Here she paused, possibly recollecting that she had declined to give an opinion on my own voice. It was only a momentary check, however, and soon smoothed over: “I have hopes of forming a little musical society here with Letty—something similar to our old group in Bath. But pray do not think I wish myself back in Bath—rural life suits me very well.”
We then went down to the kitchen where the young cook, Sylvia, was busy making apricot jam and seemingly in need of close supervision. All Mrs. Knowles’s attention now went to the pot bubbling on the stove—she wanted to know when the jam was going to set—whether Sylvia had put in all the apricot-stones. I had to remind myself then of what Mrs. Knowles had had to endure over the past year and a half—the bullying and humiliation. It was foolish of me to have expected the same straight-backed, regal creature.
I was impatient now for more news of Peter, but it was not until after dinner that his name was again mentioned—not by Mrs. Knowles but by Mr. Galbraith. I had but just sat down to the pianoforte when I heard him say to his sister: “We must have Peter Bushell in one evening, Imogen. He could accompany her on his fiddle.”
(I knew Mr. Galbraith from my Bath days as a plainspoken farmer with none of his sister’s social graces.)
Mrs. Knowles was hemming a tablecloth and did not reply, but when I finished playing, Mr. Galbraith said: “We must certainly have Peter in. I shall ask him to come the day after tomorrow. Imogen? The day after tomorrow?”
Mrs. Knowles inclined her head but I sensed that she did not really want to invite Peter. She might be happy for him to go rat-hunting with her brother in the barn, but Peter in the parlor was a different matter.
Her reluctance was not missed by Mr. Galbraith: “My sister disapproves of Peter—don’t you, Imogen?” (Here, Mrs. Knowles smiled and shook her head.) “Before she came to live here, Miss Mary, I used to take my meals in the kitchen—I preferred it, if you must know—and sometimes Peter would drop by and we’d blow a cloud and have a bit of music. But that’s all over now. We eat in the dining room now—don’t we, Imogen?”
“We do. Just as we did when our dear mother was alive.”
In response, Mr. Galbraith grunted and picked up his newspaper. It seemed to me that the rift between brother and sister had not completely healed. And afterwards—when Mr. Galbraith had gone outside to blow his cloud—Mrs. Knowles acknowledged as much: “You must excuse him, Mary. It has been hard for him—not having had a woman in the house for so long. And I fear I irritate him. The truth is he has not really forgiven me for marrying Pitt.”
I said: “He was always very attached to you, I remember.”
“Ah, my dear.” She was shaking her head. “I have cost him so much one way or another—what with the lawyers’ fees and the shame of it all—but I am determined now to make it up to him. I want him to have a comfortable home in his old age—to have all the things—the finer things that he has missed.”
“That which should accompany old age,” I said softly. “Honor, love, obedience, troops of friends.”
I had been thinking more particularly of Peter and the music in the kitchen, but Mrs. Knowles said: “Exactly. He must be persuaded to go out more and mix in good society.”
2.
The dunghill cock woke me at four next morning, its crowing counterpointed by the chimes of the clock in the upstairs hall. For a while I lay looking at the window blind—the light growing gradually behind it—listening to farmyard noises and then to stirrings inside the house. I guessed Mr. Galbraith was up and about; Mrs. Knowles had warned me that he rose early and made a deal of noise.
I rose myself then and went to the window, lifting the blind a little to look out. It was a beautiful, pale-skied morning but I had eyes only for the keeper’s cottage. Smoke was ascending from its single chimney and the thatched roof shone wetly in the early sun. I longed for a telescope so that I might better spy on the inhabitants. I imagined them sitting down to an early breakfast—prepared perhaps by Peter’s sister or even by Peter himself—certainly not by his slothful mother. (I had not forgotten the frayed shirt cuff nor the moth-eaten gray coat.)
After about five minutes I saw a girl in a bed-gown coming from the back of the house with a pail in her hand. I watched her go to the rain-water butt beside the house and ladle water into her pail. A liver-and-white dog followed her out, lapping at the puddle of spilt water before rushing around the front of the house, barking.
Next thing, I heard a whistle and a man’s voice calling. The dog raced back and I heard a door slam and then both man and dog appeared—the dog trying to jump up at the man.
It was Peter—it was certainly him—but I could scarcely believe that I actually beheld him. I knelt at the window, peering out beneath the blind, hardly daring to breathe. And perhaps he felt my gaze—the intensity of it—for he suddenly looked up, looking (it appeared to me) directly at me. I at once sat back, too afraid to look out again lest he see me. And after a couple of minutes—just as I was nerving myself to look out again—there was a tap on the door and the maidservant entered with the hot water.
When I arrived late for breakfast, Mrs. Knowles, I could tell, was annoyed with me.
“One cannot lie abed in the country, my dear Mary. One must be up and doing.”
I thought it best to say nothing, and after a moment, she said: “And so how do you propose to spend the rest of your morning? After you have practiced your music, that is. Perhaps you might care to walk to the Great House? But I’m afraid I cannot go with you. I have to see to the baking.”
I was relieved that she could not accompany me. I wondered if she had always been so managing and at once felt guilty for being ungrateful. “May I not help with the baking?”
“Goodness, no!” She patted my cheek. “I will walk with you another time. I ought to exercise more—Galbraith is always at me to take up riding—he says it would improve my posture—restore my figure.”
She then told me how Mr. Galbraith had commented favorably on my own appearance: “He thinks you wonderfully improved, dear—your face, your figure—he declares he would not have known you for the same girl.”
I felt myself reddening and Mrs. Knowles again patted my cheek: “You must not mind being complimented by an old bachelor.”
After breakfast, I went to the parlor to practice. But an old book of Samuel Webbe’s songs was lying atop the instrument and I could not resist opening it and then playing and singing “I’ll Enjoy the Present Time.”
I had not sung since George had told me that I could not sing—but now, believing nobody could hear me (I had taken the precaution of closing the window), I sang with increasing brio. I had just begun a second song when Mrs. Knowles walked in, saying in her most melodramatic way: “Mary! I have brought you a visitor.”
And before I could prevent her, she was beckoning George into the room.
I do not know who was the most red-faced, George or myself, for Mrs. Knowles—still in her floury apron—was carrying on like my mother, suggesting that we might like to walk out together: “Mary meant to walk to the Great House this morning, didn’t you, dear?”
I was too flustered to speak. I had denied myself the pleasure of singing for so long and that George of all people should have heard me was maddening.
As soon as we were safely outside, he tried to placate me: “I saw your sisters yesterday in Meryton—they told me you were here and that I might call.”
He still held his riding whip, flicking it about before bursting out: “I could not help coming. I had to ask you—I had to know—did you send my letter?” And when I did not immediately reply: “You didn’t, did you? I guessed as much.”
“You swore to me before that you would stop bothering me.”
“I swore I’d stop if you sent my letter.” He lashed out with his whip at a passing shrub. “I’ve written another—’tis the last I’ll ever write. I would do as much for you if our situations were reversed. I should not hesitate.” And finally: “Well, you w
on’t have to put up with me much longer—Purvis is now planning to return to London. I shall probably never come into Hertfordshire again.”
We were now skirting the orchard and back-garden of the keeper’s cottage, and I was beginning to feel extremely hot and bothered. It was by now late morning, the sun was beating down, and an avant-courier of smells—not all of them pleasant—was coming up to meet us. I could now see that there was a pigsty behind the cottage and a muck-hill next to it, and beyond the clipped hedge sheltering a row of bee-hives was a larger bee-hive-shaped building, unmistakably a privy.
I heard myself say then what a few minutes before I had vowed not to say: “If you have a letter for Helen, you may as well give it to me. I shall be writing to Cassandra today.”
To my own ears I sounded ungracious, but George’s expression—the deep color of his face as he thanked me—put me in mind of the boy of whom I had once been so fond, and I was glad then that I had relented. He dropped his whip and grasped both my hands: “Bless you! I knew I might count on you.”
It was then that I saw Peter. He was coming from the other side of the cottage with the liver-and-white dog at his heels.
3.
The dog bounded over, barking, and before George could retrieve his whip, it pounced. There followed a tug-of-war with George grabbing the whip-end and the dog holding on and growling.
Peter meanwhile was approaching—I could feel him coming up, I could not look—and George was shouting: “Call off your damned dog, sir!” Whereupon Peter seized the dog, forcing it to release the whip—thus causing George to stumble heavily backwards.
George—swearing under his breath—then rejected Peter’s hand to help him to his feet.
I stood by, saying nothing. I knew not what to say. Certainly nothing from the Commonplace Book came to mind. George was dusting himself off and the dog was barking again.
It was Peter who spoke first, cuffing the dog to silence: “Sorry about that, sir—he’s a young dog—bit of an idiot. You’ve not hurt yourself?”
And when George continued to dust himself off without replying, Peter turned to me. “Hello, Mary.”
It was like hearing a note of divine calm after a dissonant passage of music. My confusion died away. I found I could greet him composedly. I could introduce him to George. I could even look at him.
He was hatless and coatless, tanned and untidy, wearing old leather breeches and a white shirt open at the throat with a limp collar. (George, in contrast, was very correctly attired in a fitted tailcoat of striped wool, waistcoat, and stiff shirt collar and stock.)
Both men seemed ridiculously reluctant to talk to each other—George kept on slapping the dust from his clothes while I introduced Peter, and Peter then turned back to me: “You’re staying at Stoke Farm, are you? For how long?”
George answered for me. “Miss Mary is here only for a fortnight.” (stressing the “Miss”)
I then made matters worse by telling George that Peter played the fiddle at the assemblies. “He plays really well. I have never heard anybody play half so well.”
George said: “A folk-fiddler, are you? Self-taught?”
I burst out: “George! Upon my word!”
“Pretty much.” Peter spoke with unimpaired good humor. “But I did take lessons in London for a spell.” He turned back to me: “So you’re here for two weeks, are you?”
George cut in again: “Now I have it! You’re the keeper here, aren’t you? Yes, Miss Stoke has told me about you. Yes.”
There was a pause with George nodding to himself in satisfied recall while Peter and I waited. When nothing more was forthcoming, I said to Peter: “Mrs. Knowles has invited me to stay with her and her brother. I used to live with Mrs. Knowles in Bath.”
“Yes, I remember you telling me about her.”
He was smiling down at me and had we been alone I am sure I should have disgraced myself—I should have asked him whether he had received my message and if so, why he had not replied.
George meanwhile was becoming restless: “We should be getting on, Mary. If you mean to call at the Great House.”
There was a proprietary edge to his voice—as if I had been his sister or his wife—and the dog also seemed to sense something in his tone (a lack of goodwill towards its master perhaps) and started barking again. Peter speedily collared it, saying: “I’m going that road m’self as it happens.”
I said quickly: “You could show us the way then.”
And so we set off with the dog racing ahead and George again lashing out at leaves with his whip and refusing to take part in the conversation. For a while I worried that such boorish behavior might make Peter draw the wrong conclusion, but then I wondered if that might not be a bad thing.
At first, we did not talk about anything of consequence. He asked after my family, and laughed when I told him that Lydia had gone to Brighton: “Followed the regiment, did she?”
“She went as the guest of Colonel Forster’s wife.”
“You would’ve liked to have gone too maybe?”
“To Brighton? No indeed.”
He appeared pleased with this reply though he said nothing. He was throwing sticks for the dog. I was able now to look at him at my leisure and (with the benefit of bright sunlight) appreciate how handsome he really was. It was not a regular handsomeness—the hawk nose and brown skin would not be to everybody’s taste—but his figure was extremely good and his shabby clothes in no way detracted from it. They could even have been said to enhance it. I might not have noticed his neck—how well formed it was—if the collar around it had been high and starched.
We were walking now without talking—George’s presence was a constraint—and upon entering a little copse, the path became less even. There was a fallen oak tree trunk to step over, and Peter now placed his hand under my elbow to steady me. I then inquired (in a voice that was not quite steady) whether the tree had been struck by lightning and upon Peter confirming it, I quoted the old proverb: “Beware the oak, it draws the stroke.”
“What a lot of wise old sayings you have in your head.”
We walked on in this way for a while and then the path narrowed and George went on ahead. Whereupon Peter began to tell me about the night-school he was attending in the village: “’Tis chiefly for lads who’ve not had any sort of book-learning—farm-workers and the like—but the schoolmaster was willing to take me on.”
“But you can read and write, can’t you? Surely?”
“Aye. But not all that well. You know that.”
I could no longer look at him. I was thinking of my letter. I felt dreadful. His hand tightened on my arm briefly. “Don’t fret yourself. I can read ’n write enough to get by. But the only schooling I ever had to speak of was when we lived in London.” He stopped but then went on: “I did think at one time—Sir John Stoke spoke to me about becoming his bailiff. But there’d’ve been letters to write—estate business and the like—and I don’t think of it no more.” (correcting himself) “Any more. I’ve other plans now.”
I longed to ask what those plans were but we were coming out of the wood and the path was once again wide enough for three. George now dropped back and Peter released my arm.
“And so for how long have you been playing the fiddle?”
To my ears, George sounded insufferably condescending but Peter seemed not to notice, briefly recounting his childhood experience before asking George about his own musical background. The two of them then talked in fits and starts, with George seeking always (it seemed to me) to condescend. “So which bowing technique do you favor?” And before Peter could answer: “But I need not ask—folk-fiddlers invariably play in the first position.” And a little later: “Do you entertain your audience with imitations of cuckoos and the like?”
Peter finally showed hackle. “O aye—and with donkeys braying and dogs howling. If it makes ’em happy, why not?”
I was relieved to see the Great House looming. And Peter now seemed eager to part comp
any, whistling to the dog before taking leave of us. “Goodbye then, Mary.”
“Goodbye.” (I did not dare call him by his Christian name with George standing by.)
“Good day to you, sir.”
George merely touched his hat in return. He scarcely waited until Peter was out of earshot before rounding on me: “What’s that fellow to you?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“How comes it that you are so intimate with him? Letting him walk with you arm in arm. Letting him call you ‘Mary.’ Where did you meet him? At the assemblies, was it?”
George and I were too keen to quarrel to waste time calling at the Great House. With one accord we turned and headed back to Stoke Farm.
Nothing George had to say to me was new—it had all been said before. He told me that Peter was not my equal, that he belonged to the lower orders: “It is very dangerous to encourage men of his stamp—don’t you know that? How can you be so damned naïve?”
I completely lost patience with him then. “Oh! this is just how you used to be with Mr. Purvis! Looking down your nose at him and saying that he was vulgar and smelt of the shop.”
George seemed momentarily taken aback. “But the cases are not the same—surely you must see that. I grant you that Purvis is not an educated man, but there was never any question of his taking advantage of my mother—”
“Peter is not taking advantage of me! And he is not uneducated.”
George gave a snort.
I said: “There’s more to being educated than learning Latin and Greek. You should hear him play before you sneer at his abilities.”
The Forgotten Sister: Mary Bennet's Pride and Prejudice Page 24
