Page 5 of One Night with Mr. Darcy
She did have a boy, though.
Her family’s future was secure.
Shortly after the birth, Mr. Collins recovered somewhat. He was up and about, proudly holding his son, cooing over how much the babe looked like him (which, well, the child looked remarkably likeMr. Darcy. It was horrifying, in fact.) Mr. Collins even resumed some of his work, delivering sermons for no less than six months.
It was during this time that Elizabeth met Lady Catherine de Bourgh for the first time.
It seemed that Mr. Collins had enjoyed an especially close relationship with the woman before his illness. He was quite proud of his association with her, great woman that she was, and was eager to rekindle their friendship now that he was feeling well.
Lady Catherine struck Elizabeth as pompous, haughty, and a bit ridiculous. Elizabeth often found herself biting down on the inside of her cheek when Lady Catherine spoke to her, for fear of bursting into loud brays of laughter.
On their first meeting, for instance, Lady Catherine said, “Do you play piano?”
“A bit,” said Elizabeth.
“My daughter Anne would likely have been quite accomplished at it if she’d ever played.”
“Oh?” Elizabeth thought this was a very silly thing to say. How could you know a person would be good at something they’d never attempted?
“You must play for us,” said Lady Catherine.
“I’m not well accomplished.”
“I shall judge myself,” said Lady Catherine. “I have noticed that the amount of protestation a person makes about her lack of talent has nothing to do with her actual skills.”
“In my case, I assure you, I do not protest out of false modesty.”
“I shall judge myself,” Lady Catherine said again.
Then, after Elizabeth played, Lady Catherine was very quiet, and Elizabeth knew that she had fallen horribly short of the woman’s estimations, which made her feel a bit lacking, but she was only a parson’s wife, of course, and piano-playing was not required of her.
“There is another piano in the housekeeper’s apartment,” said Lady Catherine to Elizabeth.
“Oh, is that so?” said Elizabeth. “How lovely.” Why was Lady Catherine telling her this?
“You’d be in no one’s way if you wanted to use it.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth. “Well, certainly the housekeeper herself must decide that, I suppose.”
“You never get any better at anything if you don’t practice,” said Lady Catherine.
This was when Elizabeth almost started laughing and had to bite her cheek, because it was such a back-handed way of criticizing her, and yet so very, very obvious. “Too true, my lady,” she managed, nodding vigorously. “Too true.”
She did not come to practice the piano.
Anne de Bourgh came down to dinner only once, and then it was reported that her illness had worsened. Anne had apparently been ill, ill for years, which was why she had never learned to play the piano. When Elizabeth heard this, she felt badly about having thought what Anne’s mother had said was ridiculous. Now a mother herself, she wondered what it would be like to raise a child too ill to engage in the things that all other children engaged in.
She also worried that her husband’s illness had passed to Anne, for her symptoms sounded as though she might be afflicted with the same thing that both Jane and Mr. Collins suffered from. If that was the case, Anne’s worsened illness was ultimately Elizabeth’s fault if she were truly a carrier of the disease and she had infected Mr. Collins.
However, she supposed that Mr. Collins had been under the same roof as Jane, in the end. Maybe it wasn’t her fault. And it was so curious that this illness did not affect everyone.
She tried to convince herself it was all unrelated.
But within six months, Mr. Collins had worsened and was back in bed. And Anne de Bourgh was dead.
Elizabeth couldn’t say if it was her feelings of guilt that kept her coming to visit Lady Catherine during the last days of Anne’s illness and thereafter. She did not like Lady Catherine, not precisely, but she felt a sort of pity for the woman and she grew to feel a familiarity with the woman’s foibles that may have been said to border on fondness.
Certainly, it made no sense.
