The Clergyman's Wife Page 2

  Louisa whines more shrilly and I glance down at her. And then—oh—the mortification. There is my shawl, damp with my baby’s drool, and underneath it my nightgown. My hair, still in its nighttime plait, straggles over my other shoulder; I know, without having to see, that loose strands must be standing out wildly around my face. When I look back at Mr. Travis, I can feel the redness in my cheeks.

  “What are you doing?” I say again, voice haughty, as if I am imitating Lady Catherine. My ridiculousness swells, but I raise my chin in defiance: he is—inexplicably—in my garden.

  A cough, which, I suspect, is suppressing a laugh. “Apologies,” he says. “It’s to do with the roses, you see.”

  I must look quite blank, for he adds, “You do know about the roses?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Lady Catherine told us yesterday at tea. It is only—I expected Mr. Saxon, or one of the under-gardeners. Not—”

  “Not a farmer,” he says, smiling.

  “No, not a farmer,” I agree. “Or am I wrong in thinking roses are not generally in a farmer’s purview?”

  “I am knowledgeable about plants,” he says. “My father was head gardener at Rosings before Mr. Saxon.”

  I should have known this already, and so there is an awkward little silence. I lift Louisa higher onto my shoulder; by the limp way she is draped against me, I can tell that she has drifted once more to sleep. Belatedly, I say, “How is your father?”

  “Well enough, thank you, Mrs. Collins. He moves slowly, and I—well. I worry that he is a little lonely, sometimes, alone all day. But he seems content, most of the time.”

  “This must be a very busy time of year for you,” I venture.

  “It is. Lambing will be upon us soon. But,” he says with a wry little smile, “it is a busy time of year for gardeners as well, and apparently Mr. Saxon could not be spared. Lady Catherine’s steward told me her ladyship requested my assistance.”

  “Requested,” I say; the word sounds as bitter as it tastes, and I immediately wish it unsaid.

  “Lady Catherine is not to be refused lightly.” A small hesitation and then he says, “I have taken it as a mark of great favor, that her ladyship has taken enough notice of me to recall that I am the son of her former gardener.” His words could have been William’s but the tone is sly, and I find myself smiling at his irreverence.

  Mr. Travis’s gaze shifts to Louisa, and I look down to find that she has opened her eyes and is looking at him with great solemnity, almost the entirety of one fist in her mouth. He smiles fully for the first time, showing crooked teeth. I am suddenly unsettled, and take a step back.

  “I—will leave you to your work,” I say.

  If he thinks anything of my abruptness, Mr. Travis does not show it. “Mrs. Collins,” he says, then ducks his head so that it is level with my daughter’s. “Miss Collins.”

  Louisa smiles around her fingers, and I nod, then turn quickly enough that I nearly lose my footing. I catch my balance just before I stumble and hurry up the path toward the house without looking back.

  WHEN MARTHA ARRIVES to take charge of Louisa, I pick up my sewing with a sort of shamed sense of purpose. There are shirts to make for the poorer laborers, and caps and gowns for babies whose mothers are too poor or too busy to make many themselves. These are the usual duties of a clergyman’s wife, but today I feel particularly driven to accomplish them. My mind churns over my conversation with Mr. Travis as the afternoon wears away and I make stitch after stitch.

  “It is best to treat tenants briskly,” Lady Catherine said to me when I first arrived in Hunsford. “You have had no experience with such things, Mr. Collins tells me, so you must learn quickly. Vices must be seen and condemned. Illnesses, births, deaths—these require your attention, and of course if they come to you for advice about their housekeeping or their children, you must oblige them. But do not coddle my tenants with too much charity or attention, for such things only encourage sloth.”

  I have lived according to her ladyship’s edict for the past three years. It has not, I am sorry to say, been a great hardship; having rarely been thrown into intimate quarters with true poverty or deprivation in my life in Hertfordshire, I found, when embarking upon my new role, that I had no clear idea how to approach the meanest among her ladyship’s tenants. I cringe, sometimes, to hear William’s tone of condescension when he speaks to his parishioners, but I fear that my own discomfort and pity must be all too obvious. I have been able to justify not giving the parishioners more attention than they ask for by heeding the thought, ever present in my mind, that my family’s happiness is tied to Lady Catherine’s pleasure. And, too, there has always been the whispering fear that my assistance may be entirely unwanted; that rather than being helpful, I am merely foisting my presence upon others.

  Mr. Travis’s father is elderly; he comes to church but rarely. And yet I have never called upon him. If I had, I might have known that he once held the position of Rosings’s head gardener. If anything, I think with sudden ferocity, my behavior has balanced Lady Catherine’s, for her ladyship inserts herself into her tenants’ lives, giving advice that might just as well be called orders, just as freely as she does into my own. The difference, though, is that while I find her meddling inconvenient—the last time she took an interest in the parsonage, I lost the use of my parlor for nearly a week while new paper-hangings were installed and she dictated the rearrangement of the furniture—it does no actual harm. But a farmer . . . I hope that her ladyship’s steward has offered Mr. Travis wages in return for his help with our garden, but even so, the hours Mr. Travis spent this morning, removing that stump so roses can be planted in its place; the hours he must spend, still, once the flowers arrive—that is all time away from his farm, his livelihood. A farm flourishes only under the farmer’s constant labor and care.

  I stab my needle into the cloth with too much force, and make another stitch. Our lives are all arranged according to Lady Catherine’s whims.

  Chapter Three

  William refused to hold Louisa after she was born. “When she is larger, dear Charlotte, when she is larger,” he said, his hands fluttering nervously about until he finally clasped them together behind his back, bending to peer into the cradle.

  My mother came to Kent in time for the birth and remained for several weeks after, for which I felt an exhausted and profound gratitude. I was utterly unprepared for my new baby’s relentless neediness, and sometimes in the early days, my body still raw and aching, I looked down at my daughter—an unlovely creature with William’s lumpy nose and my own pointed chin—and began crying without warning, hot tears that felt like a curious combination of despair and joy. My mother said nothing at these times, only looked on with sympathy. She ran the household while I was overwhelmed and healing, and for the first time I appreciated that she had gone through this again and again, first with my own birth and then with the births of each of my siblings.

  Lady Catherine visited several days after Louisa was born and declared our daughter healthy and robust. She then proceeded to tell me what sort of pap Mrs. Baxter ought to be preparing for the new baby; how many extra gowns and caps Louisa would need, as it was obvious I had not sewn nearly enough; and that she herself had procured the services of a village girl to act as a nursemaid during the day, so that I would not be so taken up by my maternal duties that I would neglect my obligations to the parish.

  “Mr. Collins,” she said, “I know your income to the last penny. To keep your wife tied to a baby night and day is unnecessary, and would greatly lessen her ability to support your work. Do not be miserly, Mr. Collins. There is nothing so disagreeable as a miser. I shall send a girl to you, someone sensible and honest, and Mrs. Collins will thank me for it.”

  I thought William might swoon with ecstasy.

  Lady Catherine’s prediction proved correct, however—in this instance I am, for once, deeply appreciative of her meddling, so much so that I sometimes feel a jolt of guilt when my mind fills with uncharitab
le thoughts during William’s soliloquies on his patroness’s thoughtful generosity. When the time came at last for my mother to return to Hertfordshire, I held my tiny, mewling babe, waved at the coach as it rattled down the lane, and felt as though something inside of me were dissolving. But for the steady presence of Martha, the girl Lady Catherine had engaged, at my elbow, I think I might have closed myself in the back parlor and cried as long and loudly as the infant in my arms. As it was, I managed to smile until the coach was out of sight.

  I AM REMINDED of Louisa’s earliest days this morning, for I am pacing, once again, through the garden at dawn, holding her as she gnaws at a crust of yesterday’s bread to soothe her tender mouth. Though the sun is just beginning to rise, the morning already feels unseasonably warm, and mist hovers over the lane and between the trees in the woods beyond.

  The path takes us past the site where the roses will be planted. There is no one there today and nothing but an empty space where the stump used to be. I stop walking, Louisa squirming, humid, in my arms, her fine hair standing up from her scalp in a frizz. My own hair is pinned in a knot at the back of my head; despite Louisa’s cries urging me to quickness, I made certain to secure it neatly before leaving the house, and to don a proper gown. I am suddenly conscious that there was no need to bother, and I stand for a moment beside the bare patch of turned-up earth and tiny, exposed rootlets. They are white and fragile, and I stare at them before walking on.

  I come upon Mr. Travis quite suddenly as we each round a corner of the house from opposite sides. We stop just short of colliding, and he almost upsets the buckets he carries, barely managing to right them before they spill their contents completely across the walkway. As it is, the front of my skirt is dusted with soil.

  Setting the buckets down, he reaches out as if intending to clean my skirt off himself. Then he draws back hastily. “I find I must apologize yet again, Mrs. Collins.”

  I shift Louisa more firmly onto my hip and lean down to brush at the clinging dirt. “It is nothing,” I say. “See? It comes off easily.”

  He straightens with a rueful smile. “I hoped that my presence here would not cause you any further inconvenience, but it seems I have once again interrupted your morning walk.” He swipes the back of his wrist across his brow, leaving a streak of dirt behind. Even dirty, there is something pleasing about his face, narrow and serious and gently lined about the eyes and mouth.

  “Not at all,” I say, and then add without thinking, “And it is not you who ought to apologize for inconveniencing me, Mr. Travis.”

  I have spoken too freely. Impulsivity is not something to which I am generally given, and this marks twice, now, that I have implied to this man that I resent Lady Catherine’s high-handedness. To divert his attention, I gesture toward the buckets. “What are these for?”

  “Soil from the woods, ma’am,” Mr. Travis says. “Richer than what you have here in your garden; roses need fertile soil if they are to flourish.” He crouches down and pokes around in one bucket for a moment, then lifts a handful of soil and rises. “See here,” he says, but he looks at Louisa as he speaks, rolling the soil in his palm with his fingers. It appears to be wriggling, and I lean closer. “The presence of so many worms is a good sign.”

  “I—oh.” I nearly take a step backward but manage to stop myself, though Mr. Travis’s amused expression tells me that I have not succeeded in hiding my instinctive revulsion.

  “Forgive me,” he says. His voice sounds as though he is holding laughter at the back of his throat, and I am torn between irritation and unwilling amusement. “I forget that these creatures are not the daily companions of most well-bred ladies—or gentlemen, for that matter.”

  The worms writhe in his palm. “Ah . . . no,” I say, watching. “Mr. Collins is the, er, naturalist in our household.” Though perhaps naturalist is more than a bit of an exaggeration; although William is passionate about his gardens as he is about little else, I wonder sometimes, watching the fumbling way he goes about his pruning, whether his efforts would not benefit from less passion and more expertise. But his attention to detail is often astonishing.

  Mr. Travis drops worms and soil back together into his bucket. “I should continue working, and allow you ladies to continue your walk.”

  Despite the early hour, Mr. Travis gives the impression of having been up and about for a long while, his face flushed from his work and his hair standing up all over his head, rather like Louisa’s. “I am afraid this is a very recent occurrence,” I say as he lifts the buckets. “Louisa is cutting a tooth, and has been waking early—and often—these last few days. I wish that I could claim to be so industrious as to always be up at dawn for a daily walk.”

  He chuckles. “Well, I wish you happy despite your circumstances,” he says, and nods his head politely before turning down the path toward the lane.

  IT IS LATE enough, when we return to the parsonage, that William has stirred himself. He is dressed and seated at the breakfast table, his plate generously filled, and he looks up as I approach.

  “Good morning, my dear,” he says, applying himself once more to his cake.

  “Good morning.” I move to the tea caddy, only to be forestalled.

  “Your gown—my dear Charlotte—”

  “What?”

  “It is—dirty.”

  I look down at myself. With the sun now fully risen and streaming through the windows, I can see what was not obvious earlier—pale streaks where I attempted to clean the soil from my gown.

  “What if her ladyship should call? Or Miss de Bourgh stop on her drive? No—no—it would not do—please, my dear, change your clothing at once. What have you been doing?”

  I replace the tea ladle with rather more force than necessary. “Quieting Louisa. She woke early again.”

  It does not appear to occur to William that my response does not explain the state of my dress. “Make yourself presentable, I beg you,” he says, waving his fork at me.

  I leave the room without looking back, though his voice follows me up the stairs.

  “Do keep in mind her ladyship’s advice on the proper attire of modest women—your cap, my dear Charlotte, your cap—!”

  I SIT, WEARING a clean gown and cap, my pen poised to write and my mind as blank as the paper before me. My letter to Elizabeth, abandoned two days ago, is yet unfinished. I have described the ribbon I bought recently to trim my favorite bonnet, and I have told her of the impending arrival of Louisa’s first tooth. Absently, I brush the end of my quill across my mouth, frowning at the inches still remaining to be filled.

  Lady Catherine has made a gift of roses for our garden, I write at last. She has enlisted the help of a local farmer to plant them. You can imagine how convenient he must find such an arrangement, particularly at this time of year.

  An image of Mr. Travis—his dark eyes and unruly brows, the wry twist to his mouth when he spoke of Lady Catherine—intrudes upon my thoughts. I pause, blink, but the image is stubborn.

  Rising abruptly, I set the letter aside, yet again. Today, it seems, I have even less to say than usual.

  Chapter Four

  When the quiet of my life threatens to deafen me, I go walking in the woods around Rosings.

  At this time of year, the trees are putting out new, tender leaves, and the woods feel padded by them, safe and gentle, though it is still best to keep to the well-worn paths rather than risk the narrower deer trails. I look at them as I pass, those faint tracks to the left and right, little more than battled-back branches and trampled undergrowth, though I make no move in either direction. I am at once eager and afraid to become lost among the trees.

  My step is quick today, for it is Sunday and we are due at church. I hold my dress in one hand to prevent it from gathering mud and make my strides long and purposeful, feeling the stretch of each step in the muscles of my legs. I am soon surrounded utterly by shadows and quiet, and my ability to breathe, which felt hindered when I awoke, is restored. Taking in great lun
gfuls of green-smelling air, I walk and walk until the sun, scarcely rising when I left the house, begins to shine faint rays between the tree branches; and then I stop.

  When I look up, all I can see is the great stretch and spread of the trees above me. At my feet, on either side of the dirt path, the ground is covered in soft dark moss and tender ferns, still curled tightly. The delicate faces of spring violets peer like reticent children from around the roots of the trees. Though I am nowhere near as intrepid a walker as my friend Elizabeth, I feel pulled outside on days such as this, when I wake to the stifling closeness of the parsonage walls; to William’s snores and his heavy arm pinning me in place against the mattress. In my own home, and at Rosings Park, I often feel diminished. Out here, though I also feel small, it is in the best sense of the word. I am part of the world here, humbled and expanded all at once.

  I bend to look at a clump of flowering primrose, white petals deepening to pale yellow in the center, and am caught by a memory—the musty smell of a long-neglected book, and many fascinated, childish hours spent poring over the delicate illustrations within. I used to copy those illustrations, too, my pencil markings fine and tentative at first, though over the years they grew in confidence. I straighten abruptly, my breath a quiet outward whoosh, as though something thumped me in the chest. I stare at the primrose and feel an itch in my fingers.

  WHEN I WAS a child, my father was a haberdasher. Sometimes, if my mother gave me leave, I went with him to his shop and sat behind the counter. I felt very dignified and important, greeting the customers as they entered and helping my father make neat parcels of their purchases. When custom was slow, I loved to wander the shop, the floor creaking under my feet in the quiet, the bustle of the village outside muffled by the great glass picture window. I fingered the smooth silk ribbons and the spools of lace, everything so prettily displayed. When customers arrived, I amused myself watching my father at work; a naturally gregarious man, he flattered with such joy and sincerity that hardly anyone who came in left without making at least some small purchase.