Merriment & Wisdom
A Mansfield Park fanfiction
Part Thirty-Three:
Prolonged Absence, The Catalyst For Worse To Come
Henry Crawford found Fanny seated upon a stone bench, the shoulders and sleeves of her pale dress dappled with sunlight partially blocked by the tree which gave the bench spotted smatterings of shade, her face in her hands.
In her lap, unfolded, was a letter.
She must have heard his approach, for she lowered her hands and lifted her face.
"Forgive me for calling like this, unannounced," he said, "but I had such a desire to see you, knowing you must have heard the news and be in need of a companionable friend, and here you are. I have found you at last."
Fanny blanched slightly, and for a moment he feared she might be overcome and thus inclined to flee, but she did not recoil as he took her hand and kissed it. "You're swaying in place and your eyes are ringed with circles, Mr. Crawford," she noted, drawing back her hand and tucking it securely within the folds of her skirt. "You are tired."
Sweetest, kindest Mrs. Bertram, to have noticed! His heart was full. He sat beside her on the bench. "Oh, I have paid too much attention to the papers as of late – that is how I came to find out about your present misfortune – and too little to the pleasures of the countryside – society, taken in too great a share at once, tires me." He turned his head to look at her. "I assure you, I am quite well."
"It is not true," she said, regarding – he knew – the misfortune he had mentioned. "I know it isn't."
Henry cast a coy glance upon the letter in her lap. "Has Mr. Bertram written and explained the mistake?" He tried to be happy for her sake, if such was the case, giving her his fondest, least suggestive grin, the manner of smile he'd have readily bestowed on a fellow gentleman or a child who he felt kindly disposed toward, though – in his most private thoughts and reasonings – he deeply resented Tom for being so unscathed and snatching back Fanny's tender, perfect affections as if he'd done nothing wrong, as if he had a right to them.
Mrs. Bertram shook her head. "It is not from Tom. It's from Edmund – he's written me from Thornton Lacey. He has seen the paper as well."
"And what does he say?"
"He asks if I have need of him, if he ought to come to me. He promises to make haste to Mansfield Park if I ask it of him."
"What will you answer?" asked Henry, curiously arching an eyebrow.
"Oh, I shan't take him away from his parish again," said she, colouring brightly. "It's a kind offer, to be sure, but I must get on here as best I am able. It's not an emergency."
"That is true," said Henry, encouragingly, "and moreover, Edmund Bertram is not your only friend."
"Yes, I have Susan."
"Susan." He choked back a laugh. "Indeed. I would be a fool to devalue the comfort a sister brings when I myself know it so well! But I did not think of her when I spoke – I meant myself, of course, and Mary. We are here for you, always, Mrs. Bertram; you have our unconditional friendship and good will."
She appeared moved by this, her lashes fluttering with gentle surprise as her eyes met his and then quickly averted themselves. "I thank you, Mr. Crawford."
"It is nothing, I'm sure you're quite correct about there being some mistake" – he was not, really, even in the slightest, but he thought the white lie would do no harm to a beautiful woman in distress and in need of solace – "and you must know your true friends stand by you regardless. There is nothing I despise so much as fair-weather companions."
"That is a point in your favour."
He cleared his throat. "I have been meaning to speak to you, on a matter of delicacy."
"Oh," she began. "Oh, please, Mr. Crawford–"
"Pray, hear me out – it is not what you think."
She blinked at him.
"I wished to apologise if I made you uncomfortable the night of the ball – I meant only to extend a hand in friendship, and to make you happy by doing something useful for your brother. I've since thought it over and subsequently feared I may have brought you some discomfort. I know Tom left immediately after, and... Well, I've made myself anxious that in some way..."
"No, indeed, Mr. Crawford," she breathed out in an anxious rush, "it was not you – you must recall Tom had a horse at Newmarket taken sick."
He was, of course, perfectly aware of it. How could he have forgotten? After all, it was he who had Charles Anderson delay the news so he might dance with Fanny Bertram in Tom's place, but she must be at ease with him or how could he comfort her? He was also aware putting himself at a disadvantage would appeal to her more prevailing qualities of forgiveness and tenderness.
"Shall we walk?" Fanny was rising shakily, lifting Edmund's letter from her lap as she did so – Henry noticed – so that it did not fall to the ground as once the purple flower he'd given her at Sotherton Court had.
"Gladly, but you are more tired than I – so you must consent to take my arm as we take our turn about the shrubbery, Mrs. Bertram; if I have been too much plagued by society, I think you – despite the news – have been given too little of the world these days."
"Then, you have news from London."
"There is nothing to interest you there – your cousin Mrs. Rushworth has not followed her brother's example of speaking to newspapermen."
She became visibly distressed and tensed.
"I jest," he said quickly, patting her hand. "I assure it is only a jest – there really is, in all seriousness, no news from London worth imparting, nothing of any interest. No war, no fire." He paused and sounded wistful as he added, "No revolution."
"You sound as if you were sorry for it – as if you wished to hear something dreadful."
"Not for its own sake, but – I confess – for my amusement and vanity, so I might prove myself, I sometimes wish it."
"We ought never to wish for wickedness, to speak of ill, contrary winds or fires, Mr. Crawford, it is inauspicious – at least, my father used to think so and bellow this opinion at us as children."
He stopped in his tracks. "Why, Mrs. Bertram, you have astonished me! Truly! Here, I had expected you might reprimand me for being a poor Christian and wishing – however half-heartedly – for something which might bring misery to my fellow man, and instead you give me a token. A boon. You have never so openly shared your past with me before! And now I can understand you so much better."
She was gone dramatically scarlet. "I spoke without thinking."
"Without recalling it was me you spoke to, you mean."
She stared down at her feet as they began walking again, her arm still tucked under his. "Yes. I'm sorry. I do beg your pardon if I said something out of turn, Mr. Crawford, or was too familiar."
"No, I'm glad of your freely spoken words – you can never be too familiar with your dearest friends. And now I know your friendship is not impossible for me to secure, that I have not wounded nor offended you beyond your limit, whatever my past blunders may be."
"I need to pick some lavender." She began to disentangle her arm from his. "Lady Bertram was to send Susan, but she had need of her indoors today, so I promised to bring some when I returned."
"Would it help if I accompanied you?" asked Mr. Crawford, sorry to be losing her at his side, to no longer feel her touching him, and trying to hide his regret and disappointment while at the same time perhaps delaying it a little. "Two pairs of eyes are better than one – and I know a good deal about botany."
"Thank you, that's very kind," she said graciously, bobbing her head in a sight curtsey. "But I would know lavender a mile off, Susan and I have picked it here enough times."
"Then – before I take my leave – might I inquire if perhaps my sister and I shall invite ourselves for tea tomorrow, if you will pardon our presumption?"
"If Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram have no objections, I'm sure the rest of us should all be delighted."
And Henry was never happier nor more miserable at the same moment in time, for he was more secure than ever in his belief that she loved him; he gauged from her unguarded conversation how she only held him at arm's length for the sake of propriety. Just so. She was the most admirable, principled of women, and the way she withheld any signs of strong affection, despite clear ardent feeling on both their parts, made her only the more desirable to him. Foolish Tom Bertram did not know what he had in her!
There was, Henry Crawford knew, as he had known for a while now and simply reaffirmed within his endlessly turning, spinning mind and heart, no woman suitable in the world for him, no woman he could call wife and willingly install at Everingham (if only it were possible), save poor Mrs. Bertram.
"Lord preserve me, what have I done?" groaned Tom, flinging himself backwards onto the bed dramatically, while, in the chair across the room, Mr. Yates sighed and tossed a cricket ball in the air, catching it before it hit the floor.
The windows were all open, in order to clear the inn of its stuffiness, as this was an unusually humid day, but it hardly mattered, now, who heard what – Tom's business was already public knowledge and everybody believed they had the full story.
A story he could never retract without making things worse.
How was he supposed to know the fellow with the quill in Mr. Jones' parlour was a newspaperman? No one had ever told him funeral tradesmen kept regular company with newspapermen! The funeral tradesman he'd met when Uncle Norris died certainly hadn't seemed to have companions from London's papers popping out of his carriage or trailing at his side!
Curse that damned sneaky wastrel Mr. Dickson! Tom longed to find the sorry opportunistic bastard and throttle him. And maybe trample him with a horse for good measure.
Mr. Yates tossed the cricket ball up again, missing it, this time, as it came crashing back down, slipped beyond the reach of his outstretched fingertips, hit the floor with a thud, and rolled under his seat.
He decided to leave it, for the moment.
"What the hell d'you suppose I'm meant to do now?" sighed Tom. "How can I possibly set this right?"
"Well, you've got yourself into a pretty good muddle and no mistake," admitted Mr. Yates, still chipper, perhaps not realising the gravity of his friend's error. "But your Mrs. Bertram is so amiable – sweet little Fanny's sure to understand."
"It isn't her I'm worried about," snapped Tom, glaring at the ceiling. "It's everybody else – depend upon it, Edmund and my father will keep her out of my reach until they can be sure of me again." He brought a hand to his left temple. "I should have allowed her to come with me when she wished it. I might face anything if she were here with me. Distraction! A distraction, I called her! What a foolish notion! I could go back in time and clout myself for ever thinking something so nonsensical. Even if the world despised me, if I faced yet worse derision than this, after my humiliation here, I might have taken her – as I once promised – to Derbyshire. We'd have been together until this all died down, looking at cows, and I'd have taken it all in stride."
"Good God, man," exclaimed Mr. Yates, "mightn't you just go back and fetch her now?" He scoffed lightly. "You could so easily rush up to Northamptonshire, snake her from the shrubbery while she's out for a walk, drag her away into a carriage – I'll loan you mine, if you like – and, old bean, just like that" – he snapped his fingers – "all is well again." He beamed at Tom. "Buck up. She's hardly a princess locked in a tower guarded by a fire-breathing dragon!"
No fire-breathing dragon? Pah! Clearly John hadn't become so very well acquainted with Sir Thomas Bertram during his short visit at Mansfield. Tom was utterly convinced his father – when made properly cross, angered by true scandal – was worse than a hundred dragons. Thus why he'd narrowly avoided anything of the sort for years, only to throw his efforts away now, on the funeral of a woman he'd barely known and yet – perhaps a little improperly – liked all the same.
He propped himself up onto his elbows and looked witheringly at Yates. "You can't honestly be suggesting I go to Mansfield Park and kidnap my own wife!"
"S'not like you had a better idea," he pointed out, his tone slightly wounded.
"I'm scared to go home, John." He winced and closed his eyes. "There, I said it. There's no use holding it back any longer – I'm afraid I've spoiled everything beyond repair and it's quite hopeless. And I'm frightened of my own father and brother. I hate myself more than I've ever hated anyone, and I love Fanny better than I did even in Portsmouth or Mansfield, simply because she's out of my reach. Perhaps for a long, long time. And that loathsome, undeniable fact makes me hate myself even more."
"Bertram–"
"I can't cope with this." The bed squeaked as Tom rose from it. "I'm getting a drink."
At Mansfield Park, the days dragged on – Lady Bertram fretting half-heartedly as she sat ever-stagnant upon her sofa and stroked her pug unceasingly and Mrs. Norris stewing and, when she could be sure Sir Thomas was not paying attention, directing accusatory looks in Fanny's direction – with no word from Tom.
Unbeknownst to Fanny, Mr. Owen had business in Newmarket, and Edmund had hoped, in vain, to have word from him he might convey, then, in another letter to Fanny, but there was, of course, nothing – Mr. Owen did not see Tom, keep an eye out through he did, and could give no news. So he remained at Thornton Lacey and, after his first, wrote no more letters to Fanny than did his brother.
The Crawfords were frequent visitors, despite Edmund's absence, and while they weren't the dearest faces Fanny saw daily, they grew somewhat more important to her by habit and association.
She began to think – to hope – Mr. Crawford really did only desire to be her friend, after all.
There continued to be something off about his attentions, but they seemed somehow less improper than they'd previously been – in small ways which meant a great deal in the long run.
He did not endeavour to touch her more than was necessary, or to recommend himself to her by flattering Susan overmuch, or by vocally defending her in front of Mrs. Norris, or anything else which might have been immediately distressing.
No, indeed; Henry Crawford was all smiles and gentlemanly manners and good jokes and pretty after-tea readings.
There was a time or two Fanny could scarcely believe this was the same gentleman whose over-familiarity had frightened her so at Sotherton. She had believed Tom her rescuer then, whereas now she could not think of Tom at all without wanting to weep. Her faith in her absent husband did not lessen, but her disappointment in his standoffishness yet grew with each passing hour and cold glance from their mutual aunt, and to dwell on him, on the memory of all she felt for him, hurt beyond expression.
During those bitter days, she could only speak openly of him to Sir Thomas, when obliged to, and to Susan, at night when they were alone, visiting either in Tom's sitting room or Susan's attic, and she'd downed a cordial or two (mixed to her liking by Baddeley) to keep the excessive tears at bay.
The Crawford siblings were safer territory. A land of emotional truce.
Mary's bright, dancing eyes and witty remarks distracted one from anything like serious contemplation – Fanny found Miss Crawford so exceedingly enjoyable to watch and listen to in those tense hours, she truly began, in a way she had not quite previously, to understand why Edmund could not, despite his strong mortality and common sense, free himself wholly from wanting her for his wife.
And Mr. Crawford, so much better than he'd once been, as if fine friendship and good surroundings really were improving him – there might be something of worth in him yet!
Fanny didn't cringe as she'd been used when he sat beside her. Once or twice, she'd been glad – flushed cheeks and bright smiles glad – to see him come through the door on a rainy day when she'd imagined he would be prevented from visiting by the unexpectedly poor weather.
Susan was growing fonder of Mr. and Miss Crawford, too, in her way, but as she did not have a wounded heart to distract from (disappointment in a wayward brother-in-law is extremely different in its effects from disappointment in a lover, after all), she was a trifle more cautious than Fanny, and did say, once, very quietly, that she didn't expect the dramatic change in Henry Crawford to last.
Fanny decided, after contemplation of Susan's remark, from some morbid curiosity she could not rid herself of, to test Mr. Crawford out by wearing – one afternoon – his repaired necklace in place of Edmund's chain.
If he looked overlong, staring as he used to, she would know he had not really changed – whereas if he remained gentlemanly and respectful, if he behaved as he'd been accustomed to as of late, surely she could be a step nearer to trusting in him, to believing his friendship was real and not a dangerous path to tread upon in her husband's absence.
To her great relief, when she tried it out, he smiled only once upon recognising it and said no more. He did not gawk or seem smugly satisfied. She'd pleased him, certainly, but no further than she had pleased his sister. If the gift had been given from a motive lacking pure innocence, surely it was not intended as such now. She fancied his cheeks were slightly darkened, gone faintly red, as if he were embarrassed to have taken the highly inappropriate liberty of gifting a married woman a gold chain, notwithstanding it was done through his sister, back then, for the sake of good appearance.
Susan, however, had been less certain. "You won't repent it? Wearing the necklace today, I mean," she'd whispered as they'd watched the Crawfords walking away from the house, back towards the direction of the parsonage, from the window. "He could suppose you meant something by it you did not."
Fanny shook her head. "I wore it only so I could be assured he didn't."
"If you're certain, Fanny, I think it must be well enough – I'm glad if he's gotten over his infatuation with you, at any rate."
Poor Fanny, gauging so wrongly with no notion of the gravity of her misstep, would have felt differently if she could only have heard what Henry was saying to Mary as they walked – all about how Fanny did love him, was beginning to forget Tom a little, hadn't she seen his own necklace sparkling at her lovely throat, which could mean nothing else – but she couldn't and so, at least for the moment, she couldn't repent her actions.
Tom existed in a near-constant state of inebriation.
He drank when he sat with Mr. Yates at the inn; he drank, slumped against the side of the starting gate, while he watched his idiot jockey attempt – without the slightest sign of success – to make Francis run; he drank when he visited a restaurant or public event; he drank when another newspaperman came around and asked him for a quote (and went away with nothing but a wad of brandy-scented saliva projected into his right eyeball); and he drank when Mr. Yates, attempting to get him out of his stupor, introduced him to a dazzling group of friends – most of them entirely new acquaintances, though some were vaguely known previously through Charles Anderson – who invited him to leave the inn and remain in their home for some unnumbered days.
No one apart from the irrepressible Tom Bertram could manage to be both maudlin and merry simultaneously, and his charming inclinations to make irresistible jokes – and even to sing or recite – when drunk, made him unexpectedly popular among his new companions.
This jolly crowd had no inclination of hurrying him along, and he – cowed by prevailing fear of home and by what he perceived to be the misery of disappointed affection in marriage (even if it was he himself who had done the disappointing) – possessed no expressed wish but that he might, with a very voluntary good will, prolong the visit for as long as they would permit.
It was, he thought, no bad place to stay – to hide out – for a while.
A/N: Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.