Page 5 of Mr Collins in Love
He would not look at me, but there was the scar on his wrist that he had got when the mattock fell upon it.His hair, which was dark brown, had ever grown low over his forehead in exactly the way it did now, and the way he towered above me so I must look up was likewise the same.
I wanted to touch him to make sure he was real.I wanted to stare at him.I could have stood in the lane staring for an hour or more.But certain things were expected of me.If he had walked from Marshing, he must be tired.Hungry.
“Well, Jem, I am very happy to see you.Very happy indeed.Will you not come and have something to eat?You must be hungry.Are you hungry?”
The first raspberries were ripe now, in my garden, and there was no one to beat us if we ate them from his hand, but we were men now and there were worse punishments than a beating.A man in my position may not gobble raspberries with the fellow who used to be his father’s gardener’s boy.
The raspberries were how I had met him.I had been hungry.I had always been hungry in those days.Jem had said it would be all right, that no one should catch us.His hand had been dirty and the raspberries the size of walnuts, red as fairy lanterns.Afterwards, he had licked his fingertips and rubbed juice from my cheek and sucked his fingers clean.He had seemed a part of the garden’s largesse, so natural and generous.His eyes were small and of no colour or perhaps every colour, being sometimes brown and sometimes green and sometimes grey.He had smiled and said, “don’t eat no more today and we won’t get caught, see,” and his breath had been fragrant from the fruit.I suppose I had agreed because he had said, “friends then, now, ain’t we?”and his words had gone straight to my heart and lodged there, because he had never betrayed them.I had never heard the sentiment from any other person, but I had heard it from him that green summer afternoon in the secret place behind the raspberry canes.
I wanted to pull him into the coppice and run and run until we were alone, as we might have done when we were boys.
Instead, I turned to Mrs Fowke.She had her hands on her hips, the colander dangling like a saddlebag.“Mrs Fowke will find you something to eat, won’t you Mrs Fowke?”
She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t angry.It was part of a clergyman’s job to be charitable with food and drink and she knew it.“Course, sir.I’ll be bound it’s hungry work idling in our lane all afternoon.”
“This is Jem…that is, Jeremiah Binns, Mrs Fowke.”He is my old friend, was the phrase upon my lips, and perhaps I could say it, but perhaps it wouldn’t be fitting.“I have known him since boyhood when he worked for my father.”
“Ain’t that nice then, to see a familiar face,” she said.
She had often before struck me as possessing a peculiar simple wisdom, for the word ‘familiar’ rang in my heart like a bell.She was quite right, though I had not realised it until that moment.Hunsford was sonewand while it was my great good fortune to be there, new situations, new people and new places have ever been trying to me.Jem was the same old Jem.He looked like home.
“Yes, yes, indeed itisnice to see a familiar face.It is indeed, Mrs Fowke.You are quite right.”
She turned to Jem and I could see in her expression that she was forgiving him for having frightened her.“Come with me, then, lad.‘Spect you could get outside of a bit of mutton, eh?”
“Thank you, missus,” Jem said humbly, ducking his head and twisting his cap so I thought he should twist it in two.But then, Mrs Fowke was a stranger to him, and I had never seen him with a stranger before.Almost everyone in Marshing had known him since birth.
Mrs Fowke turned and walked towards the rectory.Jem followed.His boots were falling apart and he was footsore, limping like old Pilot.When I visited Marshing, I rode, and stayed overnight on the way at the White Hart besides.Likely it had taken Jem three days to come this far from there.Sailors on leave were famously incontinent with their pay, but he did not look like a sailor on leave.He looked like a vagrant, and certainly could not have stretched to inns, even if one would have had him.
“But, Jem, what brings you here?”I asked.
He went a delicate shade of pink and mumbled something I could not hear.
It did not matter why he had come.My heart was beating wildly that he was here.I did not want him to feel like a stranger, yet having never been to Hunsford, he would not be cognisant of the salient features of the area.I began to point them out, my heart bubbling over with pride and pleasure at being able to show them to him.
The spine of the Weald ran over in that direction.Tonbridge was that way and Bromley the other.This was the stable gate, and over there my garden gate, that the direction of Rosings, the upper storey of which we could glimpse through the trees of the park.Here was the rectory and over there the roofs of barn and stable.My sheep were over there, as were the pigs, though he could not see them from here.Those tree tops were in a sort of wilderness that followed the line of a stream.
We reached the house and Mrs Fowke made to lead Jem around the back to the kitchen door.I had scarce set foot in the kitchen since I had arrived at Hunsford.Could a rector sit in his kitchen with his housekeeper and his maid of all work and entertain a man like Jem and watch him eat a plate of mutton?
Jem glanced at me and ducked his head again in what seemed a farewell.
No, I could not follow.
“Let us talk again when you have eaten,” I called.
He nodded and disappeared around the side of the house.
My hands were trembling as I went in the front door, took off my hat and put it on the hall table, trying to reassure myself I had done nothing vulgar nor unsuitable.I had been friendly but not overly effusive.I had been familiar, but had not lowered myself.I had allowed myself to show my true sentiments, but had kept myself in check in front of Mrs Fowke.Surely, I had conducted myself quite well?
Yes, except for that last ‘let’s talk when you have eaten’.That, in hindsight, had been unnecessary, for it was likely obvious Jem and I should speak again once he had eaten.My cheeks grew warm, though I was alone and unobserved.I had mostly been educated at home by my father, but I had spent two years at prep school and there I had acquired the nickname ‘Obvious Collins’ or sometimes ‘Old Obvious’.It had not been a friendly sobriquet.It was vexing, they had told me, to appraise people of facts of which they were already cognisant.In truth I had never meant to annoy anyone, merely to give voice to my understanding of whatever situation was at hand to ensure there was no confusion, for I had found the ways of the other boys so bewildering as to be quite terrifying.Perhaps if my father had sent me to school earlier, I should have known more and done better, but he had not, and in any case, it was just as likely that by educating me at home he had saved me years of torment.
Usually, these days, I was better at censuring myself, but in all the excitement, I had forgotten.It was possible they were laughing at me now in the kitchen, though, on balance, they probably were not.Servants, I had observed, generally forgave eccentricity because they had no choice and wished to keep their positions, and I had never heard Jem laughing at anyone, or at least not in an unkind manner.
Mrs Fowke would be giving him some mutton.Now, a hunk of bread, or maybe a huffkin.She would be watching him eat it.She liked people who appreciated her food, or so she often said.I hoped Jem would not be too shy to thank her, nor to tell her how good it all was.
Now she might be giving him a draught of beer.Now, perhaps, a pickled onion.
I could not linger in the hall all evening.Where should I await my interview with Jem?My study would be the most natural place, for that was where I usually spent my evenings.But perhaps, since Jem was so dusty and ragged, the stable yard would be considered more fitting.Really, though, I longed to show him the garden.
