Eventually Darcy understood that Jane’s solicitous attentions, not his, engendered a more expeditious convalescence for Elizabeth. The hovering spectre of his private anguish aided her recovery no better than it had her labour. Thus, for a few hours at a time, he allowed himself coaxed from her bedside. Bingley and Fitzwilliam were bent upon a little sport in the field upon his behalf.
They knew little else to do. Even in the knowledge of how deeply Darcy loved Elizabeth, neither would have believed that Darcy, a man of strength and fortitude beyond any other they could name, could be so broken by the tragedy.
Whilst they awaited his company one evening, they talked of it.
Bingley said, “’Tis not that this is not the most grievous of all life’s many sorrows, for it certainly is. But Elizabeth survives, and they shall have other children.”
Only he and his brother had survived from their mother’s four births, hence Fitzwilliam hesitantly agreed, “True, no one knows of a family, neither earl nor cottager, that has not lost children.”
It was unspoken, but both knew as perilous as infancy was to a baby, childbirth was to the mother. It could be surmised that Darcy and Elizabeth might look upon it as fortunate, under the circumstances, that Elizabeth was not taken too. In a particularly philosophical turn, Bingley very nearly remarked that Darcy’s seeming obsession about the loss of the baby and Elizabeth’s health, which was obviously improving, might stem from never having been deprived of anything he had ever wanted. Fortune allowed him to glance to the darkened doorway. Darcy’s visage was shadowed, but discernible. Bingley held his tongue.
Fitzwilliam observed the alteration in Bingley’s expression and his eyes moved from Bingley to the door at his back. Darcy stepped into the room. The men were silent. Darcy did not reveal whether he heard their remarks or not, but spoke just of the weather, Bingley’s daughter’s latest words, and asked Fitzwilliam when he might be well enough to return to his regiment. After a leisurely partaking of a glass or two of claret, the gentlemen decided to retire. Fitzwilliam took the stairs but Bingley had not yet quit the room, howbeit he had taken steps in that direction, when Darcy called after him. When Bingley turned, the look upon his friend’s face very nearly made him flee. But not in fear.
“You are right, Bingley, I have Elizabeth, or at least she is alive. However, unless you have had to endure what we have, I should think it most impolitic to make judgement to what lengths grief should be taken. I pray you and Jane never have reason for better understanding that the frequency of a tragedy does not diminish the wound when it is your own.”
Bingley was shaken. He did not fear his friend’s wrath, not really fear it. But to know something could so easily overtake a couple’s happiness, as it had for a union as strong as that of Elizabeth and Darcy, made him shiver in apprehension for Jane and the next birth she would face.
“What was it?” Elizabeth bid matter-of-factly.
“What was it?” Darcy repeated, uncertain he had heard her correctly.
“Boy or girl?” she asked.
“A boy,” he answered quietly, “named for your father.”
With studied deliberation, she replaced her teacup into its saucer. The censored subject was finally accessed. Daring not let it slip away, he asked if she wanted him to carry her to the gravesite. She nodded once, thereupon the wall of composure she had so diligently maintained shattered into a maelstrom of tears. As she fell face down upon the mattress, sobs began to rack her body. She was heaving as he picked her up and turned her to him, holding her tightly to his chest.
It was a not an unwelcome phenomenon. Anything was welcome to release her from her relentless melancholia. As she clung to him, Elizabeth had no notion that the weeping was not hers singularly.
“I could not do it. I let your baby die…” she sobbed again and again.
He soothed and shushed. In time, she listened.
In the hour they lay, a measure of healing took place. Eventually, her tears were exhausted, emotion spent. With her heaviest cloak about her, he carried her down the stairs and out of the house. The servants observing this sight stopped their chores and went to the windows in silence as the master carried the mistress up the path to the baby’s grave. Unbeknownst to him, the stone had just been set. Thus, they saw it first together.
He knelt, allowing her to place a small bouquet of winter roses at the base of the marble. Neither cried nor spoke. There seemed nothing to be said.
That first spring after Hannah came into Mrs. Darcy’s employ was a heady proposition, indeed. She had never once ventured beyond Derbyshire in her brief life. London had always seemed an impossibility. Nevertheless, when the time came she boarded the second coach with Anne, Mrs. Annesley, and Goodwin without hesitation. Albeit she did not quite release a full breath until after they had reached the outskirts of the fabled town.
She had heard tales of London from her third brother, who had once travelled there. He claimed it so harsh a place that fine people stepped over dead ones upon the sidewalk without even looking down. The streets of London upon which they travelled to reach the Darcy house were quite wide and inviting. They bore no dead bodies that Hannah could see. There were, however, a few darker concourses leading away from this main avenue that might possibly contain these reputed corpses.
She narrowed her eyes as they passed each shaded street, telling herself she did not want to spot one. She peered quite conscientiously in want of not, regardless.
Interrupting her inspection, Goodwin asked her just what she was trying to spy. That startled her from her contemplation, and she shook her head stupidly. She could not recollect Goodwin ever initiating a conversation with her.
Those were to be the first and last words she heard from him for a time; the disembarkation in London sent them all into a tailspin of activity. Within this household maelstrom, a comeuppance occurred, the recipient none other than the houseman, Mr. Smeads.
As Hannah held Mrs. Reynolds in less than close affection, it was of no great surprise to her that she was even less enamoured of the son. For a reason unbeknownst to Hannah, London staff literally smirked upon invoking his name.
It appeared Mr. Darcy was unhappy with him for some misdeed. Hannah asked Goodwin if he knew what had come to pass. Goodwin answered in the negative (a grunt, meaning either “no” or “I refuse to answer,” which one Hannah could but surmise). If Goodwin’s curiosity did not coincide with her own, she found more willing mouths amongst the chambermaids to tell the history of the bedcloth.
Admittedly, it was Hannah who, much in want of repaying such salacious information, told them about the coachman Reed and that Mr. Darcy had thrashed him and cast him out. She was a little guilt-ridden for enlarging this tale from a single strike to a thrashing, but her audience was so in want of Reed being thrashed, she feared she simply could not disappoint them. (And she would have repaid the rather rude look Goodwin gifted her for gossiping by her sticking out her tongue at him, had not her conscience already been grieving her.)
Having situated herself in the good graces of the London staff with her tale of Reed, Hannah basked in the fineness of the city house. In time, the newness of her adventure wore off and she begot a bit of homesickness. But if she busied herself inside and did not look out upon the bustling streets, she could convince her mind she was not far from home. If she did look up from her chores and out the window, however, it was a tremendous task to retrieve her attention from the fine carriages and distinguished-looking people.
At first, her sleep suffered from the excitement, but her appetite was unaffected. As at Pemberley, the town help partook their meals just a little less grandly than did family. But at Pemberley, Hannah remembered longingly, no one stood about checking to see how much food one had taken upon one’s plate. In Derbyshire, people partook until they were full, period. One might think Mr. Smeads fancied their dinner had been pilfered from his own plate, as parsimonious as the man was with a potato. She huffed about it diligently, but in si
lence.
If Mr. Smeads was an impediment to Hannah’s culinary consumption, he had no weight in other matters. For she was lady-maid to Mrs. Darcy and it was Mrs. Darcy and no other who gave Hannah instruction. Hannah had not taken up any airs even in so high a position as she held whilst in the country, but town affected her pride. Was it born of the very impressive coach in which they rode, or the looks that coach affected from passers-by, she did not question. She knew only she felt quite the fine lady in London, the distinction lessened just by her country frocks. And that small consternation was put to rest upon the trip to the dressmakers with the Darcy ladies.
Whilst they were fitted, Hannah sat in a straight-backed chair observing for a time. But the expected hour turned into two and she rose to stretch her legs by wandering about the shop.
There was a drapery in Lambton. Or more accurately, a store that sold fabric. But Hannah had never seen, nor even imagined, a place such as the one they now visited. Great bolts of fine fabric lined one wall; another appeared to bear nothing but lace. She fingered one of the prettier pillow-laces, saw one of the clerks frown at her, and put it down, suddenly certain she had been found out a fraud. Clearly, that was what she must be. For her life seemed far too chimerical not to be a fairy tale. In such a store as she was, in the employ of Mrs. Darcy, and in London.
The clerk continued to frown at her so decidedly, Hannah lifted her arms and looked about herself wondering just what manner of disorder she had caused to invite such a look. Finally, the clerk said, “Ahem,” and motioned toward the activity. Mrs. Darcy was calling Hannah’s name and in her idleness, she had not heard her. Penitent, she hurried to her mistress.
Mrs. Darcy and Georgiana had dressed and stood waiting for her to move betwixt them. The dressmaker told her to stand upon the stool and two assistants started to unbutton her dress, at which Hannah grabbed her bodice to wrest it from their unexpected assault.
“Aye don’t ’low no diddlin’ with me corset buttons!” she exclaimed.
Realising Hannah had never been helped from her clothes before, Mrs. Darcy assured her it was all quite proper. Hence, Hannah dropped her hands and reclaimed her regard for her position.
Mrs. Darcy had the frowning clerk retrieve the lace that Hannah had fingered, announcing it would adorn Hannah’s new dress. As a matter of convenience, Mrs. Darcy suggested Hannah select a half dozen muslin fabrics to be transformed into day dresses (and one black worsted, for Hannah did not own a mourning dress and death occasionally struck when one was unavailed of a seamstress).
Hannah no longer had any doubt of her gentility. It was one conceit to be lady-maid to the wife of the most illustrious person in Derbyshire, quite another to be the same in London.
When they returned home burdened with hatboxes (Hannah had two new bonnets herself ), her exalted state of mind led her to order Smeads a little too disdainfully to have the boxes carried upstairs. His response made her reconsider whether she would want him to tell his mother how she had spoken to him. She hastily picked up two boxes, as if she intended to carry them up all along.
Tossing her head gaily, she trilled, “If you please.”
Smeads frowned at her much as had the clerk in the store, but he did have a man carry the boxes for her. Hannah thought, with practise, she might just be able to carry off this hoax of position. Perhaps she would never, ever be uncovered as the country charlatan that she knew she was. It would have seemed there was no word or deed that could have disturbed her happiness once she had thwarted Smeads even in so small a deception as the bandboxes. London invited a smugness in her demeanour she began to believe was unchristian. Hence, summer’s end saw Hannah’s pretension of grandeur fall away as well.
She would have returned to Pemberley just as she had left it, a happy country girl of great luck, had not such violence and outrage transgressed their party.
The closest Hannah had been to evil was witnessing a thief swipe a shoat. Or so she would once have said was anyone interested in hearing what passed for evil to Hannah. At the moment he levelled his gun at her, she had seen evil personified in the face of Tom Reed.
It was not a great leap to believe that man of the devil even before he stole Mrs. Darcy. When Hannah looked down the sight of his gun, her eyes first focused on his. It was possible they glowed yellow. It seemed an eternity before the black hole of the business end of the gun barrel became clear. But when it did, a mad scream, shrill enough to shimmy the leaves, reverberated through the trees. And, then, in that heartbeat, ceased. Hannah could not recollect from whence it had come.
If her scream had been frightened from her mind, she most surely wished the rest had been with it. She, Anne, and Miss Darcy stood in the road and wept. They had no choice but to cry. They could not will themselves otherwise.
Hannah did not stop crying until they had reached Pemberley, only stifling her tears in occupation of tending Mrs. Darcy. She had thought that such tribulations had been conquered until Mr. Darcy banished her once the bath had been drawn. That was the absolute nadir, she had believed then. But times yet to be endured showed her she only thought she understood grief.
When her lady’s baby was dead-born, Hannah stayed in the room as long as she must. But the strain of the hours spent, the pain endured, and the recognition of pain to come was more than she could bear. Mrs. Bingley repaired to Mr. Bingley’s embrace. Hannah, however, felt frightfully alone.
When she came onto the landing, she saw Goodwin standing opposite. His weight was resting upon his hands and those gripped the railing with white knuckled ferocity. Even so, she started to walk toward him. But he turned away.
In time, she would wonder why he had turned. Was it to deny her, or to deny his own sentiments? At that time, she did not think of it. She blindly and loudly ran down the stairs heading for the door. Possibly, she sought her mother, but it was just a feeling, not a conscious thought.
Had Mrs. Reynolds not caught her and hugged her to her bosom, and had Hannah not felt the tears upon the old woman’s face, she was uncertain how far she might have fled, for her mother had been dead six years.
When Jane’s second child was born, Elizabeth, as she had before, went to Kirkland Hall for her sister’s laying-in. Yet in self-proclaimed ward and watch of his emotionally fragile wife, Mr. Darcy joined the small party of relatives awaiting the birth.
It was a fecund environment, for Bingley’s second sister, Mrs. Hurst, had finally wrested enough of her husband’s attention from drink, food, and the hunt to have a lap-full herself. Ever vigilant for future worry, she flittered nervously about Jane, collecting her every murmur of discomfort as a knell for her own anticipated suffering.
Jane, even when in the midst of full labour, patted her sister-in-law’s hand in reassurance, “There, there, Louisa, all will be well.”
If the happy circumstances of wedlock and motherhood for Jane and Louisa chagrined Bingley’s elder sister, Caroline, she did not overtly betray it. For during the parturient watch at Kirkland, Caroline Bingley paid Jane every attention and lamented her every twinge of pain. However, the very vehemence of her professed devotion persuaded Elizabeth that Caroline’s fondness for Jane was less than genuine.
For unmarried yet, Miss Bingley sluiced about her company—consisting of three married men, two expectant women, and Elizabeth—in full husband-hunting regalia. Bedecked she was with a cherry-coloured, tabby dress, all furbelow and brocatelle (announcing more de trop than au courant). With every passing year, it appeared she added another adornment to her already festooned-to-the-gills costume (at some point Elizabeth fully expected her accoutrements to keep her from heaving about at all). Ever in the want of social opportunity to promote herself, she appeared for all the world ready to pounce upon the first titled, or at least landed, nabob who accidented through the door.
All her folderol went for naught. With Jane in confinement, the balls that Bingley loved to accommodate had ceased. What few gentlemen were about were out for a little sport in the
field and none ever seemed to be bachelors (or even had sickly wives). Indeed, the entire length of Jane’s pregnancy must have been interminable for a bedizened poseur like Caroline Bingley. Pretending affectionate concern whilst enduring a seeming disinterest over an ever-lengthening spinster-hood must have been a dogged test for her, indeed.
As the time drew nearer for Jane’s delivery, Caroline took up an impatient pace to and fro the room even before Bingley instituted his own measured, if nervous, stride. Caroline’s abrupt little steps sounded to Elizabeth less of familial solicitude than social frustration. Ever benign, Bingley, however, saw it differently.
“Caroline is so very fond of Jane,” he announced. “Perhaps not as much as yourself, Elizabeth. But as dearly as a sister.”
At this little treacling colloquy, Darcy looked over at Elizabeth. She had been slicing dessert, but stopped and stood poised with a cake knife in her hand. They both looked at the devoted Caroline, who hummed as she inspected her nails. Then Darcy’s gaze leapt back to his wife, possibly expecting to see Caroline’s trepanned cranium creating a crimson stain upon the carpet at their feet.
Surprisingly, Elizabeth was not considering mortal retribution for Caroline Bingley. Nor did she intend to gainsay Bingley’s misapprehension of his sister’s heart. Although Elizabeth believed Caroline was cold as charity, she had begun to feel some sympathy for her. If she had found no one to love her, it was because she had no love to offer. It was likely she might eventually find a titled husband in need of her funds and a match would be made. It was a shame, really. Caroline’s mission was a needless one, for she did not own the usual argument in favour of affectionless matrimony, that of being poor.
Jane’s labour was brief and fruitful, and mid-morning Sunday, she did, indeed, produce an heir. Fittingly, the boy-child would be called after his father. Little Charles was blonde as was Eliza, and, in proof of Bingley’s pronouncement that he was the heartiest child that had ever been born, screamed loud and long.
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