Chapter Eighteen
Papa did not somuch suggest the walk the next morning as seize upon it.
“Mr Collins,” he said, rising with an alacrity that startled the table, “you must excuse me. I have promised myself a turn about the grounds before the day escapes me entirely.”
Collins was already on his feet. “How gratifying! I find that walking, when undertaken in sober reflection—”
“—is best accomplished alone,” Mr Bennet finished cheerfully. “Do enjoy the morning.”
And with that, he vanished through the door.
There was a brief silence.
Elizabeth felt it first—not awkwardness, precisely, but a faint foggy sensation, as though the very air in the room had grown less accommodating.
“Well,” Collins said, clasping his hands. “Perhaps the ladies would care to accompany me into Meryton? It would be quite improper for a gentleman newly arrived in the neighbourhood not to make himself visible.”
Lydia was already reaching for her bonnet. Kitty followed. Jane hesitated only long enough to glance at Elizabeth with a question in her eyes. Elizabeth smiled reassuringly—indeed, she would go, because refusal would have required explanation. They set off at once.
Mr Collins took the place beside Elizabeth with an air of decision, as though the arrangement had been settled in advance. His stride refused to find a common measure—too brisk for Jane, too lingering for Elizabeth—so that she was obliged either to hasten or be left a half-step behind. He corrected for this constantly, edging closer as he spoke, his shoulder nearly brushing her sleeve.
“And it is my firm conviction,” he was saying, “that propriety, once established, must be upheld with consistency. One cannot allow uncertainty to creep in where duty has already been so clearly defined.”
Elizabeth murmured what courtesy demanded and fixed her gaze ahead.
He continued without pause. Of obligations. Of family arrangements. Of… nothing of substance, really. The full summary of any actual points he made could have been voiced in a handful of words, but he chose instead to ladle them on rather more generously.
But it was his voice that grated the most. It had a particular quality when he warmed to a subject—flat, yet earnest, and unyielding, each sentence laid atop the last as though he were building toward a conclusion that permitted no alternative.
She listened. Or tried to.
The difficulty did not announce itself at once. It began as a faint compression, deep behind her ears, as though the space around her head had grown subtly smaller. His words reached her clearly enough, yet seemed oddly displaced—too near and too far at once.
She shifted her attention to the road. The hedgerow. Jane’s profile a few steps ahead.
The sensation persisted. Similar to yesterday’s faint headache, but worse. She shook her head experimentally, and the pressure branching across her forehead grew no worse, no better.
Mr Collins leaned nearer, lowering his voice with confidential gravity. “In matters of inheritance, especially, one must be prepared to act decisively. Hesitation serves no one.”
The pressure sharpened—not pain, not dizziness, but a firm internal protest that had nothing to do with her thoughts or temper. Sound hollowed. His voice dulled into vibration rather than meaning, each word arriving with uncomfortable force, as though striking a single point just inside her skull.
Elizabeth slowed without intending to. She brought a hand up, fingers pressing instinctively to her ear, and turned her head away from Mr Collins.
As if he were to blame for her sudden earache! How Papa would laugh at the notion. Why, that was preposterous. She was overtired. Should not have undertaken such a long walk so soon. That was all.
Yet when she straightened, and he fell briefly silent, the pressure eased at once—retreating, not gone, but diminished enough to breathe.
Elizabeth frowned.
Voices did not behave like this. Proximity did not produce sensation. Words did not create screaming pain in one’s ear all on their own. And yet the moment heresumed—earnest, uninterrupted—the nerve-biting pain crept back again, clear and unmistakable.
“…a duty I have long considered with the utmost seriousness,” he was saying, hands folded before him as he walked, his tone warm with self-approval. “One must, after all, look beyond personal inclination when Providence has laid out one’s responsibilities so plainly—”
“Naturally,” Elizabeth said, digging a finger against the side of her neck just below her ear. Perhaps the pressure could be shifted...
“It has always been my belief,” he continued, “that a proper sense of obligation, once embraced, is a source of great comfort. There is relief in knowing one’s course has been determined—arranged, if you will—by wiser authority than one’s own—”
Something twinged behind her left ear this time.
