Chapter 36
Bennet drew the estate ledger nearer, set one finger beneath Elizabeth’s last column, and stopped before he dipped his pen.
The air was wrong.
Since his family had departed for Margate, he had allowed the door to stand open. Elizabeth had come and gone without ceremony, bringing a question, a correction, or some laughing charge against his figures. The quiet had pleased him at first.
He had even imagined, with more tenderness than he would have confessed, how loudly the house would reclaim itself when his wife and daughters returned at summer’s end.
Wax, leather, old paper, and the dry scent of the Turkey carpet rose about him.
Beneath it lay none of the warmer traces by which Longbourn usually announced itself: no lavender from his wife’s shawl, no starch and rose soap from the girls’ gowns, no light footstep crossing the passage before it became a voice.
The house had not fallen silent. It had emptied.
He looked down at the page. Elizabeth’s hand stood among the figures, neat, decided, and impatient of waste. She had copied two rents from the steward’s memorandum and drawn a small line beneath the total, as if figures, properly chastened, might be made to behave.
Bennet touched the edge of the page.
“Very severe, Lizzy,” he said softly.
No answer came.
He returned to the calculation. The sum should have been plain. Three tenants, two arrears, one credit against timber cartage. He followed the first line, then the second, then returned to the first again. The numbers offered no clarity.
A board sounded in the passage.
Bennet lifted his head.
“Lizzy?”
The passage kept its silence.
So did the house.
Bennet looked towards the mantel clock.
The hands stood nearer five than four.
He sat still a moment. Elizabeth had gone out after noon. She had often walked farther than she intended and returned with dust upon her hem, colour in her cheeks, and some account of a tenant’s child, a broken stile, or the absurdity of mankind at large.
There was nothing in the hour to alarm a sensible man.
Bennet laid the pen across the ledger.
Nothing, except that he had begun to count it.
He rose, crossed to the bell-pull, and gave it one measured tug. The sound travelled somewhere behind the wall, faint and businesslike. He returned to the desk, but did not sit.
A minute passed. A door opened somewhere below.
He looked again at the clock. The ticking had grown impertinent.
Bennet went to the open door.
“Mrs Hill?”
“Sir?” Mrs Hill appeared, wiping her hands upon her apron.
“Has Miss Elizabeth come in?”
“Not by the kitchen, sir.”
Hill appeared behind his wife.
“Sir?”
Bennet looked from one to the other. “I was expecting my daughter by this time.”
Mrs Hill’s hands stilled upon her apron.
“I have not heard the front door, sir,” Hill said. “She went out by the garden after noon.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, sir,” Hill said. “She had her bonnet and gloves. She said she would only take the air.”
“She was not to visit tenants? Look in on the Perkins’s boy?”
“Not without you, sir.”
Bennet looked towards the stair.
“Only the air,” he repeated.
Mrs Hill looked towards the stair.
“Please do, Mrs Hill.”
She went at once.
Bennet looked at Hill. The man’s features had gone still.
Above them, doors opened and closed in quick succession. Mrs Hill’s steps hurried back along the passage before she appeared, one hand pressed to her cap, her eyes wide.
“Not above, sir.” Mrs Hill’s voice shook upon the last word.
“Thank you.” Bennet kept his tone even. “You did quite right.”
She drew breath as if to speak again.
“Mrs Hill,” he said, more gently, “look at me.”
Her eyes came to his.
“We shall find Miss Elizabeth. Until then, we must not spread alarm. If any servant saw Miss Elizabeth after noon, I am to know it at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No crying in the passages.”
Mrs Hill pressed her lips together and nodded.
Bennet turned to Hill. “You and I will take the grounds.”
Hill crossed to the stand by the door and brought Bennet’s cane.
Bennet took it without looking, gripping the carved horse’s head.
“The garden first,” he said. “Then the orchard, the shrubbery, and the lower path. No shouting unless we find cause.”
They went out.
The evening had begun to cool, but the heat still lay in the gravel and rose with each step.
Bennet took the garden at once, his eyes lowered to the gravel, the grass, the borders, every place where a foot might have pressed and withdrawn.
The clipped grass showed nothing. The beds had not been crossed.
The little gate beyond the shrubbery stood unlatched.
“She went this way, sir.”
“Yes.”
They followed the path to the orchard, then beyond it, where the grass grew longer beneath the hedge. Once Bennet stopped for a crushed stem. Once for the print of a half-boot in dust already softening at the edges.
The sun lowered. Shadows gathered under the trees.
They searched the kitchen yard, the well, the still-room garden, the poultry walk, the copse beyond the paddock, and the track towards Oakham Mount.
Hill went ahead where the ground dipped; Bennet followed more slowly, his cane finding stones, roots, hollows, and once the mark of a wheel that proved to be Perkins’s cart from the morning.
Nothing.
By the time they turned back, the light had thinned to amber along the westward fields. Bennet’s boots were grey with dust. Hill’s coat had caught burrs at the cuff. Neither man spoke until Longbourn came again into view, its windows pale and blank in the evening.
Mrs Hill stood at the door. She had not wept. That, Bennet thought, had cost her something.
She looked first at Hill, then at him.
Bennet shook his head once.
Mrs Hill held the door wider.
Bennet entered with the dust of his own estate upon his boots and no daughter beside him. The hall had darkened while he was abroad. From the kitchen passage came the low murmur of servants.
“Candles,” he said.
Mrs Hill moved at once.
He went back to the library. The ledger lay open where he had left it, Elizabeth’s figures still waiting beneath his hand. His pen had dried beside the page.
Hill closed the door.
“Sir.”
Bennet did not look round. “Speak.”
“If we send into Meryton—”
“Yes.”
Hill’s jaw worked once. “The town will have the tale before midnight.”
Bennet touched the back of Elizabeth’s chair.
“And by morning,” Hill said, “it will not be the same tale.”
Bennet shut his eyes for the space of one breath.
“No,” he said. “It will not.”
He opened his eyes. The room had grown dim enough that Elizabeth’s hand upon the page seemed darker than the rest.
“There are two harms before us,” Bennet said. “One may be repaired by prudence. The other may not be repaired at all.”
Hill said nothing.
“We begin with those we may trust.”
Hill’s shoulders settled by a fraction. “Perkins. Dawes. Tom Weller.”
“You must go to them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perkins first. He is nearest. Then Weller. Dawes last, though you ride in full dark to reach him. Tell each man I require his help at once, and his silence as much as his speed. No sons. No labourers. No wives frightened into speech.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They are to take the lanes quietly. Perkins the lower road. Weller towards Oakham Mount. Dawes the north road. If any man saw Miss Elizabeth after noon, I am to know the hour, the place, and whether she was alone. Nothing more is to be said.”
Bennet rose and stood behind Elizabeth’s chair. “No one leaves Longbourn except by my order, and no one speaks beyond the house except in the words I have given.”
Hill stepped past him. “Yes, sir.”
The door closed.
Bennet remained beside Elizabeth’s chair. In the passage, Hill’s voice fell low and steady; another door opened; feet crossed the hall.
Bennet looked again at the ledger. Elizabeth’s little line beneath the total held the page in order.
He laid his palm over it.
Outside, Hill rode out from Longbourn without a shout, without a lantern, and without Bennet’s daughter’s name upon his lips.