The Clergyman's Wife

by Molly Greeley

  Or perhaps he does not think about our firstborn at all.

  I push away from the wall and stand under the very edge of the eave, watching the rain fall like a curtain just a breath away from me. I cannot believe that William is so coldhearted, not when I have seen the evidence of his natural feelings myself in his mother’s handkerchiefs, so long cherished.

  The rain drums on the gravel pathways. I am growing cold, but I cannot seem to make myself move from this spot.

  There is lavender drying in the stillroom. Its fragrance would be a lovely surprise for William to discover one day, a few sprigs tucked in among the handkerchiefs. The thought brings only a little pleasure, contrasted as it is with the thought of tonight’s meal and the hours after, which stretch colorlessly before me.

  I wish the rain had kept away longer, that I might have conversed with Mr. Travis just a few minutes more.

  I turn and go into the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I have spent the last hour kneeling among the raspberries. There are streaks of dirt on my apron and long scratches on the backs of my hands, but I am finally satisfied that I have gathered all the berries I can find.

  I sit so for several minutes, then sigh and push myself up off the ground. Lifting my basket, I start back toward the house. There are enough berries to make up small packets for at least five families, and this I set to doing quickly once inside the kitchen, folding handfuls of raspberries into squares of cloth and tying them with snips of twine, then settling each packet into the bottom of the basket. Upstairs, I hear the sound of laughter and running feet as Louisa eludes Martha, and then Mrs. Baxter’s startled shout as they, presumably, hurtle toward her. I smile. William was summoned to Rosings this morning, and it seems to me that we are all taking advantage of his absence.

  The packets made up, I go to my parlor to retrieve old Mr. Travis’s coat, now carefully mended. This I place, folded, atop the basket’s other contents. Then I tie a bonnet over my hair but forgo my spencer. I feel distinctly girlish as I step into the lane, the ribbon on my bonnet blowing back from my face, the autumn sun weak but still offering a little lovely, residual warmth.

  I make my way from one tenant’s home to another, giving three of the berry packets to large families. The fourth I bring to Mrs. Fitzgibbon, who is as delighted by the treat as any of the children.

  And now, at last, I turn my feet toward the Travis farm.

  I should have come earlier—I mended the coat within a day of receiving it—but I have been slow to gather my courage. The most prudent course would be to leave the coat at the Peterses’ cottage, for I know young Henry must go home to his parents on Sundays, but I have not been able to bring myself to squander the excuse to visit the Travis farm. Acknowledging this makes me flush, but my steps as I climb the hill toward the farm are firm.

  I arrive to find Henry Peters engaged in mending a fence. I hold out the coat and explain its origins, and he takes it from me, stammering his thanks. When I depart, I look back over my shoulder to see that he has folded the coat very carefully over a rail on an unbroken section of fence before returning to his labor.

  I am nearly to the cottage, intending to leave the berries with the maid, when I see Mr. Travis emerge from an outbuilding, and it is the most natural thing in the world to smile and settle with him against a crumbling stone wall. We are sheltered, here, from view from the house, but if anyone else were to happen by we are still perfectly, respectably in view of the surrounding fields. There is a small pause; we are both looking down at the berries I have brought, which tumbled from their neat pile when I untied their wrappings.

  “Have a berry, Mr. Travis,” I finally say.

  He smiles, reaches out. His hands are filthy, which he seems to realize at the same time as I do; his hand hovers in midair, and then, with surprising delicacy, he plucks a single berry from the top of the pile, so carefully that he touches only the one. I take one as well, and we chew for a moment in silence. I look at him, and then away, across the shorn fields.

  “I gave your father’s coat to Henry Peters,” I say. “He handled it with such care, I believe it must mean a great deal to him.”

  “Thank you. I am . . . embarrassed by my own cowardice. I should have delivered the coat myself.”

  “Please,” I say, and turn back to look at him, reaching out my hand. It hangs in the air between us until I drop it once more to my side. “I cannot imagine it would be easy to give up a—a tangible reminder of the person you lost. It is to your credit that you were generous enough to part with it at all.”

  He is silent for a long moment before finally saying, “My father was very . . . unsettled in the days before he died.” He is holding another berry between his thumb and forefinger, and in his hand it looks comically small. “He snapped at me, he snapped at Betsy—our maid—so much that I was afraid the poor girl would start looking for a new position. Neither of us could do anything to please him.”

  “Perhaps he was not feeling . . . entirely himself.”

  “I wonder whether he knew.” Mr. Travis shakes his head. “I do not see how he could, of course, but—I wonder. He was so unlike himself, I wonder whether he somehow—knew—that he had little time left. He spent much of his last day in the garden—kept me for hours from my own work, pruning and trimming things to his standards.” He rubs his free hand over his jaw. “I cannot help but think he knew. And he must have realized I would not have the time to keep the garden up as he would like. And while Betsy keeps the vegetables tolerably well, she knows nothing of other plants.”

  It is the second time Mr. Travis has mentioned the maid in as many minutes, and it puts me in mind of his observation that old Mr. Travis had wished his son had no need to hire a maid at all.

  “Did you never have the inclination to marry?” I say, then immediately want to cut out my tongue, which has moved so much quicker than thought or good sense. I am not speaking to Elizabeth or Maria, no matter how naturally Mr. Travis and I might converse; I cannot assume the liberties I am accustomed to with my friend and my sister.

  If Mr. Travis is offended by my poor manners, he does not show it. Instead, he looks down at the berry he holds. “No,” he says. “I never did.” He looks up at me. “That is, I suppose I’ve been inclined toward marriage in a general way, but never with a view toward a specific woman. There are few enough options in Hunsford.”

  This is certainly true. When you are born into small country-village society, limited marriage prospects are to be expected—Lizzy and I joked about Meryton’s shallow pool of eligible men often enough. When rich, unwed Mr. Bingley arrived in the neighborhood the same year I met William, it caused a tremendous fluttering among the village’s mammas. Their excited scheming would have been funny had it not been rooted in such reasonable anxiety about their daughters’ futures. And Mr. Travis lives in Hunsford, which is smaller even than the village of my girlhood—he has never left Kent at all, never had any opportunity to meet anyone outside the circle into which he was born.

  I remember the murmured rush through the congregation when Miss Harmon first arrived. A young, pretty woman, suddenly coming into a community full of unwed and widowed men; it is a wonder, I think now, that she has not received multiple offers of marriage already. But thinking of Miss Harmon makes me feel suddenly cross, and to distract myself I put a berry between my teeth. It bursts sweet and sour against my tongue, tasting of summer in the same way the pale sun feels like it, a last, generous gasp. When I have swallowed I say, “Not everyone has the luxury of waiting until love comes along. I think I told you my sister married for love, but what if she had not met Mr. Cowper when she did? She would have had no choice but to marry someone else, someone who could offer her comfort. She does not have a farm to work, as you do.”

  He looks amused. “Would you wish a farm for her, if she had not found love?”

  My mouth opens, then closes again. I look up at the sky, spreading wide and bright above us. Now they have b
een spoken, my words seem nonsensical. “No,” I say, because it is the sensible thing. “Of course not. And I—well, Maria thinks I lack the soul for poetry. I suppose I should not speak of things I do not fully understand.”

  “I do not care for poetry. But I do not see what poetry has to do with . . . I imagine a man can not read poetry, and yet still find love.”

  I stare. “But—you have never been in love.”

  His mouth twists a little at the corners. “I did not say that.”

  I am the first to drop my eyes. After a moment, from the edges of my vision, I see him take another berry. I listen to him chew and swallow. He says, “Mr. Collins has asked me to come look at the parsonage roses.”

  Startled, I say, “When did he have a chance to do that?” Mr. Travis did not attend church last Sunday; perhaps he and William met in the village.

  Mr. Travis winces. “After he finished my father’s service.”

  Shock holds me fast. William can be thoughtless, yes, but to importune a man mere moments after his father was laid to rest . . .

  “I am very sorry,” I say, but Mr. Travis shakes his head.

  “I should not have mentioned it. And Mr. Collins did apologize for the insensitivity of his timing, but he said the roses are in such a bad way that he feared delaying his request might be disastrous. I only spoke of it because I hoped you would tell Mr. Collins that I intend to come tomorrow morning, and to apologize to him for the delay.”

  He is smiling, a little. I find that I cannot. “Mr. Travis, you need not apologize.”

  “Well. I hope . . . if you happen to be in when I call, I would appreciate your, er, opinion of the roses’ condition. I fear Mr. Collins was so distraught that I could not understand how long they have been suffering.”

  There is a slight breeze; it stirs his hair. I glance away. He knows I’ve no knowledge of gardening. “Yes, I will be home.”

  “Ah. Good.”

  For want of something to do, I take another raspberry. He says, with a casual air, “What of you?”

  I am startled into looking at him. “What do you mean?”

  There is a strange, defiant sort of bravado in his face. It turns him into someone unfamiliar. “Would you have rather had a farm, Mrs. Collins?”

  “I—”

  But Mr. Travis presses his fingertips to the bridge of his nose. When he looks at me again, it is with a mortified expression. “I beg your pardon,” he says. “That was—horribly rude.”

  His embarrassment calms me. “I do not know,” I say. Mr. Travis stares at me, and I smile a little. “That is to say, I cannot truly say yes, for had I not married, there would be no Louisa, and that is . . . unimaginable. Yet I think—were such a choice available to me, were marriage not the only way I could find . . . Yes, I think I might have chosen to run a little farm.”

  “Indeed?”

  I am smiling foolishly. “I think I would, yes.” But this is too disloyal. I think of poor William and am suddenly ashamed of myself.

  Mr. Travis leans nearer, peering at my face. “Please,” he says, “do not distress yourself. It was I who asked the question—my impertinence was unpardonable.”

  My laugh is a short, empty thing. “I should not have answered, and certainly not as I did.”

  “Perhaps not, but . . .”

  I lean back against the wall and cross my arms. “My friend Elizabeth—Mrs. Darcy—could not understand my decision to marry as I did. To accept security. And comfort.” I squint into the distance. “Rather than love.”

  Mr. Travis is quiet for a time, but I can feel his eyes upon me. “I think it a shame,” he says finally, “that your friend could not recognize the courage it must have taken for you to leave everything you loved and start again somewhere new. You have brothers?”

  I nod but cannot trust myself to look at him.

  “Well, then you could have remained somewhere familiar, and still, presumably, lived out your life in some comfort.”

  “I could not have,” I say, and push away from the wall. “That is, I could have, but it would have been—to be such a burden, to know I was always going to be such a burden, and then to have the possibility of my own life, my own home, offered to me by—by a good man, a—respectable man . . .”

  “Please forgive me,” Mr. Travis says again, very softly, and steps away from the support of the wall as well. He looks flustered, brushing his fingertips along the edges of his coat before lifting down the basket and holding it out like an offering.

  “The last raspberry of the season is yours,” he says.

  I take it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Walking home, I have the most peculiar urge to strip my feet bare of their half boots and stockings and feel them firm against the earth. And then, perhaps, to press my entire self against the ground, to inhale and fill my lungs and tether myself with the smells of tree roots and undergrowth and the fresh dampness of decaying matter. I even stop walking, just for a moment, breathe in and out, flex my fingers against the handle of the basket to keep them from flying to my bootlaces. When I begin moving again, it is with the sense that my strange compulsion is dragging at me, and so I step more quickly, lifting my feet higher to leave it behind.

  AROUND MIDNIGHT, THERE is a crashing storm.

  I have been lying sleepless for hours, and at the first flash of lightning I am out of bed and across the room. I lean close to the window and peer outside, but though I can hear the wind rising, all is darkness. The clap of thunder that follows makes me jump; I look over my shoulder, but William appears to be sleeping on. Then the heavens release the rain—it pelts down over the window, and I imagine it pooling in the garden below, running in rivulets down the lane. Turning Mr. Travis’s fields to mud. I lean my forehead against the glass.

  I have never been friends with a man before. I did not think such a thing was possible, really. Friendship between women is entirely natural—we live in the same world, we share the same concerns. But men. Men have always seemed a species apart; even my father and my brothers, though beloved, are not creatures I truly understand, nor, if I am honest, ever really cared to.

  Would you have rather had a farm, Mrs. Collins?

  It was easy to say yes to Mr. Travis’s question now, when I have the comfortable life of a prosperous clergyman’s wife. I press my face into my palms, embarrassment making my cheeks hot. What do I know of running a farm?

  And yet . . .

  I let my hands drop, palms trailing down my cheeks, my throat, my breasts. They brush my hips and thighs. And I suddenly wish, with an unfamiliar clench in the deepest part of my belly, that he would touch me there, and there, and there—and that I could touch him. I could run my fingers over the roughness of his cheeks, through the softness of his hair, against the callused palms of his hands. I have never felt such a compulsion, and for a moment I am ashamed—if I must harbor such thoughts, they should be for the man who lies sleeping in the bed behind me. For the first time, I have some small understanding of what it is that makes girls like Lydia Bennet run off with men who can offer them nothing but pretty words.

  Today, Mr. Travis and I were both impolite. I drop my hands and look over at William. With him, I look forward to a lifetime of politeness. Just for a moment, I have a heady thought—if only I had waited to marry, just for a few years more. If I had waited until—

  My hands clench into fists. What utter foolishness. If I had not married William, I would be living still in Meryton with my parents. I would be an old maid. There would be no Louisa and no prospect of future children. And, of course, I would not have met Mr. Travis. I would be sitting in my mother’s parlor and he would be tending his farm, each of us utterly ignorant of the other’s existence.

  And besides, I would not have married a farmer. I was too sensible for that.

  I return to my bed. William has rolled in his sleep toward the center of the mattress, so I fit myself carefully against him in the space left for me.

  Chapter Twe
nty-Six

  The sky has been dark with clouds since I awoke, so dark that it hardly feels as if there was a dawn at all. Martha and Louisa are in the nursery and William is in his book room. I have been sitting in my parlor for several hours, sewing clothing for the cottagers and looking up at the window every other minute to see whether Mr. Travis has arrived in the garden, or if the clouds have opened, dropping rain as they have been threatening to do, so that he cannot come at all. My foot moves in restless time with the ticking of the mantel clock. I have the disconcerting idea that this must be what it is like to sit home awaiting a call from a suitor; this thought, like so many I have had of late, leaves me flustered.

  Mrs. Baxter enters with the post, and I accept it, grateful for the distraction. A letter from my mother, the direction written clearly in her careful, looped hand.

  The page is filled with the usual news of home and the gossip from the most recent card party at the Phillipses’. As I read I pull my legs up and settle more deeply into my chair.

  And then, this: Mrs. Bennet tells me her husband is recovering nicely from the cough he developed just after Maria’s wedding. But then, I imagine she has reason to be less open in her speech with me than she might once have been. In any event, Mr. Bennet has not been to church in two weeks.

  My mother’s tone is restrained, but I imagine her half smile, the eagerness in her expression as she penned those sentences. I read through quickly to the letter’s closing, then set it down on the table beside me.

  There are voices out in the garden. I glance at the window, but there is no one in sight; a moment of straining to listen and I determine that the voices are decidedly masculine. I look at the letter but do not pick it up; I cannot think what to say to my mother just yet. I look at the window but do not move to go outside. The voices fade, the speakers moving farther away from the house, perhaps, and inside my head my mother’s voice says, Mr. Bennet has not been to church in two weeks; and I am alarmingly numb.