“I have not had an opportunity to just sit and watch a baby play since my nephew was small, and that was nearly thirty years ago, now.” Mrs. Fitzgibbon chews her own bread slowly, and her tongue darts out to lick a drip of preserves from the corner of her mouth. “Only one of my own babes lived more than a week. It makes me feel quite young, having this clever girl to dote upon.”
Old Mr. Travis said something remarkably similar just yesterday, when Louisa and I called at the farm. “She makes me forget about my aches,” he said. “If my son would only marry and give me grandbabies, I’d probably live forever.”
The son in question, who had come into the back garden for a few minutes away from his labors, merely rolled his eyes to the treetops.
“How many children did you have?” I ask Mrs. Fitzgibbon now.
She does not take her eyes from Louisa. “Six,” she says. “May they rest.”
I swallow. “Louisa’s grandmother lives fifty miles away and cannot spoil her as much as she’d like,” I say at last. “So you may dote on her as much as you choose.”
Louisa tips the basket over so thread, squares of fabric, and buttons tumble together onto the floor. She looks at us and smiles as if she just did something hugely clever.
MRS. BAXTER, LOOKING a little harried, meets us at the door when Louisa and I return to the parsonage. “Lady Catherine has come to call,” she says. “Mr. Collins has been asking after you.”
“How long has she been here?” I say. “And where is Martha?” I remove my bonnet and touch my cap to make sure it is straight.
“Not long,” the housekeeper says. She reaches out to take Louisa from my arms. “Martha and I were cleaning the carpets—I will give Louisa to her now.”
I am already making for the front parlor. From behind the closed door, I can hear the muffled sound of Lady Catherine’s voice. “Tea?” I say, looking back at Mrs. Baxter.
“Yes, ma’am. And cakes, the lemon ones her ladyship prefers.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Baxter.”
I pause to smooth my gown and inspect my hem to ensure it is not too dusty from my walk. When I open the parlor door, I find Lady Catherine ensconced in one chair and William perched across from her on another, his body positively humming with anxiety. He leaps to his feet when I enter, clapping his hands together with an expression of clear relief.
“My dear! Where have you been? As you see, her ladyship has paid us the compliment of a visit—”
I curtsy to Lady Catherine. “I apologize for not being here to receive you, Your Ladyship.”
Lady Catherine sniffs but otherwise does not appear unduly put out. I sit down, and William does likewise. “I came to speak with Mr. Collins about Sunday’s sermon,” she says. “Last week’s was rather . . . uninspiring.”
“I must again humbly beg Your Ladyship’s pardon,” William says. He is leaning forward in his chair, his eyes so wide that they bulge in their sockets. I look away, pity and disgust mingling in my belly, and take up my whitework, careful to hold the needle in the manner in which her ladyship previously advised I should.
It is easy to ignore most of the conversation and keep my eyes on my stitches, until at last Lady Catherine turns her attention to me, cutting William off midsentence.
“And where have you been today, then, Mrs. Collins?” she asks. She takes a bite of cake and looks at me expectantly.
I glance at William, who has drawn back into his chair and is staring down at his hands, which are gripping his knees. Then I look back at Lady Catherine. “I have been visiting one of your tenants, Your Ladyship—Mrs. Fitzgibbon.”
Lady Catherine squints. “Ah, yes—her husband ran the little farm that borders the Clifton estate.”
“I rather think, from what Mrs. Fitzgibbon intimated, that she was more responsible for running the farm than was her husband,” I say.
“He was a drunkard,” Lady Catherine says, as blunt as ever. “If he had not had the good sense to marry an active, resourceful woman, he would have lost the tenancy years ago.” She frowns. “She did not have a complaint about her new cottage, I hope? I saw it myself before she took residence, it was very cozy.”
“No, she is—very content with her home. She was only feeling a little low in spirits.”
Her ladyship’s brows arch. “Low in spirits?”
“Yes, she is very alone in the world.”
“Well. There is no call for her to have troubled you with that. If she feels so, she merely wants occupation. If she were to work harder, there would be no time in the day for being lonely.”
I straighten my shoulders. “I . . . She did not trouble me, Your Ladyship. I thought she seemed rather . . . solitary. That she might like companionship, occasionally.”
“Companionship!” William says in a burst. Lady Catherine and I both look at him, and he smiles fawningly at her. “My dear—as her ladyship has only just said—”
“She has no one,” I say, and the hardness of my voice startles me. I take a breath to get myself under regulation. “She has only a sister, who lives nearly a hundred miles away. There is no one here in whom she can confide.” William opens his mouth to say something else and I add, “You were so kind, Lady Catherine, in finding Martha, that I might have time to perform my duties to the parish, and I would not like to shirk those duties. I believe I will take Mrs. Fitzgibbon some paper and ink, when next I visit; I think she would like to send her sister a letter.” I sit back and raise my teacup to hide my face. I feel flushed and triumphant, in a very small way.
The look Lady Catherine bestows upon me puts me in mind of the looks she used to give Elizabeth, when my friend dared to speak her true thoughts to her ladyship upon visiting me in the early days of my marriage. Then she says, with great deliberation, “Just so long as you are not encouraging idleness, Mrs. Collins.” And, turning back to William, “You must add something about the sin of idleness to your sermon. The virtue of hard work cannot be overemphasized; the poor too often neglect to feel gratitude as they ought.”
William is quick to acknowledge the wisdom of her ladyship’s words. I bend my head once more to my needlework as the conversation continues without me, much as a stream will flow heedlessly around a stone.
Chapter Eleven
When I was seven years old, I went with my mother to call upon her friend Mrs. Bennet, who had recently given birth to a second daughter. My mother instructed me to play quietly with Jane, the elder Bennet sister, though I did catch a short glimpse of the infant, who had a healthy wail and round red cheeks, and whom her mother had named Elizabeth.
For a very long time, Elizabeth Bennet remained in my mind merely one of the many Bennet girls—there are five in all, the final three born in quick and disappointing succession—all of whom are several years my junior, closer in age to my sister, Maria, than they are to me. My mother and Eliza’s liked to visit one another frequently, and generally we children were brought along, as well, for it was a short, easy walk down the dusty lane between the two houses. My mother thought Lizzy was wild and needed discipline, for she spent most of her childhood looking more like a village waif than a young lady of quality, her hair tangled, her slippers splashed with mud. As we all grew up, I spent more time conversing with our mothers than I did with Elizabeth and her sisters; the difference in our ages seemed like a chasm between us when I was of an age to come out in society and Lizzy was still losing her hair ribbons and tearing holes in her stockings.
But when she was fifteen, we happened upon one another at the circulating library, both in search of the same novel. I happened to arrive half an hour earlier than Elizabeth and had curled on a chair in the little reading room, the first volume open in my lap.
“It was you,” she said, in a tone of laughing annoyance.
Startled out of my absorption, my head jerked up. Eliza had begun by then to dress herself with more care, though still the curls of her hair were a little blown and wild, as though she had run rather than walked into the village.
She stood before me, hands on hips, her bonnet dangling down her back by its ribbons. Nodding at the book, she said, “The clerk told me someone had only just borrowed it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You are forgiven.” She smiled. “Only, you must tell me the moment you have finished.”
I WAIT NOW in the stuffy confines of the Hunsford circulating library. In front of me two young ladies are giggling together over something in the book they hold between them. They put me strongly in mind of my younger self and Elizabeth Bennet, for after that first chance meeting, we began to go to the circulating library together, and when we both wanted the same book we would take turns reading it aloud. We also passed novels back and forth between our two houses, urging one another to finish quickly so that we could discuss them. The girls before me seem to be deciding which of them will borrow the book first, and the clerk, who really ought to have finished with them by now, is indulging them so that I suspect he wishes to pay one or the other special attention. I cover a smile and look out the window at the people passing outside.
The door opens behind me; when I turn to look, I am startled to find Mr. Travis in the doorway, and though he looks as surprised as I feel, he is smiling at me. After a moment, he walks closer, stepping carefully into line behind me.
“Well met, Mrs. Collins,” he murmurs.
“Good day, Mr. Travis. What brings you here?”
His eyes slide to one side. “I am in need of a new pair of boots; am I in the wrong place?”
I smile. “You are indeed, sir.”
An exaggerated sigh. “Ah, well. I suppose I shall have to make do with a book instead.”
We are interrupted by the young ladies’ departure and the clerk leaning slightly over his desk to catch my attention.
“And how can I help you, madam?” he says. I walk to the counter and make my selection, all the while feeling Mr. Travis’s presence a little behind me. I nod when I pass him on my way out, and he tips his hat.
I’VE NO OTHER business in the village today, but still I am reluctant to leave just yet. I pause at the milliner’s, leaning close to peer at the window display, pretending—for whose benefit, I don’t know—that I am interested in a new bonnet.
Only a few steps away is the circulating library. My thoughts drift toward the man inside, and I jerk them away, back to the hats in the window before me. My reflection in the glass gazes back at me, blurry and indistinct—a fool of a matron in a green dress, the lace of her cap showing under her plain straw bonnet. She looks as bemused as I feel, as if she, too, finds the idea of dawdling in the street, hoping for a few snatched moments of conversation, as peculiar and pathetic as I do.
But the door to the library is opening, and Mr. Travis is coming through it, a book tucked under his arm and an abstracted expression upon his face. I turn my head so that I am not caught looking, the side of my bonnet hiding my face. I stare fixedly at an arrangement of ostrich plumes, even as I see his approach reflected in the glass.
“Are you reading something improving?”
I turn. “Not at all, though I shouldn’t admit it.” I hold my book out for him to see.
He leans forward and examines it, turning it open to the title page. “A novel?” he says, something teasing about his tone. “You’re right, you should not admit to it.”
“Fordyce’s Sermons was unavailable.”
He laughs outright, head back and throat exposed above his neckcloth, and I am shocked by my own pleasure.
“You do not have your own copy? For shame, Mrs. Collins!”
“No, I confess we do. Mr. Collins has always been an admirer of Mr. Fordyce. Louisa will no doubt learn his sermons off by heart when she is older.”
“Like her mother did before her?”
“Oh. Well. I cannot say I am as well versed as that. My father is not a clergyman; he is more concerned with . . . earthly matters than spiritual.”
“I suppose,” he says slowly, dryly, “this is actually rather . . . apt.” He looks at me again, brows raised. “Patronage, Volume One?”
Dismay rises inside of me, and then our eyes meet and I see his quiet amusement—and suddenly I am laughing, loud and gasping, as helpless against the force of it as a rowboat against a gale. I clap one hand over my mouth and snort through my fingers. The sound is utterly impolite, and from the corner of my eye I see Mr. Travis pressing his own fingers over the grin spreading across his face.
Passersby cast us curious glances, and the sounds of the village around us intrude upon me suddenly—the clop of a horse and cart is loud enough to startle; the laughter of small children racing each other down the other side of the street, and a woman’s voice shouting after them, make me flinch. Doors open and then close again; one young man calls across the road to another. I draw in a shaky breath, struggling to gain control of myself.
At last, I turn back to Mr. Travis to find him watching me. We look at each other and I feel my cheeks drawing up, my mouth stretching, and though I bite my lip I am incapable of stopping the puff of laughter that escapes me. Every line about Mr. Travis’s eyes and mouth stands out as he chuckles and looks briefly away.
“Forgive me,” he says at last. “I should not have said that.”
“And I should not have laughed,” I say.
He pinches his lips together, as if trying to contain his smile, and just looks at me, shaking his head.
I glance at the book he holds. “And you? Shall I assume your choice is not frivolous? In my experience, men rarely appreciate novels as women do.”
He looks down, almost as if surprised to discover that there is a volume in his hands. “It is not for me,” he says at last, without looking up.
“It is something your father requested?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “No. It is—well.” He holds the book out for me to see, his face closed as winter shutters.
“The British Herbal,” I read aloud. “An history of plants and trees, natives of Britain, cultivated for use, or raised for beauty.” I stare at the title for a moment longer, then look up at Mr. Travis, uncomprehending. “My father has this same book,” I say.
He draws it back from me. “Ah—yes.”
I cannot make sense of my conclusions, and I stand dumb, staring at him.
After a moment, he grimaces and says, “I apologize—it was presumptuous. It is only—you spoke about it with so much animation. I suppose that is why the name stayed with me.”
I am full of bafflement and fear and wonder, all at once. “You remembered that?”
Another pause, longer this time, as if he is choosing his words carefully, but at last he merely rubs his neck again. “It stayed with me,” he says once more, and holds the book out to me.
I take it, and it is as if the shutters over his expression have been pulled back to let in the sunlight. His hands hang down, relaxed and open.
“I think I will go back,” he says, indicating the library. “I rather feel I’ve something to prove, now you’ve said you think men do not much care for novels.”
I wonder who these novel-reading men are; except for Elizabeth’s father, Mr. Bennet, I cannot think of any men I know who read for pleasure. “Do they?” I say. “Do you?”
“Mmm. Well. Sometimes.” He huffs a laugh when I look at him sideways. “My father likes to be read to occasionally, of an evening, but his taste runs more toward histories. I rarely have time to read for my own pleasure; I hardly know what I would choose. But certainly there are many men who do read novels. Indeed, a great many novels are written by men; it seems reasonable to assume that other men read them.”
“Other than Mr. Collins and my father, I suppose I have rarely had occasion to discuss such things with the men of my acquaintance,” I say. “My eldest brother is at Oxford; I assume he must read a great deal more than he did while he was at home.”
Something flickers in Mr. Travis’s expression, and all at once the easiness of our exchange is gone. I stand, baffled by t
he sudden tension.
But when he speaks, it is lightly. “I myself have never left Kent, so perhaps I—and those like me—have more reason to seek the escape of novels than do more . . . worldly men.”
My mouth opens, but the words are caught at the back of my throat, and before I can force them out Mr. Travis bows. “I wish you enjoyment in your reading,” he says. “I have some business to attend to.”
I curtsy and say my good-byes and watch him go; he jams his hat onto his head and dashes out into the street without looking, nearly colliding with another man before nodding quickly in apology and disappearing down the street.
WHEN I RETURN home, I am relieved to find no one immediately about; the door to William’s book room is closed, and I can hear, softly, Martha singing upstairs in the nursery. I shed my bonnet and spencer and go into my parlor, closing the door behind me. Then I stand in the center of the room, watching without really seeing as dust motes dance in the sunlight that slants through the windows.
It is too quiet in here. I look down at the books I still carry and my entire body is at once consumed with agitation. I think of Mr. Travis’s sudden discomfort—oh, I should have said something to put him at ease. My own station in life is not so very high, after all.
And yet—Mr. Travis has never left Kent.
My fingers open and close around the bindings, and then I turn away from the window and sit abruptly in my favorite chair. There is nothing pressing for me to attend to; I can read in peace awhile.
I look for a moment at Dr. Hill’s Herbal, thinking, He thought of me. And then I shake my head, sending implications scattering, and set the book aside, covering it, after a moment’s thought, with my whitework. I open my novel and scan the first line, and then the second. My toes move restlessly within my half boots; my gaze refuses to lie still upon the page but darts, without particular focus, about the room until it lands on the corner of the book poking out from under my embroidery. I drag it back, read another line. Close the book and sit with my lips pressed together.
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