The Clergyman's Wife

by Molly Greeley

  It should not be so difficult to speak of such things, and yet my tongue is clumsy in my mouth and my neck feels hot. “I visited Mr. Travis after his father’s funeral. He was just so—very sad. And I realized that we have never spoken of your parents very much.”

  I cast a quick look at him; William appears as uncomfortable as I feel.

  “He—died not long before you came to Kent?” I say.

  “Yes.” William licks his lips. The hand holding the letter from Mr. Bennet drops slowly until the pages rest against his thighs. “I was pleased that he lived long enough to know about my new position. It is quite a step up in the world from where he began.” His glance in my direction is quick, almost furtive. “He was a grocer.”

  Until now, I have had only the vaguest notion of William’s father’s circumstances, for they are not something William seems to enjoy discussing. Lizzy once mentioned that her father called his cousin illiterate, but whether that was the literal truth or merely Mr. Bennet’s way of sneering at the elder Mr. Collins’s way of expressing himself, I do not know. Though I have often wondered whether William’s preoccupation with the grandeur of Rosings Park has anything to do with his own parents’ humble beginnings.

  “I am sure that he was very proud of you,” I venture, though in fact I am sure of no such thing.

  “I think he must have been,” William says, and then, with a little more strength, “Yes, he must have been immensely proud.”

  I nod, smile, and return my attention to my work. When he speaks, it takes me by surprise.

  “My father was a—an excellent man. He gave me every advantage he did not have himself.”

  I look up, needle poised. “Indeed?”

  “Yes.” He stands and takes up the poker, prodding at the fire, though it is already burning cheerfully. “He required the utmost respect, as was his right. His authority was absolute. But he always pushed me hard, for he knew my worth. He knew I, as the inheritor of Longbourn, needed to be ready to take my place among the higher echelons of society.” He sets the poker down, returns to his chair. His fingers steeple. “His harshness, I think, was really meant most affectionately. When I spoke to him with the deference he demanded, he was truly very affectionate.” He sighs. “If he could have but seen me dining with Lady Catherine de Bourgh herself . . . but my comfort is that at least he knew of my new position before I lost him.”

  If harshness equates to affection in my husband’s mind, then his adoration of Lady Catherine suddenly seems at once more understandable and more pitiful. I shift nearer the fire, feeling suddenly cold.

  “And your mother?” I say after a pause. “Were she and your father very like?”

  William is quiet for so long that I think he has not heard me. But then, “My good mother was gentleness itself,” he says.

  THE WIND IS brisk, the sky a hazy gray. My fingers clench tightly around the two small bouquets of pinks I cut this morning. They were the last clinging blooms of the season, most of their brethren beginning to wilt and drop their petals; but these still smell rich and spicy, like the cakes I imagined serving my son when he was old enough to enjoy them.

  I left Louisa in Martha’s care and exited the house for my yearly walk to the churchyard, a solitary tradition that I always look forward to and dread in equal measure. I passed William on my way out of the gate; his smile was pained when I told him where I was going, his eyes quickly sliding away from mine, and I wanted to strike him.

  My breath comes in erratic bursts. I avoid the churchyard throughout the rest of the year, for it would be impractical to regularly allow myself to become so completely undone. But now I walk quickly, my strides so long that I must hold the hem of my gown up with the hand not clutching the flowers. I have met no one along the way, for which I am dimly grateful.

  MY FIRST BABE was born silently into the world. I was exhausted—dazed—and it took a moment for me to realize that it had been born at all, that the crushing struggle of the past day was over. I felt something brush against my thighs but heard no cry, and for a moment I was confused, could not understand what I was feeling, what I was not hearing. Then the midwife was holding something, something red and damp with limbs that twitched, and was rubbing it, thumping its back, and everything seemed to be happening at a great distance. I had to make myself think, That is my child.

  At last it gave a cry, so faint I thought I had imagined it. “A boy,” said my mother, who had come to Hunsford to be with me during my first confinement. Her expression was twisted, strange, but my arms reached out of their own volition, and the midwife, with a glance at my mother, leaned forward to relinquish him. The navel string dragged across my softened belly.

  I understood my mother’s expression as soon as my arms closed around him. He was weightless, so small it was as if I held nothing at all. His eyes were tightly closed; when I touched his hand, his fingers shivered but did not close around my own. That first cry was more of a gasp, and now I had to stare at him, hard, to know whether or not he was still breathing. I stared and stared, watched the faint up-down movement of his belly, still joined to me by the thick string that stretched between us.

  “Charlotte,” my mother said, her voice full of all the things my mind refused to acknowledge. The breath I did not realize I was holding released, and it sounded as if I were choking. My entire body shook, perhaps from the shock of the birth, perhaps from the terrible knowledge flooding through me. “Charlotte, I am going to fetch Mr. Collins.”

  “No,” I said, the word knife-sharp. I touched my baby’s hair—it was dark, as dark as mine, and there was so much of it that it looked very strange on so small a person, as if he were wearing a poorly made wig. His chin was mine as well, distinctly pointed. My breathing was ragged. “No, not yet.”

  “I must—”

  “No.” The babe curled against my breast. There were bloody smears on the front of my shift. Though my thoughts skittered, there and gone before I could grasp them, this one thing I knew—William could not see this. I could not share this with him.

  “Charlotte,” my mother said again, bending over me, brushing my damp hair back from my temples. “My dear girl—please—he must be baptized.” I stared at her—I could not comprehend what she was saying—and she put a hand upon each of my shoulders and looked into my face. “He must be baptized now,” she said, and something inside me splintered. My mother squeezed my shoulders gently before leaving the room.

  The midwife said something in my ear, but my body was already curling forward on its own. The afterbirth emerged; she tied off the navel string; I was severed from my son. I stroked his head, pressed my nose to his hair as she moved about the room. I did not know what she was doing, and I did not care.

  When my mother reappeared with William, I could not look at either of them. I could only watch my babe’s belly rising, falling. Rising again. There was too much space between each breath, and my own breath felt trapped inside my chest. My mother murmured something, and William came forward, his tread heavy. I could see him at the edges of my vision, his hand reaching out only to retreat once more.

  “What—” he said, but broke off. I jerked my head to look at him, and he licked his lips; he was very pale, and his eyes flicked from my face, to the babe, to the pile of bloodstained linens in the midwife’s hands. “My dear—what—what is he called?”

  He looked so very lost, and I had the dim, faraway feeling that I might, under other circumstances, feel very sorry for him, for William was not made for moments like this. I held my child closer; I would not give him up, not even to his father. Poor William would never hold him. I felt as though someone had plugged my throat and chest with wool; I touched the baby’s hair, his pointed chin.

  In. Out.

  “Lucas,” I said, though it sounded like someone else’s voice, someone deeply unfamiliar. “Just as we planned, he is called Lucas.” I did not look up again. I could not stand it.

  Instead, I remained very still and held my son, and di
d not look at anybody else. A few moments later, William touched my hand where it was cupped against the back of the baby’s head, and I started away from him. “I am going to begin,” he said. I said nothing, only nodded and stared down at the tiny person in my arms, who stirred briefly at the trickle of water.

  “We thank you, Father, for the water of baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death . . .”

  I felt the catch and hold of my own breathing in too-slow time with my son’s. I was lightheaded with lack of air; my eyes burned, desperate to blink.

  “Lucas, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  From somewhere behind William, my mother murmured an echoing amen, but my own lips were incapable of forming the word.

  “Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon this your servant the forgiveness of sin . . .”

  I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe . . .

  “. . . Give him an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage and will to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you . . .”

  Shallow rise of his fragile belly. The brush of William’s shaking fingers across a wrinkled forehead, sketching the sign of the cross.

  “Lucas, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

  A howling rising up from my belly; I clamped my lips together to keep it inside, but it emerged, raw and strangled, in bits and pieces.

  THE CHURCHYARD IS shaded and silent. Some of the markers are so old they have begun to list to one side or sink deeply into the soil; others, like the one I seek, are only just beginning to weather. I reach it and set one of the bouquets aside, then kneel to place the other upon the earth. I tug at the fingers of my gloves until my hands are free and stretch out my arms to touch the stone. It is small, rough under my fingertips, engraved with only his name, Lucas Collins, and a single date.

  I did not see him buried. I listened to the knell of the church bell from my bed and clutched at a pillow with arms that longed instead to hold my child.

  I remain kneeling for long minutes, grateful for the quiet, for the solitude. I never know what to think, or what to say; my prayers are half-formed, catching in my throat. As a clergyman’s wife, surely I should be capable of praying properly for my child.

  My fingers trail across the top of the marker as I rise. My face is wet. I gather the second bouquet and turn, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand. But I am not alone; there is someone standing beside a grave on the far side of the churchyard, hat off, dark head bowed—Mr. Travis. He must have entered the churchyard while I knelt, unhearing, with my own amorphous thoughts. I am startled enough by his presence, and uncertain enough how to proceed, that I do nothing but stand and stare until it seems he must feel my gaze as a physical touch. He turns, very slowly, and nods to me, clearly unsurprised. I realize that I still have one hand to my cheek; I let it drop to my side and brush my damp palm against the side of my skirt. Then he is moving, and so am I. We walk toward one another through the quiet.

  “Mr. Travis,” I say. We have stopped under the spreading branches of an enormous oak tree, and we stand so near one another that I scarcely have to lift my voice at all to be heard. “I did not expect to see you here.”

  A stupid thing to say, even if it is true. He smiles faintly. “Nor I you. But I have come here most days, since my father . . .”

  I look down at the bouquet I am still holding. “I—these are for your father. For his . . .” I tilt my head in the direction from which Mr. Travis has come.

  Mr. Travis’s jaw hangs loose; he looks at the flowers in my hand and then at my face. “That is very good of you,” he says at last. His voice is hoarse.

  “No,” I say, too sharply. “It is the very, very least I could do.” I should have gone instantly to the Travis farm upon returning from Hertfordshire—it was pure cowardice that kept me away, and now old Mr. Travis is gone. He will never see Louisa again—Louisa will never see him again, will never again have his pure focused adoration. Guilt presses, and I turn my face away.

  There is a little silence, and then he says, “You have nothing with which to reproach yourself.”

  There are more tears falling over my cheeks. “I do,” I say. “I do—”

  He makes an abortive motion with one arm, then clasps the back of his neck. I am cloaked in shame and humiliation, but I am helpless to keep from crying. I hold my sobs behind my teeth and squeeze my eyes closed, hugging my elbows and folding forward.

  It takes long minutes to calm myself, and my breathing is still ragged when I look back at the place where Mr. Travis was standing. He is still there, though I half-expected that he would, at the very least, retreat to his father’s graveside. His brows draw together, but his mouth attempts a smile. “Come,” he says, and gestures toward his father’s grave. Then he pauses. “Unless you would prefer to offer the flowers in private?”

  “No,” I say, and he nods, and we cross the churchyard together. The wind is growing stronger, the branches above our heads creaking. His father’s grave is indicated not by a stone but by a wooden cross, carved with his name. The earth here still looks freshly disturbed. I lay the flowers at the foot of the cross and stand back, hands folded, again unsure of myself.

  “He was a lovely man,” I say at last.

  Mr. Travis half-smiles. “He certainly could be.”

  Another cross, weathered and gray, stands nearby. “Your mother?” I say, reading the name.

  He nods. “I should make her another marker. It has been too long since I replaced it.” He looks back across the churchyard to where my other bouquet rests, incongruously pink and bright in the gathering darkness. “I saw you when I came in,” he says, and in his voice is a question. “But I did not want to intrude.”

  I follow his gaze. “That is—my son,” I say.

  “A son? I am . . . I should have remembered.”

  My eyes remain fixed on the flowers marking his grave. “These things are common enough. And we were not . . . so well acquainted, then.”

  “How long—how long did you have with him?”

  I swallow. “Minutes.”

  I have not truly spoken of my son since his death. My mother is not one to discuss broken hearts, and though she cared for me as I convalesced, she thought it best to parry my need to talk about my babe with happy thoughts about the other children I would surely bear. After the burial, William came up to our room and sat with me for a moment, but he was clearly ill at ease, and we have not spoken of our first child since except for these visits, which I always mention, and which always seem to make him uncomfortable. He hovered ceaselessly, though, hovered until I longed to scream, when I was increasing with Louisa—he had been solicitous of my comfort when I carried our firstborn, but it was nothing to this. He invaded my parlor, insisted that I not walk anywhere farther from the parsonage than Rosings Park, monitored what I ate and drank, and asked Lady Catherine for advice, which she was all too happy to give, about the healthfulness of this or that food or tonic. His anxiety might have been more bearable had my own not been so high, and as we never discussed the seat of our mutual fear, I could not feel the sweetness behind his attentions, only the irritation they inspired.

  “He was too small—so very, very small,” I say now, and it is as if the words have been locked away inside of me for years, just waiting for the moment they would be allowed to burst forth. “I don’t know why. He was not very early, only a little, but . . .” The midwife had said it happens like that, sometimes, a babe born scrawny and sickly, as if it had been confined too tightly inside the womb. I take several steps away from Mr. Travis and press my hand against the thick raised bark of a tree to anchor myself, for I am suddenly too light, floatable. “And he was beautiful. I know that, I remember that, but I cannot—I wish I could still see him clearly. I wish . . .”

  He approaches. “I know,” he says, soft. “I cannot re
member my mother, really. Not the details of her. But the essentials—those remain.”

  “Yes,” I gasp out, and blink up at the treetops to ward away still more tears. The air has grown suddenly wet and heavy, thick with water droplets that do not so much fall as hang, mist-like, around us. I should return home before the rain begins in earnest, but I do not move. “Thank you—thank you for speaking with me. I appreciate it. Very much.” It is only with great restraint that I keep from fidgeting.

  Mr. Travis looks down at me, inscrutable. “I always enjoy speaking with you,” he says.

  The wind buffets me, and I shiver. “And I you.”

  A heartbeat later: “What was he called?”

  I exhale a short, stunned breath. Gratitude blooms behind my breastbone.

  “Lucas,” I say. “His name was Lucas.”

  I AM WITHIN sight of the parsonage when the rain suddenly begins falling heavily. Running, I make it inside the gate and under the eaves near the door, but here I stop and look out over the garden. Through the rain everything is hazy, and I am profoundly tired in a way that has nothing to do with physical exertion. I lean back against the wall of the house and breathe deeply of the wet air.

  Inside the house, William is no doubt in his book room. Over dinner, in a few hours, we will eat and drink together and make conversation. I will ask whether Miss de Bourgh went for a ride in her phaeton despite the threatening weather. He will say she did not. He will not ask about my visit to the churchyard. I will resent him for it.

  But something taps at my mind. When William spoke of his father, his words left me with a profound sense of sadness. I know he must feel affection toward Louisa, but it is rare that he manages to show it; perhaps it should not surprise me that he does not know how to express his grief over the son we lost. Perhaps, I think, he sits home on this day each year, remembering alone, while I make my annual walk to the churchyard. Perhaps he remembers our child’s face with increasing blurriness, as I do; perhaps he wakes sometimes with the sensation that, in his sleep, he recalled Lucas’s features with painful, perfect clarity.