All concluded happily, however, and the carriage returned to Longbourn that night amid the overlapping chatter of Lydia and Kitty. When we reached the house, our parents greeted us at the door, and Mr. Collins instantly plied them with tales of the evening’s revelry.
“I lost all games at whist and put Mrs. Philips very out for the whole evening,” he admitted bashfully to everyone’s laughter. “And Colonel Forster brought many of his officers to dine, which pleased the youngest Miss Bennets exceedingly.”
“I lost and won a fish at lottery tickets, Mama!” Lydia exclaimed.
“But it was Mary who made the evening worthwhile….” Mr. Collins continued.
The whole company went quiet.
“Mary?” Papa inquired doubtfully of his nephew.
“A delight which surpasses all other delights to hear her play!” our houseguest gushed. “A true songbird! An angel at the piano!”
“A songbird?” Mama questioned, chuckling weakly.
“An angel,” Jane repeated softly. “That is high praise indeed.”
My family’s disbelief was quite lost on me, for in that moment I could not have been surer of Mr. Collins’s intentions towards myself and of the great odds I would defy in being the very first among all my sisters to enter into that most holy of institutions: marriage.
The next day, Mr. Bingley and his sisters paid us a visit, the purpose of which was to invite our whole family to a ball at Netherfield Park. Having heard a great deal already about our distinguished neighbors (and all to their credit), Mr. Collins did not disappoint in his effusion. To Mr. Bingley, he performed an exceptionally handsome bow, which took even that amiable gentleman by surprise, and poured so many compliments on the heads of Miss Caroline Bingley and Mrs. Louisa Hurst that their initial twitters of pleasure eventually gave way to an uncomfortable silence. Even my affections could not spare me from the embarrassment I felt at witnessing the toadying behavior he so naturally adopted before his social superiors, and I might have visibly cringed when he likened Mrs. Hurst, who was ten years Bingley’s senior, to Egypt’s legendary ruler by reciting those immortal lines, “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”
But my sympathy was once again roused when I spotted Lydia and Kitty pulling mocking faces behind Mr. Collins’s back, and this, in turn, reminded me of the men who had taunted him and how he had risen, in those critical years at university, above his numerous and powerful adversaries to receive the good fortune of Lady Catherine’s patronage. The recollection of his long-suffering heroism, which I considered our intimate secret, instantly restored my finer emotions, and for the remainder of Mr. Bingley’s visit, I envisioned all the stories we would share of our respective upbringings once we were married.
Notwithstanding my dislike of balls, I could not help feeling excited at the prospect of another chance to sing and play for Mr. Collins, and the rest of my family seemed to share my enthusiasm—all except for Lizzy. Complaining of a headache, she excused herself and went upstairs, perhaps hoping that one or two of her family would trail after her. But none did, not even Jane, who had still to digest the personal honor of Mr. Bingley’s calling on her, and it was only in passing Lizzy’s room later and finding the door open that I discovered her splayed across the bed with her head rooted facedown in a pillow.
“Lizzy,” I said. “Are you ill?”
In hearing her name, the corpse raised a limp arm, which hovered a few moments in the air before collapsing with a dull thump across the mattress and becoming motionless again.
“Have it your way then,” I said, “but I’ll close the door for you.”
“No, Mary,” the body replied, rolling slowly onto its back. “Yes, close the door, but don’t leave. Stay awhile, won’t you?”
Shutting the door, I proceeded to navigate the cluttered floor of my sister’s room, which, excepting a narrow trail she had cleared from the entrance to the foot of the bed, was covered entirely with coils of stray ribbon, dirty slippers, the odd button, and several books I’d given up for lost from Papa’s library downstairs. Skipping over the final hurdle of a mud-soaked petticoat that smelled oddly of horse manure, I gratefully accepted the drooping hand extended to me. She asked me to sit down, though in looking about the room, I perceived that the only chair was swathed in many layers of stockings and shawls, with a few tattered-looking bonnets flung carelessly across its arms and back.
“You really should let Sarah or Mrs. Hill clean your room, Lizzy,” I said, and with my right foot I slid out what appeared to be a single grass-stained glove from underneath her nightstand before sitting down on the bed.
“I know, I know, but I can never find anything afterwards,” Lizzy groaned. She released my hand and, draping her wrist dramatically across her forehead, wearily exhaled. “Mr. Collins has asked me to dance the first two dances with him,” she blurted out.
“That’s just politeness,” I replied, as much to console my sister as myself. “He has to ask you because you are second oldest, and it would be rude for him not to. He has an exceptionally strong sense of decorum.”
“I can’t think of anything, at the moment, more horrifying or unpleasant that any innocent female should be forced to undergo than to have to dance with a man who shames her by association alone,” Lizzy continued. “Just think—I must stand up not once but twice with Mr. Collins and in front of all those people, too—people like Mr. Wickham, Mr. Bingley, his two awful sisters, and probably Mr. Darcy as well! It is more than anyone should reasonably have to suffer.”
“But why should standing up with Mr. Collins be shameful?” I asked. “He is just as respectable as any other gentleman, if not more so, for having made his own fortune in life instead of simply inheriting it.”
“What fortune?” Lizzy sneered, and I felt the injury of her words. “What do you think the living at Hunsford is worth?”
“More than sufficient to live on.”
“Well, I will not be married off for that!” my sister cried, sitting up. “And to the most ridiculous man in England besides! No, I refuse to accept such a fate. Do you really think that my vanity would be satisfied by receiving a profession of love, much less a proposal of marriage, from the likes of Mr. Collins? This isn’t to say that my vanity doesn’t exist—of course it does—or that it wouldn’t receive a very great boon to its self-importance, should a man possessing even half Mr. Bingley’s wealth and a fraction of Mr. Wickham’s good looks dedicate bad poetry in my name. I can assure you, Mary, that when that should happen, you’ll find me as silly and conceited as any other woman who is loved by a man she has no intention of accepting.”
“But Mr. Collins has no intention of marrying you,” I said bluntly.
“Then you have not noticed the signs?” Lizzy asked, crooking an eyebrow. “Why else should a man compliment the way a woman chews her food every time she sits down to a meal? Or worship the shape of her fingers when she works on netting a reticule? Or ask her what she is reading when she has just turned the first page of a book?”
“Mr. Collins does that with everyone, Lizzy. Don’t you remember how he complimented Jane on the admirable smallness of her feet the other day? And even Kitty for her cleverness with cutting paper flowers? No, personally, I’m convinced our cousin’s affections lie elsewhere,” I added, hoping Lizzy would take my hint.
But it had no discernible effect on my sister, absorbed as she was by matters concerning herself. “Well, I would never settle for a man like him,” Lizzy pronounced. Then her expression grew thoughtful. “No, I shall find myself a husband worth at least a thousand times our blockhead cousin, for if a man is nothing else, he can at least be rich. And though Jane is the most beautiful of us all, I daresay it would still be a pity for me to rise to no greater station in life than a clergyman’s wife.”
I found I couldn’t laugh at my sister’s vanity, but making as if to teas
e her, I said, “Well, I can think of only one man in our neighborhood, aside from Mr. Bingley, who is worth as much as that. And I’m afraid you despise him as much as he dislikes you.”
“Mr. Darcy?” Lizzy said, and her eyes glittered much as they had all those years ago when she had caught me in the forest. “Perhaps not, Mary. Perhaps not.”
As the day of the Netherfield ball drew near, the discovery that we had not a single intact shoe-rose in the whole of Longbourn threw Mama and my sisters into a state of panic. The shoe-roses could be procured only from the milliner’s shop in Meryton, and to make this journey, one had to walk a dirt road which extended from the periphery of our estate to the end of a stone bridge, an exceptionally wretched venture on a wet day.
I knew it would rain even before I set out on my task, for which I had volunteered in order to demonstrate my courage and selflessness to Mr. Collins. Normally, Sarah would have gone, but as Mama reminded us at every meal in a voice certain to reach the servants’ quarters downstairs, Sarah had been in the throes of a high fever for two whole days, and Mrs. Hill was too preoccupied with looking after her ailing charge and tending to the blisters and corns on the toes of her own person to walk as far as Meryton and back herself. Except for Lydia and Mama, who considered the threat of my being caught in the rain a small price to pay for the retrieval of an object which would bring happiness to so many, the rest of my sisters attempted at first to dissuade me from going. I wouldn’t return in time without getting drenched and risking a cold, they said. But in the end, vanity prevailed. Reminded that the Netherfield ball was only three days away, they soon became inclined to encourage my quest of salvaging from the milliner’s limited stock as many of the prettiest shoe-roses as hadn’t already been purchased by the shop’s other greedy patrons. Jane, who was naturally the most invested of us all in ensuring that her appearance at this ball would be as near immaculate as possible, embraced me at the door and blessed the righteousness of my endeavor with a tender kiss on both cheeks and a sweet entreaty for me to hurry…but to have a care not to drop the shoe-roses, of course.
It was late morning when I waved to my sisters from Longbourn’s rusted gate, and the sky was already swollen with low-hanging clouds that drifted ominously into the bodies of their neighbors. The air was cold, and the ground packed hard beneath the heels of my boots. Upon reaching a long-abandoned parasol, the sight of which indicated that one-quarter of my journey was over, I heard a hollow cry from a short distance behind me, and thinking it a bird, I continued to walk and toss my drawstring purse in the air until the same cry gathered strength and uttered words in a human tongue and, finally, my own name. I turned and witnessed, running breathlessly towards me, a familiar figure in a wide-brimmed hat and large, black shoes that clopped wearily against the earth like the iron-shod hooves of horses.
“Mr. Collins!” I cried out, and waved. He, too, flapped a limp hand in the air and subsequently bent forward to clutch his shaking knees. I retraced my steps to his side and laughed at the sight of his face, which shimmered with a moist sheen of sweat and the reddish-pink of one unaccustomed to taking brisk exercise in cold weather. He wheezed several times, releasing small puffs of warm air as he did so, and, steadying himself at last, turned cheerfully towards me.
“I thought I’d never catch up with you,” he said, still panting. “I must have been calling your name for ages, and you never seemed to hear.”
“But why have you come?” I asked.
“It’s a cold morning,” he replied. “And I noticed that you left the house wearing only a spencer of thin linen over your dress. I thought…” He unfolded a long piece of thick, black cloth that had hung from his arm and draped this lightly across my shoulders. “It’s a small blanket I keep with me when I travel,” he continued, “for the knees, you see. When the weather turns cold, they ache terribly, and Lady Catherine tells me…”
He stopped, for while he’d been talking, I’d covertly extended my arm and looped it through an opening in his own. He looked down, and his mouth twitched for the briefest moment into a crooked smile before restoring itself to a thin, solemn line. Turning towards the hedgerows, he remarked in a faint voice that it was a fine day for walking, even as the first spare droplets of rain touched our faces and the backs of our hands. From this, we quickly moved on to pleasanter subjects and, reaching at last the foot of the stone bridge, we continued to chatter in mild tones on a variety of intimate topics, such as the volatility of country weather, the number and variety of animals on the Longbourn estate, and the impressive acreage of the paddock at Rosings Park, which Mr. Collins was able to describe to the minutest detail so as to leave nothing, not even a single bush or daisy, to the autonomy of the imagination.
The streets of Meryton were predominantly empty, and we entered the milliner’s shop the only customers. Losing no time, I selected the dozen shoe-roses according to what I knew of their wearers. For Mama, Lydia, and Kitty, only the largest and brightest colored of rosettes would do, and for Jane, Lizzy, and myself, I chose the very ones which I suspected would most displease my younger sisters, these being comparatively modest in both design and size. Once the shoe-roses were purchased, Mr. Collins had the honor of ensuring the safety of the treasured parcel for the return trip to Longbourn. As soon as we had put some distance between ourselves and the shop, I restored my hand to the crook of my cousin’s arm, and in so doing was glad to receive no objection from the gentleman. This small accomplishment encouraged me to break the silence that had settled comfortably between us.
“Ever since you shared the account of your past with me, Mr. Collins, I haven’t been able to put it out of my mind,” I said. “If I’d been in the same situation, I do not know that I would have acted as rationally as you did.” Indeed, I was fairly confident that I would have either run sobbing out of the room or launched the first meat pie at my disposal into the faces of my so-called superiors.
“I hope you will take some lessons from it, Mary,” Mr. Collins replied. “There are many things in life that only seem impossible, and it is part of the challenge to decide when we should take action and when we should hold back. If you aim for the best, you might achieve second best, but if you aim for what society thinks you deserve, you’ll be a pauper for life.”
It was then that thick droplets began to fall. One-two. One-two, hitting the side of my nose and staining the leather of my gloves. We were still a fair distance from Longbourn when the rain started to come down in sheets. The landscape before us changed instantly, and the mud stuck to our shoes, so that the effort to take one step might have been the equivalent of taking five or six when the ground was dry. We were soon drenched, and the blanket that Mr. Collins had kindly delivered to shield me from the cold was now a heavy, water-logged burden which I was forced to drag through dirty puddles. Beside me, Mr. Collins used his small body to shield the package containing the precious bundles of shoelace and ribbon that would separate, in Mr. Bingley’s eyes, Jane’s delicate, dancing feet from the delicate, dancing feet of her peers. Of course, it was inevitable that one of us should fall.
“Woo-ahh!” Mr. Collins screamed in a cry more feminine than I’d imagined possible and flailed his arms like a goose attempting flight before gravity won the upper hand.
“Oh, Mr. Collins! The box!” I shouted and watched as the parcel landed upside down a few feet away from us.
“Save the shoe-roses, Mary!” Mr. Collins spluttered, spitting out rainwater and dirt. “I’ll be all right in just a moment!”
“Oh, Mr. Collins,” I uselessly repeated, and reached down to help him up.
He had just taken hold of both my hands when I, too, lost my footing in the mud and crashed on top of him with a scream. Beneath me, I heard a yelp of pain and managed to extract my elbow from the middle of his waistcoat before crawling off his body and kneeling miserably at his side. For some moments, he lay flat on his back, wriggling like an overtur
ned turtle struggling to right itself. When he was finally able to sit up, he extracted a soggy handkerchief from his pocket and began to apply this to his mud-speckled face, though doing so only served to smear dirt across a wider expanse of his cheeks. Stuffing his handkerchief inside his coat, he straightened his hat and stared at me through the rain. I looked wordlessly back at him.
That was when his expression changed. I didn’t notice it at first—the shift was barely discernible if one hadn’t been paying attention to the small alterations that began at the ends of his eyes and in the corners of his mouth. Then one of his eyebrows twitched, and gradually the transformation spread over the whole of his face in an animated wave. His lips parted. His cheeks bulged. His shoulders rose up and down, as though a faint tremor had entered unseen into his body, and balancing the back of his dripping hat with one hand, he started to laugh. He laughed and laughed, his whole torso shaking violently in the grip of his merriment, until my own mouth convulsed, a strange blubbering released itself from the bottom of my throat, and I began to laugh, too. The branches cracked and swung above us; the wind swept and tangled my hair. But we remained sitting for some duration in the middle of the dirt road, shivering without minding the cold, both our sides spasming with extraordinary pain, and my lungs so out of air I’d already begun to cough between bouts of my chortling, which instead of prompting my cousin’s concern, provoked him to laugh even more. Eventually, he paused to wipe his eyes of tears and raindrops, and the laughter between us faded until it could no longer be distinguished from all the sounds of water trickling, falling, and gushing around where we sat.
“What shall we do about the shoe-roses?” I asked at last, and in answer, he swept his palm across my forehead, removing a thick clump of hair that had fallen, limp and wet, along the length of my nose. His hand lingered awhile on my cold, practically numbed skin before sliding down the sharp angle of my face to the end of my chin. I felt his thumb arch up and over my mouth to graze the fleshy center of my bottom lip. He leaned closer and closer to me until his face rested nearly on top of mine. But just when our mouths would touch, he wavered and seemed to pull back. I couldn’t suffer the moment to escape and bent immediately forward. The kiss was brief. Our lips slid off of each other in the rain, and mine landed in the hollow above his chin. In backing away, I couldn’t look at him again, though I knew he was then gazing steadfastly at me, studying my expression. He rested a hand on my shoulder, and I felt both thrilled and tired at its weight. I wanted to say something but remained too light-headed to form any coherent words or ideas.
Mary B Page 10
