She excused herself to Charlotte, stood, walked to the tea table to refill her half-empty cup, and returned only as far as to the left of Georgiana’s chair. This manoeuvre was preparatory in defence of the expected onslaught to her sister-in-law’s delicate sensibilities.
Mr. Collins barely glanced at his cousin, so enthralled was he in his confidences with Miss Darcy. (His profuse adulations for the wife of Mr. Darcy were abandoned as soon as he espied, shall we say, new opportunistic waters to troll.)
He said, “I cannot tell you what fortune it is, Miss Darcy, that indeed, I just happen to have upon my person a few story notes I had once considered elabourating upon myself. I should not flatter myself to think, had I the time, that I might do them the justice as one of your talent. But I should be most honoured if you did me the honour of taking them under advisement for your own use.” (Occasionally, Mr. Collins’s enthusiasm for station lapsed into repetitious use of gratitude.)
Until only recently blessed with a mere nodding acquaintance with the vicar, Georgiana said politely, “I thank you, Mr. Collins, how kind.”
Had she known him better, she might well have fled the room. As it was, she sat still as a stone, betrayed only by her eyes, which commenced to blink with rapidity. Mr. Collins pressed a handkerchief to his perpetually moist upper lip and glanced to either side before continuing, perchance to make certain there was no nefarious blackguard skulking about Kirkland in employment of stealing his plots.
With great foreboding, Elizabeth put a hand of reassurance upon Georgiana’s shoulder. For Mr. Collins pulled a stack of notepaper thick enough to pad a sofa from beneath his waistcoat (scattering a few tiny little tributes to men of rank as he did). Did he, Elizabeth wondered, actually carry these about in the unlikely hope of finding such an opportunity? Apparently. And she could not argue his perseverance, for opportunity was surely thrust before him.
Holding the first page up, he announced, “My first is a story of a virtuous but poor vicar, of chaste heart and pure thoughts, who falls in love with the daughter of a villainous earl.”
He took that paper from the top of the stack and moved it with an impressively silly flourish to beneath. At that, Elizabeth’s fingers dug ever-so-slightly into her sister-in-law’s shoulder in obvious mortification of her cousin’s unceasing, and newly appreciated, gall.
“How nice,” Georgiana said.
A keen lack of interest from his audience was understood by Mr. Collins to mean he should lengthen his recitation rather than desist. This, because he was under the profound misconception (one of many it would seem) that if one is operating at a loss, doubling one’s effort will increase one’s profit, not double one’s depletion.
He read from the next, “This one tells of a poor but virtuous” (as opposed to virtuous but poor) “vicar who is thwarted from literary aspirations by a depraved plagiarist, persecuted by society envious of his refinement, and forced to flee civilised society…”
Mr. Collins had to take a breath here, for his chest was actually obliged to heave as his words conjured for him the vision of the aggrieved, virtuous, and literate clergyman of his story.
There were many, many more. As he read from each and every single piece of paper, it was obvious, had one had the poor judgement to hope otherwise, that there was a profound similarity betwixt his heroes and heroines. Beyond honour, valour, virtue, beauty, and abhorrence of the tithe system, they all had an unrelenting deficit of wit. This was undoubtedly inherited by them from their author who had the same deficit, but, alas, none other of those sterling qualities he bequeathed his characters (save objection to the tithe question).
“And this one!”
Mr. Collins’s voice raised an octave in his excitement of having, after three-quarters of an hour, reached his favourite.
“This one is about a devout, modest, and unusually handsome vicar who is forced to take leave of his of home to save England in some manner. There are a few story details to be worked upon that one, of course.”
“I do beg your pardon, Mr. Collins. Could you possibly forgive me? I have just come down with a most excruciating head-ache.”
Attempting to quit the room, Georgiana pressed the back of her fingers to her forehead in true distressed heroine fashion.
Elizabeth had let go of her shoulder as she stood and stepped back. But she had the good sense to keep the chair betwixt herself and Mr. Collins, uncertain she could overcome the intense need she had to strike him.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Mr. Collins said as he stood and bowed. “Perhaps I have bestowed too much anticipation upon you. Could I just entrust these memoranda with you? Do use them at your convenience.”
“No, no,” he insisted when she demurred. “Take them. I have several copies.”
Georgiana retreated from the room clutching the papers. As she did, Elizabeth turned away and gulped down half a cup of hot tea. (And whether that peculiar little noise she emitted was from searing the roof of her mouth or perturbation, we shall never quite know.)
Mr. Collins sat down and looked about to the others in the room (which had been forsaken within the previous half-hour by all but Jane, Bingley, Charlotte, and Elizabeth), oblivious to their silence. With an expression of satisfied benevolence upon his face, he gazed about the room. Whilst he looked about, he could not quite contain his glee. Nudging Charlotte, he whispered excitedly to her.
“I wonder which of my stories she will choose.”
His wandering musings drawing his attention to the far corners of the room, he did not see Charlotte gift him a look of stifled mortification (one she had perfected by reason of a great deal of practise).
Hence, he asided to her again, “Perhaps she will dedicate the book to me!”
Thereupon, he set about a low conversation, more with himself than Charlotte, “Perhaps I shall send Miss Darcy a note suggesting just that. It will save her the trouble of thinking of it.”
Because he was not yet looking at Charlotte, he did not see her eyes had not left him, but her usual complacent gaze had mutated into a stare of confounded incredulity.
Yet contemplating, he said, “If she offers me compensation, I shall certainly refuse it.”
Charlotte eyes widened when, upon reconsideration, he said, “Perhaps a small gift of money. That would not be unchristian, would it?”
He looked at his wife for her Christian assurances. Because her face was just inches from his, it startled him. He turned his head carefully about to face the others in the room, drew his handkerchief from his sleeve, and mopped his forehead and upper lip. If his wife’s look was cautionary, it did not find its duty for long. For he reached down to retrieve the little pieces of paper that had fallen from his lap to the floor.
Thereupon, he dropped them, one at a time, onto his outstretched, upturned palm. Moreover, as he did, he was already composing Miss Darcy’s note in his mind.
This Collins encounter was mercifully brief, Elizabeth and Georgiana immediately conjuring a reason to return to Pemberley. The excuse had something to do with Georgiana’s extended head-ache, and if it was somewhat convoluted, no one at Kirk-land (save Vicar Collins) questioned it.
Elizabeth knew she had abandoned Jane, but Pemberley had weathered a purgatorial visit from her cousin once that year. She had a strongly held belief that had God chosen to punish her in some fashion, Mr. Collins would again be upon her own doorstep instead of her sister’s. (Even in so strong as their sisterly bond, it was unspoken that in some matters, ’tis every sister for herself.)
The full humour of this entire episode had been lost upon Elizabeth, until, under the protectiveness of distance, the retelling exposed it. The audience for this was Darcy, who had begged stay behind at Pemberley to oversee construction of a small dam. Missing company with Mr. Collins was fortune in itself; Elizabeth’s droll retelling merely compounded his felicity.
This conversation came from horseback. They had ridden out west of the house to give Elizabeth opportunity to admire the wo
rk, which she did as effusively as recent company of Mr. Collins would allow.
“I fancy I was far too much in fear of your sister’s sensibilities, but I truly thought it possible such an encounter with Mr. Collins might frighten her from ever entering society again. Her poise was more than admirable and far better than my own.”
“We have finally found one meritorious quality of your cousin, Lizzy. He can rid a home of extended guests more hastily than the threat of the plague. We should remember that if we have any visitors to overstay their welcome. We shall but tell them that we are entertaining the notion of inviting Mr. Collins. Pemberley will become suddenly deserted.”
Upon returning their horses mid-afternoon, they espied Georgiana sitting in the shade with several youngsters (including John Christie, who looked quite conspicuous amongst the other prepubescent lads).
“There seems to be no end to my sister’s ambitions. She writes the books and teaches the illiterate to read them,” Darcy said as he alit from Blackjack.
Although he did not say it particularly meanly, Elizabeth (obviously not recollecting what one should do with sleeping dogs) thought to further his sister’s argument in favour of teaching at least so large a charge as John Christie to read.
“I cannot speak for the other boys, but John is surprisingly bright. He grew up in London and has told us that we only think we have seen misery in this county.”
Elizabeth had been to London, yet Darcy knew she had never come close to seeing the squalor that existed in certain sections of that city. Even he had not seen the worst, but could remember some sights he passed that he wished he had not.
As he helped her down from Boots, he said, “If this London boy tells you many more of ghastly stories you shall no doubt be opening alms houses there, Lizzy.”
Laughing at the perspicuity of that particular truth, she reassured him there was no such possibility.
She added, “Though he did live in town before he came here, he’s not truly a London boy. I understand that his mother once worked at Pemberley. Perchance you remember her. What was her name? I do not recall. It is said she was of red hair. Can you imagine that swarthy boy’s mother being of such colouring? It was Agnes or Abby. A chambermaid, I believe.”
Startled at hearing the reference from Elizabeth, of all people, he corrected her automatically, “Abigail.”
Thereupon, his countenance crimsoned, realising it would be unusual for him to have remembered something so well, for so long. Even with the understanding, be it lady or gentleman, it is rarely forgotten to whom one sacrificed one’s virginity, he certainly did not want to announce to Elizabeth a connexion substantially greater than the one she supposed. It was fortunate that her thoughts had drifted, for she turned and bid him to repeat himself.
He cleared his throat and asked mildly, “You say she had a situation here?”
She nodded, but as he had nothing else to add to her colloquies, the subject was rested. Yet he felt a certain unease. One he did not understand.
By the next day, a feeling of impending doom had overtaken him so compleatly, he looked heavenward upon occasion to catch sight of the cloud. After vacillating upon it for several hours, he decided to go to the one person whose mind kept meticulous record of such things.
Mrs. Reynolds was seated in the dining-room with the second best set of silver in front of her. Half lay in a velvet-lined, rosewood box, the others in a newly polished row upon the table.
It was awkward to bring up. He laboured upon just how to do it before finally coming right out with it.
“Is it your understanding that the mother of the foot-boy, John Christie, was once in service here?”
Mrs. Reynolds replied matter-of-factly that, indeed, she knew of the boy’s mother, for she had worked there as a chambermaid for six months. Her Christian name was Abigail, maiden name Christie. She departed Pemberley with child and in disgrace. This recited, she exhaled upon a serving spoon and polished away the vapour of her breath before making a cryptic addendum.
“That boy is not the twenty years he claims. For ’tis said he is the child she carried and it was not eighteen summers ago she left.”
As he listened, Darcy turned to the window. In the hollow silence that followed this revelation, he could hear her as she carefully set down one fork, selected another and rubbed it with her felt cloth, put that one down and repeated the process.
If there was one thing for which the old woman had an uncanny knack, Darcy knew, it was remembering dates.
Another was second sight upon the doings of the other servants. If she said it, it was thus. And with that understanding, his thoughts began to race, returning him to a time of which he had not thought for many years.
It was initially indistinct. Then, gradually, a few aspects drew clearer. As those were ruled by immoderate libido, he endeavoured to concentrate upon the more nebulous ones. Specifically time in conjunction with events.
The one thing that was inescapable, Abigail’s dismissal was immediately upon the heels of his father uncovering they were engaging in carnal rites. He imperceptibly shook his head, not wanting to admit what appeared to be a certainty. In that denial came a recollection. When she first looked upon the boy, Elizabeth had made a remark about his countenance. Odd that such a small comment would have stayed with him. But he remembered quite clearly. She had said the boy reminded her of how he might have looked at that age. And if he were honest with himself, he could see a similarity of colour and build even then.
Somewhere in the distance, he heard Mrs. Reynolds’ voice yet speaking, but he did not hear what she said. He was desperately trying to recall the events of that year, the year he lay with Abigail. He endeavoured to remember what year it was, how old he had been. Thereupon, he reminded himself it did not matter what year, for it was the year Abigail departed Pemberley and no other.
Elizabeth found him late that afternoon sitting in his library. He was at his desk, but his chair was half turned toward the waning light of the window. His elbows rested upon the arms of his chair, his forefingers steepled against his lips. Slowly, they tapped.
Evenfall was upon them and she almost overlooked his presence there, for he had made no effort to light the room. She asked him if he was well. He turned to her, lost in thought, not answering for a moment. Thereupon he stood, and with a slight shake of his head, gave her his attention, declared himself quite well, and inquired only as to the supper menu.
In a few days’ time, he saw a repetition of the impromptu schoolroom under a spreading oak, this time more at sunder. For it was just Georgiana there—and John Christie. She laughed at some jest he had made at his own expense. Darcy spoke sharply to her, her name, nothing more. But it was called much more sharply than he intended.
At his side walked Elizabeth, who at this eruption turned upon her husband’s face with puzzlement troubling her brow. And, because of his outburst, she could only believe her husband intractable about whom his sister befriended. If she thought him implacable and severe, it was not as he wished, but he saw no choice. The expression upon Georgiana’s face did pain him, but the spectre of John Christie’s paternity was a haunting one. To see his dear, good sister consorting with proof of his own lascivious conduct was unacceptable. He would not have it.
At his reproof, Georgiana’s distress was obvious. However, Darcy did not witness John Christie’s. For, if he had, he might have seen the boy’s fallen countenance betray full understanding of the master’s implication of tone and hastily turn away.
In his very few years of living at Pemberley, John had altered a great deal, and then again, not at all.
His declared years of twenty were not betrayed by the truth of mere ten and seven, for he was the tallest of the grooms by nearly a quarter-foot. He had a far better view of Edward Hardin’s sandy hair than of that man’s dimpled chin. There was even talk he might be promoted to footman, if Mrs. Hardin could but put some flesh on his bones, for he was yet quite slim.
So
lean was he, Mrs. Hardin teased him that he cast no greater shadow at four than noon. This jest was usually in encouragement of him to take a second helping, for he often partook of meals with them.
He had grown in height if not breadth and had to shave three times a week, but had not changed one smidgen in demeanour. His expression was still deliberately bland. Indeed, it might have been no bother at all to convince others of his placidity was it not for his eyes. Those denuding culprits were accentuated with an unruly tangle of dark lashes, but that was not why they were remarkable. They were farouche and fierce in one fell swoop. His countenance exposed nothing of him, but his eyes manifested all. Had he known that, he would have been most displeased.
His posture spoke him shy, not because of a stoop, for he stood quite straight. However, he walked, stood, partook, and in all likelihood, slept, with his face cast down, rarely holding anyone in his gaze. Hence, his eyes had little opportunity to forcast the shades of his mind. Nor did his voice. He rarely spoke. And never if a head-shake, nod, or shrug might suffice. Upon those occasions when he was provoked to speak, even the keenest of ears strained to hear him.
As he grew, his voice did not strengthen, only deepened, and never did its softness quite escape the incongruity of east London’s rough dialect. That was how he might have been described was someone moved to do it: tall, head down, silent. For the first few years at Pemberley, little scrutiny was paid to him at all. That suited him very well, thank you. For never had he allowed himself to escape penitence for the horses that died in the stable fire. Albeit it was not public dishonour he bore, for it was never told. However, that no one knew of his part in it did not keep him from taking a firm seat in his own purgatorial house of guilt.
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