The distraction of those amusing things which Mr. Collins said helped Darcy. Even as they spoke, the memory of Anne’s death was before his eyes. His hands shook, and it took Darcy an act of will to not drink as much as Mr. Collins, or even more.
A little less than two hours after the midwife arrived the sound of Jane’s screams and groans became louder and nearly continuous, and Darcy thought he could perceive underneath the sound a woman firmly ordering her to push, and then again to pause.
His heart beat harder in worry.
All three of them became silent, and they ceased to play cards.
This perhaps was the time of crisis, but Darcy knew that reaching the point of the child coming out relatively quickly, if that was in fact what had happened, was a promising sign.
Anne had laboured for nearly an entire day after her pains had begun.
There was another loud scream from Jane, and then quiet.
Mr. Collins pulled his hands through his hair. “I so hope Mrs. Collins is well.”
And then a child wailed.
Mr. Collins’s eyes grew wide, and a slow smile crept over his face.
Darcy’s own heart fluttered, and it was impossible not to smile as well.
“A healthy sounding set of lungs,” Colonel Fitzwilliam commented.
Mr. Collins nodded.
That sound quieted soon, though it started up again irregularly, but with enough fierceness to make clear that the occasional quietness was from the child receiving what it wished, and not from it being too weak due to ill health.
Fifteen minutes after the first sound of the babe’s crying, the door to the drawing room opened and Elizabeth came in, carrying the tiny child wrapped in those lighter cloths that were replacing the old habit of tightly swaddling the child.
A touch of blood stood on Elizabeth’s cheeks, but she smiled widely.
Upon seeing her, Darcy’s own tension and anxiety released. She would not be smiling if a large pool of blood was flooding out of her sister.
Darcy still hurried to her, moving in front of Mr. Collins, who had far more right to approach the child. “Was the placenta expelled correctly?”
Elizabeth smiled at him. “Immediately when we gave the child to my sister to suckle after he’d been cleaned.”
She turned to her cousin, who tottered up to them and looked at the tiny, perfect, little wrinkled face with wide eyes.
“Mr. Collins, here is your son.” Elizabeth held the child up.
His whole manner and expression changed. “Oh, oh, oh. It is like looking at the face of my mother.”
“You can hold him,” Elizabeth said softly.
“But won’t I drop him?”
“You are not likely to. It only takes a little practice.”
Collins gingerly took the little boy, and then rocked him softly back and forth. “Hello, hello. Welcome.” He looked up at them all. There were tears in the clergyman’s eyes. “Is he not perfect?”
“Yes,” Darcy and Elizabeth spoke together at once. They looked at each other and smiled.
The astonishment of the miracle of life was in Elizabeth’s eyes.
Colonel Fitzwilliam, in an abominable expression of indifference, shrugged.
Darcy felt tears in his own eyes.
