Intertwined Paths - Chapter 14

All in the canonical Pemberley this time. A much-anticipated event occurs: enjoy!

Chapter 14

The pleasant conversation among the others continued, but there came a brief moment during which Corinna was neither speaking nor being spoken to directly, and she looked over at Clorinda. The smile that passed between them seemed to tell the story: Corry’s eyes widened slightly and her eyebrows rose. She started to rise from her chair, but Clorry reassured her with a renewed smile and a slight hand gesture, and she remained seated, soon entering back into conversation with the others.

Georgiana rose and took the sleeping Anne to her room and, a few minutes later, returned, and Jane was starting to yawn (in a very ladylike way, of course), when Corinna came to Clorinda’s side. Just then the strongest contraction so far took Clorinda. She gave a very slight gasp, swallowed and then deliberately breathed, clutching her husband’s hand, while Corinna rested a hand lightly on her midsection. “It is time, is it not so?” Corinna said, when the contraction had passed.

“Yes,” Clorinda agreed. “You may tell them, now.”

“Very well. Everyone, may I request your attention? It seems that young Andry will soon be making an appearance. Andrew, my love, I think it would be best if you are Mr. Darcy downstairs, arranging for the midwife and doctor to be called, and doing whatever else needs doing. Georgiana can help you. Clorry will be wanting George with her, I know. Georgiana, dear, please fetch Mrs. Reynolds; she can make sure all is prepared for the birth. Andrew, you will have to prepare whoever comes for the sight of both of us in the room together, and perhaps of the other Fitzwilliam as well. Charles, you should accompany Andrew, so that you may keep each other company down in the library. If any of you become tired, you are of course encouraged to make your way to your rooms to sleep; we will let you know when the child is born.” She turned back to Clorinda. “How long have the pains been coming, Clorry? Since before our supper, is it not so?”

“Yes, they began soon after Jane and Charles arrived. They have definitely got stronger and more frequent, at this point.”

With surprisingly little fuss a coach was dispatched to Lambton for Serena Nadderby, the midwife who had delivered both Darcys and hundreds of other babies over a period of forty years, and for Dr. Marcus Rushmore, the well-recommended accoucheur whom Darcy had brought to Lambton from Derby. Clorinda was pacing back and forth in her bed chamber, where birthing supplies were already in place, and water was being heated, to be ready when needed. As Mrs. Reynolds was informing her about the water, Clorinda whispered in Corinna’s ear, and she said, “Of courseǃ”, then turned to Mrs. Reynolds and said, “Mrs. Darcy would like the first of the hot water used for a bath. Could you arrange for a maid to bring it up, but warn us before she comes, so that she only sees one of us?”

Corinna attended Clorinda to her bath, in which she soaked for some time, and found it quite soothing and refreshing, but by the time she was done the pains were coming every few minutes and were very strong. Her waters came just as she was emerging from the tub. Instinctively, and encouraged as well by Mrs. Reynolds’ advice, she concentrated on breathing as they put a bed-gown and robe upon her, and on letting the pains roll over her with as little outcry as possible. Corinna and Jane brought her into her bedroom, and she allowed her husband and Corinna to help her up onto her bed, where she relaxed for a minute or so until the next pang took hold.

Meanwhile, Andrew was receiving Mrs. Nadderby downstairs. It was pouring rain, and the Darcys’ coachman was dripping water, but he had kept Mrs. Nadderby dry under a large umbrella. The doctor, however, had not arrived. He would, so the coachman informed Andrew, be coming along later, in his own equipage, after picking up from a neighbouring village the wet nurse he had engaged; they should be at Pemberley within the hour.

“It’s right happy I be to attend Mrs. Darcy, Mr. Darcy, Sir,” said Mrs. Nadderby, who was both short and stout, but had an air of brisk competence about her. “But why you must needs bring some fancy London doctor into the business do be beyond me. I ain’t a-needin’ no man-midwife to tell me what to do. Your lady and her babby will be just fine, you wait and see if ’tain’t so. I saw her last week, and all were just as it should be. Her measurements be good —God made her for having babbies—; she’ll do just fine.”

“I am sure you are right, Mrs. Nadderby; and yet it seems right to me to have the best of the old knowledge along with the newer science, to be sure Mrs. Darcy receives the best care. I am sure that between the two of you she could not receive better. However, I must prepare you for something very shocking, and swear you to silence regarding it.”

“Oh, ho, Mr. Darcyǃ Don’t tell me there be another to give birth, and it ain’t to be known?”

“Mrs. Nadderbyǃ How could you think such a thingǃ Surely you have not attended such births in the past?”

“There’s surprising little I ain’t seen, young man, these forty years,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye. “And it’s mumchance I’ll stay about it, too.” She pantomimed the closing of her lips.

“That is well, ma’am,” he said, twinkling back. “Nevertheless, I dare say this time you will see what you have not seen before. When you arrive upstairs you will find my wife attending Mrs. Darcy. My wife, you see, is only in her fifth month. Also you will find Mr. Darcy with his wife, who is indeed to give birth tonight.”

“Lawks, what do you be saying, Sir! What on earth do you mean?” Mrs. Nadderby rather suddenly took a seat, though given her stature her face was hardly any lower in his vision than before she had done so. “I examined Mrs. Darcy myself last week, and if she be in her fifth month, I be a cow’s fifth tit. If’n you’ll pardon the expression.”

“I mean, ma’am, that there are two Pemberleys, and two of each of us, Mr. and Mrs. Darcy. I am not the Mr. Fitzwilliam George that you brought into this world and have known all his life, but Fitzwilliam Andrew Darcy, and I was delivered by the other Mrs. Nadderby. Yes, you have a counterpart in my world as well.”

Mrs. Nadderby’s eyes blinked repeatedly and her mouth remained soundlessly open for some ten seconds —quite a long time in her case— before she was able to say, “Well I never! And you ain’t twins, nor nothing like that? Well, of course you ain’t! Who could know that better ’n me! You be right, Sir, this I hain’t never seen before.”

But she bore it well when she did see it, a few minutes later. She immediately took charge of the proceedings. “Now you just rest quiet-like while you can, Mrs. Darcy. I see you done laid in the supplies we’ll need, and there be a-plenty of hot water. Good, good. Now, Mrs. D, I see another pain is hitting you. That’s right, just keep breathing and let it pass. All of this lilliburlero is just practising for the real thing; it ha’n’t got really serious yet. It’s just your body trying to convince the young-’un that it is time to abandon her comfortable nest. Do not push until I tell you it be time; you’ld just hurt yourself and wear yourself out. That’s right, Mrs. … you other Mrs. Darcy, what shall I be calling you?”

“Call me Corinna, ma’am. It is the name that the others are using for me as well.”

“All right, Corinna, rub her shoulders and wipe her face, make her comfortable. You too, Mr. D. Only let her hold your hand an she wants to. And Mrs. Bingley, stay out of my way, but happen you might rub her feet, especially when a pain has taken hold like this. It’ll distract her, and feel good to her besides.”

Meanwhile the contraction had eased, and Mrs. Nadderby, with a murmured request and an acquiescent nod from Clorinda, performed a quick internal examination, and her eyebrows rose at what she found.

“My, you do be in a hurry!” she said. “This child be coming very quickly, for a first one. How many hours do you say it been, Mrs. D, since your pains started?”

“About five, or five and a half.”

“And your water broke half an hour agone? You be at seven fingers a’ready—as I said, you be coming along very fast. That be well.” She turned away to speak with Mrs. Reynolds to make sure all needed preparations had been seen to.

Jane, meanwhile had moved to her sister’s feet and had begun to rub them. “Ah, thank you, Jane, that feels wonderful!” she responded, but then suddenly jerked convulsively, pulling her feet from Jane’s hands. Jane reacted with near-horror, but then realized that Clorinda was laughing.

“You must have been rubbing Charles’ feet too often lately!” Corinna explained. “You seem to have forgotten how ticklish are the soles of my feet. Either rub them quite hard, or just rub the tops and my ankles.”

Clorinda’s laughter ceased, however, as another pain mounted in intensity. Mrs. Nadderby moved into position and felt the top of her abdominal protrusion, with a satisfied nod.

“Yes, coming good and strong, and you’re almost wide open. Don’t push yet, but I’ll let you know. Mr. Darcy, I want you out of here in the next few minutes.”

Darcy looked at her with a mixture of nervous bewilderment, unwillingness and reluctant acquiescence, but Corinna intervened. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Nadderby, but he stays. I know that that Mrs. Darcy wants it that way.”

“Yes, I do,” panted Clorinda, just before something between a sob and a grunt escaped her lips. “Don’t go, Fitzw …” She couldn’t finish saying his name.

“I don’t hold with that!” protested Mrs. Nadderby. “A man at the birthing! As well have a horse in the kitchen! What do this world be coming to?!”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Nadderby, but that is how it is going to be!” Corinna said sternly. “You must simply accept it.” Clorinda and George both looked at her with gratitude in their eyes.

Twenty minutes later George was not so sure he was grateful. His dear wife, the light of his eyes, had turned into a termagant, and was upbraiding him most decidedly, and he was totally at a loss as to what he had done to rouse her ire. She had groaned most horribly at the last contraction, and pled with Mrs. Nadderby to be allowed to push. It was Mrs. Nadderby that had denied her, not he, and yet it was he upon whom she had turned. “Help me, Fitzwilliam!” she shouted. “Why don’t you help me! This is your fault! I cannot take this for another minute!”

“Hush, my love, I am here with you,” he said.

“I know you are here,” she said irascibly. “As if that helps! Why do you not make it stop! Why …” Her speech was interrupted by the setting in of another birth pang, and she cried out in anguish.

“Why is she so upset at me?” his eyes asked Corinna, and hers registered the same question back to him, with a certain note of humour, as if to say, “Don’t take her too literally here—she isn’t really responsible for what she is saying.”

“Oh, Lizzy!” Jane’s voice was as flustered as Darcy had ever heard it.

“This is good, this is good,” said Mrs. Nadderby calmly, one hand on Mrs. Darcy’s abdomen and the other feeling for the baby’s head. “You’ll really want to push on the next one, dearie, and it be nearly time; just one more, I think, and then you’ll be all the way open and it’ll be all right to do it.” She turned to Mr. Darcy and said somewhat fiercely, “Just think on what you’d feel, if’n you had a cannon-ball up your arse that you was trying to pass, and you knew it was her that had put it there. You might say owt you didna really mean, too.”

He gulped and looked self-conscious, then reapplied himself to stroking his wife’s arm and forehead, and she, wordlessly, looked at him and touched his soothing hand with her hot one before another pang took hold.

It was at this juncture that Georgiana knocked on the door, and Jane went to speak with her, but Mrs. Nadderby did not wait. “Just tell ’em, downstairs,” she said sharply, “that it be all coming along just fine, nary a hitch. But if that fancy town-doctor don’t make it here very soon now, he be going to miss the main event. ’Tain’t as if we want him …” she grumbled.

Elizabeth groaned once more, so strongly that Georgiana turned white, closed the door and fairly ran for the stairs. But despite the intensity of the pang, Elizabeth’s urge to snap at those around her had receded, and in its place she was conscious of a fierce determination building within her.

“Now, push!” Mrs. Nadderby said, as the next contraction built, and she pushed with all her might, grunting and sobbing as she ran out of breath.

Five minutes and three contractions later, Mrs. Nadderby said “Here she comes! Come see,” and Corinna quickly stepped down towards Clorinda’s feet; Jane was already there watching. Darcy, however, remained by Elizabeth’s head, his arm around the back of her neck, helping hold her where she could push steadily.

“He’s got dark hair, Lizzy!” Jane said excitedly. “Just like you, brother.”

“Oh my Lord!” Corinna breathed reverently. The head was now out, and on the next contraction Mrs. Nadderby eased the shoulders out, and suddenly the whole little body was wriggling in her capable hands. Jane had caught up a soft blanket, and she and Corinna together held it as Mrs. Nadderby laid the infant in it. He (it was definitely a boy) looked calmly around, breathing easily and squirming to turn his head in every direction possible, not crying or exhibiting any apparent emotion other than curiosity.

“Oh Lizzy! He’s beautiful!” Jane was practically squealing, while Corinna just looked on the baby’s face with eyes full of love, yet with tears streaming down her face.

Mrs. Nadderby had tied and cut the cord by now, and Corinna, gently taking the little bundle from Jane’s hands, carried him up to where George and Clorinda were together at the head of the bed. “Meet your son, Lizzy and Fitzwilliam!” she said.

“Little Andrew!” Clorinda cooed. Darcy, looking on in almost shell-shocked fascination, reached out to hesitantly to touch the baby’s cheek as he lay in his wife’s arms, and his son, waving his arm at random, touched his father’s index finger and instinctively grasped it. His eyes, which had been roving the room, just as suddenly locked onto his father’s eyes, sealing the bond between them in an instant. It was only several seconds later that the baby turned away, looked at his mother and gave a small grimace, and soon after that twisted his face into a full scowl, drew a deep breath, and let it be known that, notwithstanding his earlier manifestations of detached sang-froid, he was capable of passionate protest when so moved, and was possessed of very healthy lungs and a most remarkable vociferative apparatus, each of which he was quite capable of employing in conjunction with the other.