Merriment & Wisdom

A Mansfield Park fanfiction

Part Four:

Hopelessness, As We Currently Know It

Fanny herself expressed no wish to dance on the next Assembly Night; she'd only just gotten over a recent complaint which left her dizzied and short on breath, and – more urgently – she was very much afraid of seeing Tom, who, by all accounts, had remained in Portsmouth though he had not made another visit to their home since that last disastrous rainy day.

But Susan longed to be at the dance. She longed to be anywhere that was not their noisy home. The night was too fine, and the misery of being cooped up on a starry, clear night when the temperature was not such as to make walking inadvisable for her elder sister, watching their father spit into the fireplace while their mother bemoaned that she could not yet dismiss Rebecca and angrily picked apart the seams of one of Richard's badly mended breeches, and then vocally lamented the manner in which nobody in the entire household felt the slightest inclination to help the woman who had only given them life, whether or not they cared for their lot in it, too horrible to contemplate. Even the likelihood of finding no suitable partner, of being snubbed by the Portsmouth boys who had already staked out their favourites, and left to sit alone while everyone else joined in the set, should no friendly outsiders be present, was to be considered a far lesser evil in light of the alternative.

Fanny knew this, of course, was perfectly aware of Susan's dread, and when her sister applied to her, making a desperate remark about them possibly going before their mother could start tossing scraps from the workbox their way, insisting they join in on the mending rather than be idle after the dishes were cleared and the washing brought in, she allowed herself to be taken along and her pale countenance used as an excuse.

Betsey cried that she wanted to come, too, and their mother – looking up from her work with the only tender expression she had managed to give to anyone that bitter night – sadly reminded her she wasn't old enough yet.

The girls hastily made their exit while Betsey was still wailing over the perceived unfairness of this and, walking as briskly as they could without exerting Fanny too much, were soon within the walls of the dance hall.

There were in Portsmouth, as there are in all places, a group of local girls who required – in order to feel better about their own less than stellar prospects – a living vessel to unleash their venom upon.

The Prices – being a large, poor family – were not altogether the easy targets for this manner of bullying one might assume; the girls didn't dare press themselves with too much fury upon Susan, who despite her underlying desire to be sweet and good might actually have snapped and clawed out their eyes and ripped out a number of hair ribbons if provoked and not held back in time. Betsey was too small, and made by her mother's indulgence twice as vicious as Susan besides. And the boys were, well, boys. They had not loved Mary much, but she was dead now and – by way of collective conscience – deemed to be something near sainthood by means of her tragic passing.

But Fanny was fair game to them; weak and soft and sensitive and unwilling to fight back, with an air that suggested she thought them below even her justified scorn regardless of whatsoever they might do.

This was, in part, thanks to a circular misunderstanding.

In testing out the waters with Fanny as a potential victim when they were still quite young, they openly snubbed William, whose obvious doting could not escape their notice. For herself (and even Susan, in many instances) Fanny would not raise a hand or spare a cold look, but her cheeks coloured and her eyes narrowed for the sake of that most beloved brother. Fanny believed they snubbed him, not to torment her, but because they misjudged his impeccable good character. So she made no efforts to integrate herself to those girls and, in the time that should have – as years can do – changed her from victim and initiate into one of their own by association, only became more despised to them.

It was to the point where Portsmouth's young persons could be divided up into two sloppy categories, the first being those who – within reason – tolerated Fanny Price, and thus were friends of William on principal, and the second those who loathed her and found her entire person entirely disagreeable, and by extension never spoke to William if it could be avoided.

William himself had attempted to soften the blow between the factions somewhat by giving off the impression that he was ignored by the young ladies because he was a midshipman and as such too lowly in rank to be worth their looking at, not because of any partiality to his misunderstood favourite sister.

But it did very little in the end.

These Portsmouth politics had mattered very little on the last Assembly Night, the one on which Tom had first seen Fanny, because the ringleader of the girls – as well as her two closest companions – had been absent.

The leader herself had been away visiting relatives, one of the companions with her, as a guest, and the last home ill with some stomach complaint or other.

They were all three of them returned now, however, and their little clique surrounding them, and they were disappointed to see a tall, handsome visitor looking only at Fanny.

Fanny who – as was her right as an outcast – currently sat apart from them all, holding Susan's hand in a corner, with little in the way of perspective partners.

Even when they learned the tall, well-looking gentleman was a relation of hers, and might not be looking to dance with her after all, they could not bring themselves leave the matter alone.

The ringleader decided to step out in front of Tom Bertram's line of vision, convinced, as she told the others, that he would – once he got a good look at her – send his friend over to ask her to dance and that would be the end of his attentions – such as they might or might not be – towards Fanny Price.

At first, she appeared to be proved right, for Mr. Yates did approach – smiling sheepishly.

"Excuse me, dreadfully sorry to disturb you, especially with no introductions having been made," he said, pointing over to Tom; "but Mr. Bertram is standing over there, just across the way, and he wishes me to ask you a favour."

She opened a fan and fluttered her eyelashes. "Yes?"

"He asks if you would grant him the pleasure of..."

A cluster of girls leaned in, giggling and whispering.

"...moving yourself a couple feet to the left or else removing your bonnet and taking some of the pins out of your hair – you've got it up rather high and you're blocking his view of the room."

Her mouth dropped open.

Poor John Yates blinked innocently. "Have I said something wrong?" One never knew, in this backwater, what might be thought offensive.

The room was fairly small, and so Susan and Fanny both heard the majority of the exchange. They saw Mr. Yates looking bewildered, and the girls offended, and that alone was enough information to tell them what had occurred even if they had not caught the dialogue in its entirety.

Fanny had – despite herself – to fight against a small smile.

Tom, once he could see the path to where she sat clearly again, unimpeded by oversize bonnets at last, approached and asked if she might care to dance.

"I'd be more than willing to stand up with you," he added casually to the end of his invitation, sniffing a trifle self-importantly.

Her expression went slack, blank. "No, but I thank you, cousin."

Susan was aghast – it was the nearest to spiteful she had ever heard her sister speak. How could this be the same sister who had once reprimanded her for her own, somewhat unwarranted, coldness towards this very gentleman? What had gotten into her? Foolish kiss or no foolish kiss, Fanny's icy stiffness in regards to Tom Bertram was unexpected to all parties presently witnessing it.

"Oh, Fanny" – she let go of her hand and squeezed her arm – "how can you?"

"But, come, hear me out, Fanny," Tom persevered, kneeling before her imploringly. "If you do not agree to dance with me, I will not dance tonight with anyone else – for them I'm tired to death, how they keep it up so long my weary mind cannot conceive.

"You can clearly see there's nobody else suitable in this whole damnable room.

"Yates will think himself in no need of joining in if I'm not going to – and he will not feel inclined to ask your sister to dance so that we can all be merry together for the next set – and then we will all be very unhappy together, watching everybody else have fun.

"Why should you deny four beautiful young people as ourselves such easy felicity? Is it not badly done?" He reached for her hand, which she was not quick enough to pull away, lacing his fingers through hers in a smooth, intimate motion. "Can you not stand up with me for a bit? When do I ask anything of you? Come, don't resist any longer, or the dance will be over."

She nodded grimly, not meeting his eyes. "If Susan really wishes to dance – and I think she does – I'll oblige."

She looked, as he guided her towards end of the line, pallid and grave, like she was being led to a scaffold, not to a dance.

Whenever they came near to each other during the dancing, they could manage a short, clipped parody of a conversation.

On Tom's part, as he joined hands with her, he was able to ask why she was so vexed with him before they pulled away and must spin behind another pair of partners before meeting in the middle again.

She, displaying her prettiest manners, at first tried to deny her vexation, even nearly convincing herself she was only tired from the walk to the dance hall, that he had not wounded her so severely, not really, but finally admitted – when he would not give the matter up for anything – he had embarrassed her when they'd seen each other last.

"I meant nothing by it," he assured her.

That was precisely what distressed her, the fact that she did not think he meant anything by anything ever, that nothing which happened here should be more than passing amusement to him, but she could not bring herself to say so – she was frightened of crying again, and in front of such persons as would never allow her to hear the end of it, for the girls who had been dismissed by Tom earlier were watching her like jealous hawks now.

"I forgive you, then – let us say no more of it," she managed, and sped away from him as soon as there was a break in the music.

To Susan, Tom sighed, rather dejectedly, "Yes, I quite see it now."

"See what?"

"How bothersome alike you both are – I had not realised it, but I suppose sisters generally are, even if my own are not – Fanny cuts me dead now the way you tried to once before."

Now Susan was cross with him as well, for the unjust comparison, as she took it to be a great disfavour, wickedly pinning her own poor temper onto that of a distressed sister whose general demeanour she considered saintly by true comparison, if weighed fairly. And, she reasoned privately, if Tom could not see that, could not see Fanny was hurt, and could not feel wretched over himself being the cause of that hurt, he was a greater fool than thirty dull Portsmouth boys combined.

"Fanny's behaviour towards you," Susan defended, stomping after him across the room, cheeks heating, "has been all it should. Can as much be said for yours, Mr. Bertram?"

"Are we all finished with dancing, then?" asked Yates, following uncertainly, gesturing behind them with a pointed thumb. "Am I no longer needed to stand up? My feet hurt."

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Yates," Susan said over her shoulder. "We are done."

Tom spun around, his expression tense. "Susan, if you can tell me there is someone else, that my actions since growing close to your family have somehow jeopardized her happiness, I swear – on anything you like – I shall never bother your sister again."

Stunned by his uncharacteristic seriousness, she could only goggle at him helplessly. "I–"

"Is she already spoken for?" Tom asked point-blank. "Or is she only shy?"

"She's shy," hissed Susan, speaking sharply through clenched teeth.

Satisfied, he resolved to celebrate this pleasant news, this extra assurance that he did not have some grimy Portsmouth rival to show himself up against, which would have been deeply humiliating as well as unfairly taken Fanny away from his suit, by getting himself something to drink.


On her way to fetch her coat from the cloak room, so that she might start for home with Susan before their mother noticed they'd – through distraction – remained rather longer than she'd allotted for their absence and said something to their father about it, Fanny discovered Tom in the antechamber slumped across the wooden bench.

She quickly concluded that if he was not actually drunk, then he was near enough to it to appear quite pitiful indeed.

She sat next to him primly, a stiff mirror image of how he'd sat beside her during their first meeting. "Tom?"

"Hmm?" he sighed, glancing up at her from under his eyelashes, smiling when he recognised who it was. "Fanny!"

No, he most certainly was drunk. There could no longer be the slightest doubt about it.

"Can you get back to the inn like this?"

"Like what?" He leaned against her and rested his head on her shoulder. "M'sure I don't know what you mean. M'perfectly all right."

"Where's Mr. Yates? Has he gone and left you behind?"

"How th'ell should I know?" he slurred, blinking blearily. His eyelashes tickled her shoulder. "He said something about his feet hurting – s'all I remember. Was some several minutes back – when we were talking to your sister. Didn't see him after that."

"I'd thought you left already," Fanny told him in an urgent whisper.

"Leave? How can I leave? I don't want to leave without you," he murmured so softly she almost wasn't certain she'd heard correctly. "I can't leave Portsmouth and go back to Mansfield – you're here."

"Tom..."

He was nuzzling her neck, slipping his arms around her waist.

"Which inn are you staying at?" She thought perhaps she and Susan could walk him there and leave him with the innkeeper – they were late as it was, in more trouble than they'd ever been in as likely as not, but he'd stagger right onto the rougher streets, and possibly get himself hurt, if they left him like this, when the dance hall closed doors for the night.

"S'it's the one with the rooms 'n beds and all that sort of 'hing," he told her, most unhelpfully.

Fanny bit down onto her trembling lower lip, trying to think.

His continued nuzzling grew a bit more earnest and he began planting a series of rather forceful kisses on her neck and making barely coherent remarks about what an exceptionally pretty girl she was, occasionally asking in a rhetoric manner if she herself was aware of that exceedingly delightful fact.

Whimpering, she pressed a hand against one of his shoulders and pushed him off her.

He then – after being upright for about one half of a second – promptly fell forward, his head landing heavily in her lap.

"Fanny?" Susan had come looking for her – as well as for her own coat.

"You'll need to help me move him," she said quietly to her sister. "He's too heavy."

Glancing both ways with widened eyes, Susan asked, "Where are we taking him?"

Fanny felt strongly that she ought to take him back to the inn – back to Mr. Yates – but was also very much aware of the impossibility doing so, even with Susan's help, as they might very well get the wrong inn for all their troubles.

Rolling over, head still lolled in her lap, Tom made a low grunting sound.

"Home," Fanny settled at last, shaking her head. "We'll have to take him home with us. Mother will put him somewhere."

"If she's awake," Susan said, coming over and taking one of Tom's arms while Fanny laboured to drape the other over her thin shoulders so she could help balance him. "She might not have waited up – might be waiting for the morning to scold us."

"We're already in a great deal of trouble." She took a staggering step forward, hoping Tom would have enough wits about him not to drag his feet, and not being anywhere near so fortunate as that as – apart from the arm held up by Susan, who yanked him upright as best she could – his full weight nearly landed directly on her back. "This cannot end well."

"We'll put him in with the boys," Susan suggested next; "Father may not even notice."

Perhaps not, but Fanny thought her brothers themselves, even if they were asleep – or near it – when they arrived, certainly would notice another man crammed into their bed – especially one who, as of the moment, smelled most unmistakably like a brewery.


It wasn't until they dragged him down the narrow street and Susan had to let go of his arm to open the door to their house that Tom spoke to either of them again.

Leaning against Fanny and breathing rather heavily, he murmured, "You have the beauty of n'angel, Fanny Price, d'you know that?"

She turned scarlet and looked imploringly to Susan, who – just having gotten the door open with the minimum creaking they could manage – apparently hadn't heard him and shrugged helplessly at Fanny's flushed face before taking Tom's arm again.

"Blast'n bother," she spat suddenly, plainly furious with herself – and Fanny halted in the pitch dark entrance to squint at her sister and ask what was amiss (apart from the obvious, naturally).

"I forgot my coat," Susan moaned. "I didn't go into the cloak room – I was too worried about getting him out."

Tom made a faint smacking noise with his mouth, as if he somehow knew – despite his stupor – he was being referred to in conversation and was trying to make some manner of reply.

Wretched, Fanny mouthed an apology, feeling keenly that she ought to have noticed before now and the loss of the coat was her fault as much as Susan's. Hopefully they could go back and pick it up tomorrow; if nothing prevented them, that was – if their mother was willing to let them out unescorted, or out at all, given the hour they were coming in tonight.

Fanny blanched as the toe of her slipper hit the first step. She hadn't considered the stairs. How were they supposed to – just the two of them – carry Tom up those?

"Mr. Bertram," whispered Susan, into Tom's ear, getting little more than what might only be described as a low giggle by way of acknowledgement for her urgent speech, "you're going to have to step up when we say. Can you do that?"

Fanny nearly answered for him that he most certainly could not, but he actually reached around them for what remained of the weak banister like he was going to try it despite himself.

"Well. This is promising." Susan all but crossed her fingers.

He fell backwards, knocking Fanny – who tried her best to catch him – down and pinning her underneath his bulk so that Susan had to peel them both off the floor while looking anxiously over her shoulder, hoping the noise hadn't woken anyone within – especially not Mr. Price.

"Eh. Perhaps not so promising," she admitted, helping Fanny to her feet. "Are you all right, dear?"

She was sore, but she nodded – nothing sort of actual, visible bleeding would have made her confess to being hurt in this anxious moment.

"Are we up'tairs ye-e-t?" mumbled Tom, hiccuping slightly.

"No, Mr. Bertram," sighed Susan, "we are not."

"Th'shame." And he crumpled, his knees quite having given way, landing on the floor again with an audible thud that made both girls' hearts catch in their throats.

"I must take his feet, you take his shoulders," Fanny said after a long, uncomfortable pause.

"We ought to sort of fold his arms across his chest first, I think, so they don't go flailing every way as we're walking up" – and Susan did her best to accomplish this, then stepped back and let Fanny take his feet before stepping over towards his head to pull him up by the armpits.

When, after much strenuous effort, the girls had managed to manoeuvrer Tom into the boys' room, they found their efforts to tuck him in between Charles and Richard impeded by the presence of a large, snorting pig.

Reaching over Charles, Susan tried to shake her other little brother awake. "Tom?"

"Yes?" came from Tom Bertram, still draped over Fanny, blinking his glassy eyes in her direction.

"No, not you, Mr. Bertram," she sighed. Then, "Tom Price, you wake up at once!"

"What'd you want, Susie?" The boy grunted, rolling over.

"Why, for mercy's sake, is there livestock in the bed?"

"I don't know," he said with pursed lips. "Charlie's t'one as put him there."

"For the love of–" Susan gave the pig a little shove and he snorted and trotted off the mattress, squealing as he stomped over to the other end of the dusty room.

"Is Cousin Tom dead?" asked Tom Price.

"No, of course not," Fanny said reassuringly, just as Susan glanced at their cousin – who currently had fallen face-first at the foot of the mattress, near Richard's feet, and wasn't moving even when Charles kicked him in his sleep – and said, "Possibly."

Coughing, Tom Bertram rolled over and murmured something incoherent about card-tables and, perhaps, dice (it did not seem very probable that he meant mice, though that was how the word came out, sounding a bit more like a slurred M than a D).

"Oh, would you look at that – he's alive," Susan amended, rolling her eyes, and slapping her little brother on the backside. "Now move over and make room for him, all right?"

The pig – glaring from across the room – oinked gutturally and let out a succession of squeals.

Susan narrowed her eyes and glared right back at the animal over her shoulder. "Oi" – she pointed – "nobody asked your opinion."

Fanny smiled at this exchange, a little peace and contentment creeping into her expression, until she heard Richard, awake now as well, say, "He's just like Father, isn't he, our fancy cousin? Father comes home from the dockyard just the same as this," and her smile immediately fell away to nothing, leaving her looking pale and stricken.

"Smells like Father," agreed Tom Price, carelessly, matter-of-fact.

Tears rapidly filling her eyes, Fanny fled through the little adjoining closet and, upon arriving in their own little room, sat down at the edge of the mattress a few inches from a contentedly snoring Betsey.

She put her face in her hands.

"Fanny." Susan was beside her now, an arm around her waist, pulling her close and resting a cheekbone against her sister's hairline. "It can't really be the same thing. You know what boys are, they make everything so black and white."

But poor Fanny could not bring herself to speak. She was miserable and suffering from a malady beyond mere sisterly words, too far out of any earthly comfort's reach; save, perhaps, that which William might have offered, and he was, of course, not there – he was somewhere far off at sea. This was one of those times Susan could not fill his place, could not fully understand her sister's private horrors and fears however badly she wanted to, however she willed herself to.

But there was no help for her exhaustion, her hopelessness. The night was utterly spent and so was Fanny Price.

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