Chapter 11 #2
He woke at the time he did each day and made his way down to the dining parlour.
Seeing the quality of the furnishings in his house still angered him.
Those damned Bennets had left him with old, rickety furniture, cracked crockery, and very old and tarnished cutlery.
His wife had asked for money to redecorate, a request he had roundly refused and taught her not to ask again.
It was not his fault he only had two tenants, and the estate’s income had fallen by about two-thirds.
Until he found a way to increase his income, they would have to live with what they had.
He seated himself in the master’s place at the table and rang the bell. Rather than Mrs Winters, the cook-housekeeper serving his breakfast as Collins preferred, the manservant delivered the plates and his coffee to the table.
“Where is Mrs Winters? And have you seen Mrs Collins?” Collins demanded.
“Both are in the birthing chamber, Master,” the manservant replied as he flinched. Like the other servants who worked at Longbourn, he feared Mr Collins’s volatile temper.
That explained Fanny’s absence from the table.
“Ah, my wife must have delivered my son and heir,” Collins stated in a self-satisfied manner.
“Tell Mrs Winters and my wife I will come and see my son as soon as I have eaten.” He waved the man away, never once thinking that he knew not if the babe had arrived yet.
Once he had satisfied his need to eat, Collins pushed the chair back and slowly made his way up to the birthing chamber on the second floor of his home. He did not knock—why should he? It was his home—and pushed the door open.
By the time Fanny’s husband arrived, the midwife had departed, and Mrs Winters exited just after he entered.
“Welcome, Clem. Have you come to see your daughter? She is the most beautiful babe ever, far prettier than any of those Mr Bennet gave me,” she flattered.
The truth was that she was afraid the girl would look more like her father than herself, meaning that she would be rather homely.
“You told me you would give me a son!” Collins exploded. He pulled his hand back.
Fanny knew she had to speak fast. “Mr Collins, my parents had a daughter first and then a son next. As you are even stronger and more intelligent than my late father, I am certain that now that you have been given a daughter by God that He will give you as many sons as you desire. How could it not be so when you are a far better man than the late Mr Bennet ever was?”
Collins let the words wash over him. As upset as he was that he did not have a son, he enjoyed his wife’s flattering words. She had said he was better even than her own sire and that, like her father, they would have a son next and then more than one.
He dropped his hand. Collins would not punish his wife this time as he believed there would be a son next.
Although Collins had no interest in his daughter, he decided to name her.
“She will be named Catherine Wilamena. The first name is for my late mother, and the other one honours my late father, William Clem Collins,” he informed his wife.
While Clem considered her words, Fanny held her breath knowing that a babe in her arms would not save her if he decided to bring his arm down on her.
She let out a deep breath when he had lowered his arm.
It seemed like he had accepted her words, and he had named their daughter.
‘You have three other daughters, but you abandoned them in London!’ The voice of her conscience intruded on her thoughts.
Like she always did when she heard something she did not want to hear, Fanny ignored the voice in her head.
“Welcome to the world, Kitty,” Fanny cooed.
“I like that form of Catherine for our daughter. Yes, Kitty will do very well for her,” Collins decided.
When she had spoken, Fanny realised too late she had not asked Clem if he liked Kitty for Catherine.
She had expected to be punished, but by a stroke of luck, he agreed that it was a good name for their daughter.
One thing Fanny knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that if her next one was a girl, her life as she knew it even now, would be effectively over.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
“When I hear about the way that man treats Thomas’s former wife, I should feel sympathy for her, but with what she did to those darling girls, whatever it was, I cannot feel anything for her,” Agatha stated.
“It is more than a year since she left Longbourn and returned without them, and she still will not say what she did.”
She was in bed next to her husband. They had shared a bed since the first night they had lived together as man and wife.
Thanks to the servants at Longbourn, the goings on there were well known throughout the neighbourhood.
Unlike most other estates and households in the area, the servants who worked for the Collinses felt no loyalty to them and spoke freely about anything which occurred in the house.
That brute had lifted his hand to a maid, and she had promptly left his employment.
Word was it had taken months to employ a replacement, and not only that, but the other servants had threatened to leave.
The only way they had remained was for the master of the estate to vow he would never physically harm any of them again.
He still unleashed his temper but, since then, had refrained from any physical contact with those employed at his estate.
As she was his wife, Mrs Collins could not threaten him with anything, and legally he was allowed to do anything short of causing her death.
Agatha was not sure if what she heard from her maid was accurate or embellished after said woman spoke to one who worked at Longbourn. However, it was clear that her husband abused Mrs Collins, both physically and verbally.
“Gardiner told Mrs Collins that she was the architect of her own problems. That does not mean I do not abhor what that bully does to her; I do. Unfortunately, agree or disagree, it is legal,” Phillips mused.
“Mr Collins’s antipathy towards Mrs Collins can be traced back to the day I read the will.
First, he lost the money in the estate accounts, and then, the dowry he still believed belonged to his wife was not his either.
That man is driven by avarice. I can only imagine what he would say to hear that before his death, Bennet had an income above three thousand pounds and under Collins, Longbourn earns less than one thousand annually. ”
“Is that enough to keep the estate solvent?” Agatha enquired.
“Barely, they are living hand to mouth,” Phillips estimated.
“There is certainly no profit, even with the reduced number of servants. The Collinses had to pay more than normal wages to entice anyone, even from Hatfield and St Albans, to work for them.” Phillips paused as he got a malicious gleam in his eye.
“I will wager anything that Collins has not read the whole of the document governing the entail. If he drives the estate into bankruptcy, he will be removed as the master.”
“Who will gain the estate in that case?”
“Bennet’s daughters. As he is their legal guardian, Gardiner would hold Longbourn in trust until one of them marries or reaches five and twenty.
If we reach seven years without knowing where the girls are, Gardiner will not ask the courts to declare them dead.
He said, and I agree with him, that until there is proof they are no longer living, he will not do so,” Phillips explained.
“It is poetic justice that after both of them maligned Thomas and accused him of not being a true man as he could not sire a son that they have a daughter. I feel for her. Kitty is what I am told she is called, growing up in that house with a supremely selfish mother and a father who is a brutish bully. I can only pray that God will protect her.” Agatha turned to her husband and looked at him through her lashes.
“Enough about the Collinses; it is time for us to be man and wife.”
Phillips could never deny his wife anything, least of all this.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~