Page 19 of Mr Collins in Love
“Don’t know as I do, but since you say it I know it must be true.”
“Yes, it is true.”I paused.“Can I tell you a story?About my time at Oxford?”
“Course.”
“I read Classics.You know, Latin and Greek.I had a tutor.Everyone does.One goes to his rooms and one talks and answers questions and so on.Anyway, in my first year, I saw my tutor with two other men: Bailey and Ashford.Bailey, I think, did not like me.He seldom addressed me if he did not have to, but Ashford was very amiable.He smiled a lot and would often walk with me afterwards, for our rooms lay in the same part of the college.And as we walked, he would tell me things, about his sister getting married and his father losing money when his bank failed, and his cousin taking ill.I never had much news of my own to impart, but I listened and responded in a manner which I felt was appropriate; asking pertinent questions, and making relevant remarks.”
“Aye.”
“Then in my second year, things changed, and I no longer saw Ashford in my tutor’s rooms.And I was sorry, because I missed him and I used to wonder how his sister was getting on in her new home, and whether his cousin had recovered, and so on.”I fell silent, lost in the memory.
“Some friends do fall by the wayside,” Jem remarked.“Pity, that.”
“No, no, that is not the end of my story.The thing is, near the end of my second year, I met him again.I had seen him about, in halls, but we had not spoken, then we ran into one another.He had been visiting a man in a room near mine and we met at my door just as I was going out.And I greeted him and asked after his sister and he looked so startled that I felt duty bound to remind him that we had shared a tutor the previous year.And he looked blank, and then his face lit up and I was happy for I could see he remembered me after all, and then he said ‘Ah, yes, Wilson, isn’t it?’He couldn’t remember my name, you see.Not that I should have held that against him, for a man may easily fail to recollect such minor details, but it soon became clear he didn’t really remember me at all.He asked after my mother, for example, and of course she’d been dead for nearly twenty years, and I know I had told him that.
“Anyway, he went his way and I went mine and we never spoke again.But the thing was…I had thought—” my voice wavered and I cleared my throat to hide it, “—I had thought we were…well, not good friends, but at least friendly acquaintances.I remembered everything about him; all the details of his sister’s preferences in gloves, and the names of his father’s hounds, and…and everything.But he had not thought of me as a friend.Indeed, it was plain he had not thought of me at all.If he recalled me in any way, I was simply that fellow with whom he had once shared a tutor.Nothing more.Our talks had meant nothing to him.And I…I own that it hurt me.Because I made no other acquaintance at university, but I thought I had made one, and then it turned out I had not even made that.”
“Ah.”His voice was soft.“Cruel hard, that was.”
“I have no gift for friendship,” I said.“I wish I did, and I do my best, but somehow it does not happen.Except with you.Somehow, with you, it has always been easy.And I know our stations in life are different, but that has never mattered to me.Not in private.”
“Well, then.”His voice low.“Don’t matter to you, it don’t matter to me.”
I was content with that, though I felt raw at having told him my Ashford story, for the memory of my last encounter with the man ever set me writhing internally with humiliation.My hope that I had made a friend felt pathetic, even to me.
We sat a little longer and then Jem arose and I followed him out of the wilderness and back into the real world with all its bafflements and cruelties, but that night, in bed, the memory of the water, and of Jem, refreshed my limbs and my heart and I slept.
CHAPTER 6
One evening in late September we again went down to bathe.
By now, we had bathed twenty-seven times.
After the second time, Jem had vouchsafed to me that he had been obliged to tell George and Milly and Mrs Fowkes where we had been, for they had been curious about our absence from the garden.He had felt, quite rightly, that it was better to tell as much of the truth as he could.So, he had told them I had taken a fancy to bathe in a pool in the brook because of the heat, but that I did not want it getting about in case Lady Catherine thought such behaviour indelicate in a clergyman.
He told them I had taken him along to keep watch and that he did not mind for he could sit at his ease in the shade and had besides enjoyed plunging his head into the pool.He said Mrs Fowke had tutted rather and hoped I should not catch cold, but with their curiosity assuaged they never again questioned our brief absences.
Every time we reached the pool, I looked for the sticklebacks, and the ferns which grew in the cool place beneath the fallen tree, and for the sword of sunlight piercing the water.Then, once we were in the water, we would lounge at the head of the pool, where, above us, hung always a velvety brown spider in her place in the centre of her web.I do not much care for spiders usually, and had she lived anywhere in the rectory I should have instructed Milly to remove her forthwith.But down by the pool, I liked to see her because she was a part of it all and belonged there.I looked for her as one might look for a friend.
The first few times I had not stayed in the water long, and had hastened to dress afterwards.Not because I truly believed any ladies would venture down the rough path to take fright at my nakedness, but more because the place felt too new and therefore I did not quite trust yet in its beauty nor its sanctity from prying eyes.
After our twenty-eighth bathe, the place felt as safe as my own bed chamber.I pulled my shirt on over my head and that was sufficient for decency.That familiar pleasant lassitude was coursing through my veins and I lay back in the ferns, caring for nothing but the gentle shift of the warm air on my limbs.Jem lay down too, separated from me by a few green fronds.Above us, sunlight shimmered through the treetops.If I moved my head a fraction of an inch, a shaft of light all the colours of the rainbow seemed to shoot down to my eye.If I moved my head back, it vanished.I thought,this is happiness.
I turned my head and Jem was watching me through the ferns.
“What?”I said, for there was a look in his eyes that made my belly clench.
“No one about,” he remarked.
It was the sort of comment I tried not to make, for it was very obvious, and therefore needless.However, I thought it a nice reassurance.
“No one,” I agreed.“We’re quite alone.”
“No one ever comes.Not ever.”
“True,” I said, happily, for it felt good to revel in the fact of our solitude.
“Remember…” He stopped.
