by Joan Aiken
Miss Charlotte Yates was the younger sister of Julia’s husband. She now resided with her brother and his wife. A tolerably pretty young lady with very fine teeth, she possessed a decided notion of her own consequence as the youngest daughter of an earl. To display the fine teeth she laughed a great deal, thereby endowing herself with a reputation for wit and gaiety; and the notion of her consequence was of more advantage to her, as she possessed very little else, her impoverished parent having, at his death, left his five daughters with no more than a thousand pounds apiece. Two of her elder sisters had succeeded in securing husbands, two more were, as their brother John put it, “like two old fowls roosting up on the top shelf out of sight.”
At twenty-one Charlotte Yates was still sufficiently young to have no real fear that the stigma old maid need be applied to her, but she was beginning to think matrimony a duty that should no longer be postponed, and in this opinion her sister-in-law entirely concurred. It had become an object with Julia to find a husband for Charlotte and see her set up her own establishment.
“Indeed—does Tom interest himself in Miss Yates?” asked Lady Bertram in her languid tone. “I was not aware of that. But—now I come to think—somebody—I forget who—told me that Tom had rather distinguished that fair young lady who is a cousin of the Maddoxes over at Stoke—I daresay you know the lady I mean, I do not at this present recall her name.’
“You mean Miss Louisa Harley I suppose? I cannot say that I have ever discerned any sign of that. And I am just as glad of it, for Miss Harley—I will not say precisely that she is vulgar, for the Maddoxes are perfectly well connected, but her conversation lacks that elegancy of form that you and I, ma’am, are accustomed to at Mansfield. Whereas our dear Charlotte is a most unexceptionable, nice-spoken, well-bred young lady.”
“Yes, Harley. Louisa Harley—that was her name. She had golden hair and sang ‘Early One Morning’ very sweetly. Now you recall her name to me I remember Tom speaking of her more than once; he said she was a remarkably pretty young lady with a great number of accomplishments.”
“Oh, I daresay.” cried Mrs. Yates vexedly. “Tom considers any girl accomplished if she can sing a couple of ballads, accompany herself on the pianoforte, and understand a charade if it is explained to her. I cannot say that I admire the young lady myself. I believe she would make a decidedly inferior addition to our circle at Mansfield.”
“Then,” said Lady Bertram tranquilly, “it is fortunate that you say you have observed no sign of Tom’s having singled her out in any way. We need have no apprehension on that score. But, in any case, I see no necessity for Tom to marry at present; indeed, not for some time. He is but thirty. He has not spoken to me of marriage. In my opinion we go on very well as we are. I do not care for a change. It is fatiguing to be obliged to converse with some unfamiliar person who does not fully understand one’s ways. For my part I think it best that Tom does not marry for at least ten years; there is no occasion in the world for him to be in a hurry. I am sure Sir Thomas would not have wished it. Sir Thomas did not care for hastily made connections.”
“When Sir Thomas was alive, ma’am, those arguments might have held force. But now that my poor father is no more, it does seem to me that Tom’s marriage is an event greatly to be desired. Now that he is Sir Thomas, master of Mansfield Park, one of the most eligible properties in the country, and of such a handsome competence, I do think it of great importance that he should settle down, detach himself from some of his less desirable connections, and in general commence to lead a more regular, more sober life. Mr. Yates entirely agrees as to the propriety of this; he has spoken his views to me on the matter many times.”
“Perhaps it would be better if he spoke them to Tom.”
“Oh—! Tom takes no heed of what anybody says to him. He never did, you know; he would listen to my father’s admonitions with a downcast, hangdog, shamefaced look, but I do not recall a single instance of his ever acting upon them.”
“But he and Mr. Yates are great friends, are they not? It was through Tom that Mr. Yates first came to Mansfield.”
“Mr. Yates has changed his tastes since then,” replied Julia, not best pleased to be reminded of the period when her husband and her brother had been companions and vied with one another in gambling, card-playing, and race-going. “John and my brother no longer take such pleasure in one another’s company.”
“Well,” said Lady Bertram with a sigh, “perhaps there is something in what you say; perhaps a wife would help to settle Tom. It would not be right, indeed, that he should dissipate the fortune his father amassed with such care.”
“Just so, ma’am; and a sensible, practical wife such as my dear Charlotte would be the very person to see that did not happen.”
“How fortunate it is,” pursued Lady Bertram without attending to this, “that it is not of the least consequence which among these young ladies Tom decides to bring home as a wife. It can make no difference. The one he chooses will be sure to be ladylike and conformable. And her degree of fortune, or lack of it, need not be a consideration, you know, for Tom is sure to be comfortably provided for, as soon as Edmund has settled the business in Antigua. How fortunate that we need not be troubling ourselves in the matter.—I hope that Susan soon returns from the Parsonage, for my fringe has got into a dreadful tangle; she will have to undo it.”
At this moment, indeed, the shouts of little Johnny and little Tommy were to be heard in the hall outside; their cousin Susan had kindly brought them away from the Parsonage, where they had been making their presence felt by teasing their younger cousins, spilling the ink, and pulling the cat’s tail.
“Do not bring the little angels in here, Susan,” called Lady Bertram, raising her voice very slightly above its accustomed soft monotone, “for their shouting hurts my ears, and besides, they frighten Pug. Give my love to Mr. Yates, Julia, when you return home, and be so good as to tell Christopher Jackson, on your way through the village, that he is to bring his tools up to the servants’ hall tomorrow where Mrs. Whittemore has some orders for him.”
Thus hinted away, Julia had nothing for it but to summon her little angels to her side and leave, which she did with the usual feelings of irritation resulting from her fruitless efforts to make Lady Bertram take action in the matter of persuading Tom to propose to Miss Yates; or indeed to take any action at all of any kind.
Susan came quickly into the room, looking a trifle put about and discomposed—she had stept into the housekeeper’s room on her way back and been obliged there to settle various grievances resulting from a visitation by Mrs. Yates, who seldom failed, on her calls at Mansfield, to have what she called “a comfortable coze with my dear old Whittemore”—which frequently resulted in that lady’s giving in her notice and having to be cajoled out of her annoyance by generous doses of sympathy, flattery, and conciliation.
“I do not know why that one should think it needful to tell me she saw one of the girls in the village with a flower in her hat; if Lady Bertram has no complaint as to my management of the servants—”
“My dear ma’am, you know very well that Lady Bertram thinks, and so does Master Tom, that you manage the house-hold to perfection. If they have no fault to find, why should you trouble your head? I believe it is just that Mrs. Yates feels—feels regret for the past, for the old days when she lived here as a girl.’
“I do not recall that she ever took the least interest in housekeeping affairs, or paid any visits to my room in those days.”
“But now, ma’am, you see, she appreciates far more justly the niceties and difficulties of such matters.”
Susan reflected, as she said this, that, besides a sheer love of meddling for its own sake in Julia, such a view of the matter was very likely true: brought up amid the sufficiencies and comforts of Mansfield, Julia Bertram had yet to learn the anxieties of the Honourable Mrs. Yates, endeavouring to appear serenely beforehand with the w
orld on a very inadequate income.
“Humph! Well she don’t have to instruct me how much butter to let cook use in her sauce, and so I nearly told her to her face.”
Susan did not ask her aunt to dissuade Julia from these intrusions into the domestic affairs of Mansfield; she knew that Lady Bertram would only reply, “Oh, that is very tiresome of dear Julia to be sure, but Whittemore must not mind it; now, where did I lay down my sea-green worsted?”
***
At the time when she first came to Mansfield, Susan Price had been a well-grown, hot-tempered, good-hearted girl of fourteen. The society of Northamptonshire could not find her handsome; well-grown for her age she was allowed to be, and she had a fair degree of countenance; but her features were too pronounced and her neck too long and her hair too lank. Her complexion was by far too brown, and she would never match her cousins in looks.—The passage of a few years amended some of these faults. She was now admitted by many to be a remarkably fine girl; but still some of these would sigh, and add, “Ah, she will never be the equal of her cousin Maria; Miss Maria Bertram was the beauty of Northamptonshire.”
The said Maria Bertram had made an unfortunate marriage to a heavy, dull young man of considerable fortune, whom she had never respected, and rapidly learned to despise; after less than a year of marriage she had quitted his establishment for another man, and, when her husband divorced her and her lover left her, she had gone to live in retirement and reproach, at a considerable distance from Northamptonshire, companioned by an aunt whose strong attachment to her as a child had only been strengthened further by her disgrace and banishment from good society.
Miss Maria’s name was never spoken at Mansfield. Her father had utterly forbidden it. A man of high principle and strong moral judgment, he had suffered anguish unspeakable at the time of his daughter’s degradation, feeling that some lack of basic guidance, some gross error in early teaching, must place the blame on his shoulders as a parent; sensible of this blame he naturally detested the cause of it, and could not bear the least allusion to any topic bordering on reference to his abandoned daughter.
Lady Bertram was not so nice. Never, even when they were small, having been deeply attached to her children, she felt much less interest in them as they grew older, and had long ago divested herself of any anxieties or gratification regarding them, unless in a matter directly concerning herself. And as to her grandchildren, her chief wish was that they should not crumple her gown, tangle her embroidery silk, or frighten Pug.
That Lady Bertram never alluded to the erring Maria was due primarily to a complete lack of interest in her disgraced daughter’s fortunes; in fact she was hardly remembered from one year’s end to another.
Lady Bertram could, however, when it occurred to her, display some concern for those immediately connected to her daily life; this care for others was now manifested by her turning to Susan, as she rose to go and dress for dinner, in order to inquire,
“Should I send Chapman to help Fanny pack for the West Indies, Susan? She could go over when she has dressed me. Do you think it would be of assistance to Fanny if I sent Chapman?”
“No, ma’am, that is kind of you, but I believe she is already as well forward as need be, with the help of her Rachel and a girl from the village.”
Her mind thus lightened from care, Lady Bertram proceeded upstairs, and Susan was on the point of following when Tom and Edmund came back from the estate-room, still deep in the discussion of agricultural drills and new breeds of cattle.
“We are agreed as to the pastures beyond Easton, then. I shall expect to hear from you that the sheep do well on them.—Why, Cousin Susan, has my mother gone up already? I had no notion it was so late. Fanny will be wondering where I have got to. I will take my leave, then, Tom—”
“If I can take up a moment of your time, Cousin Edmund—” began Susan, with a diffidence which hardly bore out the recent views of her expressed by Mrs. Yates, “I was hoping to catch you before you went—”
Edmund, with all the kindness of an excellent nature, immediately stopped and asked how he could help his cousin?
From her first arrival at Mansfield, Edmund had felt an esteem for his wife’s sister, observing with what energy and goodwill she had taken over the not inconsiderable task of keeping his mother occupied and entertained; this admiration had, in the course of time, ripened into a strong and warm affection. Of a quiet and sober disposition himself, and married to the equally tranquil and gentle Fanny, he could yet admire the liveliness of Susan’s nature, and the way in which she found diversion and kept herself amused at Mansfield, despite the grave atmosphere and general want of animation in the household.
“I was wishing before you went away to ascertain your views regarding this business of my cousin Maria,” said Susan with her usual directness.
Both brothers stared at her in surprise.
“How in the world did you get wind of that?” burst out Tom, with no small vexation in his tone. “And what business, may I ask, Cousin Susan, do you consider it to be of yours?”
Looking at his red, affronted countenance, Susan realised that she had erred in not addressing herself to the elder brother, who now felt that his authority as new head of the family had been set aside. Quickly, she did her best to rectify this mistake.
“That is—I was wanting to ask the opinion of you both—but in recent months Edmund has been so much more in my aunt’s company than you have, Tom, that I addressed myself to him as being likelier to judge of her present sentiments in the matter. I am anxious to know how you both feel: should my aunt be told of this new development? Or do you think that would be to distress her unnecessarily?”
The new Sir Thomas hardly seemed much conciliated by having his opinion thus canvassed. Susan had a suspicion that he would have preferred to be given the dignity of his new title and not addressed with such cousinly informality as Tom. He repeated, in a colder tone,
“May I ask, cousin, by what means the tale came to your ears? I was not aware that it had been generally bruited abroad. And I feel most strongly that the less said about this matter, the better.”
“Who could argue with that?” replied Susan calmly. “I can assure you, cousin, that I have not the least intention of bruiting the news abroad. It is indeed of no personal interest to me, never having met my cousin Maria. I merely wished to consult you and Edmund as to whether you think it best that your mother be kept in the dark about it—with the consequent risk that some gossip-loving neighbour who has read a paragraph in the newspaper may come out with a remark or inquiry, under the assumption that Lady Bertram has been fully informed of the matter.”
“The decision is a difficult one,” replied Edmund, after some deliberation, and seeing that Tom remained silent. “What do you think, Tom? Is it your opinion that our mother would be greatly distressed at having the past reopened? May not these tidings of Maria recall to Mamma the fact that at the time of my sister’s disgrace our father was still living, and so aggravate the wound and increase her grief at our present loss?”
Tom looked serious.
“Our mother has received the news of his death with considerable fortitude,” said he after a pause.
Susan reflected that for fortitude might almost be substituted the word insensibility. Already accustomed, after a four-months’ absence from home, to the lack of her husband’s daily appearance at the head of the table, or at the tea-board in the evening, Lady Bertram seemed hardly yet to have assimilated the nevermore comprised in the tidings of his death; she sighed at times and said, “How we need Sir Thomas,” but without any stronger conviction in her voice than if he had merely departed on a somewhat longer voyage than had been anticipated.
“Perhaps we should ask Julia’s opinion,” Tom went on.
“I do not believe.” said Edmund impatiently, “that my sister Julia has a deeper insight, a minuter or juster knowledge of my
mother’s state of mind than anybody here present. What do you think yourself, Susan?”
“I should be in favour of telling her the whole,” replied Susan without hesitation. “In that way, the moment of revelation can be chosen with due care and discretion, at a time when my aunt is in calm spirits and not beset by anxieties, when she will have ample leisure for reflection, and can, if she needs, comfort herself by directing her thoughts to other subjects. If that is done, it need not be too much of a shock to her.”
“Upon reflection, I believe you are right,” said Edmund. “My mother’s mind works slowly; it will be best that she should have a period of time in privacy, or with one of the close family circle to advise and talk over the matter; yes, I believe that she should be informed, at a judiciously chosen moment. What do you say, Tom?”
“What I should like to know,” said Tom, without answering his brother’s question, “what I should like to know is how Susan ever came by this information?”
“Why, how do you think? Fanny told me just now when I was helping her pack up her things,” cried out Susan hastily, as if she could hardly believe that he had not the wit to work out such a simple solution for himself. “How in the world else should you imagine I might have heard it, Cousin Tom? By carrier pigeon?”
On her first arrival at Mansfield, Susan had been much given to such little quicknesses and broadnesses of utterance, freedoms of speech to which she had been accustomed at home in Portsmouth, among her brothers. Awe at the splendour of her new surroundings, and a quick ear, had soon assisted her to a greater elegance and propriety of diction, modelled on the soft, clear gentle speech of her elder sister Fanny. But there were still occasions when her tongue betrayed her and moved more swiftly than her wiser sense; when impatience brought in a reversion to that earlier, sharper way of speaking; these moments were becoming less and less frequent, for Susan herself could not have been more conscious of their impropriety; at each lapse she would blush inwardly and castigate herself for her loss of control, resolving to be infinitely more careful in future, to let no unbidden word leave her lips. In nine cases out of ten, the cause of these little roughnesses of manner would be an argument with her cousin Tom. Somehow, with neither side particularly intending it, the two cousins contrived to irritate one another. Tom had always, if only half consciously, felt Susan as an intruder at Mansfield, and never troubled himself to try and overcome this sentiment, irrational though it might be; while Susan had strong, though unexpressed objections in regard to Tom’s rather lordly air of patronage towards herself. The authority of her aunt and uncle she was naturally glad to acknowledge, since towards them, for their hospitality and benevolence, she felt a deep gratitude and sense of obligation; any commands of theirs she would make haste to obey; but she felt no obligation laid on her to obey such commands as might emanate from Tom, and had no hesitation in making this plain.
