Puttnam, when he arrived, was much more loquacious and soon became something of a local curiosity, for instead of the traditional peg, he had replaced his missing foot with a carved wooden one with an ingenious hinge and could be heard stumping down the street with alternative footsteps of hobnails and teak. He tutted over the garden and the hen run, doubted they would ever produce much, prophesied cabbage root fly, black spot, yellow jackets, ravenous pigeons, and moles, then within three days had dug it all over and was promising that by summer they would never have to buy a vegetable again.
The days were busy, but Elizabeth found the nights uncomfortably long and quiet. Lydia and Kitty were frequently exasperating, but at least they made a usually cheerful noise about the place. Many nights found Elizabeth lying awake in her enormous bed, wondering how she came to be there, a married woman without a husband, when only weeks before she had been single and afraid.
She could not help worrying until a letter came from Portsmouth. Her father, although tired, had arrived safe and sound. Since the wind was against them, they were putting up at a quiet hotel used by naval wives and families visiting the port. “I have come to believe that every travelling party should contain a naval officer,” he wrote. “Difficulties are sorted, landlords quelled, and post boys cowed. I do not think I ever have known a less harassing journey.” Her husband was apparently busy arranging for the voyage, for there was but a brief note from him, assuring them of the whole party’s health and well being. A note at the bottom added that he was wearing her comforter beneath his coat.
As the house gradually settled into its daily routine, callers began to appear. Mrs. Bennet and her sisters came over from Longbourn, Mrs. Bennet full of complaints about the loss of Mr. Bennet and Lydia and especially about her brother Gardiner’s tyranny with the housekeeping money. Elizabeth did her best to represent the need for economy without revealing she knew the funds were really under Jane’s control. As her mother and younger sisters ranged about the house exclaiming and comparing, Elizabeth and Jane managed a few minutes of mutual condolence on the difficulties of running a house alone.
The day after her family visited, Lieutenant Grace and his wife came to call. While they all drank tea in the parlour, she asked him where he had met her husband, and she was rewarded by a stream of reminiscence. “We were shipmates aboard the old Lincoln,” he said. “I was second, and he was a master’s mate. He could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen, but I was right glad to have him aboard. She were a nasty old ship, the Lincoln. When she wasn’t hogging, she was sagging and crank nor you wouldn’t believe!”
“Lemuel,” said his wife reprovingly, and he looked up guiltily.
“Am I talking too much? Always did talk too much.” Elizabeth hurried to assure him that she very much wanted to hear, and he continued. “Well, she was a bad-tempered sort of ship—needed a lot of nursing or she’d turn on you. The captain was drinking himself to death, and the premier was a bl…a fool. Your husband and I kept that old tub afloat on the Toulon blockade until she was dismasted in a storm. We had far too many landsmen aboard and not near enough right seamen, but we managed to get her back to port.” He laughed a little bitterly. “The surveyor took one good look and condemned her out of hand. I spent the next four years on the beach on half pay. You don’t get fat on four guineas a month and find yourself, let me tell you. Any road, for all he were nobbut a lad, your husband were a grand help. I’d never have done it without him.” He took a big gulp of his tea, and the next few minutes were spent with his wife patting him on the back and chiding him for drinking it too hot.
When they finally settled back in their chairs, Georgiana, who had been listening with shining eyes, asked the lieutenant how old he had been when he went to sea.
“Oh, I were twelve and wild to go to sea, like my cousin Frank. There were six of us at home and my mother at her wits’ end to know what to do with us all.”
“My brother was only nine, and that seems terribly young.”
“It is, miss,” he replied. “But your brother was lucky with his captain. He was on the Illustrious, a second rate.” Seeing her puzzlement, he added, “A powerful big ship. There’d be over a score of young gentlemen aboard, and Captain Hanning-Ward was always very particular about the way they was taught. Shipped his own cousin as schoolmaster and made sure they didn’t just learn navigation like usual. Always said he expected his young gentlemen to learn to write a decent letter or report and know what was going on in the world. That’s why they call him “Professor”—’cause there are a lot of captains who leave the mids to bring themselves up, and he wasn’t having any of that.”
This was at least a little consolation, but that night as she lay in bed, Elizabeth could not help but imagine her husband as a very small boy, surrounded by other larger boys, sitting at a long table, and practising the use of logarithms under the watchful eye of the captain’s cousin.
Chapter Twelve
Christmas was a difficult time for Elizabeth, the first she had ever spent away from Longbourn, and since her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner and their children were staying, there was no room for Elizabeth and her new relations. Instead, they went to Longbourn for Christmas Day and returned that evening, finding the house quiet and rather dull after the bustle at her mother’s house. There was no letter from her husband or her father until the end of the year when one arrived announcing their safe arrival in Gibraltar.
It was her husband who had written, and the letter took the shape of a short journal, detailing their days at sea and how her father was managing the naval life. It began rather formally, “Dear Madam,” but continued in a more conversational tone.
“It was horribly rough in the Chops of the Channel,” he wrote. “And your father very wisely stayed in his cot. I was afraid that the conditions might be too much for him, but Doctor James, who travels with us, was very kind, and by the time conditions calmed, he was much better. The cough continues, but the doctor approves the remedies Wallace sent with him and feels sure the warmer weather will help.”
Several days later, he added that her father had just won ten shillings off the captain of the Renown at whist, and would Elizabeth please forward Johnson’s Life of Savage and his Greek Herodotus. “I left him having a ferociously learned discussion with the Captain of Marines, and I suspect he means to stun him with chapter and verse if they ever meet again. He would, no doubt, write himself save that he cannot get the trick of managing a pen at sea. The second time it slid across the page and scored out everything he had written, he gave up and vowed he will not write another line until he stands on dry land.”
Additionally, and delightfully, it appeared that Captain Darcy was something of an artist. There was a charming pen and ink drawing of her father asleep in something between a chair and a hammock and another of Jessup looking at a ship’s biscuit with an expression of alarm.
There were occasional comments about the ship and its manoeuvres, and Elizabeth did her best to decipher them with the aid of the Remembrancer and, when that failed, Lieutenant Grace. Given the truly astonishing number of ropes, sails, and other equipment, she knew she would probably never understand it all, but she resolved to make the effort. After a little persuading, Anderssen even came indoors and taught her some of the common knots and hitches. He still said very little but sat patiently doing the knots over and over again until she had mastered them. She was particularly proud of something called a “Double Matthew Walker,” which was ornamental in the highest degree, so she tied them in every piece of cord in the house.
Although she was a little concerned that her letter in reply to her husband might seem dull to him, engaged as he was in a public and active life, Lieutenant Grace reassured her. “Oh no, ma’am, quite the opposite. There’s nothing better than a letter that lets you see what life is like at home and shows you that you haven’t been forgotten. Might make a man feel homesick, but tha
t’s better than being forgotten.”
So she told him everything, acquiring the habit of sitting down at the end of each day to note down for him the daily round. She was, however, careful to begin her letter “My Dear Fitzwilliam,” and hoped that in doing so she might tempt him into a warmer address.
She told him of the way the vicar’s son had fallen in love with Georgiana, utterly undeterred by the fact that he was only six years of age. “He informed her that he is doing his best to grow up as quickly as possible so that they can get married. She was, I thought, very kind and did not point out the logical flaw in the proposal.”
She told him about the slates that came off the roof and had to be replaced by Anderssen using ladders and a great deal of rope. “Lieutenant Grace came to assist, and I am persuaded they both enjoyed themselves immensely, climbing up and down and hauling things and calling Puttnam a ‘lubber’ when he let go.”
She told him about the housemaid who was caught stealing feathers from Mrs. Darcy’s bed and had to be dismissed and replaced with one of the Reverend Carter’s protégées. “She is a thin, shy, wispy girl who answers to the scarcely believable name of ‘Hepszibah.’ I was not sure she was up to the work, but over the last fortnight, one might swear she was visibly swelling under the twin influences of good food and kindness. She still says hardly anything, but this morning I rather think I heard her singing as she worked.”
She did not tell him about the time she found herself under the disagreeable necessity of taking Mrs. Darcy to task for monopolising Maria; with three ladies to take care of, it was not fair to demand so much of the girl’s attention. She had tried to be patient, for a very little thought had shown her that the lady could have been no older than Georgiana when she married, and Elizabeth knew that life with her husband’s brother had not been pleasant. However, with only three of them in the house, she also knew that, unless some basic courtesies were agreed upon, life might soon become exceedingly difficult.
She was somewhat surprised by Mrs. Darcy’s reaction. The lady first flinched and then, when no further remonstration occurred, she ventured a timid protest. Then, when her protest was kindly but firmly rebuffed, she sulked for an hour and then settled down apparently quite happy under the new regime. Thinking it over in bed that night, Elizabeth realised that Mrs. Darcy was rather like Kitty and, indeed, like Amelia Goulding and several other young ladies and gentlemen of her acquaintance. She needed to be told what was expected of her and, so long as the discipline was firm, she would do as she was told. She wondered uncomfortably what it said of a middle-aged gentleman like her husband’s father that he should have chosen such a wife.
However little she might say of her new sister’s mother, she thought her husband might like to hear about his sister, especially considering he had known so little of her growing up. “I have taken the liberty of hiring masters for her,” she wrote. “She says almost nothing about her life at Pemberley, but it appears that her education was somewhat neglected.
“It was a little difficult to find anyone in so small a place as Hatfield, but there is an émigré gentleman who teaches her French and Italian, an excellent lady who teaches drawing and water colours, and a gentleman who visits once a fortnight to improve her piano playing. I am so little of a musician that I thought she required no teaching in that respect, but she was so earnest in her desire to learn, I thought it as well to accede. He comes from St. Albans in a gig and is sinfully expensive, but Georgiana says she has and continues to learn much, so for the time being, the lessons continue.”
It was almost a wrench to let the letter go; however, one day the lieutenant came to inform her that a suitable ship would be sailing shortly, so she finished it hurriedly with her assurances of the household’s health and well being, asked him whether he was still troubled with the dizziness, and told him that she prayed for his safe return. Then she added the letter to the parcel of books her father had requested and handed them over with a slightly shamefaced kiss to the address.
A letter from him arrived less than a week later, although she did not receive it until she returned from an evening party at the rectory. She thought for a moment that it might be his reply before realising it must have been sent long before her own missive could arrive. Georgiana and her mother were already making their way up to bed, so she did not mention the letter and resolved to read it alone. She went into the parlour, stirred the fire into life, and lit the lamp from its flames.
It was still addressed, “Dear Madam,” and she might have been troubled by that, had she not told herself firmly that she was very probably the first lady he had corresponded with since his mother died and determined not to worry until he had received her last. The letter was headed “Aboard HMS Achilles,” and it began by assuring her of her father’s continuing improvement and his determination to stay on the ship as far as Malta.
Someone told him that it can take several days to regain one’s ‘sea legs.’ So he has remained aboard, mostly playing chess with the purser and reading such books as the ship affords. This time he would like you to send Suetonius, Plutarch’s Lives, and Tristram Shandy. The weather here is considerably warmer that it will be in England, although it is still far from hot. I shall ensure he is provided with suitable warm weather clothing before I set him ashore.
I arrived here to find that the dockyard have still not finished the fitting out. It appears that my new first lieutenant is an amiable young man, entirely lacking in energy or authority. When I add that he is nephew to Admiral Pascoe, I have said everything that need be said. I have spent the last few days harrying and hounding the world and his wife in an effort to get to sea in anything like good order.
To make matters worse, the port admiral has drafted forty of my men into the “Endymion” which left last week and replaced them with the scouring of the prisons. ‘King’s Hard Bargains,’ we call them, and a harder set I have never seen. You may tell Anderssen that my new coxswain is half the man he is and needs twice the telling.
Luckily, Cavendish the Second and Playford know what they are about, and the new master is really excellent. With their help, I hope to get to sea tomorrow so that I can start turning this ragbag into a decent crew.
The rest of the letter was a description of the harbour at Malta, and the drawing this time was of her father and Jessup in wide-brimmed straw hats, sitting on coils of rope. He signed off with his best wishes for her continued health and happiness and his love to his sister.
She thought the letter finished there, but when she turned the page over, almost automatically, not expecting anything further, she found an additional paragraph, the handwriting hurried.
“It is difficult to believe how much difference it makes to a man to have someone at home to whom he can write. In the past, I have envied shipmates who receive letters and, most of all, have envied their connection with home and family and England. I say this not to place upon you the burden of a lengthy correspondence if you are not of a mind, but merely to beg the favour of an occasional line from you” (the words “and Georgiana” had been added at this point) “so that I might sleep easy in the knowledge that you are safe and well.” It was signed merely FD.
She read and re-read that paragraph, before turning to the rest of the letter. Then, when she had finished it, she turned to the back and read it again, and as she did so, she thought she might weep. She was hunting round for a handkerchief, determined to go to bed at last, when there was a tap on the parlour door, and to her astonishment, Puttnam came in.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he said. “But Anderssen and me thought you ought to know. There’s some shady coves been hanging around all day, town-bred by the looks of ’em. One of ’em was in the Eagle asking about the young lady.” He hitched his head towards the bedrooms upstairs. “And one of ’em ’as been ’anging around in the lane out back.”
Chapter Thirteen
Elizabeth sat down heavily. “We just walked back from the rectory in the dark,” she said weakly.
“Never you mind about that, ma’am. We knew the vicar’d send his man with you with a light, and me and Anderssen have been walking up and down the lane with a dark lantern, making out we thought someone was after the ’ens. ’Oo ever were out there hooked it sharpish.” He saw her looking at him and added, “Ran away.”
Elizabeth did her best to cudgel her brains into life. “And they were asking for Miss Darcy by name?”
“Yes’m and they described her to a T. They’ve ordered a chaise to be ready as soon as they call for it. The captain, well, ’e warned Anderssen there might be trouble from ’is brother from up North. We reckon—Anderssen and me—that they’re mebbe sent by him to take her back.
“Do you know how many of them there are?”
“We think there’s only two,” he replied, “a bandy-legged cove with a catskin waistcoat and a big, nasty-looking piece o’ work in corduroy breeches—prize-fighting sort. O’ course there’s mebbe more we ’aven’t seen.”
“Do you think they will try to get into the house?” She looked around, suddenly conscious of the quiet and the nearby door to the street.
He was reassuring. “Nah, me and Anderssen put them shutters up and the locks on the door, like the captain told us, and they couldn’t get in without making a fu…a lot of noise. We was thinking, Anderssen and me, that if you was to bunk in with one of the other ladies, he could keep watch from the kitchen and I’d keep a watch from your room, and if they did try anything in the night, we’d wake the ’ole town up.”
Fair Stands the Wind Page 10
