Chapter Seven #2
Mr. Bennet stirred, opened his eyes briefly, looked about, then groaned and slumped again.
“Be quiet, madam,” Dr. Cliff said to Mrs. Bennet. “You will make your husband’s state infinitely worse with your squalling.” He turned to the footman. “Have her removed from the sick room.”
Mrs. Bennet shook off the hands of the servant. “I am still the mistress here! Until my husband dies, I shall not be dragged from his side!”
Jane tried to walk to her mother, but she tripped over the doctor’s bag. Elizabeth caught her so that she did not fall.
When Jane reached Mrs. Bennet, she embraced her and, sobbing, led her, though she was the blind girl, out of the room.
Elizabeth listened to the sound of her father’s breathing. She felt all the anxiety and fear that might be imagined to be felt as a woman watching a most beloved parent in such a state.
After another half an hour of observation during which Mr. Bennet stirred twice, the physician took his pulse once again, pronounced himself satisfied with the effect of the blood that he had taken off, then he withdrew an additional pint, this time from the arm.
Elizabeth rather wondered why the difference, but she did not ask Dr. Cliff, who had a fiercely unhappy expression as he studied his friend.
After that the physician went off, with a promise to return in the evening after he had made his other calls.
All that was left was to wait.
Elizabeth held her father’s hand.
Mary sat with her, trying to occupy herself with writing out extracts from her books, but she mostly observed how Mr. Bennet breathed, like Elizabeth did.
Mrs. Hill brought a tea tray out and, with soft movements, set it and a small table at Elizabeth’s side. The housekeeper squeezed Elizabeth’s shoulder and then went off again.
Elizabeth paid no heed to the tea, not even thinking of it.
After a while, Jane returned to the room. They held hands.
Other than her sister informing her that their mother had gone up to her bedchamber and that Kitty and Lydia were with her, there was no conversation.
Occasionally Mr. Bennet opened his eyes, stirred, and made to speak, but he produced no intelligible sounds.
A few hours after the physician had left, Charlotte arrived. She embraced Elizabeth, who silently wept.
Charlotte said, when Elizabeth pulled away to sit and take her father’s hand once more, “We heard from the servants that the physician was called, so I came. Oh, my poor Lizzy!”
“I shall be well. I swear.”
“I shall do anything to help you that I might. My mother has gone up to comfort yours. Mrs. Phillips came with her.”
Elizabeth was glad to hear that her mother was not alone, but she thought little of it beyond that.
After two hours, Elizabeth began to think her father was stirring more frequently and that his breathing was easier.
Shortly after the ladies left, Charlotte promising she would come to help in an instant if Elizabeth needed it, there was a knock at the front door of the house, and Elizabeth wondered who else might call on them and whether they had come to offer sympathy or help.
After some minutes, the door to the drawing room was opened, and Mrs. Hill, with an uncertain manner, brought in a young man dressed with the plain, unfashionable neatness of a clergyman.
This unfamiliar gentleman was wide about the belly and the face, with an excess of pomade in his hair, but he looked at the tableau of the sisters gathered by their father’s side with an odd expression that Elizabeth thought gave the impression of something like happiness trying to force itself past the gravity that was proper on entering a room where a man suffered under a serious affliction.
Elizabeth rose and approached him and Mrs. Hill.
The young man bowed to her. “Mr. Collins at your service. I am your cousin. I was invited by your honoured father to make my lodgings at your noble house for the scope of a fortnight, but, I find, no doubt because of Mr. Bennet’s present unfortunate state, that my arrival was entirely unexpected.”
Elizabeth stared at him blankly. “My cousin? Mr. Collins?”
Then it struck her.
He was the man whom the estate was entailed upon. She had wholly forgotten the amused manner with which her father had begun to report that they would have a guest for dinner.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said in a distant voice. “He was in the middle of announcing your visit to us when his attack occurred.”
The man who would throw them out as soon as Papa was cold—and he was already there.
That financial matter had barely been in Elizabeth’s mind the whole time she had sat by her ailing father, but suddenly its presence pressed upon her. She felt that guilt her mother had promised her she would feel if Papa suddenly died—she had not thought enough of Jane.
“Might I enquire about the state of your respectable father?” Mr. Collins said softly—in a clergyman’s consoling voice but still in a manner that made it impossible for Elizabeth to not think he was deciding whether he ought to call for all his belongings to immediately be brought to his new estate or whether it would be more politic to wait a week or two.
Before Elizabeth could reply, Mrs. Bennet entered the room. She shrieked when she espied Mr. Collins. “No! No! He is not yet dead! He is not dead! Why are you here? He has not yet died!”
Despite herself, Elizabeth was slightly impressed by the way that Mr. Collins responded.
He bowed deeply. “Madam, I assure you that I am not present to crow over your misfortune. I hope to make every recompense to you and your lovely daughters that I might rightly make. And as a man of God, I am fully prepared to engage in every proper rite and ritual of the Church of England to aid you in this unpleasant time.”
“He is not dead yet!”
“No, Mama. Please be quiet,” Elizabeth said.
Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins approached the invalid, who had stirred with their shouting. Mr. Bennet looked at them with blurry eyes, his face slack on one side. “Babebue?”
“Papa!” Elizabeth exclaimed at hearing his voice, even though what he had said was entirely nonsense.
Mr. Collins addressed her father solemnly, “Mr. Bennet, it is apparent that you are in great risk of your life. Is there anything you wish to confess or relieve from your soul in such a situation?”
Rather than replying, or even looking at Mr. Collins, Mr. Bennet closed his eyes and slumped back into the sofa.
It was impossible for Elizabeth to not feel a little hope at such a display of alertness, but what the doctor had said rung in her ears. Even if he recovered, he would most likely be taken off by another attack before the week was done.
Every thought stabbed her in the chest.
“I shall wait,” Mr. Collins said seriously, “and if he rouses himself, I shall offer the communion of the sick to him, as advised in John Wren’s The Clergyman’s Companion.”
“Oh, oh!” Mrs. Bennet exclaimed. “What can we do? Oh, what can we do?”
“Do not despair, madam,” Mr. Collins said.
“We must be strong in this time and wait to see what the result may be. But my welcome here has in no way changed my intention to make some effort, some offer, to ease your lives when your honoured husband should die, whether it be in the next hour or after a period of delay.”
After saying this, Mr. Collins looked at Elizabeth in a way that made her feel as though he pointedly admired her as a woman.
A new, unhappy sensation joined the terror for her father in the pit of her stomach.
Perhaps he meant to marry one of them. It was natural. And of course his interest would fall on her. She was the first in beauty and age since Jane had given up her rightful position.
Elizabeth looked at Jane, who sat next to their mother, whispering to her and holding her hand. Then she looked at Mr. Collins, who smiled at her in such a way as to make her skin crawl at the thought of forcing herself to let him touch her.
She turned her eyes towards her father.
Over the course of the next two hours, he roused himself several more times.
Each time he seemed more alert, and the period of sensibility lasted for a little longer before he returned to his stupor.
He was surprised to see Mr. Collins, so Elizabeth explained his presence.
She thought he understood, but she was not sure.
Every attempt of his to speak came out in grunts or a wholly inarticulate stream of syllables.
When he woke the next time, Mr. Collins pressed him to allow prayers to be said over him, and he assented with an odd jerky nod.
Evening was already falling. It was winter and cold.
Dr. Cliff returned. He once more banished Mrs. Bennet from the room and examined his patient. He declared Mr. Bennet’s pulse to be strong and bled him once more, but only a little.
After he had been bled, Mr. Bennet roused himself and spoke an entirely nonsensical sentence to Dr. Cliff but in a manner that was full of meaning.