Chapter 28 #2
“My dear Jane,” he said softly. “Mary. Kitty. Lydia. There, there. I am not worth so much weeping, though I am flattered by the tribute.”
“You wicked man,” Mrs Bennet cried. “You cruel, unnatural, abominable man! How could you be alive and not tell me? How could you be dead to us when you were alive? I have suffered palpitations enough to kill any woman of finer feeling. Hill! Hill, bring my salts. No, bring wine. No, bring both. Mr Bennet, if you ever die again without informing me, I shall never forgive you.”
“I shall take great care to give notice next time,” he said.
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly. Darcy’s hand touched hers, light and steady.
Mr Collins had not moved. His mouth opened, shut, opened again, and at last produced a weak sound. “Cousin Bennet?”
“Mr Collins,” Mr Bennet said, turning to him. “How pleasant to see you in my drawing room, discussing the disposal of my house while I remain inconsiderately alive.”
Mr Collins swallowed. “My dear sir, you must allow me to say that no man could be more astonished, more relieved, more entirely overcome by Christian feeling than myself. I had every reason, every legal and moral reason, to suppose that you had been removed from this earthly sphere. Your long absence, your lack of correspondence, the unhappy distress of your family, the natural uncertainty attending such a circumstance. It all combined to create an impression which, while painful, could not be ignored by a man conscious of his duty.”
“Your duty being to take my house and leave my wife and daughters homeless?”
“My duty,” Mr Collins said, recovering a little, “to prepare, with humility and proper respect, for the responsibilities which must one day devolve upon me as the future possessor of Longbourn. I sought only to assist your dear family in adjusting their expectations.”
Lydia made a sound of disgust. Charlotte closed her eyes.
Mrs Bennet clutched Jane’s arm. “Adjust my expectations? He came here to turn us out, Mr Bennet. He came here with papers and a solicitor and a face like boiled pudding.”
“Mrs Bennet,” Charlotte said quietly, “I am very sorry.”
Mr Collins looked wounded. “My dear Charlotte, apologies at such a moment are both premature and injurious. The matter is not so simply overturned by Cousin Bennet’s unexpected reappearance, happy though that reappearance undoubtedly is.”
Mr Bennet’s brows rose. “Is it not?”
“The entail remains,” Mr Collins said. “Your life, my dear cousin, is a source of great satisfaction to us all, but it cannot alter the solemn legal arrangement by which Longbourn must, in time, pass to me.”
“No,” Mr Bennet said. “But the truth can.”
Mr Collins stared at him.
Elizabeth drew in a quick breath; Darcy put his arm about her, an anchoring presence without which she might have needed to sit down.
Mr Bennet reached inside his coat and drew out a folded packet.
The paper was worn from travel, but carefully protected.
Darcy had secured it in oilcloth for the journey and had placed copies with his solicitor before they left Portsmouth, but Mr Bennet had insisted upon carrying the originals himself.
Elizabeth had thought that he held them as a man might hold both his crime and his pardon.
“I have been absent,” Mr Bennet said, “because I had the misfortune to develop a curiosity about a branch of the Collins family which proved more interesting than any branch of that family has a right to be. Many years ago, my father received a letter from a cousin concerning a marriage, a birth, and a question of inheritance which was not, at the time, of immediate importance. Like many unimportant things, it was put away and forgotten until Mr Collins began to remind me, with increasing frequency, that my daughters were to be dependent upon his mercy.”
“I never said mercy,” Mr Collins objected. “I said Christian benevolence.”
“An easy distinction to overlook.”
Charlotte’s face was frozen with horror.
Mr Bennet unfolded the papers. “The entail follows the male bloodline. That, at least, Mr Collins, you have understood with a thoroughness none of us have been permitted to forget. The difficulty is that the gentleman from whom you claim descent was not your grandfather’s father by blood.”
Mr Collins blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your grandfather was born on the Isle of Guernsey,” Mr Bennet said.
“His mother later married into the Collins family, and he took the name. Respectable enough, no doubt. Entirely legal as a matter of name and household. But he was not the blood son of the Collins cousin through whom the claim to Longbourn was presumed to pass.”
“That is impossible.”
“It is inconvenient,” Mr Bennet said. “Those are not always the same thing.”
Mr Collins’s face had begun to shine with sweat. “My grandfather was a Collins.”
“By name, yes.”
“By every understanding known to my family.”
“Your family appears to have understood it badly.”
“This is slander.”
“It is a birth record,” Mr Bennet said. “Here is the record of your grandfather’s birth in Guernsey.
Here is the later marriage record of his mother to Mr Josiah Collins.
You will note the absence, which I am told matters a great deal in legal affairs, of any record legitimising your father as heir by blood to that line.
Darcy has seen them. My solicitor has been sent copies.
More will be made. You may challenge them if you like, but you will not do it from my drawing room while frightening my wife and daughters. ”
Mr Collins turned toward Darcy, as if hoping for contradiction.
Darcy did not oblige him. “The documents are sufficient to raise a serious challenge to your claim. Until the matter is settled, you would have no right to act as owner here, even in Mr Bennet’s absence. Given what Mr Bennet has found, I would not advise you to proceed.”
Mr Collins looked from Darcy to Mr Bennet, then to Charlotte, who seemed to be absorbing the ruin of her husband’s expectations with more composure than anyone else in the room.
“My dear, you are very composed,” Mr Collins said to her hopefully. “Do you perhaps see a solution? Or had you — why, Charlotte, had you somehow guessed?”
Charlotte’s face hardened. “No. If I had suspected this, I would have made certain choices differently.”
Mrs Bennet made a strangled sound. “Do you mean to say he is not to have Longbourn?”
“I mean,” Mr Bennet said, “that Mr Collins is not the blood heir named by the entail. As there appears to be no remaining male heir of the proper line, the entail fails. Longbourn remains where it ought to have remained all along.”
Mrs Bennet stared at him. “With us?”
“With us.”
For one shining instant, Mrs Bennet looked beautiful in her joy. Then her eyes rolled upward, and she fell back onto the sofa.
“Mama!” Kitty cried.
“She has fainted,” Lydia said, with more interest than alarm.
“She has not,” Jane said, already reaching for the salts. “Mama, please breathe.”
“I am breathing,” Mrs Bennet said faintly. “I am breathing in a house that is mine again.”
At that, Mr Collins made a noise so small and wounded that Elizabeth turned back toward him. His face had gone an alarming colour. He lifted one hand as if to address the room, Lady Catherine, Providence, and the English legal system all at once.
“This is most irregular,” he said. “Most violently irregular. Lady Catherine herself would say…would undoubtedly say that such records, such foreign records, such island records, cannot be expected to overturn the expectations of a respectable clergyman who has long been assured —” He stopped with widened eyes.
Then, Mr Collins collapsed. For a second, no one moved.
Lydia leaned forward. “Has he died too?”
“Lydia,” Jane said reprovingly.
Charlotte was the first to act. She crossed to her husband, knelt beside him, and checked him with brisk efficiency. “He has fainted.”
“Of course he has,” Mr Bennet said. “What else would an avaricious coward do?”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together. Darcy looked away, though she suspected it was not entirely from solemnity.
Charlotte rose, pale but composed. “Mrs Bennet, may I have the footmen carry Mr Collins to my parents’ house? I think it would be best if we removed ourselves at once.”
Mrs Bennet, still reclining dramatically with one hand over her heart, opened her mouth.
Jane spoke before she could. “That is an excellent idea, Mrs Collins.” There was enough firmness in Jane’s voice to make everyone look at her, including Mr Bingley, whose face filled with admiration.
Jane coloured slightly but did not retreat.
“I will ask Hill to send for the footmen,” she continued.
“And I shall have your things sent to Lucas Lodge.”
Charlotte looked at her with gratitude. “Thank you.”
Mr Collins was removed with more awkwardness than dignity. The footmen carried him out under Charlotte’s direction, while Lydia watched with undisguised fascination and Kitty whispered that she had never seen a clergyman faint before. Mrs Collins paused at the door and turned back to Mr Bennet.
“I am sorry,” she said.
Mr Bennet’s face softened a little. “I believe you are, Mrs Collins.”
She looked then at Elizabeth, and for a moment all the old friendship, strain, disappointment, and understanding passed between them without speech. “I am glad he is home,” Charlotte said.
“So am I,” Elizabeth replied.
Charlotte nodded once and followed her husband from the room.
The silence left behind was not peaceful, exactly, but it belonged to the family.