Merriment & Wisdom

A Mansfield Park fanfiction

Part Eighteen:

Commissions & Lessons, For Good or For Ill

"Oi, Lord Byron, how's about gettin' off your fancy arse and clearing a table every once in a while?"

"Mmm, what's that?" Shifting in the corner of the tavern, Tom Bertram glanced up coyly from the sketchbook he was using the last remaining stub of his charcoal to draw in. "D'you need something?" He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his wrist.

"And how, might I ask" – and this was the tall man, now approaching, who had found Tom on the beach, days and days ago, perhaps weeks by now, as it all seemed to blend together so, snorting more sand than tobacco up his nose – "is the new fellow I found for you working out?"

The tavern owner threw up his hands. "Well..." cough, cough. "Let's see, shall we?" He began counting sarcastically on his broad, splayed fingers. "He's lazy – he's indolent – he usually sits around mooning and sighing to himself, getting nothin' done – quite often he pretends as he can't hear us when he doesn't want'a do somethin' – he takes food and drink from the patrons' plates and glasses without askin' – he won't give us his name, so we all are obliged as to nickname him Lord Byron, despite the fact he don't look a bloody thing like him, way I hear it – and sometimes he takes sick in the back room and doesn't clean up after himself."

"Bit of a disappointment, then, eh?"

The tavern owner looked taken aback. "Ye havin' a go at me? Upon my word, he's the best, most dedicated lad who's ever dipped too deep you've yet to drag before me in the name'o charity! Never had a better worker here since my grandfather's time." He winced, then, his expression crumpling. "And that's so depressing, I may have to go off and weep somewhere." He pressed a hand to his left temple and began to walk towards the back room. "Excuse me, mates."

"Oh, what does anything matter?" sighed Tom, blinking languidly and lolling his head back as he ran his smudged fingers along the edge of the sketchbook page. "My hopes are all for naught... What changes in this cruel world if I never rise from this corner? I shan't save enough money to leave this place; I'm never again to see my dearest..."

"I've come with a letter," rang a voice from the tavern's doorway.

Suddenly possessing remarkable perkiness, downright buoyancy of spirit, Tom sprang to his feet. "Is it for me? Give it here."

The man who'd gotten him the job at the tavern rolled his eyes and took the letter gingerly between his fingers. "It's mine – from my solicitor in London – not everything is about you."

Yates, thought Tom, sinking back dejectedly, come and fetch me already, damn you!

The – rather well-looking – man who'd brought the letter in studied Tom and his still-open sketchbook for a moment. "What have you drawn here?" His brow lifted and he reached for it. "May I?"

Tom shrugged.

"You've drawn an exquisite pair of hands here," he remarked silkily. "The fine fingers and the dainty, womanly shape – there's something distinctly sensual about the manner in which you've gone about committing them to paper." Giving a little frown of concentration, he added, "But one matter perplexes me. Why are the knuckles splayed and fingers curled so tight while the wrists hang slack?"

"That's how she holds them," said Tom, shrugging again.

"She?" Now he appeared truly interested. "Am I to understand these are the hands of a real person? Not a mere figment of your imagination?"

"They are the hands of my wife," Tom admitted in a softer tone. They were, indeed, Fanny's hands, as he remembered them.

"Do you only sketch, or can you paint portraits as well?"

"Yes, I can paint, if I've got the supplies." Which, he implied with an arched eyebrow, he, as of the moment, did not.

"Fascinating – and how do you like working here?"

"I do not like it at all."

"Well, then, I see a most agreeable solution for the both of us." He beamed. "Come and work for me – paint a portrait of my girls, and I shall pay you double what you are making here. Triple, if I really fancy the end result. The supplies will be given you free of charge, naturally." The corners of his mouth lifted, curling upwards. "What say you?"

"I think that would indeed be most agreeable." Tom struggled to keep his whole body from sagging in relief and disguised his reaction by pretending to stretch as he rose from his place. "I'll go with you whenever you like."

"I would be correct, I think," said he, "in assuming you are actually a gentleman...?"

Tom feigned exaggerated ignorance. "Moi?"

He winked. "We'll be discreet, shall we?"

The tall man snagged his arm and urgently whispered, "Don't go with him, my friend."

Rolling his eyes, Tom brushed the man's grip off with sharp impatience. "Hem. I thank you for your concern, and your earlier assistance – such as it was – but I assure you I'll be quite all right."

"I know what you think he's asking of you," hissed the tall man through his teeth, grabbing him again, "but you are mistaken – he does not have daughters."

Tom did not comprehend his meaning, and – in all honesty – assumed he must be a bit mad. Of course the chap who was offering him the commission to paint a portrait had daughters! He'd said as much, hadn't he? Who else could he possibly mean by 'his girls'? The tall man must be addled in the head.

"I'll be fine," he insisted, shaking him off more firmly. "Thank you."


The first part of Edmund's attempt to educate Fanny, to help her fit in more with the class she had married into, pleased both Fanny and Susan greatly – they had always been more generally inclined towards reading than the other girls in Portsmouth, particularly Lucy Gregory's set, and had lacked only the extended opportunity and guidance to thrive in their selection of books.

Edmund's tutelage was thus warmly welcomed, and he was – in turn – most relieved and delighted to discover that the worst which could be said about their knowledge was there were a few – admittedly wide – gaps in it. They might know an inordinate amount about figures they had found books on, such as Joan of Arc or Mary of Scots, and they could to-be or not-to-be better even than Tom (they had the patience and retention and smoothness of speech Edmund's elder brother decidedly lacked), but several classics were strangers to their minds and non-fiction beyond the more popular history might have been a tea-shop in France for all they knew of it.

Susan did express some small doubt that any mere reading was going to change her sister's current sorry situation at Mansfield Park, though she did not object to the lessons in the least for their own sake, but Fanny trusted Edmund implicitly. If he said it would help – overall, somehow or other – she believed him.

Lessons in etiquette were more immediately practical than they were enjoyable, and both sisters endured them stoically, but – particularly for Fanny – they proved a source of intense retrospective distress. Ignorance had, in some small ways, been an unwitting bliss – now that they knew the nature of this or that faux pas they must be humiliated by in future, it occurred more readily in their shocked minds how many times they had slipped in the past. Fanny blushed to think she had never been corrected before, and here she was, all grown and married and making mistakes a child of the Bertrams' world would have avoided by the age of eleven.

Although she knew what Mrs. Norris said, about Tom being home more if he had a different sort of wife, was not true, a small part of Fanny's broken heart did wonder, now, if her husband did not find her somewhat vulgar compared with his own family and peers. He did not strike her as the sort to care too much about such things, but – just the same – she could not imagine he was blind to it, could only conclude he was simply silent on the matter – perhaps as she herself would have been, had their roles been reversed. Regarding this fear, she consoled herself a little with the notion that vulgarity of manner might reasonably be improved upon, while incurable selfishness lingered unchangingly in most cases. Mary Crawford did not strike her as a giving person, and Tom was a taker both by nature and nurture alike – a marriage between them, had it occurred as Mrs. Norris evidently wanted, would hardly have been a happy one for very long even if they managed to begin it on amiable footing. Two equally selfish people can never contribute to the contentment of a union, because neither would be willing to bend their own will for the sake of the other.

Edmund's patience (and, in certain cases, inventiveness, even creating a pretend make-shift dining room in the school-room – now returned to its former use, rather than simply a parlour for them all to sit in and whisper between themselves – for practice) soothed away the worst of the lingering embarrassment, however, and allowed Fanny to look to the future with hope. She came to believe she might win, eventually, despite sour introductions, the good opinion of her father-in-law, Sir Thomas Bertram, even if her Aunt Norris remained forever prejudiced against her.

She had not anticipated – though she might have done, if she gave it thought enough from Edmund's prospective – Mary Crawford being drawn into these lessons. Fanny had reasoned, fleetingly, that Mary was too old and refined to want to sit in on such instructions herself, regardless of how bored she might be with the countryside, and seeing as Edmund truly seemed to know all, including how a woman of their class must hold their fans and fold their napkins, they could surely have no real need of her, either.

Yet, one morning, she did indeed arrive on the threshold of the school-room with Susan to discover Mary already within, whispering with Edmund, awaiting their entrance.

She stiffened, and Edmund, with a trace of apology in his voice – not for the person he'd brought, for he privately suspected no one with sense or wit could object to Miss Crawford's company in general, but for the fact that he'd dragged someone else in at all – said, "Forgive me, Fanny, but I had to ask her – I can do nothing myself regarding your clothes, save tell you if it looks correct after it has been arranged. I was not even sure if my own usual tailors would do for you. And here I had faithfully promised to help you in any way I could. Miss Crawford, I knew, would be only too delighted to be asked. You must know that all the good bearing and genteel mannerisms in the world would still look very odd with the wrong kind of clothing accompanying it."

"Come," said Mary, taking her hand and signalling for Edmund and Susan to follow behind, "we shall go to your room" – she was shortly to be astonished to learn it was actually Edmund's old room, having not realised Fanny was not yet officially in residence of Tom's chambers – "and together we'll make an account of what your wardrobe is lacking."

Fanny, with unsteady hands, set her dresses out on the bed and stepped back so Mary could examine them.

"Good lord, is this best you've got?" Miss Crawford grimaced, pointing as if she had just been presented with an unasked-for portrait of a scene most gruesome.

Susan looked as if she very much wanted to say something in her sister's defence, perhaps a remark which pointed out that at least – in comparison to Lucy Gregory's set – Fanny was not over-trimmed or gaudy, only held back by the fact that Fanny herself shot her a brief, urgent expression which seemed to tell how she wished nothing to be said on her behalf, as if she was mortified quite enough already.

"Miss Crawford," murmured Edmund, shaking his head. "I know you can intend no unkindness, but do have a care."

"Pray, don't mistake me," added Mary, then, quickly, as she struggled to regain composure, "I do not mean to insult" – she gave the sisters her prettiest, most agreeable smile – "I'm sure they did you no disservice at all when you were Miss Price, Fanny, and that your family was doubtless very good to provide you with them, but as Mrs. Bertram, they simply will never, never do."

"This, you must have known already," Edmund said softly, patting Fanny's arm. "You did ask."

Fanny swallowed, blinked, and nodded.

"And what," said Susan, speaking at last, "do you suggest we do with Fanny's old things, Miss Crawford?" She knew the house-maids of Mansfield Park would not want her sister's Portsmouth cast-offs – perhaps not even for polishing rags.

"Do with them?" cried Mary, voice cracking from holding back some emotion – perhaps shock or mirth – as she steadied herself against the bed-post. "You cannot be serious, my dear Miss Price! Do with them! They must all be gotten rid of at once – burned, preferably, so that no one of discerning taste shall ever have to look upon them again."

"My dear Miss Crawford..." warned Edmund, through his teeth. "Season your words with salt."

"Unless you wish Fanny to walk about in her undergarments," said Susan, rather tightly, "that's perhaps ill-advised."

Mary laughed. "The trouble with that being most of her undergarments are equally unsuitable. She ought to have her under-things and corsets and stockings all done up new and proper as well."

Fanny was scarlet.

"Oh, Mr. Bertram, are you sure," said Mary imploringly, lifting two dresses and tossing them onto the carpet, making a pile, "positively certain, Fanny cannot wear something of Maria's just for a little while? There seems to be nothing here she could even meet respectable tailors and seamstresses in if they were called to the house."

"Do you wish to pose such a suggestion to my Aunt Norris?" Edmund pointed out, blowing his cheeks with barely restrained exasperation.

"Hmm, I do see – but she's just the slightest bit too tall for anything of mine." Mary giggled to herself, tossing another dress onto the pile. "Henry teases me I'm built like a little brownie from a fairy-tale. You really mustn't imagine he goes easy on me because I'm his sister; he teases all women so indiscriminately."

Fanny scarcely heard, let alone cared, what she was saying about Henry Crawford; she'd noticed only that the dress under the one Mary had just tossed onto the pile was the sole one she'd miss if taken away – the only one she was resolved to intercede on behalf of.

"No," she blurted, stepping forward, a hand outstretched. "No, Miss Crawford, not that one – please."

"Mmm?" Mary looked at the revealed dress, noticing it properly for the first time. "Oh!" She took in the white muslin and glass beads and her expression changed, relaxing. "This is not so very bad – you might have shown me this one at the first and given me some hope – I've had a dress something like this one myself."

Fanny lowered her hand. "It was my wedding dress."

"Well, in that case, you must put it on for us all to see," Mary declared. "It is the only gown here the wife of a future baronet need not be ashamed of." Her eyes darted to the cross dangling from the chain about Fanny's neck. "Have you any other jewellery to go with it?"

She shook her head.

"Never mind, then. There is nothing truly amiss with your cross and chain, save that they are very simple-looking – I'd only asked to be sure of what options we had, you know – they are both very well."

Taking the gown into her arms and cradling the shimmering fabric protectively despite the fact that it was clearly in no danger, Fanny changed behind a screen.

Susan, circling her after she stepped out to show them all, was concerned she'd lost weight, thinking the dress hung a good deal looser on her poor sister's frame than it had in Portsmouth on her wedding day, but Fanny was certain she was not so altered.

Mary, coming behind her and skilfully grasping her fair hair and pinning it up, stepped back and examined the effect, now that hair and dress were both acceptable. "Lovely," she declared, as if she herself had had a great deal more to do with this than merely having pinned up a fistful of golden curls and tucked back a couple of small plaits. "Much better."

"She looks very fine, as women in white always do," Edmund agreed. "It is well done."

"I had not realised," Mary marvelled, "she resembled the current Lady Bertram so closely – her sister's child or no, it is most striking." She chuckled, a touch suggestively. "One does not say – not aloud, not to a larger group than our little party – that our Tom may have, most unexpectedly, something of Oedipus Rex in his nature. I would not ever dream of saying so."


In the darkness of the bedroom, hours after Mary Crawford had left them, Susan lolled at the foot of the bed, dangling off the side of the mattress, while Fanny sat by the fire and played with the fraying fringes of her old shawl which she had – with more effort than she really had the energy to be putting forth – persuaded Mary to let her keep for the time being, despite her insistence on its shabbiness.

On the desk – a jutting shadow from Susan's current peripheral view – was a neat list, detailed in several pages, of precisely what Fanny would need, from pelisses and muffs (Fanny had not thought a muff a priority, but both Mary and Edmund insisted a good pelisse would be sure to look incomplete without one) to summer dresses and evening gowns and undergarments and gloves and hats.

For all her faults, one could not accuse Mary Crawford of being less than thorough.

"Susie," said Fanny, quiet and thoughtfully, "who do you think is going to pay for all the things Miss Crawford says I need?"

Susan blinked. Truly, the question had never crossed her mind. "Tom, I suppose."

"We don't even know where he is."

"Uncle Bertram, then."

"Aunt Norris will know if the bill goes to him," Fanny pointed out. "And she'll be angry with us because of the expense." She paused, gazing into the fire again. "She comes in here – and up into your attic-room – and counts how many logs we use, and then she tells Sir Thomas after breakfast, you know."

Susan groaned, rolled over, and propped herself up onto her elbows. "You need clothes, Fanny."

"Clothes, yes," she agreed, "but matching hats in every colour? I fear it may be too bold a request just now."

"You are Mrs. Bertram," Susan pointed out. "You're not..." She bit her lower lip. "You're not me – you ought to matter here."

"I suppose," mumbled Fanny. Then, "And what did you think of Miss Crawford today?"

Susan swallowed. "The truth?"

"Yes."

"I was cross with her," Susan confessed, glancing over her shoulder. "You don't suppose Edmund can hear us? I know he likes her a great deal..."

"The walls are too thick in this house."

"Right. Then, I will say I think Mary is too vain for her own good, and she doesn't mind how she speaks to you."

"Why should she?"

"Because you outrank her, technically."

"She was raised a lady."

"I don't care if she was raised by Queen Charlotte," hissed Susan, suddenly passionate. "What she said about Tom..." She coloured vividly in the half-light, shadowed cheeks aflame. "Implying he married you because you look like his mother."

"It wasn't right of her, I'm sure," Fanny had to agree, "to say such things – and I do think if Edmund knew she was not only jesting, if he suspected she meant half of what she says, it would break his heart – but think how we must seem to her. She might not even realise Edmund is giving us so many things to read, or that we read in Portsmouth at all – she might have supposed us strangers to Oedipus. It may have been a private joke for herself, though spoken aloud."

"It was wicked of her," Susan said firmly. "Whatever she thinks or means, she speaks evil. The rest doesn't matter."


Despite having to wriggle back into his dry – slightly sandy – clothes rather defeating the purpose of bathing in the sea, Tom Bertram was walking along the shore feeling quite refreshed; his wet hair was plastered unbecomingly to one side of his head, and he still hadn't any boots, yet he strode with purpose.

In less than an hour, he was to meet his commissioner again and to be taken to his holiday home. He imagined this would be a pleasant job, comparatively cushy, and – with newly lined pockets once the work was completed – he'd, soon enough, be en route back to Mansfield Park – back to Fanny.

Back, also, to his father and Edmund, but he tried not to dwell on that.

He glanced up, then, lifting his free arm to shade his eyes from the glare of the sun, and saw a pretty young lady – somewhere, he gauged, in shape and colouring, just between Fanny's light willowy form and Mary Crawford's small, dark and bright features – was seated on a rock a few feet away, reading a letter which she gazed upon with moistened eyes.

Tom halloed good-naturedly.

The lady started and looked up, surprised but not unduly alarmed by the sudden appearance of the fair man with the open shirt carrying a sand-smeared leather bag tucked under one arm, eyeing her with innocent curiosity.

"Good news?" he asked merrily, motioning at the letter.

She gave him a reserved, polite smile.

"It's not a death, I think," Tom mused, his pacing feet making a slight circle around her in the sand surrounding her rock, "or your tears would be of the less attractive sort and I'd be expected to give you my condolences. And no postmarks implies it was hand-delivered. Perhaps by the writer himself."

"No, sir, indeed, it is not a death."

"Ah, a proposal, then."

She did not reply, and that was very nearly reply enough in and of itself. If she were Fanny, she would have blushed and given herself away entirely, but she was not given over to easy colouring.

"Word of advice, miss – don't keep the poor fellow in suspense." He grinned tightly to himself. "It nearly killed me, waiting on my own wife's answer. You women ought to have pity on the more boorish sex; we don't have your patience or reason. The longer we wait, the more hopeless we become. And hopeless, tormented men behave stupidly sometimes."

"I do not intend to torment him," said she; "I've simply not yet decided how I must reply."

"What is the rub? Is he too lowly for you?"

"Quite the opposite – I am the one who lacks the fortune in this match."

"Ah, I see" – his lips were pursed pensively – "so the letter itself is not to your liking?"

Seeming mildly unsure of herself, as if this were not something she meant to do, not a thing she would usually do, she reached upwards and handed Tom the letter. There was just something about him, something separate enough from the rest of high society to believe he would not betray her. "See for yourself, sir."

He studied the letter a moment. "Frank Churchill is the man, is he?" His eyebrows lifted. "Well, good for you! There's that frightful aunt of his, of course – I was nailed to a card-table with her once, for several hours, and it was ghastly – but otherwise you'll be happy enough."

She was not one for such remarks herself, about as prone to gossip as she was to blushing, but neither could she cut off the conversation now. "And the letter itself?"

"Good," Tom declared, handing it back to her. "So good, in fact, I imagine he enlisted some outside help in writing it – the Honourable John Yates and I could put our heads together for three days and still not come up with anything half so pretty."

"I do believe I will say yes – but please, on your word as a gentleman, tell no one... His aunt cannot hear of it."

Tom smirked. "How can I tell anyone when I've passed you in silence on the beach and only nodded to you as I walked on my merry way? I never even saw your letter, as I recall it, Miss...?"

She exhaled in relief. "Fairfax."

"I'm Tom Bertram." His left eye twitched into a faint wink. "But don't tell anyone."

A/N: Yes, that was (very unsubtly) Jane Fairfax from Emma Tom was talking to at the end there.

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