Mama, his servants move like frightened dogs. All of them. The footman who poured the wine. The maids who brought in the next course as though nothing had happened. The housekeeper in the hallway. None of them looked up when we passed. The older woman who took my coat was flinching before I spoke to her.”
Nobody spoke.
“One learns to manage it,” Elizabeth said again. She was not speaking to anyone.
Mrs Bennet set down her needlework. “Men have tempers,” she said. “Your father had a temper.”
“Papa’s temper ran to sharp remarks and closing doors.”
“And Mr Sibley’s runs to a broken glass, which servants are paid to clean up.
They are servants, Elizabeth — of course, they are quiet and mindful.
That is what well-trained servants do. You have had Hill all your life, who took your father’s kindness as though it were the natural order of things, and you have never seen a proper London household where the servants know their place.
You do not know what you are looking at.
” She picked the needlework back up. “You are making a great deal out of nothing. He did not strike anyone, I take it?”
“Not while I was watching.”
“Elizabeth, the settlement on you alone would keep Kitty and Lydia housed for years. It would keep me housed. It will keep Mary housed, whatever she — it is more money than this family has seen in twenty years, and you are sitting there pulling faces over a broken glass. You will thank me for this.”
Jane’s hand found Elizabeth’s on the settle and held it very tightly.
Elizabeth kept her eye on the wall. Thirty years of broken glass and no door to close.
Thirty years of one learns to manage it spoken by a woman who had borne it herself and saw nothing wrong with passing the task along.
She weighed the phrase. She weighed the other side — Sibley’s face while he did it, deliberate and unperturbed, the glass gone before anyone had drawn breath.
It might have been different if he had seemed angry.
Anger could be justified. This was just… cold.
She was still there, Jane’s hand in hers, when the knock came at the door.
Mrs Bennet looked up. “Who on earth—”
Jane had her own hands clasped white in her lap, her eyes glassy with tears she would not permit. Elizabeth went to the door.
The man on the step was middle-aged, neatly dressed, and he held a card. “Miss Elizabeth Bennet?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Mr Erskine. I am a solicitor, engaged by a client in Edinburgh.” He glanced past her into the hall, briefly. “I wonder if I might speak with Mr Edward Gardiner. I have a matter of some urgency.”
Elizabeth’s eye went to the card. Mr James Erskine, W.S. Edinburgh.
“My uncle is not here at present. He is expected within the hour.”
“I will wait,” said Mr Erskine, “if that is convenient.”
She turned to him. He returned the look without hurry, without disclosure.
“Come in,” she said.
She brought him into the larger of their two rooms, because there was no other room in which to put him.
Mrs Bennet rose immediately, her hand to her throat, her eye travelling over Mr Erskine as though he might be a visitation from Providence or a bailiff, and demanding to be told which.
Mr Erskine bowed, accepted the tea Elizabeth poured for him, and waited — speaking when addressed, volunteering nothing, returning Mrs Bennet’s questions with courtesies that contained no matter.
Jane sat beside Elizabeth with her hands white in her lap.
Mary was upright on her pallet-turned-settle, hands folded.
Kitty had come to the doorway and stood there, unwilling to come fully in and unwilling to go away.
The air in the house was the air of a place that had stopped doing anything but wait.
Mr Gardiner arrived forty minutes later.
He took in the room in a glance — Mr Erskine with his untouched second cup of tea, Mrs Bennet leaning forward in her chair, Elizabeth and Jane on the edge of the pallet, the card in his hand when Elizabeth passed it to him — and said, “Mr Erskine. There is a public house at the corner with a quiet back room. If you will step out with me a moment, we can speak there.” Mr Erskine rose and followed him without a flicker, and the two of them went out.
They were gone twenty minutes. When they came back, Mr Gardiner came in first. He did not sit.
“Edward, you must tell me at once what this is,” Mrs Bennet began. “I have sat here for a full half-hour while you took a stranger out of my daughter’s room to a public house of all places — a public house — and the girls and I have been made to wait upon—”
“Fanny.”
It was not loud, and, as far as Elizabeth could recall, he did not speak now in affection.
“You will hear what Mr Erskine has to say as Elizabeth hears it. You will not speak until he has finished. If you cannot do this, I will ask you to wait in the other room until the matter is concluded. Is that understood?”
Mrs Bennet opened her mouth.
“Is that understood, Fanny?”
“Why, I never… oh, you are very unkind, Brother.”
He ignored her and turned to Elizabeth. “Mr Erskine has a matter to lay before you. It is a proposal. I have heard the terms. I have asked him to present them to you as he presented them to me, because the decision is yours, and no one in this room will make it for you.”
“A proposal! But I have one already. Do you intend for me to back out now?”
“I think… You might consider what Mr Erskine has to say. That is all. Mr Erskine?”
Mr Erskine set his case on the table and opened it.
“I am here on behalf of a client,” he said, “who has asked me to conduct this matter on his behalf rather than in person. He is the Baron of Auchengray — a Scottish barony of ancient standing in Aberdeenshire. The title is legitimate, his property unencumbered, and everything I am about to present has been verified through the Edinburgh firm of Erskine and Sons, of which I am a principal.” He placed a document on the table.
“The baron wishes to propose a marriage to Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
Mrs Bennet made a cry. “But she is already — Mr Erskine, my daughter is to marry Mr Sibley tomorrow. The settlements have been signed. A gentleman of — of what did you say — a Scottish barony — presenting himself now, on the evening before her wedding — a man Elizabeth has never laid eyes on in her life — why should she—”
“Fanny.”
“Edward, she has never met him! She has never heard of him. You cannot expect her to—”
“Fanny, you will be silent, or I shall have you removed from the room.”
Mrs Bennet pressed her lips together.
“How did I come to the baron’s attention?” Elizabeth asked. “I cannot imagine that a gentleman in Aberdeenshire knows anything of a family in Hertfordshire.”
“It came to the baron’s notice, through a mutual acquaintance in London, that certain young women of good family were in want of suitable marriages.
This acquaintance moves in circles where such information passes quietly between gentlemen.
The baron heard something of Miss Elizabeth’s character and disposition that he found — well, he has asked me to convey that he does not propose to say more on that point. ”
“He will not say what he heard?”
“He will not.”
It struck her, sitting there with the document between them, that nobody in the room had yet asked what kind of man the baron was. Not her uncle, not herself. Only what he was willing to offer. She was not sure whether that said more about their circumstances or about the offer itself.
“What are the terms?”
Mr Erskine turned the document towards them.
“The settlements are ￡10,000 for Miss Elizabeth Bennet. An equal sum for Miss Jane Bennet. Five thousand each for Misses Catherine and Lydia Bennet, and for Miss Mary Bennet — all to be paid upon completion of the marriage and held in trust for each woman independently of any future husband.”