Merriment & Wisdom

A Mansfield Park fanfiction

Part Thirteen:

The Beginning of Middles, Such As They Are

Fanny – once again wearing Tom's dressing-gown with very little underneath – sat by the window of their room in the inn, looking out at the rather charming – if slightly obstructed – view of the harbour. She wondered how she could not have realised, prior to these last fourteen days, how very beautiful it was. Nothing in Portsmouth had ever struck her as being particularly prepossessing of beauty, not in all her time growing up here, yet in the days she'd spent with Tom after their wedding it had altogether transformed.

Or perhaps she had – she did feel different, bolder, happier.

Certainly, she felt prettier herself – it was difficult to feel drab or unworthy of notice when Tom was constantly looking at her admiringly.

He was looking at her now, as a matter of fact, glancing up from his sketchbook, rubbing his charcoal-stained thumb and index fingertips together thoughtfully.

"Would you mind, very much, Fanny, pulling that dressing-gown off your shoulder a bit?"

Blushing, she did so, then – as he, after a rather intense stare, returned to his sketching – she looked out the window again.

A strange feeling came over her – a suspicion of sorts – and, slowly rising to her feet, she began to take a turn about the room, circling her way so that she could come up behind Tom, who – for his own part – had not even seemed to realise the alleged subject of his artwork had left her place.

Fanny peered over his shoulder, down at the open sketchbook in his lap, her pale-gold brow furrowed. "Tom, you aren't drawing me at all." The only thing committed to the thick paper was the shape of the window and shadowed hints of the harbour beyond. "You're doing a landscape piece."

"Hmm?" His fingers kept working, shading the place under the sill's likeness, but his eyes flickered upwards. "What's your point?"

"I'm not sure I understand – if you weren't drawing me," laughed Fanny, "why was I sitting there, and why did you ask me to pull the dressing-gown lower?"

Tom blinked, then reached for the decanter on the table beside him. "No reason. I simply wanted to see your bare shoulder."

"Why?"

He poured himself a drink. "What can you mean, why? You're nice to look at and you're my wife. Suddenly I have need of another reason?"

Fanny put her arms around him from behind the chair and planted a kiss on his cheek, then another a little lower, near his jawbone. "I don't spoil your concentration, do I?"

"You didn't," he said, placing his glass down beside the replaced decanter. "You rather are now."

She loosened her grasp on him and began to go, and he reached behind himself to grab her hand and prevent her. "Oi, not so fast, I didn't say stop."

Fanny moved so that she was in front of the chair, smiling down at him. Her hand was still in his, and he rubbed the back of it affectionately with his smudged thumb, leaving traces of grey on her pale skin.

"I think I've had enough sketching for the day," Tom murmured. "There are other actives I might enjoy while there's still time."

The mention of 'time' made Fanny think. "Your father has not sent the carriage yet – perhaps it has not been convenient? I suppose it has not been two weeks, really – not already – not until tomorrow. That is fourteen days exactly since we were married, isn't it?"

"Alas, no, Fanny – most people would say it has been a fortnight already – it's sixteen days since then, at least, I'm certain of it." And no one wanted such not to be the case more than Tom himself, whose mood had turned rather gloomy at the unsavoury change in subject. Most of their things were already packed, in dreaded anticipation. Brightening, he added, "But perhaps my father chooses to give us another week. Jolly sporting of him, if he has." He rose up from the chair and slipped his arms around Fanny's waist. "If that's the case, we have plenty of time still."

No sooner had he buried his face in Fanny's neck (feeling blindly to unfasten the dressing-gown) and taken a deep breath after making that statement, than the sound of hooves clopping and strong wheels of fine quality running over a bad road drifted up through the open window.

Somebody cried, "There's a carriage for Mr. Bertram – just arrived from Mansfield Park – someone fetch him!"

"Whyyyy?" groaned Tom, letting go of his wife; the knot in the fasten was only partially loosened, leaving the dressing-gown open at the front so that it showed a tantalising vertical line of white skin between her breasts.

Fanny scurried away, fleet and soundless as a mouse; she still needed to dress and put away the last of her things before they could fetch Susan and Edmund, say goodbye to her family, and depart.

There was a knock at the door. "Tom? Fanny? Are you decent?"

Think of the devil – Edmund himself, already looking for them, probably having heard the carriage rolling up from his own room.

"Define decent!" Tom called, cupping his hands over his mouth and shouting in the direction of the door.

Fanny – the only acceptable-looking dress she owned save for the one she'd worn to her wedding draped over her shoulder – slipped behind a screen. "It's all right, Tom – let him in."

"Must I?"

"Tom!" Edmund knocked again, louder and with more urgency.

"There's no need to shout, brother – the latch isn't even in place!"

Fanny stepped around the screen as Edmund entered, dressed now and looking very neat and respectable as she tucked her hair, save for her loose ringlets at the front, securely into a bonnet.

"Are we ready?" asked Edmund, giving Fanny a kind, encouraging smile.

"No," Tom muttered sulkily, as Fanny nodded in affirmation and assured Edmund their things were packed and could be carried down as soon as it was convenient – they simply needed to say their farewells and to fetch Susan.

"Very well, then," said Edmund, nodding grimly, "I'll see you both downstairs in five minutes."

"He's anxious," Fanny noted upon her brother-in-law's departure. "He thinks your father–"

"My brother worries too much," muttered Tom, waving it off, perhaps because – deep down, now that the hour of judgement, so to speak, had at last arrived – he was growing anxious as well and was loath to admit it.

Tom had been so extraordinarily happy and contented – in a manner so far beyond his wildest expectations – for too long at a stretch to relish, now, the satisfaction of revealing his recent actions to his father as much as he'd thought he would.

Not, of course, that he was planning – as a result of these halting feelings – on being meek about it, or appearing penitent and chastised upon arrival at Mansfield Park, the way he was sure Edmund would like him to – such was not, quite simply, his way.

There were few tearful goodbyes to be shared between the Prices in regards to Fanny and Susan's departure. William was already gone, back at sea, and the other boys were too busy trying to hide their pig from Rebecca by concealing him – most ineffectually – under a grossly insufficient length of tablecloth, to say many parting words to their eldest sisters; excepting John, who was preoccupied, having been charged by their mother with the thankless task of trying to get Betsey to come downstairs.

For Betsey would not be persuaded, by anything at all, to leave what was now her own room and see her sisters off.

Mr. Price clapped Tom on the back and gave Edmund a nod that was not nearly so disagreeable as the looks he had granted him in the past, and he did tell Fanny she might give her coarse old father a hug goodbye if she liked – which she did, more from duty than anything else – before reminding Susan to behave respectably at Mansfield Park and not get herself sent back in disgrace.

Mrs. Price had a few shed tears and kisses to spare for her girls, after all, greatly to their mutual surprise, but most of her remarks ended in a variation of, "Whatever can be keeping darling Betsey? She's been so terrible cross all day, poor love. She'll miss you both dreadfully, to be sure." And once, with a little aggravated sigh, she said, voice fairly dripping with reproach, "Susan, you might have left her that silver knife – she is so terrible fond of it. What need had to you take it among your things? They will have many fine silver knives at Mansfield, I am sure. You should, perhaps, learn to think of others, especially those you leave behind, now that you will be in fine society."

"Mother, Betsey hasn't cared a wit for my knife in months now – not since Tom began bringing her presents – and you know Mary left it to me."

Mrs. Price seemed not to hear – or she pretended as much.

And, after a pause, their mother – for want of anything else to say, as Betsey still had not come down and could no longer be waited for – changed the subject to Fanny's marriage and how mercifully good a match it had turned out to be if she did say so, and how she didn't dare hope Susan would be half so lucky but it was very thoughtful of them to find her a place all the same.

In response to this statement from his wife Mr. Price repeated his admonition that Susan behave, then – complaining of his flaring gout again – adjourned into the hectic house with little parting ceremony, unless you counted a hacking cough and several – rather strong – curse words directed at the sons who got in his way.

There had, in all honesty, been more feeling in their parting from Mr. Yates – especially on Tom's end, since some part of him was always just that little bit sorry to leave behind any agreeable companion – than there had been in parting from the Prices.

All four of them – Edmund, Susan, Fanny, and Tom – were glad enough to climb into the carriage at last, their things secured and the Price family no longer watching them from the doorway, returned to their own more pressing occupations.

And despite Tom's longing for another week alone with Fanny, he too – along with the others – was never in higher spirits at passing the barriers of Portsmouth.

The driver made a brief detour through London, and they might have – in spite of their eagerness for the journey over and done with – stayed the night if the cousin of an old nanny of Edmund and Tom's had been as willing to put them up as was initially expected and if a horse which was suspected of having a stone in his hoof had sustained any real strain or damage after all, but their stop was, instead, brief.

Nanny's cousin was a saddler who knew a great deal about horses; it only took a brief conference – in low, polite whispers between driver and saddler – to settle that the horse was indeed uninjured and would be perfectly all right to carry on to Mansfield Park, as well as the fact that there were no rooms to be spared in the saddler's home for so large a party. Just the Bertram brothers travelling alone might have been all right – they might have shared the bed in the guest room – but they hadn't any place to put up ladies at the moment.

And Edmund especially was glad of it. He had not anticipated the detour, though it was, admittedly, a logical one. Alas, he feared too long an unplanned layover in London might prove a wicked temptation to Tom. Even the most loyal soldier can desert in the course of a single night, should the lure glitter brightly enough. He had been on the verge of openly praying for a miracle, noticing – as perhaps even Fanny hadn't – how very twitchy Tom appeared when the carriage rolled to a stop. So naturally the younger brother of he who was most likely to be dragged in and corrupted by the gleam of London – he who was the most susceptible prey of the group – proved pleased beyond expression when they found themselves off the cobblestones and headed towards more open, handsomer country.

It was only Susan who could manage to really smile and for the upward curling of her lips to reflect within the expression of her eyes in the form of true, visible happiness. And understandably so. It was she who had the least to be fearful of upon arriving at Mansfield Park. She was a guest, invited – even if Fanny's welcome did not count for much yet, by Tom – and she was nobody's wife or daughter-in-law. No one had anything to be angry with her about, if matters proved unfavourable. She was, of course, more than a little worried for Fanny's sake, but she convinced herself Tom – good-hearted Mr. Bertram – would have taken care of everything within reason – or tried to convince herself of such – and she herself had never been away from home before, not for a single day, and could not help being thrilled by the novelty.

There was not much conversation. They sat quietly, each lost in their own private speculation. Susan tried to speak to the driver, once, when they were stopped to water the horses, and her words were personable and friendly, but the poor man seemed flummoxed and uncomfortable, and a small shake of the head from Edmund signalled to her that guests of Mansfield Park did not generally converse casually with the servants. They spoke to them only when they needed something. And, a high-born lady she might not be, but sister to Mrs. Bertram and respected guest she certainly was now.

Fanny was saved from making the same error herself simply because she was too shy, in addition to being too nervous. Several times, she had thought of speaking to the driver, of attempting to befriend him, for she was fearful of being believed rude by anyone from Mansfield, her own future home, regardless of what position they held, but was held back by her own timidity. And when she saw Edmund's reaction to Susan, she understood she needn't make the attempt after all.

A single night was spent at a small inn situated in the countryside, where the four of them shared a long, creaky room made up with three beds. Come the following day, they would not have far to go before they were at Mansfield Park.

Susan slept well – dreaming, it seemed, of her new life, of napkins and silver and the smell of grass instead of the pungent scent of the sea at low tide – breathing softly in and out, tossing and turning very little.

Edmund's sleep was more fitful, but Fanny was sure – after a while – that it was deep enough only herself and Tom were left behind in the world of conscious thought, and she whispered, to her husband, "What if they don't like me?"

"Fanny," he sighed, rolling over in the bed and touching her cheek affectionately with his curled knuckles, "if they don't like you, then they'd have to be the very stupidest sort of parents in the world. Now, I may not be as bookishly clever as Edmund, but I'd like to think I'm a fair judge of my own parents' intellect. They're not that stupid. Even my mother, who hasn't said anything worthy of giving pause in twenty years, has more sense – a great deal more, if I'm not mistaken. Stop worrying. However cross they are, it'll pass as soon as they see I've brought home an angel."

Fanny smiled faintly. "You've called me an angel before, you know."

"Have I?" His brow lifted partway.

"Well, you said I had the beauty of one, anyway." She blushed in the dark. "You were drunk."

"Ah."

"They may not want me, you know, all the same." They might very well think her more mouse than angel, and she could not blame them if such should prove to be the case.

Grunting, Tom sat up and lit a candle, reaching for the small curved holder with one hand and taking hers with the other. "Come on. Up you get, creepmouse."

"Where are we going?" whispered Fanny.

"Just across the room – shh, be quiet, or you'll wake our brother and sister."

She padded barefoot across the creaky, somewhat jagged floor of the room, Tom tugging her forward. He motioned to a map of the British Isles on the far wall, apparently in place for decoration – it was faded and brown, stained about the torn edges, and some of the names were not current. "Look."

"At what?"

"The map." By flickering candlelight, she saw him roll his eyes. "I should think even you know a map when you see one."

"But why?"

He ignored her question. "Point to something – anywhere."

She pointed.

He leaned forward, raised the candle, and squinted. "Derbyshire, I think."

"Derbyshire?" she echoed so quietly as to nearly be inaudible.

"That's where we'll go," Tom told her, grinning, "if – for some strange reason – my parents don't like you. We'll run away to Derbyshire and live among the cows – or whatever it is they have there." He was fairly certain about the cows. "I freely admit, Fanny, I'd really hoped your pointing finger would select some place a bit more exciting, but Derbyshire it is, I suppose."

"You're teasing me," said Fanny.

"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not – one day, however, I'll take you there, since you picked it out, on my honour; even if it's only on holiday."

"We're to spend a holiday looking at cows?"

"Hmm." He gave a grim little nod. "It would seem so." A pause – and, then, "I don't suppose they race them for wagers – do you? The cows, I mean. Rather too cumbersome and bumbling, I shouldn't wonder."

They were all half-dosing when the carriage finally came within sight of Mansfield Park.

Susan jolted fully awake first, leaning out the window, and exclaimed, "It's beautiful! I could not have imagined anything so very beautiful!"

Tom seemed pleased by his sister-in-law's approval of his future property; Edmund remained grave in countenance; Fanny intertwined her fingers together, wringing her trembling hands before dropping them into her lap.

As the carriage pulled up in front of the sprawling big house, Fanny brought her thumbnail to her mouth and bit down.

Edmund noticed. "Fanny," he sighed, "don't – don't do that – you're sure to spoil your nails that way, and it's a most unsightly habit."

"Don't tell my wife what to do," snapped Tom, glowering across the length of the carriage seats at his brother. "The future mistress of Mansfield Park can bite her nails down to nothing at all if she so wishes. The opinion of a self-satisfied, busy-body parson from Thornton Lacey should have no weight in her choices."

But Fanny did not chew her nails any longer – not then, and not ever again that anybody ever saw; she took Edmund's words entirely to heart.

And not only Fanny, but Susan as well. On her end, however, it was not for any excessive platonic love for Edmund; she was suddenly very afraid of betraying some vulgarity before her wealthy relations and being sent back to Portsmouth in disgrace, and so she gave up chewing her fingernails on the spot.

"What, is Mother off the sofa?" exclaimed Tom, seeing not only his father standing outside with the servants waiting for him, but also Lady Bertram as well. "That's unexpected."

Edmund looked. "She seems in higher spirits than usual – how fortunate you are, Tom."

"What do you mean?" asked he, a little testily.

"I mean," he explained, "things always seem to turn out well for you, don't they? You bring a new bride home to Mansfield, after an underhanded secret marriage–"

"Which you performed, let us not forget," Tom interjected.

Edmund glared. "–and our mother is risen up all smiles and Father is the picture of amiability itself. No one else in the world so reckless as you would have your endless strokes of luck, depend upon it."

"If only such fortune would carry on into the racing season," Tom sighed wistfully. "My Francis is a damn fine horse – as I'm lead to believe – but I've got no guarantees of his winning just yet."

But Tom's alleged good fortune did not hold even for another twenty seconds; no sooner had he climbed out of the carriage (Edmund getting out and around on the other side), and reached back in to help Fanny, than the expressions on the faces of Sir Bertram and his utterly befuddled lady changed.

"Both my sons," Lady Bertram had begun happily; "I can't recall the last time you both..." She trailed off, seeing Fanny step down and a shadowed Susan peering from the open door of the carriage. "Oh! And who else?"

"Tom, you promised!" snarled Edmund, whirling on him. "You gave me your word you would write!"

"I did!" Tom hissed through his teeth.

"I-I saw it," Fanny whispered in low defence, her voice cracking. "He did write. I saw the letter."

The only explanation was that the missive had gone astray somewhere and had not reached Sir Bertram in time. The only recent letter they'd gotten, it would seem, had been Edmund's, asking for the carriage. They'd plainly expected only the arrival of their two sons – they had not been in expectation of a daughter-in-law.

"Tom, who is this?" Sir Bertram's brow furrowed in Fanny's direction.

"Well..." He straightened his waistcoat and cleared his throat. "Here goes nothing, then." He affected an over-wide smile bordering on the theatrical and motioned to Fanny. "Father, Mother..." He waved at the servants. "Eh, staff... This is my wife."

"Your w-wife?" said Lady Bertram in a shaky, uncertain voice. "But Pug's litter isn't due quite yet, my dear... You know I meant to give your bride a puppy when you married. You would have done much better to consult me first – I haven't a puppy for her just now. You ought to have been married in a couple of months. Yes, that should have done very nicely indeed."

The lines around Sir Bertram's mouth tightened; he glanced from Fanny to his own wife and saw what only an idiot could have missed. "You were in Portsmouth," he said, and it was not a question; that letter, at least, had reached home unencumbered. "This girl is one of my sister-in-law's children."

"What, one of dear Fanny's little ones?" gasped Mrs. Bertram. "Oh, I suppose I must write her now – it has been a very long estrangement. I hope she is not still out of temper with me. What do you think, Sir Thomas? Must I write her? Should it be a very long letter, do you think? Writing does fatigue me so."

Edmund's cheeks coloured and he lowered his gaze, perhaps ashamed of his own part in all this, but Tom stared directly at their father as if daring him to make a great fuss over it.

Fanny bobbed a nervous curtsy. "Sir." She wished she might call him Uncle, or even Father, as either expression once permitted would signify some small measure of familial warmth between them, but she did not dare.

He gave Fanny a curt (though not unkind) little nod, took note of the gold ring on her left hand and concluded from it this could not be a prank, could not be some manner of sick jest Tom inexplicably found amusing, then – turning his attention back to his son – looked at him as if he were contemplating hurling him off a very large bridge somewhere.

Susan came out next, unaided, hopping down in what the loudly crunching gravel under her feet refused to let be a discreet gesture, and Lady Bertram marvelled over her as well, repeating her question about whether or not Sir Thomas thought she ought to write her sister.

It is perhaps worth noting here that the servants – although they pretended not to be – were watching the scene unfold with all the fascination of viewing a play free of admittance charges. The groom and driver kept working with the horses, secure in seeing the rest of this unfold at least until the family went inside, and the maid-servants, in their little line up, were all in dreaded suspense of being set back to work out of earshot of the grand drama.

These captivated, sensation-hungry maid-servants did not think much of the new Mrs. Bertram's clothes or her coarse-looking sister. If she was not already married to Tom, if she had been brought in as someone he simply wished to wed, they were quite certain their master would have packed the shaky girl right back up in the carriage had her driven home to Portsmouth posthaste – relation of his wife or no.

"Have you no sense of shame?" growled Sir Bertram, broad fingers with creaking knuckles curling and uncurling at his sides.

"I do not understand you, Father," said Tom in reply, much too coolly. "Surely there can be no shame in setting right what you have neglected."

His eyes were stormy. "Do you accuse me of neglect?"

"Accuse?" Tom's mouth formed a sharp O of feigned surprise. "Accuse? No, I certainly cannot do that. Who accuses anybody of something of which there can be no doubt? To accuse you, Father, would be to assume there was some chance you might defend yourself – might carry some explanation that would put all to rights. With all due respect, sir, you cannot deny you did nothing at all for the Prices. So now I have." He sucked his teeth. "One might even say I paid off your debt to them. Only in a manner of speaking, of course."

"Tom!" Edmund hissed in warning.

Fanny felt cold, despite the relative warmth of the day and the fact that they were standing in the sunshine. She couldn't remember ever feeling so cold, so bitterly unloved and pawn-like, in the whole of her life.

"You should not speak anything so improper to your father, my sweet Tom, though I know you cannot mean it," said Lady Bertram, her voice quavering. "Sir Thomas does not like it."

"We will continue this discussion inside," said Sir Bertram, icily, adding in a more neutral voice, to the housekeeper, "We will want tea at the usual hour – there is no cause here so alarming as to let standards drop – but we'll take it in the drawing-room."

"Yes, sir, of course." The housekeeper bobbed and began clapping her hands at the gawking maid-servants to regain their attention.

The show, for them at least, was quite over.

A/N: Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.