Merriment & Wisdom

A Mansfield Park fanfiction

Part Thirty-Two:

Newspapermen, Such As They Report

If Tom had known it would be his last conversation with Anne before she departed from the world, he might have spoken of something other than the B– – – races, despite her polite but evidently real interest in the subject even as her breathing slowed, somehow so gradually it missed his notice.

Her chest rose and fell, and then – quite suddenly – it fell with a little sigh and a last whistle through the nose as she exhaled and did not rise again.

When do you suppose Tom realised he was alone in the room?

Refraining from naming the exact minute, one has to admit it was still longer from the moment of that final breath on her part than did strictly did him credit.

And, as realisation dawned, his countenance clouded and he stared straight ahead – he was stupefied.

His first clear thought was an – almost angry – inner grumbling of, You'd think a gentleman's daughter would know to say goodbye before she left! And he had to dash the back of his wrist against his eyes and turn away until he regained composure.

It was an unforgivably shocking display, even in private, and he knew it.

His second thought was to discover the time so that he could be – more or less – certain as to the hour of death.

The clock in the room had ceased ticking several days before, and it had not been one of Tom's priorities, while Anne yet lived, to have the innkeeper send for someone to repair it (indeed, it never came into his head at all), so he was obliged to call the innkeeper up now and – in addition to informing him of Anne's passing – ask for the hour.

"Haven't you a watch?" asked the innkeeper, surprised.

"I have," said Tom, blinking, and feeling dully at his waistcoat, "now you mention it... How foolish of me. Funny how I hadn't thought–" He choked off, throat closing and stomach churning. "Pardon me, I fear I'm unsettled."

"I'm sure the passing of your friend has simply rattled your nerves, sir."

He spoke as if in a daze. "She wasn't my friend. Quite impossible that she should have been, you know."

"That's your business, sir, but you did good by her, far as I see it" – he lowered his voice and took a step nearer to Tom – "now's I don't mean to hurry you along too quickly in your grief, but the sheets will need washing and the bed airing, if you take my meaning."

"I-I must speak to someone," Tom stammered out next, glancing over his shoulder at the bed. "A solicitor, I imagine, about...the body..."

"I should think you'd be wanting an undertaker for that," offered the innkeeper, gently.

Tom shook his head. "Eventually, yes, for putting the body on ice and what not, I certainly don't plan on taking on the task myself, but, that is–" He had it in his head that she shouldn't be dumped unceremoniously into a common grave as an unnamed prostitute. If there was the tiniest bit of truth to the story she'd told him, she ought to have a proper burial, a respectable funeral. "Christ." He placed a hand over his mouth. "I don't even know her surname."

Some hours later, around teatime (which accounted for the mean, chalky little cakes which tasted like bad turpentine and the untouched yet filled to the brim teacup a maid had handed him, nearly scalding his fingers and knuckles in the process, when he came in) Tom found himself seated in the parlour of a certain Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones was a funeral tradesman the solicitor he'd contacted had recommended, and he was in the company of that same solicitor – one Mr. Bamber – and another man – seated directly across from him on the opposite sofa with a notebook open in his lap and a quill in hand, occasionally grinding his heel into Mr. Jones' clearly inauthentic Turkish carpet – whose presence, in all honesty, Tom hadn't the foggiest notion as to the purpose of – a friend of Mr. Jones, who seemed to enjoy writing things down from time to time, he might have supposed, if pressed.

"All seems to be in order here, Bamber, we can certainly handle the arrangements for Mr. Bertram," Mr. Jones told him, setting down his tea cup and looking over a paper the solicitor had passed to him. "But we will need to ascertain the exact status of the dearly departed."

"I don't see how that matters." Tom reached for the top hat he had placed beside himself on the sofa when he came in and began fingering the brim, a touch anxiously. Because he knew exactly why it mattered. "You're to be paid the same regardless of who she was – what money for extra expenses I haven't on my person now, I can get – and I haven't a surname to give you – Anne didn't use one." Not one she'd shared with him, anyway.

"Curious," said Mr. Jones. "No surname, yet you indicated to your solicitor she was the daughter of a gentleman and could be buried on private property."

"She was a gentleman's daughter," Tom insisted, not really caring all that much whether, in saying this, he was lying through his teeth or else telling the truth.

Mr. Jones looked through the papers again, tsking. "I'm afraid your vehemence, Mr. Bertram, counts for very little if you cannot tell us which one."

"I tried to warn you, Mr. Bertram," added Mr. Bamber, in a lowered tone near to a whisper as he leaned forward. "I admire your discretion, and respect it. However, this was always a possibility. If you really do know, you do yourself no harm to tell Mr. Jones now. Indeed, I think you had better – that is my advice."

Tom's mouth went dry – he could invent a name, easily enough, but enquires would be made. Some gentleman somewhere, bearing whatever name Tom now pulled out of his backside, would be asked if he had a daughter Anne's age and would say no, certainly not, whatever were they speaking of, these charlatans, and – worse case scenario – the body would be dug up again (if Tom even managed to force the issue to the point of a funeral) amid a great deal of outrage on more than one side, and a lot of trouble would be stirred.

"There must be," Tom said, willing his voice not to crack, "a loophole of some kind, for a situation of such a..."

"Of a sort there is," Mr. Jones admitted, raising a finger to his chin in contemplation. "Now you mention it. Putting aside who she is or is not the natural daughter of, if this woman was the mistress of a gentleman, the arrangements would be slightly less public, perhaps, give or take one or two small details, but the connection would suffice as a reason to bury her among the gentry."

For a moment, Tom was furious with himself for not finding out the real name or status of his commissioner, the man in whose home there hung, presumably still, a portrait of Anne, Sophie, and the other girls all unclothed – if he could somehow have used him to secure Anne's burial, he'd have done it in a heartbeat.

Then it hit him.

He didn't need that man's name, or to prove he'd had relations with Anne.

This was it – he stood, metaphorically, as an innocent blinded with stupefaction teetering on the great social abyss. This was the final service he could render the woman he'd known simply as Anne, the one sacrifice he did not stop to consider could cost him more than he was actually willing to give up for her sake.

Technically, he didn't need to prove anyone had relations with Anne, nor bring up her profession.

Because...

"I could have," he murmured to himself. "It could have been me. So easily, it might have been."

"I'm sorry." Mr. Jones cleared his throat apologetically. "What was that?"

"Me," blurted Tom, louder, his choice quite made. "I was... She and I..."

Mr. Bamber's eyes widened. "Mr. Bertram, are you saying she was your mistress?"

Mr. Jones' friend, the one with the quill, looked particularly intrigued, though Tom couldn't imagine why.

"Indeed," Tom affirmed, setting the hat back down at his side and exhaling heavily. "For many years, as a matter of fact."

"Mr. Bertram–" Mr. Jones looked at him doubtfully.

"What?" Eyes narrowed, he glared at the funeral tradesman challengingly and drew a silver flask from his breast pocket.

Mr. Bamber sighed. "You'll need to tell him when this alleged affair between yourself and the departed began, Mr. Bertram."

The lie was so easy it rolled off his tongue – following a couple swallows of the contents of the flask, of course. "When I was younger – oh, about sixteen or so, if my memory serves." Tom sank back, stretching one arm along the top of the sofa and letting his wrist dangle over the curved, polished edge of the framework. "She was my first time, we met after a party thrown by mutual friends, and I liked having her around – a woman older than myself, you know how it is." He affected a brusque, throaty laugh. "If either of you have further doubt, I can show you my sketchbook; in it are several likenesses her, in a state of complete undress, which were done fairly recently – while we were in Weymouth together."

Mr. Bamber said he thought it would be sufficient, unless Mr. Jones yet remained uncertain and was afraid of being hoodwinked in some manner by Mr. Bertram's story.

But, no, Mr. Jones was more convinced even than Mr. Bamber – he believed Tom Bertram likely had only gone through the initial attempt to have Anne buried as a gentleman's daughter rather than his own mistress to spare himself and then, simply and with a devil-may-care metaphorical shrug, relented when such proved impossible.

Typical enough.

The same maid who'd poured the tea and handed Tom his cup when he first came in reappeared, then, in the parlour, holding Tom's greatcoat (she'd taken it when he arrived, though he'd kept his hat) and announced there was a carriage outside with a Mr. Yates who was waiting to escort Mr. Bertram back to the inn.

Tom rose a trifle shakily, put the flask away, and reached to take his greatcoat from the maid, turning to go.

Jones' friend called to him. "Mr. Bertram?"

"Yes?"

"What you've said today – between ourselves, strictly off the record from Mr. Jones and Mr. Bamber here – is it true?" Then, almost as an aside, "Oh, I'm Mr. Dickson, by the way, I'm uncertain I was properly introduced to you upon entry, there being so much else to discuss."

The man – this Mr. Dickson – must think him thick as anything, if he believed he would speak freely in front of those two – and to a stranger to boot – off the record or not!

Tom thought of Anne, as she was in life rather than in the last moment as he'd sat by her bedside blithering on, smirked, and said, simply, "It might be true. It might be a truth – one kind of truth. Sometimes a person needs to say what others expect to hear from him." Tom swallowed. "A..." He inhaled and then released the breath. "A friend taught me that." Placing his top hat upon his head, he added, "Good day to the three of you."

[Excerpt from a newspaper, the contents of which concern this portion of the story]

It is with sadness that the editor of this article, currently in Newmarket to share with the masses the latest news on the season's dwindling number of races, reports the death of the apparent long-time mistress of Mr. B. of Mansfield Park, of what was believed – in the professional opinion sought out by our writing staff – to be consumption and a decaying state of the lungs.

Mr. B. was with her to the last and the funeral – held tomorrow, believed to be invitation only – is at the expense of his family.

As to the departed's family, its name is unknown to the editor of this article at this time, though Mr. B. indicated she was not low-born when he spoke to him in person in the parlour of Mr. J. of All Saints Road.

The editor of this article does not have cause to believe this event indicates a fracas in the little-mentioned marriage of Mr. B. and his wife, as his relationship with the departed predates their – notably socially unassuming – wedding by as many as ten or eleven years.

We ask, humbly, that you do not send flowers or gifts of condolence to our London offices as we have no way to convey them to the family of Mr. B. or the departed.

[excerpt ends]

Henry Crawford folded, unfolded, and then refolded all over again the paper. "Well," said he, glancing to Mary across the breakfast table. "Well, well." And then he sighed. "Well."

"Oh, spare me your well, well, well, Henry!" she cried at last, placing her teacup down with a light clatter. "It is remarkable, is it not, how one never reads the paper and declares 'well, well, well,' unless something is decidedly not so very well as all that!"

"I believe, sister, I said well four times, not three." But he handed her the paper – folded again – so she might read it for herself.

"Oh," she said after a moment of her eyes alighting on the page, upon the only passage that could have affected Henry so. "Well!"

The corners of Henry's mouth curled upwards, but he forced them back down. "Poor Mrs. Bertram."

"Yes," replied Mary. "I can pity her, at least. Mr. Bertram, however, well – what he did was not so very shocking in itself, if only he had been more discreet. If poor little Fanny had never known anything of it, I don't suppose it could have hurt her – you know what men are, Henry. You especially.

"Under better circumstances, he would deserve no more than a half-hearted 'now see here,' and a small slap on the wrist for what he did, particularly as it predates his marriage.

"Even the most close-minded of ladies has to admit, in this fast and free day and age, when many a gentleman scarcely thinks, regardless of his circumstances and allowances, to provide adequately even for one woman, Mr. Bertram succeeded, evidently, in caring for the welfare of two. Admirable enough, that. But Tom should have known better than to do something stupid like run his mouth in front of a newspaperman!"

"I would imagine he was under the influence of drink," mumbled Henry; "it is his most obvious vice – we all know it."

"This is not the first time," Mary reminded her brother, "this has happened in the world, nor the last."

"But for Fanny" – he cleared his throat – "that is, Mrs. Bertram–" Henry sucked his teeth and exhaled heavily, whistling through them. "For her, it may well be the be all end all, she is so innocent. D'you suppose she's read of this yet? Would Sir Thomas shield her from it, do you think?"

"Edmund might, if he were here. It is his way to protect those he loves, where he feels he can," mulled Mary, reaching for her teacup and, bringing it to her lips, taking a long pensive sip. "But as he is at Thornton Lacey, it's difficult to say what news will reach Fanny and when. I should think Sir Thomas would be more anxious about keeping the news from Lady Bertram – though it will affect a mother less than a wife. And keeping it from Mrs. Norris won't be... Well, I don't think anyone could ever manage that. And once Mrs. Norris knows..." She lowered her teacup again and stared off into the middle distance. "Well!"

"I'd altogether forgotten the old goat, she has been so much in the White House as of late," Henry admitted. "If she blurts it out, as she's dreadfully likely to, I hope she exercises some care for her niece's tender feelings."

Mary snapped back to attention. "Henry, please do remember, even supposing Tom unable to recover from this social blunder, supposing him physically separated from Fanny forever after this, perhaps by way of his father or Edmund's intervention on her behalf – and it is not very likely, Tom being a man in this world and not a woman, and therefore unable to be called fallen – she still isn't free to..."

Henry pushed back his chair. "I know it – painfully, as a weight upon my chest which has no relief – I know it, but she needs me, Mary. She needs me to be there to help her through this. Who else, if not me? Me, who she has directed her pleading, helpless eyes at from the first!"

"I daresay she needs someone, but must that someone be you? Hadn't it better be myself?" Mary appeared anxious. "With you rushing in like the white knight, playing the part I told you mustn't, which indeed I say you still mustn't, you'll only break both your hearts with what cannot be. Ask her to love you, and she will never have the heart to refuse – yet, she is not free, poor girl."

Henry was already standing. "For good or ill, I must be there for her – it is my fate here at Mansfield. Can you not feel it, my dearest one? Fate, binding me to her in her darkest hour?"

"What I can feel," sighed Mary, shaking her head warily, "is tension – tension growing and growing until it must, by some manner or other, be popped."

It was not this inevitable pop itself Mary feared – there were ways to recover from it, if only it were soft enough and few enough persons heard its explosion – but rather the force behind the pop.

There was a coiled spring behind her brother's eyes; a coiled spring behind Fanny's quietness and the good manners and breeding and domesticity of Mansfield Park in general; a coiled spring in Tom and Edmund Bertram respectively...

And it was growing so very, very tight...

Who knew what might happen when it was tripped, when it was sprung!

Even in the case of solely Fanny, Mrs. Bertram undeniably being the most constant of the lot of them, little though Mary herself might truly value such a quality in most matters, there was no telling – she supposed – how somebody like that would react to being honestly tempted, perhaps for the first time in their entire lives.

How could any of them escape something of that magnitude unscathed?

"There is something missing from the paper today," remarked Sir Thomas, his eyes flickering up to Baddeley.

"No, sir," said Baddeley, certainly too quickly but with the correct feudal spirit as far as his tone went. "I think there cannot be."

His mouth flattening into a grim, no-nonsense line, Sir Thomas lifted his newspaper, shaking it out emphatically as he opened a page to reveal a rectangular gap cut out and casting a little uneven square of light and shadow onto the drawing-room carpet.

"Ah." Baddeley looked momentarily discomfited and he briefly exchanged a glance – to Sir Thomas' great surprise – with Susan Price, who winced sadly back at him.

"Is there something you wished to break gently to me, Baddeley?" pressed Sir Thomas, sounding very put-out.

Susan bit her lower lip and turned her head to gaze sadly at Fanny, who was lost in her own private thoughts, sewing by the window. She took a deep breath and answered instead of the butler, feeling responsible since it was as much her doing as Baddeley's – they'd conspired together after seeing the article in the paper. It turned out Baddeley had something of a growing soft spot for Mrs. Bertram and Miss Price; perhaps because, unlike Tom, they never threw anything at his head, and unlike Maria and – to a slightly lesser extent – Julia, they never attempted, either of them, to boss him about, piling on requests as if he were their own personal genie rather than Sir Thomas Bertram's butler.

"Not you, sir," Susan said. "We were concerned about the effect on... Somebody else..."

Fanny was looking over at them now, guided from her inner musing to the knowledge she was being spoken of without being named by vague intuition. She knew something was up.

Perhaps it was connected to her fight or flight process – for, at that moment, none other than Mrs. Norris came running in, breathless, wild wisps of greying hair slipping out from under her lace cap, brandishing her own newspaper. "Sir Thomas, Sir Thomas! Have you heard?"

Lady Bertram started, unnerved by her sister's frantic state. "Is the house on fire? Has somebody died?" Pug – in her lap, disliking her sudden nervousness – growled.

Susan rose, took a step nearer to Baddeley, and whispered, "We forgot to bribe the house-maid at the White House."

The butler nodded sombrely.

Sir Thomas had the good sense, at least, to usher them all – Susan, Baddeley, and Mrs. Norris – into his study, leaving Lady Bertram and Fanny alone in the drawing-room while he discovered what this was concerning.

It all came out, then.

Sir Thomas hadn't been as in the dark as they'd supposed; a bill had come to him, for Anne's funeral, which Tom had not been able to pay on his own, and – after a strong moment's hesitation – been footed without further questioning, but there had been no explanation as to who Anne was, or why she was entitled to have her burial arranged by the Bertram family.

Now, according to the newspaper Mrs. Norris shoved in his face, Tom was allegedly providing for a recently deceased mistress of many years. The fact that this came, so very publicly, on the heels of a lavish ball thrown at Mansfield Park to celebrate Tom's love-match marriage of little to no social standing was unfortunate, to say the least.

"We have been made fools of," Mrs. Norris declared. "Absolute fools."

"Baddeley" – Sir Thomas decidedly ignored his sister-in-law's remark and set the newspaper down as if it were printed with blood blackening his fingers rather than ink – "be so good as to bring Mrs. Bertram in. I would speak to her."

"This would never have happened," wailed Mrs. Norris, stricken, "if he married Miss Crawford instead of Fanny. She would have kept Tom in line."

Susan's nostrils flared and her mouth puckered angrily.

"Whatever are you looking so sulky about, girl?" Mrs. Norris turned on her. "It's your silly, shrinking, utterly ungrateful sister who has–"

"Mrs. Norris!" roared Sir Thomas, already in a poor mood and not the least buoyed in spirit by her braying on and blaming his poor little daughter-in-law Fanny, who he perceived to be the wronged innocent in all of this sad business. "Show a little compassion, my dear lady, please! Put aside your grief at the shame, and think. Fanny has been twice abandoned and humiliated by Tom since coming here as his bride to Mansfield, and she has borne in silence what would have broken the hearts of most women." He added, as an aside, noticing Mrs. Norris pursing her lips, "Not all women are so hardy as you. I know you forget, but there are more delicate constitutions and fragile feelings in the world than your own." Then, "And in so saying I intend no disrespect to Miss Crawford – who is an admirable and lovely girl in her own right, I'm sure, and should she yet join our family I would welcome her, gladly – but I do not believe her capable of Fanny's grace and forbearance if put in her place."

"I see one may not speak as one sees fit in this house any longer," snapped Mrs. Norris, sardonically. "Not for fear of wounding Fanny's nicety. One cannot risk making the mistake, it would seem, of unwittingly harming the tender, soft feelings of–"

"You may speak as you always have," he replied, cutting her off, "and I daresay as you always will, Mrs. Norris, but – for today, at least – I may choose not to listen and to tend to my other concerns. Which, I fear, are very great this hour. Baddeley will be bringing her in any moment now, and I wish you to be kind to her."

"No one could have been kinder!" cried Mrs. Norris, sounding truly aggrieved. "I have never been anything but kind to Fanny."

"Good. Then you will have no problem standing aside and allowing me, without interference, to tell her what has been reported in the paper."

"She ought to be told quickly, and it should not shock her, for I still think she might have prevented it somewhat if she had behaved less hastily with Tom – you may think her pitiable, Sir Thomas, and I might have to agree she is, but I've told you before her behaviour has not always been what it ought to be.

"She has carried on with Tom worse and more wantonly than her mother with Mr. Price – and I ought to know, for I recall her parents' regular flirtations and eventual elopement, exactly – and regrettably must reap what she has sown. She's done nothing to tame Tom's ways, or to placate him, only to encourage his occasional ill-temper for her own means and benefit, and–"

"She's here," growled Susan, as her uncle gently brushed Mrs. Norris to his left and came forward.

Fanny trembled in the doorway, white-faced and white-knuckled, fearing bad news more than she did reprimand. "Tom–" she began.

"Yes, my dear," said Sir Thomas, taking her trembling hands and leading her to the fireplace, bowing his head and speaking softly. "This is about Tom. I'm afraid you must be brave now."

"He's hurt, or abandoned by his companions, or ill," Fanny gasped out in a breathless rush, certain she had felt it before she could know of it. And perhaps there was a bit of the prophetess in her, given what was yet to come, only still far too early in its foretelling.

"No. No, indeed." Sir Thomas was momentarily shaken by her intensity. "That is, my son is physically well, and safely in whatever it is he calls company, so far as I'm aware."

"I've had no letters," blurted Fanny. "I feared the worst."

Mrs. Norris made a motion as if to come forward and scold her, but Susan, as casually as she was able, stepped between them, blocking her off from getting anywhere near her sister and uncle.

Sir Thomas bent forward and gave Fanny a kiss on the forehead, brushing back her blonde fringe affectionately as her own father might have done if Mr. Price had been a more tender sort of man, a man more interested in his daughters.

When he pulled back, he told her, as gently as he could, what he'd read in the paper, producing Mrs. Norris' copy from the chair behind them and allowing her to see for herself.

"It is a mistake, sir," murmured Fanny, stumbling as she staggered a few steps to the left and Sir Thomas needed to grasp her shoulders and steady her. "It must be a mistake, it cannot be true; it must mean some other person."

"Some other Mr. B. of Mansfield Park?" shrieked Mrs. Norris, unable to hold off any longer. "I should think you a very stupid girl indeed, Fanny, if you believe that."

"Mrs. Norris, I understand the present difficulties better than anyone, but if you cannot control yourself, I shall ask you to leave my study!" Sir Thomas gave her a hard glare. To Fanny, "You speak, I imagine, with a resolution which springs from despair. Mrs. Norris is right that it's unlike to be a mistake – it is, sadly, every bit as direct as it might be without giving me leave to take legal action against the publisher. Moreover, I know the funeral for this woman – whoever she was – was very real, for I have paid for it from my own pocket."

"If my husband, sir" – she took in a large gulp of air – "were a different kind of man, I should despair and make such a speech from it, yes..." She turned her head away. "But not Tom."

"I'm growing to fear, despite years of expensive education and attempts to raise them up morally, I do not know my own children at all."

Fanny did not deny it – Sir Thomas was a good man, and she was grown fond of him, but perhaps he gauged his own failings rightly when he said he did not know Tom. Indeed, he might not, but she did.

"If it were almost any other man in the world" – the exceptions of her heart being William and Edmund, who she did not feel the need to mention by name – "I could indulge no hope these paragraphs were false."

"It might be a mistake, after all – it might," said Sir Thomas, then, without conviction. "By all the saints in heaven, Fanny, if but I had your faith so I might hope as you do!"

"The damage is quite done," interjected Mrs. Norris darkly, "whether it is true or not." She drew a handkerchief from the folds of her skirts and blew her nose into it loudly enough to make Susan take several steps away from her in haste. "Dearest Tom has blundered gravely and made a spectacle of himself in Newmarket."

"He will write" – and only here did Fanny's soft voice at last waver with a trace of uncertainty, not quite able to convince herself Tom had written and the letter was gone astray as the one he wrote to Sir Thomas of their marriage had, though she wanted to believe it with all her heart – "and the mistake will be cleared up. I know it must be so."

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