The reaction was not feigned, so Phillips judged that the man across from him was unaware of his wife’s situation. He was initially hesitant to say anything knowing that his former sister-in-law would pay in blood, but it could not be helped. The clodpole before him had to be disabused of attempting to pass off another’s son as his own. “The midwife was very vocal about it before she left Meryton after the birth of your second daughter. Your wife can never bear a child again.”
Collins felt a cold fury grip him, but he could not turn his anger on the man opposite him; that lesson had been learnt.
Ignoring the man’s contorted face, Phillips pushed another document forward. “Sign this; it acknowledges I have informed you what is to happen and when you must vacate the estate. It is your right to employ a barrister and challenge this in the Court of Chancery. You will lose, and I suspect you cannot afford to do so.” Seeing the man was frozen where he sat, Phillips repeated his order, this time opening and closing his fist.
Collins signed. He was given a copy of the entail document, the order of termination of his lifetime tenancy, and a copy of what he had signed. He stood, marched out of the office and made for the tap room at the Red Lion Inn.
He paid for four tankards of porter[3]and was soon feeling the effects of the grog. He had a wife to deal with.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
With her husband away from the house, Fanny was in the nursery enjoying some quiet time with Kitty and Lydia when Mrs Winters entered and delivered some sandwiches for them to enjoy while Mr Collins was away.
Before the cook-housekeeper left, they all heard the crash of the front door being thrown open and the sounds of a raging Mr Collins.
“Mrs Winters, take my daughters, go down the servants’ stairs with them and get them out of the house. I have never heard him so angry; they must be kept safe,” Fanny pleaded as they heard doors being thrown open on the ground floor.
Without delay, Mrs Winters led the petrified girls to the servants’ stairs.
So that Mr Collins would see her and not look for his daughters, Fanny stood on the second floor landing so that she would be observed from the ground floor.
Once he exited the drawing room, in his fury, Collins looked up and saw the lying jezebel standing there on the second floor. He stomped up the stairs, but it took a lot out of him with the speed he was climbing up to the floors above. By the time he reached her on the second-floor landing, he was sweating profusely and very much out of breath. Seeing that his wife stood perfectly still and did not cower or flinch, only made Collins that much more infuriated.
All he wanted was to punish her in the worst way. “You lying bitch,” Collins spat out as he drew both hands back, ready to pummel her with his fists.
The brute was standing between Fanny and the bannister. She felt a calmness descend all over her as she made the last decision she would in the mortal world, one which would protect her girls. It would not atone for what she did to her other three daughters, but it was a start.
She was making a decision to abandon two more daughters, but this time it was done to save their lives.
While Collins was off balance as he got ready to hit his wife harder than he ever had, his eyes got huge as she threw herself at him. The force of the collision threw him back against the wooden bannister.
It had been decades since the woodwork of the bannister had been changed or strengthened. As such, it simply cracked and gave way as the weight of two people, one of them on the obese side, hit it. The last thing Mr or Mrs Collins felt in the mortal world, with their bodies entwined, was falling toward the ground floor from a height of more than twenty feet.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
Mrs Winters heard the terrible noise, and then silence; no voices, nothing. “Miss Kitty and Miss Lydia, wait here. Sit on the swing and I will be right back.”
Used to following any order without question, the two girls slid onto the seat of the swing hanging from the ancient oak tree. It had been years since Kitty’s father had allowed her on the swing; for Lydia, it was the very first time.
As she approached the open front door, Mrs Winters stopped every few steps to listen and make sure the master was not making a sound. Eventually she reached the door and tentatively poked her head into the house. Seeing the Collinses, unmoving and lying on the floor next to the stairs, it was certain that neither was alive. Mrs Winters withdrew her head and cast up her accounts into the shrubs near the front door. She pulled herself together and made her way around the corner to the park, where the two girls obediently sat on the swing.
She took one hand of each of the shells of girls the two had become living in such a house. It was a place where they had to hide from their father as much as possible, and as much as their mother had tried to hide her suffering from them, they had heard their mamma’s cries caused by their father’s hands.
With as much speed as she could with girls of six and three, Mrs Winters made for the only place she could think of—Mr Phillips’s law office.
Jamison had been working on a brief when an older woman with two small girls, who were not dressed for the cold of the winter, entered the office. His eyebrows shot up in question.
“I must see Mr Phillips; it is extremely urgent.” Mrs Winters had calmed her shaking long enough to be coherent.
Phillips stepped out of his office. He had never seen Mrs Collins’s daughters before, but he was relatively sure he was looking at them. “What is all of this about?” he demanded to know.
“Sir, we need to speak behind a closed door; something terrible has happened at Longbourn.” Mrs Winters slid her eyes to the two girls.
There was a feeling of dread in Phillips’s belly. “Please follow me… Mrs or Miss?”
“Mrs Winters, Sir. Iwasthe cook and housekeeper, although the latter was in name only, at Longbourn. Mr Collins came back in the worst of moods…” Mrs Winters told all she knew.
“JAMISON!” Phillips yelled.
