by Joan Aiken
“Just the same, I think she had better look out for herself. I think, Tom, you had better ask the gentleman his intentions. Yes, that would be best. Although he is certainly very far from the kind of match that one would wish for one’s friends, for Susan, Crawford will do well enough; indeed, she will be exceedingly lucky to fix him. Six thousand a year and the place at Everingham; it is far above what she has any claim to be expecting. A little trouble on your part, Tom, will bring it off and secure for her a satisfactory settlement. Yes, you must have a talk with him, and the sooner the better, while the demise of his sister leaves him in a softened, undecided mood, ready to be pleased with any female who will have him. And such a girl as Susan is certainly all that he has a right to expect.”
By the end of this speech Mrs. Yates had worked herself to such a pitch of enthusiastic planning that she quite smiled on her mother and brother.
Lady Bertram had not been able to follow her argument very closely; she said in a perplexed tone,
“Does Mr. Crawford offer for Susan? I thought that it was Fanny that he had a partiality for; but that, you know, came to nothing, for she married dear Edmund.”
Tom said irritably, “Julia seems to think, ma’am, that he has been paying Susan attentions; I have seen nothing but what was proper, myself.”
“Well, if that is the case, Tom, you had best ask the gentleman what he intends, and so secure him.”
“But you would not wish to lose Susan, ma’am?”
“If a gentleman of good estate offers for her, I should raise no objection. It would be her duty to have him, indeed; it is every young woman’s duty to accept such an offer.”
Both ladies now became greatly engaged in the plan of marrying Susan off to Mr. Crawford, Lady Bertram from disinterested, Julia from highly interested motives. If Susan were once out of Mansfield, sheer inconvenience would soon, Julia shrewdly perceived, drive Tom into matrimony.—While Lady Bertram merely felt that if a man of substantial means such as Mr. Crawford remained unmarried, it was almost a matter of morality that some young woman should attach him; and Susan was a very good girl; if he were available, then she should have him.
This decided, both ladies went to work on Tom at such length and with so lively a persistence that at last, miserable, guilty, dejected, and goaded beyond endurance, he made a kind of promise to do as they recommended, and so escaped them.
His opportunity did not come for several days, not until after the funeral, which was attended by both Tom and Susan. Mrs. Osborne also sat in their pew; Mr. Wadham read the lessons, and the sermon, a very affecting one on the text “They shall not grow old,” was preached by the Bishop.
Henry Crawford sat by himself and they respected his wish for privacy; Susan, as always, had the greatest reluctance to push herself forward, and she had said everything that was possible to him during several earlier meetings; she had been seeing him repeatedly since his sister’s death, because, as Mrs. Osborne had said, and Susan agreed, he was so very severely afflicted that without continual company he would hardly hold up.
After the service they were obliged to hasten away. Julia had agreed to sit with Lady Bertram, but said she could not remain upwards of two hours; little Tommy had thrown out a rash and she feared that it might be the chicken-pox.
The tiny group of mourners in the churchyard soon dispersed and went their several ways. Susan, glancing back as they drove off, at the grave mounded with its wreaths of late roses, could see only one lady remaining, who appeared to be studying the wreaths and their inscriptions; the lady, richly dressed in velvet with a feathered hat, bore no evidence of mourning and was not familiar to Susan, who thought that perhaps she was merely a passer-by, not connected with the obsequies at all. On the drive home the strange lady was soon forgotten, since poor Tom was unburdening himself, as he did at least once a day, on the subject of his guilt and wretchedness.
“I hastened her end, Susan. Without question, I hastened her end; if it were not for my blundering stupidity, if I had not taken advantage of her kindness, battened on her, worn out the remains of her strength and resources—I believe she would be with us still.”
“It could have been only a matter of time, Tom,” Susan repeated gently, as she had on many similar occasions. “Everybody knew that; Dr. Feltham knew it; indeed he confessed himself astonished that she had lasted so long. It was the air of Mansfield, he said; anywhere else, in such a case, she must have succumbed far sooner. Her constitution was quite worn out.”
“But if I had not invaded her tranquility—cut up her peace—she might have remained alive long enough to see Fanny—and that was her chiefest wish. I can never forgive myself for that—never!”
“You must forgive yourself, Tom, for she had done so; indeed she told me repeatedly that she was glad of the opportunity for getting to know you better; which otherwise, you know, she would never have done.”
“No, because I was such a bigoted, churlish dolt that I would not go to call upon her! Oh, Susan, I am very miserable, indeed! All my behaviour has been at fault. Oh, how deeply I wish she were still with us.”
He could not wish it more deeply than Susan did herself. Every minute she found herself longing for the playful, light-hearted common sense of her friend, who would have been teasing Tom for the self-importance of his grief, and scolding him out of excessive guilt. The burden of his continual self-reproaches was a hard one for Susan to endure, combined, as it was, with the frequent need to be comforting Henry Crawford in his more intense, more rational, less vocal affliction.
She had been walking half an hour with Henry in the shrubbery at Mansfield one evening later that week when, seeing Tom approach, she made her excuses and slipped away along a side-path. She did not feel equal to the combined wretchedness of the pair of them, and hoped that, left together, they might find a means to comfort each other.
—She had been asking Henry his plans, and he had told her that he had none.
“This has been such a bitter blow, Miss Price. I know that you warned me; I see now that you did your best to warn me again and again; but somehow I could not bring myself to believe the truth. I think that it will take me a very considerable time to accept it, even now, even after the event. I believe that I shall travel; to be continually on the move is the only prospect that I can tolerate. Tomorrow I leave Mansfield, first for Norfolk, then I know not where. Perhaps I may go to China.”
Susan found herself envying his freedom, though not his state of mind, as, leaving the two men, she rambled off along a narrow glade. Oh! she thought, the pleasure of such infrequent moments of solitude! The relief of being thus private with one’s own thoughts, of having no demands made upon one for sympathy, entertainment, assistance, understanding, support.
Hardly had she framed the thought when, to her astonishment, she heard her own name spoken.
The two men were still not far away from her, though screened, in the little wilderness with its winding walks, by no more than a thicket of syringa; she could clearly hear the voice of her cousin Tom, now demanding in extremely forthright terms whether Mr. Crawford intended to marry his cousin Miss Price, and, if not, whether he had considered how severely he was compromising her by being thus continually and so confidentially in her company?
It was the voice of the old Tom, the old hectoring, domineering Tom, whom Susan had thought banished for good in the reformation wrought by Miss Crawford.
She stood aghast, thunderstruck. For a moment she felt almost stunned with outrage. To hear her name bandied thus—as though she were to have no say, no choice in the matter—she, who had been expending herself, hour after hour, day after day, in the consolation of those very two who now appeared to be discussing her as if she were some insentient being without a will of her own!
Picking up her skirts she ran swiftly back through the windings of the maze until she confronted the two of them once more.
&
nbsp; Her eyes flashing with indignation—“Stop!” she exclaimed. “I will not have this! It is unjust, it is undignified! Pray, Tom, be silent this instant, and never let me hear you touch on this topic again. I am not a—a marketable commodity to be offered for barter like some piece of furniture. As for you, sir—” to Mr. Crawford—“I can only apologise deeply that you have been subjected to such embarrassment. Pray endeavour to overlook it. I—I am very unhappy that our last meeting should have been attended with such mortification. —I will now bid you goodbye.”
Unable any longer to withhold her tears she hastily turned away and almost ran from them, leaving them no less aghast than she herself had been.
Chapter 11
For some days, Tom and Susan hardly spoke to one another. The good understanding that had been building between them seemed destroyed for ever; she could not forgive him for his officious, insensitive interference, while he was as much astonished and wounded by her behaviour as if the stock he were tying around his neck had turned into an adder and bit him.
Mr. Crawford left Mansfield on the day following the scene in the shrubbery. But before doing so he wrote a letter to Susan:
My dear Miss Price:
Like you, I very deeply regret that our last meeting should have been clouded by the unfortunate and unnecessary encounter with your cousin. I do not blame him; he was but doing his duty; I do blame myself for my inconsiderate behaviour, for not thinking less of my own needs and more of your good name. Your recent kindness has been of such inestimable benefit to me; I can truly say that I do not think I would have survived after the recent tragic event without the support of your friendship and solicitude. I value it inexpressibly. And—if your cousin had not intervened at that moment—I think it not improbable that I would have implored you to add to your previous generosities by becoming my companion for life—such is the dependence I have fallen into the habit of placing upon you.
I do not ask this now. You, rightly enraged by your cousin’s interference, would, might, feel that I was forced to do so by his exigency. The position would be falsified. Our relations would be forced, fettered by the unfortunate circumstances of their commencement.
And yet I find myself still hoping, feeling, that, in the future, when sorrow has died down and humiliation is forgotten, it may not be impossible for us to meet again, for me to put the question that I do not put now, for you to consider the possibility of our union. As to myself, I would welcome it eagerly. I have the deepest admiration for your person, your intelligence, your goodness, your sagacity. You would make me, I am sure, a very happy man. And, if devotion, care, consideration, could achieve it, I believe I could make you happy. And I know that, from beyond the grave, Mary would smile, to see what she had been hoping for come about.
Your sincere friend,
Henry Crawford.
After she had read this letter, cried over it, and read it again, Susan resolutely put it away. I will not think about it, she said to herself. Not for a long time. I will wait, and show it to Fanny; until I see her again, I will think no more of it.
Naturally, this was a very hard resolution to keep. Naturally she did think of the letter, a great deal; but she adhered to her resolve not to reread it. Such strength of mind was reinforced by a new spiteful tale from Julia, who came into Lady Bertram’s room a few days later, exclaiming,
“Well, here is a fine thing! Here has Crawford been seeing Maria again, under our very noses!”
“Indeed?” feebly from Lady Bertram. “How very shocking!”
And from Tom, much more sceptically, “How do you know such a thing as that, Julia? Who is your informant?”
“Why, Charlotte Yates’s sister, Lady Digweed, was in Northampton lately, buying boots for her children, and she saw the pair of them! Conversing, would you believe it, like old friends! Can you imagine anything so disgraceful?”
“Why should it be disgraceful for Mr. Crawford to converse with a lady whom he has once known?” here quietly inquired Susan. “Unless you feel that, because Maria left her first husband, anybody must be disgraced who talks with her?”
Ignoring this, Julia continued. “It was the day of the funeral. There they were, in the churchyard. He was standing by the grave, and she came up and spoke with him. Lady Digweed saw them both, as near as I am to you. By his own sister’s grave! And that is the man who has been calling here on terms of familiarity, making himself quite one of the family! It is a thoroughly good thing that he has left Mansfield, and I, for one, hope that he never comes back to pollute it.”
Susan found herself so exasperated by this that, as before, she was obliged to leave the room to prevent herself making some angry remark. Julia’s story was so petty, so trifling, so plainly governed by nothing but malice that nobody in their right mind could pay serious heed to it.—Very likely Henry Crawford had encountered Maria Bertram, Maria Ravenshaw as she now was, by pure accident; if she were staying in the neighbourhood there was nothing more likely than that she might have been crossing the churchyard, seen him, or the newly dug grave, and stopped to offer her condolences. What could be more natural, more probable?
And yet, Susan could not help admitting to herself that the story made her uneasy.—She could hardly have said why. She had no reason not to trust Henry Crawford; yet the story made her uneasy.
She was glad that Mr. Crawford had left Mansfield, that she would not be seeing him for some time; she was glad that she had an unlimited period in which to consider his proposal and her own reactions to it.
Would I ever be quite sure of him? she asked herself. A story like that—how trivial. And yet it makes me uneasy. Such a suspicion, in time, would cast a poison on our relations. The poison would be in me, not in him; yet it would be there.
Meanwhile, to her surprise, she began to be aware that Tom’s silence and air of constraint towards herself were not prompted by resentment or bad feeling or disgust at her explosive outcry; on the contrary, by small attentions and glances, by the expression in his eyes as he looked at her, she grew to believe that he was profoundly sorry for what had occurred; that he was even wishful to apologise.
In the end he did so, one evening after Lady Bertram had fallen asleep over the cribbage-board and Susan was softly putting away the cards. Tom, with a whisper, summoned her to the other end of the room.
“Susan, I have been mustering up my courage these five days past to say that I am sorry for what I did about Crawford. I should not have approached him in the way that I did. I should not have been interfering in your affairs. It is what I cannot stand in Julia, and it was very bad in me to have done it. If it had not been for Julia and my mother, indeed, I would never have entertained the idea. I should not have heeded them.”
Susan, who had guessed as much long ago, did not find that Julia’s instrumentality made her feel any better about the incident; rather the contrary; but she said kindly,
“Never mind it, Tom! It was a mistake. We all make them. But it has done no lasting harm. I do not think I should have accepted his offer, in any case. It has given me more time to think it over.”
Tom’s rather shamefaced look turned to quick inquiry.
“Crawford did offer, then?”
“I do not think I am under any obligation to tell you—but, yes: he has made me an offer. I am going to take some time in considering it.”
“Susan!” cried Tom; astonishing her, and, very possibly, himself also, “Susan! Don’t take Crawford! Marry me—do, do think of marrying me, Susan! I do not see how we could go on without you, indeed I do not!”
He looked so humble, so beseeching, so uncertain of himself, that Susan was quite amazed. Quickly she said,
“I am very sorry, Tom. I am truly sorry. But I cannot marry you—never, never—not just in order to look after Mansfield, you know. I am afraid that is wholly, wholly out of the question.”
Incautiously, they h
ad raised their voices, he in agitation, she in emphatic repudiation—and Lady Bertram stirred, opened her eyes, and said thickly,
“I was not asleep. What o’clock is it? Is it time for bed already?”
Susan was glad to go to her aunt’s help in untangling the embroidery silks from around her slippers; and Tom dejectedly flung out of the room, shutting the door with an emphatic slam. Susan, having escorted Lady Bertram upstairs, retired to her own chamber with a heavy heart. She looked at the two letters, which lay in a filigree box on her table: Fanny’s, and that of Henry Crawford. She read neither of them. Instead, she went sorrowfully to bed, but found it almost impossible to sleep.
***
The following day was a very unhappy one. Susan, looking at the calendar, saw that it was now three weeks since Mary Crawford’s death; only three weeks, yet so much seemed to have happened. The world of Mansfield seemed utterly changed. Tom wandered about silent and despondent, or took himself off to the Parsonage; Henry Crawford was gone, and must be missed; and there were no more visits to the White House.
Susan, picking late roses in the garden with little Mary while Lady Bertram drowsed on the terrace, was delighted to see Mrs. Osborne walking across the park, and went out to meet her.
“So! Miss Price, your sister returns in a fortnight from now. You must be very happy at the thought.”
“Very, very happy,” said Susan with truth. “I am counting the days.”
“Yet it is a sad prospect for us at the Parsonage,” said Mrs. Osborne cheerfully. “A case of ‘Hieronymo, ’tis time for thee to trudge.’ We shall be under the sad necessity of quitting Mansfield. A parish does not need two parsons, and your brother will most capably fill the office; and his parishioners will be glad to welcome him back.”
“But it is very sad that you must go,” Susan said sincerely. “Could you not remove into—into the White House? You have become such friends of all of us, you and your brother.”
