CHAPTER 2 A FATHER’S VERDICT
The sun had no business being so bright the morning after Elizabeth’s greatest tribulation. Her eyes snapped open the moment her mother’s voice sounded through the floorboards. For a half-second, she wished she had dreamed up the entire debacle.
Then Lydia screamed about something, and the sickening thud of her life actively collapsing dropped her heart to her stomach.
Collins was downstairs, and he had her mother’s ear.
The carriage ride home had been stone cold, due to her refusal, and she was only saved from a tongue-lashing by Lydia’s recitation of Darcy’s dismissal of the daughters as none handsome enough to be worth distinguishing, to which Mrs. Bennet lamented loud and long while Mr. Collins attempted to assuage her displeasure by lauding Elizabeth’s lovely eyes.
What would she do now that Collins was ensconced in her home, confident that she would break within a fortnight?
She pulled the counterpane back over her face and considered shriveling up into a speck of dust. But when a quarter of an hour had gone by, and she was still alive and breathing, with sounds of the breakfast room growing louder with her sisters’ chatter, Elizabeth discarded her nightgown and washed her face.
Papa had not entered the breakfast room. He would be hiding in the library, buried in the pages of a book, the way other men drowned themselves with brandy. Surely, he would not concern himself with the byproducts of Mama’s nerves and Mr. Collins’s foolish pomposities.
He would make a cutting observation about Collins being exactly the sort of man nature created as a warning to others, and then he would tell her mother that his favorite daughter could not marry this absurd and completely unsuitable man.
The noise from the breakfast room rose to thunderous heights, and Lydia’s voice resounded like a cavalry charge.
“—and then Darcy looked at all of us as though we were furniture, and Collins told Lizzy that Darcy had commended her particularly—” Lydia was clearly enjoying herself. “Can you imagine? Being commended by a man who couldn’t be bothered to look at you for more than two seconds?”
“Lydia,” Elizabeth said, “I am certain Mr. Darcy has forgotten the assembly entirely.”
“Not according to Mama. She’s convinced he was utterly captivated and merely too proud to show it.” Kitty giggled. “He glared at you when you were leaving. Mama says that’s a sign of deep attachment.”
“Mama says a lot of things.” Elizabeth put on a brave face and tried to bypass the room for the library, but to no avail.
Mrs. Bennet looked up and announced, “There is our bride. Lizzy, come, come, greet your future husband. He has already written to Lady Catherine on the happy news.”
“Indeed, I have written to my esteemed patroness.” Mr. Collins preened. “I described you in terms I trust you would find flattering, though of course I confined myself to those qualities Lady Catherine would consider relevant to the position.”
“The position,” Elizabeth repeated.
Lydia tapped her plate with a fork, interrupting, “Mama, if Lizzy marries Mr. Collins, may I have her bedroom? It gets the morning light, and Kitty snores.”
“I do not snore!” Kitty said.
“You snore like a draught horse, and I will swear to it in a court of law.”
“Girls,” Mrs. Bennet scolded, although without conviction. “Elizabeth will make a most excellent wife to a clergyman. She is sensible, well-read, her father has always said so, and though she can be headstrong on occasion, a firm hand and a proper arrangement will smooth that out directly.”
Collins beamed at this assessment. “Indeed, ma’am. Lady Catherine has often observed that a well-tempered wife is the foundation of a well-ordered parish. She will be relieved to hear how well I’ve married.”
“Then I’m sorry to inform you that the news is premature,” Elizabeth said. “Mama, I am not going to the altar.”
“Nonsense.” Mrs. Bennet dismissed this with the efficiency of a woman swatting a fly. “Jane, dear, did Mr. Bingley mention when he might call? I thought his manner was very promising. Two daughters settled in one month. I shall be the envy of the county.”
“Mama,” Jane said carefully, “perhaps Elizabeth’s feelings on the matter deserve some—”
“Feelings are a luxury for women with fortunes, Jane. Pass the jam.”
Collins jumped up with an alacrity he hadn’t possessed at the assembly. He had dressed with care—his best waistcoat, his Sunday cravat, his hair arranged with what appeared to be pomade—and he pulled out the chair beside him. “Miss Elizabeth, will you be seated? I trust you slept well.”
“Like the dead.” Elizabeth found she could not stomach sitting and eating next to the man oozing with sweat and foolishness. “And like the dead, I require no sustenance. I believe I shall speak to Papa.”
Mrs. Bennet waved her off. “If anyone can talk sense into you, it is Mr. Bennet. He is the one whose untimely death will throw all of us into disarray.”
Elizabeth found her father, as she always found him, in his usual armchair by the window. A book lay open before him, and his expression suggested a man who had definitively retired from the present day, with no inclination to return.
“Papa.”
“Lizzy, you’re awake.” He looked up, his eyes warm as they always were. They’d been warm like this every time he’d handed her a book, opting to distract her with it rather than solve the problem the book was meant to help with.
“You have heard about Mr. Collins.”
“I’ve heard little else since your mother returned from the assembly.” He closed the book, a promising sign, though he kept a finger marking his page. “Sit down.”
She sat, although she didn’t see a reason to.
Her father would make a dry remark about Collins being a man of limited understanding and considerable appetite, and then he’d step in to stop this foolishness.
There’d be shouting and a surfeit of nerves, but in the end, Papa would support her refusal, and the days would float on as they always did at Longbourn.
“Your mother informs me you refused Mr. Collins last night.”
“I did. He proposed during a dance, and I could hardly accept between figures.”
“No, I suppose not.” He removed his spectacles, which was alarming, because it meant the conversation was going to be serious. “He has asked me again this morning. For my permission to address you.”
“Which you may grant, Papa, but I would only refuse him again. I told him very clearly last night.”
“You did, and he was moved by your resolve. He interpreted it as encouraging.”
“Then you can disabuse him of that notion.” She kept her voice even.
“I will not marry him. He is absurd and the distilled extract of every quality a woman might least wish to spend forty years enduring. His mouth runs away from him, and he slobbers to a degree that would embarrass a lapdog. He interleaved his proposal with fragments about shelving and his patroness’s backside in between the figures of a country dance, and he sweats profusely that one might well take him to be a sponge. ”
Her father’s mouth curved, and she pressed the advantage.
“Papa, I have refused him. I refuse him now, here, in this room, with you as witness. Whatever Mama has arranged, whatever Collins believes—my answer does not change.”
Mr. Bennet did not respond immediately. His face had congealed with the expression of a man about to say something he did not want to say, and Elizabeth felt the first cold touch of dread.
“Mr. Collins is my heir. He had the consideration for our family to come to Longbourn to choose a wife from one of my daughters.” Papa’s voice was even, thoughtful, with no trace of his usually amused wit.
“He wishes to make amends for the rift between his father and me, and to preserve Longbourn as a home for you and your sisters.”
“But Papa, I am only one of five daughters. Mary might be more suited for a clergyman. She reads Fordyce’s sermons, quotes scripture, and is accomplished on the piano. She is also patient and exhibits charity and faith.”
Papa put up his hand, and her unease grew.
“His first choice was Jane. I told him Jane was likely to be engaged. He accepted this with reasonable grace and redirected his attentions to you.” Papa’s voice was flat in a way she had never heard before.
“I will not insult my heir twice, Elizabeth. I refused him once regarding Jane. I cannot refuse him again.”
“But Papa!” The floor didn’t collapse so much as tilt—like the slow, disorienting shift of a foundation she had always assumed was solid. “I cannot do it.”
“You will marry him, Lizzy.” Papa’s finger was still marking the page in his book. “You will think of it as a rescue. He will preserve your home. Your mother will be secure, and your sisters will not be turned out.”
“But at my expense. I cannot live with him for forty years.”
“And I will not be alive another forty years.” He opened to his page and did not look up. “I have said what I mean to say. You are a selfish girl, and I suggest you reflect upon it.”
“Papa?” Her throat was tight, and her hands were steady—her sense of belonging crumbled between the space of these two facts.
Ignoring her, he turned a page, and she left the library, the door closing behind her to a place she would never enter again.
The Bennets walked to church in a state of false civility.
They filled the pew, looking serene, united, and devout.
Collins sat beside her, breathing with great thoroughness, so that she heard nothing of what the vicar said—not that any of it would have aided her.
She thought about Robinson Crusoe and desert islands and the fact that Crusoe, at least, had the luxury of being ruined alone.