The Netherfield Fire

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Had another two days gone past, this fire would have been impossible. At Mr. Darcy’s advice, Mr. Bingley had hired a local company of chimney sweeps to come through Netherfield and clean all of the fireplaces. But the housekeeper Mrs. North had not wanted her preparations for the ball to be interrupted and turned into a mess by the vast amounts of black soot dust that the cleaning would spread throughout the house. So the date had been set for after .
The night of the ball was also the coldest night of the year so far, and while the air was clear, there was a strong wind, and in the late hours of the night temperatures had fallen well below freezing. In the ballroom, the exercise and presence of so many sweaty bodies kept everyone warm. But the guests who retreated to the library to play cards were required to pile the fire high with logs and then stir it hot to maintain their comfort.
And then the ash of many years burst into flame.
It was a half hour past the end of supper, and Elizabeth was pleasantly engaged in a dance with Colonel Forster, and teasing him about the friend of Lydia’s who rumor claimed he was engaged to be engaged with, when the screaming shouts of fire began.
Shouts followed by screams, and the thick smell of smoke.
Everyone began to flee towards the exits of the building, Elizabeth included.
The fabulous Netherfield ballroom was set on the first floor, that is, for the colonials amongst my readers, on the upstairs floor, the one directly above the ground floor. Some few of the male guests took this situation as an excuse to laughingly climb out the balcony and down the trellises to the ground to avoid the crush. From the ground they could see clearly that the building around one of the chimneys had caught fire, and the flames were leaping red, and spreading rapidly.
Mr. Darcy’s sharp commanding voice cut through the screams, as he organized people in lines, quickly, quickly running down the stairs to escape. He ordered the gentlemen of the community to organize a proper bucket brigade from the pump in the kitchen to try to save the building. Mr. Darcy had been born to command, and even though much of the community disliked him as an arrogant and highhanded man, in this situation all of them did what he ordered him to without question.
It was then, as Elizabeth had reached her turn down the stairs and out to safety, that she remembered Rose, trapped in her room, only able to hobble around on crutches. She was possibly asleep with no notion of what was happening.
Elizabeth’s first thought was terror for the servant.
Surely the housekeeper would remember to send some footmen up to retrieve her .
Mrs. North was downstairs already; Elizabeth had seen her running down as one of the first.
With a scared feeling in her stomach, Elizabeth turned and ran the other way, up the stairs to where she remembered the servant’s room was.
In a timber frame building, a fire hot enough to light the heavy timbers could spread extremely rapidly, and the smoke and fumes will often choke and suffocate a victim long before the burning flames can catch and sear flesh.
The smoke was already billowing and thick when Elizabeth reached the uppermost floor. She cried out, “Rose, Rose, are you still here?”
She began coughing.
Elizabeth ran to where she thought Rose’s door was.
The handle felt hot to her touch.
The door was hurled open from the other side, and Rose’s face, barely visible in the smokey dark loomed pale before her.
“The house is aflame! Fire! Fire!”
The frightened girl hurried through the door, leaving everything behind in her room.
Elizabeth supported Rose as she hopped to keep from using her leg to the head of the staircase. But here came the problem — it takes a fair amount of skill to be able to move down a staircase with only one functioning leg. It is near impossible to do so at speed. Rose had not yet developed that talent.
Elizabeth, unfortunately, had nothing like the strength to pick up and carry the other girl, who was in any case several inches taller and ten pounds heavier than Elizabeth’s slim frame.
The sounds of cracking and breaking came, and the smoke grew thicker.
Elizabeth supported Rose, and with her other hand she supported herself on the bannister as Rose hopped down one step after another.
Slow. So agonizingly slow.
Everything was hotter, and hotter. The bannister was painful to the touch.
It had become hard, nearly impossible to breathe.
They reached the landing.
Flames were visible down the hallway, leaping and orange, and consuming the floor. The flames were coming closer.
The two rushed to the next line of stairs, it was like a furnace, as if the staircase had become a chimney itself, funneling the hot air up.
Step by step, Rose hopped down, going as fast as she possibly could. Sweat poured down their faces. They coughed step by step from the smoke.
Then Rose missed a step in her desperation, and holding Elizabeth’s hand, she pulled them both tumbling to the bottom.
Elizabeth struck her head against the bannister, and for a moment she was stunned and did not know which way was up. She hurt. She was bruised everywhere, but she realized she could stand. Rose moaned, gripping at her leg. Rather than trying to stand again, Rose started to crawl forward in the direction they thought the last flight of stairs was.
The air was easier to breathe closer to the ground.
Elizabeth’s lungs burned. An idle thought passed through Elizabeth’s mind that she should abandon Rose here so they did not both burn. The excuse crossed her mind then, I will get some strong men who can carry you down.
That would be an excuse.
The building was entirely aflame. She could see the portrait of the baronet’s father, Sir Clement, his sneering face curling to a black crisp across the hallway.
Fast, fast, or they would both die here.
Elizabeth wondered if she was about to die.
She stood up, and then made an effort to drag Rose across the floor towards where she thought the stairs were, as she could not see them.
Her feet burned through the leather slippers from the heat in the wood.
And then, a painting fell off from the wall, falling onto her face, and Elizabeth screamed in pain, as the glowing red metal of the frame sat against her face for a second before bouncing on her arm and falling away.
She fell to the ground.
Elizabeth tried to force herself to stand, but she could not. She smelled hair burning.
Everything was dim, and then a hoarse, yet still commanding voice cut through the dimness. “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Miss Elizabeth, are you here!”
Mr. Darcy’s voice!
For some reason that she could not understand, Elizabeth felt entirely relieved, and much of her panic left as she shouted out again and again, choking on the thick roiling smoke.
“Here! Here!” both she and Rose called out.
There was a long moment, a moment in which she feared that she had hallucinated Darcy’s voice, or that he could not hear her over the fire.
She coughed hackingly, and she and Rose crawled forward further on the hot floor that now burned their fingers.
Mr. Darcy appeared through the smoke from behind them. His face was wrapped in his cravat to protect him from the smoke.
He pulled Elizabeth to her feet, and then without any seeming effort he picked Rose up with just one arm, and at a run he pulled Elizabeth along behind him, running in the opposite direction from that which their confused crawling had taken them.
They reached the grand staircase in the entry hall, and Darcy ran down it carrying Rose, somehow not falling, Elizabeth stumbled behind him, though one of her feet seemed sprained and she half hopped on it, not feeling anything.
A step cracked under the weight of Mr. Darcy and his burden, the wood underneath eaten through by flames, and as he passed an orange flame burst up in front of Elizabeth, lashing at her eyebrows.
Darcy reached the bottom, and he shouted out, and handed his burden to someone else standing near the entrance. He ran back up the stairs, and picked Elizabeth up from where she was stumbling and coughingly trying to make her way down.
His arms were strong, and she felt completely safe, even though they were still in the burning structure.
And then wreathed by flames and smoke, both coughing, he rushed through the wide open doors carrying her, and behind them, it seemed merely a second later, there was a resounding crash as one of the wooden support beams for the roof collapsed, with an enormous clatter, and a new burst of flames.
Elizabeth had no notion of where she was, only that Mr. Darcy still held her. She vaguely heard hundreds of voices around them. The air was cool. So blessedly cool after the heat of the past minutes.
There was something about how Darcy held her, as he talked to others, saying things that Elizabeth could not understand, that made her believe that he did not want to put her down.
She did not want to be put down.
But Mr. Darcy, after he walked her far enough away from the building that she could barely feel the heat any longer, placed her gently down on the softest patch of lawn he could find. Darcy pulled his coat off to give her a pillow. He looked at her intently in the flickering flames.
His face was tight and full of emotions.
“Oh. Elizabeth.” He gripped her hand. “It will be well — I am sure. A physician. Just lie here. Just lie here, we’ll have a physician for you, and all will be well.”
Her face and arm now screeched with pain. She felt burnt all over, and everything hurt.
“Do you promise?” Elizabeth did not even understand why she asked him.
Darcy looked down at her with dark serious eyes. She would always remember the way he looked at her at that moment.
And then Mama and Papa found her, and Mrs. Bennet wailed, “Oh! Oh! My beautiful daughter mutilated! Oh! Oh!”
With a final squeeze of her hand Mr. Darcy left, and she heard his voice, hoarse from the smoke, calling out commands once more.