Merriment & Wisdom
A Mansfield Park fanfiction
Part Seven:
Acceptance, Being Resigned To Present Happiness
There wasn't – given the narrowness of the street – a great deal of space outside of the Prices' house in which to hang laundry, but Mrs. Price had managed – not without a great deal of quarrelling with her neighbours in the process – to set up a short washing line nonetheless. She ignored the protests that it was a safety hazard, as – indeed – if her own clumsy, noisy children managed to steer clear of it, it seemed to her other children could do just as well. More frequent were the complaints that it crossed (though, to be sure, if it did, it was only by the length of Mrs. Price's own toe) into the property of another tenant.
Heedless of this – and of numerous threats and of it being cut down mysteriously in the night more than once – Mrs. Price regularly employed the makeshift line to hold any washing which could not be counted upon to dry somewhere within the house. It was not usual for one of her elder daughters to be seen balancing on a rickety stool before the line with a basket of sopping under-things belonging to Mr. Price and a set of wooden pegs.
Those local girls who did not like Fanny – and had been rather affronted at being slighted by Tom Bertram in obvious favour of their sworn nemesis last Assembly Night – saw them going about it, and it was not unheard of for them to stop to see if it was Fanny who was out that day so that they might kick the stool from under her and feign horror at the dreadful accident.
On this particular day, it was Fanny, for Susan was inside trying to break up a fight between Charles and Tom over that poor pig Rebecca had still not managed to get rid of. Rather than take the opportunity for a practical joke, the ringleader, passing her, actually decided to stop and speak – something of an event in and of itself.
Fanny was unabashedly curious despite her disdain. What could she have to say?
"So, your Mr. Bertram is leaving, I hear." She tossed back her head. "Gotten bored with you, I suppose. Can't really blame him, can we? Anyone would."
"I'm afraid I do not understand you." Fanny blinked down at her and wobbled a little on the stool.
She smiled up with a false sweetness. "Why, I've just come from the inn where he's staying" – she named one, matter of factly – "and the innkeeper said Mr. Bertram was packing his things to move out."
"You weren't at the inn," said Fanny, decidedly.
"I was! After I talked to the innkeeper, I even saw him – Mr. Bertram – this was less than a quarter hour ago – with a trunk. That prig Mr. Yates was with him; he had a trunk as well."
And she doubted her own surety. It might be a lie. It probably was a lie. But supposing... Just supposing... Supposing he had tired of waiting for her answer, or – and here she thought with warmth and far more charity – there was some family emergency and he needed to be gone from Portsmouth in a great hurry...? Supposing Mr. Yates – with all good intentions, of course – had convinced his companion to depart for some reason or other?
She ought to be pleased, Fanny knew. Relieved. She need never answer him if he jilted her before they were even betrothed. Her mother should never blame her for not accepting him if it were he who ran off without a word.
But the knowledge that he was going with no goodbye – and she should see him perhaps never again – was an unexpected, unbearable weight. It was as a stone she could not lift and tear away though it hurt dreadfully, though it was crushing her utterly.
Fanny scarcely knew what she was doing as she let the wooden pegs fall from her hand, and allowed a steaming piece of linen (which honestly still looked a bit dirty even after being thoroughly washed) to drop into the ground with a hiss and a splat, and as she alighted from her stool. She spared the smug messenger no thought, hardly even a look, as she began to tear down the street as quickly as she could.
She was nearly run over by both a carriage and a cart respectively, and it wasn't until she'd reached the front of the inn that Fanny realised she was not wearing a bonnet, her hair hanging quite loose, and the front of her dress was damp and closed incorrectly. She must look positively mad – someone might grab her and lock her up in asylum, for going about with so frightful an appearance – but there was no help for it now. Nor was there help for the fact that the air was getting colder and she had no coat or gloves for the walk back, which would no doubt feel much longer than the race here.
Making her way, shaking, through the front door of the inn, a warped wooden sign flapping noisily above her bare head, she breathlessly asked for the innkeeper.
The innkeeper, when brought forth, looked her up and down. She seemed vaguely familiar to him – perhaps he saw the faintest resemblance to Mr. Price from the dockyard in her harried expression – but he seemed to conclude that, while she was almost certainly a local girl, he did not know her and could not say which one personally, nor who her folks were.
She got out, barely, "Mr. Bertram," and despite her clothing not matching the idea in his head, he wondered – aloud – if he'd been wrong to presume her locality after all. Was she was one of Mr. Bertram's relations, possibly a sister? If so, whatever had possessed her to come looking for her brother here, dressed like a poor lieutenant's daughter?
She was one of Tom's relations, of course, but not in the way the innkeeper thought, and she did not know how to answer. She gawked silently, helplessly. She wanted to know if Tom had left yet – if she had missed him – that was all.
But her voice was entirely failing her.
Then, behind her, "Fanny?"
She gasped and spun around. "Tom?" She blurted out the familiar address before she could think about it.
"Good heavens, Fanny – you're so pale – you look like you've just seen a ghost."
"I... I thought... I thought..." And she tried, for all she was worth, to think.
"You know this young lady, Mr. Bertram?"
Tom nodded and waved him away. "For mercy's sake, Fanny! You must be freezing." He took in Fanny's trembling form and how heavily she was panting. "Come on, let me take you upstairs. Warm up in front of the fire with a nice glass of mulled wine, and then you can tell me what's happened."
His hands, folding over her own, were so warm. A fire sounded heavenly. His face was so earnest and comforting, despite the playfulness in the back of his eyes which – she was growing increasingly aware – never did leave them altogether, no matter what was happening.
It would have been the easiest thing in the world to let him lead her to his room.
No.
She shook her head, pulled her hands out of his.
"Fanny," he laughed, some small shred of comprehension dawning on his face, "it's all right – Mr. Yates will be there. We won't be alone."
Poor Tom. He was more of an innocent than Fanny took him for if he really believed another young man's presence in the room absolved them of all impropriety. More likely, he didn't really think it through. He probably never stopped to consider the difference between Mr. Yates being present in his room and, perhaps, Mr. Yates' grandmother being present, for example. To him any other person could be a suitable chaperone.
Fanny found it charming, and rather sweet, but she did so wish he would just stop looking at her pathetically and think. It would take only a moment. He was a smart man – it would come to him if he thought hard for a second or two.
If word got around about one of the Miss Prices going up into a gentleman's room at a local inn, unaccompanied, regardless of what happened within, Fanny would be in serious trouble. A tarnished reputation was only the start of what she'd endure. Mr. Price had – on reading accounts in the paper of other young women behaving wantonly – threatened more than once that if his daughters ever did a thing like that, he'd whip them senseless. Father had never whipped any of his children before, nor struck them – at least not purposefully – with anything harder than his own fist, but Fanny didn't doubt his willingness, not if there was a real scandal.
In truth, if Susan had not spoken up when she did, the morning after Tom spent the night with their brothers, Fanny still hated to think what might have occurred.
And how she'd come running in here... To then go up to Tom's room... Good Lord, how shocking it would seem!
"No." Her voice was a squeak.
"Right then – if you're that worried about it – we'll just pop into the kitchen instead – they've always got a fire going." Tom gripped her sagging shoulders and cheerfully guided her away from the stairs and past a pantry; then he set her before a roaring fire.
She spread her hands over it gratefully.
He rubbed her arms. "I still can't believe you ran all this way looking for me."
She shrugged out of his grasp and inched her shivering body closer to the fire. "It was a misunderstanding."
He raised an eyebrow, and she told him what happened – how she'd thought him leaving Portsmouth.
And, indeed, then, he assured her, it was a misunderstanding, for no such thing had been occurring as his leaving even the inn. Let alone Portsmouth. He and Yates had simply removed themselves from their old room and placed their belongings in a new one with a better view at the innkeeper's own welcome suggestion.
"So you ran from your house to here, in this state, just to say goodbye to me?"
She couldn't deny it. "I'm sorry."
"No, no – you needn't apologise." Tom closed the gap between them. "I'm flattered." His arm slipped around her waist and he gently nudged her so she'd turn and face him. "My poor creepmouse braving the elements just to get one last glimpse of me before I vanished from sight."
"You're making fun of me," Fanny said darkly.
"Oh, only a little." He bent his head forward and pressed his lips to hers.
It was so different from the kiss he'd given her in front of her family, or the drunken sloppy kisses he'd planted on her neck outside the cloak room; this was so gentle and tender. This one felt real. She couldn't help sinking against him and gripping his forearms. She felt as if she were melting.
They broke apart. Fanny breathed shakily. Tom sighed and leaned in again. One of his hands pressed against the small of her back, holding her against him.
He moaned lightly – she felt it rumble through her body so intensely she nearly wondered if she'd been the one to moan and not him after all.
Enveloped in warmth and sweetness, Fanny became too aware of how easy it might be to just let go of everything. To forget the full situation, to think of nothing but what she wanted in this moment. She could reach up and put her arms around his neck. She could part her lips and let Tom's waiting, impatient tongue inside her mouth – it would happen so quickly, and it would be nice, and she would enjoy it...
She pulled back, panting. "Stop. Please don't do this. We mustn't."
Tom blinked rapidly, looking as if he'd been far away and only returned to himself that very moment upon her urging. "God, Fanny – do try to remember I'm only a man. You need to have some mercy on me."
How could she tell him it was mercy that held her back? Mercy for him, because none of this meant she'd made up her mind.
"I'm sorry," she gasped out, unable to look at him. "I need to go home."
Tom looked bemused and frustrated, but he softened at her wretched expression and so took her hand chastely, the very same way he'd have taken one of his sister's hands, and led her back to the Prices' house, assuring her in a airy, cheery undertone that some excuse could be made her for confusion, for her having run off, and that he'd make it if she liked, it really was all right, and to please not cry again.
Before he left her with Susan, who was at the door to meet them, he told Fanny he would be by for a visit tomorrow if she had no objections.
Her heart beat wildly. Of course she must have objections! Of course. Seeing him and not seeing him were equally terrible to her. But she only nodded her consent, for it seemed to matter so little, either way, and let Susan take her upstairs.
The cold became a pounding, icy rain that rattled their bedroom window, and Fanny was awake most of the night, in a daze, listening to it.
Cold and harsh, but clean, like it was wiping the world away – washing away all the harsh edges and grime and leaving something slick and new behind. She wondered if it would turn to snow.
She thought of Tom, and tried to imagine living with him. She mightn't be happy all of the time, but no one was.
She wasn't happy all of the time now.
He'd hurt her, one day. No one so reckless as he could be could make it through life with someone as oversensitive as Fanny knew herself to be without inflicting a serious wound.
The truth was she was afraid of the pain he could cause her. To accept Tom would be like putting a fine crystal bowl into the hands of a clumsy person and hoping they wouldn't drop it. Not that she saw herself as being so valuable as crystal – indeed, she was perhaps not the lowest of the low, but she was pretty near to it. Her self awareness on this matter, prevented from sinking too low from a sort of uppity pride her whole family had always had, was unwavering. She did think herself as breakable as crystal. She wanted to be strong, as it seemed a good character trait to have, but – perhaps due to her physical limitations and her inability to get along without weeping when she felt strong emotion – always felt she'd failed somewhere along the way in that regard.
"Are you still awake?" Susan asked her, rising from her place beside Betsey – who moaned in her sleep and rolled over, making little smacking noises with her mouth – and padding over to her sister.
Fanny nodded, then pressed her forehead against the glass.
"Have you been thinking about Tom?"
"And other things," she lied.
"I wish you'd marry him after all, Fanny."
Reaching up and drawing back, Fanny rubbed out a rough pattern of little interlocked flowers onto the foggy pane with her fingertip, then she breathed on it to make it disappear.
"I don't want to be hurt," Fanny admitted in a hoarse whisper, sniffing. "No one could ever disappoint me so very easily as..."
"Oh, Fanny, I know." Susan put her arm around her. "It's not untrue. If you go ahead and refuse him, you might not be let down by him." She tightened her grasp, squeezing consolingly. "But you won't be loved by him, either. You can't be. Not if you give him up."
The next morning the day was clear, and Fanny awoke late, to her great surprise. The noise of the house had not roused her, and no one had shaken her awake, insisting she get up and help with the daily chores. Perhaps Susan had interceded on her behalf, given the day she'd had yesterday, as well as the long, long night thinking it over afterwards.
The house was not entirely silent, there was still muffled scuffling and the usual noises of things being moved indelicately and small quarrels working themselves out, but it was a lot quieter than usual.
Fanny leaned into a shaft of sunlight coming in from the window and let it warm her face. She'd missed one of the flower patterns she'd drawn when she breathed them away, and this remaining one cast a daisy-shaped shadow onto the floorboard beside the mattress.
She looked at it for a few moments before getting up and hastening to dress.
There was a voice – rising up from downstairs in the same vague manner in which heat rises through thin floors on a muggy day – along with the muffled din, which sounded as if it were reciting or else reading something aloud.
It was indistinct, the words could not be made out, only the general shape of their being spoken in a way that was theatrical rather than conversational.
Dressed and making her way down the stairs, Fanny finally recognised the reader.
Tom.
Her own Tom Bertram.
Even as she entered the room and saw him by the fire, seated in Mr Price's usual chair, holding a battered-looking book, Fanny still couldn't work out what he was reading. (She deduced, after a little consideration, that – as the book came from their own paltry library, and they did not see many books in the house – it must be either the old family Bible or else the worn volume of Milton given to them by poor Mary's godparents, who had been very attentive to the family, back when their goddaughter was still living, and were – through no cruel intent – seldom heard from nowadays.) Seemingly without it being his intention, Mr. Bertram recited so dreadfully quickly as to be unintelligible. She felt sorry for what he must have put his reading tutors through as a boy, and yet she would not have had him be a fine, captivating reader for all the world – for then he wouldn't be himself.
Tom and Charles were sitting on the floor in front of him and Betsey was seated on the arm of the chair so that she might rest her small chin on his shoulder and cling to him like a girl-shaped barnacle, apparently glancing down at the page from time to time with exaggerated interest although she'd not yet learned to read, sincerely believing the alphabet was her greatest enemy.
Straining, trying to make her mind speed up to the level of Tom's bombastic, jittery voice, Fanny began to catch snippets of his speech.
"...Heaven's last best gift, my ever new delight..."
The hurried, almost slurred inflection of his tone, punctuated by a need to pause for breath at awkward intervals, ironically made it sound more like, "Heaven's, a'last" – as could be taken as at last by some ears – "best gift, m'ever new d'light."
Fanny came fully into the room and stationed herself behind her little brothers. Tom glanced up, eyes darting in her direction briefly, the corners of his mouth raised in pleasure.
And in that short locking of their eyes, Fanny suddenly knew. She knew with a certainty that – whatever happened, for their misery or happiness – she would accept him. She would marry Tom Bertram. She knew it as she had never known anything before. She felt as if she were her own future self looking back in time, as if it had already happened and nothing she could say or do now would stop it anyway.
It was meant to be, with so much set against it, and yet... Oh, yes, and yet...
Unable to keep this remarkable revelation to herself, she nodded at him, almost imperceptibly.
For a moment, she believed he had missed it. Then his eyes were on her again, questioning, his mouth still automatically spluttering out the words of John Milton but his mind clearly on Fanny Price and Fanny Price alone.
She nodded, again, and this time – when the tears sprang up – they were happy ones.
"Yes," she mouthed, just so there could be no doubt.
If any gentleman in Portsmouth were happier than Tom Bertram in that hour, when his joy was instantly fixed upon in so small yet so significant a gesture, free even from any fear of a retraction (no one who looked as Fanny did right then could have taken back their acquiescence), there was no record of it.
As for Fanny...
Fanny, who was perfectly aware she had completely trapped herself, that she could never get out, that she had secured herself behind the bars of a cage which, even if it were wrenched opened, she would never bring herself to fly from, as for her...
Well, she was eighteen, and in love with a gentleman who thought her angelically beautiful, and – for the moment – it was enough.
Edmund Bertram, preparing to quit Thornton Lacey, was distressed to receive another letter from his elder brother.
Tom had had so many frivolous letters franked in the past (including one which proved only to have one line: 'Do be a lamb and bring my good riding whip, when next you are in London; I have left it behind me like a proper ninny') that Sir Thomas had cut him off, and most companions whom Tom kept up correspondence with were obliged to pay for his missives upon receiving them.
The last letter Edmund had received spoke of Tom's love for an unnamed woman. Nothing should have been more surprising than Tom's suddenly having a sweetheart, save for the fact that the letter was posted from Portsmouth, a place he refused – to his parents' bewilderment – to quit for reasons which had previously been an alarming mystery to them all.
I cannot tell you, brother, just now, who she is, for I fear I have gotten ahead of myself in writing to you about her at all – she has not accepted me, and I was resolved not to write you until she relents. To seem to be plotting against her wishes, this I cannot suffer. But I will have great need of you if she accepts. Perhaps you can guess why? I will only say that when you do learn her identity, you shall no doubt have a great shock. But, then, she is amiable and so pleasant to look at with due admiration – I cannot even so much as think of an amber cross now without recalling her fine neck and the cross she wears strung upon a ribbon and being quite struck. I tell you, if you can't like her on sight, despite everything, Edmund, then your head is not on right and your opinion is not worth my noticing. Alas, she is shy, and I must wait. I cannot quit my suit prematurely. It would be badly done. After all, she loves me, so what I else can I do? At any rate, I think you will reassure our father I am not dead and that the unpleasant letters burning in the fireplace of my room were indeed respectfully read before being thus discarded? Between ourselves, it was the only warmth I found in the purpose of those missives at all.
Unnerved, and unable to disclose Tom's real errand to their parents, Edmund had decided to attempt to get a fuller view of the situation by writing to Maria.
Was there, he asked, any chance Tom had fallen in love with a girl in London before carrying the romance onto Portsmouth?
Such might confirm, despite the unlikelihood, that his choice was at least a lady – Edmund did not personally care about the status of who his brother might love, of course, so long as she was not connected to any moral scandal, but he knew of several persons who would go to pieces if they heard of Mr. Bertram marrying dramatically beneath himself.
Maria had written back that she did not know Tom fancied anyone in particular, and was Edmund having a go at her? Certainly their brother spoke to nobody while with the Rushworths. Oh, no, but wait, that was not true – not quite – he had conversed with Mary Crawford in front of herself and Julia. (Could that offer any clues?) But it could not be her, because if they were to be attached, if it were really and truly all over with Edmund and Mrs. Crawford and she was looking instead to his brother for the family's title, it should be long done by now, should it not? Certainly nothing could be more unlikely.
No.
Edmund was easy in that regard, he was in no fear of it. A romance with Miss Crawford might account for the mentioned 'shock', but the rest did not add up. Mary was not in Portsmouth, for one thing. And Tom would not write to Edmund hinting of his performing a marriage between his own brother and a former love, for another. He was careless, he was not cruel.
Mary would also not wear a cross on a ribbon. She would have chains. Most ladies who were out in society would be able to afford a simple chain. And that was an unnerving thought for many, many reasons.
"Oh, Tom," Edmund had murmured, setting Maria's letter aside, "what have you been playing at?"
So now there was a new letter, and Edmund fervently hoped it was word of a refusal and his immediate return to Mansfield Park on his own, his spirits humbled but not depleted.
Indeed, though, it was nothing of the sort.
The mystery girl had accepted him – of course she had – and he was over the moon. Now he might at long last tell Edmund who she was and bid him to come to Portsmouth at once and marry them straight away.
This letter will reach you before you are to quit Thornton Lacey, I trust?
Edmund rolled his eyes and read on.
The next few paragraphs fulfilled the younger Mr. Bertram's worst fears and then some. He had managed to find their mother's people, impoverished cousins – who, allegedly, lived in complete and utter squalor, and who had to go about stealing pigs from who knew where because they could afford none of their own – and to pick out a wife from these poor relations. And certainly he had done so to upset their father.
Her name is Frances Price, and she is eighteen years of age. We met in a dance hall and conducted our courtship under the eyes of both her family and Yates. Nothing was done improperly. (You may write and ask John for yourself, if you doubt me.) And I am under no delusions regarding her. There has been no trick or mistake. She could be our mother's own child – the resemblance is most remarkable in some lights! You'd, undoubtedly, know who she was just by looking at her. And, besides, now that Fanny has agreed to be my wife, there can be no further reason to keep her a secret from you. You might think of bringing some small token or bauble as a wedding present for her when you come. I should like you both to shake hands, exchange good will, and make friends quickly, just as fair cousins ought. You will find her pious enough to suit all your scruples – she has the virtue of a saint; alas, there's nothing to be done about it, frustrating as it is. Oh, well. I don't mind – who can mind having what is too good for them? – so long as I don't wake one morning to find she's actually got a halo hidden away somewhere. For myself, I am planning on naming one of my new racing horses in her honour – I shall write soon to tell the jockey and the groom how the new beauty in their stables is to be called Francis. He is a very fine horse with good odds, I am assured.
Edmund grimaced most unhappily; for now he would need to travel to Portsmouth to try and talk his brother out of this folly, and he was positively dreading it.
A/N: Reviews Welcome, replies may be delayed.
