Merriment & Wisdom
A Mansfield Park fanfiction
Part Twenty-Three:
Traps, As They Appear To Be
Tom Bertram had just begun to properly enjoy the warm bath Yates' valet and two of Rushworth's staff had heated for him, feeling as though he were soaking away untold ages of sand and saltwater and turpentine, was finally returning to himself, when an older, rather stringy-voiced maid-servant knocked at the door to remind him what time supper was served.
As though he didn't already know.
As though he didn't have an unnaturally loud mantel clock directly in his line of vision, ticking away like anything.
"Yes, yes, fine," he called, slinging an arm over the side of the tub and rolling his eyes dramatically for the benefit of no one except himself; "I'll be out directly!"
"Very good, sir – I'll tell Mrs. Rushworth to expect you presently." Her heavy, thudding footsteps began to soften, muffling themselves with merciful distance as she walked away.
Groaning, Tom scooped up a generous fistful of the bathwater in his two palms and splashed it onto his face, running his damp hands through his hair and slicking it back.
As he rose from the tub, he made considerable efforts to drip onto the woven rug by the fireplace as much as possible – it looked expensive, and he thought getting water on it might vex his sister. He was aware, of course, how it was a silly, pointless revenge she'd probably never know about, given the damnable rug, probably none the worse for a little soaking despite the delicate material, would be dry again by the time she had any business coming into this guest room – and he himself would probably be long gone, more than halfway to Mansfield Park, where dearest Fanny awaited him – but it made him feel a twinge of satisfaction, all the same.
He wiped his feet dry on it, too, for good measure, vaguely hoping some dead skin got caught under the fibres.
Downstairs – where he arrived, with playful deliberateness, exactly one minute late and raised an eyebrow at Maria, as though daring her to say anything about it – he was greeted by Julia, who'd been whispering in an alcove to a beaming, enraptured-looking Mr. Yates.
"Tom!" she cried, pulling away from Yates and running to her brother as though she was genuinely happy to see him – and she believed, in her way, that she really was, perhaps a little.
"Ah, dear Julia," Tom laughed as she embraced him and took his arm. "Look at you! If it wasn't for that protruding beak of yours" – and he reached down and tweaked her nose affectionately – "I nearly wouldn't have recognised you – Maria's got you all dressed up for supper like we're expecting Queen Charlotte. You look positively tippy." Mr. Yates was on his other side now, and Tom – looping his free arm through that of his smiling companion – hissed, from the corner of his mouth as an aside, though not with any real venom, "I thought I told you to stay away from my sister."
"What nonsense," laughed Julia, pouting at her brother. "I picked this dress out myself, I'd have you know – Maria had nothing to do with it."
"It's very fine," said Mr. Yates.
Tom snorted, "Yet I imagine her husband's money had a great deal to do with purchasing it."
"And why not?" Julia said with a half-shrug, entirely unruffled. "There are worse things in the world than a generous brother-in-law."
"Will we see anything of Mr. Rushworth this evening, or are we only to hear his praises and whistle hosannas from afar?" Tom asked as the three of them disentangled themselves from one another so they might take their seats, ignoring an already seated Maria's deepening glower at their over-the-top merriment and her brother's exaggerated flamboyance.
"My husband," said Maria, answering for Julia, "is away at the moment, but he trusts me to manage the household in his absence. He trusts me implicitly."
"My dear girl," laughed Tom, "anyone can manage a house which practically runs itself by routine. I imagine I could train one of my horses to do it."
She made a face but gave no answering remark to a comment she believed – perhaps rightly – was made only to provoke her.
The meal would have been a quiet one, save for Mr. Yate's bright chatter, and his attempts – almost unceasing, each one immediately following the last – to make Julia smile or laugh. He tried to be gracious to Maria as well, distinguishing her in the way that gentlemen very often distinguish the sisters of the women they admire, but not so much that Julia could suppose he actually preferred Maria.
Tom privately suspected this was the main reason Julia even permitted John Yates to pay her so much attention in the first place. One brief meeting at a masque party and a couple of light compliments tossed both ways before parting did not seem so very likely to have the same enrapturing effect on Miss Julia Bertram (now simply Miss Bertram, since Maria had married) that it had on Mr. Yates. Poor John might have been half in love with her after that meeting, quite thoroughly infatuated, but his feelings were not so readily returned without further prompting. She might have forgot him before two days had gone by. He did not possess a memorable charisma of the sort Julia had – at least in past dealings, which had disappointed her expectations – believed she valued in a gentleman. However, the fact that she seemed to be the first choice, the preferred sister, notwithstanding that Maria was already taken – which had never mattered greatly before – was enough to make her play at love a little more willingly.
Tom wondered if Julia realised, if it ever crossed her mind, how well he understood her probable reasoning – wondered if she knew he sometimes felt over-shadowed by Edmund the same way she did by Maria.
It was true their Aunt Norris had never favoured Edmund above Tom the way she petted and adored Maria more than Julia, in such things her experience was very different to his own, but that did not account for everybody else.
Sir Thomas never got that disappointed look in his eye when Edmund was speaking to him which seemed to haunt Tom whenever he walked into a room. It was quite often as if his father was, the moment he showed his face, already wondering what his wayward eldest son had done wrong and how much it would cost to mend or smooth it over, how deeply the family would be humiliated this time.
And even Fanny – his beloved wife, his sole reason for returning home and facing his scandalised family's scorn and ire, bless her – well... Tom had seen the way she'd looked at Edmund the first time she met him, the first time she laid eyes on him in person. And he saw how she treasured the chain Edmund had given her. He was reckless, but he wasn't stupid; he knew too well, with painful acuteness, if Fanny had met his younger brother first, she'd never have fallen in love with him.
Though he'd been loath to show it, what Anne had said – the night he danced with poor little Sophie – it... It struck a nerve.
Is it because you're afraid someone else already does it so much better than yourself, that you feel you aren't needed?
Yes, and so what?
He'd been feeling that way all his life. Edmund was only the one year younger, and he was perfect.
Tom understood what it meant, how important it could feel, to be anyone's first choice. For that reason, above others, he could not think of trying to divide Julia and John, to spoil their fun in any active way, though it would have been, he knew, the wiser thing to do. They were not fit for each other. Furthermore, Sir Thomas Bertram would not want the likes of Yates as a son-in-law. Not that Tom had ever chosen wisdom in anything where there was another option, or let his father's wishes dictate even his own marriage...
The food, served on gleaming pearl-white plates for each marvellous, over-blown course, was a credit to Rushworth's staff, but its quality did not surprise Tom in the least – one needed only to have set eyes on Mr. Rushworth once in order to ascertain he enjoyed the meals cooked by his servants.
It was the wine served in tall faceted crystal, gold-rimmed glasses which Tom was most pleased with, and – as his sister never objected to his drinking – he had at least four glasses with his meal (he'd stopped actually counting after three, so it might have been five), even though he was wholly aware further drinks – certainly brandy, if it was too causal an occasion for champagne – would be served in the drawing-room afterwards.
By the time they retired there, getting up from the table so the servants could clear away the remaining dishes, Tom was already rather glassy-eyed and approaching a sloshed, uninhibited state of being.
Julia and Mr. Yates played happily with a stack of anagram gaming tiles. Mr. Yates repeatedly spelling out little phrases such as Hello, Miss B. or Lovely and then sliding them over to her.
"For pity's sake, Mr. Yates, that's not how it works," Julia tittered, cheeks darkened, shaking her head and removing one of the letters from the middle of Lovely and replacing it at the front. Elovly. "See? You're supposed to mix it up – I'm meant to guess the word."
Tom sipped his brandy and lolled against the arm of a sofa, looking askance at Maria, who sat primly on the other side of him, between himself and Julia and Mr. Yates.
She set down the glass of wine she was nursing, placing it beside the anagram tiles, and blinked disapprovingly at Tom. "I hear you got married."
"Oh, yes," said Julia, half-listening, more engaged with explaining how the tiles worked to Mr. Yates, who she was quite certain was only feigning continued ignorance of the game in order to amuse her. "Congratulations, I suppose."
"I half suspected you were up to something unsavoury when Edmund wrote asking if you fancied anybody – you who never pay attentions to anybody – I almost thought he was having me on, but it was still quite a shock hearing from Aunt Norris that you'd married one of our Portsmouth cousins."
"Hang on." Tom frowned, attempting to sit up a little straighter, with limited success. "Are you telling me you knew about them? About Mother and Aunt Norris having another sister and her marrying William Price and being left in a state of pig-stealing poverty?" His countenance was considerably darkened, kept from outright disgust only by the counterbalance of visible shock and the numbing effects of his brandy. "Or was this just something our Aunt Norris revealed to you in her most recent letter?"
"Honestly, Tom" – she rolled her eyes – "if you listened sometimes to things said between our parents and aunt in private family moments, rather than drone it out with whatever nonsense it is which constantly flies through your head, maybe you'd know a thing or two."
"That's not an answer."
"I knew they existed, of course," said Maria, sighing. "I know nothing about them – why would I? I would wager considerable money if I told your wife Father's fortune came from tea in Antigua, she'd probably think it was a shop."
"You'd lose. I reckon my pretty little Fanny," he slurred coldly through clenched teeth, "has got more wits about her than your silly husbandman Rushworth ever dreams of having, and that's on a good day."
She reached for her wineglass, picking it back up and bringing it to her pursed, tense lips. "Rushworth is worth two of our ignorant cousin."
"Aye – on a scale, perhaps."
She did not argue the point, perhaps because she knew when a truth – however disagreeable – had been brought into a matter which could not be talked away through pretty words. She might have had pretty words to spare, all the same, if she loved Mr. Rushworth, but as it stood she had no affection for her husband to sharpen her words, only displeasure at her brother to tighten the lines about the mouth which would have said them.
She drank her wine, and Tom reached for the nearest decanter to top himself off.
When she spoke again, it was to say, "But, really, Tom, teasing aside, what could you have been thinking?"
"Perhaps," he replied, blinking coolly, "I thought I would rather marry a person than a bunch of fancy properties."
"That's easy to say when you're already an heir," Maria retorted. "Besides, you know what an honour it was to–"
"Bag Rushworth?" He arched an eyebrow. "Yes, I know, sweet sister, I was there for a fair quarter of your simply heart-warming courtship. The most timeless of love stories, as I recall it. From the moment I returned from Antigua and saw you holding back his arm and a retch at the same time, I could see there was indeed little love to be lost between the pair of you." He smirked. "Well, on your side at least – poor Rushworth had – I'd imagine still has – some private delusions you've no intentions of availing him of, poor fellow."
Maria's fingers tightened around the stem of her wineglass, clenching harder with each word Tom spoke – it nearly snapped under the pressure.
"But that kind of love, as much as I envy you it" – his voice fairly dripped with mockery – "wasn't for the likes of me."
"It's quite amazing, isn't it" – her voice was nearly a whisper – "how you can speak so lightly of my marriage, implying yours was some sort of grandiose love-match, when you've been – for quite some time now – living with women of ill-repute in Weymouth without so much as sending word back to your long-abandoned wife at Mansfield Park?" Her eyes flashed. "One could almost suspect you of being hypocritical."
Tom's eyes widened, but otherwise his expression betrayed precious little. "Where," he snarled, leaning in, "did you hear about that?"
"Oh, it might have been Aunt Norris..." She tapped a finger against her bottom lip. "Or it may have been Edmund..." Her tone was sweet – too sweet. "Perhaps it was Mr. Owen – you remember Edmund's friend Mr. Owen, don't you?"
Tom's throat constricted. He felt rather unwell. In the back of his mind, something flashed, bursting like fireworks.
Dancing with Sophie; her asking him what was wrong; his reply, how he thought a certain man had been watching him...
A man he could not place for the life of him.
He's probably taken me for someone else in the dark. I'm sure that's all it is.
It had been Edmund's friend.
That was how he knew the gentleman watching him that night – why he looked so strangely familiar.
Damn.
"They all know?" asked Tom, as steadily as he was able, inwardly trying to convince himself Fanny would certainly forgive him, that probably – by now – she already had. "At home? They all know where I've been?"
Maria sighed, her spite dissipating slightly. She almost sounded pitying. "Honestly, Tom! You couldn't have supposed they wouldn't find out?"
"Maria, don't look at me like that – it is hardly as if you've never done anything you're ashamed for the family to know about."
Her brow lifted.
"Oh, yes?" Tom sucked his teeth. "Very well, then. As you like. Have it your way."
Mr. Yates and Julia had been ignoring their conversation, still continuing to tease each other.
Julia put her hand over that of Mr. Yates and, curling her fingers around it, guided his fingers over a tiled letter and helped him slide it towards the back of the word. "For the last time, Mr. Yates," she giggled; "like this."
"Ah, yes," he said with resounding tenderness. "I do believe I've got the hang of it now. You're so very patient, Miss Bertram. So very patient and good to a silly dunce like myself. I don't believe there's a sweeter creature in the whole of the world."
"Right." Tom leaned forward and, reaching over, swatted their hands away and clumsily scooped up a handful of tiles. "I beg your pardon, I need to borrow these."
"Rude!" cried Julia.
"Steady on, old bean – we were playing with those," was the only remark to come from Mr. Yates on the matter, spoken with very little conviction.
Waving them off, Tom formed a word, then slid it to Maria. "You were saying?"
FCRAWODR
She got the idea – she would have had to have been not only far more stupid than her own self, but also ten times duller than her husband and his parents combined before she was dim enough to miss what Tom was doing, what his nasty implication was.
With an angry swipe of her hand, she cast the tiles to the floor. She would have, undoubtedly, liked to make the same motion in the direction of her brother's face, though she – with all the restraint of an amiable hostess she could muster – resisted.
Julia – confused for a moment, not fully understanding the argument between her elder siblings, bent over to pick the scattered pieces up, so she and Yates might go on with their far more innocent game, and saw the rearranged word – saw CRAWFORD, unmistakably – and she flinched.
"Tom," she said shakily, getting to her feet and stomping to the doorway, "proper names are not allowed. You know they aren't."
It had not been, of course, Tom's intention to hurt Julia's feelings as well as Maria's – it would never have occurred to him to think to wound her any more than it might occur to him to kick his mother's pug randomly upon exiting the drawing-room at the conclusion of an average evening at Mansfield – but he was not particularly agonised over the result of his actions, either.
Mr. Yates was more upset – as he was bound to be upset at anything which brought a frown to a face he admired – but even he did not chastise Tom, or look at him with any lingering displeasure. How Tom Bertram treated his little sisters in private was very much his own affair, and it was taken for granted that he must have his reasons.
The effect on Maria was just as Tom might have wished it, however.
She had not one more ugly word to say in regards to his marriage to their poor cousin for the remainder of his visit.
Whatever Maria – when she'd still been Maria Bertram – had or had not done with Henry Crawford during their father's absence in Antigua, from which Tom alone returned early, it was enough to give her notable pause before making strong statements on the propriety of his behaviour with Fanny Price in Portsmouth.
Not that he would have admitted it to any of his siblings in a thousand years, but there were times, admittedly, when Tom sometimes had enough awareness to question if he would have been so very scrupulous in his behaviour there if dear Fanny had been less innocent-natured, less standoffish, less of a shrinking creepmouse during their courtship. Probably he wouldn't have been, his inexperience at the time notwithstanding. He never claimed – even to Fanny herself – to be pious. He never thought to be. Not even for her sake. His sort of goodness was all a matter of convenience, of circumstance. Still, it had all turned out looking well for him on that front, and even if Maria wished to insinuate that it might have turned out differently, the point was, it didn't.
One unforeseen happening which resulted from his spelling out CRAWFORD with those tiles, which Tom – and this did him little enough credit – didn't have strong feelings on one way or the other, was a sort of fresh rift between Julia and Maria.
Old wounds had been carelessly reopened.
Mr. Crawford had, from the start of their joint acquaintanceship with him, been a source of contention between the sisters – both having felt keenly they each had the better claim to him.
Maria saw herself as everything her Aunt Norris had always proclaimed her to be, and as such she'd thought – if Mr. Crawford would make his intentions known in time – she should gladly have him instead of James Rushworth, Sotherton Court and a house in town or no; while, Julia, on the other hand, had seen it as finally, finally being her turn, her chance to shine, to be beloved – even Aunt Norris, who championed Maria in all things, saw her favourite as being all settled on already and had been hoping for a match between her and Mr. Crawford.
But when Maria was clearly preferred to herself, Julia had felt her hopes slipping away.
Her hopes might really have been maintained, despite early disappointment, if Maria had rebuffed Mr. Crawford's attentions, citing her forthcoming marriage as her reasoning, rather than permit them. In truth, watching her sister with him, she'd lost her own affection for Crawford; she'd remembered, suddenly and with a clarity she could not believe she had ever lost, that he was not handsome, not particularly desirable when you looked at his features alone without his pretty, elegantly murmured words to smooth their edges into something far nicer to behold. She'd forgotten Henry thusly, and very nearly forgiven him. He'd acted as he had because it was what he was. She might sooner have stayed cross at a duck for quacking, flying, or swimming. His vanity would have been easier, even before then, to forgive, if it had not so sharply wounded her own tender feelings.
But her sister?
Oh, how could she forget Maria's selfish vanity?
She'd thought, for a while, perhaps Maria's inviting her to come away from home, first to Brighton, then to live with her in London after her wedding, was something of an olive branch, and she'd taken it eagerly, as glad to leave Mansfield Park as if she were leaving it with a husband of her own. Gradually, she'd come to suspect, though, she might actually be there only as a buffer between James – it still felt strange to call Mr. Rushworth that, even in private, and usually she forgot to – and Maria.
Still, she'd taken the good with the bad.
Now Crawford's name had been brought up again, because Tom's nature was too base to resist the lowest point of an argument in order to win (he wholly shared Maria's qualities of entitlement and ruthlessness), and old resentments stirred, blown up into the stale air like so much unsettled dust.
The sisters could hardly bear to look at one another and recall that name – the one sister still in love with him, the other sister not the least still in love yet very much humiliated to have to admit she'd once been.
Or very nearly, anyway.
And so, one way or another, it was decided Julia should quit the London house – for how long was not mentioned – and perhaps remember the evils from which Maria had rescued her by going home with Tom and Mr. Yates.
"Our Aunt Norris," said Maria, too sweetly, when all was settled and Julia's bags were packed, "will be very glad of seeing you again, I believe – it's for the best."
"Yes," replied Julia, biting down hard onto her lower lip, then releasing it. "Perhaps she will even find me a husband this time – she'll have so little distraction now, with you and Tom both married off."
"I hope she does," was Maria's simpering answer, her curled fingers tightly interlocked, her countenance stormy, and her eyes fairly glittering. "And I hope he's as wonderful as my Rushworth – you deserve it."
Mr. Yates was the only one in the group to look remotely discomfited on Julia's behalf, and he hid any betrayal of his feelings by turning away and coughing into a handkerchief.
Tom – talking more to the driver and valet than Mr. Yates right then – was more concerned about Julia's luggage, which he felt to be excessive. His own things were few enough; he had taken little to Weymouth with him initially; but between all of the things Mr. Yates had dragged along when he'd come to fetch him and all of the extra goods they'd been given on their departure, Tom felt there wouldn't be enough room for his little sister to transport no less than five hat-boxes.
"If she would but put four hats to a single box–" he began, sighing, and was immediately interrupted by Julia and Maria (who was still listening) protesting that such storage would ruin the best of hats and bonnets and didn't he know anything?
There was nearly a fresh quarrel over this matter, as Tom flatly refused to have any of his sister's silly, over-trimmed belongings in his lap for the journey, but things were amiably resolved when Mr. Yates offered up both his own lap and that of his valet to hold anything which could not be secured to the carriage roof or tucked under their feet.
Tom, growing sullen, then muttered something about wishing he'd crept out the night before, had drinks, gambled, and then packed himself off via stage coach at first light. (How easily the former evils and his vow never to utilise public transportation again were forgotten in his aggravation!) He comforted himself only with the knowledge that he would look fresh enough when Fanny witnessed his return, not stale and glassy-eyed and rumpled, which was the whole reason for stopping over in London to begin with.
And so, with Mr. Yates gallantly offering his hand and Maria, now returned into her lovely, grand house, watching them from the window, Julia was assisted into the carriage.
She did not permit herself the agony of looking back, of glancing around before she ducked inside, of catching one last glimpse of town, of all the pleasures and freedoms she was leaving behind her in London.
Strangely enough, however, Tom did.
It was not at the city's pleasures, though, or with longing for what he was leaving (Fanny trumped all of it, at least for the moment); no, rather, it was with a strange apprehension.
His eyes happened to meet those of his sister in the window, and he found himself hearing what she must be thinking, sensing her wretchedness in a way he was unused to.
She looked trapped.
I can't get out, Tom, her eyes seemed to be shouting. Rushworth is a fool and I'm so unhappy, and I cannot get out!
He did not care, not exactly, only he was left with the unshakable feeling that he was bringing the wrong sister home with him. Julia might be more tolerable, but she was still free, still her own self, somehow, while Maria was in distress.
Why she should be in distress, having all she wanted, all she'd ever claimed to want, was anybody's guess.
And yet...
And yet...
There were horses Tom had seen shot, because their worth was up, who looked more hopeful than Maria Rushworth in that damnable window.
Tom blinked, almost sympathetically.
To his astonishment, Maria put three fingertips to the glass pane.
I'm sorry, I can't help you, sister. Aunt Norris can't change a wall or persuade Father to rescue you from this one, my dear, foolish girl. You're on your own now. I'm sorry – truly.
She let her hand fall and stepped away, vanishing into the house, her jaw set and her eyes hardening. Of course Tom would not help her – of course. He always was good for nothing at all, save to stir up trouble wherever he went.
It was beginning to rain – lightly – a misty drizzle softened by curls of wispy grey fog.
Tom shut the carriage door with a click and, grunting, plopped down into his seat beside Mr. Yates' valet, opposite to Julia and Mr. Yates, who seemed to have been whispering between themselves while he took his time getting in.
Yates smiled brightly at him once he was seated. "Are you ready to go home, my dear fellow?"
Tom arched an eyebrow and cocked his head, as though questioning the seriousness of his companion's inquiry. Mr. Yates must know he'd been ready to go home, ready to see his wife again, for what felt like forever and a day.
Aloud, all he said was, "By all means."
And Mr. Yates – pulling back the curtain and dangling his head out the window – called to the driver and there was a flick and they were moving.
At last.
Tom lolled his head, letting it roll and rest on the back of the seat. He shut his eyes and smiled contentedly.
Maria might find herself unable to get out, unlucky girl, but he felt his own freedom, his own sense of rising hope, with more keenness in this home-bound hour than he thought he ever had in his entire life prior.
His full-body tranquillity was suddenly interrupted by Julia shrieking at the top of her voice and kicking up her feet with such haste she knocked him in the shins.
Tom bit back an oath – quite literally, quite physically, his teeth coming down hard on his bottom lip. There was some small amount of blood. When he could speak again, he cried, "For mercy's sake, Julia, what the devil are you–?" He stopped, then, mid-sentence – he saw for himself.
It was a mouse.
A little mouse running around the floor of the carriage.
A field vole with golden fur, vaguely the same colour as fine wheat – female, probably, judging from its size.
Mr. Yates was exclaiming he had never had vermin in this carriage before and it was surely some mere oversight, and certainly Julia must not be too distressed, all most irregular, didn't she know.
For her part, Julia ignored him and kept on screaming.
Tom wondered how she managed not to pass out – how she did not faint dead away – making that incessant noise without the slightest pause for breath.
"Julia!" he snapped, holding up a hand. "Julia, stop! Julia – shut up at once or it will be my unfortunate brotherly duty to reach across this carriage and slap you!"
"I say!" cried Yates. "Isn't that a bit extreme, Bertram?"
"She's bloody hysterical!" protested Tom, rolling his eyes.
The valet – a heavy blunt object, perhaps his own boot-heel, in hand – was rising to strike the mouse, which – poor thing, though it still squeaked quieter than Julia shouted, was in terror of its own – ran about in helpless circles.
Tom felt his chest tighten. "You complete idiot." He stayed the valet's hand. "There's no need for that."
"Ugh! Oh, Tom, don't touch it!" cried Julia – for indeed Tom was leaning forward and picking up the mouse, frozen in terror, in his hands with unexpected gentleness. "It's filthy."
"Come, come. It's only a mouse – and, honestly, I think she's rather pretty." And he placed, to his sister's visible horror, the little golden-furred creature in his breast pocket, snug and safe under his greatcoat. "I shall place her outside at the next stop."
A/N: Reviews Welcome, replies may be delayed.
