Colonel Forster has rented a house in Brussels already, so we will have somewhere to stay when we arrive. And it has all been arranged. Elizabeth and I will leave Pemberley in a week's time and travel to Longbourn. Elizabeth says that baby James is overdue for a visit with his grandmother and grandfather in any case. And then from Longbourn, Kitty and I will travel to Ramsgate, where we will embark for Ostend. We are to set sail on the 10th of June.
I've written to Edward of course, to tell him that I'm coming. But given the state of the mails, I may arrive before the letter does.
Which if I am completely honest, I am glad for. There is a part of me that is afraid that if Edward had time to personally approve the plan, he would tell me that it is too dangerous, that I ought not to come.
Saturday 10 June 1815
I'm writing this in the parlour of our inn at Ramsgate--the Traveller's Arms, the inn is called. It's very early in the morning; Kitty and Mrs. Forster are still asleep, but I can hear the innkeeper and his wife arguing in the kitchen and the maidservants beginning to clatter pots and pans.
We're to set sail this afternoon and, depending on the winds, should reach Ostend sometime tomorrow night.
I had never met Mrs. Forster before, though I have heard of her from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's sister Lydia was staying with Mrs. Forster and her husband in Brighton when she--Lydia, I mean--eloped with George Wickham two years ago. Given that history, I was more than a little surprised that Mr. and Mrs. Bennet consented to let Kitty go with Mrs. Forster to Brussels. But after meeting Mrs. Forster--or Harriet, as she insists I should call her--I think I do understand.
Harriet has been married to Colonel Forster for these three years already, but she is very young--only a few months older than I am. She has a round, pink-cheeked face and round brown eyes and bouncing brown curls. Now that I have written that, it sounds rather patronising. But I don't mean it that way. I do like her--it is impossible not to like her. I can see why Elizabeth hasn't managed to cherish any resentment over her small part in Lydia's elopement.
Harriet is chubby and bouncing and friendly--and anxious to please--as a new puppy. And very sweet and kind. She offered to change rooms with me last night at least three times, just because the room I'd been assigned to was at the back of the inn, overlooking the stable yard, and Harriet was afraid that I might be woken by the noise. And she is sincerely attached to her husband. It's not only that she can talk of little else but the prospect of being with him again. There is a kind of glow that comes into her face whenever she speaks his name.
And besides all that--and which Kitty didn't mention in her letter to me--we are to be accompanied to Brussels by Harriet's grandmother, Mrs. Metcalfe, who will serve as chaperone for us all.
Mrs. Metcalfe is as unlike her granddaughter as it's possible to imagine: fine-boned, bird-thin and ramrod-straight instead of plump and round, with snowy-white hair scraped back into a plain knot under her cap. Her movements are all sharp and very decided, as is her voice. And she has a small, withered-apple face and the keenest pair of black eyes I've ever seen.
She caught me watching her last night while we sat down to the dinner of steak and kidney pie that the inn had provided. "I suppose you'll be wondering what an old woman such as myself is doing, gallivanting off to the Continent in this way when I should be sitting by the fireside at home?"
Her eyes seemed to bore into mine--which I had always thought an exaggerated figure of speech until now. But her gaze seemed as though it ought to penetrate clear to the back of my skull. So I gave up the half-framed polite response I'd been composing and answered frankly, "Actually, I was trying to guess at what your age might be."
That seemed to please her, for she laughed. Her voice is old and cracked-sounding, but her laugh is surprisingly young. "Well, you're honest, at any rate. I cannot abide dishonesty in young females--or all this wrapping a truth up in a lot of flowery-sounding rubbish when it would take three words to say what you really mean." And then she stopped, fixing me with the same penetrating stare as before. "Your room is next to mine upstairs. You don't snore, do you? Or talk in your sleep?"
I was startled, but told her I didn't--at least, not so far as I knew.
Mrs. Metcalfe nodded her head, making the ruffles on her cap bounce. "Well, see that you don't tonight. I'm an old woman and need my sleep." And then she closed one eye in a wink that surprised me nearly as much as the question had. "Sixty-nine years old, to answer your question from before."
A maidservant has just been in to offer me tea and hot rolls for breakfast. Maybe I will go outside and look around Ramsgate for a little while after I have eaten. It is very strange to be here again--and in these circumstances, preparing to set sail for the borderlands of a war. I have not been in Ramsgate since I was fifteen.
Sunday 11 June 1815
I am sitting on the deck of our packet boat. It is nearly eight o'clock at night--which means we have been aboard more than a day, now--and the sea is millpond smooth and stained rosy-gold by the fire of the sunset. It would be beautiful--well, it is beautiful, but would be more so if it weren't for the fact that the utterly calm sea means we are stranded some miles still from Ostend without a breath of wind to push us towards the shore.
Kitty and Harriet have been horribly seasick almost from the moment we set sail; they are down in the ship's cabin, lying on the hard wooden bunks and groaning feebly. I have never been aboard a ship before, so I had no idea whether I would be sick or not. I haven't been for a moment, though, not even last night when the sea was quite rough. I feel slightly guilty saying so, when Kitty and Harriet are so miserable, but I really do love the sensation of the boat rocking and swaying under my feet.
Mrs. Metcalfe is the only one of our party besides me not affected by sickness. At the moment, she is also on deck, lecturing one of the ship's crew about the hygienic arrangements on board. Which honestly do leave something to be desired, but between the voyage and the prospect of finally reaching Brussels within the next few days, I haven't noticed very much.
I was just reading through what I wrote yesterday morning at the inn. Mostly to keep myself from growing impatient over the delay in reaching shore. But it has reminded me that I never wrote about the conversation I had with Elizabeth just before Kitty and I left for Ramsgate.
Our visit at Longbourn was lovely--though we were busy from morning until night with Elizabeth's family and all the neighbourhood callers who came to see her during our stay. And then, too, Elizabeth's sister Jane came to visit with her husband Charles Bingley. They brought their daughter Amelia, who is nearly a year old now. Amelia looks exactly like Jane, the same golden-blonde hair--though Amelia's of course is as yet just wispy curls--the same blue eyes. She was so funny with baby James; every time she saw him she would give a kind of high-pitched baby shriek and crawl towards him at full speed. And then she would grin and chuckle and try to gum his cheek or poke her small fingers into his ears.
James started to be able to roll himself over while we were there.
But none of this is what I started out to recount, which was that on the night before we were to depart Longbourn, Elizabeth came to my room. She had a parting gift for me--a little bottle of lavender water to use on my handkerchiefs. But then once she'd given it to me she sat down on the bed and seemed to hesitate, looking uncertain or as though she were trying to make up her mind whether or not to speak.
Which is so unlike her that I asked whether anything was wrong.
Elizabeth shook her head. "No, there is nothing the matter. Or at least, I hope that there will not be anything the matter. It's just ..." she gave me a small, rueful twist of a smile. "I have been debating whether or not to tell you this all day. I don't want to upset you. But then, that's rather condescending, isn't it? Trying to decide what you should and should not know. And besides, you ought to be prepared if--" Elizabeth stopped again and drew in her breath. "To speak plainly, my mother had a letter from my sister Lydia three days ago. Lydia is t
he worst correspondent in the world, of course, and hardly ever writes. Not unless it is to ask for money. But in this letter to my mother, she wrote that her husband George Wickham's regiment has been called to foreign service and is already embarked to join the Duke of Wellington's force in Brussels."
I think I said, Oh. Or something like that. And Elizabeth leaned forward and asked whether I was all right.
I nodded. "Yes. I'm ... surprised. Though I suppose I shouldn't be. I didn't know he was now in the regular army, but the chances were always going to be great that he should be called to fight with the rest of Wellington's troops."
I know last year I forced myself to write out the full story of how George Wickham nearly persuaded me into eloping with him four years ago, when I was fifteen. It is embarrassing now, to remember how naive I was, how easily taken in by his unctuous declarations of love. And I still despise myself a little--even if I was only fifteen--for being so spineless that I was too afraid to tell him no when he asked me to run away.
But at least I have the comfort of knowing that it was after all four years ago, and I am not that girl anymore.
I sat back a little against the pillows on the bed. And then looked up at Elizabeth. "I am surprised. But I don't think I am worried or distressed. The army is thousands and thousands of men strong--it's surely not very likely I should meet him. And besides, even if I did, I don't think I would care."
And it is true. I don't think I would care, not now.
Last spring, George Wickham went so far as to come to Pemberley in an attempt to blackmail my brother. Wickham could damage my reputation by spreading the story of our near elopement. Even though nothing more untoward than a single kiss ever occurred. And my brother would have paid to stop Wickham's doing it--but I told him he mustn't. I refuse to live my whole life in fear of what Wickham may choose to say. And Edward already knows the whole truth of the affair in any case.
Even being in Ramsgate yesterday--which was where Wickham instigated his courtship of me--didn't so much bring it all back as make me feel more than ever as though all that were part of entirely another life from the one I have now.
I have to stop writing. Mrs. Metcalfe has been talking to the captain, and apparently there is a chance of some of the crew rowing us to shore; she has just come over to tell me she'll need my help in dragging Kitty and Harriet from their berths.
Monday 12 June 1815
We are in Ostend at last. I was too exhausted to write anything when we finally found our beds last night. So it is morning now. Late morning, to judge by the angle of the sun streaming in through my window, though there is no clock in my room and I have not yet been downstairs.
We are staying in the home of Mrs. Pamela Elliott, the wife of General Elliott, who commands the garrison here.
Mrs. Elliott is an older woman, grey-haired and pink-cheeked and sensible-looking. Though I think she must have been quite pretty when she was young. She and the general never had children of their own, so she makes it a habit to befriend and take an interest in the younger people who come into her acquaintance. Mrs. Elliott also happens to be a second cousin of Harriet's on her mother's side. And it was arranged between Mrs. Elliott and Harriet before we set sail from England that we should come to the Elliotts' home when we arrived.
We were rowed to shore from the packet boat last night. Which is why the cover of this book is now slightly damp; the splash of the oars and the occasional swell of a wave would come over the side of the boat and soak our luggage. We wound up on a stretch of sandy beach just before midnight, surrounded by all our bags. And Mrs. Metcalfe asked--well, I suppose commanded would be strictly speaking more accurate--the sailors who had rowed us in to take us on to the town.
And so here we are, at General and Mrs. Elliott's.
And I had better go downstairs now, since Kitty has just come in to inform me that Mrs. Elliott is holding a ball tonight, and we ought to help her prepare.
Tuesday 13 June 1815
Poor Kitty. I would never have believed it was possible to be so completely sorry for someone and so completely exasperated with them at the same time. But I am with her right now.
It is two o'clock in the morning, and I am sitting up in bed in the room Mrs. Elliott assigned to me for our stay. It is a very pretty room, though the furniture is all very much in the French style and so heavily gilded it's dazzling even by the light of the single candle by my bed.
This morning, when Kitty told me, was the first I had heard about the ball that General and Mrs. Elliott were to hold tonight. But Mrs. Elliott had apparently been planning it for weeks, and had written Mrs. Forster that if we should arrive on or before the twelfth of June, we should be able to attend. In all honesty, a ball was the absolute last thing I wanted to even think of after our journey. And--though I realise that I sound like the drooping heroine of a melodrama all over again--all I have wanted from the moment I left Pemberley has been to reach Brussels and Edward as quickly as possible.
It is not just gothic heroine fancies. There's a kind of strung-up tension about the whole city of Ostend--the whole countryside around here. We went out in the late morning to walk around the city a little while. And it's beautiful. Cobbled streets and houses of coloured bricks. And breathtaking cathedrals, built of grey stone, with impossibly high spires and windows of coloured glass. But all the while we were walking, children--little street urchins--were crowding around us and simultaneously begging for pennies and cursing Napoleon and the French. Success to the English, and destruction to the French, was what they called out over and over again. And in the few shops we went into--a sweet shop, a lace-maker's, and a book stall--the owners said almost exactly the same. Everyone was full of war-talk. Fiercely eager to tell us of how Napoleon was hated here for his taxes and for having conscripted all the fine young men to die in his cursed army.
But the ball:
Unlike me, Kitty had heard about it from Mrs. Forster before we set sail and had been looking forward to it ever since.
Greatly looking forward to it; back aboard the packet ship when I went in to help Mrs. Metcalfe with getting Harriet and Kitty up onto deck and into the rowboat, Kitty had groaned and pulled the blankets over her head at first. And then she sat bolt upright and asked me what day it was. And when I told her it was the eleventh of June, she dragged herself up and shook Harriet and said that they had to go or they'd not be at Mrs. Elliott's before the twelfth.
I remember at the time thinking it was strange--though everything was in such confusion what with rounding up our bags and paying the ship's captain that there was no chance to ask her to explain. And then yesterday--Kitty spent the entire day debating and changing her mind over what she should wear and worrying that the spots the sea-water had left around the hem of her gown--pale-lavender silk with an overskirt of deeper purple sarsnet--would show.
And now I know why: Lord Henry Carmichael was among those in attendance here tonight.
I was sitting off to one side of the dancing with Mrs. Metcalfe--who had donned for the ball the most incredible turban of silk and gold lace--when I saw Lord Carmichael come in. He was with a large party of other guests--three other gentleman and four ladies. And one of the ladies--an exquisitely pretty woman with four ostrich plumes in her red hair and a very low-cut gown of emerald chiffon spangled with gold and pearls--was clinging to his arm. I recognised Lord Carmichael. And felt a lurch of dismay, because Kitty saw him at the same time and started straight for him.
I'm not Kitty's mother. I'm not even responsible for her behaviour on this journey. But I still felt I ought to do something to try and stop her coming to any worse harm than she already had.
Except I needn't have worried. Not about Lord Carmichael trifling with Kitty's affections, at any rate.
I had excused myself to Mrs. Metcalfe and gone after Kitty, so that despite the music and the crowds of people all around I was near enough to hear the exchange between her and Lord Carmichael. She put out her hands and said, "H
enry! How utterly enchanting to see you again!"
And Lord Carmichael gave her a completely blank look through his gold- and jewel-encrusted quizzing glass and said, "I beg your pardon. You seem to have the advantage of me. Have we been introduced?"
I was behind Kitty and could not see her face. But before she could reply, Lord Carmichael had been hailed by someone further into the ballroom and moved off, the red-haired lady still clinging to his arm. I took a step forward and touched Kitty on the shoulder.
She had rouged her cheeks again; when she turned around I could see that all the natural colour had drained from her face and the paint stood out on each cheek in two garish stains. She looked as though she were on the verge of tears, too--so I caught hold of her hand and pulled her with me into a little curtained-off alcove at the rear of the ballroom.
There was a courting couple there already--a plump girl dressed in curry-coloured satin and young man in a black superfine coat and very tight pantaloons. They gave us--or me, rather--indignant looks, but pushed past us and rejoined the ballroom when it was clear Kitty and I meant to stay. Once they had gone, I pushed Kitty onto the stiff brocade cushions that formed a kind of bench around the alcove's rear wall. It was like moving a wooden doll--she went wherever I directed her, her movements jerky and stiff. And when I wasn't trying to get her to move she came to a total standstill, her eyes fixed straight ahead.
When I had sat down next to her on the bench, though, Kitty turned her head to look at me, her eyes still swimming with tears. "He doesn't remember me." Her voice was choked. "He had not the smallest idea of who I was."
Pemberley to Waterloo: Georgiana Darcy's Diary, Volume 2 Page 13
