Snowbear

A Mansfield Park and Pride & Prejudice fanfiction

Chapter Thirty:

Fanny came to – albeit dimly – in strange surroundings.

She was in a room that, while unfamiliar in a general sense (she was sure she had never been in this place before) had strangely recognisable (if only she might venture a guess as to where from) touches; it seemed to be a luxurious room, and she was laid out in the middle of a great soft bed with elaborate, frilly – she might almost have used the word frothy to describe them, they were so expensive-looking while simultaneously insubstantial in nature – hangings tied to four tall posters carved with a winding design of ivy tendrils.

She could not shake the unnerving sensation of being a fly caught in a spider's glossy, intricate web. Her head swam; she was made all the more muddled and distressed by the fact the very last thing which she could recollect was being in a carriage, travelling post with Sir Thomas. She might have supposed this was an inn, and they had stopped here for the night, but for the obvious – the room was too detailed, too personalized, for this to be a feasible explanation. There was, for example, a very fine toothpick-case – monogrammed with some initials Fanny's mind would not allow her to read, for the curving, interlocking letters swam and jumbled before her eyes and she could make no sense of them – set on a table a little way from the bed. And there was also a silver snuffbox balancing precariously on the edge of a shelf on the bookcase, which held several gilded volumes that appeared, from their tight spines and polished states, never to be taken down for the purpose of reading. Fanny herself was used to keep her own books in very good repair, for prior to her marriage to Tom such keepsakes had always cost her meagre purse dear, but even her cherished books, struggle against the eventuality as she would, inevitably showed signs of use – such signs were almost always imprinted, one way or the other, upon well-loved volumes simply for the looking, even to an unfocused eye.

She was in somebody's bedroom, most likely a gentleman's; for while it was elaborately decorated, it had a notable lean towards a vaguely foppish branch of masculinity; there were none of the painted flowers (the only painted screen she could distinguish while squinting about her had a design something like sea-foam meeting stormy-blue sky in an interlocked rhombus pattern) or perfumed scent-bottles or netting-boxes one usually saw in a room set aside for the use of a particular female.

Very much frightened, Fanny struggled to rise from the bed (she flailed a good deal during this effort, and no doubt would have looked more than a little ridiculous if there had been anybody to see her) and to stumble along, grabbing awkwardly onto anything within reach to steady herself, until she reached the door.

Once I have reached the door and let myself out, Fanny told herself, without quite thinking it through, it shall all be over – I will be safe.

When she discovered the door to have been locked from the outside and was brought quickly to accept her weak knock was to be continually unheeded, perhaps no one can blame her that she sank to her knees and began to sob, leaning her head against the wood.

In so doing, she brought on her illness – such as it had been – afresh and swooned dead away, welcoming oblivion when it came.

Upon her second waking in what she judged to be a dreadful room and wicked prison, back in the bed once again, she was mercifully not alone – a woman (she was not certain what sort of woman, whether a lady or else an upper-servant of some kind, whether reputable or disreputable, only that it was an older, rather handsome woman with a pleasant enough voice and very smooth hands) was with her and smoothed her brow and cooed that she must rest.

"You've been very poorly, mon chéri," said this woman, speaking softly. Despite the rather proper-sounding usage of French, she did not have an accent to indicate she was any less English than Fanny herself – indeed, Fanny's own pronunciation was a little better, while Maria Rushworth's would have been vastly superior. "You will not rally around as your friends hope you soon will if you insist upon distressing yourself into fainting fits – pray put yourself at ease."

"Please," croaked Fanny, blinking at the woman; "please, where am I?"

"You are in the house of a friend – shh, no more questions – sleep now."

Tom Bertram had grown tired – bored might be a more accurate word – of his life without Fanny in it; the Wickhams were a poor substitution for her.

Getting intoxicated every night and playing cards at odd hours in seedy establishments, and against Lydia (who was a good deal more ruthless, even to him, than anyone he would find in the aforementioned establishments) until it was a wonder he had kept himself from complete destitution was all well and good, it certainly kept him from thinking too much and feeling the pain he was always in as keenly as he otherwise must, but there was only so long one could reasonably cling to so brutal an existence and not expect to – sooner or later – ruin oneself entirely.

He only had to look into a mirror to see he was already becoming spoilt; with his hollow visage, coarsened complexion, and black-ringed eyes, he was no longer the same well-looking man he'd been when he left Fanny behind, locked in that wardrobe.

Moreover, his time with the Wickhams was curtailed, cut quite short, when George was called away by army duties and he was left only with Lydia for what limited time he could live with her alone (chaperoned, if such it might be called, only by an absent-minded housekeeper whose tasks seemed to chiefly be to cook for her mistress, plump the occasional pillow, and to throw out, when she remembered she ought, the gathering collection of empty wine-bottles from George Wickham's makeshift study) without its becoming local on-dit.

Although he longed, by then, for Mansfield Park, for home and for Fanny, Tom stubbornly resolved he would go south to London again and seek out the Bingleys, who ought to be in town this time of year.

He supposed, in all likelihood, he should be able to reach London with rather a considerable amount of time to spare before his friends were to take themselves off to Netherfield.

Lydia wept inconsolably that he should leave her, swore on everything tangible she would miss him dreadfully and must be dull and unhappy for ever and ever and for always without him – he remained the hero who had turned into a bear and rescued her from a nasty despoiling as well as, hands down, her favourite whist partner, and she liked him very much – but it must be mentioned she recovered more quickly than she would have otherwise done, when she looked at him from underneath her wetted eyelashes as he gave her a tight embrace and placed a – slightly rough – brotherly kiss such as he would have given to Julia upon her cheek before slinging a bag over his shoulder and walking away, and was – in so observing him – abruptly reminded how much less handsome her darling, dearest Mr. Bertram was become as of late.

Fanny imagined at least two days – but it was so exceedingly difficult to tell time in that place, feeling as she did and seldom knowing herself there – had gone by before she could make the handsome woman who waited on her, telling her to sleep and occasionally holding a wineglass to her lips and urging her to drink, tell her anything worth knowing.

The first thing she learned was the woman was not a servant, but she was not the wife of the owner of this house, either.

The woman tried to explain who it was who'd brought Fanny here, though she did not say from where, and she'd faltered and then ranted on at the part when she came to the relationship of this gentleman in regard to herself.

"My hus–" Here, her cheeks had coloured and she'd shaken her head. "Nay, he is not that, more's the pity, and I hope you shan't tell him I almost said he was; he wouldn't like it. He despises marriage, you see. He tried it once and it did not make him happy. He is my..." She sucked her teeth and sighed. "My friend, I suppose. My friend who pays for my keep and gives me the running of this house, second only to himself and his nephew."

The second was that she had once seen Fanny's brother William, had dined briefly at the same table as him, admiring his bearing and good manners, and thought him, as was the general opinion, she was sure, a very fine young man, but had never spoken even two words to him.

"You look very like him – your brother, I mean," the woman told her; "your eyes are the same, light and gentle."

Fanny couldn't help but be pleased – truly flattered – by the favourable comparison and – from this moment, regardless of her growing apprehensions – considered the woman as rather a benefactress as opposed to a gaoler.

Still, she could not comprehend why she must be locked in the room – she had not been well enough to rise and try the door again, but she had indeed heard the click of the lock when the woman left her, more than once, and she wondered.

"It is not to keep you from leaving," she said. "You mustn't imagine such a dreadful thing – you are a guest here – but the Admiral – that is my friend, who has taken you in for your brother William's sake – has other guests at the moment, as well, some far less nice than yourself, and was frightened one of them might come into this room and trouble you." She grimaced. "You must allow, even in your illness, you are very pretty. Such prettiness might prove, for some in this house, too much temptation.

"You might be taken advantage of. It would be unsafe for you, in your present state, if certain men could simply slip in and out of this room at will, if you take my meaning."

There was a certain something about all this which rang off bells of remembrance in Fanny's head, but she could not hold to it.

When the woman had said Admiral – and William – she was certain she had found the connection at last, and she felt very stupid when her addled mind refused, even then, to put together the final pieces of the puzzle.

She knew the answer stared her directly in the face, that she had got enough information at last to work it all out, to understand her situation, and yet...

And yet...

Tom had not recollected Bingley's London residence as having been so dull and insipid as he found it upon settling back in; indeed, he remembered it being rather a pleasing sort of place.

But then, that had been with Fanny.

Without her, and without the loud and distracting nature of the Wickhams to offset his increasing discontent, it was remarkably easy to find fault with every room and inexcusable forwardness in every servant's manner towards him (in most cases simply for their having had the nerve – the utter nerve – to wish him a good morning or a pleasant evening – as if they had any right at all to dictate to him what sort of day he ought to be having), to judge Bingley – though he knew it was most unjust – as the least accommodating gentleman of his acquaintance.

Tom found fault, for the first time, with his friend's wife, as well.

Was Mrs. Bingley always so damned quiet? How could she bear to simply sit there in silence, hour after hour, keeping placidly at her embroidery save only for a rare moment or two when she might glance up with a little smile for Mr. Bingley before returning – with full intensity – to her former occupation?

Had Fanny been there, of course, she would have been no more lively than Mrs. Bingley, both women sharing a quieter nature, neither being like himself or Lydia, neither inclined to make the drawing-room anything like a den of spirited conversation, and Tom knew this, and took his full awareness of this as decided proof he was not pining for the wife he had left behind him.

But, of course, he was.

No one had ever pined for their absent lover so thoroughly, so pitifully, as Tom Bertram as he sat (lounged, more like), languid and Friday-faced, on the sofa between Mr. and Mrs. Bingley.

He was not the least bit angry with Bingley for being a neglectful friend – Charles never had neglected him a day in his life – but rather he was almost blindingly jealous of him for still having Jane and her tranquil, kind smiles when he himself no longer had Fanny.

It was when the woman caring for her absently remarked, one day, she was exceedingly pleased to find she liked her – she had not known for a certain she would like her, had privately doubted she might more than a little, despite having liked William, on the basis it was well known she was Miss Crawford's particular friend and, to tell the truth, she had never got on with her – Fanny finally understood where she was.

Her host – the gentleman whose house she was in – was none other than Admiral Crawford, Henry Crawford's uncle. Her nurse and new friend was the very same mistress that Admiral had installed here so long ago whose presence made it impossible for Mary Crawford to continue living on with them in London; she was the reason Mary had gone to the Grants.

"Why," cried Fanny, in more wonder than outright alarm (alarm would come a little later, when she was to discover exactly whose room it was she had been locked into every night), "then I am obliged to Admiral Crawford" – the same admiral who, while he must be despised for the poor moral conduct of the charges brought up under his roof, for his own lack of morals and good company, must also be loved and respected for securing William's commission – "for taking me in. Please, ma'am, am I in Admiral Crawford's house?"

The woman assured her she was.

"Can you not tell me how I came to be here?" Did Sir Thomas know she was in this house? Surely, he wouldn't have left her with Admiral Crawford in order to go on searching for Tom and Julia by himself! She was sure he wouldn't think it appropriate.

But, then, what had happened to him?

All Admiral Crawford's mistress could tell her was the Admiral had brought her in – lifting her from the carriage in his arms – and carried her to this room himself and immediately charged her with looking after her until she was well again.

"I know only, whenever he discovered you, he recognised you at once, despite never seeing you before – because he saw a likeness to William in you – and would not leave you to suffer.

"He said when you were recovered enough, when you were not so weak as you still are, and the other guests had gone, you might join us for dinner some night in the dining-room, but I know nothing of his plans for you beyond that."

So there was nothing for it but to keep waiting, to keep trying to get better, to endure Admiral Crawford's mistress fussing over her, and to try her best not to think what manner of ill-bred characters might be beyond the locked door when she left her each night.

She had recovered well enough to sit up frequently, though not enough to leave the bed and walk about, and was resting against a pile of pillows with her head lolling back and her eyes closed, when she heard the key turning in the lock.

It never occurred to Fanny it would – nor even that it could – be anyone but Admiral Crawford's mistress.

That woman was the only person she had met in this house as of yet, and she expected to meet nobody else until the (admittedly very long in coming) day she was to be judged well enough to leave this room and come downstairs and dine with her host (she hoped, well before then, she might successfully persuade the mistress to bring her paper and writing materials so she could write Sir Thomas, though she did not know where she must send these missives).

It never entered her head there might be more than one key, and the other key might belong to the usual occupant of this room, whoever they were.

She didn't even open her eyes as the door opened, and so did not perceive Henry Crawford walk in – in fairness, fully as ignorant, upon entry, of her presence in his room as she herself was – and casually sink into a chair in order to begin pulling off his shoes and stockings.

His absent whistle – clearly not the feminine humming of Admiral Crawford's mistress – was what gave away him away, and Fanny – her head lifting and her eyes flying open, mouth gaping in shock, as she cried, "Oh!" shrank back into her little tower of pillows in horror.

Henry's brow furrowed; he bent forward at the waist and craned his neck. "Who's there?"

Fanny could not answer for trembling.

One shoe and its companion stocking removed, his other foot still completely shod, he waddled over to the bed in what might have been a comedic goose-step under different circumstances.

He was delighted to discover Fanny there – it was only too bad the feeling was not mutual.

She was spared a little, for the Admiral's mistress did come in but a moment later – frightened at finding the door ajar and fearing the worst – and rush over to reassure (and defend, if need be) Fanny Bertram.

It came all came out, then – Mr. Crawford had come to the house as he was accustomed to do, without need of informing anybody beforehand, found his uncle out, and subsequently let himself in thinking to change his clothes and join the present parties for tea and cards after.

No one had told him his room was let to an ill person, let alone to Fanny.

"But now I know she is here, and in need of rest," he declared brightly, standing erect with his hands behind his back and a beaming, toothy smile upon his face, "I relinquish the room to her usage entirely of my own free will. You needn't fear my bursting in upon you again, Mrs. Bertram."

But Fanny did fear exactly that. He still had a key, and she was presently helpless. It was also he who had, though she knew she could not blame him for own foolish actions, persuaded her to look at Tom – he who had gifted her the wretched tinderbox. As well as he who played cicisbeo to Maria. She could not relish his company. Particularly in a situation where she was this utterly powerless – where the merciful avoidance must be afforded to her only by him, on a whim.

"Oh, no," she tried, croaking up at him weakly; "indeed, Mr. Crawford, you must take your room back and I shall go somewhere else." She attempted to stand and fell forward so quickly she would have struck her face against an ivy-tendrilled bedpost if the Admiral's mistress had not caught her and thus prevented the accident. "Pray, let me go somewhere else – let me occupy another room."

But there was no other room – Henry was resolved to share with one of his uncle's friends, and was pleased to do so, but this was hardly a reasonable sacrifice Fanny herself could make in an effort to be both polite and free of him in one move.

Somewhat to Fanny's surprise, Mr. Crawford did keep to his word and, though she was often in a suspense of the eventuality which was almost as bad as suffering from the action itself, refrained from using his key to enter the room and pay her unwanted visits.

At least, for a while; she didn't see him again until her first dinner with the Admiral, where he too was at the table, on his uncle's left.

By then, of course, the practice of locking her in at night perhaps ought to have been left off, since most of the Admiral's less reputable guests had gone, but now the habit seemed to have been gotten into by all involved and nobody talked any longer about leaving it off.

This gave Fanny a feeling of being a canary in a cage, like she was some manner of present the Admiral had brought home for his nephew and she must be secured inside at all times lest she fly away.

But she felt guilty for such feelings, which she supposed to be unworthy – she was of two minds about the Admiral, even if she was generally of only one about Henry Crawford himself.

On the one hand, it could scarcely have been more obvious this was the man who'd raised the gentleman who'd so often been her greatest source of anxiety and vexation – excepting her aunt Norris, if anyone – and she could not like him for his principles any better than she liked his nephew.

Further, although more gentlemanly than her own father, he was brasher and less refined than his protégé, and his manner could sometimes wound one as high-strung as Fanny.

She might have thought him reputable, at least, if he kept a wife instead of a mistress – she was not of Miss Crawford's mind, for she liked the woman for herself and had never known the late Mrs. Crawford in order to feel jealousy for her sake, but she felt keenly he ought to have married her, that if he were a good man he would have done so.

Yet, on the other hand, while still ignorant of the particulars, she knew she owed her recovering health to this man's discovering her while she was so very ill and taking her in, as well as that she owed him for his kindnesses towards William.

She prayed each night to be preserved from feeling ingratitude towards this family brought on by old prejudices.

Henry himself behaved very well throughout the dinner, and even had grace enough to look at her no more often than he needed to, sparing her some mortification.

It was enough to convince her at last his uncle did not know – had not been told by him, at any rate – he had once been amorous towards her, desirous of marriage.

Fanny was almost at her ease about him when, the next day, he broke faith with her by using the key to come in unbidden and – apparently without the slightest thought to the propriety of his actions – sat upon the foot of the bed and grinned broadly at her, holding a piece of folded paper in his hand.

She turned white when he addressed her as, "Dearest Fanny!" rather than as Mrs. Bertram and confessed he had been unable to resist coming to her at once with his news which he knew must make her very happy indeed.

"I have discovered the whereabouts of your daughters."

Colour rushed to Fanny's face afresh. "What?" She shook her head, unable to take this in. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Crawford – what?"

He placed his hand – the one not holding the folded paper – over one of hers and patted it. She felt uneasy and wished he had not touched her – wished he would never touch her – but did not pull away.

"I hoped it would not be too great a shock for you, having been so unwell, but as soon as I was certain, I could no longer hold it in – I have discovered where Tom Bertram has established your daughters." His dark eyes sparkled. "They are here in London, Fanny – quite close."

She stared, unblinking, into his face, expressionless as one in a trance. His words made no sense. Surely if her babies – girls of about three years by now – were so close, she would know it. They couldn't be in town – they must be with some other family in some shire somewhere – perhaps this was some ghastly trick.

If it were indeed a trick, it was a painfully cruel one, the manner of prank she'd hitherto thought even the Crawfords above playing upon a heartsick woman.

"I swear to you, most faithfully, I have found them out and am not mistaken – they are in the home of a saddler," Henry told her eagerly. "Apparently, Mr. Bertram's old Nanny is cousin to this man and the arrangements were made through her. They have been here at least two years and – as I have also discovered – are set, in another, to be moved out of London and into a school for girls in Surrey." He handed her the paper in his hand. "There is the address of the saddler, and – below it – the address of the school – it is in a village by the name of Highbury – in case they are sent away earlier than expected and you miss your chance to see them in town."

Eyes blurred by tears, Fanny nonetheless succeeded in reading the addresses on the paper – the saddler's was indeed, if her guess about the Admiral's location was correct, as close as Henry promised.

She nearly forgot herself – she certainly forgot she was in her dressing-gown – and, overjoyed as it sank in this was real, bent forward at the waist and threw her arms around Mr. Crawford's neck and thanked him brokenly for his goodness in finding her girls; if he had been almost any other man alive, she would have kissed him.

"This was so generous," she murmured, pulling away, her face warm; "I hadn't any notion you were even making enquiries about them."

"I have been seeking them for a while, ever since our last conversation in the carriage," Henry explained, looking pleased – and well he might, after the voluntary embrace he had gained from one as standoffish as she. "I should have told you as much – you scarcely can know how I longed, how I ached, so many times to have Mary write you with my progress and lifted my pen to write to her and ask her to do precisely that" – oh, the irony of how much gladder Fanny should have been of a letter with such tidings as those, false hopes or not, than the one she'd actually received from Miss Crawford while at Mansfield Parsonage! – "but I feared giving you false hope if I was unable to locate them."

"I am obliged to you, sir," said Fanny, clutching the paper tightly within her clenched fist as if she were afraid of its being taken away. "Infinitely obliged."

"Pshaw." But he smiled knowingly, showing he was – in reality – perfectly aware of the magnitude of what he had done for her. "I only hope it will be – rather than the shock I feared – inducement for you to recover more quickly. You will wish to go to them, and I believe you shall, as soon as you have reached a level of wellness even my uncle cannot deny – for William's sake, you'll have to be fairly glowing before he'll let you leave us, I am sure – I doubt he would credit me if I asserted paleness and gravity to be parts of your natural countenance. You must allow for the fact he is not yet so acquainted with you as I am."

Poor Fanny, awestruck by the offer of regaining her own daughters, would have promised next to anything – she would do all that was in her power, she assured Mr. Crawford, to convince the Admiral of her progress in recovering.

It must be confessed, in her unbounded delight over the girls, Fanny had all but forgotten Tom – it was several hours before she recollected she was in town to seek their father.

And – to her great astonishment, when she thought it over afterwards, once her spinning head had steadied itself and cleared a little – more than once she had been bitterly disappointed when the noise of the key in the lock did not reveal Henry Crawford again that day – with, she had been agitatedly hoping, yet more news of her daughters – but, instead, admitted just a servant or the Admiral's mistress come to check on her.

Still, what she had gained was enough to keep her unspeakably, incandescently happy for ages yet.

She brought the paper to her quivering lips, kissed it tenderly and read the addresses again and again to commit them to memory, murmuring them to herself until she fell asleep and resuming her breathy, rapturous recital the moment she was once more awake to the world.

Her daughters.

Her own darlings, her little Mary and her little Wilhelmine, though she doubted the names she'd chosen at their birth was what they were called now.

For all Henry spoke – when in Fanny's presence – of the possibility of her missing her chance to see her children before they were sent to Highbury, he had no intention of letting such an eventuality come to pass.

He had been making plans of his own, now he found out where Fanny's daughters were, and they did not include the girls being sent off, nor Fanny even needing to leave the Admiral's residence in order to see them.

He hoped to adopt them – to make them his wards – he didn't imagine it should be a very difficult task, given Tom Bertram had never legally claimed them and Everingham was nothing to scoff at as a part-time home for two nameless girls who would have had no better prospect than a simple country school without his kindly intervention.

If he could keep Fanny at his uncle's house, recovering, until his plans had come to pass... He indulged himself with gleeful imaginings of bringing them by their little hands to see their mother, surprising her in her – well, his – room.

If the mere scrap of paper with the address of their current home had moved her to embrace him, there was no telling how much better she should like him when he brought them to her in the flesh and assured her of their being protected and cared for their entire lives.

How she had looked at Tom Bertram while he read Samuel Johnson to her in the library at Mansfield would be as nothing to the look from her Henry was convinced he was to gain when he entered the room, smiling charmingly, with one of her daughters on either side of him.

There had been rumours going about Mr. Bertram's seeking to divorce her, and this should place matters even more securely in his favour.

He had every hope, once she had the girls playing at her side and the promise Henry would love them as if they were his own, of persuading her, too, to accompany him and his wards – she would hardly wish to be parted from them and he must tie himself securely to that unfailing love until her feelings were as much for himself as for her children – to Norfolk.

He hoped to marry her – he still wanted no other wife but Fanny – but if legalities prevented it, if Tom never succeeded in properly divorcing her – she should nonetheless have all the benefits due to the mistress of Everingham (the servants would be given orders to mind her if they cared for their positions in his house), and he hoped she would someday give him a son he could subsequently leave Everingham to, a son who'd be obliged to look out for the interests of Fanny's girls when he was gone.

Indeed, people might well come to suppose he was their father, too, in time; who was to say there was anything very much of Tom Bertram in them, anything which could not be accounted to Fanny's own complexion?

So, it was with hope and satisfaction, infinitely increasing, Henry watched Fanny recover bit by bit from her previous illness and sweetly engage, whenever she was brought downstairs to dine, with his uncle.

He was thinking, all the while, he would have gained her at last, and this when he had thought long ago he must have lost her – her, the woman he rationally as well as passionately loved – for good.

Of course, all was not smooth sailing – the saddler was making a good deal of trouble he had not foreseen; he vowed he wasn't going to hand over the little charges left in his care to some puny, money-laden gentleman who claimed to know their mother, even seemingly hinted he was their father, just for the asking. He was under orders to send the girls to school when they were big enough and that was all he intended to do. He was a simple man and Crawford had better take it up with the school once they were off his own hands and his sworn duty, as promised, was completed.

He would, he allowed, if pressed, relinquish the girls to a servant of the Bertrams – if Sally Robins or Roger Smith came for the girls, that should be all right – but Crawford's flimsy connection to the Bertrams was unconvincing to him.

So, Henry's next notion was to pay Robins or Smith, or Nanny herself, to take the girls away from the saddler for him, depositing them at the Admiral's house, but this proved a good deal more difficult than he anticipated – Nanny and Robins were too close to the family, at least they were near enough Lady Bertram he was afraid they should reveal his plot prematurely, and no one had seen Smith since Tom took off.

It was as if the valet had somehow known he wasn't needed any longer, that his time with the Bertrams must be up, and simply vanished into thin air.

Henry was still considering his next steps, such as they must be, by no means persuaded to give up the scheme, not for the world, when the very last thing he could have wished happened.

Tom Bertram himself turned up at the Admiral's door.

A/N: Reviews Welcome, reply could be delayed.