Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice Sequel Bundle: 3 Reader Favorites (61 page)

“Pray, why did you allow me to take leave?” he asked.

“You are here now and that is all that matters,” she smiled. “They should have let you be and you could have come home to sup and been handed a baby.”

“I want to be here with you,” he kissed her hands.

Her smile of encouragement deepened into a grimace as a contraction began to do its work upon her. It was clear she was endeavouring to disguise its strength, but it eclipsed her will. She clutched his hand, but turned her face from him, biting upon the edge of the pillowslip to keep from crying out. Perspiration broke out upon her forehead and upper lip. He felt ill.

After what seemed an eternity, it began to recede.

“I fear this will not transpire with haste,” she gasped. “In time, Jane shall come to you with word of the birth.”

Her indirect request for him to withdraw for the duration of her labour was taken as neither a rebuff nor a reminder of propriety. He knew he was unsuccessful at masking his horror at her suffering. His discomposure was one more burden for her. Thus, he knew he would do as she bid.

“Do you recollect once telling me how unfair it was that men are not allowed to see what their wives endure to bring their children into the world?” he inquired.

“Yes, but I also remember you reminding me that for every person in the world, there had been an act of love. I remind you that for every said same person there had to be a childbirth. My mother endured it for me, yours for you, and I shall for our child.”

With that declaration, Dr. Carothers arrived, clearing his throat and tugging at the neck of his shirt. A fubsy, fleshy looking man, he had the good sense to appear a bit unkempt (a toff for a doctor was indefensible). Jane escorted him to Elizabeth’s bedside to “have a look.”

Darcy fled the room, face averted, stationing himself just outside the door in an impatient wait of the foetal examination. He did not abide the pause well, for he could hear lengthy murmurings and moans upon the other side of the door. Eventually, after perhaps an hour, the doctor reappeared with Jane shadowing his elbow.

Both countenances were sombre.

Dr. Carothers explained his grave face thusly, “Mrs. Darcy’s labour is early…As often is in such cases, the baby is not positioned correctly. I have tried to exact an external cephalic version to turn it but it will not budge. Determined little cusser.”

However obscure the terminology, his meaning was hardly unfathomable. The danger was clear.

“Pray, is that it then?” Darcy demanded far more loudly than he intended, thus he reiterated more softly, “There will be no further attempt?”

“Of course. Of course there shall. You must know, though, I hold little hope of success.”

Darcy asked the unthinkable, “And if it cannot be turned?”

Dr. Carothers chose his words carefully, “I have delivered a number of breech babies with little more vexation than a lengthier duration of labour. But those were babies born of mothers who had birthed previously. This, of course, is Mrs. Darcy’s first. She has a narrow…she is narrow. It is difficult to predict the outcome.”

The look of frightened despair upon Darcy’s face caused Jane to soothe, “Do not lose hope.”

It was difficult not to be terrified when the best outcome they could hope for was grievously long labour. Darcy had assisted enough foaling mares to know just how perilous a breech delivery was. He had spent many a harried night watching Edward Hardin attempt to realign a foal. As hardy as was the lineage of Pemberley horses, these were bloody, long, painful affairs. When fillies were involved, not one in ten was successful. The unseemliness of comparing his wife to one of his horses was not lost upon him, but it was, quite simply, his single sphere of reference.

He could not bring himself to imagine Elizabeth attempting to expel an infant buttocks first. So little faith did he hold in Dr. Carothers capabilities just then, he fleetingly considered dragging Edward Hardin from the stables to attempt to turn the baby, but collected his wits long enough to discard that notion.

In preparation of the wait and the battle that he would be unable to fight for her, he removed his jacket and tie and loosed his collar. He drew a straight-backed chair from across the hall and set it firmly next to the door to Elizabeth’s room. It was upon that seat that he braced himself for what would come to pass.

The afternoon sun grew long and then disappeared.

Upon hearing of the impending happy event, Bingley and Fitzwilliam rode to Pemberley in grand humour to offer their company and ply spirits into the expectant father. When Bingley learnt where Darcy waited, he went to coax him into joining them downstairs. However, Darcy refused to relinquish the chair by Elizabeth’s labour room, for her pains had increased but progress had not.

Bingley said cheerfully, “You serve no purpose sitting here. Fitzwilliam has brought a superior cognac. I can tell you it helps one not to think of it.”

“How could I not?” Darcy snapped.

Jane arrived forthwith to explain away Bingley’s confoundment, telling him of the dire predicament. Nodding his understanding, he ceased his cajoling of the father-to-be.

Touching Darcy’s sleeve, he did urge him to reconsider, “I do think it best if you come downstairs, Darcy. Truly, you can do nothing here.”

Darcy just shook his head and stared with great intensity at the floor. The single entreaty refused, Bingley knew better than to beseech further. He returned to Fitzwilliam and they commenced to splash down the “superior cognac” without tasting it.

Periodically, Darcy left his post in the corridor and came in to see Elizabeth, but when she caught sight of him hovering over her, invariably she smiled and shooed him away. He would heed her wishes and take leave, but even so diligently as was it offered, her feigned nonchalance was pitiably inept. He despised having to participate in the farce when he wanted so fervently to stay with her.

With the baby imbedded in the birth canal, refusing to turn and unable to come out, the hours of the night stole even indomitable Elizabeth’s strength. As dawn arose, a wearied Jane appeared in the corridor. Darcy knew well that her dedication to Elizabeth’s labour room was risking her own health. She looked at Darcy, put her hands to her face and began to cry.

Never had he more than kissed Jane’s hand, but neither hesitated to share a woeful embrace. So wretched was she, he could think of nothing but to pat her upon the back,
assuring her Elizabeth would be all right.

Dr. Carothers had the poor timing to appear at that moment, dashing to pieces what little solace they gathered.

His message was succinct, “I am not at all certain the baby is yet alive. If Mrs. Darcy cannot rally, I fear for her as well.”

The stricken look upon Darcy’s face was duplicated by Jane’s. A vision of a dead baby and dying Elizabeth bade Jane betray a promise she had made to Elizabeth.

“Mr. Darcy, you must know this. Elizabeth does not want you in with her for fear that it will excite your apprehension. She knows you are outside the door. She has stifled her cries in defence of your disorder. It is what she wants, but it is not good. She must push to get the baby out and she cannot push hard enough unless she wails.”

From his perch outside her door, he had heard only muffled moans emitting from Elizabeth, not the strong screams of childbirth lore. When his sister was born, he was not yet twelve. Yet, he remembered quite vividly his mother’s searing cries during Georgiana’s birth. Elizabeth had told him Jane would not scream out in her pain because she knew Bingley could not bear to hear her. He knew Elizabeth would do no less.

Doctor Carothers would but think as Jane, “It is the only way she can draw upon the strength she must.”

At this, Darcy closed his eyes and turned away, the back of his hand to his lips. He put his other hand upon his hip and stood motionless for what to Jane seemed an eternity. Then, perchance the words finally obtained, he went into Elizabeth’s room alone.

She lay upon her side facing the door. Pale, her hair soaked with perspiration, she raised her hand as if to shoo him away once more, but it dropped uselessly back to the bed. Kneeling, he took her enfeebled hand and kissed it.

“I am told that if you do not cry out, you cannot push the baby out, Lizzy. Be not stoic in defence of me. I will not have it. Do you hear me, Lizzy? I will not have it.”

At this well-used demand, she looked at him and very nearly smiled. Recognising his own ridiculousness, he might have as well, but the peril of the situation reclaimed such a notion with dispatch.

“You are too weak to push the baby out unless you scream. I shall be outside your door. I beg of you, howl, beshrew, anything. I promise you, I shall not be affronted.”

At the notion of him bidding her to curse, she did smile and gathered enough strength to squeeze his hand. He kissed her forehead and, only with the utmost reluctance, took leave.

Although she cried out as he bid, whatever the temptation, “Mouse-foot!” was her most explicit profanity.

Her screams were weak, but he could hear her. And when he could not, in his own private agony, he called encouragement to her.

“Scream so I can hear you, Lizzy!”

And once again, he could hear her calling his name.

In the library, Bingley and Fitzwilliam sat mute. They listened to the screams that even Pemberley’s thick walls could not muffle. In time, Bingley took notice that Fitzwilliam had gone. Although his senses too begged him flee, he could not. As long as Jane stayed with Elizabeth, so did he abide. However, it was not with compleat
composure. For as he paced the room, he looked through the open door across the corridor. There Mrs. Reynolds sat at the great table, her hands over her ears.

Jane sat in torturous disquiet next to her sister’s bed. Betwixt Elizabeth at her side and Darcy in the passageway, it was compleatly indiscernible which wailing bore the greatest pain.

Sometime before dusk, Elizabeth’s cries silenced. Darcy sat in frozen horror in his chair until Jane came out to tell him a baby had been borne dead of Elizabeth.

“Lizzy survives,” she said quietly.

Jane followed him into her room and placed the baby boy in his arms. He held their child on behalf of his wife.

In time, Jane gently but firmly lifted the lifeless baby from him. Hannah changed the bloody linens beneath Elizabeth and brought a basin of water. Jane returned, intending to cleanse her sister.

Darcy motioned both Hannah and Jane aside, and with tender strokes, sponged the blood from her himself. Jane retreated to the corner of the room, for she believed herself intruding upon a moment of uncommon intimacy.

Thus tended, Elizabeth lay there in the freshly made bed, stomach then vacant, hair brushed smooth and spread out across her pillow. As he sat next to her, his fist yet gripping the hairbrush, it seemed to him an almost perverse serenity, as if nothing horrific had come to pass. But that tragedy had befallen was betrayed by the shallow, shuddering breaths she took. And then, for one, agonisingly extended moment her slow, rhythmic respiration became indiscernible.

The stifled weeping Jane and Hannah had been issuing from the cranny beyond the chimneypiece ceased. All held their breath and feared the worst.

“Lizzy!” he cried, and shook the mattress fiercely as if to awaken her from the clutch of eternal sleep.

Jane and Hannah both ran to the end of the bed. He thought to put his ear to her heart. As if in answer to the percussion his fit of anguish incited, her chest again struggled to rise. Then again. He held her hand, laid his head next to hers, and began to sob.

Jane sank to the floor. Hannah fled the room.

The house was deathly quiet, befitting the circumstance. Bingley and Jane occupied a bed in a guestroom, lying across it fully dressed save for their shoes. Fearing to move her, Darcy lay by Elizabeth’s side in the room of labour and held her hand to his cheek. But sleep was denied him, for every time he closed his eyes he dreamed, and his dreams were nightmares of screams: Elizabeth’s, his mother’s. They became indistinguishable and unbearable. He awoke, and then dozed, and in his exhaustion, he began to think he might be going mad.