Snowbear

A Mansfield Park and Pride & Prejudice fanfiction

Chapter Twenty-Two:

It seemed Fanny was never to be fortunate enough to simply enjoy a blessing when she had gained it – in this case, the blessing was her firstborn child, not yet a week old, beautiful and perfect as he could only be, in his undisputed infantile glory, to a besotted mother whose light eyes were filled with decided warmth whenever she gazed down upon him – without something on the fringes going amiss and casting an ill-boding shadow.

The trouble started up around the time they began to talk of having the baby baptized, a thing the church usually required done for the newborn before they had passed two full Sundays in the world and relatively near to the time of their official christening.

Fanny – and Tom, though he outwardly expressed his want far less vehemently, as if it really mattered very little to him, either way, when in reality he felt quite as strongly about it as his wife – wanted Edmund to do the honours, and since he was a clergyman now, there ought to have been no objection, but it was – apparently – something of a snub, brother or no, to make a point of going to Thornton Lacey for a clergyman to baptize the infant, to go so far as to attend a 'foreign parish' on Sunday for this purpose, when – naturally – Dr. Grant in Mansfield had expected to be asked.

Somehow or other, rather than strictly blame either Tom or Fanny for this slight, the doctor had got it in his head Mrs. Norris had spoken against him – perhaps on account of a long-standing quarrel between them, beginning with their sharp difference about the apricot tree outside the parsonage he yet held was not a Moor Park – not quite understanding how indifferent Mrs. Norris felt towards a child that was as much Fanny's as it was Tom's and certainly looked it.

Mrs. Grant, ever the peacemaker in that quarter, did her best to soothe, to smooth over, but she herself was stung – deep down she could not help resenting Fanny for first rejecting her brother and then not supposing her husband good enough to baptize her child.

If Fanny had married Henry, if the child in question were her own half-nephew, Mrs. Grant might have forgiven her choosing Edmund over Dr. Grant (she had no delusions about Mrs. Norris being the culprit) but as matters stood any previously held fondness for Fanny was rapidly cooling off in her heart.

Fanny hated to wound anyone, and she almost – in spite of it being her heart's wish for Edmund to do the honours – gave in and would have seen about sending someone to ask Dr. Grant after all, but she stopped herself at the last moment – likely, it was the mortification of asking and their not being mollified, perhaps thinking being asked second greater rudeness than not being asked at all, which steadied her will.

But no sooner was it all arranged, and one felt one might at last begin to go about one's business again without injuring anybody, than a letter arrived for Sir Thomas from none other than Mr. Rushworth. He bitterly regretted to tell him Julia (who he made certain to describe as 'sister to my most beloved wife, Maria', as if Sir Thomas would not know which person he meant if he failed to add this clarifying aside) had quit his roof in the company of John Yates, and they were not at all certain where 'dear Miss Bertram' was gone with that 'shady Yates character'.

An elopement was assumed – and feared – and Tom took it rather to heart when he – arriving at the house in the evening after his transformation back into a man – was handed the letter by his silent father, who quit the room immediately after doing so, because he had introduced Yates into their circle, and if Julia had foolishly accepted his attentions and run off with the stupid fellow, it was at least partly his doing.

"But, you know," Tom attempted to defend himself to Fanny that night, rather sheepishly, while they sat in the nursery watching their baby sleep, "Yates is not so very bad. He is not the brightest of my companions, but I didn't pick him out for his wit, and I don't suppose my sister would have married him for it, either. He's better for Julia than Crawford would have been and no mistake." He sighed and rested his chin languidly upon Fanny's shoulder. "I daresay my father shan't forgive me, though."

However, a most surprising thing happened – Julia and Mr. Yates arrived within the boundaries of Mansfield Park a day later, unmarried, and claiming to have only left Wimpole Street in order to come and see Tom's new baby – they'd had great hopes, they said, of arriving in time to see it baptized – and had not been travelling together, exactly, at least not by design, only happening – by chance rather than set plans – to have quit London and taken the same way – by the mail – to Northamptonshire.

A wheel had been lost and caused delay, but they both insisted nothing untoward had occurred between them.

Mr. Rushworth was mistaken.

Julia spoke very prettily, but only Mrs. Norris took her part without reserve, although she did lament – until everyone was tired of hearing her speak of it – Maria had not come as well.

To the ears of the others (even the usually accepting and docile Lady Bertram), it did seem very odd indeed Julia should have had no interest in attending Tom's wedding, or in seeking Mary's society afresh after Edmund married her, yet would come, so suddenly, without sending word again, all this way to see her new little nephew baptized – it smacked unmistakably, to anyone discerning, of a botched elopement and of haphazard contrivance to cover up an error in judgement.

The trouble was Mr. Yates was too willing for Sir Thomas' liking to make it all well again, whatever the truth was regarding their exodus from London, and if he pressed the matter, the gentleman was visibly on the point of suggesting he marry Julia – if such an action was needed to save her reputation – at the earliest convenience and, as he was not the son the baronet wanted, he had to let the matter rest or risk an offer being made in such a way as to induce Julia to feel obliged to accept it.

When she discovered herself to be quite safe, for the time being, from Yates, and – albeit begrudgingly and with distrust – more or less forgiven for her folly in leaving London unannounced, Julia's mind had leave to regard what she could only judge to be a brand-new marvel.

"Fanny!" she exclaimed, catching her cousin alone in a hallway before breakfast the following morning and taking her arm. "Whatever have you done to my brother?"

Fanny murmured she hadn't any idea what Julia meant.

"Tom is so different, now he's married you!" she went on earnestly, amazed Fanny herself had not seen it. "I used to think he was always having some joke at my expense when he looked at me – and you can't have forgotten how dreadful he was to me about the play, when he didn't want me for Amelia? But I find him so changed! Last evening, he was so extremely amiable – if he were sombre and a bit darker, and the fire a trifle lower, I might have mistaken him for Edmund!"

"It wasn't my doing, if he's any different," said Fanny, her colour heightened, nonetheless. "I think it must be his becoming a father."

Julia fought back a disbelieving snort. "Did you fail to notice how he turned his head to gauge your reaction almost every time he spoke to me? He's besotted with you, Fanny – he wants to please you rather than tease you – and it has altered his manner towards everybody else into the bargain."

They had come down the stairs and reached the breakfast-room.

Julia, in a lower voice, hastily added, "I confess, as I know you wouldn't tell my father if I asked you not to, there was a reason – a rather unpleasant reason, entirely separate from wishing to meet my little nephew – I was so keen to quit town and come here. And it wasn't any great passion for Mr. Yates, any desire to run off with him, you know."

It must have been something most dire indeed, to drive Julia all the way to Northamptonshire, when she might – if she merely needed a break from Maria's company, if the sisters had simply quarrelled – have gone to her cousins in Bloomsbury (these were Sir Thomas' relations and virtual strangers to Fanny, owing to natural distance and also because of her connection to the Bertram family prior to marrying Tom having been through the Wards, via her aunt's marriage; they had never wanted anything to do with her, but they were fond of Julia and Maria).

What could have driven her to risk scandal, and to return to a home she despised?

But Julia seemed to have no intention of elaborating – at least not here, standing before the open door to the breakfast-room. "I thought there should be no one at home I might risk telling the truth to, but with Tom so changed..." And she trailed off, shaking her head.

She did tell it to Tom, that very night, when he returned from Mansfield Wood, and he – coming into their sitting room with a severe pout – ordered Smith out and confided in Fanny.

"Oh, mousy, you would never guess," he told her, dropping wearily into the chair across from hers. "It is so much worse than my father supposes – and it is not Julia's folly, after all, but Maria's."

"Maria's?" echoed Fanny, astonished.

Tom gnawed on his bottom lip for a moment. Then, "Crawford is in London at present. He has been there for some time."

The two sentences seemed entirely unconnected – Fanny furrowed her brow.

"Fanny," Tom pressed. "Think about what I just said. It will come to you."

"But you cannot mean–" she began, realisation slowly dawning.

"Oh, yes, I can."

"Maria wouldn't." But her attempt at making a defence for her cousin was weak, undeniably feeble.

"Wouldn't she?"

"Mr. Rushworth," she tried.

"Did that stop her during Lovers' Vows?"

No, it hadn't, to be sure – nor, even, had the fact she and Mr. Crawford were cast as mother and son rather than the titular lovers. "She was not married then."

Tom shrugged one shoulder.

"And... And did Julia discover them?"

He nodded grimly. "She came upon them – in exactly what state I don't know, as she was reluctant to share that detail with me as her brother, which says quite enough in and of itself – at least twice by her own account."

Fanny swallowed. "Mercy."

"Julia has been greatly distressed – apparently Maria has been threatening her, and Crawford bribing her, quite lavishly, in an effort to gain her silence on the matter." He sighed. "Lord, I wish it was as simple as her having run off with Yates for a lark."

"Goodness. Does Mr. Yates know? Has Julia told him?"

"No, but he sees she's unhappy and he suspects Crawford has something to do with it – he thinks it's more of the same business we had during the play, of Crawford's snubbing Julia and wounding her feelings. He wouldn't suspect... Such a notion would never enter Yates' head – trust me, I know the man well enough to be aware there are not many notions that would."

"Will you tell your father?"

"I don't see how I can – Julia has sworn me to secrecy, and if I did tell him, Maria and Crawford would both know who told me."

"We must hope they expose themselves, then?" said Fanny, holding her hands in her lap and wringing them uncertainly.

"Not even that." Tom sucked his teeth. "The scandal would–"

Tears shone in her eyes. "What are we to do?"

"The best I can figure," said Tom decidedly, "we must do all which is in our power to make Mansfield agreeable for Julia. If we can avoid her being tempted away because she wishes to flee the evils of a home she finds oppressive, she at least is safe here with us. As for Maria... There, I am lost. I need more time to think."

"Regarding Julia," Fanny said thoughtfully, "ought we to name her godmother to our son? If she felt a duty to him, she might be induced to stay at Mansfield longer and more willingly."

"I baptize thee, Thomas Charles Bertram" – Edmund sprinkled water from the baptismal font upon the baby's brow while it squirmed in Julia's arms – "in the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Ghost–"

"Thomas Charles, eh?" whispered Mr. Yates – who had appointed himself, quite unasked, as a stand in for Tom, who, unable to risk another of the rapidly tallying days of extension to his curse, was in Mansfield Wood – to Mary Bertram, seated at his side in the pew to which he had been hastily shunted off when it was decided there was no real need for him to be standing beside Fanny, grinning over at Julia like an idiot. "Would that be for Bingley, by any chance?"

"I'm given to understand Tom and Fanny have named him godfather along with Edmund," she said, primly leaning away from him and trying to focus on the event at hand.

"Thomas John should have sounded just as well," he muttered. "I daresay I am just as much Tom's particular friend as Bingley."

Sucking in her lips, eyes bulging out most unbecomingly, Mary had to lower her head, as if in silent prayer, but really stifling an uncharacteristic desire to laugh despite being in church.

It did little good, for all it was a valiant effort. She was obliged to draw from her reticule an elaborate fan (a gift from Kitty, whose tastes ran much more extravagant) and flutter it awkwardly until her cheeks cooled and she could once again control the expression upon her flaming face.

And, even so, she had to spend several minutes after this pretending to wipe her spectacles with her handkerchief before she could be quite certain of her self-possession.

"Bingley couldn't even be bothered to turn up."

She drew Kitty's fan out for a second time.

In the row behind Yates, an affronted older woman began to thump and thwack the back of his seat with the thick, cracked spine of her battered prayerbook and to shush him at rather an ironic volume.

Julia – attempting to ignore the carrying voices from the pews – kept her expression sombre as she placed the newly baptized baby into Fanny's waiting arms.

Tom began to suffer from nightmares – it ought to have been Fanny, as she was the more intuitive, and these were the sort of ill-boding dreams which foreshadow what is to come, but it was his curse, and therefore his dreams.

He woke drenched in the sheen of an icy sweat, jolting the mattress and startling Fanny awake beside him.

They got up together and rushed to the nursery – he unshakably certain something terrible had happened to his son – only to find him sound asleep in his cradle without the slightest sign of disturbance to trouble the baby or anybody else.

This panicked dash across long hallways and directly to little Thomas Charles' side occurred three nights in succession, after increasingly fierce dreams, and only once did they arrive to discover a sinister-looking figure bent over the cradle prepared to lift their baby from it – a figure which proved to be, much to Tom's relief, only Roger Smith.

For Fanny, there was no relief at all in identifying the culprit as 'only Roger Smith'; she'd never trusted her husband's valet; he and his occasionally glowing eyes and often disingenuous, aloof manner frightened her still.

Here, her intuition was ahead of Tom's, but it did little good – his valet entering the nursery before they themselves chanced to reach it was the least of Tom Bertram's worries, as his dreams had shown him the shadow of the witch from Antigua falling over the child.

Of Smith, he never though ill.

Of Smith, he rarely thought anything at all – perhaps by the valet's own, seemingly supernatural, designs.

No amount of anxious whispering and trembling from Fanny would induce Tom to be distrustful of his valet, but, paired with his nightly terrors, her fears did persuade him to have the infant's cradle moved into their own sitting room the following night.

Tom had another dream, and – Fanny panting at his side, stumbling as she tied her dressing-gown unevenly about her middle – they went at once into the sitting room to check on the baby, only this time the cradle was empty.

Forgetting even to make certain Tom had his mask on in her frantic desperation (luckily, he had remembered to replace it), Fanny began lighting any candle within reach and searching every inch of the room; it was as though she imagined whatever had snatched away her baby might have left him under a chair or behind the curtains.

Tom didn't look anywhere – his hollow gaze behind the slits of his mask was wholly unseeing – simply sinking into the first chair Fanny had bent to look underneath and bringing a hand to his face.

When she'd peered into every corner and called out with a hoarse voice, Fanny turned and looked at him. "You know Mansfield Wood best – you could take a lantern and search–"

"He won't be in the woods, Fanny." His voice was despairing. "Whoever has taken him... This is the curse at work. One of its ugly tentacles. It can't be anything else." Finally rising, he walked across the room and removed the soft bedding from the cradle; then he pointed to the wood underneath. "Does this look familiar to you?"

In the candlelight, Fanny squinted, and saw the wood, no longer recently re-varnished and finely glossy, had taken on a dark colour – the colour, perhaps of a bruise or a burn.

She had seen this colour before. On Tom's neck when he'd used William's cross to remain a human when the curse required him to be a bear.

"He's half mine" – Tom shivered violently – "I ought to have guessed the curse had some degree of power over him, even if it had none over you." He gulped, recollecting Edmund had imagined this – or something like this – was indeed possible.

We don't know how the curse affects any children of yours.

Tears began streaming down Fanny's face as the full horror of the situation sank in. "Is he all right? Whatever's taken him won't hurt him, will it?" she choked out. "Can we not get him back somehow?"

"I don't know." His voice had gone hoarse, making his words nearly unintelligible. "Lord help us, I haven't the slightest notion."

Just to be certain there was not the slightest chance Thomas Charles Bertram had been kidnapped by human hands and not by some dreadful extension of his son's curse, Sir Thomas had every inch of the park turned upside down in vain hope of recovering his grandson – that is, of course, with the exception of Mansfield Wood, as the baronet was too afraid of any search parties coming across Tom lumbering about the trees in his bear form and doing him, in his present vulnerable state, some evil.

There was no trace of the lost infant, and this was in itself enough to break Fanny's heart a thousand times over; letters of condolence from the Grants (who meant well, but whose words of comfort were painfully generic and forced, and were probably copied by Mrs. Grant's hand and under Dr. Grant's direction from some book of vaguely religious quotes, mostly concerning infant deaths) and suspicious glares from her aunt Norris (Mrs. Norris was as convinced Fanny had contrived to misplace her own child as Fanny herself was convinced – though she hadn't any proof – Roger Smith had had something to do with the tragedy) made it unbearable.

(Julia defended her against the worst accusations, a loyal enough godmother, and unwaveringly positive Fanny would never have done the sort of wrong which seemed to be implied, but she hadn't anything like the influence upon their aunt Maria had wielded, and, if anything, she was only judged by the jaded woman to be a second traitor to her past kindnesses, every bit as bad as Tom.)

Screwing her courage, Fanny – while Tom was in the woods – approached Smith on her own, finding him clearing away a scattered collection of newspapers from around Tom's chair in the sitting room, and – hands pressed together – pleaded with him, if he did know something, to let her have her poor Thomas Charles back again.

That he did not deny it or look at her askance with an eyebrow raised as though she were mad to suggest he could be involved only made her aching heart that much heavier. She had guessed correctly, she'd known, and yet it mattered not.

With a glance over his shoulder, as if to make completely certain they were alone, Smith simply said, "This thing was not done to harm you. Try to understand."

No amount of pleading could make him explain himself, or even repeat himself, so that she might be sure, exactly, of what he had said, and Fanny was left utterly helpless.

"I will give you anything," she tried; "please just tell me how I am to get him back."

"There's nothing you can give me, and it would you do no great good if there was." And then he would say nothing else but went on in silence with his daily tasks.

Fanny let out one wretched, strangled cry before collapsing beside the empty cradle – still situated in the sitting room, not yet returned to the empty nursery – sobbing afresh.

It was a deeply unhappy time for the couple – even between themselves they could take no comfort over the loss of their child.

Tom imagined Fanny blamed him – because he blamed himself – and became colder towards her as a result, and Fanny – who could not thrive without, if not someone to love her, than at least someone who could accept what love she might give them – felt his alienation, his lack of warmth or even of anything kind to say, keenly.

It was Edmund who – on a visit from Thornton Lacey – saw how it was between them, asked his father (who had, in his own misery over the loss, only nominally noticed the growing coolness between the pair) about it, and then – in confiding in them both separately – gently encouraged them to speak to one another again.

Fanny was meekly compliant; she would speak to Tom, if he would speak to her – and gladly.

She missed him.

But Tom himself did not think he could bear it.

"How can I?" he had burst out, everything he'd been holding in since the night his child disappeared suddenly rushing forward, as if a dam inside of him had been broken. "How am I to face her? It's all my fault! It's my curse – my taint – my idiocy! How can I expect her to care anything about me, Edmund, when I know she must – quite rightly, too – despise me after this? I have failed her utterly. She shan't forgive me – I shan't forgive myself."

He'd then placed a hand on his brother's arm. "Can you be certain Fanny doesn't feel much the same?"

"She isn't the cause of this."

"And have you told her that, assured her as ardently as you can of the fact?"

Tom was stricken – his lips parted in shock. Truly, the thought never occurred to him. "Come now. Do be serious. She ought to know it wasn't her doing, damn it! It's my fault, mine! She is not the one who's cursed."

"Tell her so," Edmund urged, giving his arm a firm squeeze.

He did, after a fashion, and the result was a night of them holding one another and crying in the darkness of the drawn canopy – sleeping very little, if at all – but in the morning, although Tom had already gone away to Mansfield Wood by the time she opened her eyes and stumbled out of bed, Fanny felt far less alone than she previously had.

The indefinite grief in her heart was no longer an isolated island cutting her off from the rest of humanity – sharing it with Tom, the only person who could feel it as deeply as herself, was the bridge which finally allowed her, thereafter, to share it with everybody else.

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