by Lona Manning
“You mustn’t take offence, Bertram, at anything I say,” the Admiral laughed and refilled his glass. “We sailors are not diplomats. Still, a damned dull life you will lead, by g-d. I hope you sowed your wild oats while at Oxford—had a little friend there, or knew a friendly widow?”
Edmund started, because, in fact, he had had an intimate acquaintance while at college, the respectable young widow of a tradesman with whom he had privately succumbed, for the better part of two years, to the agreeable pastimes that ardent young men will resort to when the opportunity arises. And while he was rather more philosophical than remorseful about his past, he was not accustomed to canvassing the subject openly.
“Sir,” he turned the subject neatly, while raising his glass, “whatever service I may render on this earth, I own without reservation that it will in no way compare with the perils you have endured for our country.”
This was more than pleasing to the Admiral, who then regaled his guest with tales of past engagements with the g-d-damned French, and he pressed the salt cellar and all the cutlery into service to re-enact some of his victories, so that Edmund’s knife tacked nimbly past the soup ladle and fired a broadside at Henry’s fork—and when at last the gentlemen retired to the parlour for a snifter of brandy, he toasted them with tales of prizes won, hurricanes encountered and mutinies suppressed, until sleep claimed him in the middle of recalling the first time he had rounded the Horn.
* * * * * *
The presentation dresses for Maria and Julia, with their hoop skirts and heavy trains, their white silk and extensive silver embroidery, stood poised on wire frames in the middle of their shared bedchamber. Because the hoops commenced just under the bosom (for the fashion of the day was for raised waists), court dresses looked like nothing so much as large be-frilled dinner bells. The gowns had cost Sir Thomas a great deal of money, and were to be worn only once—at the presentation on the coming Monday. The hairdresser was engaged to call on them very early that morning; they would then be corseted and sewn into the dresses, their hair would be arranged with large, dazzling feathers crowning all, and they would be armed with enormous feather fans and high-heeled shoes. Once garbed, they would be transported to St. James’s Palace, where they would stand and wait for hours until summoned for their few minutes before Her Majesty. No wonder the daughters of England’s finest families did not eat or drink anything on the day of their presentations, for to relieve themselves they must resort to a little coach pot held under their skirts, and no wonder so many fainted before the end of the day!
Maria and Julia were now too anxious to be happy, and too happy to sleep. On Saturday night, they both attended a ball at Mrs. Stanhope’s, and it was hours after midnight when they returned, yawning and footsore, to the bedchamber they shared, but they lay talking together of the ordeal of the coming Monday—the announcement of their names by the Chamberlain, the advance and the deep curtsey, the brief conversation with the Queen, the final curtsey, and, most difficult of all, the retreat, backing away while facing Her Majesty, the train gathered up and draped over one arm.
Finally, Julia exclaimed, “Oh, Maria! We must go to sleep—look, it is already dawn!”
Maria looked, perplexed. “But Julia, our windows do not face the east but the south.” Curious, she got out of bed and stuck her head out of the window. “I believe there is a fire in the distance.” Soon both girls, all pretence at elegance forgotten, and with their hair in curling rags with shawls around their shoulders, were leaning as far out of the window as they could without falling into the street. The distant sound of pealing bells reached them, soon followed by the appearance of a wheeled cart, filled with long handled axes and grappling hooks, pushed by a group of panting young men, toward the distant blaze. A servant hallo’d down to them, to ask whither were they going and came the answer –
“The palace—St. James’s Palace is on fire!!”
The early morning brought confirmation of the dismal fact. Large crowds milled around the edges of the Park to view the sight—half the Palace lay in smouldering ashes, and no one could deceive themselves that there would be any receptions hosted there this season.
Upon hearing the news later that morning, Mary Crawford quizzed her brother on his whereabouts the night before—whether he had been in the vicinity of St. James’s Court with a torch, and to what lengths was he prepared to go, indeed, to avoid a public announcement of the understanding between himself and Maria Bertram? Mr. Crawford joined in the joke, but explained that he was, as always, the child of good fortune, and counted on that luck to continue to preserve him from wearing the matrimonial yoke.
The overthrow of all their hopes of meeting royalty, of distinction, of being the object of all eyes at the reception, was a bitter blow indeed for Maria and Julia, and no less so for the father who had laid down money, in the form of convivial dinners and gifts of sherry, to bring it about, and moreover, had had his pockets emptied by the most exquisite dressmakers London had to offer. Sir Thomas hoped he could persuade his daughters that with some alterations, the presentation gowns could be wedding gowns one day.
Chapter Twelve
Mrs. Butters was loyal to the fashions of her youth, feeling that the high-waisted gowns then in vogue looked ridiculous and immodest on a woman of her proportions. At her age, the necessity of wearing her corset and stiff bodice, and sitting at the sidelines of a ballroom until well after midnight, listening to tedious talk and watching foolish young people behaving foolishly, had lost no small amount of its charm. But the good-natured widow had agreed to escort the daughters of an old friend who was indisposed, and thus she found herself at Lord and Lady Delingpole’s ball, with her fellow chaperones, watching over the new crop of Society beauties and the men who pursued them.
“There—that is Miss Crawford, is it not?” She asked her companion, Mrs. Grenville. “I haven’t seen her for this age. How lovely she looks. Her partner is very handsome. Do you know him?”
“I believe he is the son of Sir Thomas Bertram, the baronet—you may recollect—he used to be the member for Northamptonshire. What a fine-looking pair they make! One of his sisters is here as well, the tall girl with the golden hair, in the next set of couples.”
“Hmmm, very striking. Is this her first Season?”
“Yes, and she has an older sister also making her debut. They both will have ten thousand pounds.”
“And young Mr. Bertram? What are his prospects?”
“He is not the heir. I am not certain.”
“Miss Crawford appears to like him nonetheless, I perceive.”
“Wasn’t there something—something about Miss Crawford last season? I cannot recollect….”
“I think, my dear Mrs. Grenville, you are referring to rumours concerning Miss Crawford and the Earl of Elsham. I am told that Lady Elsham once met her at a reception and gave her the cut direct.”
“Of course, I give no credence whatsoever to rumours.”
“No, they only serve to entertain us until we can go home and be comfortable again. Blast these stays!”
“Oh, my dear Mrs. Butters, only look. There is the Earl himself.”
Edmund Bertram and Miss Crawford were in the thick of a crowded throng, attempting to dance—though sometimes buffeted by persons moving through the ball room to gain the card tables or tea tables on the other side—when a tall, distinguished man of aristocratic mien, whose hair was shot through with grey but whose trim figure spoke of health, discipline and vitality, accosted her thusly:
“My dear Miss Crawford! At last! I feared we would not see you this season. You appeared to have buried yourself in the country, most utterly.”
Mary started, and paused in the dance. “My Lord, what an honour and a pleasure to see you again.” Quickly recovering, she made a graceful curtsey. “Lord Elsham, may I present—”
“I think not.”
Lord Elsham, without another word, took Mary’s gloved arm and walked away with her, leaving Edmund alone a
mongst the dancers.
“My Lord,” Mary remonstrated, “we will be remarked upon.”
“I am always being remarked upon,” he replied. “I am the Earl of Elsham, after all. And you, Miss Crawford—you would be quite put out, I think, if you were not remarked upon at such a gathering as this. Now, when may I call on you, Miss Crawford? When may we resume our delightful acquaintance? My wife is out of town, visiting her sister. She will be away these three weeks.”
“I am greatly obliged to your lordship, but, my circumstances are such that, I can no longer—we must leave the past in the past.”
“The past? I was not aware that we had parted. My dear, can you not continue to be my very good companion when you are in London? I do miss you extremely.”
“As I will miss you, my Lord, but, I do beseech you, allow me to go my own way now, and let us part as friends, and perhaps—perhaps one day, we may meet again.”
“I have many friends,” Lord Elsham responded testily, “and don’t require any more. If you are going to keep company with your partner over there, I suppose I must wish you well, but I see no occasion for you to withdraw from me in this fashion. Can you not find time for someone who admires you as I do? One who did so much to introduce you into the highest rungs of Society?”
Miss Crawford’s face still wore a smile, as she looked about the room, as though she and the Earl were discussing the weather. She tried to find Edmund in the crowd.
“I hope we may part as good friends, my Lord,” she repeated. “You have been very generous to me, I own. But you know as well as I, that reputation is a bubble and I must guard mine very carefully at this time.” She stressed ‘at this time,’ in the hopes of placating him—she knew not if she would ever allow the Earl such liberties as he had taken in the past, but she did not wish to antagonize so powerful a man.
“With the greatest regret, then, my dear Miss Crawford,” the Earl kissed her hand affectionately, and he kept his hand possessively around her slender waist until Mary was able to locate her partner again. Edmund Bertram had to be satisfied with her explanation that the Earl was a particular friend of her uncle, and had known her since she was a child, etc., and Edmund tried to persuade himself that the look he had seen the Earl give Miss Crawford was an avuncular one. Nay, it is but an uncle, he told himself.
* * * * * *
“I declare, can it be? Yes, it is! ‘Tis the divine Miss Julia!” Mr. Yates exclaimed cheerfully as he claimed a place next to her at the supper table. Her dancing partner looked up from his dish of white soup in irritation that someone was flirting with his partner, saw that it was Yates, and returned his attention to his meal.
“Mr. Yates, how good it is to see another friendly face amidst this sea of strangers,” Julia returned his salute.
“And how fortunate are we that you have come to London to enchant us all with your beauty,” Yates enthused. “A blooming country rose fresh from Northamptonshire. I have told my friends Sneyd and Anderson about you, do y’know. They declare that there never was a female possessed of a good sense of humour, who could tolerably understand their wit, and I told them, ‘no, no, no, you have not met the divine Miss Julia, she is a girl who loves to laugh.’”
“I think all young ladies claim to prefer a gentleman with a ready wit,” Julia offered, “but wit can be so dangerous, Mr. Yates. It aims its barbs in all directions.”
“Fear not, Miss Julia, I will be your shield and protector for so long as you are in London. Stay by my side.”
“So long as you do not shield Miss Bertram from Cupid’s darts, Yates,” put in her partner. “You and your particular friends must not engross her.”
The two men fell to joking about arrows and quivers and targets and butts and soon Julia, while affecting to laugh, found she did not understand them at all.
While Julia Bertram collected admirers, her sister was at pains to keep only Henry Crawford by her side, wherever they appeared together.
Her time in London had both entertained and sobered Julia, for she had realized that, while in Northamptonshire she was reckoned, along with her sister, to be foremost beauty in the county, she was one of many beauties in London. As for accomplishments, education and wit, she again acknowledged that she had many rivals in Town. This revelation, together with her disappointment over Henry Crawford, had humbled her vanity not a little, and she was the better for it.
It was not at all unusual for Henry Crawford, when attending a reception or a ball, to be surrounded by two or more jealous females who aimed venomous looks at one another, and in the ordinary course of events he not only accepted such attentions as his due, he took amusement in the havoc he created in the breasts of the young ladies in his circle. He watched as sisters turned into enemies, best friends turned into implacable rivals, and it had only served as food for his vanity.
But Maria Bertram, with her superior, though as yet, unpublished, claims to his affections, was of a different order. When in public with him, she would not suffer him to address or even smile at any other lady under the age of five-and thirty, she fixed a glare that Medusa might have envied on any young woman who approached him, and as for dancing with anyone but herself and his own sister, he had first to seek her permission, confirm that the young lady was the daughter of an old family friend, and, as anyone could see, so far inferior to Maria in point of beauty that it was almost a punishment to stand up with her, etc., and during the said dance, his fair Maria would not take her eyes from him, nor, he sometimes thought, even breathe, until he had returned the young lady to her seat.
At times he rebelled, and made a point of giving flattering attentions to the most beautiful, most sought after women in the room—such transgressions were met by Maria with first, a whispered promise to end their clandestine meetings, and secondly, a whispered promise to attend the next clandestine meeting and smother him with a pillow when he slept and thirdly, she would fall to berating and insulting the unfortunate object of his gallantry in a fashion that drew the attention and derision of the lookers-on. In short, Maria was passionately jealous; she could not help or control herself, and the prospect of a lifetime under such scrutiny was unthinkable to a man of Henry Crawford’s independence of spirit. By g-d, was she out to geld him? To make him into a tame lap dog? It was not to be endured.
But even as he internally resolved that he could not make Maria Bertram his wife, owing to her shrewish temper, she remained the most desirable, willing and passionate lover he could ever recall. And no sooner had he pleasured himself with her to the point of exhaustion and packed her back to her family or to Mrs. Fraser’s, than he began to hunger for her anew and start to contrive the next rendezvous. It was dangerous, it was foolhardy, but what man could have done otherwise, given the inducement?
* * * * * *
And so the month of February passed away, in novelty and pleasure, with some pangs of pain for Julia, who was stubbornly forgetting forlorn hopes, and Edmund, who could neither advance or retreat in his suit.
So far as he could allow himself to judge, Mary Crawford preferred him to any of her other admirers, and spent more time in earnest conversation with him, than in light bantering with the others.
One afternoon in mid-February they met, as they often did, in an overheated and overcrowded reception room. Mary was in attendance with Mrs. Fraser and her set of friends, a coterie whom Edmund had learned to distrust, suspecting them of being careless as to reputation and worse, contemptuous of morality, and he longed to see Mary brought out from their influence. He suspected that some of her cynical views were imbibed from these same friends, and it was they who were poisoning her mind against the idea of marrying a clergyman.
On this occasion, the afternoon began promisingly enough. Upon spotting him, Miss Crawford went to his side, would not be parted from him, took his arm and strolled about the room with him, and gave him her sauciest smiles. However, he had information for her that he feared would end those attentions for a time, if not forever.<
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“Mr. Bertram, there is to be a harp recital next week at the Argyll Rooms. While you have politely endured my playing for many an hour, wouldn’t you care to listen to a true proficient? I am going with your sister—won’t you come with us?”
“Alas, Miss Crawford, as much as I would enjoy accompanying you, I have determined on completing my ordination as a clergyman. My father will be here in London on business, and we thought it an opportune time—
“Oh!” She pulled apart from him. “So soon? You will leave us next week?” Miss Crawford looked shocked. “I thought you had determined to stay here with your sisters until July?”
“My father will not object to my leaving for a week while he is here.”
“That is not what I meant, and you know it, Mr. Bertram. I meant, are you going to take this step? Have you no second thoughts? You know that some of your friends would be very sorry to see you settle for the life of a country clergyman.”
“I trust that those of my friends who know me will understand that even if I could afford to choose a different career, or no career at all, I do not desire any other, and that I would rather, at the end of my days, look back upon a life of some utility to my fellow creatures.”
“Come, Mr. Bertram—you cannot mean it. Are you truly going to do this? Will you condemn yourself to this dreary exile? Will you become a country parson, marrying and burying for a few shillings apiece, handing out the school prizes, taking your afternoon nap after your Sunday mutton? A man of your parts, your excellent understanding, your wit—will you throw yourself away in this fashion?” Mary’s voice quivered with derision, but her eyes filled with tears as she spoke.
Edmund looked grave. “I see that it is useless to attempt to persuade you, Miss Crawford. I recall suggesting to you that you have been accustomed to speak lightly of the cloth, as you have heard others speak, but I had hoped that upon further examination and reflection, you would come to acknowledge that, for all their faults, the clergy play an essential role in a civilized nation. And I have explained that of all the professions open to me, the Church has long been my choice—by conviction—and not, as you appear to insinuate, out of any desire for a soft and idle life. Furthermore, obscurity holds no terrors for me, at least, not so long as I could believe myself esteemed by those I love.”