Merriment & Wisdom
A Mansfield Park fanfiction
Part Twenty-One:
New Arrangements, Such As They Will Be
"You'll be fine, Fanny," said Edmund, lifting his knuckles and rapping on the heavy oaken door to Sir Thomas' study. "All you need to do is tell my father what you told me, what we discussed."
The knock was loud, not with intent to be insolent but with intent to be heard through the thick wood, and Fanny winced involuntarily. She thought she was very likely to take sick, and was thinking of how she might turn and run away without disappointing Edmund.
"It's really not important," Fanny murmured, when she could trust herself to speak without accidentally retching. "Your father has much greater concerns right now, I'm sure."
"It is not boldness," he sighed, "to ask him to consider making one small concession for your sake."
"But he has already done so much," Fanny pointed out, thinking of his taking care of the bill for her wardrobe, which was due to arrive for a fitting in only a few more days now.
Mrs. Norris never permitted her to forget that, not for one single moment, though she also seemed to firmly believe Sir Thomas allowing Fanny and Susan to continue living in the house after Tom's seemingly total abandonment of them was equally magnanimous and felt Fanny ought to bless him each morning for the grand privilege of having a roof over her head.
What she would say, if she knew what Fanny was about to ask Sir Thomas for now – what she'd brought up to Edmund in innocent, casual confidence, not supposing he would expect her to do anything about it – didn't bear thinking about.
Their aunt's response would be biting and angry, if caught with the news when she was feeling particularly agreeable.
"This matters, Fanny," Edmund said, after a long, sad pause. "We've all left it too long. Little as the matter may seem in itself, it reflects on you, as Mrs. Bertram, and on all of our treatment and acceptance of you."
Swallowing hard, Fanny reached up and pushed her blonde curls away from her face, trying to breathe evenly. Truly and deeply tempted – for the first time since giving it up forevermore – to bite her fingernails, she instead fiddled with the cross dangling from its chain around her neck, carelessly tugging and swinging the glittering amber pendant back and forth, back and forth.
"Do be careful, Fanny," whispered Edmund, close to her ear; "you'll break the chain."
She stopped at once, not wishing Edmund to think she didn't take proper care of his precious gift to her.
Sir Thomas called, "Come in," and her heart seemed to stop. She looked at Edmund, who opened the door and held it for her, with an expression of pure terror, which only intensified as – the moment she'd stepped over the threshold – he closed it, leaving himself on the outside. He was not coming in with her. He was making her do this on her own. She felt forsaken by the entire world, and wondered – frantically, desperately – how she would make words come up out of her rapidly drying-out throat and mouth.
"Fanny," said Sir Thomas, looking up from a stack of paper he had been writing something on, and sounding – if nothing else – certainly amiable.
This might have been the first time Fanny could recall him appearing almost pleased to see her. If she were anyone else, another kind of woman, this might have made her braver and more comfortable. As it was, it eased her fear only minimally.
"Yes, child, come closer, there's no need to stand by the door." He gestured with two fingers and began to rise from his seat. "Can I do something for you?"
"If you are busy, sir–"
"No, no," said he, with level compassion, "I have nothing that cannot wait, and I have been meaning to take a break and see to how you've been bearing up – I know things must be trying for you, given recent events, and yet I never do hear you complain. And here you've gone and saved me the trouble of seeking you, by coming in to see me for yourself."
Did Edmund know this? Know Sir Thomas had wanted to see her? Fanny wondered, and supposed he couldn't have, though he – being more in-tune to his father's moods than she was – might have guessed it and chosen today for that very reason. Clever Edmund.
"Are you unwell?" said Fanny, for lack of being able to get straight to the subject which was still a source of distress, only added to by his unlooked-for kindness. "You have been working very hard, I see."
"I'm no more unwell than can be expected, given all the shocks I've gotten one after the other," he replied, leaning one hand heavily on the arm of his chair and shifting from one foot to the other with a little groan as his joints loosened and popped. "None of which I blame you for, Fanny. Make yourself quite easy on that account."
The moment had come and Fanny wished it had not. It might, she feared, put an end to their unexpected pleasantness with each other. She wrung her hands and struggled to meet her father-in-law's eyes. "I think, sir, given appearances, and the fact that To–my husband has not returned home so there can be no practical reason to prevent it" – she coloured and dropped her gaze – "I ought to be moved from Edmund's old bedroom into my husband's chambers."
Her father-in-law was silent for a moment. Then, his expression wholly unreadable, "You do, do you?"
She held her hands more closely to herself. "Yes." Would he be very angry? Would he tell Mrs. Norris, leaving her to be scolded for her ingratitude? Or send for Edmund to remove her from his sight?
"It is possible," he conceded, "that I was too hasty in placing you – originally – in the attic-room with your sister, and I admit – between ourselves – very little good came from it, and I did feel the evils you faced as a result were most unfair.
"No bride, I imagine, wishes find herself locked out of her new home on the coldest morning imaginable. I do not think it could have been your idea, Fanny, to disobey me – I do know my son to that extent at least, even when his actions make him seem quite a stranger to me.
"I was guarding, you understand, against Tom's impulsiveness – not acting thusly in order to punish you – and it did not, in the end, bring about the desired results.
"Edmund, I fear, was right in that regard; but I was cross with him at the time for the part he, too, played in what transpired."
As he spoke, he'd stepped between her and his desk and begun to pace, meeting her eyes after each sentence.
"From what I have observed – and do not look so stunned, my dear, for, yes, I have indeed been observing you, in my way, though it did not appear so – I think too well of your character to suppose you will ever harbour resentment towards me – towards any of us here at Mansfield Park – for the slight given you in regards to your due as Mrs. Bertram."
"No, indeed, sir," cried Fanny, at once.
He seemed gratified by this. "The principal, on which you were subjected to many unfortunate privations and restrictions, was good – or at least meant for good – in itself. I fear it was carried too far in your case. Alas, when the husband is of one temperament and the wife is of the other, it can be – you must see – difficult to know how they should be treated as a pair.
"The restrictions I foresaw as possibly keeping Tom out of trouble if enforced straight away and not bent in the least measure, were – most regrettably – not beneficial in the least degree to you. I only hope they have not been detrimental in any lasting manner."
Moved, Fanny relaxed her hands and allowed them to fall to her sides. "I do not believe they were."
"Then we shall say no more about it," he decided, his footsteps slowing. "You will remove your belongings – such as they are – from Edmund's former room and into Tom's chambers whenever you see fit – within the hour, if it pleases you." His mouth twisted thoughtfully. "I shall even ask Baddeley whether a house-maid is free for the afternoon, if you feel you need assistance."
"Please do not trouble the staff on my account," Fanny told him, privately certain if there were anything – as unlikely as it seemed – she could not see to herself regarding the move, Edmund or Susan would help and have it done far more quickly than one of the judgemental house-maids might.
Sir Thomas nodded. "If you would have it thusly, I see no reason why not."
"I thank you, sir." She had to bite down on her lower lip to keep from smiling in relief and joy and pleasure.
To her surprise, her father-in-law then took her hands in his own and gave them a kind squeeze – a gesture which reminded her very much of his younger son. "I may have been disappointed elsewhere, in all this upheaval and madness, but in you – my dear – I suspect I'm further blessed than I had the right to be, given my harsh welcome."
Tears glistened in her eyes as he released her hands, straightened his waistcoat, and stepped back around the desk, sitting down in his chair again with a low, weary groan.
"As for Tom," he added gloomily, picking up his quill and settling his eyes back down onto his papers with fresh intensity, "we can only hope and pray he comes to his senses and returns home." Then, "You may go now, child, and see to your own affairs, if there's nothing further you require from me."
"What can be the meaning of this?" Mrs. Norris stopped before the open doors of her eldest nephew's chambers, halting so abruptly that her lace cap went slightly askew and she needed to reach back and adjust it into place once again to avoid it falling from her head. "For mercy's sake, child, what are you doing with that?"
Susan Price – who had been dragging a trunk – glanced at her aunt with feigned demureness. "Why," said she, in a voice of affected innocence, "I'm bringing my sister's things into her chamber. Whatever can you mean to ask me, Aunt Norris?"
The woman's nostrils flared – she perceived some insult to herself was meant here, though she could not pin it down precisely. Reporting Susan's rudeness to Sir Thomas, when she could not say exactly which words were the insolent ones, wasn't yet an option, and it put her further out of sorts.
For lack of anything else, she latched quickly onto the first thing to enter into her line of vision. "Edmund!"
Edmund, having just arrived in that part of the house, looked at his aunt with rather more genuine puzzlement than Susan's sidelong expression gave off. "Yes, Aunt Norris? Whatever's the matter?"
Choking up, she gestured with an ill-tempered flick of the wrist at Susan and the trunk, and she managed to squeak out something about the impudence and – with more clarity – the potential for the floors to be scuffed up, ruined beyond inexpensive repair.
Here, at least, was something Edmund could comprehend. "Oh, of course – how thoughtless of me!" He bent at the knees and reached for one end of the trunk. "Come, Susan, let me help you with that – at least until you make it into Tom's sitting-room – you shan't lift it high enough on your own."
And they were soon gone from her direct line of slight, vanished into Tom's chambers, chattering to one another good-naturedly, giving little simpering words of gratitude back and forth, as if they were up to no mischief at all.
Shameless, thought Mrs. Norris. Quite without any degree of shame.
Then Fanny carrying some cloth and a workbox in her arms – an old dress she'd been mending, and altering the frayed skirt to, tossed over one shoulder – appeared, her countenance unusually cheerful and sort of humming to herself, and the outraged Mrs. Norris decided to unleash her full, pent-up fury on her.
"You!" she snapped, glowering fiercely. "This is all your doing, I shouldn't wonder. You always are going about making trouble, whenever there isn't any to be readily gotten, aren't you?"
"Forgive me, Aunt Norris – I do not understand why you are cross with me," she murmured, staring down at her workbox rather than meeting her aunt's eyes. "What have I done to upset you? I'm only moving my things into my rooms."
"Your rooms?" she gasped, pressing a hand to her heart. "Your rooms indeed!"
Fanny blanched, and her grip on her workbox tightened and turned her splayed knuckles quite equally as white as her blood-drained face, but she remained steady.
Mrs. Norris took – as much as she took note of it at all – Fanny's firm stalwartness in this moment for mere wilfulness of spirit; it did not endear her to her niece. "And who do you suppose, you thoughtless girl, will pay to keep such a large fireplace as there is in Tom's sitting-room alight when Tom himself is not in residence?"
"Sir Thomas has said I may move into these chambers."
"Surely not," argued Mrs. Norris, lips pursed. "I'm certain of there being some mistake. Your uncle would never, never agree to such an unnecessary indulgence, I'm sure. Do not, by any means, make yourself comfortable until this matter is resolved." She snapped her fingers, hoping – rather in vain – to call Edmund and Susan forth, back into the hallway. "I shall speak to your uncle, and he will..."
The rest of her shocked speech did not matter, because he did not, in the end, do whatever it was she said he would.
Sir Thomas, once he regained his somewhat rumpled composure after being called out of his study while he was deep into his affairs, hastily assured Mrs. Norris that he had given Fanny leave to move into her husband's chambers; the girl was acting on his orders, had not stepped out of line, and – while he certainly appreciated the, should he say, attentiveness in this matter – her insistence on correcting Fanny's error was gravely misplaced.
"Well," said Mrs. Norris, at the last, cheeks sucked in and eyes narrowed, "nothing – positively nothing, whatever – shall surprise me after this! Nothing! I will only say that Fanny is a very fortunate girl indeed.
"First you foot the bill for an overly extravagant wardrobe which was not economised on in the least, even where it might reasonably have been, then you give her leave to use some of the most lavish rooms in the house despite there being no real call for it – she was perfectly cosy in Edmund's old room, and too free with the fire as it was.
"You've been most generous to her. Well beyond anything which could be expected. She ought to be very obliged to you, I'm sure." She turned, then, to look – so she supposed – at Fanny critically, adding, "I believe you have something to say to your un–" She stopped, mouth parted. Fanny was not there (she had been signalled, by a little darting eye-twitch from Sir Thomas, that she might, if she was swift and quiet, leave in the middle of Mrs. Norris' speech); she had fled. "Well, upon my word! What a shocking trick that is!"
"Oh, and there is no need, my dear Mrs. Norris," said Sir Thomas, biting back a tiny smile, "though I know it is all well-intended, of course" – he held up a hand, silencing her before she could interrupt – "to monitor her fire now that she has changed rooms. She may be the best judge herself of when she needs a fire – we are not all so hardy as yourself."
Fanny, for her own part, except for her relief at having just escaped Mrs. Norris (she was almost more grateful to her father-in-law for such an unlooked-for mercy as that than she was for the usage of the rooms), had far less than she'd anticipated to smile about once she returned to Tom's – to her – chambers.
The fire was merry and crackling to the point of being fairly roaring, of course, and all her few worldly possessions were there to greet her half unpacked in the sitting-room, which cheered her up rather a good deal at first, but she was alone, and the rooms were enormous, and she so wished Susan and Edmund had remained and were there to greet her and to sit with her a while.
Left to her own devices, she began to put some few things in order, and – opening the workbox – stumbled upon the handkerchief Tom had left with her in Portsmouth – before they were married, while he was still waiting for her answer to his proposal, when he'd brought her those raspberries for her headache...
Running her fingertips over his embroidered initials – thinking how, once, he had been willing to sit with her while she slept and leave without recognition, and now he could not even bear to be home with her – she began to cry.
Once, in all fairness, she realised bitterly, she too had been different in her regard of him – of the man she'd married.
She'd really thought, back then, she could simply accept his love for as long as he might be willing to give it and afterwards endure his disinterest. She'd suspected she could somehow live off the memories, off the relative comfort. And now she found only pain in them, in those same beautiful memories, because she wanted him back so badly it hurt beyond measure, and – worse still – did not want to want him back – not if he himself did not want her.
Oh, why did Tom not write, at the very least?
Was he so wrapped up in his disreputable friends – in the merriments Mr. Owen had witnessed and reported to them – he did not think of her at all?
What could she have possibly done to make him disdain her so?
Didn't he know she loved him still? Couldn't he imagine she missed him? Shouldn't that, at least, count for something?
The worst part was the feeling that even those few memories she could manage a halting smile at before the tears came were all worth nothing if there was no way of being sure he ever meant anything by them.
She wondered why he'd gone through the trouble of marrying her at all, if mere loving and then leaving had been his aim all along.
Could it really have been only to upset his parents?
Or was it, that, yes, but a kind of pity as well? Had he felt sorry for how she lived in Portsmouth? Had he thought himself doing a charity bringing her here to Mansfield Park instead?
Had he reasoned, perhaps, having once enjoyed the pleasures of a wife, he could leave off any interest in the gentler sex for ever after, and simply go about gambling and partying and drinking without another care in the world?
Been there, done this thing.
Edmund did not know it, but Fanny had learned – because it had somehow gotten to Mrs. Norris, as everything did eventually, and she couldn't help but mention it within Fanny's own hearing, more than once – about Sir Thomas' initial idea to permit her to separate from Tom if she so wished. Fanny was relieved, beyond expression, he had never put the question to her, glad it had not been offered after all.
Because, in her heartbreak, she feared she might have accepted and, in so doing, doomed herself to further unhappiness.
By the time Fanny came downstairs to take supper with the rest of the family, her eyes were red and her countenance no better, no more merry, than it had been when she'd come down to them from Edmund's old room the day before.
Mrs. Norris, pointedly straightening her already perfectly aligned silverware beside her plate as she spoke, pounced on this immediately. "I should think to find you far more jovial, Fanny, given how blessed you are, all you've been given this day – I hope you are not becoming spoiled, or taking on a habit of sullenness. It is a detestable habit in any young person, particularly one such as yourself."
Susan squeezed her hand under the table, gritting her teeth and cutting her eyes coldly at Mrs. Norris, and Edmund shot her a sidelong glance of warm empathy when his aunt was not looking at him, but she – though she felt guilty, seeing how many people still loved her even if Tom and, obviously, her Aunt Norris did not – couldn't bring herself into more raised spirits, even by way of pretending (she could not act), or manage to eat very much of what was put in front of her before asking to be excused.
But at least she had her own proper chambers – which had long been due to her as a married woman – now to retire to after Sir Thomas nodded his assent to her leaving the table.
Yes, there was that much comfort, for what it was worth.
A/N: Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.
