And then a little before four o’clock, on Monday, Mr. Collins arrived with the old Bennet carriage that he’d appropriated upon inheriting the position.
When he had done them all the enormous favour of marrying Jane, Mama had done Mr. Collins the favour of tellinghim that all that was hers, was his. As a result, there had been no dividing of the estate’s property from the family’s property, and Mr. Collins had treated everything he found within the confines of Longbourn as his, to do whatever he wished with.
Upon alighting from the carriage, he came to embrace Mama. “Dear Mother Bennet. Your absence from our lives has been the saddest aspect of my otherwise happy and irreproachable life in Hunsford — though I cannot but confess that my connection to Lady Catherine serves as a sufficient recompense for the loss of your presence.”
Jane came down slower, and with a sort of heaviness to her stride. She looked quite pale, and upon reaching the bottom closed her eyes and pressed her hand against her mouth. Elizabeth went to embrace her dearest sister as Mr. Collins continued to effusively greet the rest of them.
“My dearest Jane,” Elizabeth whispered to her. “You do not look well.”
“I only require a few—” Jane broke off and suddenly vomited next to the carriage.
Elizabeth held her.
Mr. Collins glanced over, frowned and said, “Again? — if only you ate more at breakfast, as Lady Catherine counselled, you would not cast up your accounts so often.” He then grandly turned to the family. “Do not worry, do not worry. There is no reason to be concerned for our dear Mrs. Collins. It is merely a feature of her delicate condition. She found the long period in the carriage difficult. There is nothing amiss with her, and the doctor who Lady Catherine called to look at Mrs. Collins was wholly sanguine, though he did give her a small salutary bleeding. Lady Catherine always insists that if only her own doctor had been allowed to look after her own daughter during her lying in, she would have given birth without any ill effects, rather than dying from the blood flow.”
That speech gave Elizabeth’s chest a tightness of worry. She did not want to think about how her sister could die like Mr. Darcy’s wife.
And she resented Mr. Collins. Why did herhusbandcheerfully talk, and mostly ignore the retching?
Jane did not yet have that characteristic belly of women close to their confinement, and after she wiped her mouth with her handkerchief, she looked about with a healthy and clear eyed expression.
She embraced Elizabeth. “I have missed you so much!”
“I missed you as well.” Elizabeth teared up at the face of her beloved sister. “I have missed you so, so much!”
When they went into the house, Mr. Collins acted very much as the proprietor, criticizing the servants for having excessively fine ribbons and an irregularity in their uniforms — all he said was peppered with references to Lady Catherine’s endless fount of wisdom. He noted that certain of the hedges had been trimmed too far back, and that another hedge had been unevenly trimmed.
Mrs. Hill said something in her own defence, and Mr. Collins replied, “Accept your rebukes silently, and with good Christian modesty. As the Lord would have you, and as I am one of his anointed.”
“But, Mr. Collins, without Goodman to do the gardening, we cannot—”
“No, no.” Mr. Collins wagged his finger warningly in her face. “No, no. Do not make a defence of yourself. Do better in the future. I will expect when I next visit to see the hedges, and all other matters, in proper order.”
The way that Mrs. Hill’s eyes flashed at that speech made Elizabeth worry for the sanctity of Mr. Collins’s future soup.
Mrs. Hill’s excuse simply was the truth — with only four servants doing the work that used to require eleven, the housewould not stay in such good order as it could when Mr. Bennet was alive.
Before he allowed them to settle down for tea, even though it was evident to Elizabeth thatJanewished to sit again, Mr. Collins demanded a thorough tour of his sovereign domain. The silver was not adequately polished. Mr. Collins found a fresh spider web. He spent three minutes castigating Mrs. Hill forthat. The pantry was both overstocked and understocked. And in the daily schedule the dinner was served a half hour too early.
Lady Catherine had declared once that the damage to the digestion from too close proximity to the afternoon tea was inestimable.
While Mr. Collins’s frequent references to that woman had never given Elizabeth any pleasure, she now began to properly detest her.
Through it all Jane simply kept the same serene, amiable expression.
If Elizabeth had not known better, she would begin to believe her sister had been struck down by a blow that deprived her of her good sense. For her part, Elizabeth knew that she would not have been able to endure such speeches without washing away the rust that Mr. Collins had found on one of the knives with the blood of her husband.
At least she would have screeched at him, rolled her eyes, and found some way to retreat to a different room.
Unless she feared that he would beat her — though nothing Elizabeth had seen from him, including now, hinted that Mr. Collins ever behaved as a beast.
He was a petty tyrant, but Elizabeth hoped for her sister’s sake that her assessment that he was not a violent one was correct.
Jane would not discover what sort of temper he might show towards an impertinent wife, as Jane would alwayskeep that serene, content, submissive smile. That stupid smile. An expression Elizabeth found as frustrating as Mr. Collins’s speeches.
And the only thing worse than that was how Mama fawned over the gentlemen.
When they sat down to tea, he ordered toast for Jane, without giving her any chance to tell Mrs. Hill herself what she wished to have.
