Page 22 of Introducing Mrs. Collins
When they got home, Charlotte dallied in the hall a moment to ask her mother if there had been many eligible men there tonight.
‘Not – not many,’ was the reply, but her mother had hesitated, and unluckily for her, Charlotte was not easy to fool. She nodded slowly, understanding.
‘I am not so much a prize as some ladies in the neighbourhood,’ she said, which made her mother’s eyes flood with indignant tears.
It is one thing to understand that you have not been picked out for special attention by anyone, but it is another to watch your daughter experience such a marked lack of any attention and realise its implications. It is, perhaps, a heavier burden for a mother to bear than for the daughter herself.
‘You, Charlotte, are worth more than any of them. You looked wonderful tonight, you showed them your skills, and I am sureyou will dance more in future. You have more to offer a husband than any young woman I know. You are not a prize to be won, but upon my word, the man who does win you will be lucky indeed.’
Charlotte smiled softly. ‘You are biased, Mother.’
‘Of course I am, and I will always be. But I am still right.’
Upstairs, Alice helped her undress. Charlotte took off her emerald ring and asked Alice to return it to her mother. Once the maid had gone, Charlotte lay out her green dress on the bed and looked at it, admiring its beauty, and she felt that it had been rather wasted tonight. Determinedly, she steered her mind towards the practical.
‘Well, at least I may wear it again soon – after all, it will not be well remembered.’
CHAPTER X
Life became much quieter following the removal of so many visitors. Elizabeth and Maria had left shortly after Darcy and Fitzwilliam, so the reduction in society was sudden, though not unwelcome at first. Between settling into Hunsford after the wedding and the arrival of her friends and family in March, only a few weeks had elapsed, and so Charlotte had not yet had much opportunity to experience what her new life really felt like, day to day.
Spring slid into a warm summer, and just as Charlotte’s garden began to bloom and flourish, so she found herself growing into her new life with more colour and more vigour than before. She found a routine which suited her well: her visits to the village, looking after the church, keeping house, gardening and writing letters to her mother and sister and to Elizabeth kept her occupied – though Elizabeth was more lax in replying than usual.
Charlotte walked a great deal. The countryside around Hunsford was stunning in the summer. The parkland around Rosings led right to their gate at the parsonage. Before nearing the grand house itself, there were acres of land that they were welcome to enjoy freely. A long avenue of beech trees led the way through the estate, with paths leading off it into the lawns and woods that made up the farthermost gardens.
One part of those grounds, which she had stumbled upon in February and was keen to revisit, was an area of woodlandthat she found enchanting. Trails led up high to rocky outcrops and down to cave-like hollows beset with knotted roots and tangled undergrowth, the thicket dotted with rhododendron bushes that decorated the wood with flashes of colour when in bloom. In winter, it had been a fairyland – dark, shadowy, mysterious. In summer, it was a playground – splashes of pink, purple and blue, lit by shafts of sunlight which burst through the canopy making them glow. It was a special place, and all her own.
On the other side of the parsonage was farmland – yellow fields stretching out for miles, divided by country lanes and footpaths, some of which led into Hunsford or other neighbouring villages (if you welcomed a long walk) or allowed one to simply wander through the fields in the hazy air of high summer.
Charlotte explored it all, little by little, savouring each new part of it, unwrapping the gifts of her surroundings one at a time.
She had occasionally shared these walks with Mr Collins and had hoped it might be a pastime that would bind them closer. She did not expect a marital miracle, but in her modest hopes, she imagined there would be a rare accord between them. As it was, her husband was not very comfortable on country walks. His eyes seemed to squint in the sun or be bothered by the breeze, blinking and watering. His clothing itched and chafed and it was too much, or too scant. He would stumble and trip often, but that owed as much to his lack of attention as it did to a want for sure-footedness – his gaze was never expanded out but kept close to his own person, or to Charlotte’s. He could not keep pace with her, even though he was taller, because he walked in small steps and with hesitations and interruptions, fiddling with a shoe or moving a twig or turning to check on his wife.
Therefore, they now had an unspoken agreement that country walks were mostly taken by Charlotte alone. She was grateful for solitude over a poorly matched companion. However, in the recent days of bright sunshine, when she could wander freely,bare-shouldered and freckled and sweaty, glorying in the sights around her, she wished so much that she had someone with whom to share it all.
There was a development in her situation that she had not expected, which was that, at the invitation of Lady Catherine, she began visiting Rosings every week, alone, to practise the pianoforte. She let herself in by a side door, as instructed, and crept to the little square pianoforte in Mrs Jenkinson’s room, which was a good, basic instrument. She had a few sheets of music herself, brought from her home in Hertfordshire, but she found a large and up-to-date collection of music left for her on the instrument, varying from country dances to the latest Beethoven sonata.
After a few weeks, she encountered Lady Catherine as she was leaving the house.
‘Next time you come, Mrs Collins, play on the Broadwood grand in the drawing room. It is a superior instrument, and I think you would feel the benefit.’
‘Oh, I am very happy where I am, Lady Catherine—’
‘Nonsense. You are becoming a fine pianist, and you should play on a fine instrument. And a pianoforte needs playing, or it will go out of tune, so it would be a favour to me if you would play it.’
Lady Catherine did not look as if she were requesting a favour; Charlotte took it as an order but soon came to appreciate being pushed towards the scheme. She had enjoyed the privacy that came with her upstairs practise sessions but she found, to her surprise, that it was gratifying to be heard by the household. Lady Catherine often made herself absent for these times, and Charlotte could only guess at whether this was due to a surprising sensitivity – acknowledging that always having an audience was not helpful for improvement – or because she did not have such a ‘true enjoyment of music’ as she once claimed. Either way, it suited Charlotte well. She was transported on these visits. Herpassion and her skill at the instrument were secrets she held for herself, and she treasured them.
Her contentment came from everything in her life, excepting her marriage, but she had not yet wholly resigned herself to despair on that front. She knew that her husband was not a sensible man – she had always known that. But neither was he a cruel man; he could be judgemental but never towards her, and she found that her hopes for the marriage continued to evolve. During weeks when she had not spent many hours with him, she could think that, in time, she might come to love him, in a companionable sort of way. On days when he was buzzing around her, like a persistent wasp, she thought that, at most, she would be able to tolerate him indefinitely. And at other times, she pinned her hopes on the notion that a sudden apoplexy would carry him off. Her thoughts were uncharitable, but they were private, so she let them be and tried not to think them in church. This was difficult, because listening to his poorly written sermons was one of the chief agitators for her.
Each month, she waited to see whether her courses would be late, if her body would swell, if her face would glow as she had been told it might.
But each month her body – her healthy, robust body – remained the same, running like clockwork. It was a disappointment. She knew that six months was not a long time to wait for a child, but she felt a need for her life to advance, and this seemed like the natural next step. She did not feel a longing for a child – not yet. If solitude was her comfort, she knew a baby would be its thief, and she was in no hurry for that. But she had no idea what a married life looked like without children. A life spent with Mr Collins, with just each other for company, did not appeal.
Meanwhile, Mr Collins’s appetite in the bedchamber had increased. He grew in confidence, though little in skill. One mark of this evolution was that, while formerly he had attempted tomake love while wearing his nightgown, he would now, at least, disrobe before the act. He did so in a rather ceremonial way, folding each item of clothing after he had removed it and placing it on a chair. He did not require the same from Charlotte, apparently preferring for her to remain in her nightgown and for him to work around it. Charlotte did not have the experience to know what was and was not standard practice, but she felt instinctively that she would rather clothes were removed or cast aside in the heat of passion, rather than as a pre-ritual formality.
She had hoped she would grow more used to it, but as time went on, the opposite happened. Their communion felt more wrong each time; while her mind accepted it, knowing it to be a requisite of a stable marriage, her body did not, and at times she had to force herself not to pull away, not to stiffen in her body.
But Charlotte had always been a fast learner and resourceful, so she began to seek out ways of making it all more comfortable for herself. She experimented while alone, until she found a few methods which she could employ to ensure that marital relations were, at the very least, physically endurable. But any pleasure she was able to find she owed entirely to herself and always in spite of Mr Collins rather than because of him.
