Page 6 of Mr Darcy’s Inconvenient Wife

Elizabeth did not answer. There was no answer she could give that would do her credit.

The visit to Netherfield had not helped. She had sat between Kitty and a dish of hothouse pears for two hours. She had admired the silver that was to be lent for Saturday and agreed that the yellow drawing room was very handsome. She could not have repeated a word of what was said. Mr Darcy had stayed in the garden throughout. She had been glad of it. Yet she had known, for every minute of the visit, exactly which window looked out on the garden.

That morning he had bowed to her beneath the eave, with rain running from the gutter behind him. She had curtseyed. Neither of them had said more than a dozen words. It was exactly what she had wanted. Since Kent she had promised herself a hundred times that if she ever met him again, she would be brief and cool and quite unconcerned. She had been all three. It troubled her that so small a performance had left her so unsettled.

The door flew open.

“A chaise!” Lydia cried from the passage. “There is a chaise in the lane, and Hill says it is Mr Collins!”

Mrs Bennet's voice rose from the direction of the still-room. “Mr Collins! Now, of all times, with the best bedchamber heaped with linen!”

“He was invited, my dear.” Mr Bennet had appeared at the study door, in no hurry at all. “You invited him yourself, in a letter crossed in both directions. I remember admiring the economy of it.”

Mrs Bennet came into the doorway with a tablecloth over her arm. “He is a relation, Mr Bennet, and relations must be asked. I never promised he would be comfortable.”

Jane's eyes met Elizabeth's. It took a great effort for neither of them to laugh.

A year ago, the very name of Mr Collins would have sent their mother to the sofa, calling for her salts. He was the man who must one day turn them out of their home. But Jane's engagement had changed everything. On Saturday she would be Mrs Bingley of Netherfield, with a good fortune and a house with rooms to spare for her sisters. The heir of Longbourn had shrunk to a cousin who needed a bed aired.

He came in bowing before Hill had finished announcing him. He greeted each of them in strict order of rank, beginning with Mr Bennet and ending with the hall, which he believed had lately been painted. Lady Catherine de Bourgh, he told them, had been so gracious as to spare him for a full week. Her ladyship had observed that the claims of family, on such an occasion, must come even before the claims of a parish.

“How very kind of her ladyship,” said Mr Bennet, “to spare us so much of you.”

***

After tea, Mr Collins begged the favour of her company in the garden.

She could not refuse without rudeness, and she had promised Jane three days of perfect civility. She went to fetch her bonnet.

The gravel was still dark from the morning's rain. Mr Collins set off towards the paddock at a stately pace. At the turn he stopped to survey the house. His eye travelled from the roof to the stables and rested a long time on the chimneys.

“A very tolerable view from this side,” he said. “The chimneys are older than I had supposed. Lady Catherine remarked to me only last month that an estate of this size needs a settled hand. Nothing is so ruinous to land as uncertainty, she said.”

“I am sure her ladyship is seldom wrong.”

“Seldom indeed. I might say never.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Miss Bennet, I will be frank with you. You are aware, of course, that your father and I have debated the matter of the entailment for some while. You even came to call on me at Hunsford. Since you departed, I have given the question more thought.”

“That is very good of you, sir.”

“I believe it is. And in the course of my thinking, an idea came to me with such force that I can only call it the hand of Providence.” He halted on the gravel, so that she had to halt too. “Why disturb the estate at all, when a far simpler remedy lies within our reach? Why cut apart what might be joined?”

Her fingers tightened on her bonnet strings. She knew now where this was going, and dread rose in her.

“Mr Collins, I beg —”

“Allow me to give you my reasons in their proper order, for I have arranged them.” He raised one finger. “First, I think it the duty of every clergyman in comfortable circumstances to set an example of matrimony in his parish. Secondly, I am convinced it will add greatly to my happiness. Thirdly, and by no means least, it is the express advice of my noble patroness. She was good enough to tell me to choose a gentlewoman of sense and economy, not too finely brought up, and to bring her to Hunsford to be introduced. It was at that very moment, Miss Elizabeth, that your image came into my mind.”

A blackbird burst from the hedge behind him. Neither of them remarked on it.

“There is a further consideration,” he went on, warming to his subject. “If I marry a daughter of this house, the question of the entail is settled forever. Your mother need never lose another night's sleep over it, and your sisters keep their home. I believe few men have had the power to give so much comfort by such agreeable means.”

The refusal was on the tip of her tongue. Then she saw, very clearly, what would follow it. He would be offended within the quarter hour and eloquent about his injury by dinner. He would carry his grievance into church on Saturday and lay it down among Jane's flowers. Jane would spend her wedding morning soothing him. She would do it without complaint, just as she had borne the long winter in London without a word against anybody.

Elizabeth loved her sister too well to allow it. Her own ease was not worth that price.

She lowered her eyes to the gravel and kept her voice even.

“You do me a great honour, sir. It is more than I had any reason to expect.”