Page 8 of The Fire at Longbourn (Pride and Prejudice Variation)

Longbourn

The next morning

A cerulean sky arched above a mild day, the sun smiling cheerfully down on Longbourn, as activity stirred in the ash-speckled yard.

A faint smell of smoke still pervaded the stony husk of the east wing of the house and clung to the stables and yard, but the atmosphere was one of cautious cheer.

The main part of the house still stood, and no one had died.

There had been some concern the previous night, when no one could find young Amelia Miller anywhere, but this morning, a message had arrived from the girl.

Amelia had been sent out on an errand before the fire started, and then she had sensibly stayed out of the way in town when she heard news of it.

Much of the activity at Longbourn centered around the stables as men soothed nervous horses and saw to their needs.

The summer kitchen was the other hub, where John Harrison – a former tenant who had spent his teen years caring for his sickly, widowed mother – held court over breakfast preparations made of the food sent over from Lucas Lodge the previous evening.

A low buzz of tentative conversation hummed through the stables and the yard and the summer kitchen.

What would happen now? It was certain the Bennets would struggle financially after this calamity.

Would they have to turn off some of their people?

How difficult would it be to find other employment?

Surely the Bennets would give them good characters.

Who would be let go? And in the meantime, with the family not in residence, what was there to do?

“The Longbourn carriage is coming up the drive,” piped young Stephen Barstow, and Coachman Jack quickly handed the currying comb to the young man and said, “Finish caring for Marigold.”

“Yes, sir,” Stephen said, his face lighting up. The young man adored horses and worked well with them, and Jack was certain that the boy would grow up to be a fine horseman.

Jack hurried to the large open doors of the stables and came to a halt as the coachman pulled the horses to a stop.

Jack admitted to himself, reluctantly, that the driver, Mullins, seemed to be managing his duties well enough.

Jack usually drove the carriage for the family, but given the situation, he and Mr. Bennet had decided that Jack should stay at Longbourn to look after the servants and horses.

A crowd of men had gathered, and one of them stepped forward to open the door. Mr. Bennet descended to the ground, and then turned to assist Miss Elizabeth, who was the only other person in the carriage.

“Jack,” Mr. Bennet said, while Miss Elizabeth turned to stare at Longbourn, her slim figure rigid with distress.

“Sir,” Jack said, and then impelled by his long association with the family, could not help but ask, “May I inquire as to how Mrs. Bennet and Miss Mary are doing today?”

Bennet’s expression softened at these words, and he said, “They are both well, thank you, Jack. Miss Mary has a broken arm and her head is sore, but she will be well, and Mrs. Bennet is hindered only by a sprained ankle.”

There were soft sighs of relief from the assembled servants, and Bennet actually smiled a little. He was still reeling from the near loss of his wife and daughter, and the actual loss of his library, but he could only be thankful and grateful for loyal, hardworking servants.

“Elizabeth and I will be looking around to see what needs to be done with the house,” Bennet continued. “Mr. Selkirk will probably arrive soon, along with additional provisions for you men. We will give you additional direction when we have a better understanding of the situation.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jack said stolidly, and the other men openly relaxed.

Bennet’s conscience, already heavy with the knowledge of Mrs. Bennet’s near death, was pricked at the sight.

This was, without a doubt, a disaster for the Bennet family, but none of them would go hungry or naked.

The servants, on the other hand, depended on Longbourn for their livelihood.

Very few would have much in the way of savings; he must find a way to provide for their needs, though how, he did not know.

Not for the first time, he wished that instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum, for the better provision of his children, and of his wife, if she survived him.

When he and Fanny Gardiner had first married, economy was held to be perfectly useless; for, of course, they were to have a son.

This son was to join in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow and younger children would by that means be provided for.

Five daughters successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs. Bennet, for many years after Lydia’s birth, had been certain that he would.

This event had at last been despaired of, but it was then too late to be saving.

Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy, and Mr. Bennet’s love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their income.

No, there was no sum laid by to resurrect the east wing, and his library, from the ashes.

Bennet’s grim thoughts were distracted by a soft sob, and the master of Longbourn made his way to Elizabeth, who was standing some fifteen feet from the library, her shoulders shaking.

“My dear Lizzy,” he murmured, putting a gentle arm around the shoulders of his most intelligent daughter, “it is dreadful, is it not?”

“It is terrible!” Elizabeth cried out, and for a full two minutes, father and daughter stared disconsolately through the hole which had once been a window, into the room which had been the gateway to a thousand worlds.

Bennet remembered, with melancholic fondness, the uncounted hours he had spent in that room, away from the noise and fuss of the outside world, of his family.

Elizabeth had joined him there often enough; she too loved the written word.

Characteristically, it was Elizabeth who broke free from her sorrow first.

“We should go inside, Father,” she said suddenly, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose on her handkerchief, and then rooting around in her reticule for a notebook and pencil. “I will take notes describing the state of the various rooms if you like.”

“Yes, that would be excellent, Lizzy,” Bennet said, and squared his shoulders. As much as he wished to mourn his carefree life and his library, he was the head of his house and the master of Longbourn.

Arm in arm, the twosome made their way around to the front door of Longbourn, passing broken windows on the way, the gray grass of winter mixed with dust. Inside, the carpet was gray too, with a fine layer of ash sifted like flour over every surface.

Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth looked at each other, and she took a deep breath as they moved towards the corridor that led to the east wing.

They stood in silence for a moment, examining the door.

It was – or had been – a solid, sturdy, oak affair, well-maintained and often used.

The carved details had burned away and the whole thing looked fragile and mournful.

Mr. Bennet finally stirred and put his hand to the knob, turning it carefully and pulling.

The brass contraption in his hand pulled free of the door in a puff of black char.

He stared at it for a moment before looking to his daughter, who was gaping back stricken, then put the knob aside and knelt down to peer through the hole.

He could not help his mewl of distress at the devastation within and stood up quickly.

Elizabeth braced herself and knelt as well to peek through the gap. The scene she was seeing was blazoned across Bennet’s mind’s eye: the blackened walls and fine sifting ash, the ceiling collapsed in and walls gutted. He understood well her shaky in-drawn breath at the sight.

Elizabeth stood and turned. She was very pale in the weak light but held herself with brave determination. “Perhaps we can enter the east wing through the dining room,” she suggested.

“Yes,” Bennet agreed numbly. “We should do that.”

He turned, leading the way into the dining room, and Elizabeth trailed behind him, clutching her notebook tightly.

It was almost as desolate in the dining room as the hallway of the east wing, if in a different way; the carpet was covered in muddy bootprints, a watery ash mixture squishing up at every step.

Broken glass glittered around beneath the windows and throughout the rugs, trekked through the house on the bottoms of boots.

Patches showed on the soaked-through wallpaper where servants had hastily pulled down the pictures and carried them outside to safety; about half the chairs were missing for the same reason, along with candlesticks and the linen-and-lace table runner and the elegant white tablecloth.

The room seemed bare and abandoned without its usual accoutrements.

Bennet looked about disconsolately before approaching the door to the kitchen, taking a deep apprehensive breath before grasping the knob, twisting and pulling. It did not come off in his hand. It did not budge. He frowned and yanked a little harder and the door creaked but did not give.

Elizabeth peered closely. “I think the jamb has warped,” she said quietly, making alittle notation in her book.

“I think you’re right,” her father agreed grimly, turning away from the door. “I fear the kitchen is probably destroyed. We can look through a window from the outside, but given the state of the corridor…”

He trailed off, and Elizabeth nodded. “I quite agree, Father. There might be some dishes that survived the fire. Perhaps we can have the men try to go through a window and see if anything can be recovered.”

“Yes, pray do write that down, my dear. I generally pride myself on my memory, but not on an occasion such as this.”

Elizabeth bit her lip at these words and blinked hard to force away the tears. Crying was for another time.

Mr. Bennet turned and led the way next to the drawing room.

It was much the same as the dining room, if less sodden.

The more portable valuables had been removed, the carpet was muddy and soggy, furniture in disarray where it had been quickly shoved aside to make room for the fire fighters, and everything was dingy with a fine layer of ash.

Elizabeth stood for a moment, looking over the mess after her father had turned away.

She had not been witness to the fire and the desperate fight to save the house.

But the chaos itself told its own story – of friends and neighbors and servants and tenants expending themselves carrying heavy buckets of water, fighting to protect the rest of the house from the devouring flames.

Gratitude welled in her bruised heart for their kindness.

The situation was less bleak in the parlor, the music room, and the back sitting room. All of them smelled strongly of smoke and would need considerable airing, and the ash had drifted there too, but she was hopeful that they could easily be made livable again.

Mr. Bennet led the way up the stairs. The hallway here was clear, only a faint smell of smoke clinging and the occasional flake of ash.

Elizabeth opened the door to her room and glanced around, feeling oddly dreamlike and surreal.

It was precisely as she had left it when setting out for Meryton the previous day, serenely awaiting her return.

Not a fleck of ash in sight, the smoke smell so thin that it could be from her fireplace.

And yet – she knew well the damage in other parts of the house. The muddy saturation downstairs. Her younger sister Mary injured in a courageous escape from the fire, rescuing their mother. The charred stones and buckled doors that were all that was left of the east wing.

“Lizzy,” her father said from the doorway, and she turned towards him.

He seemed to have aged ten years over the past day, but some of the haggardness had left his expression and he looked around her bedchamber.

“Mary’s and Jane’s rooms, as well as the guest chambers, are untouched as well.

We must be grateful for such a blessing. ”

“Indeed,” Elizabeth agreed soberly, then squared her shoulders. “Father, we must check the east wing now.”

The weary edge returned to her father’s eyes.

“Yes,” he sighed. Together they moved towards the eastern part of the house, picking their way carefully around patches of wet and the ash that grew thicker the closer they got.

They stopped outside the blackened door to the east corridor and shared a look, then Bennet took a deep breath and tugged it sharply open.

It was… terrible. Astounding in its charred calamity.

It was plain the fire had started here; there was almost nothing left.

There was no sign of furniture, clothes, personal effects, decorations.

The walls were gone and the pair could see right through to the end of the house.

The floor in the hallway had sagged and collapsed and fallen through in several spots and the rest seemed ready to crumble at the slightest sign of a disturbance.

“I am very thankful that there were no servants in the attic when the fire took hold,” Elizabeth said, coughing and covering her mouth with her second handkerchief.

The movement of the door, and the breezes through the open window from which her mother and Mary had jumped, were causing ash to swirl in the air.

“Yes, anyone upstairs would have been trapped,” Bennet said soberly, and then ordered, “Step back, Lizzy.”

She did so, and her father pushed the door closed again and said, “There is no reason to let additional cinders and debris into the remainder of the house.”

He held out his arm to his daughter and guided her to the sitting room between Jane and Elizabeth’s bedchambers.

“Do sit down, my dear,” he invited, “and allow me to look through your little notebook.”

Elizabeth did so and, with nothing else to do, found her eyes drawn toward a stack of books placed tidily on a wooden end table.

She had been reading Shakespearean plays of late and thus Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, the Tempest, and Richard III had escaped the flames.

That was, she thought ruefully, a small mercy, and she smiled faintly.