Merriment & Wisdom
A Mansfield Park fanfiction
Part Forty-Five:
The Beginning of Endings, Such As They Are
The young serving-maid was almost too astonished to be properly alarmed when, quite suddenly, Mr. Bertram reached out and touched her collar and – with rather a bit of unexpected force – yanked it downward. A scrap of lace she'd gotten from a wish-he-were-sweetheart last Christmas was tugged out of its place and exposed, just slightly; a button popped off her lapel and landed soundlessly in the carpet.
She gawked, as though she'd taken a blow, as if winded.
Tom Bertram was the very last person, the very last kind of eldest son, to be expected – much less ever suspected – of lechery towards the maids of his father's household. He had never, so far as she knew, laid a hand on any of them before. Partly because he wasn't stupid – he knew his father was against scandal of any sort and was not the kind of baronet who would allow such a thing to occur under his roof. But he also seemed wholly uninterested in them in that particular way. For all that her generation of downstairs staff, roughly between the ages of thirty-five and sixteen, did not as a collective like Mr. Bertram and would have preferred the baronet's younger son inherit the running of the house – though none disliked him enough to be very sorry he recovered, now that he indeed had; they weren't wicked – they never had cause to fear him.
The untried friends he brought home with him from Oxford in the early days just out of Eton, returned for some holiday or other, were far more likely to harass the females of the staff – to grope or pinch inappropriately – than he was, and much less at liberty to do so without it becoming known.
The worst Mr. Bertram had ever done to them was have the sort of merriment a mischievous young man of seventeen will always think fair with persons who are legally required to comply with most of his demands; nothing perverse, just a few rather ill-conceived pranks. A faux-bug or faux-rodent carefully placed to make them scream. A spilled something or other at an inopportune moment. A straight up framing for – a pointed finger at – a made-up problem they did not, any of them, actually cause. This serving-maid in particular, who had been around twelve when he was newly eighteen, had once suffered a twisted ankle and a chipped tooth because he lifted the corner of a rug to make her trip – he hadn't actually meant to hurt her, and the scolding he got from an irate Sir Thomas afterwards made him feel as badly as he would allow himself to.
Interestingly, had the woman who was now his wife been a visitor in residence at Mansfield Park at a similar age, she would have suffered roughly the same sort of treatment, with no-holds-barred, from him – for all Tom's ready condescension, he wasn't discriminatory.
But, indeed, Fanny – as she now was, rather than as she might have been – was yet another reason the serving-maids didn't expect this of him. They did not care for her much more than they did for him, but he plainly adored her, especially after his recent recovery, and was not remotely inclined towards unfaithfulness.
So the startled young woman could do little more than, with quivering lips, try – and remarkably fail – to croak out, "Mr. Bertram!"
What could he mean? None of this was to be made sense of!
Oh, but if he really – and Sir Thomas not back yet, delayed in Scotland these increased weeks – oh...!
Mr. Bertram had personally summoned her up here, on her own, without even Baddeley's supervision, to serve tea in the drawing-room which ought to have contained his mother and wife at this hour as well as himself, his brother, and his sister-in-law.
Yet Lady and Mrs. Bertram were both inexplicably absent from their usual places upon the sofa; Susan was occupied with a book; and Edmund, although watching them from under slightly lowered eyelids, was – most uncharacteristically – showing no signs of interfering.
He'd seen the full exchange; seen Tom beckon her with a distinct motion of his index finger to stand directly in front of him (he wasn't going to take the trouble of hobbling on his walking-stick to come over to her) and then grab her and pull down her collar. And he scarcely reacted. His brother might as well have just taken a sip of tea for all the concern Edmund displayed.
With a speedy slip of his finger which made her squeal, Tom lifted up a glittering, ornate gold chain and arched an eyebrow.
She'd been so shocked, so startled, so stupidly certain he had meant something he couldn't possibly have meant, being who he was, she had gone and missed the obvious – she'd forgotten about the necklace she was wearing tucked under her dress. The necklace she'd been wearing for days without detection.
She really had begun to think herself – and her secret – safe.
She was a fool.
Smirking, Tom inclined his head to Edmund, whose eyes were fully open now – he looked more saddened and grim than accusing, but it was plain he was displeased with her.
"What do you say, Edmund?" Tom asked a trifle archly. "Was I right or was I right? We have our spy."
Susan's book fell to her lap. "Simply having the necklace about her throat doesn't make her–"
The serving-maid, blood pounding in her ears, was in no state to wisely allow her case to be pleaded, however damned in manner; she'd barely heard the defence, barely even heard Mr. Bertram's actual accusation, she was so tightly wound.
"I didn't steal it – I didn't, sir!" she burst out, losing her head. "I found it – on t'ground as like n'one wanted it." She hiccuped anxiously, on the verge of hysterical tears. "I swear it on my mother's grave. Mother's grave, sir."
"Your mother's Mrs. Talbot, isn't she?" Edmund's brow furrowed. "Forgive me, I didn't realise she passed away – my condolences."
"She hasn't," said Tom, impatiently, from the corner of his mouth, well aware none other than Mrs. Talbot had gathered up his bed linen that morning – and given something of an odd, but fleeting, look in his wife's direction he'd been rather confused by – and she'd seemed in perfect health then. "And, I don't give a damn about the necklace, and I think you know why – I think you know exactly who gave it to my wife and why she discarded it – you better begin talking quite rapidly if you don't desire an immediate dismissal."
"I-I know it was a present from Miss Crawford, sir, but Mrs. Bertram didn't like how it looked with her cross and–"
Tom grabbed her arm and squeezed, glaring. "Don't. D'you take me for an idiot?" He snorted angrily, giving her arm – which he still held roughly – a shake. "You're in love with Henry Crawford, aren't you? And you've been taking news from this house to the parsonage for him for well over a month now, haven't you?"
Susan defended her. The young woman's face – though still faintly disdainful – was distorted with evident terror overpowering any other emotion. Terror, perhaps not only of Tom Bertram and what he could do to her, but of betraying someone dearer to her than any position. "Tom, enough! Be gentle with her – you know what Crawford's like." There was no telling what sweet words, what pretty, meaningless endearments the so-called gentleman had whispered into this maid's ear to get his information. All because he couldn't forget Fanny. All because he refused to let go of a woman who had been denying him every step of the way.
Tom's grasp loosened, pity trickling into his gaze. His eyes softened as he stared wearily down at the maid-servant. "Come on. Don't be a damned bloody fool. You know it's not you he wants. He's not going to take to Norfolk with him when he leaves."
"Right, sir," she choked out, "I knowed" – she coughed rather violently, racked by sobs – "I mean knew it, that's right, en't it? Knew? But as Mrs. Bertram won't 'ave him, as she only fancies you, I thought–"
"That, I'm afraid, does not excuse betraying this family's confidences."
She wept inconsolably, begging them to not take her position away without references. There was no place else for her to go.
Edmund, now at her other side, gently asked, "Does Mr. Crawford even know you have that necklace?" He didn't believe it was a bribe – Henry wouldn't dole out an expensive gift he meant for Fanny to maid-servant, even as a way of getting information. He was a charming man, he could achieve the exact same ends with a flower or a smile as he could with something of actual monetary value.
She shook her head.
"Where did you find it?"
"In the shrubbery outside, under Mrs. Bertram's window – she throwed – threw – it out."
"You ought to have turned it in to Baddeley. It would have been the right thing to do."
"It weren't wanted."
"I know, dear," Susan put in, when Edmund seemed at a lost for responding to this last, rising from her place. "But–"
Tom, done with swallowing his spleen for the moment, snapped, "Can we forget about the stupid necklace and discuss the jolly mean dance you've led me on these past three weeks trying to find out which one of you lot downstairs was the rat? How can you expect to be kept on after so betraying my wife?"
"I didn't tell him everythin'!" she exclaimed, teeth chattering. "Not everythin'! Just about you getting worse, a'fore you recovered. And Mrs. Bertram taking to her bed with headache again. Mr. Crawford never asked nothin' bad. He's a good gentleman, he is. And, also, I told some stuff about Mrs. Bertram not walking alone in the shrubbery since you got better – dunno why he wanted to know that, but I told him it, on account of he asked me. And I told him Edmund burned his letter – the one as was supposed to be from Dr. Grant. I knowed – knew – because I found a wee bitty scrap of it in the grate, when I come in to sweep, and it had an I curled just the way Mr. Crawford does 'is own. I didn't say nuf-thing t'all about the baby. I weren't goin' to, neither, I swear it."
Tom dropped her arm and sagged backwards against the sofa cushions. "What baby?"
At first she – gone chalk white – would say no more, but Tom refused to let it go. He might have grabbed her again and shaken it out of her if she hadn't finally complied on her own. "T-the baby Mrs. Bertram's set t'ave. My mother says as she's had no courses this month at all, and she hasn't been late a'fore, not once in the time she's been here..." Her already wide eyes bugged at his startled expression. "Didn't you know?"
He had not known, that much was plain. But it fit. The look Mrs. Talbot had given Fanny, when she took away the linens this morning! Tom didn't even have to count back to guess, now he thought on it, his wife was due to be... To have her...well... Unless she...
He was scrambling to his feet at once, fumbling for the walking-stick. It wasn't until he'd gotten out of the drawing-room entirely, pivoted himself in the direction that would take him to where Fanny was (the library, most likely), and actually shouted her name twice, calling for her despite the impossibility of her hearing, he remembered they were rather in the middle of something.
He stuck his head back in hurriedly. "Uh... Edmund? Give the blasted maid a good what-for in my place, won't you?"
"I'll handle it," Edmund waved him off. "Go."
"Fanny!" It sounded as though he'd cupped a hand about his mouth. "Oi, Fan-neee!"
"For goodness sake," muttered Susan, rolling her eyes, "he is not calling a runaway horse!" To the serving-maid, "And you, just... Just don't tell any more tales to Crawford and don't take anything that doesn't belong to you. There, Edmund, you're spared a speech or an immediate dismissal for now, perhaps that can be an end to it."
The serving-maid's hand flew to her throat. "M-may I keep t'necklace?"
Edmund shook his head and held out his hand. "No, I'm afraid not."
With tears in her eyes, she unclasped the gold chain and handed it over. "S'not fair," she sniffed. "S'not fair t'all. I only wanted what apparently weren't good enough for the likes of Mrs. Bertram – nothing else. I woulda bin a lot kinder to it than she was."
Susan and Edmund both felt quite certain the maid-servant was not speaking strictly of the necklace.
More of the giver than the gift itself, to be sure.
The hot, slick trail of tears coursing down her face were not merely for some found trinket she was now required to return.
Henry Crawford really had done a number on this one; Baddeley would need to keep an eye on her and mind which errands he chose to send her on. It would be for the best if she weren't put in the path of the parsonage, and temptation, anytime soon.
Tom fairly burst into the library. "Fanny! Is it true?"
Fanny, in a leather chair and bent over a large book she now closed, blinked up at him in startled puzzlement. "Is what true? What can you mean?"
In a flustered rush, it flew from his mouth – the maid-servant whose mother changed the linens had said she... Well, she really mustn't keep him in suspense – it wasn't like her to tease – was she?
"Oh." She went quite scarlet. "Yes. That is, I think so. I've never...so it's not easy to say...but my mother always, when she, well she was like... So I think–"
Although he was a man leaning on a walking-stick for support he still managed, somehow, to close the – surprisingly wide – distance between them with recording timing and bend over and kiss her before she could finish speaking.
Pulling away, yet still keeping within inches of her face, he exclaimed, "Creepmouse, why-ever didn't you say something before?"
"I wanted to be certain – it's still so early – and I thought it might be better if both your parents were here, so you could tell them together."
"But this is wonderful – we shall be parents! Can you imagine it?" He launched into a joyful speech, here, about how their son would be the most precious thing in Mansfield.
"It might be a girl," Fanny reminded him in a halting, steadying tone that, while sweet, was also almost arch.
Tom's happiness was in no way diminished by this. "All the better!" he crowed, planting another kiss on her – this time it landed on her cheek – for good measure. "A boy'll be an heir, you know, he'll have to belong to Mansfield and family duty as much as to us. A girl would be all our own."
"I'm relieved you're so happy about it."
"Did you doubt it?" he laughed, astonished.
"No, but you've just recovered from being so ill..." She gave a shivery shrug. "I thought the timing might make you unhappy."
"Nonsense – d'you even realise...? God, Fanny, I thought I was going to die – that we'd never be together again. For a while I believed the only chance you'd have to keep everything I promised you, to have the life you deserved, would be to marry Edmund. All that while, being so ill, I thought about the family we'd never have. Only, now, everything's different! We're together and we're going to have a child."
"I'm a little frightened," Fanny admitted, her hands, joined tightly in her lap, beginning to tremble. "I've never been very strong, Tom – what if I can't carry it? What if it doesn't..."
"We shall have the best physician we can find always at the ready." He placed his hands over hers, steadying them. "And everybody at Mansfield will make sure you don't exert yourself unnecessarily. You're going to be fine, I promise. Don't you trust me?"
She smiled, but it was with some plain hesitance she was not fast enough in her momentarily frazzled wits to think of concealing.
"Come on, think – have I broken any promises to you recently?"
She shook her head. "No." No, he'd been wonderful lately; more than wonderful, he'd been everything. It seemed impossible in so few weeks her already beloved husband could become even dearer than he'd already been, but it was true, he had.
"Then trust me when I tell you everything's going to be all right – better than all right."
Standing in the vestibule at Stanwix Lodge, Henry Crawford clutched the brim of his top hat, looking sheepish. He'd just finished confirming to the owner he no longer had need of renting the place, making several fervent apologies, and stating he hoped the inconvenience would not be too great.
"I expected to marry," Henry admitted; "the house was to be for my wife."
To be sure, this was not the first time he was informing his would-have-been-landlord of his withdrawal from the lease of the property, but he was aware his letter had been hasty and offered no explanation. It had seemed prudent to come in person.
"Not to worry, sir," – the owner, an amiable elderly man of middle-class ranking, appeared perfectly tranquil throughout the entirety of his speech – "shortly after your first missive arrived, informing me I could advertise the place again, another gentleman contacted me and I feel very confident of letting it out to him. He seems a fine fellow. Pretty little wife he's got, too, though she doesn't talk much. Such lovely fair hair she's got. My own missus was blonde, you know, hair like winter wheat she had, before it turned a little grey nearing the end – I used to call her Goldie, when it was just the two of us about – and I just lost her last October. It leads me to be rather sentimental, lighting eyes on a pretty woman like Mrs. Bertram."
Henry struggled to keep his composure – his features fought against the unconscious desire to distort themselves. Despite his best efforts his nostrils flared and his chin was not as still as it ought to have been.
"You're letting the house to Tom Bertram?" He would have thought Mr. Bertram, even at his worst, above such a low strike as to swoop in and – despite having no evident need for it – secure the house he'd intended for Fanny, back when he'd thought things would turn out differently, though they hadn't. But, then, Edmund – generally thought to be the less spiteful of the two brothers – had gone and given that unfortunate sermon, the one he could have chosen any topic for in Dr. Grant's place, which upset his sister so; he could no longer be certain of what either Bertram brother was capable of. Henry never realised how much he liked them as friends, what pleasant companions they really were, until he found himself, most unwillingly, their targeted enemy. "Tom Bertram of Mansfield Park?"
"That's the fellow. Friend of yours, is he?" The landlord of Stanwix Lodge brightened at the notion of a connection here, no doubt thinking them all happy, young, titled persons dwelling in a glittering world all their own. And he was old and good-natured enough to be pleased for them. "Then you must have heard, I expect. Poor thing has himself a walking-stick, been frightful ill as of late, and it's made him weak about the legs, but he's on the mend and – as I'm sure you'll be pleased to know – I never in my whole life saw someone with higher spirits."
Of course he'd be in high spirits – what did Mr. Bertram have to be less than enthusiastic about? He was married to the most perfect woman in the world, such a woman as Henry Crawford himself would never see again; he was rich and titled, a future baronet with more assets than he could keep track of on his own; and his health was miraculously improving against all odds.
Any one of those things ought to be enough to put a spring into anybody's step, however hobbled their gait might currently be, Henry thought, not without a bit of gall in his throat, and Tom had all three.
Henry would have given up Everingham and lived like a pauper anywhere in the whole of England, no matter how far from London or the ton (or so he imagined he would have been willing to do, which is not at all the same thing as a real inclination; he believed this statement to be sincere enough, though) if he could have gotten Fanny for his own in the end.
Mary, when he told her his thoughts – upon returning to the parsonage from Stanwix Lodge – pointed out, firstly, he would look rather blank as a pauper and she couldn't imagine him giving up Everingham, his London friends (and lovers), and their uncle's support for a member of the royal family, let alone Fanny Bertram. She knew him to be earnest, to be still very much in love, but he needn't, she was quick to remind him, be ridiculous. Even on Edmund Bertram's current income, the disgustingly modest income of a country parson, he should be strained and tense, let alone that of an actual pauper. She had more than once seen her brother unsettled when no servant was on hand to tie his cravat for him in the morning; and she knew he was too proud, as well he should be, to beg.
But sensible he would not be.
He argued, unwilling to give in to her point, that no princess in all of Christendom was better or sweeter than Fanny.
It was, he stated melodramatically, as comparing rocks and mountains to diamonds.
In return, Mary snorted, "I don't see where the diamonds come into it" – her brother's metaphor was strained at best – "but what are sweet girls to rocks and mountains?"
No, no, her wit would not silence him. He would not be thought less than what he truly felt. After all, would she wilfully misunderstand a brother so defeated in love? Would she not let him state, from the depths of his broken heart, how he would give anything – absolutely anything – for a different outcome than the one he was left with?
"Have it your own way, Henry," she sighed finally, wearied; "believe yourself a martyr prevented only by forces outside yourself if you like. But before you begin to complain about Mr. Bertram slighting you about Stanwix Lodge again, I suppose you ought to know. It's not for Fanny and Tom themselves. Don't excite yourself imagining the couple decorating Stanwix as their personal love nest.
"No, it is for Mr. Yates and Julia – they've married, you see. That is why Sir Thomas has been away despite Tom's illness; he left to hush up the scandal. Stanwix Lodge is to be their home as long as they desire to reside in Northamptonshire, because Tom cannot bear to have John Yates in the house, depend upon it.
"You know how unforgiving the Bertrams can be to their friends."
This was not all a lucky guess on Mary's part. Mrs. Grant had gotten it from Mrs. Chapman, and then from Lady Bertram herself (she'd managed to visit the house briefly while Tom and Fanny were out to take the air and Edmund was occupied with the downstairs staff; and she had only Susan's vaguely disapproving looks to avoid), and shared it with Mary afterwards.
The mere fact that Stanwix Lodge was not being rented simply to spite him, to rub his loss in his face, coupled with the news – rather surprising, to be sure, yet everyone swore to the truth of it – Mr. Bertram was leaving for Derbyshire as soon as his father returned from Scotland, kept Henry from complete despair, but his relief did not last long.
His grasp on the tiny chipped fragment of hope he yet clung to was soon drastically loosened.
While out for a walk, he chanced upon Mr. and Mrs. Bertram taking a picnic by the pond. They did not see him, but he was near enough, concealed only by the trunk of a tall oak tree, to watch them and hear their conversation.
Tom placed a hand on Fanny's belly and murmured something into her ear.
"It's too soon," she laughed, putting one of her own small hands over his and, with a hasty turn of the head, shaking away a stray side-curl blown close to her left eye in the breeze, "you won't feel anything yet. Betsey didn't kick my mother until we'd known about her for more than eighteen weeks."
Henry recoiled as if he'd been struck in the chest by a bullet and slumped against the tree, letting himself sink into a loose crouching position.
He covered his face with his hands.
She was with child. She would be Mrs. Bertram always now. She was simply not the kind of wife a man like Tom Bertram left alone and untouched, even if he ought to for her own sake, after giving him an heir and a spare.
The hope Henry had been nursing of coming back into Fanny's good graces one day, of regaining her friendship, if nothing more desirable, beginning his attack while Tom was in Derbyshire, ebbed away faster than a fistful of water from the pond would have slipped through his splayed fingers.
All the concern in the Bertram family would be for that unborn baby – possibly Mansfield's heir – nothing would be permitted to upset Fanny in her pregnancy, and Edmund would guard his brother's wife jealously.
Lately, Henry had been having silly daydreams in which he simply snatched Fanny away from everything, grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into his carriage and had the driver take them to Norfolk, where he would convince her how much better her life would be with him, recovered husband or no recovered husband, until she understood they were made for one another.
The dreams were already impossible, and he knew it all along, he wouldn't (or so he told himself) really have done anything like that, however much he liked imagining it, envisioning over and over again the glorious moment when she would throw her arms about his neck and declare she never wanted any other home besides Everingham and no other man save him, but the baby – well, the baby shattered the dreams entirely.
She might love him more than Tom – he never did believe Fanny didn't love him at all, despite her having said as much – someday – but more than her child?
No.
Even Henry knew mothers adored their children in a way no lover could come between or dream of surpassing.
And she would want her precious child to be with its father, always.
Moreover, the way they were looking at one another now, Tom's big, clumsy hand still on her belly regardless of her claim he would feel nothing yet, locked in a starry-eyed gaze...
It was plain as day there was no coming between them.
The final blow came the following morning – Mr. Bertram had indeed gone to Derbyshire for a holiday upon his father's return, but he hadn't gone alone. He took Fanny with him – for, apparently, he'd promised her as much.
And, mere moments before Mr. Bertram's carriage was readied for their departure and Fanny had been ardently kissed goodbye by both Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, a small parcel containing a single gold chain arrived at the parsonage with a short letter from Susan Price 'thanking Miss Crawford for the generous loan on behalf of her most beloved sister, though it was no longer needed'. (Edmund's reading the letter before it was sent was the only thing which prevented a post script adding how, now that circumstances were so vastly good, Tom no doubt intended to supply Fanny with any number of chains for her cross among other jewellery, having already begun with a very pretty pearl-and-emerald ring which had been in the family for almost as long as the baronetcy and looked exceedingly well upon her sister's finger; such an addition smacked, to the good sensibilities he strived so to set the example in, a little too much of vanity, and he was gentle but quick to remind his cousin they were, or must at least try to be, above such things.)
Without a reason to stay and wait for their return, and without saying goodbye even to Mary, Henry left for London less than an hour after Dr. Grant informed him they'd gone.
A/N: Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.
