by Lona Manning
Fanny could not help but smile as she thought of what form “forgiveness” would take with her aunt Norris. Perhaps censorious hints of ingratitude, dropped only every half hour, as opposed to every quarter. A breeze, coming through the window near where she sat, ruffled her new curls and tickled her ear. You are stronger than you know, the breeze seemed to whisper.
“Thank you. Now that my whereabouts have been discovered, if any members of my family wish to communicate their sentiments to me directly, they will do so.”
“Is this Fanny Price?” exclaimed Mr. Crawford, laying down his newspaper in astonishment.
“Upon my word, Fanny, you are quite an altered creature from the girl we knew in Northamptonshire!” his sister added. “I recall once conversing with your cousins about the revolution in manners produced when a young girl comes out in society, but this—this new indifference, this coldness, is astounding.”
Fanny looked at them silently, thinking: And did you really know me in Northamptonshire? Did anyone know me, save Edmund? Did anyone care enough about me to know me? Did I even know myself?
But aloud she said only, “I am very obliged to you—I am sorry, exceedingly sorry, for the exertions you have undergone on my behalf, but it was unlooked for by me.” She stood, and gave a slight curtsey. “I hope that you are now satisfied that I am well. In my estimation, I have brought no disgrace upon the family by taking on the responsibility of my own maintenance.”
“Well, even though you are intent on turning your back on those at Mansfield, what of your family in Portsmouth? Did you know that your brother William is there and anxious to see you?” asked Miss Crawford.
Fanny trembled with surprise. She thought it abominable and condescending for Miss Crawford to speak so freely of her relations, calling her brother by his first name—but the news that her brother, the so long absent and dearly loved brother, was in England again, filled her with joy. Henry made idle note of the fact of how Miss Price’s face lit up when her brother was mentioned.
“We stopped in Portsmouth on our way to Bristol. Here, Fanny, is a letter that we are pleased to convey to you from your brother, who also sends his love and his earnest desire that you come to Portsmouth. Your mother is of course longing to see you, and worries about you daily.” And Miss Crawford handed over the letter, which, the reader will note, was the only letter, of all those which fell into her hands, that she actually conveyed from sender to recipient in the entirety of our story.
Fanny thought Miss Crawford’s representations of her mother’s feelings were highly doubtful, for as she well knew, her mother was not of a doating disposition, at least not where she was concerned.
“Well, Miss Price, what do you say? Henry and I would be pleased to convey you there…. how long has it been, Fanny, since you have seen your own family? Should you not like to be among them again?”
Perplexity and anger now followed pain and humiliation. Why were the Crawfords so intent on meddling in her affairs? Fanny longed to go see her brother, but did not wish to put herself in the power of this brother and sister, who, every instinct told her, were not her friends.
“I am very much obliged to you, but—I have undertaken to stay with the Smallridges for no less than a year—barely half that time has elapsed—it would not be proper to ask them for leave to go to Portsmouth. Please, please do not trouble yourself further on my account.”
With a nod of thanks, and clutching the precious letter, she was about to make the plea of a headache, when Henry Crawford intervened.
“Do not run away, Miss Price, as I perceive you are longing to do. We have not finished our tea, and you should know that the amiable Mrs. Smallridge has invited us for dinner on the morrow—yes, she has, and no doubt you will be at the table also,” Henry Crawford extended his cup to Fanny for her to refill. Although he and his sister had decided to refrain from informing Fanny of Edmund’s engagement to Mary, he could not forebear, out of mischief, from telling her something of how Maria came to discard Mr. Rushworth. “You have shown very little curiosity about Miss Bertram’s ruptured engagement with the estimable Mr. Rushworth,” he ventured. “You see, Maria discovered herself to be in love with me.”
Fanny nodded, unsmiling.
“And so, we are to be married—or so I am told!” He laughed, but Fanny received the information with grave silence.
“What? No ‘congratulations’? No ‘best wishes’?”
“I do sincerely hope…… that my cousin Maria, and you, will both be very happy, sir.”
“But you doubt it will be so? Or… you doubt we will be happy together? Is that what you think?”
“Now, do not tease her, Henry. You know that our Miss Price is too upright to engage in making artful inferences. Further,” Mary turned to Fanny, “I fear, my dear Fanny, that you have been unwell. You must be very tired. Henry, we shall not detain her longer today, nor prevent our hostess from the use of her own drawing-room. Fanny, my dear, we shall see you again tomorrow and we hope to find you in better looks.”
Mary rose and moved to the door just as Mrs. Smallridge reached it, with her dress and hair newly arranged. Mr. Crawford’s smile told her, her efforts had not been in vain.
Fanny curtsied and departed swiftly, under plea of returning to her duties, and after exchanging further civilities with Mrs. Smallridge, the Crawfords then excused themselves, having much they wished to discuss with each other as they continued to Bristol to find a hostelry for the night.
At least Fanny had the consolation, the more than consolation, of a long letter from William to delight herself with. The letter had been begun at sea, and continued in Portsmouth with a description of the family and their doings, and contrary to Miss Crawford’s assertion, contained no longing message from a worried mother, who, by William’s description, was busily engaged in her usual pursuits of complaining about the servants, coddling Betsey, and lamenting the un-mended parlour rug.
The chief of William’s letter consisted of telling her all his hopes and fears, plans, and solicitudes respecting that long thought of, dearly earned, and justly valued blessing of promotion. Everybody gets made but me, Fanny, he wrote despairingly. And this war will end before I am ever more than a worthless midshipman. Our family has no influence at the Admiralty. I hope I am not boastful when I say that I have earned a promotion through merit and diligence, and I passed the lieutenant’s exam with distinction, but without patronage…. as you know….. I fear it shall never be.
Fanny's disposition was such that she could never even think of her aunt Norris in the meagreness and cheerlessness of her own small house, without reproaching herself for some little want of attention to her when they had been last together; much less could her feelings acquit her of having done and said and thought everything by William that was due to him.
Gladly did Fanny lay aside her own sorrows and perplexities to think upon William and to wish with all her soul that she could contrive some way to help him. Her own prospects for a happy, successful life were irredeemably blighted but her brother, uniting as he did, intelligence, fortitude, talent and enterprise, deserved every happiness which public fame or private domestic felicity could bestow. If it were possible, through any sacrifice on her part, to obtain a promotion for her brother, she believed she was equal to it. But no amount of earnest contemplation could suggest an answer to the problem.
* * * * * *
“Now I am at a loss, Henry,” exclaimed Mary in vexation as soon as they were alone again. “I had assumed that she would return with us and that I could so work upon her to make her afraid to speak to anyone by the name of Bertram! If we leave her here, she is beyond my control, and Edmund will write to her, perhaps even visit her, before our marriage—I am certain he will.”
“You desire that Fanny Price be removed somewhere that will satisfy her cousin Edmund,” Henry pondered aloud, “but be so situated that he feels under no account obliged to visit her, or even write her, nor she him.”
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��While you,” smiled Mary, “wish that your marriage to the lovely Maria remain a distant event, but the one reason that you advanced for postponing it—the disappearance of her cousin—has been removed, thanks to your own ingenuity! And did you not observe how discomposed Miss Price became when you spoke of your marriage to Maria?”
“Is it at all possible that she is jealous? Could she be acting a part, hiding some regard for me? How well do you know this girl? I had very little to do with her at Mansfield and now I find, to my surprise, that she appears to dislike me. It’s neither here nor there of course, but—”
Mary was grateful for an occasion to laugh, given the hardships which enveloped her. “My dear brother, you cannot make a hole in every girl’s heart, you must rest content with making the Bertram girls and Margaret Fraser and half-a-dozen others miserable!”
“Either she is affronted because I did not distinguish her, as I did her cousins,” Crawford mused aloud, “or she is prudish and did not admire how adept I was at making love to two Bertram sisters at once.”
“The latter, I conjecture.”
“If we know her character, we can trim our sails accordingly. I do not despair of persuading her to return to Portsmouth with us—her devotion to her brother is very evident.”
“Now that we have found her, what shall you tell Maria? Shall I order my dress for your wedding?”
Henry yawned. “Were it not for Boney, I’d be off to go rock-climbing in Switzerland, followed by a leisurely tour of Italy in the winter, perhaps. Ah well, I always wanted to make a walking tour of the Hebrides. I know very well how to place myself beyond the reach of matrimony, but where, where, shall you place Miss Price?”
“The bottom of Bristol harbour does suggest itself,” laughed Mary. “No, no, that will not do, even for a jest. However, I am certain she was very ill indeed, and quite recently—her hair all shorn off—and she has lost so much flesh—why are the Fates so capricious?”
“Here is a challenge to confound even our ingenuity!”
The pair were indeed profoundly silent for some time, and Mary Crawford was feeling very vexed with Fanny Price by the time they returned to their hostelry in Bristol and ate a quiet supper. Mary was about to propose turning in for the night, when Henry laughed, clapped his hands, and exclaimed, “I have it, Mary! I have a solution that will answer your wishes—and my own.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mr. Smallridge escorted Mary Crawford in to dinner, Henry Crawford had the honour of conducting Mrs. Smallridge to her seat, and last of all, Fanny was handed in by Mr. Chatsworth, the local vicar. Mrs. Smallridge was too taken up with entertaining the Crawfords to observe that her governess, the supposed relative of her dinner guests, never joined in their conversation or even smiled at their wit. Fanny could not escape hearing all that was said, of course. Mr. Crawford, with all the skills of address that she herself lacked, was interposing himself in the Smallridge’s usual talk about their neighbours and their estate and their dogs, with amusing anecdotes about his own coachman, or the eccentric old dowager who was his nearest neighbour at Everingham, while also asking them questions about their own country—their horses—their pursuits—and his conversation was all that was agreeable and captivating while still being perfectly proper and gentleman-like. He transformed the shopworn topics the Smallridges usually canvassed, that she had been used to think of as tedious, without dominating the table nor showing anything but the most considerate interest in his host and hostess. She could not but allow that the art of being witty, agreeable and charming was, in itself, not to be condemned; it was only when it was placed in the service of corrupt ends that it became an evil. But she had only to recollect his behaviour last autumn to her cousins to know to what advantage he had used his charm, and, if his stay under the Smallridge’s roof were to last for some weeks, rather than a few hours, she would not have laid a wager that Mrs. Smallridge’s heart, or even her virtue, would escape unscathed.
Meanwhile Miss Crawford, in conversing with Mr. Chatsworth, felt again all the superiority of Edmund Bertram’s conversation, air and appearance, and again lamented the rash step he had taken in enlisting himself among a body of men who were, in her experience, distinguished by their dullness, or their absurd self-importance, or their hypocrisy in preaching Christian forbearance while indulging their own appetites, whims and ill-tempers (and here she was thinking particularly of her brother-in-law).
Mr. Chatsworth, labouring mightily to make himself agreeable to both the ladies, did allow, upon a saucy enquiry from Miss Crawford, that an unmarried vicar was a constant temptation to the neighbourhood and he could not be too cautious in his dealings with the fair sex. ‘Hadn’t a vicar better marry, and set a good example in his parish?’ And she hinted that no doubt more than one young lady in the vicinity would gladly undertake the role.
Fanny, watching as Miss Crawford toyed with the vicar just for the idle amusement of watching him puff up with vanity, began to count the minutes when her “distant relations” would be on their way back to Northamptonshire.
With such condemnatory thoughts as these residing in her breast, she was completely taken aback when, the men rejoining the ladies after dinner, Henry Crawford asked to speak to her privately for a few moments. With a feeling of foreboding, and a resolution of saying as little to him as possible, she led him to her own little sitting-room-bedchamber adjoining the nursery. Scarcely pausing as they entered the room, Crawford said, “I think that you do not approve of my marrying your cousin Maria, Miss Price.”
Fanny only looked her reply.
“You have it in your power to prevent it.”
Again silence, but now Fanny refused even to look at him.
“If you will impersonate the part of my wife, for some definite period of time—it need not be more than a twelvemonth—I can put it about that you and I are married. You can come live at Everingham, in every comfort, while I—oh, Miss Price, pray sit down. May I fetch you some brandy? Do you have some salts?”
A few more minutes, indeed, were necessary for Fanny to find her breath and steady her racing heart. The indecorum of the suggestion, the barefaced audacity of it, exceeded even the worst she had supposed of Henry Crawford. She became aware, as one becomes aware of a distant noise and realizes the noise has been continuing for some time, that Mr. Crawford was still speaking, outlining the advantages to her of such an arrangement.
“…your person, of course, would be sacrosanct, I would claim no rights over you. All you need do is not contradict the report that we are married. I would settle a handsome allowance on you. As Mrs. Henry Crawford, you could come and go as you please, visit your family, live comfortably at my estate, entertain guests… have you ever been to Norfolk?”
“And what of Maria?” Fanny managed to utter.
“Maria is certain to find a husband within a twelvemonth. She is eager to enter the state, while I, alas….” Crawford spread his hands gracefully. “Once she is married to some other, and no doubt, much worthier man, we can drop the imposture.”
Crawford watched Fanny for some sign that she comprehended the proposal and would not put an immediate negative on it, but she was rendered speechless. “Take your time, Miss Price, consider my offer—I make it in all sincerity. I will return tomorrow morning and I trust you will give me enough of an audience to answer any objections as may occur to you. And remember, the destiny of your cousin Maria is in your hands.”
For the better part of a sleepless night, Fanny pondered and occasionally wept over the corruption and impiety of Henry Crawford. At first, her only concern was to find the words to tell him what she thought of the recklessness of his scheme. For herself, for her own reputation, she had no doubt that impersonating a married woman, after running away from home to be a governess, might so confirm her eccentricity in the eyes of the world as to necessitate her removing herself from society altogether.
The more she condemned Mr. Crawford’s character, however, as immoral, carele
ss and even vicious, the more justifiable it appeared to her that preventing a union with Maria should be a prime object. Should the marriage be effectually prevented, the sacrifice on Fanny’s part, of her own peace of mind and reputation, in exchange for the certain good of preserving Maria—as seemed certain to Fanny—from a lifetime of the bitterest regret, was a reasonable price to pay. Since she, Fanny, would never know earthly happiness, being separated forever from the man she loved, she could at least derive some satisfaction in assisting others. In her humility, she still rated her own claims to worldly happiness so low, and her cousin, being a Bertram, as so high, that once she became convinced the scheme would preserve Maria from a fatal step, she thought that her willingness to undertake this sacrifice for her cousin would be a proof of her gratitude toward the family that even Mrs. Norris, should she ever comprehend the whole, could not gainsay.
But—but—deceit was deceit, and falsehood was falsehood. This was, undoubtedly, the chief argument against agreeing to Mr. Crawford’s proposal. But there were others—she instinctively shrank from the idea with such true maidenly modesty as made her feel almost ill, and in addition, there was the sorrow of leaving her new friends in Bristol. In all probability she would never see Mr. Gibson again. She was truly fond of Caroline and Edward and flattered herself that her gentle affection helped to shelter them from all that was unpleasant and unhappy in the pronounced lack of harmony between their mother and father, which the advent of Henry Crawford had done nothing to improve.
But, on the other hand, if Fanny were to have the handsome allowance Mr. Crawford promised her, she would have an opportunity to assist her brothers and sisters. She did not doubt that she would see little of her sham husband—his motive in proposing this scheme was to secure his freedom—so he would be in London and Bath and all the fashionable watering places while she, the titular wife, stayed at Everingham in seclusion, away from the wondering eyes of the world.
