Chapter Twelve #2
Aunt Jane nodded. “Do not mistake me—I love my sister greatly, as I always have and always shall. Nor do I doubt that she has been acting out of the tenderest love for you. Her judgment is often superior to mine; her cleverness and wit have revealed much to me that I would otherwise never have comprehended. But even dear Elizabeth may make a mistake, and she has fortitude enough to endure being told so. She is wise enough to prefer honesty, so this I have given her.”
“You have realized the depth of my feelings for Miss Tilney,” Jonathan said. “And you agree that the matter of the portrait should in no way influence our future?”
“Indeed not. Who could put any stock in wicked rumor?”
“My mother and father, it seems,” Jonathan said. “Not that they believe the calumnies against Miss Tilney, but they are convinced others shall always do so and that I am better off forgetting Miss Tilney. I cannot make them comprehend that she is the one person I could never forget.”
Aunt Jane put one hand over her heart. “You must understand, Elizabeth was never greatly crossed in love. The path to matrimony she and your father tread was not smooth, but for your mother, at least, her true feelings went unrecognized almost until the moment they became engaged. She was tender toward me in my own travail, but the painful sentiments involved…these she has never known for herself.”
This suggested that Aunt Jane had suffered some manner of romantic disappointment in her youth, a fact of which Jonathan had previously been unaware.
However, his curiosity on this point was understandably subsumed by more immediate concerns.
“Their complaisance about public opinion—their willingness to bend to that which they know to be unjust—it is this I find most difficult to accept.”
“Your father is among the best of men,” said Aunt Jane, “but he is very conscious of his family pride, possesses a very great delicacy of feeling in that regard. Why, he has never even allowed the beautiful portrait of your mother to be publicly displayed. There, I think, may lie the source of his refusal. As for Elizabeth…like so many of us, she can forget the sorrows of the unhappy when she herself is happy. And your mother has been so very happy all her married life. Forgive them and trust that in time they will see true.”
Jonathan sensed much truth in his aunt Jane’s words and resolved to remember them well, for within them might lie the key to his parents’ ultimate persuasion.
Pushing past his reluctance to touch most persons, he leaned forward to kiss his aunt’s cheek.
“I shall never forget your kindness, Aunt Jane.”
“I will demand to be repaid, mind you,” she said with an impish smile. “You must save me a piece of the cake.”
Juliet’s joy upon Mr. Darcy’s arrival she concealed as best she could, though to any who were attending—in particular, Priscilla Allerdyce—she seemed very nearly aglow.
More notice might have been taken of the pair had they not swiftly turned their attention to the important task at hand, the next stage of the investigation: learning all they could about the theft of Aunt Jane’s sash, for this delicate length of green satin had been fashioned into a weapon of murder.
Mrs. Mulgrew led them into the laundry, a sort of room Juliet had never entered even as a child; to judge by Mr. Darcy’s avid curiosity, he had not done so either.
On this day, the large metal tubs were still being scrubbed by the scullery maids after the work of dyeing so many garments black.
The smells of soap and dye mingled in the air.
Metal and wooden washboards hung on the walls, and lengths of clothesline were coiled around hooks.
“All the clothes set out for dyeing would have been brought here directly from each person’s room,” said Mrs. Mulgrew. “Here, they would have been separated by fabric, for some materials must soak longer than others for the color to take.”
“Did all the dyeing take place in this room, Mrs. Mulgrew?” Mr. Darcy asked.
The housekeeper laughed. “Goodness, no. We should all be overcome by the fumes until we were in a faint!” Given the memory of the acrid scent on the breeze that day, Juliet could well believe it.
“No, the dyes would all be mixed in the tubs in the side yard, beyond the stables, where all should be out of sight. Then each batch of clothing would be taken there and dyed in its turn.”
“How many batches were there?” Juliet asked. “Were they all dyed at once, or in shifts?”
“We had four tubs of black dye and at least ten or eleven batches of clothing,” said Mrs. Mulgrew.
“Eleven, I believe. So we were at it all the day. After each batch had been turned black, every garment was hung out to dry, and thank goodness we had a fine sunny day—but I understand that is not of particular interest to you.”
“That is correct, Mrs. Mulgrew, for the sash was stolen before it was dyed.” Juliet went toward the door that led from the laundry to the yard and opened it; the path uphill toward the dyeing and drying area was soft brown soil worn through the grass, evidence of the feet of many servants over many years.
“Am I correct in believing that the clothing would have remained entirely unattended from the time it left this room to the time it entered the dyeing tubs?”
Mrs. Mulgrew then seemed somewhat uncomfortable.
“Well, we’ve no laundress here at Netherfield—the task is one undertaken by many, and their other tasks ever remain to be done.
So it is possible that one of the girls might have taken one batch or another out to the field early—before another batch had finished its time in the tub—and left it there to see to something else.
Mind you, the clothes are fully scrubbed during and after their dyeing.
So there’s no question of them being made dirty. ”
“We would not for the world criticize your methods, ma’am,” Mr. Darcy hastened to tell Mrs. Mulgrew.
Juliet’s heart, in a state to seize upon every merit of his being, swelled at this simple courtesy.
“Thus we must turn to the question of whether anyone from upstairs was seen to be in or near the basement earlier that day.”
“Mrs. Hurst came down twice to tell us to take care of particular items,” Mrs. Mulgrew said. “I of course told her we take care of every piece entrusted to us, but that would not suffice for her. Yet Mrs. Hurst took nothing away with her at that time.”
Juliet asked, “Would it have been possible for Mrs. Hurst to come down here at a moment when you were not supervising and none of the maids were present?”
After a moment’s consideration, Mrs. Mulgrew nodded. “Yes, this could have happened, but if so, I saw no sign of it.”
Next Juliet turned her attention to the maids, who had continued their scrubbing while ill-disguising their avid interest in the scandalous subject at hand.
“Did any of you see Mrs. Hurst here, or anyone else? Or anyone near the actual dyeing and drying who would not normally have been there?” The girls exchanged glances, and Juliet hastened to add, “We will not share with anyone beyond this room how we have learned of it.” She wondered whether any of her reassurances could bear much weight, given that they were investigating the murder of one of their fellow servants.
However, one finally said, “Mrs. Brooks was out on the lawns once, looking at all the black clothes on the line. Staring like she’d never seen black before, ma’am—I mean, miss. Stayed a good long time, too, and neither saw the moment of her coming nor her going.”
Another maid chimed in, this one very young. “I saw Mr. Lofton walking near the stable, too—that’s close to the yard! And Mr. Bingley went not long after.”
Mrs. Mulgrew scoffed. “Did you ever think the gentlemen might have been going to the stable, child?”
Mr. Darcy said, “Every piece of information is potentially useful to us, Mrs. Mulgrew, so we are grateful to the girls for telling us this.”
Had either of the gentlemen gone out riding that day? Juliet could not immediately recall. Oh, if only the necessities of etiquette and propriety did not so slow their investigations! Still, this could be found out. “Yes, indeed. Thank you all very much.”
Upstairs that afternoon, Caroline Allerdyce sat in the parlor, pretending to embroider, while across the room, her daughter Frederica was once again deep in conversation with Mr. Lucas.
Jane Bingley sat in the room as well, returned from visiting Longbourn and happily engrossed in a book, but Caroline took no particular notice of her sister-in-law, as was her custom.
Nor could Jane have engaged in any activity that would have distracted a mother from such matrimonial danger.
He would not have the effrontery, Caroline told herself.
Surely not. It pleases his vanity to gain the attentions of a girl so far beyond his expectations, but he is not insensible.
As yet Caroline had formed no new plans for her elder daughter, still stung as she was by the loss of the baronet, but assuredly she could turn up a potential suitor more deserving than this.
While Caroline tallied up the various sons of her acquaintance—and had not Mr. Biggs-Dawson been widowered in early summer?
He should be again eligible come springtime—Priscilla came to sit by her mother.
Caroline said to her, “Are you wishing to go into the town, dear?” Mr. Allerdyce had given both the girls five pounds, so that on this trip they might buy themselves as many niceties as they wished—a rare but not unheard-of fatherly indulgence.
“Your money would be better spent in a larger place than Meryton, which has little to choose from.”
“I am not thinking of going there,” Priscilla murmured. “Do you not wonder, Mamma, that Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney should be allowed so much time together all but unattended?”
She replied in the same low voice her younger daughter had used. “Such, I am given to understand, is the nature of their investigatory endeavors. You should not worry, Priscilla. Whatever danger she may have represented, that is no more. The match is not only impossible; it is unthinkable.”
“To you, and to me,” said Priscilla. “But certainly not to Miss Tilney, and perhaps not to Mr. Darcy.”
Caroline set down her embroidery. “Whatever do you mean?”
Now speaking in almost a whisper, Priscilla said, “I have glimpsed small touches and attentions between them that make me wonder—Mamma, you have said often enough that preying girls will stoop to any level, any at all.”
Was it possible that the Tilney girl would stoop to entrapping Jonathan Darcy? That she would offer certain liberties that would then require him, in honor, to propose to her despite her enduring disgrace?
As Caroline considered this with mounting alarm, the sound of an approaching carriage was heard. Jane lifted her face from the book of poetry she had been reading with a frown. “Whoever can that be? We expect no one.”
Both women rose and went to the window, and thus shared in the astonishment of realizing that the carriage coming toward them was manned by servants wearing the distinctive livery of Pemberley.