Page 34 of The Cheapside Runners
Mrs Black spoke angrily, all traces of her foreign accent replaced with a lower-class cant exactly matching the reprobate’s, in a threatening, grating, tone.
“Oy, shove off, cully! She ain’t fer the likes o’ you. She ain’t in the game. Best leg it ’fore I learns ye some manners!”
“Ain’t no doxy in the ken till she’s played her hand,” hesaid blithely, apparently not the least bit worried, despite being surrounded by dozens of people, probably because most seemed intent on minding their own business.
Mary looked around desperately for the two guards and almost missed when the man screamed like a banshee. She looked over to see him on his knees, begging and blubbering for the madam to take pity on his poor old soul and let him go.
With complete nonchalance, Mrs Black waved her charges over, all traces of the cant gone from her voice, so she once again sounded slightly foreign.
“I am afraid this… hombre…” she said and punctuated it by making him scream another time. “…has disrupted my careful instruction schedule. You should not learn about thumb locks until the second week, but I may as well show you now, since he volunteered so nicely. Look carefully at how I have his thumb, and how I bend it back like so—”
She demonstrated by bending it back a few times, each of which made the ruffian scream and Miss Green giggle, until she got a good stare down from the instructor and remembered how she had cuffed the orphans upside the head and had a large grown man screaming on his knees.
For a couple minutes, she did what could hardly be considered anything short of torture to the man while patiently instructing her charges about how to make it hurt without breaking it before she finally released him and sent him running.
She turned back to her charges and spoke calmly and emphatically.
“That man committed no punishable crime, according to our legal system. However, if he were a gentleman of any means or status,I would have by defending myself.Keep that in mind. He could assault each of you in turn, and the magistrate would not lift a finger. You must learn to protect yourselves. The first step isnotputting yourself in a position where you need to defendyour own person. However, as you so clearly see, you cannot always be so lucky, so you should be prepared to do what is necessary… but ideally with less fuss. I could have broken his thumb with just a bit more pressure, wounded or killed him with my knife, or broken his arm with little more effort or risk to myself. Any of those would be messy and likely to result in a charge I would just as soon avoid; but I would not hesitate if the situation called for it, and neither should you. Now, follow me.”
All her charges stared in shocked silence, but eventually Miss Violet took off to catch up with their teacher who had outpaced them by a dozen yards, and the rest followed at a run.
At that very moment, Mary gasped in even more shock as the scales fell from her eyes, and she noticed her tutor was none other than her long-lost sister. The disguise wasbrilliant, and she doubted anyone short of a sister would be able to pierce it. That said, once she was aware of the subterfuge, the pieces came together and made sense. She noticed the thick soles and heels on her boots, as well as the fact that her dress did not move quite correctly. That made sense. Elizabeth was unlikely to have gained a stone overnight, so she was obviously padded. The earrings were like the red cape Spaniards apparently waved at bulls, something that drew the eye and distracted, as were the dark and slightly unnatural looking eyebrows. She wondered how she simulated the colour and wrinkles in her skin to make herself look older, because she could easily pass for anywhere from thirty to forty. The accent would just require practise, and the hair could be a wig or some sort of dye on her naturally dark tresses.
She wondered when any of the others from Meryton would work it out, if ever. She wondered at the purpose of the ruse, but assumed Elizabeth had even more reason to maintain her anonymity than they did, since this was clearly not her maiden voyage on the choppy waters of instructing dunderheads. Simplelogic suggested that if a fortnight had some risk to reputations, months or years just compounded the hazard.
She did not even want to think where or when her innocent looking sister had learnt servant’s cant or thumb locks.
Later in the evening, Mary worked out that this must be an unusual class and thought to ask Lizzy about it when it was over. After all, there could not be all that many families with four daughters to instruct, nor did she think it likely there were usually so many from one town; and of course, Elizabeth could only train her own sisters once, though Mary was sceptical that once would be enough for Lydia or Kitty.
She remembered that Lizzy said the course was forwealthyladies, so guessed Uncle Gardiner must be gifting it to other women in Meryton who he considered vulnerable to the militia, as they were not the least bit wealthy. She did notice that the attendees had all been consistently kind to Lizzy over the years, even though she was at Longbourn less than half the time.
She decided she had a great deal to discuss with her sister, and even hoped Elizabeth might somehow offer her an escape from Longbourn. That would obviously require her to give the course double her best effort.
~~~~~
The afternoon was spent in similar pursuits, though not all with soldiers’ wives or bad situations. In London, you could go from the grandest mansion to the meanest hovel without leaving an area half the size of Longbourn, so it was easy enough to see a wide variety in a few hours if planned carefully. Mr Darcy’s London house was closer to Cheapside than Netherfield was to Longbourn.
They saw wives of tradesmen, merchants, blacksmiths, shopkeepers, and a few others. It was not all gloom and doom. Many of the situations were comfortable—different from what they were accustomed to, but suitable enough.
It eventually sank in that Mrs Black was showing them a range of possibilities. In fact, some of the wives were gentlewomen who had deliberately chosen that route, sometimes because there was a dearth of marriageable gentlemen, where the lesson for Meryton ladies was not the least bit subtle. A few were even love matches, or cases where a lady could find better comfort in trade than gentry. Aside from the supposed loss of consequence, a banker’s wife lived far better than any but the wealthiest wives of gentlemen. Mrs Black very helpfully pointed out that if you took their status as the daughter of a gentleman and added a shilling, you could buy one meal. She even introduced them to a seventy-year-old wife of a bookseller who was happy as she could be after fifty years of marriage. It had taken her over a year to convince her father to allow the marriage, thus proving that occasionally, even a duke could be worked by a beloved daughter.
~~~~~
The very last stop of the day seemed like it would be the worst, because even the indomitable Mrs Black looked discomposed by what was in front of them.
“Be very quiet and respectful here,” she cautioned, as if they had not been doing that all day. Even Lydia had been subdued after the first visits to officers’ wives.
They entered a tiny little room in a nondescript hovel, and the smell drove half the ladies back into the street to cast up their accounts into the gutter.
They gathered at the side of a bed to observe a listless woman who looked at least a hundred years old, who barely managed to wave her hand at Mrs Black, though she made no effort at all to get up.
“Ah, Mrs Black. I wondered if I would see you again in this life.”
“Mrs Stacy,” she replied quietly. “I told you I would return.”
“Another week would have been too late, child,” she replied seemingly casually, then coughed outrageously.
“How are you?” Mrs Black asked.
