Lizzy parted from us, and Lydia and I went to the lodgings of the officers’ wives.
Outside, there were a couple of washerwomen doing the laundry. When they saw us, they smiled.
“Oi,” said Samantha, who was one of the older washerwomen in the set. While her face was clean, naturally her clothes were a little sordid from her daily routine. “Miss Bennet and Miss Lydia.”
“Good day, Samantha.” I waved to her. “Do you need help carrying more of the laundry to the laundry lines?”
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind…”
“I may be a little fat,” Lydia laughed, “but these arms are strong enough.”
Together, Lydia and I helped Samantha carry the wet clothes to the laundry line and she began to hang them up.
“Are Mrs. Warrens or Mrs. Harville awake?” Lydia asked as I handed Samantha the clothes. “Or any of the other wives?”
“Yes, as a point of fact!” Came a voice from above us. We turned around and looked upward. From one of the windows on the second floor was Mrs. Warrens. “La! Lydia and Kitty, come for a visit, have you?”
“Yes, we have,” I replied, handing Samantha a shift for her to hang up with some clothespins.
Lydia jumped forward, calling up to her.
“We come because you all are the only people worth talking to in Meryton. Literally, compared to you all and the officers, everyone else feels so droll!”
Mrs. Warrens laughed.
“Well, don’t just stand down there,” Mrs. Warrens said with a laugh, “come on in then!”
“Will do,” Lydia called up to her, then she grabbed my hand and began to pull me along. “Come on!”
“Tell Mrs. Warrens that I will be in, in a minute,” I said. “I just need to help Samantha for a little while.”
“You are being stupid.”
Lydia left me with Samantha as we hung clothes up on the clothesline.
“Thank you for helping me, Miss,” Samantha said.
“Of course, Samantha.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Samantha eyed me shrewdly.
“I would feel humbled if I didn’t know your real purpose,” she remarked. “You know that I’ve got the best gossip in the place.”
“Then both of our intentions are satisfied, aren’t they?” I said, laughing.
“I do so wonder if you and Miss Lydia run home to see who gives the best news to your family.”
“You are suggesting that we compete?” I clarified.
“I bet you do.”
With every fiber of my being, I wish it weren’t so, but lying did not become me very well. Therefore, I allowed my true motive to be disassembled.
“Oh, very well,” I said, handing her some stockings. “Many people don’t know that I am aware of this, but news brings importance. The better the news you bring, the more people find you to be a useful sort of person.”
“Aye, you are smart, a little. I noticed that people don’t see that about you.”
“I’m not the sort of ‘intelligent’ that people find to be of any use. In our household, we all have our stations. Jane is the beautiful one who will save the family. Elizabeth is the most interesting. Mary is the most accomplished—though I personally think that Elizabeth plays and sings better than she does. Lydia is the youngest, and so is the favorite. And then there’s me. So, I must bring some news, so that my family can say, ‘Kitty is the one who supplies us with the news’. I have got to have something to say for myself.”
“When I was younger, I always was jealous of you rich people.”
“We’re not rich.”
“Rich enough not to work. That makes all the difference. Either way, when I began to see how stiff and boring your lives were, I said ‘never mind’. Being poorer is more fun. We don’t have so many prudish nothings to tie us down. I still haven’t seen this paragon of a sister of yours in Miss Jane Bennet. Why aren’t you and Miss Lydia seen as equally as bonny? I don’t see how she could be much prettier.”
“Thank you, but somehow, she is. I used to be jealous of her for being perfect, but I think I have gotten over it. I suppose that I had to accept that she was superior, and that was an end to it. I just keep telling myself that being jealous is like—like wasting time.”
“It is. I spent too much of my life jealous, and it led to having even more wrinkles than I should have. I was jealous of everyone for every single reason imaginable. You name it, and I was jealous over it. If a woman had a man’s love, I was jealous of it. If she had more money, I was jealous. If she was prettier, I was jealous. If her clothes were a little less ugly than mine, I was jealous. Always jealous. Believe me, that jealousy does you no good. It just makes you get older before you have any right to get older. Tell me truly, are you jealous of your oldest sister?”
A series of scenes flashed before my very eyes.
Of when Mr. Bingley and Jane danced together.
Of how Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst favored Jane.
Of every time that Mr. Bingley smiled so very fondly at her.
“Yes,” I admitted, “perhaps I might have been. But I am getting over it.”
“Keep doing so,” she urged, “there is only one thing easier than being jealous, and that is to stop being jealous. Stop being jealous. It’s the biggest waste of time in the world.”
I handed her another item, and she was correct.
Closing my eyes, I said Kitty, you keep saying that you have risen above this… so rise above it all and be as a bird in the skyway.
“I did it,” I said to Samantha, “it is fully out of my mind.”
“Good, because take my word on it, wanting something is a strange thing.”
“How so?”
“Wanting is always more desirable than ‘actually getting it.’ It is not reasonable. But it’s true, do you hear? It’s true.”
* * *
We finished hanging up the clothes and I helped her carry the baskets back to where they usually remained. After doing so, we entered the kitchen where she was heating up the iron.
“Oh,” Samantha said before she went upstairs. “But there is one soldier who has been arrested for desertion.”
I flinched, stricken by this sudden announcement.
“Oh yes!” she stressed.
Now we were getting to the heart of our discussion. Samantha really was the best gossip in the place. All the officers’ wives had much to say, but Samantha bested them all.
The burden of being the hired help was that you had to toil your entire life. The solace of being the hired help was that you overheard many things.
“And what is the man’s name?” I asked.
“From what I heard, he is a Mr. Benjamin Ogle, from Birmingham. He has been caught and he is now under arrest and awaiting a court-martial.”
“Oh, how exciting!”
Samantha gave me a look by way of a raised eyebrow.
“You know what I really meant,” I responded hastily, realizing how I must have sounded. “The news is exciting in the sense that it will—”
“Make you look interesting when you return home,” she said, covering her hand with a long rag so that she didn’t burn herself when picking up the iron.
“Yes,” I replied, bashfully.
“No worries, Miss. I reckon that I know what you meant. Also, another officer, Mr. Edward Garvie, is thinking of retiring his commission and joining the Navy instead.”
“Why?” I asked, amazed.
“The Navy is worse in some ways, and better in others. It’s more possible for a man to make more of a fortune in the Navy, but that’s complicated. And another officer, Mr. Daniel Crosby, has fallen in love with a girl here in Hertfordshire.”
“Do you know the young lady’s name?” I asked, my voice low from desire.
“Yes. A Miss Sofia Kirk.”
I gasped.
“I know her. He likes her?”
“What? Is she not pretty?”
“It’s not that she’s not pretty. Well—she is not that handsome at all. But she is a little aloof—and such. She always struck me as being a little dimwitted.”
“When have men not been attracted to those sorts, though?”
We both laughed at this until I recalled my father’s words about Lydia and I being two of the silliest girls in the country. Suddenly, my laugh came to an end, and I felt very sullen. If my father regarded me as being silly—then did that mean that he thought that I was dimwitted? He would know better than anyone… after all, he was married to our mother.
However, a few seconds later, I roused myself. Truly, Father spent much of his time not ever being a proper parent and not caring about our actions. Nor did he ever care to try and enhance mother’s mind. Rather, he took more fun in criticizing her folly. Were her habits of mean understanding and his habits of witty indifference not the sign of a small mind as well? Who was Father to criticize and censure me when he never reflected on his own actions?
No. I was not a bad person.
And I will not care for the censure of those who, whatever good principles they were taught, never employed them themselves. I was not born to live under perpetual hypocrisy. I would fall apart if I did so.
Samantha did not realize my temporary slip into self-contempt, because I continued laughing in the next minute.
“Anything else?”
“Kitty?” I heard Lydia call from the upper landing.
“I believe they have called you,” Samantha said.
“Aye, that’s my name. I guess I was away for long enough.”
Standing up, I went up to Mrs. Warrens’ quarters. When I was allowed entry, Mrs. Warrens already had tea and was waiting for me.
“You have missed the most delicious bit of gossip,” Lydia cried, grabbing my hand, and pulling me to the sofa.
“Have I, Mrs. Warrens?” I asked Mrs. Warrens as I sat down.
“Yes, you silly thing,” Mrs. Warrens said, pouring some tea for me. “What were you about, staying downstairs for so long?”
“Nothing of much importance,” I lied, smiling. “Just dawdling.”
“Mrs. Warrens has been telling me all sorts of things!” Lydia boasted, then she turned to our new friend. “Mrs. Warrens, that means that you have to tell the stories all over again. That makes me happy, for I long to hear such stories repeated.”
“I would love that, and—”
We were interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Come in.”
The door opened and three more women entered. It was Mrs. Hawkins, Mrs. Barrett, and Mrs. O’Connor, who were also other officers’ wives.
“We knew that we heard familiar voices,” Mrs. O’Connor said giddily. They were all very pleasant women, but I liked Mrs. O’Connor the most, because she was the jolliest and had a way of bouncing into a room.
“You know that we can never stay away,” Lydia said.
“And you look happy to see us,” I responded cheerily.
“Well, this is very merry,” Mrs. Barrett said as Mrs. Warrens got more chairs for more company.
“And not the least bit industrious,” Mrs. Hawkins said, “women in your class have this strange tendency to always think sewing something that is of little use and no beauty is what gives us importance. I cannot stand to look at one more pillow being sewn for the church.”
“I agree,” Mrs. O’Connor said with a laugh, “let us talk of follies, gaiety, and harmless gossip. There is nothing wrong with wicked speech if it is done between women in a sitting room and stays there. For outside of the room, no one gets hurt!”
We all laughed.
“Thank goodness for you all,” I added, “our evening talks can be so boring, because there is little variety. One time, when our family was at a dinner party, and the men had left the room, leaving us women to talk amongst ourselves, the only thing that we women had to talk about was the best way of removing ear wax!”
“Truly?” Mrs. Barrett asked.
“Yes, it was so terrible!” Lydia remarked. “And what’s worse is that that conversation lasted for thirty whole minutes!”
“How could you stretch a conversation about nothing for that long?” Mrs. Hawkins asked.
“It derives from having no real conflicts in life,” Mrs. O’Connor remarked. “When you have nothing to complain about, the human soul becomes boring. And yet, would I give in my eventful life for the tedious living of rich people?” She laughed. “Oh, just ask me!”
“But that is quite true,” Mrs. Warrens said, “there are so many people, in this world, who need something to be angry about, because they have nothing better to do, and so their characters are shaped by having something to be mad over. And when you remove that, many people don’t know how to live. From the little I know about the aristocracy, is they need something to be angry over, but they have nothing. So, they make up reasons to be upset, and find busy nothings to vex themselves, and vex us in the process as well.”
“But I would like to be rich,” Mrs. Hawkins said.
“So would I.”
Mrs. O’Connor turned to us.
“Tell us, what is that like?” She asked, which led to us all laughing at her question.
“Faith, we are not very wealthy at all,” I remarked, through our guffaws.
“How not? From what I have seen, you live a life that I would be jealous over—if I knew how to be jealous. Thank God I don’t understand that emotion!” She giggled. “But my other flaws make up for me never entertaining that one.”
“Our estate is entailed away to the male line of our family,” I explained.
“Oh, and your parents only had girls, yes?” Mrs. Barrett asked.
“Yes,” Lydia said, “so we are always being told how, when father dies, our lives will be ruined. So, we must marry.” Here, her eyes twinkled. “And I lean more towards being the wife of an officer. It seems like the best thing to do!”
“I find myself leaning in the same direction,” I added, “especially since an officer might intimidate the male who WILL inherit Longbourn. That would be a good laugh, wouldn’t it?”
“Who is the gentleman who will inherit your home?” Mrs. Warrens asked. “Would they really be so terrible that they would turn you out of your home?”
“I’ve seen that happen before,” Mrs. O’Connor augmented, “truly, there was a man who had an estate in Sussex, and he had a son from his first wife, and three daughters with his second wife. When he died, his son inherited everything, and his father told him to make sure that he gave his second wife and his half-sisters money, for their welfare. The son promised to do so, then ignored his father’s wishes, let his wife drive his sisters and stepmother out of the house, and fend for themselves.”
Lydia and I gasped.
“No!” I gasped.
“Disgusting!” Lydia wailed.
“Is this really true?”
“Oh yes, I can prove it, because I used to be a maid in the household.”
“Really?” Lydia remarked. “Who is this family?”
“The estate is Norland Park, and it was the seat of the late Mr. Dashwood with his wife, Mrs. Dashwood. And their three daughters, Miss Elinor, Miss Marianne, and Miss Margaret. Soon after Mr. Dashwood died, his son relocated to Norland, with his horrid wife and family. Thank goodness Mr. O’Connor chose to marry me, because I couldn’t stand that woman for one more day.”
“What happened to the family of women?” I asked. “Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters.”
“They fell through the cracks of life and landed somewhere with family. They received an invitation to live in Barton Cottage, which was on the estate, Barton Park, where Mrs. Dashwood’s cousin lived, Sir John Middleton. I don’t know what their lives are like now. Hopefully, they are happy, but when you have been forced from your home, whoever knows?”
This forced me to reflect. Was I being told my near future?
“Well,” Lydia replied, “nothing would be more horrid than if our cousin, Mr. Collins, is like that. He’s a clergyman, but that never stops them from preaching one thing, and then practicing selfishness.”
“Indeed, they can often be no more or less selfish than any other man,” Mrs. Hawkins confirmed.
“Do you know if he is married?” Mrs. O’Connor asked. “If he is, he will use his wife and any children of his as an excuse for throwing six defenseless women out of their domicile, as being respectable. I always find it amusing when people destroy other people’s lives under the excuse of being ‘proper parents’; it goes to show that people only feel a tidiness to their own lives if they make other people’s lives a mess.”
“When last we heard of him,” I considered, “he was unmarried.”
“I pray, for your good luck, that he remains that way. Young unmarried men usually prefer to have some occupation to fill up their day, rather than spending it in leisure.”
* * *
When seeing how this conversation was forcing Lydia and I to reflect on our own bad fortune, Mrs. Warrens shifted in her seat.
“Come, come,” she urged, “what are we doing? We are supposed to be giving the Bennet sisters gossip and good cheer. I refuse us to not supply the service.”
“Yes,” Lydia added, “we dearly love a good laugh.”
“Even if it is merely a small thing,” I compiled.
“Well,” Mrs. O’Connor offered, “I have just the thing.” Lydia and I leaned forward, eager to hear something merry. “It is not about our husbands, but rather it is about an animal. One time, I was visiting relatives in a small village, and one woman had gotten some beautiful lace. She was told that if you sat it in milk, it would bleach the lace. She had a cat, who merely saw that there was milk in a bowl. Next thing the woman saw, it was the bowl empty and the cat gagging.”
“The cat swallowed the lace!” I deduced.
“Yes! And the women all got together and waited till the cat—excreted the lace!” We all laughed even more.
“I have a cat story myself,” Mrs. Hawkins added, “now, I do not wish to disturb you all. This story begins as being deplorable, but never fear, it ends happily. I went to visit a cousin of mine in Helstone. When I went there, I discovered that they were the scariest sort of provincial town; they still had pagan superstitions. They believed that if you wanted to get something that didn’t work out, the best way to go about it was to boil a cat alive. Its screams would give you what you desired.”
We all gasped in horror, immediately shouting out, branding those townspeople as being the vilest things alive. How could they commit to such disgusting evil to boil an animal to death, forcing it to undergo such pain? Especially when the death was so meaningless and idiotic.
“What good ending could be to that?” I asked. “Or did someone punish those people, because surely they deserved it!”
“Me,” Mrs. Hawkins replied, smirking. “I am what happened to them.” She put down her tea and became animated. “Whenever I heard that they were going to boil a cat, I hid the cat that they chose, and someone thought a demonic spirit was stealing all their cats. My cousins also helped me in this endeavor. Then I snuck a word to the new parson who had been placed there. When he discovered that people were doing this, one Sunday, he brought a basin of hot water in there. He asked one of the popular people in the parish to come forward, then he shoved their hand in the water. When they shrieked, he declared that ‘the cat suffered far worse than that’. So, every time that he heard of one of his parishioners boiling a living cat to death, he would not only dive their hand in hot water, but he would boil their hand in his fireplace. And, thus ended cat sacrifices in Helstone.”
“The fact that there were ever sacrifices is savage alone,” I extoled, overcome, “but I am happy that there was a happy ending.”
“That sort of savagery is in more than one town,” Mrs. Warrens added, “in the village I was raised, people still believed that a black cat was a sign of evil.”
“We are told that here too,” Lydia professed.
“Lies,” Mrs. Warrens professed.
“Precisely,” Mrs. Barrett supported. “I never suffered from a black cat crossing my path in the whole of my life.”
“In our area,” Mrs. Warrens continued, “my family suffered all kinds of gossip because we didn’t fear black cats. In fact, black cats always were on our property because we allowed them to stay in our barn and we fed them and gave them blankets to lay on so that they could be warm. My father’s farm never suffered any calamity at all, and my brother still runs it. We have never had bad luck a day in our lives. All my siblings have gotten married, our spouses are good people, their children are healthy, and our cows have never run mad. Black cats are bad luck? Nonsense!”
We continued talking this way for some time.
“Take my advice,” Mrs. O’Connor said, her thick Irish accent augmenting her influence, “never live your life under other people’s foolishness. And when you are foolish yourself, admit to it. That way, your mistakes will be little. As a result, innocent people and creatures won’t get caught in the crossfire of your actions.”