Page 83 of Introducing Mrs. Collins
Seeing this, Charlotte enquired if he were quite well.
‘Just a pain I have had in my side since last night. I am sure it will dissipate.’ He smoothed his countenance and lifted his toast, but she noted that he didn’t take a bite. ‘I have had a letter back from Mr Smithson,’ he informed her, as cheerily as his discomfort would allow.
‘Oh, I am glad!’ said Charlotte. ‘What is his news?’
‘I have not yet opened it; it arrived this morning.’
He grimaced again. She supposed that what ailed him might be indigestion or perhaps a gastric complaint, and she did not wish to embarrass him by questioning him further.
But that afternoon, upon returning from a walk into Meryton, she discovered that he had taken to his bed. She entered their bedroom quietly, finding him lying on top of the bedsheets, fully clothed, gripping his right side as he had at breakfast.
He smiled tightly at her. ‘It has not dissipated. It is a little worse.’
Charlotte sat on the bed and put her hand tenderly on his arm. ‘What can it be? Is it an ache?’
‘It is’ – he winced – ‘a sharp pain.’
‘Could you have broken a rib?’
He only shook his head; speaking seemed to be difficult. Instead, he groaned again, loudly, and clutched his side.
Charlotte went downstairs and asked Mrs Brooke to fetch the doctor. Brooke prepared to leave immediately, and as she turned to go, Charlotte grabbed her arm and said, in a panic, ‘I do not know what to do. What can I do?’
Brooke took her hand and said, ‘Just be with him, madam.’
Now, Mrs Bennet had found a comfortable seat for herself next to her sister, Mrs Philips, and was eating a sandwich and cheerily discussing how the decoration of the room had changed since she had quitted Longbourn. Lady Catherine was present, too, occupying a corner seat, sitting with an ashen-faced Maria. Forthe first time in all of their acquaintance, Lady Catherine looked truly grieved.
Mr Bingley stood by the fireplace, speaking seriously with an older man whom Charlotte did not recognise. She asked if Jane knew who the gentleman was but, on receiving a negative, returned to silence. She had said very little in the last few days.
But a few moments later, she was forced to engage when Mr Bingley approached her to introduce that very man as a Mr Poulteney.
The gentleman gave Charlotte a soft, kind smile, sitting down in the vacant seat next her. ‘I knew your husband quite well, Mrs Collins. I was very fond of him.’
Charlotte felt tears in her eyes then, because she had not heard that sentiment expressed by anyone in the last week, and she had mourned for the lack of it. Mr Collins deserved better.
‘So was I, Mr Poulteney. So was I. Tell me, how did you know him?’
She sat for half an hour, listening to the man’s stories of William Collins’s quirks and misfortunes, talents and gifts. It was a gift to her to receive them. If she gained a better understanding of her husband from this, it came too late to be useful in their marriage, but she was grateful all the same.
Across those next two days, Mr Collins’s pains became far worse, and he had a high fever. The doctor spoke with great authority, but it was clear to Charlotte that he no more knew what to do than anyone else. He recommended cooling cloths and opening the window, both of which she and Brooke had already done. Brooke was her usual self – calm and resourceful – but even she was helpless in the face of this malady.
At points, Mr Collins was delirious and became agitated by the thought that Charlotte was not with him, even though she was; she always was. When his body was taken by dramatic tremors thatseemed ungodly, she tried still to hold him. When his hair was matted to his face with sweat, she gently combed it to one side.
He was bled by the surgeon, but this did not ease him. By the fifth day, Charlotte could not help but be grateful when he seemed to be taken into sleep. His breathing was greatly laboured, so it was not the rest she would hope for him – but at least he was still.
She decided to try reading to him, in the hope he might hear her. She chose a sermon by Fordyce, passages that were written for the death of a friend, which offered words of comfort – at least, words she believed her husband would find comforting.
‘The beginnings of piety are often scarcely discernible; but being kindled by the breath of God, that spark of divinity is by degrees blown into a flame, which mounts upward, and upward, and still upward, till it reacheth to the throne of the Eternal.’
She looked keenly at his face, but it showed no sign of understanding. Turning the page, she continued, ‘Under the righteous reign of Jesus, that “everlasting righteousness” which he defended, must prevail; and neither death, nor life, shall be able to separate the pious and the just, from the love of God.’
She closed the book and took his hand, pressing her cheek to it.
‘He was not the most accomplished of dancers,’ admitted Charlotte, smiling gently at her husband’s childhood tutor, ‘and now I understand why.’
‘Curiously, while he could not retain the fixed moves of a country dance, I would, at times, observe him dancing, in his own particular mode, very happily and rather creatively, when my wife was playing the piano and he thought he was unobserved.’
‘Indeed? I wonder what other talents he was hiding.’
