Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
THE DARK HOURS BEFORE DAWN
Two days prior to the wedding, Elizabeth woke suddenly, her heart racing but the dream, if that was what had provoked it, unremembered.
She sat up, considered for a moment, and then left her bed.
Pulling a shawl over her nightgown, she crossed the hall to where Jane slumbered, telling herself that she merely needed reassurance that her beloved sister was well.
Expecting to find her sister asleep, she pushed open the door without knocking; to her surprise, she found Jane standing over the washstand in the corner, scrubbing at a long piece of diaphanous material.
She gave a little jump when Elizabeth opened the door, then turned to her sister, and wordlessly extended the material towards her.
Elizabeth accepted it. The material proved to be a nightgown, and the stain was not large. Indeed it looked almost like nothing, but it was unmistakably something. What Elizabeth knew not was the meaning of it.
“I-I do not understand,” Elizabeth said. And then she saw the bed with the coverlets thrown off, whereupon another stain bloomed, dark and ominous, and she understood. “I see,” she whispered. And then, as much to herself as to Jane, she said, “This is nothing. Nothing at all. Let me…”
She went to the bed and removed the soiled linens, balling them together with the soiled, damp nightgown. “All is well,” she murmured to her sister who stood in the middle of the room seeming stricken. “All is well. I am going to go and get Mama.”
“Not Mama!” Jane cried out in a whisper.
“I must get help, Jane! I have no notion of how to help you in this.”
“Aunt Gardiner,” Jane said. “Pray get our aunt.”
“Very well.” Elizabeth nodded. “Are you in pain? Perhaps a dose of the laudanum…?”
Jane nodded numbly. Elizabeth went to where the bottle had lain since she was ill, and poured a dose into the small cup beside it. “Get back in bed,” she told her. “I will be back shortly with our aunt.”
Slipping from the room, she stole down the hall on light, quick feet. She knocked lightly at her aunt’s door once and then again. The second time she was rewarded with the sound of rustling within and shortly, Mrs Gardiner was at the door, peering out. “Lizzy? Is Jane—”
“You must come, now,” Elizabeth said, and it was all Mrs Gardiner needed to hear.
She followed Elizabeth back down the hall and into the bedchamber.
Jane now lay on her bed, atop the coverlets, her eyes wide.
Mrs Gardiner gave her a questioning look, and Elizabeth beckoned her towards the pile of dirtied linens.
“There is bleeding,” she said, showing Mrs Gardiner the stains.
Mrs Gardiner acknowledged it all with an air of slight puzzlement. Jane’s eyes had drifted closed, but Mrs Gardiner asked Elizabeth, “Her courses?”
“No.” Elizabeth laid a hand on her aunt’s arm. “It is not her courses.”
“No?” Mrs Gardiner met Elizabeth’s eyes.
“No.”
Mrs Gardiner held her gaze for long moments. At length, she said, “Mr Bingley?”
Elizabeth nodded.
Then her aunt’s practical side took over. “We may expect far worse to come, I am afraid to say.”
“I insisted she take some laudanum,” Elizabeth offered. “She did not mention any pain—”
“I do have pains,” Jane mumbled from the bed. “Hurts.”
“Does your mother—”
“We do not wish Mama to know anything at this point,” Elizabeth said, wordlessly begging Mrs Gardiner to put aside any notion of help from Mrs Bennet.
“Go downstairs, get hot water and clean linens. If Mrs Miller wakes, tell her it is for Jane and insist she return to her bed, on my orders,” Mrs Gardiner instructed, sounding very calm.
Elizabeth agreed and ran off, relieved to leave the room and its unfolding tragedy in her aunt’s capable hands.
In the kitchens, she found water in the cauldrons situated over a low fire; it was an easy matter to stir up the heat so that the water might be brought to a boil. She stood, transfixed by the fire and not permitting herself to think while she awaited it.
“Oh Miss Elizabeth! Such a fright you gave me!” Mrs Miller appeared, tightening her apron around herself as she came.
Elizabeth shot her a smile. “I am only getting some hot water for my sister. My aunt and I are both with her, and Mrs Gardiner told me I must insist on you going back to your bed.”
“Merciful heavens, I could not! Go to her, I will bring up the water—”
“No, no,” Elizabeth said firmly. “She said I was not to hear a refusal. Go back to bed, Mrs Miller, for I should so dislike to see my aunt cross with me.”
Something in her looks must have been persuasive, for Mrs Miller, after one additional very mild protest, left her. Elizabeth turned to watch the pot, wishing she might hurry it along and yet simultaneously glad to absent herself.
Bingley and Jane were engaged, no matter how it had come about, and they would marry and be happy. Of the small soul who was lost, she could not bear to think. It was too painful, the little niece or nephew who was no more. There will be others, one day, perhaps sooner than we imagine.
The water boiled then and, after a moment to wipe her eyes, she poured it carefully in the bucket and took it upstairs.
Mrs Gardiner had put on a muslin day-dress and an apron and gestured towards a similar apron near Elizabeth without looking up. Elizabeth set down the water and did as she had been wordlessly told to do.
“I do not suppose that I had ever told you that my mother was a midwife,” said Mrs Gardiner, beginning to move Jane around.
“No, I do not think you had.” Elizabeth moved to help her; evidently she wished Jane to be in more of a seated position, and the laudanum had rendered Jane helpless and heavy.
“Mm,” said Mrs Gardiner, smoothing the sweat-damp strands of hair from Jane’s forehead. “She was there when Lady Anne Darcy died in childbed.”
“Oh no! How dreadful.”
“Of course there was a physician in the room as well, one of the best or so she was told. I say, high or low, there is never much use for a man in a birthing room.”
Elizabeth smiled somewhat faintly. “Was that when Mr Darcy’s sister was born?”
“No,” said Mrs Gardiner. “Although that was a very difficult delivery too. I believe little Georgiana was about two years old and Master Fitzwilliam was about thirteen or fourteen, although with his height he did look older. My mother said it was one of the most dreadful things she ever had to do, to go to that young man and his father and tell them that neither the baby nor the mama had lived.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Poor Mr Darcy.”
Mrs Gardiner nodded, her eyes still on Jane. “Mother was always so impressed by that young man and how well he did in managing the news. He went immediately to his sister in the nursery—my mother followed to be certain he was well—and picked her up and held her close.”
A lump formed in Elizabeth’s throat.
“And she heard him whisper to her that he would never let anything bad happen to her and would always make sure she had a happy life.”
“That does sound like him.” Elizabeth swallowed hard. “Why do you tell me this, Aunt? Is Jane… She will be well, will she not?”
Mrs Gardiner gazed down onto her niece’s pained countenance. Without answering directly, she said, “Were there other cloths that you perhaps already took away?”
“No, but perhaps Jane did. I do not think so, however.”
She nodded. “Likely we are just at the beginning, then. It will probably be a long, long night, Lizzy.”
She was correct in that. It was nearly dawn before Mrs Gardiner pronounced herself satisfied that the business was done.
“Done?” Elizabeth looked at her sister’s sleeping form on the bed. “But it does not seem like anything of consequence—”
“Hush.” Mrs Gardiner held her finger to her lips. “Come, Lizzy, let us talk in your bedchamber.”
Obediently, she rose and followed her aunt from the room. Once they were safely within Elizabeth’s room with the door closed, Mrs Gardiner spoke.
“You came to me, I daresay, imagining her to be suffering a miscarriage?”
Elizabeth nodded. “There was blood—you saw it.”
“It does happen,” she said. “Not always at this juncture…four months gone?”
“In fact, five now,” Elizabeth said. “It happened but once, so we know precisely when.”
“Sometimes there is bleeding,” said Mrs Gardiner. “And sometimes it bodes ill, and other times it means nothing at all.”
“Then she still might be…?”
“The baby might be well or it might not. We have no way of knowing. She will need an excellent midwife, one who has experience with such things.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Once she is married.”
“Once she is married,” Mrs Gardiner agreed. “Oh, how stupid I was to not understand her desperation! I ought to have forced this information out of her long ago.”
“She was very determined it should remain a secret,” Elizabeth said.
“Does your mother know?” Mrs Gardiner asked.
Elizabeth replied with a look.
“She will need to know soon,” Mrs Gardiner warned.
“Once they are safely married, we will tell her,” Elizabeth promised.
“I understand,” said Mrs Gardiner. “Well, she will not hear of it from me. Would that I could have been of use to poor Jane all these months she was here! My efforts were made towards her forgetting him. Little did I realise that was the last thing she should do.”
“You gave your best counsel given the information you had.” Elizabeth touched her aunt’s arm.
“I hardly know whether to hope or fear by now,” said Mrs Gardiner. “In any case, they will marry. That is the important thing.”
Elizabeth nodded. “For no matter how you look at it…Jane’s virtue is gone and Mr Bingley is the one who took it.”
Mrs Gardiner nodded firmly. “They must marry. Whether a baby will come in August or not, I cannot say, but he must marry her.”