Page 31 of A Debt Inherited

“The magistrate wished me to be exact,” Gardiner said, quieter still. “No man would have Longbourn opened upon a mistaken heir. If you will make your mark of receipt, I shall carry it back.”

Bennet looked for the pen and saw none; Hill had already found it. The quill lay across the orderly’s table with a little plate for sand. Bennet took the quill, dipped, and wrote his name as he had learned it first: Thomas Robert Bennet. The letters were set down with care, not for show but because it was the thing required. He blotted and returned the pen.

Gardiner accepted the paper with both hands and bowed again. “I am to ask, sir, whether I shall have the house opened and a fire made in your chamber, and whether the steward is to purchase provisions.”

Bennet looked at the stack of books—the sober shapes of them—and at Hill, whose eyes were upon the window still though there was nothing new to see there. He put his hand to the chair back and felt the polish under his skin.

“You will have the house opened,” he said. “Tell the steward that I come when I am fit to walk to it. Not a day sooner, and not a day later.”

Gardiner’s mouth softened, as if a knot had been untied in him by that certainty. “I shall say so.”

Hill set the hat into Gardiner’s hand without being asked. The gentleman glanced once at Bennet’s leg—linen drawn under the blanket as evenly as a soldier’s bed—and then at Bennet’s face. His mouth opened once. No phrase came. He bowed instead.

“God keep you, Captain,” he said, and went.

The door closed with a softness learned in sick-rooms. The ward again was itself: the small regular noises, the thin light, the slow pace of men who had been brave too long. Hill did not move at once. Then he took up The Spectator, as if to guard it with another book, and set it square. He cleared his throat and did not speak.

“Read me something,” Bennet said.

“Sir—of which.”

“Cowper. Where you left off.”

Hill found the ribbon and opened the page. His voice was careful at first and then easier, the syllables running plainly as a well-made road. Bennet listened, not to the sense, but to the measure of it. The medal notice lay folded in Cicero, thin as a pressed leaf. The packet upon Clarendon waited with its blue seal unbroken.

“Too weak to struggle with tenacious clay, or ford the rivulets, are best at home—”

“Hill.” Bennet waited until the book lowered. “Would you and Mrs Hill come to Longbourn with me?”

PART TWO

Fortitude

Fortes fortuna adiuvat

—Terence

Chapter 14

Longbourn, Hertfordshire, May 1798

Bennet sat a little apart from the hearth, his leg stretched along a stool, the old wound a reminder that even blessings may limp. The scent of lilac crept in through the open sash; the garden beyond bloomed, and the orchard hummed faintly with bees.

Mrs Bennet was at her embroidery table, the sun playing upon her hair till it shone like pale copper. She had refused any cap that morning, declaring herself too warm for lace and prudence. Bennet thought she had never looked more beautiful. The years had not dimmed her brightness; they had only made him more afraid of losing it.

Jane, eldest and fairest, bent over her sampler; her flaxen curls were tied back with a blue ribbon, and when she smiled at her work the whole room seemed to draw breath and smile with her. Elizabeth—dark-haired, quick-eyed, her small fingers smudged with graphite—sketched the view beyond the window with one ear given to the garden and the other to every word in the room. She had drawn the elm too sternly, Bennet thought, and the church tower too honestly; no child who loved flattery would have given a weathercock so sharp a beak. Mary, poised between play and thought, had abandoned her hornbook in favour of a worn copy of Pilgrim’s Progress, which she was reading upside down with great seriousness. Kitty and Lydia were upon the carpet, arranging dolls around a square in what Lydia called a princess tea.

“My dears,” Bennet said, “I believe an artist might bankrupt himself if he attempted to capture this scene.”

Elizabeth looked up and smiled. “Would it be a grand portrait, Papa?”

“Grand, indeed,” Bennet replied, folding his hands upon his cane. “He would begin with Jane and be ruined at once. No honest man should be asked to bottle the sky.”

Jane’s blush was immediate. “Papa, you are too kind.”

“Never, my dear,” he said. “It is my calling to speak plain truths. Your mother might tell you I am incapable of flattery, though I have occasionally practised the art upon her with limited success.”

Mrs Bennet looked up from her embroidery with that expression which was half reproach, half indulgence. “Limited success, indeed! You mistake obstinacy for virtue, Mr Bennet. But pray, proceed with your catalogue. You are not finished praising our children, I think.”