Jane Austen After

  Mr. Knightley shook his head. “What freak is this? Emma, you have better sense than that.”

  “Miss Bates—that is, Jane is lying in. She—she needs me.”

  “Even so, your own needs must be paramount. I believe Perry would back me when I say you must remain here. You are wet through, and this rain will only worsen.”

  “I can take the carriage. I’m sorry for the horses, but I must go. I must.”

  He tried to remonstrate with her, but she was adamant.

  It was he who disengaged before the argument could exacerbate them both. He had known Emma all her life. One of the things he had admired most through her girlhood was her independent spirit, tempered in young womanhood by a sense of justice and mercy: though she had made a promise to love, honor, and obey, she would never submit unless she was convinced of the rightness of the action. To demand submission as his right would be to risk losing her trust. He would not demand, but he could reason. She had always answered to reason, once she could be got to listen.

  So he followed into the bedchamber after she had bathed, while she changed into her warmest clothing.

  His carefully reasoned words—those with greater authority within call at Randalls—her own health—her father’s worry—the weather—were all to no avail. Moreover, he sensed that there was something she was not telling him.

  By then the horses had been put to, as she had ordered. He gave over, finally, and distraught as he was, he himself put the hot brick on the floor of the carriage for her feet. He said, “Carry my best wishes to Mrs. Churchill.” And shut the door.

  Emma saw that he was angry, and grieved a little, but she knew he would wait for her explanation. Though her eyes stung, she was also grateful: she had his trust.

  The carriage lurched into motion, as rain drummed on the roof. The trip was swiftly accomplished, and on her arrival, the first person she saw was a former housemaid from Hartfield who conducted her straight upstairs.

  Emma’s shock when she saw Jane lying on the pillow was so great she could not speak.

  Jane’s hand was hot and dry as she clasped Emma’s. “Thank you for coming.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I have something to ask of you.”

  Just then a housemaid brought in a tray, not forbearing to glance at the basket in the corner. As Jane’s personal maid helped her mistress sit up a little against pillows, Emma withdrew toward the window enclosure with Mrs. Weston, and pointed toward the basket full of crimson-soaked cloth.

  “Is it always this sanguinary?” she whispered.

  Mrs. Weston’s eyes were frightened. “No.”

  “Where is her physician?” Emma asked.

  “He waits below, with Frank. There is nothing he can do at this moment, not until the babe is closer to coming,” Mrs. Weston said.

  Jane looked wearily at the tray, and then shook her head. “Take it away, Rebecca, please.”

  “But Master sent it, Mrs. Churchill,” the little maid returned.

  Jane smiled a little. “Tell him I thank him. For his thoughtfulness. I will eat later. Set it aside for now.” A faint flash of humor shadowed her thin cheeks. “At least there is no more calomel to be choked down.”

  Rebecca obeyed, then whisked herself out at a sign from Mrs. Weston—after one more long glance sent at the basket.

  Jane was about to speak, but her lips pressed into a white line. She shut her eyes. Drops beaded her pale brow as she doubled up.

  Emma watched in horror as the other women in the room moved with swift and deliberate purpose, testament to how long they had been at it. More cloths were laid, and when the spasm ended they were taken away to be added to those already on the basket.

  “He fights,” Jane murmured at last. “He fights to get out.”

  Emma tried to find an unexceptionable subject. “You think the babe a he, then?”

  Jane’s smile was faint, but sweet. “Only because Frank so badly wants one. Sometimes I think it’s a she. My Hetty.”

  Emma hesitated, looked up at Mrs. Weston, and then said to Jane, “I think you ought to send for Mr. Perry.”

  “Frank wouldn’t have him.”

  “He oversaw little Anna’s birth as well as Harriet’s Betsy. And surely two physicians can do more good than one.”

  Jane lifted a hand—sighed—it was enough. Mrs. Weston sent an approving glance at Emma, and left to send someone to fetch Mr. Perry. The maids followed her, carrying the big basket between them, leaving Emma and Jane alone.

  Jane said, “Emma, I fear I may die.”

  Emma shaped the words of denial, but Jane twitched restlessly. “No, no, do not argue. I haven’t the strength left. In truth there is no pain right now, except these spasms when the babe tries to come forth. The rest of the time I feel as if I float on a river. There are things I must do in case I . . . drift out to sea.”

  Emma’s throat ached. She thought of Miss Bates, so distant, so helpless and worried. Was she listening now? “Your aunt can hear you,” she whispered. “She sent me to you.”

  Jane’s hand wandered restlessly over the bed covers. “I promised never to tell. But it’s the real reason I stayed with the Campbells. I was so little, but even so I began to see how she did things for me before I could speak. A child is so passionate—it was far too easy to hurt her—I could not sleep, trying to guard my thoughts day and night. When Colonel Campbell wrote, it saved us both.”

  Emma drew in a deep breath.

  Jane said, so low her voice was a thread. “It’s why she never married. We talked only once. Just before I went off to Enscombe. She said she could not bear to have any child inherit . . . it. Whatever it is that makes it happen.” She pressed her hands against the mound of her middle. “If she lives. I hope my babe will not be so afflicted. But you must promise me. Look after the babe. I—I never told Frank. It was my aunt’s secret, and I feared . . .” She compressed her lips.

  “I will promise you anything you wish,” Emma cried, pressing the hands that gripped hers with sudden, but brief strength.

  “Oh, comes another. I had not expected one so soon.”

  Emma turned to fly to the door, but it opened then, Jane’s maid bringing in fresh linens. She took charge at once.

  When Mr. Perry arrived, Emma knew there were too many people in the room. The maids were needed, Mrs. Weston had the greater claim, and so she trod wearily downstairs.

  The lower floor was flooded with light: all the candles had been lit. Noise from the open drawing room drew her. She discovered Frank striding back and forth from window to wall, his hair disordered as he thrust his hands through it. At her step he whirled around. “How is she? Is she better? Is she close to her time?”

  “Mr. Perry is with her.”

  “Perry!” Frank exclaimed, then shook his head. “If that’s what she wishes. But . . .” He strode through the open door into the passage, then yanked open the door to the second drawing room. “Thayer!”

  Emma glimpsed a tall gentleman seated at a table beyond, reading. The table was overspread with books.

  “Will you go upstairs? They’ve summoned Mr. Perry—something’s happening.”

  Dr. Thayer murmured a word of pardon as he passed by Emma; his coat smelled of tobacco smoke. He trod quietly up the stairs.

  Frank turned away, flinging himself back across the passage. After Emma entered the drawing room behind him, he kicked the door shut.

  “In truth, I don’t know why I sent him up. He doesn’t know what to do. None of them do, my uncle was right. They’re all charlatans.”

  Emma exclaimed, “Did he do no good, then? Why would you have him?”

  Frank’s face was ravaged. “Because I don’t know if he did good. Or harm. How can we? Something goes wrong, they say it was meant to be, whether by order of all-seeing Providence or blind Nature. Even your omnipotent Mr. Perry did not save Jane’s mother.”

  Or mine, Emma thought.

  “At first all was well. Jane had told me at the outset that she
would not get fat. She did not want me to see her gross, and his medicines kept her slender. But then she was so ill. At first just days, then it was all the time, yet she would insist she was fine. And she was distressed if I showed distress, but in truth, I could not bear to see her suffer, I went to London just to get away—I thought if I could laugh a little the time would pass faster. There was nothing I could do. I would willingly take the pain if I could, don’t you see, Emma?”

  “I think I do,” she ventured, trying to understand how each so worried about what the other thought, he going away and thinking himself sent, when she wanted him the most but would not say it lest it discommode him.

  “If only I had not flirted in London! It meant nothing—it passed the time—why should Jane be made to suffer for my sins?”

  “She is not being made to suffer for your sins,” Emma said.

  “Then why is this happening? Surely she is not punished for her own sins! She, who is without fault!”

  Frank cast himself down in a chair, hands thrust through his hair until it hung in tangles on his brow. “I am not good enough for her,” he said over and over.

  “Good or bad—we most of us are a mix of both—you are what she wants.” Emma sat down next to him, her shoulders tight, her temples pounding. Her entire body trembled with fatigue and shared anguish.

  Mr. Weston came into the room, soft of step, and stood by his son, his cheerful face unrecognizably solemn.

  Emma left her chair that Mr. Weston might sit next to his son, and wandered without purpose through the doors, as servants dashed about, some on errands, others wanting to look and exclaim. Jane Fairfax, so good, so sweet, Emma could not bear to think of her music silenced. Emma groped for the banister, and then felt a hand close over hers. “Do not come upstairs. There is nothing you can do now,” Mrs. Weston murmured.

  A high, thin cry came from the room upstairs, and both women looked up, and breathed in relief.

  “Come, let us tell Frank there is some good news.” Mrs. Weston wiped her eyes, and led the way back into the drawing room. “The babe lives.”

  Frank started up. The doctors appeared moments later.

  “Your boy is sound as a nut,” Mr. Perry said. “A little blue at first, but a good cry fixed that—”

  In the distance the passing bell began to toll slowly, and Frank gasped as though he had been struck. “Jane!” He cried.

  Mr. Perry put out his hand. “She is asleep, dear fellow. That bell will be for old Mr. Pelham. We’ve been expecting it this week at least. He got his ninety years’ lease, he told me—ready with a joke until the end.”

  Frank’s ravaged face began to ease.

  The London accoucheur spoke in the calm, sober voice of the medical faculty, using the language of authority. “A hot embrocation at once I trust will meet the needs of the case, to restore order to the movement of the blood, followed by the child’s taking ass’s milk well laced with calomel as soon as he can suck, that he might evacuate the last of the birth tissues.”

  Frank stared at Doctor Thayer. “You’re not going to blister him? Bleed him?”

  “No, no,” Mr. Perry said soothingly, leading Frank out of the room toward the stairs. “Come see him. The women have him bathed and swaddled by now. We will go to the nursery, then you may kiss your wife. But you are not to wake her. She is still in a great deal of danger. There are two things you must do. Encourage her to eat. Put that French cook of yours to work, though simple foods might be best. But she must eat, and drink fresh milk. And no more tincture of mercury. It may be all the crack, as you young fellows say, but I cannot help think that women—and infants—did well without it these many centuries.” When they reached the stairs he said with a smile, “My distinguished colleague is concerned with the business of birth, as one might say, but my long experience, perhaps, may be trusted for the results of the birth, if I may speak so bluntly. The babe’s color is good, his lungs are in fine order . . .”

  He paused and this time everyone heard the thin, high, wailing voice.

  Frank stopped, transfixed, then pounded up the stairs.

  Mrs. Weston and Emma still stood in the passage below the stairs. They returned to the drawing room, where Emma sank gratefully into a chair.

  She was unaware of anything else until Mrs. Weston pressed her hand, rousing her. “I will summon your carriage. Go home, Emma. You do not look well.”

  Frank Churchill entered the drawing room with the doctor behind him. Frank’s hands cherished a small bundle. There were tracks of tears on his face. He held out his son, and everyone kissed the sweet face lying in the blanket, with eyes so much like Jane’s.

  Emma’s carriage arrived. Mr. Weston—who wept silently for joy, and worry, and release of pent-up emotion—conducted her out, and shut her in with disjointed words of gratitude.

  When she pulled out her pocket watch she was shocked to see how far the hour had advanced. At first she attributed her discomfort to the tiring events of the evening, and to the wet, cold carriage ride, for there had been no one to remember a hot brick.

  Mr. Knightley was waiting for her, a lamp at hand. He ushered her to her bedchamber, and confined himself to the little questions she could easily answer.

  By midnight she knew her increasing discomfort was something else. Once again Mr. Perry was fetched, but well before morning, without any danger or drama, Emma presented to her dearest George a son.

  o0o

  Mr. Woodhouse had the felicity of waking up to the news that Master George Knightley had arrived, and that there was no cause for alarm. Emma was well—he had seen her—and whenever he thought of a new worry, he could tiptoe in and inspect his little grandson.

  Emma enjoyed a quiet day and night, waking early the next morning, just as the sun was rising. Her husband, aware of her stirring, lit a lamp and asked if she needed anything.

  “Only to talk, now that we are alone,” she said, and smiled at the baby who nursed, blinking up at her face in the lamp light.

  He began with an apology. “You were right to go to Randalls. I was wrong, and I beg your pardon.”

  “You did not know. No one could know,” Emma responded. “Except Miss Bates.”

  Then she told him her guesses, how Miss Bates had heard her thought, what she had said about Jane—and what happened. As Emma spoke, Mr. Knightley reacted in surprise, and disbelief, and puzzlement, but he did not deny the surprising intelligence, or tell her she must be mistaken. He asked several questions, desired her to repeat what Miss Bates and Jane had both said, shaking his head from time to time.

  “You are right to keep it secret,” he said at last. “I suspect even presented with the evidence, few would believe it. Others might make a raree show of Miss Bates, to serve their own ends. That must never be.”

  Emma agreed. “I think the saddest thing is what she said about being alone, and what Jane said about her never marrying. Will such an ability ever be part of human nature, or do such things die out because they are too painful to bear? Surely Mr. Bates and his daughter are not the only ones.”

  Mr. Knightley said wryly, “Some philosophers talk of the infinite capacity for humans to change, others talk of our limitations. I wonder if there are some strengths, let us call them, or abilities, which might exceed our capacity. Yet I might be wrong. For all I know, there are men on the other side of the world who can fly.”

  “I catch your meaning,” she exclaimed. “I comprehend. But let us say we change our capacity. Would such a change make us other than human?”

  “That is probably a question our children will answer. Or our children’s children, if such changes do come upon us. What I know now is, I do not think any of us are prepared to hear our neighbors’ real thoughts. Or to have them hear ours. I would not have Frank Churchill, in his worry, hear my opinion of his actions during Jane’s confinement.”

  Emma considered that. “I know you still consider him thoroughly spoilt. Yet he could not have been, with his Aunt Churchill’s t
emper so uncertain.”

  “Frank Churchill is thoroughly spoilt in the sense that he has always had everything he wants, excepting only his aunt’s vagaries, and his visits here proved that even she—even in her extremity of need—could be got round. And at a very young age he came into his estate.”

  “So you did as well,” Emma said, trying to discern his thought.

  “Yes.” He frowned, not at her, but at his fingers entwined with hers. “To anyone else I would sound like a coxcomb, but I trust you will know where I am at when I observe that I was raised to a sense of duty, and Frank Churchill was raised only to a sense of obligation. With the deaths of the Churchills, and you know as well as I how the good Westons will always find an excuse for him if they can, he has been released from any obligation except that he chooses.”

  “You make him sound evil, dearest George!”

  “No. Not evil. Selfish, though I grant him a good heart, if a volatile one. Perhaps, if she recovers—and Perry said he left her regaining some of her color in sleep. If she recovers, Jane will be a more sensible woman, who will raise little Frank to be sensible. Perhaps Frank may learn to control his flights of fancy. A little communication may not accord with Lord Byron’s ideas of romance, but there is no doubt that it makes for more comfortable life.”

  Emma chuckled. “Yet every woman may also like a little of Lord Byron’s romantic flights. Is that selfish or terrible?”

  “No. I speak of moderation, not dullness.” Mr. Knightley leaned down to kiss his wife. “I will endeavor to remember your Byronic fancies, when you are more recovered.”

  Emma took his meaning, and blushed, and smiled with anticipation. Yet her thoughts ran on. “The romances of matrimony.” She shook her head a little. “I’m afraid there isn’t much hope that Mr. Elton has retained his Byronic ideals.”

  Mr. Knightley turned her ring around on her finger, around and around. “Unless the Eltons find their way toward understanding, it could be that a few weeks’ angry activity, perhaps a decision made carelessly, will cause him a lifetime of regret. I hope it is not the case.”

  Emma struggled for the compassionate view. She could see it from time to time, and it made her feel, if only for that moment, as if she were larger than herself. Was that how Mr. Bates felt all the time, with his sunlight brighter than the orb circling the sky?