Merriment & Wisdom
A Mansfield Park fanfiction
Part Forty-Four:
Remembrances, Turned Friendly
Lady Bertram declined to appear at supper, retiring to her bed with Pug and a stomach complaint as her evening companions. But, with real warmth, she insisted Susan must feel free to go down and eat with the others – despite her having offered, because she'd felt almost certain her aunt Bertram would wish it, to eat beside her while reading. The servants could bring something up to them, something light – it truly was of no importance.
"That is very thoughtful of you, to be sure," she'd said, patting her niece on the arm and giving a little yawn, "but I'm not feeling at all up to that heavy stuff. No fault of your reading, I assure you, dearest Susan – I don't believe I could enjoy it tonight even if Henry Crawford were here to read it. And you'll recall what a one he was for reciting when he visited; he was very good – Mr. Crawford has a great turn for acting."
Susan barely refrained from a muttered sarcastic affirmative. And from stating that, while he certainly was a very good actor, he was perhaps not as good as he believed himself to be. He had – for a short while – fooled Fanny a little, and even nearly herself to a lesser degree, and he had shocked them both, but his performance won no hearts when the curtain was drawn back on his true character. It had not achieved its objective. He could make people believe – almost – he was handsome – stretch though such a claim was for so meanly plain a face and so low a stature – certainly that he was charming, but not, for any extended time, that he was moral.
Although, even if she had voiced her bitter thoughts, her aunt mightn't have noticed her tone, much less surmised her meaning.
Lady Bertram's thoughts had drifted too far from the original point, and she was now considering the possibility of a theatre at Everingham, for Mr. Crawford seemed just the sort to want such a thing, as well as to be equal to it, once he was settled in there.
What would Susan think of it if there were one?
Susan did not answer, she was icy and standoffish, without even an indignant blush to spare for any Crawford, Mary or Henry, and Lady Bertram's original point was made to come back into the slow moving current of her thoughts.
"As for light prose," she continued, speaking again of reading material and forgetting about acting and Mr. Crawford entirely, "it is never as enjoyable when one's stomach is being disagreeable, you know. And I will have Chapman to help me change for bed."
Such was the most independent, self-sufficient, and confident sort of speech Lady Bertram was ever likely to make. It took Susan by some surprise, but it was not unwelcome – or, rather, it would not have been unwelcome if her only dining companions downstairs were to be Edmund, Fanny, and Tom.
Mrs. Norris had invited herself to stay and dine with them all, even though Edmund had remarked, with a pointed little cough, that – given his mother's disinclination to eat with them tonight – it was sure to be a very simple meal.
"Rest assured, Edmund," she had replied, barrelling over his technically unspoken yet every awkward moment implied protestations without missing a beat, "that I never lament simplicity. The plainest meals served in this house are twice what they are in my home, regardless. Your poor father has found it very difficult to economise in the kitchen, despite my best efforts to help him. But, alas, we must only be pleased he does so much better than the Grants. The excess of butter and eggs at the parsonage these days I simply cannot account for! Nor excuse! Why, only the other day – Edmund, are you listening to me? Young man, I believe I asked you a question. Oh, yes? Now, where was I? Ah, the indulgence – the sheer quantity – of butter at the parsonage, I recall it now – well, it is a way of going on I never can understand. Four persons cannot reasonably consume so many eggs! I am sure it's not good for them, at any rate. Only the other day, I was saying to..."
And Edmund, sporting a wince his aunt accepted as a smile, silently prayed – with a sincere apology for the irreverence – to be struck down like Ananias and Sapphira and thus spared the rest of his aunt's speech. Sudden miraculous deafness would work, too, however, if God thought the request too extreme – his heart wasn't set on actual death by any means.
Sitting down to the meal was worse, enough to make Edmund wish himself back into a conversation about eggs and butter and to make Susan – who'd believed she was through with going red for those she disdained – turn quite scarlet.
For her part, Fanny only looked pale and small and, understandably, a little bit cross. She was seated beside Tom, who would not permit her any other seat, would not suffer her even to move her chair an inch further away from himself, and would not – despite all his aunt's sharp looks – refrain from occasionally reaching out and folding his fingers over his wife's hand reassuringly.
Edmund's own words once spoken to his sister-in-law rang in his ears as he watched them together now.
They were as an out of tune – and date – wholly irrelevant – song of yesteryear playing at the back of his mind.
Tom won't protect you from her, Fanny.
Could he have been wrong about that? Was protecting her from Aunt Norris what his brother was trying to do right this moment in front of them all?
If so, he had never been happier to be proven wrong in his life.
After the soup had been ladled out and spoons were clinking – the tension thick enough to be sliced with a knife and served alongside the broth they were spooning into their mouths – Mrs. Norris demanded to know, once and for all, if Tom was, or was not, going to send Fanny back to Portsmouth as they had discussed.
As if there had been a discussion, a rational one, where Tom had not thrown his tray and screamed his opinion – which certainly had not since changed – at her.
Edmund choked on his soup – Baddeley was required to pound him on the back – and Susan's nostrils flared. Fanny did not say anything or look anywhere, but her cheeks were notably darkened.
"Not," said Tom, returning his spoon to his pursed lips with exaggerated causality. "I can't imagine why you'd think I would." Then, an aside, from the corner of his mouth, "For pity's sake, Edmund, must you cough so loudly? I'm just recovering from being very ill and that noise is a bit unnerving. Nothing so remarkable has been said, has it?"
Susan passed her handkerchief to Edmund. "You have..." She faltered, then resumed. "You have a spot of...soup...on your chin..."
He accepted it gratefully.
"Tom," cried Mrs. Norris, aghast, "do you truly not realise that, if we do not set the example in sending Fanny away, the Grants may well fail to send Mr. Crawford packing to Norfolk, as they ought for his behaviour, even if he is a gentleman, and dear Julia – when your father brings her back to us safely from Scotland – may have her virtue compromised. Ill implications given to her name, at the very least. It's been circulated, though a while ago, how Mr. Crawford was to be for Julia."
"Firstly," said Tom, with slow coldness, "my wife has done nothing wrong – I thought we established this as fact when I asked her in front of you earlier, though perhaps you failed to listen – and, secondly, in regards to Julia, I'm fairly confident she must be married by now. Otherwise Father would surely have written and told Edmund of her fallen state.
"So she can, you must agree, as a married woman, care as little for seeing that certain person as anyone in this house.
"You rather seem more obsessed with the man than the rest of us, to be sure, aunt.
"And I will, now, ask you to please refrain from mentioning a person I've solemnly promised my wife she should be free from hearing of in future. I'll not have her distressed in her own home."
The bowls were cleared away and Mrs. Norris pertly readjusted the silverware remaining in front of her. Her wrist-bones were tense and jutted out at uncomfortable angles under thin, clammy skin. "You think very little of your own sister's reputation; I'm quite ashamed of you, Tom."
"Oh, trust me, the feeling is entirely mutual." He reached for a filled wineglass, which – at Edmund's snapped fingers – was instantly switched by Baddeley for a glass of water. "Edmund!"
"You know what the physician directed, Tom."
"Yes, yes," he muttered, bringing the water to his lips and drinking without any evident enjoyment. "Very well. As you like. You're right, I suppose. But this is hardly a conversation to be endured sober."
Fanny quietly signalled Baddeley, who – noting her exhausted expression – compliantly placed the still filled wineglass beside her plate, now it had been removed from her husband's reach.
No one, to the butler's perception, had ever looked as if they needed it more.
"You need to watch how you speak to me, young man!"
Tom coolly took another sip of water and made rather a point of going, "Ahhh..." and smacking his lips indolently afterwards.
Fanny tipped her head back and downed half her glass in one go, largely unobserved by the others.
"If poor dear Julia's plight cannot move you, think of your own standing!" cried Mrs. Norris. "When I came upon you earlier, she" – she pointed at Fanny, who was still steadily gulping – "was in a most wanton state." She lowered her voice. "Displaying her breasts. Quite shocking."
"I am sure, aunt," snapped Susan, cracking her knuckles against the side of the table, "Tom already knew what her breasts looked like – otherwise, it should be a most dull marriage indeed."
Fanny, plainly mortified, looked about ready to sink under the table and hide.
Tom, wholly unabashed, muttered something under his breath about there being no need for his aunt to complain about Fanny's breasts, of which he was quite fond, just because nobody had any interest in seeing hers. Edmund shot him a glare, and – to the rest of the table, declaring himself to be extremely uncomfortable – asked for a change of subject and was promptly denied such, though they did mercifully leave off further mentioning anybody's breasts.
Instead, the conversation – following an aside from Tom to Baddeley that he have a maid-servant bring Fanny's required night-things into his sickroom after they ate, as she would be sleeping downstairs with him tonight – took a turn into what Mrs. Norris had been meaning to get at: she did not believe Fanny and Tom should be allowed to be so intimate when they did not know, for a certainty, whether or not she was already with Henry Crawford's child.
Fanny had, she pointed out, been oddly sick for several mornings – she never did believe her niece's headaches were real – after Mr. Crawford had left the house for the last time.
"And if there is a bastard, and it should be a boy" – she shuddered – "the very notion of her pawning the brat off as yours! Of a Crawford inheriting Mansfield Park someday. Of the baronetcy being–"
"Aunt Norris!" came from Edmund, who could not help it, but he need not have bothered.
For this proved more than Tom would stand. "Get out."
"I beg your pardon?" Her widening eyes were fairing popping with shock and outrage. "Whatever can you mean?"
"Leave the house – leave my house – this instant." His chest heaved; his clenched fist struck the side of the table, making it rattle from one end to the other; if he could have settled on something to throw in time, they might have had a repeat of the tray incident. "If you think I shall sit by like a good little schoolboy with my hands folded while you repeatedly insult my wife in this dashed unpleasant manner, you're surely dreaming."
"Oh, well done! Good for you, brother!" cried Susan, so exceedingly proud of Tom she could have shouted louder still if she dared. She could have whooped as easily as she cried out. Only narrowly – and by sitting upon her hands – did she resist the temptation to bang a spoon merrily against her glass.
"I'm sure," gasped Mrs. Norris, gone chalk white, "I've never heard of such a thing in all my life!" She followed this exclamatory remark with a sharp, nasal speech on how they should recall it was not, not quite yet, Tom's house, and he was showing himself to be a very poor future master of it indeed, if this was how he meant to treat his guests. "But if my company is not desired," she sniffed in conclusion, rising from her place, pushing back her chair with unsteady hands, "I shall return to the White House most willingly, and so remain until your father arrives and I can plead my case – and describe your wicked mistreatment of me – to him in person!"
"Will you be requiring your glass refilled, Mrs. Bertram?" asked Baddeley, breaking the ensuing silence and bringing over the bottle.
"Oh, God," squeaked Fanny, sagging with relief in her chair, "yes."
"To tell the truth, Fanny, I think supper went off very well. I'd even go so far as to say exceedingly well. Wouldn't you?"
Fanny – already in bed and watching Tom set aside his walking-stick and pull off his stockings – gawked at him with an expression of mild disbelief. She was used to his queer, teasing speeches, to be sure, but she couldn't fathom how he meant to spin this one in jest.
"Don't look at me like that," said he, pouting lightly. "Really, don't. I only meant, well, I told Aunt Norris where to go, did I not? You can't tell me you didn't feel a pleasant twinge of satisfaction, seeing her turn all green and rushing out of the dining room as she did? I was too angry to enjoy it properly myself, but in retrospect it was a right splendid show!"
She murmured that she hadn't wished for him to make trouble for himself upon her account. "If she does say something to your father–"
"Then I shall tell him she insulted your honour and persuade him to take my part." He eased himself down onto the bed beside her, pulling back the coverlet and sliding his now bare legs inward with a contented sigh. "Which I think he might readily do, old ties be damned, for your sake – he gave you a ball, after all, and I feel certain our aunt couldn't have wished such for you. Given her proven feelings, I mean."
"She raised you." Fanny's voice was small – she did not have overmuch affection for her own father and mother, but to be cut off from them by a quarrel rather than mere distance would have stung.
Familiarity in and of itself had always had a way of worming into Fanny's heart, of carving out a place therein, and she wouldn't have blamed her husband if he felt the loss of Aunt Norris despite everything.
If he'd had a tear or two saved up for her, dreadful though her behavior had been.
Tom, however, felt nothing of the kind; he was not very like his wife in that regard. His love, even when given passively, could rarely be won for the long haul by mere proximity.
He only wrinkled his nose and rolled over, slipping an arm about her waist. "Oh, don't remind me, creepmouse." He chuckled, a trifle darkly, to himself. "I suppose it's why I didn't turn out better, eh? She never fawned over Edmund as she did myself and Maria, and even Julia, when the mood struck her."
Fanny had rather a lot of theories as to why – of the four of them – Edmund would be Aunt Norris' least favourite; it was something she thought on occasionally when she could not sleep, simply because the idea of anyone – even Mrs. Norris – not loving Edmund as well as they ought struck her as very strange, most alien a concept indeed. A puzzle to be sorted out. But none of those theories were anything like the point now, for she'd not at all missed the slight Tom's grim speech directed towards himself.
"I think you turned out wonderful," she whispered, placing a hand on his face and tracing the shape of his handsome cheekbone.
"Of course I did," he teased; "I certainly am as wonderful as you say, but I think I might have been better."
She shook her head and pressed her palm flat. "No."
There simply was no one better than the gentleman who had seen her breaking away from the dancing at the assembly in Portsmouth and then, out of concern, come and sat beside her.
She couldn't have known, then, not from the first moment, naturally, but in looking back that little memory was so indescribably dear.
The days when thinking of him without wanting to weep – because he was so far off, in Weymouth and Newmarket respectively, and she'd believed them separated by more than merely distance – was nearly impossible were washed away like shallow footprints on sand.
No one, absolutely no one, was better than the man who had courted her so earnestly, pressed his case so clumsily – there had been that wretched kiss in front of her entire family which only eventual marriage had prevented from being a remembrance to inflict the most painful mortification – yet in a way no heart like hers might have hope of resisting forever.
It was so strange to think how she had resisted his suit at first for fear of his inevitably hurting her one day. She hadn't suspected then how, along with the hurt, would come something equally consolatory; the pain then was part of her joy now as well as the joy before it.
Every memory was a friend (or else bore relation to a recollection that was); from herself and Tom hiding from Charles in the closet – and to think he had been flirting with her, trying to be near her and touch her hair, incorrigible future husband! – to Tom's childishly running away from his father, from poor Sir Thomas, when they were newly returned to Mansfield and only reappearing at odd intervals. It was an evil, still, to recall being shut out, taken up for a woman of loose morals by her aunt Norris – but even that irredeemably ugly recollection so easily set off the accompanying memory of the night before it, of Tom's affection for her. Think how he had even tucked her in afterwards while she slept! The thought was as glowing and warm as stoked embers in a grate.
She wondered if he could see it – behold it in her face as he pulled himself on top of her, entangling one of his legs with one of hers, and began to drag the blankets over their heads – how very, very much she loved him.
He must have had some idea, some reassuring notion of it. At least, she hoped he did.
"You have my word, creepmouse, our aunt will never trouble or vex you again," he said (and it was the last thing he said before being otherwise occupied with her, one of his hands already diligently bunching up her nightdress about her upper-thighs). As far as he was concerned, no one would. They would never, not under his watch or roof, have another Norris or Crawford in their lives together. "It's about time I became useful to you" – his mouth gave a little empathic pop, his exhaled breath warm and sweet against her face – "steady and quiet."
Not too quiet, Fanny privately hoped as she was pressing her lips to his; for she so dearly loved to hear him, often to be shocked by him, when he had something to say.
Or nothing.
They had some news of Julia and Mr. Yates at last. A letter arrived telling all Sir Thomas had discovered regarding them.
The pair had not been nearly so hard to find as the anxious baronet had grimly anticipated; a very giddy John Yates had been seen going about in public humming the wedding march and waxing on about his beautiful wife – for wife she now was – to anyone who would listen, without the least thought to be inconspicuous or discreet.
Tom, in no mood to indulge in thoughts of his old companion, grumblingly admitted it certainly sounded like something Yates would do – the blockhead – when Edmund read the letter to him.
They were in his sickroom to avoid Lady Bertram overhearing anything prior to it being settled exactly what they ought to tell her regarding Julia's marriage.
That it had taken place must be shared with her, certainly, and it might even bring her pleasure to think of a second daughter married off to a gentleman who was not wholly unfavourable a match, but she must be spared the broader implications of the elopement, spared the knowledge of the distress it had caused her husband.
"Father says," Edmund told his brother, reading on, "he has some hope of things turning out better than he imagined." With a light rustle, he turned over the page to see what was written upon the opposite side "He claims Julia has been humble and very much desirous of forgiveness for being so underhanded with her marriage. I don't doubt it myself. She always was less headstrong than Maria. Mr. Yates has expressed a wish for our father's guidance, and Father is pleased to find his new son-in-law's gambling debts not half so much as your own once were." He was pensive, taking it all in. "What do you think, Tom – I fear I don't know Yates very well – can he be tolerably domestic?"
"I daresay Julia will learn to like him well enough, though he's not very solid, but I won't desire anything to do with him for a while, not if it can be helped."
"You may need to think of forgiving him in time, Tom."
"Aye, in time – but mine, not his." And he never could be what he had once been to him, that much was a certainty. Edmund, the brother Tom had spent so much of his life feeling inferior to, had always thought was privately condemning him with all his extreme displays of piety, now fully occupied the position of primary male companionship – for he had proven himself true. It was Edmund's company Tom wanted, for sport and talking and sitting quietly and for reflection, not that of John Yates, who – in biased retrospect – he began to think rather insipid and not nearly serious-minded enough to be a real friend.
For his own part, Edmund privately lamented the severance of two close companions who had – even excluding all other ties and claims – truly loved one another in the past, even if their influence on each other had never been strictly for the best. Still, he could find nothing decidedly wrong in Tom's statement, his declaration of disinterest in Yates – he was bitter, which was to be expected, but he was not wrong. Not entirely. He was not flatly denying forgiveness in and of itself; he was not being unchristian towards their new brother-in-law so much as he was being cautious and guarding his heart against further wounds.
Besides, Fanny's remaining fondness for Mr. Yates as the original companion of the gentleman she fell in love with in Portsmouth, the one who had worked alongside him to secure her, might – with the aforementioned time – soften him up somewhat, recalling better days even to Tom's wounded pride.
"Do you think," asked Edmund, with a mild twinkle in his eye, folding the letter, "our mother will wish to give Julia a puppy? She didn't give Maria one. And she's never quite forgotten Julia liked to tease Pug as a girl."
Tom's eyes drifted to Fanny's puppy asleep on his pillow behind him, the little pug periodically making drinking, sucking noises in its sleep and running in place with its short, stubby legs. "Well, if it comes up" – he reached over to rub the dog's head – "tell her she can't have mine."
A/N: Reviews Welcome, replies may be delayed.
