Chapter 2
A veritable war raged in Thomas’ mind and heart. Curiosity to know how such a sum had been amassed fought against his need to see his brother taken care of. The latter won, but only just.
“Thank you for letting me know, Collin,” he said. “We can talk more on the subject later, for I have many questions. For now, however, you need to get cleaned up and made comfortable in bed.”
Collin grinned impishly, and for a moment Thomas saw the little brother who had once been a torment to him. The image faded almost immediately, replaced by the sight of a very ill man.
Thomas left to fetch his valet first. Once his man and Rydley were set to work making Collin comfortable, Thomas sent a servant up to build up the fire to keep the room warm, and he sent some thin soup up to warm Collin from the inside.
Only then did he seek out his wife who was giving orders to her maid as to what to pack for herself and for Lydia.
“There is no need for you to leave, after all,” he said. “It is consumption, making it highly unlikely that you or the girls will get ill.”
“You cannot change your mind now,” Mrs. Bennet said. “You told me to go to my brother’s home, and that is where I will go. Besides, there is no guarantee that consumption is the only thing he has. It doesn’t usually cause a high fever like what you saw. Therefore, I will stay my course.”
Honestly, Thomas didn’t really want to keep her here. Collin needed rest, and he wouldn’t get it with the caterwauling that was often to be found within the walls of Longbourn, usually from either his wife or Lydia, though occasionally Kitty was just as loud.
He would need to rethink his decision, though, if Collin survived more than a week. He wasn’t certain he could afford for Mrs. Bennet to be exposed to all the shops in London for longer than that.
“Very well, my dear,” said Thomas. “If it will make you feel better, you may still go. I just thought you would be relieved to know that the situation isn’t as bad as we thought.”
With that, he left his wife to her packing.
~~~~~
Three hours later, the house was peaceful once again.
Mrs. Bennet and Lydia had left for London, and Kitty had gone to stay with Mrs. Bennet’s sister, Mrs. Phillips, who lived in Meryton.
Mr. Bennet did not believe she was actually afraid of the fever.
He suspected she just wanted to be away from the possibility of being asked to assist in caring for a sick man she didn’t even know.
The apothecary, Mr. Jones, had come and gone, leaving behind a chest salve that might help ease Collin’s breathing. A physician had just left, his news stark and unwelcome. At least now they knew what to expect.
Collin’s exertions while dealing with his consumption had caused a secondary case of pneumonia to crop up during his stay in London.
While he could have lived for another few years with consumption, the pneumonia would almost certainly take his life within a week.
There was little chance of fighting it off with his constitution already weakened.
With a heavy heart, Thomas went back to his brother’s room.
When he opened the door, he was pleased to find Collin awake. Even so, he did not know what to say.
Collin was the one who broke the silence. “It’s not good, is it?” he said.
Thomas simply shook his head.
“I knew it,” said Collin. There was no anger or frustration in his voice, just a tinge of sadness.
“If you knew it, why did you force yourself to travel all this way?” asked Thomas.
“Well, as I mentioned earlier, I did not even know anything was truly wrong until I was on the ship. Even before then, however, it would have been just as difficult to turn around. There are currently no ships sailing between America and England, so I had to travel all the way to Canada to even have a chance of getting home to England. Besides, I had no home to return to in North Carolina, since I had already sold my land.”
“Well, you should have just stayed in London until you had recuperated a bit,” said Thomas.
“I couldn’t do that, either. The air there was much harder to breathe. Perhaps I should have left London earlier, but that is the only thing I could have changed, and in the end I do not think it would have made any difference,” said Collin.
Thomas could not speak. His fists were clenched in his lap in his frustration that he had finally reunited with his brother, but he could do nothing for him.
“Please, Thomas, do not spend your life regretting the past,” said Collin. “Nothing can be done to change it, and wishing it were different will only make you unhappy. Your future and that of your children is secure now. Please look forward and enjoy it for my sake.”
Thomas tried to do as his brother advised. For the first time in his life, he forced himself to listen to the advice of his younger brother. It was good advice, sound and practical, just as all Collin’s advice had turned out to be.
Collin said, “I would love to hear more about my nieces, the ones who will inherit my good fortune.”
“I will tell you about them, but then you must tell me how you acquired such a fortune in the first place,” said Thomas.
Collin smiled and agreed.
Thomas went on to describe his five daughters.
Jane, the eldest at age twenty-one, looked the most like her mother, but her personality was more similar to her grandmother’s, mild-mannered and kind.
Elizabeth was nearly twenty. She had the darker hair that came from the Bennet side of the family, and her personality matched it.
She had a keen intellect and a sharp wit that everyone said mimicked her father’s.
The next daughter was Mary. She would be turning eighteen in another month. She was studious and quiet, though she perhaps liked to show off a bit too much. Kitty and Lydia were the youngest, both rather willful and wild, though Lydia took after her mother’s personality the most.
“So, you have five daughters to split my fortune amongst,” said Collin. “That is quite a generous dowry for them, do you not agree, Brother?” he asked with a mischievous grin.
“I don’t wish to look a gift horse in the mouth,” said Thomas, “but it is quite the conundrum you have given me. Where will I find men who are worthy of my daughters once they become so obscenely wealthy?”
Collin chuckled, though it quickly turned into a coughing fit.
When it had ceased, Collin said, “I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you.
I have no connections here anymore, not that I ever had many.
Those who once knew me are all in this neighborhood.
You are not without a modicum of intelligence, however.
I’m certain you shall come to some conclusion how it should be done. ”
“Well, while I am pondering on that subject, perhaps you will now tell me how you became so wealthy,” said Bennet.
It took a while for Collin to tell the complete tale. Between his coughing fits and his need to simply rest occasionally, it took more than a day before Thomas’ curiosity was completely satisfied.
Collin had started out with a small farm in Noth Carolina.
Over the first five years there, he took every opportunity to purchase the surrounding farms, usually offering somewhat more than the land was worth to enable the sale.
His goal was to build up a stable income and inheritance for any future children he might have.
By 1793, he had accumulated a vast swath of land.
It was run by hired laborers. He was never comfortable with the idea of owning slaves, so he refused to do so even though it was, at times, difficult to find enough labor to truly take advantage of all of his land.
It all changed in 1795 when he was walking through his fields one day and stumbled upon a large and unusually heavy rock which had been moved to the side of the planting area. A couple other rocks were nearby, having similarly been moved out of the way.
A suspicion of the possible nature of these rocks prompted a trip to Raleigh, the nearest city of any size. There, he had the rock appraised, and it was discovered to be gold. It was a large rock, about 10 pounds. That one rock was worth nearly three hundred English pounds.
Collin endeavored to keep it secret, and he managed to do so for five years.
All the while, he personally walked through his fields after they had been plowed each year and collected the gold rocks.
He spent the winters travelling from town to town, selling them wherever he could find a buyer.
He did not wish to try selling them all at once.
For one thing, no one would have enough money to buy it all.
For another, it would be impossible to keep it secret if he did.
Secrecy was paramount to keep his laborers from simply walking away with the gold on his land and also to keep his family safe. The amount of money he was accumulating was starting to become concerning.
In the end, it couldn’t be kept quiet forever. In 1800, the secret was leaked, and all the surrounding farmers began searching their own fields for such rocks. Additionally, they all began searching the stream beds as well, and there they found far more than they could find on the land.
By the time Collin’s wife and son died, the easy-to-find gold was running thin, and there was talk among the locals of hiring a proper mining team to see if they could find where the gold had come from so they could dig it out of the earth, but no one knew enough to be able to figure out how to go about it.
When Collin decided to sell out and head back to England, there was no shortage of offers for his land. Even though he made it clear that he believed he had found as much gold as possible there, the offers were enormous.
So, he sold it to the highest bidder. Then he hired a team of servants to accompany him to Canada, both to help with the journey and for personal protection, since he would be taking his entire fortune with him.
It was a harrowing journey, and there were a couple of attacks along the way, since he couldn’t keep his departure completely quiet. Once they were north of Philadelphia, however, the rumors of who he was seemed to have stopped, and there were no more attacks.
By the time Collin reached Canada, the cough which he thought was a holdover from his own bout with influenza had grown worse, but there was no helping it. He had no choice but to press on.
The crossing of the Atlantic took a month with the weather mostly cooperating. In fact, the sailors all marveled that they hadn’t had any true storms, since autumn was usually quite rough in the north part of the ocean.
Though Collin had the largest cabin on board, the fundamental discomfort of the journey made his health decline even more. He had already begun to suspect that he was in a sorry state when the medical officer told him he had consumption.
Collin refused to give details of the difficulties he encountered once he reached land, but Thomas was fairly certain he wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for Rydley. Thomas could well understand Collin’s desire to reward such loyalty handsomely in his will.
After hearing the tale, Thomas was truly convinced that, once Collin had decided to return to England, there was nothing that could have been done to save his life, no choice that could have altered his fate. He resolved to make the best of the time he had left.
Less than a week later, Collin breathed his last. Thomas shed many tears over his loss, tears he had never in his life felt the need for, not even when his parents died.
Now, they were absolutely necessary, not only to express the loss of a brother but the loss of the many years they had spent estranged.