Chapter 10
I spent the journey home in a lather of exhausted nerves.
Lady Catherine, I was almost sure, would approve of Miss Lucas, but it was Jem’s reaction that had my stomach churning and my thoughts racing, for I felt the situation could go either way with him.
Hope is ever one of the most difficult sentiments to endure, for the apprehension, that sense of balancing upon a knife’s edge, is utterly wearying.
I had to keep reminding myself in the sternest tones that hope was a thousand times better than the morass of gloom into which I should have sunk had Miss Elizabeth accepted me, for she was surely just the kind of innocent young maiden that Jem had been so keen for me to avoid.
I did not get home until late on Sunday as the roads had been bad about Sevenoaks due to heavy rain.
Mrs Fowke met me at the door, let me into the warm, took my coat and assured me all was well.
The house smelled of beeswax and apple-wood fires and I could have embraced her, though of course I did not.
She led me to the dining room and set out one of her hearty veal and ham pies, to which I could not do justice, blaming my lack of appetite on the indignities of travel.
As soon as I could, I repaired to my study.
I sat in one of the easy chairs before the fire and asked her to send Jem to me, saying I wished to enquire about the crop of white filberts which he would have got in while I was away.
He came, and I saw him for a moment as a stranger such as Mr Bennet or Miss Elizabeth might have seen him; a big, rather ill-favoured and common-looking country fellow, dressed decently enough, for he was wearing the brown striped velvet waistcoat which was his Sunday best, but with nothing interesting nor remarkable about him.
Then I blinked and he was my Jem, and it was so wonderful to be with him I could not stop smiling, even though I knew I should not, for our coming interview might not go well and then such happiness would seem ridiculous, and possibly even importunate.
“Welcome home,” he said.
“Oh, Jem, how I missed you!” I stood up, the better to see him. “You have no idea how glad I am to be back.”
“You wanted to know about the filberts?”
“Yes! How many—no. The filberts were an excuse so Mrs Fowke would fetch you. I have news.”
“You’re getting wed.”
His tone was clipped. He was standing with his arms crossed, face angled slightly towards the fire so that he was looking at me out of the corners of his eyes. It seemed a sullen pose, or a defensive one.
“Yes, but, Jem, I hope you will not be angry. Indeed, I hope you will be pleased with me, because she is very practical, and is seven-and-twenty, and labours under no illusions. We made an agreement and it is a very sensible one, I think. I told her everything—well, of course not everything , but I was as honest as…as decency allowed. I told her I must marry because my patroness desires it although I do not, and we agreed we would be friends, and she said she does not mind whether she has children, but wishes to have an allowance of five pounds a year to spend on books, to which I agreed. And she promises she will not interfere in the garden, nor make any alteration to the household, nor will she ask for a pianoforte, nor sing unless necessary. And she can play quadrille and…and…of course I understand that you may wish to reserve judgement until you have met her, but I think you will see that she does not expect anything of me that I cannot give her, and is content with that. More than content. She wished to marry. She is happy, I believe, with our bargain.”
I felt I was babbling, over-explaining, but he did not move or speak.
“Oh, and Jem! I did the wrong thing at first and proposed to one of Mr Bennet’s daughters who—thank goodness!
— refused me. Had she accepted, it would have been everything you said would be wrong because she is young and pretty and hoping for love and you were right.
It would have been very wrong. So I had a lucky escape.
And I have thought of you every moment and wished you could see everything in the Longbourn garden.
I have brought you some seed potatoes from Mr Bennet’s gardener which are a different variety and I think you will like them.
They are very hardy and have a very good texture when boiled which we both agree is so important, don’t we?
And I have collected some other seeds for you, besides, and I hope you are not angry and will think I have done well.
Oh, and her name is Charlotte. Miss Lucas.
” I was wringing my hands together in my anxiety, but I could not seem to stop. “Please say something.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it like a trap. He seemed to considering everything I had said.
“You really told her? All that? You didn’t want to marry but had to?” There was an accusatory note to his voice which I felt I did not deserve.
“Yes. I told her I must marry because of my patroness.” My voice sounded timid, even to me. I tried to inject some reassurance into my tone. “She was very understanding.”
He gave a short laugh. “Wonder she didn’t slap you.”
“Oh no.” I was quite shocked, for he had clearly got the wrong idea about what sort of person she was if he thought she would behave in such a way.
“She is kind, I think, and has excellent manners, though she is plain and has no money. She did not wish to become an old maid. Well, or an older one. Her father is very respectable.”
He was squinting rather. “Wait. First you asked one maid, and she said no, so you turned about and asked the other?”
“Yes, yes, and you are the first person I’ve told. I didn’t mention it to Mrs Fowke because I wanted you to hear it from me.”
“How long then, between you asking the first and asking the second?”
“Er…” It seemed such an extraneous detail, but it must be important to Jem or he would not ask. I attempted to calculate and found I was too nervous to do so properly. “A few days. Two or three. Does it matter?”
He smiled, and hope leapt within me, warm and alive.
“No,” he said. “Just…just…” He shook his head, still smiling.
“You are a wonder, sometimes. How you manage things. Don’t reckon there’s many men as could do what you just done.
” He sat down, rather suddenly, and to my surprise, in one of the chairs in front of the fire.
“So, you told her true, this Miss Lucas. Well, if that don’t beat all! ”
“Is it all right for you to sit there?” I seated myself in the chair opposite. “What if Mrs Fowke comes back in?”
“She comes back, I’ll get up.” He was still shaking his head. “Blimey, Blackbird, did you really do it? Well, I always did think as how you were honest to a fault usually. When’s the wedding?”
He had called me Blackbird and something tense and taut in me eased. All would be well, now, surely? “As soon as possible. Early January.”
He sat back in his chair, staring into the fire. “So, you told her. All fair and square.”
I sat back myself, suddenly so weary I cared not if Mrs Fowke came in and saw us sitting there together like friends.
In fact, if she came, I would suggest we all had a glass of madeira wine to celebrate my upcoming nuptials.
We had some, for I had got in several bottles for Mr Chambers and other such callers.
But Mrs Fowke did not come and I let my gaze linger upon Jem.
How strange was life that it could be so relentlessly harsh and bewildering, and yet it could also give one moments like this.
My Jem, safe and warm and well-fed and clothed, sitting by the fire with me while the east wind blew icy outside, and he was smiling at me with something like admiration and there was no spot nor stain of disharmony between us.
My chest ached with such tender feeling that I longed to give back to him some little part of the contentment he gave me.
“You see, Jem, everything will be all right,” I kept my voice down, for I still expected Mrs Fowke at any moment.
“I am not free to live as I please, but I will always find a way to look after you, no matter what happens. I’ll always be your…
your…” But I did not know what to call myself in relation to him.
I was his friend, certainly, but somehow that did not feel warm enough.
Eventually, I said, simply. “I’ll always be yours. Always.”
“Aye, I see that now. In it together, ain’t we? Forever.” He wiped his eye with his knuckle and sniffed. “Luckiest day of my life, I reckon, the day I met you behind those raspberry canes.”
“The luckiest of mine, too,” I said.
He made my heart swell, sitting there with the firelight illuminating his face and playing over his brown velvet waistcoat. Everything about him was marvellous, every feature so beloved that I wished the moment could last forever.
“I wish we could sit together like this every evening.” I said. “It is too cold, nowadays, to linger out of doors or to go down to the wilderness.”
“Spring’ll come again. Then summer.”
He was right, but I had to make sure that this meant what I guessed it meant. “So, we’ll go down to the brook together again one day? We’ll bathe? And afterwards, if you want to, you’ll let me watch?”
“’Course. All those things. First warm day.”
“Perhaps we may get a warm enough day in March or April?”
He grinned, likely at my wishful thinking, for April was generally far too cold for bathing or lingering out of doors. “We may.”
“I wish there was somewhere we could go in winter.”
He shook his head. “Thought on that plenty myself.”
“You couldn’t think of anywhere?”
“Stables, maybe. But George is in and out, unless he’s laid up. And it ain’t just him. Remember the time Mr Hay came calling and put his mare in the stable hisself because he knew George had been bad and the mare had had a cough?”
I nodded. That was the problem with anywhere around the rectory.
People came and went: Boys with messages that I was wanted somewhere, the churchwarden on parish business, the clerk, the sexton, women wanting churching, men wanting charity, Mr Butler’s Tess with a brace of woodcock or a trout, not to mention Mr Chambers, who seemed to stop in every week for a glass of something on his way home from whatever ghastly sport with which he had seen fit to entertain himself.
Jem and I could, perhaps, find a moment to ourselves in the barn, or the woodshed, or concealed behind the gig in the tack room, but it would always be risky, and inside the house would be even more perilous.
Mrs Fowke and Milly generally knocked and waited for my call before entering the study if they knew I was in there, but there had been times when they had thought I had gone out and had simply tapped and entered immediately.
In any case, that they knew everything that went on in the house I had no doubt.
Servants generally did. It would take but a moment’s inattention, a forgotten duster, a sudden decision to wash a particular window and Jem and I would be discovered, and then what might happen I did not dare to think.
Perhaps they would tell no one, do nothing, but what if that were not the case? It did not bear thinking about.
In any case, the very idea of creeping around at night and furtive meetings and hastily buttoned breeches made me almost ill from tension.
I expect there are men who can put their fear of discovery aside for long enough to take their pleasure, but I am not of that type.
What I wanted was to lie at my ease with Jem in the ferns, for us to speak of whatever we wished without fear of being overheard, and to be certain that none could observe us.
“I would invite you to my chamber at night,” I said. “But I do not dare. There would be no pleasure in it, for I would always be awaiting discovery.”
“I know.” He nodded. “Ain’t worth the risk.”
“Spring,” I said. “Celandines and violets, primroses and irises.”
“Lords and ladies,” he added, nodding. “Hellebores.”
“Bluebells.”
“Dog’s mercury, wild garlic.”
“It won’t be so long,” I said.
“I will have met her by then.” He sounded thoughtful. “You sure she don’t want children?”
“She said she did not mind. She has several younger brothers and sisters and has played nursemaid to them all her life. She says she would be happy to spend some time in her own company.”
He nodded, and was silent a time, then said, “She changes her mind and wants them, you give her them, you hear me?”
He sounded so determined, I did not argue nor restate the lady’s case, but simply said. “I hear you.”
“Good.” He stood up. “I better go. I’ll tell them in the kitchen, eh? They’ll want to wish you happy.”
I stood up too. “I’ll tell them myself, and ask Mrs Fowke to pour us all a glass of wine.”
He reached for me suddenly and took my hand.
We were standing still before the fire but it felt like the last time he had held me, as he led me to the pool. It was as if he were about to take me somewhere beautiful, somewhere free, a place where I need neither dissemble nor strive to be anything other than myself; a place where I was loved.
“Aye, reckon we’ve got something to celebrate,” he said.
THE END