by Lona Manning
He could barely perceive the two small figures in the distance, who he supposed to be Tom and Edmund Bertram, waiting for him in the meadow. He had expected to see his second, Mr. Stanhope, arrived ahead of him, presenting the offer of marriage on his behalf. But, come to think on it, he would be pleased to dispense with tradition and speak for himself. He had always held that no man was his equal in turning an indifferent acquaintance into a friend, or in disarming an enemy with his ability to charm and persuade. The forthcoming interview would be the crowning glory of his career—Edmund Bertram, who sought to murder him, would become his loving brother—he and Maria, and Edmund and Mary, would spend Christmas and Easter together, now at Mansfield Park, now at Everingham, now in London, and this morning on the heath would become a fond memory to be talked over and laughed about, and as for Tom—well, he had never been sure about Tom, but they at least could always talk about horses. Laughing out loud, and in final show of careless bravado, he urged his own team to greater efforts even as the narrow, rutted road curved and rose into the meeting-grounds.
His rapid approach amused, then alarmed, both Tom and Mr. Anderson.
“By g-d! He is laying on the whip—that must be Crawford. He is the wildest driver in England, I vow.”
“He is driving like a man possessed—watch him, look how he is taking the corner—”
Both men watched, transfixed, as Henry Crawford left the narrow road to travel directly to them over the uneven ground. They saw the barouche tip dangerously to one side and almost overturn, then recover its balance. Alas, a moment later, when he was almost upon them, they watched in horror as the barouche flew into the air—undoubtedly one of the wheels had come into contact with a stump or a boulder—he landed on one wheel, overturned and, still pulled by the panicked team, was dragged across the meadow to the other side of the clearing where all came to a halt in a tangled mass of horses, reins, mangled carriage, broken axle, and, somewhere in that carnage, a man.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mrs. Butters finally persuaded Fanny to take some tea—any kind of nourishment was unthinkable. She waited, miserably, as the parlour clock chimed the hours. Oh, would that it were Edmund who rode up to the door, healthy and well. Or Tom, with a hopeful message. And what if the combatants escaped with their lives but then were arrested for dueling?
She heard the sound of horse’s hoofs, but at an unhurried pace which proclaimed the advent of another day for traders and travelers, all going about their business in calm indifference. She heard window shutters opening, and street vendors crying and all the sounds of a world awakening to another ordinary morning. But no matter the outcome, that world would never be the same again for her.
Six o’clock came! Seven! Eight! There was no possibility of rest. The morning arrived, without pause of misery. She passed only from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror; and from hot fits of fever to cold. Although straining to listen with every nerve of her body, she was barely aware when Susan was escorted out, to pass the day with the wife and children of their neighbour, Mr. Stephen. With every moment that crawled by, Fanny felt her spirits sinking. Surely this silence meant that Edmund was dying or dead, with Tom attending him, too distracted to send a message to her. If Henry Crawford was triumphant, supposing he had even made note of where she was to be reached, he might have decided to leave her in cruel suspense. Her suppositions and speculations grew ever darker. It seemed only too probable that she would never see Edmund again—what other explanation could there be for this long delay?
At nine, when her poor suffering frame could endure no more, and she was resting on her bed, there came at last a knock at the door. Fanny sprang up, flew down the stairs and ran into the waiting arms of a weary Edmund Bertram. He held her tightly, without saying a word, for a long moment. Fanny stifled her questions and stood quietly in his embrace, laying her head upon his heart, instantly changing from being the one who sorely needed comfort and relief, to being the one who gave it. Whatever had transpired or was to come, he was drawing strength from her.
* * * * * *
Henry Crawford was lying in agony at The Spaniards Pub, close by the Heath, whose proprietors were accustomed to receiving injured parties from duels. A surgeon was swiftly summoned and pronounced what no one needed a surgeon to perceive—although the injuries to Mr. Crawford’s head looked alarming and bloody, they were inconsequential as compared to the injuries to his legs, which were mangled and crushed beyond repair. He would require amputation, which he refused. “That’s right, the young gentlemens always refuses—at first. And when they changes their minds, it’s often too late,” said the surgeon philosophically, packing up his bloody tools into his satchel.
Upon hearing the grim news from Edmund, Mrs. Butters swiftly offered her own home to receive Mr. Crawford, who she still supposed to be Fanny’s husband. “What agonies the young man will be in!” exclaimed the kindly widow. “Oh dear, and his horses—I expect they were all put down, poor things.”
A few hours later the injured man arrived at their door, laid upon a blanket which had been ingeniously suspended by four corners in the back of a hay wagon to protect him from the bumping and jostling of a hazardous trip over country roads. The full extent of his injuries were not apparent until he was brought inside and laid upon a mattress placed on Mrs. Butter’s dining table. His pain was severe; he had been well plied with brandy, to little avail. Both Mrs. Butters and her housekeeper received their unexpected guest with composure, having had experience in years past with the injuries suffered by shipwrights on the Bristol docks; the sight did not overpower them, but even Fanny, to Edmund’s surprise, placed herself at Crawford’s side and took his hand, offering him calm reassurance. He was half-delirious, and more concerned about the fate of his team of horses than himself.
Others crowded into the room—Edmund, Mr. Anderson, and Mr. Stanhope, who had followed Henry Crawford to the dueling grounds to act as his second, but who had fallen behind when Crawford unaccountably whipped his horses into a frenzy.
“Fanny—waste—waste—waste!” Henry gasped out through his pain. Fanny moved closer to listen.
Mrs. Butters supposed that Crawford, facing his own extinction, was lamenting his misspent life, and was about to exhort him to think on eternity, but Fanny said, “No, ma’am, I believe he is saying ‘waistcoat.’ Something about a waistcoat.’ An answering squeeze to her hand confirmed that she was correct.
“Do you want your club waistcoat, Crawford?” asked Mr. Stanhope. “Your blue-and-yellow? It is not here, but I can have it brought to you,” he promised, though thinking within himself it was a trivial request from a trivial man facing his final judgement. Crawford shook his head and moaned. Fanny bent over him, he whispered something, and she reported, “He says, ‘look in the pocket of his waistcoat.’”
Crawford’s waistcoat had been cut from his body at The Spaniard Pub, and was located with some difficulty, half-hidden under the blood-spattered hay in the wagon. Inside were found his settlements, sworn before a lawyer, on Miss Maria Bertram, to be his wife, and on Miss Fanny Price, in reparation for the injury done to her reputation. Fanny was to have three thousand pounds.
With a great effort Crawford exclaimed, “Where is Maria? I may die under the surgeon—need to take my vows first. For God’s sake, bring her swiftly.”
Mr. Stanhope volunteered to use his influence to obtain a special license as quickly as possible. Edmund offered to fetch the Admiral or Mary to the bedside but Crawford refused vehemently— “You don’t want the Admiral at a wedding, and I don’t want Mary to see—” before fainting away.
Mrs. Butters was dumbfounded to learn that Fanny was not Henry Crawford’s wife, but to Fanny’s relief, she did not condemn her for telling falsehoods. Mrs. Butters had her own reasons for being pleased that Fanny was a free woman and although she was no poet, she could hardly wait to find a quiet moment to put pen to paper and inform certain friends that Mrs. Crawford was in fact still Miss P
rice, and would be three thousand pounds richer into the bargain.
In the almost twenty-four hours of agonizing waiting that followed, Fanny tried her best to comfort and support Henry through his ordeal, as Edmund hastened to fetch his sister from the secluded village where she lived, whose location he had learnt from Tom just prior to his brother’s hasty departure for Liverpool.
At about two in the morning, Fanny heard Mr. Crawford’s breathing become fainter, and she feared that he was slipping away.
“Mr. Crawford,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “Mr. Crawford, you must wait for Maria. She is carrying your child.”
She heard his ragged intake of breath in the darkness. “Then I am not going anywhere, Miss Price, I do assure you.”
The entire household watched anxiously for Edmund’s carriage, which finally arrived in the late morning the day after Mr. Crawford’s accident. It rattled swiftly up the street, a heavily veiled lady climbed down awkwardly and was carefully escorted inside. Fanny had hardly left Henry Crawford’s side through his ordeal, but shrank away when she saw her cousin Maria arrive. She did not see the lovers reunited, did not see Henry Crawford take Maria’s hand and kiss it, did not see the tears falling on her cheeks, as she guided his hand to her belly so he could feel his child kicking under her heart.
“Ah, Maria, he has good strong legs,” Henry jested weakly.
It had taken a substantial fee to obtain a special license that waived the reading of the banns, and moved the ceremony from the church. The minister was found and hurried to his place, Henry waved away the proffered brandy and laudanum, so that he might clearly speak his vows, which he did, through a haze of excruciating pain, and after being pronounced man and wife, he could even make a jest about disappointing his bride on his wedding day. The bride was led back to the carriage to rest at Wimpole Street, so that she should not hear what was to follow, as the surgeon stepped forward to tighten his tourniquets and sever both of the bridegroom’s legs above the knee.
Now the house rang with the screams of the injured man! Fanny wept and buried her head under her pillow until sudden silence fell upon the household.
* * * * * *
William Gibson held his hand and forearm up before his eyes and thought, impartially, that he would not have recognized the limb for his own, it was so browned from the tropical sun, and so thin and wiry—just bone and gristle. He lay back, closed his eyes and thought of the delicious food available to him in Portsmouth, if he could only leave his hammock and obtain it—fresh bread and butter, fried eggs and ham, roast chicken, frothy ale, perhaps some oysters, or an apple tart.
And that was supposing that he had the ready funds to buy something in Portsmouth, and the clothes to be seen in among decent folk. The Navy was fairly nonchalant in the matter of what and when he would be paid. More precious than the pay, though, was the fact that Captain Columbine had procured his discharge from the Navy. “You are no sailor, and never will be, Gibson,” he had said with a smile. “You can do more good for the cause of abolition if you stay ashore. I will write you from Sierra Leone after I’ve assumed the governorship and let you know how matters prosper there.”
Gibson remembered little of the last two weeks, after succumbing to the fever and dysentery that swept through the crowded sloop. He thought he could remember the nightmares more vividly than the waking; nightmares of struggling in a dark cave through green water, chest deep, sweating and panting in the stinking heat, as he frantically pushed barrels and bales through a hole smashed in the side of—the side of what? He blinked, confused. It had been no cave. It had been no nightmare. There had been an exhausting and totally futile hour of working the pumps in the bowels of the ship to try and keep the hold from flooding. He could feel the Solebay slowly listing beneath his feet, could hear the planks crack and separate and the warm water rush in. The pumps were abandoned and he and his mates turned to trying to save the stores of food and rum and ammunition. At last, as the waters surged around his waist, he climbed out of the hold and struck out for the shore, limp as a rag and gasping for breath.
Other fragments of the expedition against the French came back to him; the pathetic little boats attempting to ferry the soldiers and sailors across the sand bar at the mouth of the river, fighting the river currents as they plowed into the ocean tides, watching one of the boats flip and seeing seven men from the Derwent tossed out, clawing at the waves and swept under to rise no more; the misery of the soldiers, who were, of course, compelled to wear the same wool jackets and rigid stocks around their neck that they would have worn on a cool morning back in Merrie Old England, except now they were in the middle of a steaming jungle where no one in his right senses would wear more than a loin cloth if he had any choice in the matter; the poor old sergeant, overcome by the heat, falling face down, never to rise again, the cabin boys, round-eyed and silent, poised by their gun crews, ready to run on command to fetch more gunpowder, the deafening sound of that first salvo sent across the river to smash into the French defenses, the general joy when it was realized that the French had abandoned their posts and withdrawn into the jungle, and the smile on Captain Columbine’s tired, sweat-streaked face when he returned with the articles of surrender from the French encampment, and the answering cheers of the crew.
Gibson hoped that his illness had not wiped out other details, for he needed to recall everything for his book. Did he remember correctly, or was it some feverish fantasy, that the surrendering French were allowed to keep their own slaves, because they were, after all, the property of the French?
Gibson had spent the last part of the voyage home to England crammed into a stinking infirmary with other stricken sailors, some of whom had been carried out wrapped in a shroud. Now safely anchored in the Spithead, Gibson was still lying on board the Derwent, gently bobbing in English waters, for lack of anywhere else to go. His friend Lieutenant Price had been granted shore leave to arrange lodging with his family, but he could not flatter himself that the Price family would want to take in an invalid stranger, as the ever-sanguine William Price assured him they would. Should that fail, he would write to his old friend Mrs. Butters for the name of some friend of the abolitionist cause in Portsmouth—a friendly and compassionate Quaker, perhaps—for he doubted he could survive the journey to London or Bristol, as he could not even crawl to the head and back without fainting.
He allowed himself to briefly feel some pity on his own behalf; he had no anxious family waiting for him on the pier upon his return—no parents, no cousins, no relations who were obliged to take him in while he recovered his strength—and certainly no one with soft blue eyes who looked up at him with admiration for everything he said. He managed a smile, and admitted to himself that in certain circumstances it might be very useful, even pleasant, to have such a thing as a family one day.
There were women within hailing distance, surrounding the sloop, bobbing in the harbour on little boats, a small army of gap toothed, grimy, blousy and vulgar dolly mops who would instantly claim to be his wife, should he wish. Fortunately, he was too tired to consider coming to grips with any of them.
He was asleep again when Lieutenant Price returned, waving the discharge papers which would permit him to remove William Gibson from onboard ship. His mother had been unenthused, but was unable to refuse her beloved son’s request— “And just when we were returning to our ordinary ways, after having your aunt Norris among us. I have had enough of company for three lifetimes, may I tell you. And I have plenty to do, without nursing an invalid on top of the bargain!”
William promised he would help take care of his friend, if only a corner could be found for him upstairs, and finally his mother sighed, “all right, you may place him on a pallet in the attic. But he is your responsibility, mind,” as though her son was asking to bring home a guinea pig, or a puppy.
“And,” added his mother, “he will pay for his lodging, and his food, or he will be back on the street right sharply, I can promise you that.”
Lieutenant Price represented his mother as being of course in every way delighted to welcome her son’s good friend, so Gibson thankfully bid farewell to the Derwent, and with the help of some friendly Marines he was carried to a bosun’s chair and lowered away to a launch. The sun was bright but the breeze was deliciously cool, wonderfully English and, by Heaven—whether or not you believed there was such a place, of course—it was good to be alive.
* * * * * *
The funeral for the late Henry Crawford was held at St. James, Piccadilly, with Admiral Crawford serving as chief mourner. Edmund Bertram slipped quietly into the rear pews, wanting to pay his respects, feeling it proper, but unsure of how he would be received. His brother Tom’s friend, Charles Anderson, was the only sympathetic face he saw in the church—the other men, all friends of the Admiral or of the dead man, upon seeing him, nudged each other with their elbows, whispered in each other’s ears, and gave him icy stares of contempt.
After Crawford survived the amputation—he had thankfully fainted dead away during the operation—Edmund had informed the Admiral, over Crawford’s objections, and the Admiral, over the objections of everyone, insisted on transporting his nephew from Stoke Newington to Hill Street. Once there, no one by the name of Bertram, not even Mary, was admitted to see the patient. A week later, came the word that the wounds had turned putrid and Henry Crawford, after enduring the most intense suffering, was no more.
