Chapter 13 #2
She organised the small container with real sugar, hiding it in the drawer, having it ready to swap with the one on the table for her visitor’s benefit.
She then ordered the tea and cake which she had instructed her cook to bake.
It was to be an almond cake, for she had noticed that Miss Elizabeth had liked almond cake and praised it to Mrs Quinton, asking her to pass on her compliments to the cook.
The tea service and cake were served exactly at three o’clock, just as Lady Catherine demanded. She waited a few minutes but when Elizabeth failed to make her appearance the lady called her maid to ask her to go and fetch the young woman.
After a few minutes the maid returned saying she could not find Miss Elizabeth anywhere.
Lady Catherine became uncontrollably irate and throwing the door of her sitting room open with a crash proceeded to go to look for and find the young woman herself, whom she suspected was hiding in the library, possibly with Darcy.
When she found Miss Elizabeth she would know how to act. The insignificant chit caused one offence after another. Her patience was finally spent!
***
Mr Collins had been held up in the morning, stuck in a difficult passage of the Prophet Isaiah that warned against idolatry.
His sermon for the following Sunday was an earnest admonition against the sin of idol worship, which he described as ‘that lamentable tendency of the heathen to elevate the creature above the Creator,’
He had paused and then lingered to refine a sentence praising the incomparable condescension, wisdom, and symmetry of mind possessed by his noble patroness, whose guidance, though he was careful not to add as an object of worship, was nevertheless deserving of his deepest admiration, gratitude and total reverence.
Thus, so delayed, when he finally made his way into Rosing's for his daily session of devotion at the feet of his benefactress, it was already 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
Mr. Gibbs, the butler, received Mr. Collins with a solemn bow and informed him that her ladyship was, as was her custom, in her private sitting room, where tea had already been laid.
At the mention of tea, Mr. Collins felt a most pressing agitation within his stomach, which he endeavoured, though unsuccessfully, to ignore.
With eager steps, he hastened toward the room, anticipating the honour of attending upon Lady Catherine and partaking in the elegant refreshment as he had done many times.
Upon entering, however, he found the chamber entirely deserted.
Neither her ladyship nor her maid was in attendance.
Yet the table was set with exquisite care.
A teapot, still gently steaming, stood beside a freshly baked cake, its surface adorned with delicate slivers of almond arranged in a most pleasing design.
“What luxury,” he murmured, his eyes brightening with undisguised satisfaction.
He seated himself and resolved, at first, to wait.
A few minutes passed in silence, broken only by the faint ticking of the clock and the increasing insistence of his appetite.
At length, he began to reason that Lady Catherine, who valued propriety in all things, could hardly approve of such fine provisions being neglected and allowed to grow cold.
Thus persuaded by his own logic, he concluded that he would, in fact, be rendering a service by partaking while the tea remained hot.
So, he proceeded to pour himself a cup of tea with a liberal hand, adding two heaping spoonfuls of sugar, and continued to cut a generous slice of the fragrant cake.
A further sprinkling of fine white sugar over it completed the indulgence.
The scent of almond rose most invitingly, and he partook of the first bite with unrestrained eagerness, quite gluttonously.
It was not until he had begun upon a second portion that an unusual sensation overtook him. His hand faltered. A sudden dizziness clouded his senses, and the room seemed to waver before his eyes. The teacup slipped from his grasp and fell, its hot contents spilling unnoticed upon his person.
A strange and violent disorder now seized him. His breath came in sharp, irregular gasps; an unseen agony twisted within him, rendering him wholly insensible to all but his suffering. He attempted to rise, to call out... yet no assistance was near.
With a heavy collapse, he fell to the floor.
There, in dreadful solitude, his suffering reached its terrible conclusion; bood started pouring from every crevice in his face, as his insides were screaming, twisting and dissolving into a mass of bloody tissues due to the effects of the poison known as white arsenic.
The elegant chamber, so lately the scene of quiet refinement, bore witness instead to a most shocking end.
He realised that as he had paid little attention, in life, to those closest to him, so was he left neglected and abandoned in his time of need. As he suffered and died there was no one to hold his hand or whisper words of comfort as the end came swiftly and terrible.
Mr Collins expired alone, his ill-fated indulgence still upon the table, and the sweetness he had so eagerly embraced proving, in the end, his undoing.