Part of Fanny had hoped that a stay in Portsmouth would allow her to forget Mary, but it was not to be; William had soon to go off to sea again, in his new position as lieutenant, and in his absence all she was left with was a father who seemed permanently half-drunk, loudly squabbling siblings, and a mother too busy to pay attention to her.
All that remained for her were her thoughts. Thoughts that rested uncomfortably on Mary, and the way they had last spoken. She missed Mary very much, but without that memory, she would have perhaps been able to bear it; there would not be that bitterness in their parting, that simultaneous dread and longing felt in the idea of seeing her again.
With nothing to distract her, and no one to care if she fully wasted away in the midst of this confusion of people, Fanny began to sink further and further into dark despondency, only recalled from such endless depths of misery by chance.
She had at first made an attempt to endear herself to her younger siblings, but, either due to her own half-heartedness or their complete lack of sensibility, she had soon given up and instead resigned herself to loneliness. There was one - Susan - who, if Fanny had not been so wrapped up in her own despair, would perhaps not have been dismissed simply as a bad tempered fourteen year old, and instead a far greater sense of feeling than Fanny could have expected in such a noisome, busy household would have been discovered, a sense which Fanny herself would have no doubt endeavoured to tease out in better circumstances. As it was, it was only several weeks into her stay - weeks filled with silent, lonely suffering - that her notice was drawn to the girl; Susan, long concerned at how withdrawn her sister was, finally asked her what the root of her sadness was. Fanny was half-tempted not to reply, but something in the way the girl spoke convinced her that there would be no harm in revealing such a thing to this sister, at least.
"I have - or rather, I had - a friend whom I cherished most intimately," Fanny admitted after pausing for a long time to think on these things. "I miss her dearly - far more than perhaps I should, as we have not known each other very long - but I am afraid that we did not part on good terms." She sighed heavily.
Susan gazed at her older sister with dark, intelligent eyes. There was a wholly unexpected look of sympathy in them that struck Fanny. "I am very sorry for you, sister," she said sincerely. "Was this disagreement really so bad that you cannot even write to her, to tell her about the misery that this parting has caused you?"
Fanny's silence was all but confirmation. She could have told her sister that she did not think Mary would care, that Mary had other concerns that did not include whether or not she had insulted the poor relation of a rich family, but she did not. In all her distress at what had happened she had forgotten the look of guilt in Mary's eyes, the attempt to apologise.
From that point on she looked at Susan with new interest; she saw a difference in her from the other members of their family, an actual effort to set right what she saw as wrong within the household. Soon, Fanny had decided to take her under her care in order to try and improve her somewhat.
Her decision was only somewhat formed on the hope that throwing herself so fully into something new would help her to forget Mary, at least temporarily.
Mary, meanwhile, was distracting herself in a different way, one which Fanny would have barely been able to conceive of, and would have looked upon with horror even if she had. She had joined friends almost as uncaring as she herself had once been, and it would have shocked Fanny to know how quickly Mary seemed to slide back into her old ways. It would not be entirely fair to say that she was throwing herself indiscriminately into frivolous pursuits, but she was almost certainly acting with less care than she had even before she had met Fanny Price, and these were not the sort of friends to prevent her from harm - they were rather more likely to encourage such behaviour, since it was so similar to their own, and caused them great amusement.
Out of her merry circle of friends, Mary was by far the one who laughed the loudest, even at the cruellest of jokes; the one who flirted the most indiscriminately, and who gleefully encouraged such behaviour, no matter how ill advised, in her married friends. She could only hope that these thoughtless flirtations would make her forget the woman she had fallen in love with; Mary wasn't used to feeling guilty, and she found the feeling, and the way it continued to sit with her, deeply unpleasant. The only thing more unpleasant would be to apologise. It was not, after all, so very serious a thing; Fanny had simply overreacted - or so she told herself, after the first attempt to make amends had been brushed off and she retreated to lick her wounds. She quickly found that it was far easier to revert to the worst of her old behaviour than think of that which caused her pain. No matter the newly discovered voice of conscience that scolded her even for the least severe of her excesses.
Edmund came to the city a few weeks after her own departure. He had intended to propose, but when he arrived in London he was horror struck. Here was not the Mary he was used to, the one who he had always seen as so wonderful, and whose goodness had only grown over the months he had known her. In London, he saw the very worst of what she could be laid out before him, and it did not take much before his decision wavered.
During his stay, he managed to secure some interviews with her; but each time she was flippant, dismissive of his concerns, and, especially worrying, she would always find some excuse for him to depart whenever he attempted to bring up Fanny and speak of how she fared. It was not long before he gave up and returned home. When there, he wrote of his bitter disappointments to Fanny, little knowing (perhaps not even thinking of) how much pain it should cause her when it reached Portsmouth.
After he had written the letter, he sat and thought for a while. It was very strange indeed that Mary should be so reluctant to hear Fanny's name spoken. It was true that he had not seen them together very much of late -
He sat up. Could that be it…? An argument between the two of them? It could only be hoped that a quarrel was the root of Mary's actions, for that would not be so very difficult to solve. At least, not so difficult as the other idea that occurred to him - that Mary had been concealing this part of herself, and this was what she was really like.
When he had returned, Edmund had scarcely expected to see Mary again, for a long time at least. If he had been able to look an hour or two into the future, he would have been surprised to discover that he would soon be on his way back to London, on purpose to speak with her again.
It was good that Edmund had realised, almost unknowingly, what the problem was; had he not decided to intervene, then it was very likely that Mary and Fanny would have continued as they were - one reluctant to give an apology, the other scared to ask for one.
Almost as soon as he had returned to London, Edmund sought an audience with Mary and after some haggling was admitted to her presence. Once the usual formalities were over, Edmund began to speak.
"Miss Crawford," he began, "I speak to you today not as a man intending to ask for your hand - I am sure that you are aware of my...my regard for you - or as a man of the Church here to tell you the error of your ways, but as a friend. I have seen enough of your recent behaviour to make me very deeply disappointed in you. In fact, until a short while ago I was determined never to see you again if I could at all help it, but then I realised -"
Mary had been watching him impassively, almost scornfully, but here she burst into mocking laughter.
"Why, Mr Bertram, your choice of words makes you sound rather more like a disappointed parent than a friend! And indeed, it is not my belief that true friends are so judgemental of others' choices. You who turn your back on me so easily, are you really a friend?"
Edmund stiffened. "I am not turning my back on you," he said slowly, "that is something that I would never do, and forgive me if I appeared to be. I am simply pointing out that you are not acting like the woman I knew at Mansfield Park. Fanny, especially, seemed a good influence on you; why do you now turn your back on every sympathetic quality she brought out in you?"
Mary flinched slightly. He had touched on a sore point. "Oh, Miss Price and I were never all that close," she said, trying to sound flippant. "As a matter of fact, I only spent time with her because I would have been so deathly bored otherwise. Country livings would be abolished entirely if I had my way."
Edmund scoffed. "Nonsense! I saw how close the two of you were. What argument has made you fall out in this way? Why are you so keen to forget her?"
Mary was silent for a moment. She tried to laugh; it sounded regrettably unconvincing. "It seems that you have hit upon the reason for my recent bad behaviour. How perceptive you are!"
"Miss Crawford...if this is about some quarrel that the two of you have had…"
"No, no, do not say anything more. I have done something terribly wrong; if Miss Price cannot forgive me - and indeed, that is what I must assume, given her silence - then what is the point of being good?"
"I have always believed," Edmund said carefully, "that good is its own reward. I refuse to believe that you were ever good solely to impress Fanny - or, I hope that it is not true, because that sort of good is never one to last."
"As you can so clearly see," Mary said, still making an effort to laugh away the situation.
"Miss Crawford, why do you not write to Fanny? If what you have done is really so bad, then you should apologise."
"It is not in my nature."
Edmund thought for a bit. "Miss Crawford, if we never did things that we believed were not in our nature, then I doubt the human race would have managed to achieve as much as it has." He bowed. "I shall leave you to consider your own course of action, but please know that seeing you now gives me great pain, and I am sure that Fanny is suffering similarly from what knowledge of your behaviour I have given her. You cannot expect her forgiveness when you have not asked for it. I beg of you to do so."
His words had an effect on her; her guilt had been bubbling near the surface for a long time, even as she had attempted to repress it; it had required only a slight push to bring it to the forefront, and Edmund had provided that push. Once he had left, Mary did something she hadn't done in a long time; she sat down and, taking a deep breath, pulled up her sleeve to stare at Fanny's name.
It was almost invisible, no longer marked out in the strong black letters that she had become so used to.
Mary gave a resigned sigh. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
"Perhaps there is more truth in what you have told me than I was willing to admit, Mr Bertram," she admitted quietly to herself.
She sat in this position for a moment longer, lost in thought, then, as though coming to a decision, stood up, paced up and down for a moment, and finally sat down again at her writing desk and began to compose a letter.
The Prices were surprised to find, early one day, a gentleman and his sister coming to call on them. The gentleman professed to be a friend of their son William, and was most sincerely disappointed on finding him not at home (although all of William's acquaintance that they knew of were aware that he had been back at sea for some time now). His sister had some slight connection to their eldest daughter.
"We most sincerely beg your pardon for intruding on this family without warning," the gentleman said, charm oozing from his every word. "My sister and I were travelling in this area and we thought that we should take the time to visit the family of a young man who has been such a good friend to me. And, of course, we were desirous of knowing his sister better than we currently."
The family, rendered almost completely silent in their shock, suddenly sprang alive again, rushing about to make the two of them feel welcome, with Mrs Price in the middle, giving orders to her young underlings as she worked. A real gentleman and his sister? It was not something that could have ever been anticipated. Only Fanny remained inactive, staring in something akin to trepidation at the woman who had arrived so unexpectedly.
Could it really be Mary, come to see her?