Chapter 1 #3
I squared my shoulders. To expect happiness in life is to be fortunate indeed. Even if I married, I would still have the living. I would still be the rector. I would have that, most likely, until I died, unless I disgraced myself in some truly ghastly manner.
Even with a shrewish wife, I would have my study with the window that opened onto the lilacs, and I would have my garden and the song of the bees and my walks in Rosings Park.
And if my wife despised me then I should endure it, as I had endured life before Hunsford, with as much patience and courage as I could muster.
Mrs Fowke came hurrying towards me from behind the house.
Her hair was escaping her cap and she was red-faced and frowning.
She carried a colander and must have been on her way to the vegetable garden.
Picking vegetables wasn’t usually her job, so likely George was poorly again.
She was probably worried about him, hence her expression, which was usually more pacific.
I greeted her, and she bobbed a curtsey.
“Oh, Mr Collins, there you are, sir. Oh, sir, I must tell you. George is taken bad again and there’s been a foreigner in the lane all afternoon.
And he hasn’t come to the door, and he hasn’t gone away, and Mr Butler came by in his gig and we thought that had scared him off, but Milly saw him again not half an hour since and he’s after our fowl, I’ll be bound. ”
I could not understand her alarm, for foreigners, as she called them, came regularly to Kent.
They were Londoners, generally, looking for work on the farms. I wanted to get to my study and find a piece of sermon paper and list the names of the ladies I had considered so far.
Two lists, actually: ‘Suitable’ and ‘Unsuitable’.
I did not want to forget anyone for the Unsuitable list.
“Probably he is merely looking for work, Mrs Fowke,” I said.
“But it ain’t time, sir, begging your pardon. The planting’s done and the hay in, and the hops not ripe for weeks. And he was a big-looking ruffian and all. Very ragged.”
I could feel no true alarm, even though the rectory was at the far end of the village and if George was in his bed, there was nobody about but the women. “Very well. I’ll go and see.”
I went around the house, stopping in at the front door to get my stick from the hall table. If there was some wayfaring fellow about, twopence would probably do more good, and this I had in my pocket, but my stick made it clear to Mrs Fowke that I was taking the matter seriously.
The lane was empty in both directions, the hedgerows dreaming in the late afternoon sun. Butterflies hovered about the meadowsweet. Finches peeped and fluttered. Velvety dust arose about my ankles from the road, so white my father, had he been alive, might have used it to powder his wig.
“I see no one,” I said.
Perhaps the demure Miss Norris was not yet five-and-thirty. Perhaps she was but four-and-thirty. Or three-and-thirty. It really was impossible to say. Perhaps even if she was five-and-thirty that was not, in fact, too old.
“He were there, sir.” Mrs Fowke pointed left. “Towards the village. Idling in the lane, at first, and then Milly saw him in Butler’s coppice. There at the edge.”
I made my way along the lane, Mrs Fowke behind me, and peered into the green depths of the coppice. No dark figure lurked there.
“I think he must have gone, Mrs Fowke.”
Many men married women older than themselves. Perhaps I should make a third list, titled ‘Neither Suitable Nor Unsuitable’. Miss Norris would be the first name on that list.
“Hiding, likely,” Mrs Fowke said in my ear. “Anyway, I got the fowl in, just in case.”
“A wise precaution.”
I stepped across the tangle of weeds and wildflowers in the ditch and into the coppice. It had perhaps ten years of growth and while it was easy to walk between the trees, it would be difficult to find anyone in its depths for it was thick and covered a large area.
I cast about, startling a blackbird which flew off, disturbing the peace with its cry of alarm.
I knew the coppice well for Mr Butler did not object to his neighbours walking there, but I could see nothing amiss.
No ruffians lurking in the undergrowth, only foxgloves.
I made my way back to the lane where Mrs Fowke stood hugging her empty colander in the sunshine, her brow knitted in concern.
“No one is there,” I said. “Likely he was just some poor fellow stopping to rest in the heat of the day. I expect he has gone on now.”
“If you say so, sir.” She bobbed another curtsey.
“I hope you’ll excuse me, sir. I’m not usually one to take on, as I hope you know, only what with George taken bad…
and the fellow’s manner was odd sir, all ducking and diving like he didn’t want to be—” Her eyes went round.
She was staring past me, into the coppice. “Oh, sir. Oh, lawks. It’s him .”
I turned. A huge shape was emerging from the shadows. A man dressed almost in rags, his trousers gone at the knees and his jacket ripped at the shoulders. For so large a fellow he moved very silent and at the edge of the lane he stopped, several paces from us, shoulders hunched, head ducked.
He wrung a cap between hands like hams, his knuckles all scraped and scabbed. His brow was dark and heavy, and his eyes, when he glanced up, small and apologetic. He had a hare lip so that a chink of white tooth showed through as though he wore a permanent snarl.
My mouth fell open.
It could not be.
He was changed, of course. He was older. His cheeks had hollowed and had a scruffy beard. He had got a filthy blue neckerchief. But the biggest change was in his manner. He had never been one to put himself forward, but now he cringed like a man trying to hide.
What has happened to you? I wanted to say.
Because it was him. It was Jem. Jem Binns.
My only friend. Come back to me.