Merriment & Wisdom

A Mansfield Park fanfiction

Part Twenty:

Truths, As They're Given To Us

For the first couple of days after Mr. Owen's visit, Fanny was permitted – simply by unavoidable neglect on the part of everyone other than Susan – to wallow in her unhappiness. It was not wilful misery, but rather a cloud of suffering which hung constantly about and refused to be ignored as the rest of the world – it would seem – was ignoring her.

She read, and did not retain neither subject nor moral.

She ate, and did not taste.

She sewed, and did not notice her work becoming crooked (Mrs. Norris was not present at the time, kept busy at the White House, to point it out, and Susan hadn't the heart).

She walked the hallways and corridors, and could not say – afterwards – where she'd been or what she'd seen.

She went to bed at a reasonable hour, and did not sleep.

And where was Edmund?

The first day, he was arguing, unexpectedly, with Mary Crawford, who quit the house in an ill-temper.

He had, perhaps unwisely, confided in her about Tom and was frustrated with her suggestion that it all be hushed up as quickly as possible.

"My dear Miss Crawford, forgive me for scolding, but you do exasperate!" he cried, shaking his head. "I know you do not think ill – I know your heart to be good and moral, deep down – but the way you speak one could almost think you were concerned only with how it looked!"

"One could," she'd snarled in return, "say very much the same of you, Edmund."

"Whatever can you–?"

Her hand was raised. "You've said yourself that you don't for a moment believe Tom is doing anything immoral beyond gambling – you do not accuse him of slighting our poor, wretched Fanny – you simply don't like who he chooses to dwell with. Am I mistaken? How is that not the same thing?"

"You are mistaken!" he had argued, distressed that she could not see it for herself – he truly thought her to have more sense. "Living with women of ill-repute, even if you are not soliciting them for..." – and he coloured vividly – "Well...erm... That is..."

Mary's brow had risen.

Edmund cleared his throat. "Well, it is a gross immorality in and of itself. It shames his wife. Even if no one else outside of this family and our closest friends ever hears of it, Fanny will know where he has been, who he associated with. The harm is done whether word is out or not."

"Then, for mercy's sake, go and fetch him! You've spoken – to Fanny, I'd imagine, as well as myself – of going to get him and bring him back."

"And how would it seem for two sons of Sir Thomas Bertram to go into a house like that? Has Tom not shamed this family enough?"

"And – speaking so – you still tell me appearances are not your primary concern, do you?" She had laughed, then, but it was not a very nice laugh. "Silly Edmund! That is where the hushing up comes in."

Edmund objected to being called silly, and begged Mary to think and to make herself useful, for he was regretting having spoken so openly and seriously to one who would not grant him the same manner of solemnity in return.

"You think," was her last remark as she rose from her place, grabbed her bright red shawl from the chair, and made for the door, "if you shake me hard enough, something serious will drop out." Her dark eyes bore into his lighter, vulnerable ones, their look mocking without any indication of real malice. "But I assure you I am profoundly shallow!"

The last thing to be heard of her until the following week – which brought her and her brother both back to them all in better, more forgiving spirits – was the sound of her high-heeled slippers clicking on the marble foyer and her polite goodbye to Baddeley.

The second day, Edmund argued, more levelly, with his father. He did not advocate hushing the matter up, but Sir Thomas needed to be told all the same, and it was best that his younger son break the news and report from which quarter it came, rather than someone else.

Sir Thomas' first suggestion, which was that Fanny be called in and permitted, if she wished it, to be released from all ties with Tom, repulsed Edmund entirely.

"Why should Fanny, who is completely innocent in all this, live such a life – practically the life of a widow, despite her having a living husband still – for Tom's moment of foolish indiscretion?"

"It would be arranged only if she wished it," said Sir Thomas, "and she would be provided for, naturally, by our family. We Bertrams would not forsake her if she disavowed Tom." He had then emphatically jabbed his quill pen into the ink-pot on his desk and, lifting it back up, banged it against the crystal rim. "She would not be in want; she would have an income."

Edmund shuddered at the thought of the mean little cottage in some dreary countryside corner and pinched expenses which would follow, regardless of any initial good intentions, especially once Aunt Norris stuck her oar in.

"Sir," said he, struggling to keep calm and to not crack his knuckles anxiously against the side of Sir Thomas' desk, "I do not believe Tom has done anything which would require a legal separation to be considered by Fanny. But she is distressed by the news and to put such a question to her now..." His hands had shaken dreadfully. "She is fragile. She needs comfort and stimulation and, above all, compassion – not to be paid off and set up apart from us all.

"Father, please, with all due respect, it would be a further cruelty, inflicted on one who has already suffered beyond what mere words we can exchange between ourselves could describe, not a mercy offered."

By the end of the discussion, Sir Thomas had finally agreed not to put such a question to Fanny, to spare her that much distress at least if Edmund truly thought it best, but it took a great deal of wheedling and anxious speech back and forth to reach that point.

Edmund was exhausted, emotionally and physically, by the end of that day.

Worse, he was made thoroughly miserable by thoughts of Mary Crawford and his brother Tom respectively, and his mind refused to leave off when he urged it to give him a moment's respite. He defended Fanny, always, in every tense conversation he forced himself to endure, but there was no time to see to her personally, even in passing.

When, on the third morning following Mr. Owen's news of Tom, after the dust had settled somewhat and Edmund was able to seek Fanny out, he was made truly nervous by what he found.

She was pale and listless, looking sickly as well as low in spirits, despite her instance that her head did not hurt her.

What alarmed Edmund the most about her drastic change in appearance was he was almost certain she had looked healthier in Portsmouth, despite the ill air and clutter. Here, in the country, she ought to be as close to the picture of health as could be expected of someone of her constitution. She ought to be improving, day by day, not worsening.

Susan's own cheeks had lost their rosiness, and her eyes were not bright, but Edmund suspected this was largely from fretting over her sister's rapid deterioration.

It was apparent to him that both young ladies needed to be out of doors and getting some manner of exercise. Lessons were all well and good, but they'd get no benefit from slaving over books and silverware and practising their manners if they let themselves grow physically frail in the process. Moreover, Fanny's mind was clearly not benefiting from her reading or handiwork at the current time – she hadn't at all the look of one who was thinking on what she was doing. She wasn't possessing even of the expression he associated with over-worked scholars from his Oxford days; she was too absent to be manic.

Edmund knew he had already left it too long, even if it couldn't have been avoided, and if he were to leave it any longer and Aunt Norris was to take note of Fanny's low spirits, she'd prescribe some exercise which would hardly benefit poor Mrs. Bertram and would be far more to her own advantage. One might call it 'useful chores' more than 'taking the air' if one dared speak openly.

So his mind was quite made up.

He stood in front of Susan and Fanny and clapped his hand together, urging them up at once.

"Fanny," said he, once she had risen, slowly and with a dazed look about her not unlike a diver who has surfaced too quickly, "I know you've expressed apprehensions about horses before – I know you fear them a little – but you – you both – are going to learn to ride."

"Me? Oh, cousin, no..."

"You asked me to help you," he reminded her. "Riding will suit you, once you've got the trick of it, and you need daily exercise. You must, Fanny. I refuse to let my brother's neglect spoil you, in health or in habits. He no longer has a say in the matter."

"I haven't..." she stammered, wide-eyed with horror. "I have not a horse."

"Susan will have to ride Julia's old horse, and you – regardless of whatever fuss Aunt Norris kicks up – will ride Maria's mare; she's the most gentle horse I've ever seen." Both beasts, he assured them, were still in residence at Mansfield. "That shall be an end to it." He took Fanny's trembling hand and, giving it a brisk little pat, closed his own over it. "Come now."

From the beginning, it was Susan who took to riding the quickest. Edmund was half afraid she would begin jumping hedges and cantering around the countryside before he'd had time to give her adequate instruction. She had Julia's horse trotting and eager to break into full a gallop before Edmund had finished showing her how to walk the beast. Her smile was bright and her pleasure evident.

The same, predictably enough that it did not distress Edmund unduly, could not be said of her sister.

Maria's mare was gentle and slow, seemingly aware its rider was timid and needing to be carried carefully, yet Fanny still trembled once she was on her back. She did not like it; she was almost too petrified to grasp the reins.

Edmund was all patience. He urged her to keep at it, to try to venture just a little further than she dared; he urged her to not be so very afraid, to take in the beauty of the day and the friendliness and good will of the mare she rode.

In a few days, however, Fanny had surpassed the daring younger sister who'd started on better footing than herself and was showing many, many signs of being a true horsewoman, deep down, after all.

She kept her seat well, sat beautifully side-saddle, looking like a very proper Mrs. Bertram indeed, when she was no longer shaking with fear.

As Edmund hoped, the exercise brought life and colour back to his sister-in-law's face and she seemed in far better spirits.

This unlooked-for felicity – this delightful cure – came to a grinding stop when – the following week – Mary made up with Edmund, most prettily, and asked to be taught to ride herself. She had always wanted him to teach her, she insisted, had been on the verge of asking many times, but up until Maria became Mrs. Rushworth, both Bertram sisters' horses were always wanted on fine days and it seemed an impossible request.

Seeing Fanny at it, and the good it was doing her, renewed her longing. Couldn't she, one morning or other when Fanny wished not to go, have a try?

"Could she, Fanny? You wouldn't mind, would you?" Edmund had then asked, smiling, looking at her and putting the question in such a way that – without his realising it – made it impossible to answer honestly.

Of course Fanny minded! Of course! She had not expected to love riding so, and it took her mind off her absent husband – indeed off of all her troubles. But she could not refuse Edmund, who she loved too well to disappoint, and, moreover, the horse was not hers. As it belonged to Maria, even if it seemed unlikely Mrs. Rushworth of Wimpole Street would return to Mansfield Park to ride the mare again, Fanny could have no say in who could or could not ride her.

Trying to swallow her disappointment and private resentment towards Mary, which she did not count as being quite so fair as she wished to be, Fanny gave her consent.

Edmund was so pleased he kissed her on both cheeks, called her the best, most generous of sisters, and squeezed her hands before turning to tell Miss Crawford the good news.

Susan, though she loved Edmund as well, thought it most presumptuous of Mary to squeeze herself into the riding lessons, and would not be pacified by Fanny's soft explanation that surely it was not wrong of Miss Crawford to want to spend some time alone with Edmund which would be considered proper, given they were not betrothed to each other and many other activities were ruled out.

"Besides," ended Fanny, a little lamely, "it may be she really has been wanting to learn to ride – for its own sake."

"As I heard it," grumbled Susan, fuming, "she turned him down – she hasn't got the right to hold his company to herself now. You should still go riding, Fanny, it's doing you a world of good – I don't need to ride – Mary can have my horse."

"Susan," was her gentle reminder, "the horses aren't ours."

"Julia's horse, then." Susan looked as if it were one and the same thing.

But such was not to be.

Maria's horse was more ideal for teaching a beginner, which Mary certainly was. Susan had proven more capable than Mary, despite being younger, and could handle Julia's horse from the start, but Edmund doubted Mary Crawford would be able to do so until she'd had a couple of lessons.

The idea was suggested of Fanny taking Julia's horse – Susan would not ride if her sister was to lose out – but by then Edmund was on the fringes of suspecting Fanny had not been entirely truthful with him when she said she didn't mind Mary taking Maria's horse, and to be considered a liar by Edmund was more than she could bear. So she demurred, shook her head, insisted she really had not wanted to ride for a few days and Susan had merely worried on her behalf.

The tears in her eyes nearly gave her away, but Edmund – whose own eyes were largely for Mary that day – did not see them, though they glistened unshed.

"And I'm sure," said Edmund, at last, "if you change your mind, we'll be back in time for a second ride."

They were not.

Fanny and Susan were, for so many days as Mary wished to ride – up until a wet morning came, brought on by perfect grey clouds, and put a merciful end to it – left behind at the house with Henry Crawford.

They usually sat in the drawing-room, which was quiet when Mrs. Norris did not join them and Lady Bertram dozed off, stroking Pug in her sleep. When Mrs. Norris did make an appearance, she had so much to say the young people – even if they'd been more inclined, on all sides, to talk openly – could not have gotten very many words in edgewise.

When her endless pert prattle, very little of it good-natured despite her efforts to appear still amiable to Mr. Crawford, became too much to bear, they adjourned – more than once on Henry's own suggestion – for a walk on the grounds.

If he were anyone else, Fanny might have felt obliged to him, because he did seem to realise how she was slighted by Mrs. Norris and made his suggestions and excuses with impeccable timing. As it stood, she disliked his attentiveness. There was nothing directly improper about it, save that it was too continuous to wholly dismiss, but it always left her feeling uneasy.

Luckily, Fanny was in no danger of loving him. Not in any manner. If ever she was, it might have been during the two days Edmund quarrelled with Mary and Sir Thomas respectively. Her spirits having been so sunken, her disappointment in Tom – even her private anger at his total desertion of her – at its highest, most unchecked peak, she might almost – if she did not guard herself – have been vulnerable to the exaggerated kindness of a charming gentleman fawning over her, whoever he was.

But she had not seen Mr. Crawford at all during that time, the quarrel having temporarily kept both himself and his sister away, and by the time she did see him again, she'd had the riding to clear her head and time enough to ease her aching heart. She wasn't looking for any kind of emotional replacement for the one whose company had been denied her.

And, thus, she was – more or less – safe.

For his own part, watching her walk morosely at his side, her smiles only for Susan and never for himself, Mr. Crawford just couldn't work it out.

Anything he could think of which might endear her to him, he had done. He'd even fetched her shawl for her before one of the house-maids could do it, nearly each time, before they went walking.

One day, for lack of any better ideas, he tried giving full attention to cheery Susan Price – just that once fetching her shawl instead of Mrs. Bertram's as they readied to go out – to see if that was the way to Fanny's affections, or at least to making her jealous, if nothing else, but either it had no bearing on her emotions or she saw right through it.

"I begin to suppose," he told his sister, reclining upon the sofa in the parsonage drawing-room early one evening, "Fanny Bertram is incapable of feeling."

Mary, who had been having a good day until he made such a ridiculous comment (she was not the sort of woman who could tolerate stupidity with as much grace as she did scandal), lifted her head from where it lolled on the fringed silken cushion and glanced up at her brother with dark annoyance. "You're an idiot, Henry, if you truly believe such a thing – she's very sweet, and she has been made unhappy. Her husband has left her, among relations, to gallivant in Weymouth with his friends."

"Her cousin," he said, wetting his lips and thinking wryly of Maria, "was never unhappy when her husband left her to go to Bath. And, indeed, I know of no woman who ever was made unhappy by the gallantry of a rich husband – with worldly sense enough to know his use is up – leaving her in luxury and generously putting himself out of the way of her doings."

"Listen, I don't deny what you say is true enough in many – or even most – cases." She sighed. "Truly, anyone who thinks otherwise only deceives themselves and others.

"Alas, Fanny herself may not have been aware of these facts before marriage. She may be a private romantic despite outward appearances. She may fancy herself deceived. Our Mrs. Bertram was not, I think, realistically schooled for matrimony." Mary rolled her eyes. "Yet you – wicked gentleman – accuse her of being without feeling, even as she plainly suffers from feeling too much over her husband's trifling folly – the poor, poor wounded soul!"

Henry snorted.

"Oh," she went on, throwing up an arm melodramatically, "I do not know why Edmund would not go and fetch Tom back; I hope he will not repent it! He was so keen to go before he knew where he was – before the errand was truly possible.

"Foolish man! It would have been nothing to slap his silly brother on the wrist – as I've done to you many a time, my dearest – warn him off future indiscretion with a few stern words, and drag him back for a fortnight until tempers cooled all around.

"Mansfield would perk up most pleasantly, depend upon it.

"Fanny, I believe, would be mollified by two weeks with a temporarily reformed Tom in residence – less has been enough to content pining wives in worse cases than her own."

Henry groaned loudly at that, tossing back his head and staring up at the ceiling. A returned husband skulking around Mansfield Park did not assist his own desired ends. He liked Tom well enough, but husbands – particularly the wealthy, titled ones – always got in the way when they would hang about where they weren't wanted.

"I wished only," he said, with more than a trace of sulkiness, "to make a small hole in Fanny Bertram's heart – and now I fear, watching how little she warms to me, though I've shown her nothing but kindness and prettiness of manner, she does not have one."

"Ah," sighed Mary, without malice, an indolent smiling playing about the corners of her mouth, "I was not mistaken, then, dear brother – you are an idiot."


"I'm telling you, I did hear him cry out your name," whispered Sophie in a low hiss. "He said 'Annie' – in his sleep, I think – I heard it, plain as anythin'."

She and Anne were standing over a partly-faded chaise lounge on which the slumbering form of Tom Bertram was sprawled, fully dressed. He must have, as stood to reason, fallen asleep here in his clothes – perhaps an hour or so prior – instead of making his way to his guest chamber, where he usually slept.

Anne wrenched her hand free from Sophie's tightly clenching fingers, which had still been curled around her wrist a little too forcefully after dragging her here. "What nonsense. I cannot believe you would bring me down here for this. I ought to have remained in London – I was not so put upon there as I am here."

"But he did," she insisted, her voice going up a decibel or two. "He said your name. I heard him!" Then, a moment later, "Listen, it's quieter, but he's doing it again – look, his lips are moving."

Anne inclined her head slightly, leaning further over the chaise lounge. "No," said she, more gently, understanding now how the misapprehension most likely occurred, "he's not saying Annie – not at all – you're mistaken, Sophie. He says Fanny. Though his speech is slurred and quick enough to easily mistake one name for the other."

"But..." Sophie's pretty brow furrowed. "Who is Fanny?"

"I might venture a guess," Anne murmured. "Leave us for a moment, would you?"

Sophie left the room, and Anne shook Tom's shoulder. "Mr. Bertram, wake up."

Tom smacked his lips, groaned, and tried to roll over, but, gripping his shoulder more firmly, Anne shook him again until he was forced to respond. "Mr. Bertram!"

"What?" he grumbled, peeking at her irritably, one eye opened a mere slit.

"You were talking in your sleep."

Coming properly to his senses, Tom was yawning and sitting up, rubbing at his eyes and blinking rapidly. "Mmm, was I? Whatever about? Anything good?"

"Is your wife's name Fanny?"

Tom's cheeks darkened noticeably and he suddenly couldn't look directly at her without their colour steadily increasing. "Yes."

She smiled and sat down beside him. "That would explain it."

"Was that what I said?"

"Sophie thought you were calling for me – it sounded like 'Annie' to her."

He laughed, rather good-naturedly, at that.

"Were you dreaming about her?"

"I can't remember," he said, sounding honest enough – his cheeks might have remained hot if he were lying. Indeed, he sounded rather disappointed that whichever dream he had involving his Fanny should have vanished entirely from his mind upon waking, even holding just a little resentment towards Anne on that account, for forcing him out of it in the first place.

"Tom, don't neglect your family," Anne said quietly, holding her hands stiffly in her lap and staring into the middle distance with an unreadable expression on her face. "They may not always be there when you return. They're not going to wait for you forever." She sighed wistfully. "I know you probably think someone like me knows nothing about it, but perhaps I do. Perhaps I know more than you would suppose."

"Why should you?" He said this matter-of-factly, without intention of wounding.

"I was a gentleman's daughter."

Tom snorted. "Nah, I don't believe it."

"I was, once." She smiled. "How do you think I understand you when you speak French – or know so much about horsemanship, for that matter? D'you suspect the London gutters of being filled with spare tutors and riding instructors?"

This took him aback. He actually hadn't been paying enough attention during many of their more casual conversations to take note of the fact that, when he said something in French, or quoted Shakespeare in some oblique manner, it was usually – in the present company, excluding Mr. Yates and his valet, and perhaps his commissioner as well – only Anne who responded as if she knew what he was talking about.

"So," he said, new respect in his voice which hadn't been there before, "what happened?"

"I left them, after a quarrel – my family – and when I thought to return," Anne admitted, "they were not where I had left them. So I went away again, and I tried to forget – now the doors which would bring me back to them are forever barred."

"I'm sorry," said Tom, with sincerity. "I doubt you deserved such a fate."

"Go home, Mr. Bertram," she said, when at last she spoke again; "finish the damn portrait, collect your money, and go home – go home for both of us. You don't belong here."

"I never had any other intention."

"Neither did I – at first." And she rose and began walking towards the doorway.

Tom called after her – there was something he wished to know. "That story... The one you've just told me about your family, about you being a gentleman's daughter..."

"Mmm-hmm? What about it?"

"Is it true?"

"Does it matter?"

He cocked his head. "It's not, is it?" She wasn't of his class – she must have learned French and horsemanship some other way, though he couldn't imagine how. "You made it up, didn't you?

"You suspect me of being a lying whore?" She glanced at him over her shoulder, one eyebrow lifted, her steps ceasing.

He appeared slightly offended by the accusation, the teasing-tone it was delivered in notwithstanding. "Oi, I didn't say that!" If Tom could not honestly claim it was not what he'd said, he could at least protest it was not what he had meant.

Tom wasn't sure what he'd meant, actually – he was confused, hungover, and still partially groggy.

"It might be true, mightn't it?" said Anne, a little cryptically. "It might be a truth – one kind of truth. Many things can be true in their own way, even if they aren't exactly..." She trailed off. "Or it could be that, being what I am, I'm expected to know exactly what men need to hear – and I told you the truth I thought you needed to hear."

"For the record, Anne, regardless of who your family was... There was no chance we'd – you and I – would ever have... I mean, you're old enough to be my mother, right?" Tom asked, laughing, though the merriment was somewhat forced.

She might have replied that at approximately thirteen she had not quite been prepared for motherhood, but – as she had before – she smiled saucily and said only what she knew he wanted – what he needed – to hear.

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