Chapter 22 #3
And if Mr. Collins was capable of becoming a better man, why should she not be the one who effected his transformation?
None of her sisters would be prepared to take on such a task, nor equal to achieving it.
She was the one Bennet daughter who, by accepting Mr. Collins, might make it possible for him to grow into a more sensible being.
Mary shifted in her bed, aware of where her thoughts were leading her.
Perhaps it was her duty to marry Mr. Collins, to save him from himself?
Of course, in becoming his wife, she would secure her own future as well as his.
As Mrs. Collins, she would be both comfortable and secure.
At the same time, she would deliver the greatest prize of all, for marriage to him would keep the Bennet property in the Bennet family line and remove forever the looming shadow of the entail.
She smiled bitterly to herself in the darkness as she imagined her mother’s response when she understood it was the least loved and most disregarded of her daughters to whom she owed the prospect of a happy old age.
It was a triumph that would offend Mrs. Bennet very deeply.
That alone rendered the prospect of marriage to Mr. Collins almost worthwhile.
She turned over, unable to settle, and vigorously shook out her pillow.
All this was very well, but what chance did she have of securing him?
There was little doubt he was ready to marry.
He had hinted to Mrs. Bennet this was his intention, and his very presence at Longbourn suggested he was disposed to make a choice from one of his five cousins, although Mary was candid enough to admit there was no reason to suppose Mr. Collins had any preference for her.
It had been Jane’s lovely face which had attracted his attention.
But then she remembered Charlotte’s insistence that a man’s preference might be turned round by a woman truly determined to win him.
Charlotte would have told Mary her task was clear—she must communicate her readiness for matrimony by any means necessary, flattering Mr. Collins’s pride, and pumping up his self-regard, guiding him step by careful step towards the realisation that she and she alone was the only sensible choice for him to make.
As she turned it over in her mind, it seemed to Mary that dispassionate reasoning—of the kind advocated so forcefully by Charlotte and, indeed, by all her favourite authors—admitted no doubt in the matter.
Marrying Mr. Collins was the rational thing to do.
Both of them would benefit from such a union.
He offered her escape from an uncertain destiny, the possibility of a comfortable home, and the salvation of her family’s finances.
She promised him a sympathetic temper, an interest in serious subjects, and the prospect that, by managing his worst excesses, she might enable him to present a more pleasing figure to the world.
But even as Mary congratulated herself on the clarity of her thinking, something within her resisted, her heart rejecting the conclusions her head had so easily arrived at.
Could she really imagine herself as Mr. Collins’s wife?
What if she were wrong, and there was no better Mr. Collins for her to discover?
Could she bear to be yoked to man who could not open his mouth without provoking derision?
Even if it proved possible to cajole him into making her an offer, was there really any possibility of their making each other even tolerably happy?
Pity and self-interest on her part, coupled with ignorance and naivety on his, seemed very fragile foundations on which to build a life together, whatever Charlotte might say.
Unbidden, an image sprang into her mind of John Sparrow at the Meryton assembly, holding out his hand to invite her to dance.
She remembered them smiling together, their shyness dissolving under the pleasure they discovered in each other’s company.
He had held her little bag and offered to take her spectacles out and clean them with the cuff of his shirt when no-one was looking.
They had both laughed, and then they had danced again.
Life with Mr. Collins would never be like that, she thought; but then she could hardly expect to meet a John Sparrow again, a man who had, for the first time in her life, made her feel carefree and at ease.
Those few happy hours with him had been but a little thing, she told herself, quickly snuffed out by the sneers of those around her and by her own timidity.
But it had given her a glimpse of what happiness felt like; and that was hard to erase from her mind.
Now it was over, dead and buried, never to be repeated.
John Sparrow was many, many miles away and would not return.
It did no good to repine. It was not long since she had assured Lizzy every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason.
Now she must apply that lesson to herself.
Her choices were few and of too much importance to be influenced by unruly emotions.
Sense and not sensibility must be her guide.