For her own safety, Fanny never dared to tell him that she had done what she had to please him.
Her husband had only found two tenants to replace the five who had left, which had meant that the estate’s income had fallen by more than half. With the income much lower than he had imagined it would be, Clem was often in a bad mood and in his cups almost as much.
And now here she was, with a midwife from Hatfield—both local midwives had refused to attend her—waiting for the fourth babe to be born of her body to arrive. It had to be a son this time, did it not?
After all, it had been Mr Bennet’s fault she had never birthed a son. He was dead now, so that meant that this one would be a son and heir for her husband. Clem had already picked out a name, William Clem, following the Collins way. The sons of the family alternated between Clem William, like her husband, and William Clem, as her son would be named.
Her labours began in the early morning of the twentieth day of April. Four hours later, at eight that morning, there was the squalling of a babe.
“Is it my son?” Fanny asked nervously through the exhaustion of childbirth.
“No, Mrs Collins, it is a daughter,” the midwife stated. “Your maid will clean her up while I deliver the afterbirth.” The midwife had never seen a new mother burst into tears the way this one did. Was not the birth of a healthy child a joyous occasion?
Fanny cried both out of frustration and fear that she had birthed another daughter. This time she could not claim that her late husband was deficient. She could only imagine what her husband would say, or more to the point, do, when he discovered she had not given him a son and heir. And if she intimated it was somehow his fault… That did not bear thinking about.
As she waited for his inevitable visit, Fanny decided on a tale she would tell him which may save her from his wrath, this time at least.
Collins had not allowed his manservant to wake him when his wife began her labours, as he could not care less as long as she bore him the son and heir he needed and deserved. He was a far better man than that dead Bennet, and producing a son when all his cousin had managed with his sour seed was daughters would prove Collins’s superiority once and for all.
He woke at the time he did each day and made his way down to the dining parlour. Seeing the quality of the furnishings in his house still angered him. Those damned Bennets had left him with old, rickety furniture, cracked crockery, and very old and tarnished cutlery. His wife had asked for money to redecorate, a request he had roundly refused and taught her not to ask again. It was not his fault he only had two tenants, and the estate’s income had fallen by about two-thirds.
Until he found a way to increase his income, they would have to live with what they had.
He seated himself in the master’s place at the table and rang the bell. Rather than Mrs Winters, the cook-housekeeper serving his breakfast as Collins preferred, the manservant delivered the plates and his coffee to the table.
“Where is Mrs Winters? And have you seen Mrs Collins?” Collins demanded.
“Both are in the birthing chamber, Master,” the manservant replied as he flinched. Like the other servants who worked at Longbourn, he feared Mr Collins’s volatile temper.
That explained Fanny’s absence from the table. “Ah, my wife must have delivered my son and heir,” Collins stated in a self-satisfied manner. “Tell Mrs Winters and my wife I will come and see my son as soon as I have eaten.” He waved the man away, never once thinking that he knew not if the babe had arrived yet.
Once he had satisfied his need to eat, Collins pushed the chair back and slowly made his way up to the birthing chamber on the second floor of his home. He did not knock—why should he? It was his home—and pushed the door open.
By the time Fanny’s husband arrived, the midwife had departed, and Mrs Winters exited just after he entered. “Welcome, Clem. Have you come to see your daughter? She is the most beautiful babe ever, far prettier than any of those Mr Bennet gave me,” she flattered. The truth was that she was afraid the girl would look more like her father than herself, meaning that she would be rather homely.
“You told me you would give me a son!” Collins exploded. He pulled his hand back.
Fanny knew she had to speak fast. “Mr Collins, my parents had a daughter first and then a son next. As you are even stronger and more intelligent than my late father, I am certain that now that you have been given a daughter by God that He will give you as many sons as you desire. How could it not be so when you are a far better man than the late Mr Bennet ever was?”
Collins let the words wash over him. As upset as he was that he did not have a son, he enjoyed his wife’s flattering words. She had said he was better even than her own sire and that, like her father, they would have a son next and then more than one.
He dropped his hand. Collins would not punish his wife this time as he believed there would be a son next. Although Collins had no interest in his daughter, he decided to name her. “She will be named Catherine Wilamena. The first name is for my late mother, and the other one honours my late father, William Clem Collins,” he informed his wife.
While Clem considered her words, Fanny held her breath knowing that a babe in her arms would not save her if he decided to bring his arm down on her. She let out a deep breath when he had lowered his arm. It seemed like he had accepted her words, and he had named their daughter. ‘You have three other daughters, but you abandoned them in London!’ The voice of her conscience intruded on her thoughts. Like she always did when she heard something she did not want to hear, Fanny ignored the voice in her head.
“Welcome to the world, Kitty,” Fanny cooed.
“I like that form of Catherine for our daughter. Yes, Kitty will do very well for her,” Collins decided.
When she had spoken, Fanny realised too late she had not asked Clem if he liked Kitty for Catherine. She had expected to be punished, but by a stroke of luck, he agreed that it was a good name for their daughter. One thing Fanny knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that if her next one was a girl, her life as she knew it even now, would be effectively over.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
“When I hear about the way that man treats Thomas’s former wife, I should feel sympathy for her, but with what she did to those darling girls, whatever it was, I cannot feel anything for her,” Agatha stated. “It is more than a year since she left Longbourn and returned without them, and she still will not say what she did.”
She was in bed next to her husband. They had shared a bed since the first night they had lived together as man and wife.
Thanks to the servants at Longbourn, the goings on there were well known throughout the neighbourhood. Unlike most other estates and households in the area, the servants who worked for the Collinses felt no loyalty to them and spoke freely about anything which occurred in the house. That brute had lifted his hand to a maid, and she had promptly left his employment. Word was it had taken months to employ a replacement, and not only that, but the other servants had threatened to leave. The only way they had remained was for the master of the estate to vow he would never physically harm any of them again. He still unleashed his temper but, since then, had refrained from any physical contact with those employed at his estate.
