Merriment & Wisdom
A Mansfield Park fanfiction
Part Fifty:
Endings, Such As They Are
"A dashed uncalled for trick, upon my word – to shut a fellow out of his own bedroom! T'devil can they mean by it?" Tom raised a hand and began to bang irritably on the closed doors before Edmund came up behind him, grasped his forearms, and gently pulled him back into the sitting room, vainly attempting to calm him. "I see no good reason for it! You know, the physician is all right, in and of himself, nothing against the good doctor, he came quickly enough, but those damned midwives he's brought with him took one sidelong look at me, declared 'Oh, it's the father', in that insipid, simpering tone of disapproval they all use as if it's going out of style tomorrow, and then the fairly frightening one with big" – Tom's eyes darted downward towards his chest for a moment, then he coughed – "eh, that is, beady eyes – big, beady eyes – fairly pushed me out and slammed the door in my face! Hang me, I do say, if this isn't the most impertinent reception a man's ever gotten in his own home – a respectable gentleman, no less!"
"Tom," tried Edmund, "I know you're concerned for Fanny – we all are – but it's hardly the custom–"
"Hang the custom!" he snarled. "If a man can be present when his favourite mare gives birth to a foal – which I've been many-a-time – why on earth is he barred from seeing his own child arriving?"
Edmund could provide no answer to that (in fairness, rather logical) statement, and – perhaps because he did not give a retort – Tom became suddenly almost docile in response, realising Edmund – a fellow male barred from witnessing the birth – wasn't really the enemy in all this, and sat down in one of the velvet chairs, observing Susan sitting tensely upon the arm of the opposite matching chair.
That is, until the doors he'd been banging on moments ago magically opened partway and a midwife, sticking her head out, demanded to know if she was the mother's sister, and called her in – she said they needed an extra set of hands about, just then, if she didn't mind.
"Of course I don't mind!" Susan moved like a flash of lightning – even if Tom had thought to use her as a human shield to get in there himself, she was too quickly gone. His docility thus came to a crashing halt.
"I have hands, too," Tom sulked, as Susan slipped hurriedly into his bedroom, the candlelight winking on the back of her bare white neck and loose blonde hair really making her look like a flash of light in a mirror rather than a moving person. "My hands are a good deal steadier, too – I might add! D'you know, before Susan, they went on and let in a flighty maid-servant I know for a fact – a fact, Edmund – broke an entire set of tea-things on the back staircase once. Why, I wouldn't trust that lumbering dunderhead styling herself as a diligent slavey to deliver my breakfast, let alone my firstborn child!"
Betsey ought to have been asleep, but there was enough commotion in the house to rouse even Lady Bertram from slumber, so many rooms away, and the youngest Price sister was brought along into the sitting room as well. Actually, she'd known something was going on, something to do with Fanny's baby, ever since she'd heard Edmund get up – via a glass she had pressed to the wall when she'd awoken to the noise of a knock and hurried scuffling. But going with Lady Bertram was her first chance to properly join in the fray. There was no leaving Betsey behind when anything of importance was taking place; next to nothing could happen within the walls of the big house in Mansfield Park which she did not endeavour to see for herself.
Casting her sly little eye about the room upon entering with her aunt, she used the fact that there were not enough chairs (Lady Bertram at once had taken the one Susan had rested on the arm of, and Edmund was standing) to plop herself directly into Tom's lap.
Tom studied his little sister-in-law. "Oi, I bet they'd let you in." He lifted her from his lap – much to her chagrin – and set her onto her feet, nudging her towards the closed doors. "Here's what we'll do, Betsey. You go knock, tell them you want to help – then, when they're not looking, you can let me inside."
"Tom!" exclaimed Edmund.
"Oh, no," said Betsey, blinking girlishly, "s'alright... I'll do it."
"W-what time is it?" yawned Lady Bertram, rubbing her hand over her face. "Has it happened yet? Have I missed it? Is the baby here? Where is dear Fanny?"
"No, ma'am," sighed Tom, slumping forward in his chair. "You've missed nothing. We're all still waiting here with bated breath, I'm afraid."
"It seems a very long time, for one baby – for her first baby, no less," she said, pensively; "Edmund took some time coming out, to be sure – then, he was a little early, you know – but you and Julia were such fast, lively babies – you, especially, were out and being cleaned off so very quickly. I'd truly supposed Fanny's little baby would be much the same. We ought to be hearing a loud wail any moment now, I imagine, if the baby's got your lungs, Tom – then we'll know it's all set."
The scheme with Betsey proved fruitful enough – Tom was sneaked in by her quite speedily – only, not two minutes after Tom's apparent triumph, the doors swung back open and the large, beady-eyed midwife he especially detested was seen yanking him by the back of his dressing-gown and fairly throwing him out at such an angle he was forced to begin running across the carpet the moment his feet hit the ground or else he'd have fallen flat on his face.
"Out, Meester Bert-Tram, out! No need fer the father. No meddlin' fathers, in the birthin' room, if ye please. Jest get out of the way. We'll call ye back in when the baby's 'ere n all washed off."
Slam.
As soon as he turned himself the right way around again, facing the doors, they were shut, barred against him once more.
Tom stuck his tongue out.
"Oh, well done, Tom." Edmund – now seated in Tom's vacated chair – raised his hands and mimed mock applause. "I own I was uncertain before, regarding your methods, but you most definitely showed them, didn't you?"
"Shut up," he sneered, beginning to pace the length of the sitting room with his hands planted upon his pivoting hips, silently contemplating the pros and cons of possibly disguising himself as a woman to gain entry.
The longer they remained waiting in the sitting room, the colder the atmosphere of it seemed to feel – this, despite the fire not having been allowed to get any lower and still crackling away like anything.
Tom was making himself – and everyone else – more than a little mad with his wild fretting. "Why is she so damnably quiet?" His footfalls click-click-clicked. "I don't hear any shouting. Why does she never raise her voice? I thought women giving birth were loud – Fanny does know she's having a baby, doesn't she?"
"I promise you," said Edmund, glancing at the ceiling and inhaling sharply, "she knows."
"I've always felt the most important thing when having a baby is knowing how to keep one's partner calm," said Lady Bertram, suddenly.
Tom stopped pacing mid-step and looked at her curiously. "What, was my father allowed in the birthing room to keep you calm?"
"Oh, goodness me, no," sighed Lady Bertram, with an indolent little shake of the head. "I meant keeping Sir Thomas calm – that is what I meant – I sent Chapman out of the room to him every few minutes when I was having you in order to remind him to be calm. She always said he was perfectly composed – until the last, now I think on it, when his nerves got the better of him and he informed her that if she left my side to come and speak with him even one more time he'd have her dismissed. After that, I supposed it best if I stopped sending Chapman to him." She paused, remembering. "So then I sent your aunt Norris instead."
Presently, the doors opened and out came the beady-eyed midwife, her countenance remarkably altered, almost so Tom – who she had oppressed so greatly upon arrival – wouldn't have known her if not for common sense; she was so changed. She had Betsey – poor, pale, unnaturally subdued and red-eyed, nothing like the corky child who'd skipped in earlier – by the hand and was murmuring how the girl ought, just now, to remain out here with them.
The girl was young yet, probably – though, to be sure, only barely, rather at the cusp of being old enough to understand life was not always pretty – to see a thing like this, didn't they suppose?
And with such a cryptic statement as that, and next to nothing in the way of proper explanation for it, she made haste to leave Betsey with Edmund, whose hand was ready to replace her own in holding his cousin's in numb consolation, and who seemed – moreover – the most stable of the three persons there waiting.
For Lady Bertram was blank and stunned, unable to process what was happening, and Tom was visibly terrified – he had the broken-up looks of a man who is staring into the great unknown abyss, hoping against all hope for a light by which to judge his step in descending into it, and discovers it is only blackness and no illumination is to be provided.
A more clouded brow than Tom Bertram's in that moment cannot be imagined.
"For God's sake," he burst out at last, "what is it?"
"Tom, my love, you mustn't shout," managed Lady Bertram, blinking. "I am sure it is not necessary, nor liked."
With his free hand – the other still holding Betsey's – Edmund touched her shoulder. "Ma'am."
The physician stepped out, then, and answered for the midwife. "If you wish it still, Mr. Bertram, it would be good for you to be with your wife now – I regret to inform you, sir, she fares more poorly than I anticipated."
Tom didn't require a second invitation – he was beyond those foreboding doors and flying to the bedside in a twinkling.
Betsey spoke after he'd gone. Her voice was hoarse. Perhaps she'd been a little afraid of looking less than stoic in front of Tom. "Cousin Edmund?"
"Yes, dear?"
"I don't want anything bad to happen to Fanny."
He released her hand, but only to crouch down to her level and offer her his handkerchief, as she sounded on the verge of fresh tears. "Of course not, Betsey, none of us do."
"I don't want her to die."
Edmund assured her everything was being done to prevent it and hastily informed the child – in a tone possibly intended, also, to comfort himself – that in the advanced age they lived in advances in English medicine gave them far more reasons to hope than to fear.
"Tom's better with her," said Betsey, with such chilling simplicity Edmund was obliged to stiffen with involuntary horror.
If the worst should happen with Fanny, a painful prospect in and of itself for the lady's own sake, it was indeed alarming to imagine the effect such a traumatic event, such an unmatched loss, would have on Tom.
There was no chance of his becoming dangerously wayward without her – Fanny was his confident and anchor, but she was not his conscience. He would find his way, although it would be rather more difficult for him on his own. Nonetheless, Betsey was right – Tom was better with her; she brought out his best self, his more kindly nature as opposed to his selfish tendencies. His recent illness might have opened his eyes to his most serious faults of character, but it was Fanny's constant, humble manner contrasted to his own ready pride which prevented him from forgetting and being blinkered when not seeing everything at once would, arguably, be more to his personal advantage.
What would he be without her?
Edmund feared for Tom's loss of Fanny the same way he would fear for the loss of one of Tom's legs or arms. He could, conceivably, live without a limb, but how well? And how much – beyond the normal grief – would he suffer sans something so important to his quality of life? Fanny – bless her beautiful soul – might rest in peace, but the lingering phantom of losing her, of looking to where she ought to be and expecting her reappearance, in the same way an amputee might come to believe in that place between asleep and awake his lost arm has grown back overnight, could well prevent Tom's ever having another moment of it.
That was enough, thought Edmund, to drive any man to madness.
Meanwhile, Fanny – her brow caked with perspiration and her general appearance one of pure exhaustion – lit up considerably when Tom stepped into her hazy field of vision.
As long as it had been possible, before the pain and commotion made all thoughts beyond immediate feeling too difficult, she'd been looking for and expecting him at every moment – she'd even asked for him – but the midwives and physician alike only tutted and shushed and patted and told her not to work herself up, that it wasn't good for the baby.
Her steadily increasing weakness had begun to worry her now she could think a little again (if not with the desired clarity at least with some restored coherency), especially as the shifting faces around her – those which she could make out, anyway, one of them, she was fairly certain, Susan's – seemed so distressed, and she was gripped with a fear she couldn't put a name to, a fear of something or other happening – something unfortunate and permanent – before Tom was let in.
This fear temporarily dissipated when she saw her husband bending over her. She lifted her arms about his neck so she might kiss his cheek and cling to him.
In a movement so dearly reminiscent of the first time he'd ever kissed her, he deliberately turned his head, and her lips made contact with his mouth instead of his cheekbone as she'd intended.
She could hardly be sorry for it, though tears streamed down her face from start to finish.
They broke apart with great reluctance. He brushed his mount of Venus somewhat clumsily against her damp hairline and stared – helplessly – into her light, glassy eyes. There were tears on his face as well, but neither of them felt certain as to whether they were hers or else actually his own.
Fanny's mouth parted and her stare widened. The name of the thing she'd feared finally came to her and she was distressed anew – not for her own sake (though she certainly wasn't glad for herself), but for his.
"Oh," said she, realising what all the tears – not tears of joy at the event which had just taken place, but tears of sorrow – coupled with her feeling weaker than ever before in her life, even after her worst headaches, must mean. "Oh. Oh, Tom, I'm so sorry."
A small, strangled noise came from his throat.
Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she sank heavily, gone limp in what remained of his grip.
Tom had just enough remaining sanity from the numbing onset of grief to not simply let her drop and flee from the room – rather, he lightly placed her down, and – even before the physician could make to do it – put two fingers on her neck and felt for a pulse.
It was...
It was faint – very faint, a hum where there ought to be a thrum – yet still present.
She was unconscious, that was all. She wasn't–
She wasn't–
The thought of it, of what might yet be, became too much and, then, dually spared and tormented, he yanked his hand away as if it had been burned and fled the room – and the sitting room beyond, in too great a hurry to be prevented – stumbling into any number of objects and banging any number of doors carelessly behind himself.
Edmund was obliged to go searching for Tom – when finally he discovered his brother, he found him in the stables, in a corner within the stall where Fanny's beloved mare Shakespeare was kept.
His dressing-gown cast off, he sat – wearing only his sweat-dampened night-clothes – in the pungent hay, bare, somewhat scratched-up legs sprawled, with an open decanter and a tall crystal tumbler – the rim of this tumbler was in the process of catching a shaft of newly-risen sunlight and it cast little refracted rainbows upon Tom's extended, slack wrist – beside him.
Tom's back was turned to Edmund, who did not immediately cough or speak to make himself known; instead, he watched with grim apprehension as his brother – eyes clinched shut – tossed back his head and downed nearly a whole tumblerful in one go and then reached for the decanter for a refill.
He hadn't overindulged like this since he'd been ill – since his return from Newmarket. Edmund didn't know if pity or disappointment was the correct response. He understood how dreadfully this must make him feel – to face the mere idea of losing Fanny was a kind of exquisite torture they were all currently suffering through – but to childishly flee the room, to have not even asked after the baby, to come here and hide away in the stables where – excepting himself and, perhaps, Baddeley – none of the household might have thought to look for him...
His shoe-heel scraped along the grainy stable floor, finally alerting Tom to his presence.
Tom barely flinched. He opened his eyes and stared straight ahead. "I can't understand," he slurred, "why God'd permit me to get better – to not die when I was so nea'death – only to see her go like this." He turned his head. "You're t'clergyman – you explain it to me. Is it some manner of demented punishment?"
"Tom, come now." Pushing past Shakespeare, who'd begun nudging his arm insistently with her soft nose, quite eager for some attention, he knelt beside Tom in the hay and placed a hand on his shoulder. "You know He doesn't work like that."
"I'll never forg-iveh Him," hiccuped Tom, reaching up and wiping his nose with the back of his wrist before leaning his temple against Edmund's curled knuckles. "I shall never forgive God if he takes her from me now, like this." That was when Edmund realised his brother had been steadily weeping throughout his entire drunken speech. "I won't even believe in Him any longer."
"That's all right, Tom," Edmund said softly, giving his shoulder a squeeze. "He'll still believe in you. Just take your time. When you've finished raging at Him, finished with being vexed, regardless what happens to Fanny, God will still be there – waiting."
"How d'you know that?"
He shrugged. "Because it's God – otherwise, what would the point be?"
Groaning, Tom lifted his head and dragged his hands to his face.
Edmund rose and began to pull him up beside him. "Come on."
He was as unprotesting as a lamb, quite willing to be led away if Edmund would have it so, though his eyes darted to the decanter they'd be leaving behind and he slovenly reached out to pat Shakespeare's flanks in passing. "Where're you taking me?"
"Don't worry about it," he whispered, putting a guiding arm around his now-shivering brother.
Once they'd gotten back into the house, he took him past the rotunda and into the old sickroom, pulling down the bed's covers and gently pushing him onto the mattress. "You're not well, you need rest."
Tom rolled over onto his side, curling into a fetal position from which he didn't move for the next several hours. He must have slept, though when he felt his eyes shoot open he didn't feel much as if he had, because when he woke to the world – sober again, or else at least very near it – Edmund was gone and Susan, looking very no-nonsense, had entered the room carrying some manner of bundle.
"You," said she, pursing her lips. "Sit up and hold your arms out."
Blearily blinking grit from his eyes and slowly sitting up, he watched as Susan – not without gentleness, though it was all directed at the bundle, not at him, with whom she seemed rather put out – plopped what she held into his arms.
"Not that you remembered to ask."
The blanket in his arms made some faint noise and Tom, brow furrowed, peeled back one corner of it, revealing a tiny, pretty little face which – it seemed – had been asleep but was now looking up at him with curious blue eyes.
"Eh, hello." His eyes – reluctantly – flitted from the baby back up to Susan, questioning. "Is this...?"
His sister-in-law's mouth twisted in clear annoyance, and she had to breathe in and out twice before she was composed enough to answer. "No, Tom," she snipped; "it's some other baby I happened to have on hand and thought you should take a look at."
Tom rolled his eyes and then looked down at the baby again, feeling a warm tug at his chest. "Well, he's beautiful."
Susan's expression softened considerably. She seemed to be struggling not to laugh, or possibly cry. "Well, he's a girl, actually – just so you know."
Arching an eyebrow, Tom muttered, "Excuse me," and lifted the small linen gown the baby wore and looked for himself. "Oh. Aye. It's a girl."
"She's been fed," Susan informed him. "The wet nurse the servants brought in just had her."
"She looks precisely like Fanny," Tom marvelled, stroking the side of the baby's cheek with one index finger. "That's her exact colouring."
Susan smiled. "It's your colouring, too, Tom – and you have the same nose – but you're right, her looks are all Ward and Price, hardly any Bertram in her. No one will ever see Edmund after meeting her and think he's her uncle."
Tom continued to gaze down with bewildered affection at his daughter. Susan wasn't mistaken – she was a little Ward girl, third generation, in miniature. Light eyes, light lashes, delicate features.
She was, simply, perfect.
Upon first discovering the news of the child's conception, Henry Crawford might have worried the baby would trump all concerning Fanny's affections, but he never considered what place the same baby – even if it was not a boy, not an heir – would hold in Tom's esteem. Perhaps, because, Mr. Crawford had stubbornly, likely to ease his own conscience, seen Fanny as mattering to Tom only as much as any other sentient possession – as much as one of the future baronet's favourite dogs or horses – he never could have imagined the baby making much difference to the likes of him. Not for its own sake. But it was love, plain and simple. Tom looked at the baby, and the baby looked at him – and that was it. Love. Mutual and deep, and at first sight, trumping all.
Mistaking the affectionate slouch of Tom's demeanour for tiredness, Susan reached over to take the baby back from him, now he had held and seen it instead of ignoring its existence.
Tom twisted his neck to glower at her defensively, shifting his body away automatically, unhappy at her attempt to take the child back from him so soon. "Oi, there's no need to be quite so grasping – get your own baby."
Susan's cheeks darkened slightly as she pulled herself backwards. "You realise, all you had to say was you wanted to hold her a little longer," she laughed.
The baby proved to be the best possible cure for Tom's feeling sorry for himself; he was soon up and – once he'd finally consented to hand the child back to Susan for a few moments – was washing his face, dressing himself in the clothes Baddeley brought downstairs, and steadying his nerves with a cup of tea.
Even knowing the worst might yet happen with Fanny, he couldn't any longer justify moping about after he'd seen the child; the little girl-child who might be facing the dismal prospect of being without her mother and, poor tiny helpless soul, need not become fatherless into the bargain as well.
It was not long after he was dressed and out of the sickroom that the physician sought him out and informed him his wife – although still extremely weak and not yet out of danger, for he certainly wished to raise no false hope in the gentleman – had regained consciousness and was asking for him.
Tom fairly flew up the stairs in his haste to be at her side.
Fanny's eyelashes fluttered as she regarded him with relief, reaching up to stroke the side of his face. "Such terrible dreams I had, tomcat!" she rasped out, her chest gently rising and falling. "You'd gone away again – to some place, Weymouth or Newmarket or Derbyshire – and left me behind."
"Never!" he cried. "Never, Fanny, d'you hear me?" He turned his head and kissed the centre of her raised palm. "But don't you go away, either, not if you can help it. Do stay with me – it'd be jolly decent of you."
A tear seeped out from the corner of one of her eyes. "That sounds a fair trade, I think."
"It does," he laughed achingly, "doesn't it?"
Maria, combing out her hair, stopped by the bed when she saw the open luggage upon it – and Henry's valet coming towards it, his arms full of clothes.
"You will not!" she shrieked, reaching over to rip the shirts and waistcoats from the valet's arms. "You will not! You deaf idiot! Don't you hear me? He's not going anywhere."
"Orders, m'lady – I do beg your pardon."
Flinging her hairbrush across the room, where it hit the opposite wall with a resounding thud, Maria stomped into the adjoining parlour. "Henry! Henry! For the love of God, Henry!"
"I've told you already I shan't be prevented going," he sighed; "you need not make yourself any more agitated over what you can have no say in."
"You would leave me?"
"Maria, the best, most estimable woman of my acquaintance may be dying – may already be dead, for all I can learn of it."
"She is nothing to you, Henry! And yet you would desert me. Me, who has left my every comfort of home for you."
"You took very little convincing," he said icily. "Indeed, the whole scheme was your idea, as I recall it. You might have stayed on Wimpole street if you wished, and not obliged me into hiding all this while. It was you who could not bear to live with Rushworth any longer."
She swallowed hard and bit her lower lip. "If you dare do this – if you will throw away all our efforts and leave me without even a promise of your return from a place you have no business going to to begin with – I will endeavour to be gone from this place before ever you–"
"No one is preventing your leaving – you may go whenever you like. Why, have I not been encouraging you to leave for nearly a fortnight?"
Maria fairly ripped the gold necklace from her throat, breaking the clasp, and hurled it at him in her ensuing rage. "And take this chain with you – I suppose you wish to return to it her – it's her you wanted to have it."
"You knew it from the start," he snorted. "Do you forget how you begged me to have it, and I resisted and resisted, offering you any number of baubles in its place, telling you I'd by no means give over something I meant for Fanny, until I realised there would be no peace from you if I failed to relent and let you have it? You were keen on owning the necklace then, as I recall."
She snarled, "If I am to recall any of that, I must yet recall, too, how you obviously liked pretending I was her – how much pleasure it gave you, rather than myself – how often my cousin's name was murmured in place of my own as you kissed my neck. All while you deluded me into thinking no such thing was happening, that I misheard, that you were not in your senses. That you wanted me, really."
"You deluded yourself – I never said I wanted you, or made out you would trump over Fanny if I must go to her."
"Fanny, Fanny, Fanny! Hateful name! It is an absurd, base name. I quite detest it. The name of a low-born milksop tease who does nothing but make eyes at my brother like a lovesick calf. And who – I add with scornful triumph – never cared anything for you, Henry! I hope you choke on the horrid name you love to say over and over!"
"Perhaps I will yet – but I have a wish to see her, to see how she fares, and that is what I will do."
"I hope, failing you choke, Tom simply shoots you the moment you walk into the house – serve you right! To go away and leave me unprotected like this!"
Henry shrugged and lightly elbowed past her into the bedroom. "My valet will help you pack – once he's seen me off – if you wish to depart yourself, if not, stay as you like and do as you will. It's all one and the same to me."
Fanny began to improve in the days which followed, much to Tom's relief. A few scares aside – these scares carried as far as the parsonage and London and no doubt exaggerated, though the danger was bad enough at times it need not have been – her recovery was as steady as any in the household might have wished it.
Sir Thomas wrote home to inquire after her, and was greatly relieved the physician was beginning to believe there was – now, at least – reason enough to hope for a happy outcome.
"There is one thing, Mr. Bertram," the physician had said gravely, shaking his head and leading the startled gentleman off to the side. "There is one thing you should know – I've not told Mrs. Bertram, as any manner of upset may interfere with her chances of recovery – but you ought to be made aware, for your own knowledge..."
"For mercy's sake, spare me the suspense – do have out with it! – what is it, man?"
"If she survives, even if she returns to being as she was before, this may well be the only child she will ever bear you – I'm only sorry it was not a son."
"Is that all?" cried Tom, wildly passionate with relief. "And here you made me quite wretched with anxiety for something so unimportant?"
"You're a titled man, Mr. Bertram, with a considerable estate to think of – naturally, I thought you might be–"
"Oh, as to that! My brother is to be married soon – Susan is a strong lass – his sons, Edmund'll no doubt have at least half a dozen, can inherit if I should have none of my own." He was perfectly content, he assured the good doctor, with his wife and daughter. "Just make my poor creepmouse quite well again, doctor – I require nothing else."
"I will say this for you," marvelled the doctor, as he discovered Tom to be in earnest, "you at least, it seems, knew what you were about when you went choosing a wife in poor health – many gentleman choose frail, romantic women and expect to have a great army of children from them. It's simply not realistic."
As she recovered, Fanny was confined, though she must have been going a little mad by then, to the bed a while longer. It was not indefinite, of course, but it felt – to a young woman who'd been lying abed so long already – as if it may as well have been.
Her chief consolation – apart from being permitted to hold and nurse her baby for herself when her strength was up – was she was visited by Tom, Edmund, and her sisters (Betsey was especially cheerful with her – relief made her generous and generosity in turn made her into uncharacteristically pleasant company) frequently enough she at least was not lonely, or suffering boredom, even if a longing – rather more of an insatiable craving – to see the sunshine and walk freely – perhaps even run mad – among the flora and fauna, to stroll in the shrubbery, was beginning to rather consume her waking hours.
She fairly rhapsodised about the evergreens – "How beautiful; how welcome; how astonishing!" – until Tom brought her a few sprays and placed them in her lap one morning, thinking they might placate her a little.
Misty-eyed, she ran her fingers over the needles and was as insensibly pleased with the tiny pieces of tree as another kind of woman would have been if Tom Bertram had unexpectedly poured a stream of rubies and pearls into their lap.
"Your goodness in thinking of me, Tom," exclaimed Fanny, her arms outstretched to him. "I feel much more than I can possibly express!" Did any woman ever have such a husband? She was starry-eyed, gazing upon him in perfect delight. "Thank you – merely thank you – does not seem to be enough."
He smiled, cleared his throat, and declared they'd be out among the foliage for real soon – together – it was only to hold her over, nothing so special as all this, but if she wished to make a great fuss over him, for the sake of a few sprays of evergreen, and to kiss him and fawn over him a bit, singing praises of his goodness, he had no protestations, none indeed, to such a reaction; her affections as she wished to bestow them were most welcome.
She did make rather a great fuss over him, stroking his hair and murmuring pet-names (she came up with at least three besides the usual tomcat though none either of them liked half so well or had the inclination to use again), until she fell asleep again.
Ever since having the baby, Fanny slept so deeply Tom might have – if the fancy struck him – taken up the trombone and set to practising in the room while she slumbered and not have roused her, and he was perfectly aware of this fact, sometimes it even worried him how eerily little she now stirred in her sleep, but he still – in all smiling tenderness – crept out into the sitting room as if the smallest footfall would disturb her, would jolt his darling wife awake.
Henry Crawford had sense enough not to come to the front door and ask to be announced; he knew no one would allow him into the house to see Fanny, even if it was true and she was dying (news of her recent turnabout had not reached him, and if it had, he would likely have failed to believe it). He let himself in by the servants' quarters, seen only by a young serving-maid he knew to have a fondness for him. She had brought him news of Fanny to the parsonage before, and she'd often stared at him longingly. Her eyes were wide, plainly startled, as he walked straight by her into the house, but he – turning at the waist – put his finger to his lips and she, giving an anxious little sigh, perhaps aware her position was rather at stake in regards to this, nodded compliantly; she could not deny him.
It took him a while to make his way through the house unseen; once, he nearly ran directly into Edmund, who would likely have seen him if he hadn't been distracted by Susan's appearance at the other end of the corridor.
He was seen – the cost of a wrong turn at the wrong moment – by a pert little girl he didn't recognise, who looked him up and down with unusual disdain for someone so young to level at a stranger.
"Well," she said, snorting, "you're not anythin' to look at, are you?"
Something about her small, narrowed eyes was vaguely familiar – Henry thought they reminded him of Maria's, a little, when she was scornful – but he couldn't really place them.
As soon as the little girl vanished from sight, he quickly resumed his fast-paced trek to Fanny – she'd be in Tom's room, he supposed, beyond the sitting room he'd seen her in last – not knowing, now he'd been seen by someone other than a servant, whoever that oddly hostile child had been, how much longer he had.
He found the sitting room empty when he reached it and crossed into the bedroom easily enough; Fanny was asleep with the canopy pulled back. She looked like a sleeping princess in a fairy-tale. There was a little colour in her face, a bit of a flush of health about her cheeks, which was some relief when he had supposed her to be at death's door.
She didn't stir, nor did she seem aware a stray handful of her tussled blonde curls were currently covering up one half of her face.
Henry didn't think that could be comfortable for her – approaching the bed, he longed to bend over and smooth the stray curls back onto the pillow, away from her beautiful face.
Then, however, he would be tempted to kiss her, and she might wake at the touch.
But, then again, he had to wake her, didn't he? If not with a kiss, then at least by a gentle shake of the shoulder or a cough to alert her to his presence.
Surely, and suddenly he was dreadfully uncertain, he had not come all this way without the intent of speaking to her one last time?
The recollection of how she had reacted to him on their last meeting, coupled with his fear of worsening her weakened condition, stayed his near-trembling hand. He might desperately wish to speak with her, to tell her he was come – as a friend, if nothing more – to see her in her time of illness, but the risk of doing her some irreversible harm was not one he could take lightly.
He stood there and watched her breathing for a few moments, hesitating.
Then he heard her voice, or thought he did.
"Did you speak?" He had seen her lips move.
She slept on, nothing else moved; she was talking in her sleep, it appeared.
Henry leaned forward despite himself, eager to hear what she had to say.
"I love you..."
The words could not be meant for him – logic dictated it was quite impossible – they were only part of her dream.
And yet...
Who was to say he was not there, in her mind, right now, being greeted in her slumbering fancies with far sweeter words than she could bestow upon him while awake?
"...Tom."
Oh.
Definitely not him, then.
So strange it was to think, not so very long ago, her love for her husband – having shown him how tender her feelings were – had been rather attractive to Henry, rather than a dagger in his heart.
Tom never would deserve her, and nonetheless she would persist in going on loving him blindly. She would probably give the unbelievable dolt she was married to another child after this – Henry couldn't imagine Tom taking measures to prevent it – and might not recover a second time.
She was the kind of woman who would probably go to the grave after childbirth with a serene smile on her face, never aware she might have been spared.
A small pug Henry had not previously minded or registered as being present, sleeping near Fanny's feet, lifted its head, sniffed intently, and growled before putting its head back down again.
Speaking of Fanny's child, it was then he noticed the cradle, a few feet from the bed – he nearly backed into it, trying not to disturb the tiny dog – and, turning himself about nimbly, peered down.
The baby within was so extremely like Fanny – he did not think he saw much of Tom, or any other Bertram, in the infant – so small and pretty and sweet, he was tempted to lift it up and hold it.
He thought his own child, if things had gone differently, if Fanny had been his and Tom had not recovered from his illness, might have looked not unlike this one. He might never have the chance to hold Fanny's child in his arms again. He had not, until that moment, supposed he would want to – he had thought of the baby as a means of separation forced between them, thought it Tom's baby, but seeing it now made all the difference.
At first the baby made no protestation. The little thing slept as sweetly in his arms as in the cradle. Suddenly, however, the infant began to squirm, cracking one beautiful blue eye open, perceived it was being held by a being that was not Father, Mother, Nurse, nor Uncle or Aunt, and promptly began to wail.
Henry's primary terror was for Fanny's disturbance – as he turned to look at the bed again, he saw she did not wake.
But he couldn't shake the feeling of being watched and after ruling Fanny out he perceived – the blood in his veins turning to ice – Tom Bertram in the doorway, his face drawn very tight and his eyes dark with indignation.
Without a word, Tom raised his hand and motioned him into the sitting room with one curled finger. The message was more than clear. You come here now, unless you want me to stride across the room and knock you down.
As soon as they were out of the bedroom, the doors shut behind them, Tom held out his arms for the baby – which Henry had, in instantly obeying him and walking out towards him, forgotten to place back in the cradle.
The moment the baby was in its father's arms, the keening wail ceased.
Tom arched an eyebrow. "Prefers me to you – she's just like her mother." He patted the baby's back reassuringly. "There, there, Mary. It's all right now. The mean little man shan't bother you any longer."
Henry blinked in some astonishment. "You named the baby Mary?"
"After a Price sister, not after yours."
"Oh."
(The baby's full name was, as it happened, Mary Sophia Bertram – Tom had suggested naming her, at one point, after Miss de Bourgh, as he knew Fanny to be very fond of her quiet friend from Kent, but the notion of naming Tom's baby Anne, when there had been another Anne besides Miss de Bourgh in his life, one Fanny didn't wish to be reminded of every time she spoke their child's name, was too much for her and she'd put forth Mary as another option. She'd, after some uncertainty, consented willingly enough to Sophia since little Sophie had undeniably played a part in saving Tom's life when his Newmarket friends abandoned him and nobody knew who he was. Tom had worried, at first, giving the baby the names of both Edmund's previous sweethearts might bother the uncle, but he seemed entirely unruffled by the coincidence, when he was told, and so the names were firmly fixed upon.)
"Now." Tom eased into a velvet chair, still holding his baby protectively to himself. "You, Mr. Crawford, must have a death wish."
"I know I'm not welcome in this house at present," he said; "but I heard Fanny might be–"
"Clearly she's fine."
"I only wanted to–"
"She doesn't want to see you," Tom snapped. "Indeed, I've promised her she never shall again. And she's quite happy about that, I can assure you."
"How did you discover I was within?"
"Betsey, my wife's youngest sister, saw you – recognised your likeness to your sister – and told me." He drew in a long breath, glancing up from his child's face to Henry's. "You know, in all the time I've spent hating you, fearing you'd come back to harass my wife, I never thought of asking."
"Asking what?"
"Asking how you could betray me as you did – we were friends, Mr. Crawford, all the time you were plotting to steal my wife away."
"I never intended to hurt you, Bertram – loving Fanny was–"
"I won't consent to hear you call her that more than once – to you, forevermore, she is Mrs. Bertram or my wife, you will refer to her as one or the other in this conversation or you will not refer to her – I never want to hear her Christian name come from your mouth again – am I quite clear?"
"Loving Mrs. Bertram," said he, at last, tasting gall, "wasn't something I anticipated – I began with idle designs, it's true, but coming to know her, seeing how much she deserved beyond what you gave her, put an end to them."
"I see. And I suppose you expect me to say that makes everything all right." Tom spoke through clenched teeth, eyes glinting. "By the way, Crawford, if you ever attempt to give that damn necklace – yes, the one in your pocket you keep stroking when you think I'm not watching you – back to my wife again, I shall take the greatest pleasure in strangling you with it."
"Very well, I shan't, but you must allow that the temptation, the frustration of never seeing her treated as she ought, by you or anyone else, coupled with the prospect of her becoming widowed–"
"You stupid man," ejaculated Tom, who would have stood up in an angry hurry if he was not still holding his daughter, "can you really – after everything – suppose I've never loved her as you believe you did? Can you be so thick? D'you suspect yourself the first man moved by her goodness? I loved her before you knew her – she was – before I was even aware of it – already mine from the moment I learned who she was in Portsmouth. And it is not – not one fleeting second of it – any of your concern."
Henry simply stared at him uncomprehendingly – Tom wondered if he was truly simple in the head after all; it would explain a thing or two, certainly.
"Where the devil is my sister, by the way? My father has been out of his mind searching for the pair of you – hoping against hope to reverse a desperate situation." He bounced the (now growing slightly restless) baby on his knee. "I suppose you'll tell me you didn't set out to destroy her marriage, either."
"Maria" – he cleared his throat – "that is, Mrs. Rushworth" – a withering look from Tom indicated he didn't care a great deal what Henry chose to call her – "has been under my protection after quitting her husband's roof, it's true, but I've not prevented her from seeing any of you if she wishes. She has been secluded and secretive of her own volition. Truly, I say, you may have her back, Bertram, and welcome! I know she is your sister, and, trust me, you could not feel more protective by duty than I, given how events have transpired as of late, but there is a notable deficiency in that woman's character I think you will agree Fan– Mrs. Bertram does not suffer from."
"I at least rest easy now," sighed Tom, "hearing such disdain from you, knowing you have no further designs on her – for you'll never be brother to me or my poor wife as long as I have means of preventing it. As to the rest, let it be on your own conscience if you can speak so of a woman who – for all her faults, and for no reason I can puzzle out – I am sure does love you."
"I've given her my leave to do as she likes, but one word from you, as her brother, will," Henry assured him, "induce me to send her back here to Northamptonshire, to Mansfield, and put an end–"
"Ha! Let her come no further than the White House – only my aunt Norris will have her, of that I am sure." Rushworth, he was positive, would not take her – a strayed wife – back into his heart and home, and Stanwix Lodge, for all its convenient nearness, would not welcome such a visitor. "It is just as well, too; let their tempers be each other's mutual punishment, I say."
"Tom?" It was Fanny's voice, and the doors shook, rattling with her effort to unlatch them and enter the sitting room.
Henry coloured, alight with anticipation, but Tom hissed, "Unless you are a fiend, sir, you will conceal yourself behind the curtains and avoid shocking her."
Fanny entered, in only her nightdress, and was a little surprised when Tom made a great fuss over insisting she borrow his jacket – which he awkwardly attempted to take off and give to her without putting baby Mary down – and deflected her questions as to what he was about – who had he been talking with in this room – with an airy passiveness.
"You're meant to remain in bed another two days at least, Fanny – you need to regain your strength."
"I had strange dreams again." She touched his arm, gingerly dragging her fingertips down it. "Will you not join me?"
He softened, bending down and pressing his forehead to hers – if Henry were not hiding in the curtains at that very moment, he would have kissed her ardently and given her nothing but encouragement. It was not any wish to spare Henry Crawford which held him back – indeed, he would have been pleased to lord the victory over a man who had treated him thus – but to use Fanny in such a manner, and she – poor innocent – wholly unwitting regarding the ulterior motive behind the exaggerated affection he desired to lavish upon her, all for the sake of childish flaunting, would prick more than a little at his conscience.
He was a grown man, with a wife and child; he must behave like it; he must behave as Edmund or his father would in the same situation, with honour and stoicism. Henry Crawford was nothing – a chafing pebble in his shoe, to be gone and near-forgotten by the end of the day with a bit of good fortune. He would not degrade Fanny, cheapen his feelings for her, for the sake of such a person.
Fanny, however, took Tom's strange way of holding back – of his being less freely tactile with her, when she believed them to be perfectly alone, save for their baby and the pug which had followed out at her heels – for a kind of detached reluctance, and wondered – struggling against rapidly lowering spirits – if her constant poor health was beginning to erode – at least to some extent – what appeal she held for him.
Still, his general affection for her was evident in his bearing, in his tender, low-spoken reassurance he would join her in a little while, and she took great comfort in it.
Moreover, her distress brought on by misconception as to Tom's view on the matter was never to last long – by that evening, when Tom would discover her examining her waned, pale complexion in a hand-mirror, Friday-faced with pondering whether or not she was all used up from illness, he would remind her, rather stunned by her bizarre self-deprecation, he himself was no longer in the bloom of youthful health; his lungs, for instance, would never be what they were before his fall and subsequent illness. Would she not consent, was to be his point, that they should be content enough both being sickly and used up together, rather than fret over what couldn't be changed on either side?
As soon as she'd re-entered the bedroom and closed the doors behind her, Tom escorted Henry from the sitting room and told him he would leave the house presently, never to return, no matter what news should reach him regarding Mrs. Bertram in future, on pain of legal action – Tom fervently vowed he would find some complaint upon which to persecute him, real or invented, to drag him before a magistrate, if need be – of the swiftest and most relentless sort.
And although Henry did not leave the park as its future master no doubt desired him to – quitting only so far as to the parsonage, where the Grants and Mary were astonished to see him and had, once greetings had been dispensed with, some extremely strong admonishments to bestow upon him in regards to his recent actions, Dr. Grant in particular quite flying up into the boughs, unrestrained by the biased familial affection the other two were plagued with – it was the last time Tom ever saw him privately.
All future sightings between the two gentlemen were to be in London and in passing.
Henry did not long remain at the parsonage.
Even if Dr. Grant would have permitted his staying on, and that was doubtful enough, he could find no rest now in being so near to his beloved Fanny, mercifully alive yet so completely lost to him, nor in being in ready proximity to Sir Thomas, returned from London. He lived in dread of the baronet calling him out, this dread ever-deepening the longer Maria held off quitting his former dwellings – even after he had ceased to pay the bills to let them and more than one embassy from the landlord had attempted to turn her, along with Henry's valet, who had been left behind in his haste to reach Fanny and was practically Mrs. Rushworth's hostage by this time, out – and returning to the White House.
Before quitting the park for good – for the last time – Henry did attempt, just once more, to approach the big house in stealth, in some hope of eluding Tom and saying goodbye to Fanny, rather regretting by then he had done as Mr. Bertram asked and hidden himself when she came into the sitting room, only the direction he was obliged to approach the house from, in view of the library windows, was such that he caught a candid glimpse of Fanny and Tom, and – seeing how they were occupied – thought better of his resolution and turned away.
He did not quit the park alone, however, as such was not Henry's nature – he took the serving-maid with him, sparing Mr. Bertram the need to give her notice if he should learn of her being complicit in his gaining entry into the house.
Less than two weeks after his departure, Maria's at last admitting defeat and appearing with her sourest countenance on Mrs. Norris' doorstep, and Fanny's being judged well enough to go out of doors again, Susan and Edmund were married – in a simple morning ceremony performed by Mr. Owen – and moved to Thornton Lacey together.
For Tom's sake, Betsey continued to display relatively good behaviour towards her aunt, and was deemed an acceptable replacement for Susan, though Lady Bertram could still be heard – on occasion – to lament the loss of the preferred stationary niece under her breath. This proved surprisingly good in teaching Betsey a little humility – she was not used to being the second choice, having been the darling of her mother, and the challenge of needing daily to earn Lady Bertarm's affections (such as they were) kept her young mind occupied.
By the time Mary Sophia was approaching her first birthday, her youngest aunt was well on her way to becoming a very proper, considerate young lady indeed.
And Mary Sophia was not but a week away from her third Christmastime in the world when Dr. Grant succeeded to a stall in Westminster, leaving the living at Mansfield free.
Mrs. Grant and Miss Crawford's belongings were no sooner loaded up and carted away than Edmund and Susan's were brought in to replace them.
This change was to be a source of pure delight to Mary Sophia; while, in infancy, her preference was all for her father above anyone else, somewhere upon entering her more cognitive years, where she could crawl – and then walk – to whomever she chose, quite of her own volition, she developed an unshakable attachment to her uncle Bertram (her uncle Yates, in contrast, made her nervous because he was liable to drop her or trip over her by mistake, or simply to forget he was meant to be watching her until she came to some grievance or other). To have Edmund so near, and to be told by Mother that she – indeed all three of them – were to spend Christmas Eve at the parsonage with him and Aunt Susan, was an unlooked-for felicity far beyond mere presents, sweets, and the tearing and wasting of gold paper.
"Yes, yes, Father's coming around to help you down, don't fuss so – I know you love Edmund best – you and everybody else – your mother is just the same," Tom teased as he alighted from the carriage, just rolled to a stop beside the growing snow mound heaped before the parsonage, and went around to lift Mary Sophia. "Don't run, Sophy."
She immediately ran anyway, the moment her little feet touched the frozen ground, spying the front door opening – glimpsing the warm, twinkling light of dozens of lit candles within – and anticipating her most beloved uncle.
"She'll be all right," came Fanny's soft voice from inside the carriage. "Now. Aren't you forgetting someone, Mr. Bertram?" Ducking her head out, she extended her gloved hand towards Tom for his assistance in stepping down.
"Never." He smiled, watching the silvery snowflakes gather on her nose and eyelashes and in her plaited hair and onto the shoulders of her cream-coloured pelisse where they looked very like glass beads – 'glossy pieces' – just before they melted. "And it's Tom."
Fanny sighed; it was remarkable how quickly the parsonage, once seemingly irrevocably tainted by its previous occupants, leaving her unable to approach without some painful sensation of alarm, was growing as dear to her heart, as thoroughly perfect in her eyes, as everything else within the view and patronage of Mansfield Park.
"Oh!" She tucked her arm under Tom's as they walked together. "Is it possible to be so happy?"
"Evidently, creepmouse." He bent his head nearer to hers, resting his temple against her hairline. "Evidently it is."
Finis
A/N: That's all, folks (kisses hand and waves goodbye) - hope you liked it.
Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.
