A Contrary Wind: a variation on Mansfield Park (Mansfield Trilogy Book 1)

by Lona Manning

  Then came some news which drew all of Fanny’s solicitude back to her friends in Bristol and London—Mrs. Butters wrote with the shocking intelligence from her Bristol correspondents that William Gibson had been press-ganged. At first, his friends did not know what had befallen him—he had failed to return to his lodgings one evening, and almost a fortnight elapsed before the news escaped from an unfriendly quarter, that he had been seized by the press. His friends had applied to the local magistrates in great indignation—Mr. Thompson, in fact, was nearly arrested after brandishing his walking stick and bellowing imprecations at the authorities—and they had spoken to everyone they knew in any way related to the Navy, but he was not to be recovered. He was no longer being held in Bristol and no one knew, or would reveal, where he had been dispatched. He could be on his way to the Caribbean for an absence of five years or more, or he could be held in some other port, awaiting assignment to one ship or another.

  Fanny was disconsolate to think of Mr. Gibson, with all his accomplishments, being snatched off the streets and forced to become a common seaman, though she naturally regarded the Navy more benignly than did the Bristol abolitionists. She wrote an anxious letter to her brother, giving a description of Mr. Gibson and asking him to be on the lookout for her friend.

  * * * * * *

  Blinking in the harsh sunlight after several days held below decks, William Gibson was lined up with the other pressed men on deck, to be interviewed by a serious young lieutenant supported by what Gibson supposed were midshipmen or clerks on either side. He listened as the men ahead of him were interviewed, until his turn came.

  “Name?”

  “William Frederick Gibson.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Place of birth?”

  “Cambridgeshire.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Writer.”

  “A writer? A writer of what?”

  “Anti-slavery tracts, mostly. And poetry.”

  “Religion?”

  Gibson was tempted to say ‘none’, just to see the expression on the lieutenant’s face, but having watched the previous pressed men being interviewed, he knew there was only one acceptable answer, one which he refused to give. He prevaricated.

  “My uncle, who raised me, was a clergyman.”

  “Begging your pardon, Mr. Bayly,” said a voice behind Gibson. “But this man is a gentleman. He’s no sailor.”

  “Silence! No one is to speak unless spoken to.”

  Bayly scrutinized Gibson, who was wearing the same clothes he had been wearing more than a fortnight ago when he was seized off the streets in Bristol. Well, few gentlemen could look like gentlemen after such an ordeal.

  “Are you, sir, a gentleman?”

  Gibson had struggled for several days, locked in the hold with his conscience. The fact that he could put on a show of outrage, speak of having attended Cambridge, declare himself to be a gentleman in education, birth, breeding, everything but substance, and escape the fate of his fellow captives, struck him as a trial or a temptation comparable to the tale of St. Anthony. He might walk away; they could not. Neither could the Africans he had pledged his life to fight for.

  “Well?” demanded Lieutenant Bayly. “Do you contend that you were impressed illegally?”

  “Civis romanus sum, sir. But the fact of my being impressed, is not more unjust than the impressment of any of my fellows here.” There! It was said, and he wanted to feel glorious and noble for having stood by his principles, but he felt tired, grubby, and possibly foolish to the point of insanity.

  A long cool stare from Bayly. Then—

  “Any previous seagoing experience?”

  “None.”

  “Will you volunteer?”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  “Landsman Gibson, you are assigned to the West Africa Squadron. Many vacancies have arisen there. Dismissed.”

  Gibson turned around, expecting to see awe and respect in the eyes of the other pressed men, but most were watching him with looks of disgust or perplexity.

  “What’s that? He didn’t try to get off” — “Now we’ve got to look after this lubber” — “touched in the head” — “you take care of him, I won’t take him in my mess.”

  Gibson was unceremoniously shoved aside. His eyes were finally adjusting to the sunshine, but he saw to his dismay he was being taken below decks again. He looked around for the friendly young Lieutenant Price, but he was nowhere to be found.

  * * * * * *

  Sir Thomas was visiting his bankers, Mrs. Norris was gone to pay her morning visits, and Julia elected to stay home with Maria, who was feeling unwell. However, Maria made it clear that she desired nothing more than to be left alone, and Julia was descending the stairs to the parlour, hesitating between practicing on the piano, or writing a letter to her mother, when there came a knock at the front door, and, out of curiosity, she answered the summons herself.

  She beheld a tall, broad-shouldered, suntanned young naval lieutenant, with a cheerful and open countenance, whom she had never seen before, yet there was something about him which was oddly familiar to her. She was taken aback, but also could not help returning the artless smile he bestowed upon her. It would be fair to say that each of the young people surveyed each other, and each was not displeased by what they saw.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss—do I have the honour of addressing one of my Bertram cousins?” ventured William Price (for of course it was he).

  “Oh! You are Cousin William! I mean—Mr. Price,” Julia exclaimed, then reddened. “Do—please—” the lieutenant was ushered in with no further ceremony and shown to the parlour. She was briefly alarmed that she had perhaps greeted her cousin with more warmth than was proper, considering the vast gulf between the Bertrams and the Prices, but William Price was so unselfconscious in his manner, so free from either cringing servility or assumed hauteur, that she soon was chatting with him without reserve.

  Captain Henderson had kindly left him at Wimpole Street and his carriage would return in twenty minutes’ time. The visitor declined all offers of tea, and there was but time to tell how Mr. Crawford’s uncle had obtained his long-desired promotion, for which Julia congratulated him heartily, not even blanching at the mention of the name “Crawford,” and she listened with great attention, though not much comprehension, to his animated description of the fifth-rate frigate HMS Solebay, the number of her guns, her dimensions, her history, the many ships she had captured in her past and his great fortune in being assigned to her, though she had been re-fitted and commissioned at least four times, to be sure, and probably would scarcely hold together when encountering a gale. Julia exclaimed against the possibility, which led to young Price’s modest acknowledgment that he had lived through several hurricanes and a shipwreck, to say nothing of several engagements with the French, and at her invitation he was expanding on his adventures, when too soon, alas, the young people heard the sound of the hackney coach come to collect the young lieutenant and return him to his duty.

  Julia then happily recalled that Fanny used to share some parts of William’s letters with the family (William blushed to recollect how warmly he used to abuse Aunt Norris, and trusted that his sister had been discreet in which portions she read), and she surprised herself with the impulsive suggestion that he ought to correspond with his uncle, Sir Thomas, who, she was sure, would be pleased to hear from his nephew. William pronounced it a capital idea, as his uncle had in fact been his first benefactor, even before Henry Crawford. He promised to write regularly, and dared to hope that his uncle might have time to write him a line in reply, as letters were very precious things to sailors far from home, and with a final warm smile and a bow, he left his fair cousin.

  Julia skipped upstairs, feeling more light-hearted than she had in weeks. Whether or not she ever saw that pleasant William Price again, the fact that he gave her heart a little flutter was proof that she was in a fair way of recovering from having it br
oke by Henry Crawford. She went into the bedchamber she shared with her sister and found Maria being sick into the washbasin.

  “Whatever is the matter, Maria?”

  Maria looked at her with despairing eyes. “Nothing. Some bad mussels, I think. I’m going to lie down now.”

  * * * * * *

  Dear Fanny, I am forwarding a letter from Mr. Gibson for your perusal, as I am sure you would like to read of his adventures first hand—Yours affectionately, H. Butters.

  Apr 15—

  My dear Mrs. Butters,

  Madam,

  I am writing to you from the deck of the victualling ship, Agincourt, currently at harbour in Portsmouth. Would you please inform our mutual friend, Miss Price, that I have now seen the ramparts of Portsmouth and the sea beyond and can confirm that it in no way resembles Heaven, at least not to my eyes. She will understand.

  The mystery of my impressment has now been unfolded to me—some of our merchant friends in Bristol, seeking revenge over the loss of their profitable trade in human souls across the Atlantic, and the corresponding end of their trade in trinkets and cloth to the corrupt African chiefs in exchange for the unhappy victims, paid a bribe for me to be abstracted from the streets.

  However, Fate may have hoisted my persecutors on their own petard. They arranged for me to be swiftly transported to Portsmouth, evidently to thwart any efforts by my friends to effect my release, but in so doing, they put me in the way of being selected for the West Africa Squadron. Think of it—the merchants of Bristol have paid to send another man to help put an end to the diabolical slave traffic. Therefore, please inform our Bristol colleagues that I am growing daily more resigned to this unexpected adventure. For, imagine if you will, Ma’am, the account I could write for the public, once I have witnessed the reality of the slave trade in person! I feel, in all modesty, I could be of signal aid to our cause. Further, I shall be paid wages while I collect material for a book, and a man must live upon something, as I can attest, having attempted to live upon nothing for several years now.

  I am no sailor, but I am trading on what little I have learned over the years just by breathing the sea air of Bristol and hearing the talk of nautical folk.

  I know that you will keep me in your thoughts and I will write to you as events permit. And now for my most urgent request—may I beg you to send me, as swiftly as possible, a quantity of Jesuit bark? The more experienced sailors have impressed upon me the hazards of the miasmatic air of the African coast, and the high probability that I may contract fever. That, and protecting my one pair of spectacles from being broken, are my chief concerns. A ream of paper or some notebooks would also be a godsend.

  Thank you for your kind solicitude and also please tender my regrets to Miss Price, as we had planned to establish our own little circulating library, and exchange our thoughts by correspondence, which is now, alas, impossible unless the bluestocking females of the Ghana tribe write three-volume novels on coconut fronds. (Here, Mr. Gibson had written several lines but had crossed them out completely so they were impossible to read.)

  your devoted servant, Wm. Gibson.

  p.s. –. Apr 17—This letter is being conveyed to London by my new friend, second lieutenant William Price. And to answer your next question—yes, he is. He is her brother. And he is a fine fellow, not yet one-and-twenty, cheerful, encouraging, and he has been extremely helpful to me and has prevented me from making many ‘lubberly’ errors which would have earned me the derision of my shipmates. He has informed me that his sister has recently married. Will you please tender her my congratulations on having exchanged uncertainty for certainty. And do not forget that you owe me a shilling. Wm. G.

  * * * * * *

  Apr 21, at sea

  Dear Fanny,

  I trust this letter finds you happy and in the best of health, and Mr. Crawford likewise. I am still on the Agincourt as I write this—I am sharing a wardroom with Lt. Bayly but expect to join my own ship within the month. We are sailing south at last to meet up with the Solebay—my ship— (with what pleasure can I write— “my ship!”) —along with the sloop Derwent—those two ships together comprise the entire mighty West African Squadron!

  The West African Squadron is charged with patrolling the coast, principally from Cape Verde to Benguela—I know my dear sister will consult an atlas—and stopping any English or French ships carrying enslaved Africans. We cannot stop ships under other flags, you see, because our English laws do not apply, but we can stop English ships and the Frenchies as well because we are at war with them. This is why, do you know, that so many traders are using American ships now-a-days!

  You can imagine my surprise when your letter informed me that we had a common acquaintance on board ship here. To think, you were in Portsmouth and never knew that your friend Mr. Gibson was also there! He has been pressed into service—in fact, Lt. Bayly told me all about this curious fellow he had assigned to the Solebay, before I ever knew he was your friend! He—Mr. Gibson that is—says you are a very thoughtful person, and said much in your praise. He’s a splendid chap, good-natured and curious about everything but I have been at some pains to teach him that he must not talk or ask questions when he is on duty. The other able-bodies were hostile to him at first, but he has won them over—as he is so friendly and obliging and does not hold himself out as better than the others—he will write a letter home for any sailor who only knows how to mark his ‘x’ and, what do you think? He has offered to give me private lessons in Latin for free, or rather, gratis. I dined at the Captain’s table for the first time last week, and rather wanted to crawl away and hide, as half the time the other officers were speaking to each other in Latin tags, and then the chaplain would turn to me and say, “Ain’t that so, Price?” so I rather think he was trying to score a point off me. Gibson says he can teach me so I can quid nunc and quid pro with the best of them soon….

  We should make the Isle of Gorée (no, I never heard of it before, either!) by the middle of May, if all goes well…

  Fanny had decided against engaging a lady’s maid because she had come to regard her bedchamber as a sanctuary where she could retreat from the servants, drop the mask of being the chatelaine of Everingham and become just Fanny Price again. It was there that she read and re-read what little private correspondence she did receive—from her brother or Mrs. Butters, for, though she daily hoped for a letter from Edmund, none arrived.

  She was therefore alone in her room when she opened a note from Henry Crawford which brought the news of the union of Edmund and Mary.

  While I was not myself at the ceremony, I can answer your undoubted anxiety about that most essential point—the radiance of the bride. The bride herself assures me, she was a vision of modesty and beauty, all in white with a veil to match. The happy couple are now residing in Thornton Lacey….

  Fanny had again that strange floating sensation she had experienced the morning she quit Mansfield Park—she could see herself, as though from a great distance, standing in her bedroom by the window, holding the letter, looking out across the fields. She thought to herself she might faint, and when she didn’t, she thought, I am glad I never told him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The day that Edmund Bertram took Mary Crawford to wife was the happiest of his life. Mary had declared she cared not a fig for a fashionable wedding at Hanover Square, as it would be injurious to the feelings of poor Maria and further, neither her brother nor the Admiral would attend; she was, against all expectations, a country bride in Mansfield with her sister, Mrs. Grant, as her only attendant. Nor did she condition for a bridal trip to Brighton or the Lake District; her new husband handed her into their smart new gig, a gift from Sir Thomas and his lady, to travel the short distance from Mansfield Park to take up their new lives in Thornton Lacey.

  Nor did any special ceremony attend the Reverend Edmund Bertram’s maiden sermon in his new parish. At his request, the family stayed away, but the pews were full of the curious, of course. Those o
f the congregants who preferred their clergymen to be tall, dark-haired, and handsome found nothing to complain of in the Reverend Bertram. His wife won general approbation for her pretty looks and her ready smiles.

  “I am conscious of being far better reconciled to a country residence than I had ever expected to be,” Mary wrote to her brother shortly after her wedding. “I can even suppose it pleasant to spend half the year in the country, under certain circumstances, very pleasant. An elegant, moderate-sized house in the centre of family connexions; continual engagements amongst them; commanding the first society in the neighbourhood; looked up to, perhaps, as leading it even more than those of larger fortune, and turning from the cheerful round of such amusements to nothing worse than a tête-a-tête with the person one feels most agreeable in the world. There is nothing frightful in such a picture, is there?

  Alas, while it was no small source of gratification to know herself to be the first lady of refinement and gentility in her neighbourhood, Mary Bertram soon discovered that she had no acquaintance in Thornton Lacey whose society was not a punishment of some form or another. While most of the residents of the village kept a respectful distance from the vicar’s wife, there were some prosperous farmers and a few merchants who fancied themselves not so far removed from the Bertrams in point of birth, manners or wealth, to make them at all reticent about paying a morning call on the bride, or extending invitations to their homes for tea or dinner, the prospect of which filled Mary with dismay.

  The alterations to the parsonage afforded Mary with an excuse for refusing most of the unwanted solicitations—until she could return hospitality in kind, she was resolute in declining it, but many a farmer’s muddy boots disgraced her parlour floor and many a gossiping housewife had to be endured nonetheless. She philosophized that such minor irritations were to be preferred to the ennui of having only the servants for company, and hoped that the end of the Season in London might bring more eligible families within visiting distance to their part of the country.