Page 80 of Introducing Mrs. Collins
Startled into answering, Charlotte replied in the negative, and Lady Catherine’s next remark was as sudden as it was baffling.
‘Go to Bath.’
Charlotte blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Go to Bath. Take the waters.’
‘Why? I am not ill.’
‘I understand the waters help all kinds of maladies – rheumatism, low spirits, and difficulties of your kind. My sister took them.’
Charlotte wondered if Lady Catherine had laced her tea with gin. ‘I do not wish to go to Bath. I do not believe water can change my situation.’ She added, rather piously, ‘I do not think it is God’s will for me to be a mother.’
Lady Catherine pulled an incredulous face. ‘God’s will? You sound like your husband, Mrs Collins. I had not marked you down as being so’ – she searched for the word – ‘passive.’
‘Passive! How can I be otherwise?’ cried Charlotte. ‘You know how I fared last time.’
‘Yes, I do,’ replied Lady Catherine, calmly and unsentimentally. ‘Are there efforts in the marriage to try again?’
Charlotte shook her head in disbelief at the temerity of her companion but found herself responding. ‘Yes. Some. But it is to no avail. Therefore, I confess, we have largely ceased to try, to save ourselves the heartache—’
‘Oh, come, Mrs Collins – you are not the first wife to have difficulties getting with child.’
Charlotte had mostly restrained her anger thus far, but it began to find some momentum. ‘This is too much! You keep saying “difficulties”; I do not know whether I have difficulties – the difficulties may not bemine! What if the difficulties arehis?’
Her voice grew louder as she raised a concern that had preyed on her mind since the first months of her marriage.
Lady Catherine paused, upon receiving this. ‘You may well be right. But it does not matter. It is always us who have difficulties, Mrs Collins. It is always the woman’s problem, in the end. I know you studied your history books, so I am sure you realise that theChurch upon which your husband’s former livelihood rests was founded because of a king’s desire to remarry in order that he might get himself a son. That king tried six different wives, and five of them received the blame when male heirs were not forthcoming. Yet what is more likely? That all those healthy women haddifficulties, or that an old king, bloated, gouty and probably diseased, was not up to the task?’
Lady Catherine fell silent for a moment, before continuing in a voice low but unflinching, edged with a pride that had weathered sorrow. ‘I wanted more children. It took five years to get Anne. I lost three before her. No more children were to be mine. My husband wanted a boy, of course. But it wasn’t to be. He barely looked at her, at first. Too small, too sickly. But I loved Anne fiercely, to make up for his dismissal of her. She was not meant to survive, but I made certain she did. She was all I had. All Ihave.’
Lady Catherine turned to Charlotte now. ‘People think me strong. And I am. I am strong – for her.’
‘That was your path,’ said Charlotte. ‘I do not know whether I want the same.’
Lady Catherine came back to herself and said sharply, ‘Nevertheless, children will be the best way out of your current predicament.’
Charlotte looked puzzled. ‘I am not in a predicament.’
‘Oh, but you are, Mrs Collins.’ Lady Catherine breathed out of her nose, apparently exasperated by the conversation that no one was pushing to continue but herself. ‘You may think you are content for the time being, but marriages such as yours cannot sustain happily without the addition of children. I speak as a widow and a dowager. When your husband is no longer there, what are you left with?’
‘A peaceful life and a comfortable home,’ replied Charlotte, her chin jutting out in defiance.
‘No,’ replied Lady Catherine firmly. ‘You shall be left with neither. This comfortable home’ – she gestured at the house thatloomed in front of them – ‘is not yours. Your previous home was not yours. The house you grew up in was not yours. This house belongs to yourhusband, while he lives. Andifyou have a son, it will belong to him, and you may live in it. If you have neither husband nor son, you have no comfortable home. You would be all alone and reliant on the charity and pity of others. Would that afford you apeaceful life?’ She allowed the impact of her words to settle, before adding, more gently now, ‘Go to Bath, Mrs Collins. Take the waters.’
With that, she took her servant’s hand and climbed into her carriage. She waited a moment until Mr Collins returned, deeply apologetic for not having found her glove.
‘No matter, Mr Collins; I thank you for your efforts. It is always worth trying, even when the task seems hopeless. I bid you good day.’
And with that, the carriage wheels turned, and Charlotte watched the vehicle sweep out of the drive – but not before seeing Lady Catherine adjust her bonnet, give instruction to her coachman, and proceed to don a pair of immaculate white gloves.
CHAPTER V
It was a hot, sticky summer’s day at Lucas Lodge. The air was thick with warmth, and the dining room windows, though open, let in no breeze. The Collinses had been invited to take luncheon with the family, and Charlotte, ever polite, had eaten more than she had really fancied of the generous helpings of roast chicken and potatoes. The meal sat heavily on her, and, feeling languid and uncomfortable, she longed for a walk outside.
‘An excellent choice of meal, Lady Lucas, well suited to the day,’ Mr Collins simpered untruthfully.
Lady Lucas accepted the small compliment graciously, accustomed to Mr Collins’s manners by now. The company all reclined a little in their chairs as Sir William Lucas muttered something to their butler.
