by Lona Manning
“As though you need to ask, Mary. Matrimony forms no part of my plans at present.”
“Yes, but Henry, you speak as though you wish never to return,” and Mary glanced across the room at Edmund Bertram.
“Alas, Mary, if I don’t get away, I fear the consequences.”
“Yet you were as ardent as ever, if not more so, with Miss Bertram tonight! Could you not simply be more discreet? Or turn your attentions back to her younger sister?”
Henry shook his head. “Tonight must bring a close, I fear. I predict that tomorrow our uncle will have suffered a gouty spell and will have written, requesting my attendance on him. At any rate, Lord Delingpole has invited me to join his hunting party.”
“You cannot mean to leave me here with only my sister and Dr. Grant to talk to!”
“Come with me, then! Lady Delingpole will welcome your company.”
“Only for the pleasure of abusing Lord Delingpole to me. I think not, Henry. Not now.”
Miss Crawford soon excused herself to retire for the night, which seemed to signal a general break-up of the party; Maria Bertram made her adieux, Mr. Rushworth yawned and took his leave, and Henry Crawford slipped away quietly. Only Tom Bertram and Mr. Yates remained behind.
Mary Crawford paused at the second floor landing and stood at the tall windows overlooking the path which led down the hill past her temporary home at the parsonage. For the past four months, the young Bertrams, her brother, and she had come together almost every day–walking, talking, riding, dining, reading, singing, laughing, and flirting. But, should her brother make good on his promise and leave them on the morrow, she feared the immediate effects of such a change. She saw herself isolated at the parsonage. The sisters, while professedly her friends, had not truly formed an intimate tie with her, clearly preferring her brother’s company to her own. And while not disliking the Bertram sisters, she was, it must be confessed, only interested in being on an intimate footing with them as it brought her into contact with their brother Edmund. Henry’s removal would make this fact, disguised by the frequent comings and goings of both households, all too evident.
After some moments of calm deliberation, Miss Crawford quietly glided along the passageway to Julia’s bedroom, and found Julia awake, still dressed, also searching for solace by gazing out the window.
“How now, Julia!” she cried. “Shall I call your maid, or can I assist you? I promise you, the world will wear a better aspect tomorrow morning, after a good night’s sleep.”
“A good night’s sleep!” Julia exclaimed scornfully. “They say that a troublesome conscience keeps one awake, but in my experience the opposite is true. I have not wronged anyone, I have not deceived anyone, and I cannot close my eyes. But she sleeps soundly at night, after making a fool of her future husband before his very face!”
“As for sleeping soundly,” Mary said with meaning, “Just now, I went to your sister’s bedroom to wish her goodnight, and there was no answer. The door was slightly ajar, so I peeped inside—her lady’s maid was sitting there asleep by the fire, but of Maria, there was no sign.”
“Where is she then? With the others?”
“No, she was not in the dining-room when I left. And,”—with an earnest look— “and—neither was my brother….”
Further hints were not necessary. Julia took a candlestick from her dressing table, slipped out of the room in her stockinged feet and glided down the stairs.
The servants had banked all the fires and retired for the night, save for a solitary yawning footman who stood at attention in the pantry, ready to serve Mr. Bertram and his last remaining guest. The clocks were striking eleven and Tom Bertram and Mr. Yates were still holding high revel in the dining-room, having opened their fourth bottle of wine.
Yates was half sitting, half lying at his ease across several dining-room chairs, entertaining himself by flicking playing cards at, but seldom into, the upturned hat of his Baron costume.
“This is what happens when I go out shooting, drat the luck,” Yates took another long sip of wine. “My aim is atrocious. Not like Charles Anderson. D’you remember when Anderson shot the cork off a bottle of champagne at twenty paces in the old Duke’s gallery? Shame about the bust of Diana, of course.”
“Nonsense, Yates. That statue wasn’t an antique, but once Anderson took her nose off she looked like she had been dug up out of Pompeii. Did the Duke a favour.”
“Gave it that very… veritable… verisimilitude… in vino veritas,” Yates was cheerfully assenting, when a strange commotion arose. A woman’s voice, raised in anger, another’s in alarm, followed by a deeper— “Hold your tongues, both of you! You’ll bring the entire household down upon us!”
“I will NOT hold my tongue, you—you—blackguard! You cur!”
That was clearly Julia, and the argument seemed to be proceeding from the theatre.
“They’re not still rehearsin’, are they?’ Mr. Yates queried, the wine cup half raised to his lips. His host exclaimed something in an undertone, and bidding his guest stay where he was, Tom ran to the billiard room.
There, in the dim light of a solitary candle, a desperate situation met his eyes—Maria en dishabile, her limbs exposed, reclining on the pile of green baize curtains, Henry Crawford in the act of pulling up his breeches, his shirt tail untucked, hopping across the stage toward Julia who, like an avenging virago, stood poised, one hand holding her candle aloft, with the other hand pointing toward her guilty sister. Tom Bertram, hearing more footsteps in the corridor, closed the door firmly behind him.
“Is everything all right, sir?” Through the door came the sleepy voice of the butler.
“We won’t require you any further tonight, Baddeley,” said Tom. “T’was only a—”
“Only a play?” suggested Julia scornfully. “Only playacting? ‘Tis too true, isn’t it, Mr. Crawford? Tell her that you were only playing a part. Did you vow undying love? Did you tell her you would perish unless she gave herself to you? Let us have a repeat performance!”
“Good night, sir,” came from the other side of the door. Baddeley retreated.
Henry Crawford’s eyes met those of the brother of the girl he had seduced. “Bertram, my friend, what can I say? You’re a man of the world, aren’t you?”
The effects of two bottles of wine evaporated and Bertram felt himself to be fully sober. “Crawford, you and I shall speak in my father’s study. Julia, you shall assist your sister and escort her upstairs as swiftly and quietly as you can.”
“No! I shall not! I shall never speak to her again so long as I live!”
“Come with us then, let me get you some brandy to calm your nerves. Maria, you have nerve enough for anything, I apprehend. Get yourself to your room and for heaven’s sake, let no one see you.”
Julia took a deep breath and was on the point of screaming her defiance when her brother seized her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.
“Have a care, Julia. If you bring ruin and disgrace upon your sister, you will ruin yourself as well.”
“I bring ruin. I?” Julia hissed, shooting a look of pure venom at Mr. Crawford. “Serpent! Cad!”
“Will everyone please leave me?” Maria asked, in a tone, Tom thought, more imperious than ashamed. Julia set down her candle and allowed Tom Bertram to pull her across the stage and through the door into his father’s adjoining study, where Henry Crawford followed. The only light was from the faint crescent moon and the three could only see each other in silhouette, Julia’s heaving breast giving testimony to the fierce passions that contended within.
“Well then, Bertram,” offered Crawford coolly. “I am at your disposal.” Julia gasped and moved to place herself in front of him, but he pushed her aside.
“If you are hinting at a duel, Crawford, don’t be ridiculous. I find, when it comes to the point, that I’ve no wish to risk my life for my sister’s honour—not when she has chosen to fling it away. But you will oblige me by telling me, how do you propose to disp
ose of yourself, Crawford?”
The door from the billiard room opened and Maria, hastily dressed, with her hair tumbling down her back, flew into the room and flung her arms around her lover.
“I see,” said Mr. Bertram. “Very well. Julia, I promised you some brandy. Crawford, you will oblige me by staying out of my sight until I ask for you. I am not inclined to discuss this matter further tonight and I want in particular to consult my brother.”
“I surmise that your brother will not be as... philosophical about this turn of events as you are, Bertram.”
“Do not underestimate us, Crawford. Do not insult our understanding, after you have insulted our honour. All Edmund—or anyone save ourselves—need know is that Julia and I have seen, shall we say, undoubted proofs of affection, between yourself and Maria. And—” he looked sternly at his sister, “Maria, tomorrow morning, Mr. Rushworth will be informed that your understanding with him is at an end—unless you can bring yourself to look him in the face.”
“I can look him in the face if I am assured it will be the last time I must ever do so,” was the rejoinder, and Crawford felt Maria’s arms tighten around him further.
Julia’s outrage had subsided to wracking sobs which she muffled with her handkerchief; her bearing now spoke more of defeat than of anger as she allowed her brother to lead her away. The guilty lovers parted in the hallway, but not without a fond caress and a whispered “My Henry! My own!”
Mr. Yates remained, forgotten, in the dining-room, addressing another bottle of wine. After waiting some three-quarters of an hour for his host to return, he finally took a bottle with him to his bedchamber.
Fanny, lying in her garret bedroom, awoke briefly. She thought she had heard a quarrel but perhaps it had only been part of a dream. She had been dreaming of Henry Crawford, seeing him in prison, as his character Frederick was in Act Four of the play. Maria, as Agatha, pleaded for his release, but it was to her own father, Sir Thomas, that she pleaded in Fanny’s dream. Fanny hovered on the edge of sleep, listening to the household clocks strike midnight, then one, then two, waiting for the hour of four o’clock, when she would arise.
Chapter Four
It would be hours yet before anyone by the name of Bertram, or any of the guests sheltered under their roof, required hot water, or hot chocolate, or curling tongs, or breakfast, or a morning paper, yet the corridors and offices of Mansfield Park were by no means deserted, even before the first hints of dawn. Fires were laid, chairs dusted, and all was set in order for when the household should come to life. Unnoticed amongst the underservants, who scurried to and fro on their duties, there passed a slight figure, muffled up in a dark green travelling cloak, wearing a close bonnet and carrying a small portmanteau. No one challenged Fanny as she left the house through the tackle room and detoured around the stables, where she was unlikely to be noticed from the house. It was an unseasonably cold morning, and Fanny’s breath mingled with a morning fog which enveloped the park and gave a ghostly aspect to the bare trees. Frost lay thick on the ground, and the shallow puddles in the rutted lanes were covered with a thin dirty film of ice.
Had she been able, Fanny would have paused to turn around and take a last look at the beloved house, and she longed to go into the stables and take affectionate leave of Edmund’s gentle little mare, the one he had bought specially for her use, but fear of detection prevented her from doing so.
Fanny was passing carefully behind the outbuildings, when Christopher Jackson, driving a cart pulled by a reluctant old pony, overtook her.
“Why—Miss Price? What are you about at this hour, Miss? Are you going to the parsonage or to town? You had best climb up here with me, don’t be walking through the dews and the damp like that.”
Fanny had no choice but to comply and climb up beside the tradesman.
“What brings you abroad so early Miss Price?” Jackson persisted. “Is anything amiss? Are you a-going to the White house? Is your aunt unwell?”
“My aunt Norris is in good health, I believe.” Fanny countered. “Mr. Jackson, please do not trouble yourself on my account. Please let me down at the crossroad before we reach my aunt’s house.”
“Of course, Miss Price, but I can just as easily take you to her door. It’d be no hardship.” Jackson looked again at his passenger and observed with alarm that she was wearing, in addition to her travelling cloak and bonnet, two dresses, one on top of the other, and any quantity of petticoats.
“Why Miss Price, for all the world, you look as though you was planning to…”
Fanny could say nothing but looked straight ahead, her face shielded by her bonnet.
Jackson whistled thoughtfully and the pair proceeded in silence for some minutes. Finally, he spoke to her in an undertone:
“Miss Price, we folk who serve your family may be silent but we’re not blind. We know what a life you lead. That lady, who out of respect to you, I will not name”—and Jackson spoke with angry emphasis—”insulted my son, my own little boy, as much as calling him a thief—just because he was bringing a piece of lumber to me, at my bidding, at the same hour the upper servants were sitting down for their dinner. He had no more idea of what time it was than any boy of his age, but she must scold him in front of everyone, call him a sneak and a sly fellow trying to cadge a meal and tell him to run home again! A lady who has eaten how many fine dinners at your uncle’s table? A lady who, let me tell you, never leaves her sister’s house for her own with empty hands! Who walks through the kitchens as she goes, supposedly to bring instructions from my Lady Bertram, but really to help herself to anything she pleases out of the pantry and larders, so Cook tells me! To accuse me and mine of taking advantage of your uncle’s generosity!” Jackson recollected himself and urged his pony on a little faster. “It may seem a small thing, to be spoken to in such a manner, but one small thing builds on another, I know all too well, and—and I reckon you do, as well. And I’ll say this—if you are going away, then it’s nobody’s business, as I reckon, but your own.”
Fanny could only nod her head in acknowledgement and thanks. She half felt that she was dreaming. They passed by the Parsonage, and her luck held; the windows were still dark; Mrs. Grant and her servants were not yet astir. They passed by the hedges, trees, fences, and scattered dwellings she had passed hundreds of times before, usually on some errand for her Aunt Norris. She had seen the trees clothed in the tender green shoots of spring while she tottered on her pattens through the mud, seen the fences lined with hollyhock in the height of summer, seen the winds of autumn toss the dry leaves before her down the road, and reveled in the beauty of new-fallen snow on the meadow, but never had she beheld these familiar scenes in the earliest light of dawn, through the tendrils of an October fog. She had the sensation that everything and everyone she knew was dissolving into a mist, leaving only her, Christopher Jackson, and the sound of the pony’s hoofs on the half-frozen road. The enormity of what she was doing, actually doing, made her feel oddly detached from her own body. It was as though she could see herself in the wagon but yet it was not herself, it was some other person.
“Mr. Jackson, you will not speak to anyone about this?” she finally ventured.
“Well, I’ve been thinking on this, Miss Price, as we were getting along, and I believe I have hit on it. I would never tell your uncle, Sir Thomas, a falsehood, were he here, nor out of respect to him, any member of his household. If someone was to tell him that you was seen in my cart this morning, I would never deny it. But all I know is, I offered you a ride to your Aunt Norris’s door, and you rode with me so far as the crossroad and you bade me not to go out of my way, but to let you down. And so I will and that’s all I need say about the matter. So God bless you and keep you safe, Miss Price.”
Fanny thanked him fervently and they maintained a companionable silence for the rest of the journey. Fanny had lain awake half the night, wondering if she had the strength to carry her portmanteau to the village, not daring to arrange a ride or to borrow Ed
mund’s pony, which she knew not how to saddle—oh, was there no end to her ignorance and helplessness! But the ride with Christopher Jackson had saved her a quarter of an hour and she walked as swiftly as she could through the quiet streets to the coach house well in time for the early morning mail coach to Oxford. Her luck held there, as she was able to obtain the last empty inside seat. Her name was entered in the station master’s book, who evinced no surprise that a genteel young lady was travelling alone, without a companion or servant, and if he knew of her connexion to the great house on the hill behind the village, he betrayed no sign of it, or indeed any interest whatsoever beyond collecting her fare.
* * * * * *
Tom Bertram could not long endure being the only soul, apart from Julia, who knew what evil the day must bring. He woke his brother Edmund before six o’clock and gave him enough information to comprehend that Maria and Henry Crawford had secretly formed an understanding while Maria was still pledged to Mr. Rushworth.
“What would I not give to escape this interview with Rushworth, Edmund. I would almost condition for my father to be here, rather than have this fall to my portion!” Tom exclaimed.
“But our father is expected every day, and I grieve to think of how imperfectly we have discharged the trust he placed in us, to superintend his daughters—”
“Stop! Stop, don’t preach to me now, for pity’s sake, Edmund!” cried Thomas. “We have enough to do. We must break the news to our mother, we must manage Julia somehow. Can she reconcile herself to a marriage between Maria and Mr. Crawford? What think you?”
“Perhaps, if given enough time. I can hardly take it in myself and I never fancied myself in love with Crawford, as I fear Julia has. But as awkward as this situation is, matters may yet tend for the best. You know what misgivings I was harbouring about Maria’s union with Rushworth. Crawford is inferior to Rushworth in point of fortune, but his superior in understanding, education, address, wit—”
“Surpassing Rushworth in wit would be about as challenging as surpassing our dear mother in enterprise.”
