by Lona Manning
He turned away, determined not to dispute with her when she had lost her composure so utterly, and to seek the solitude of his study downstairs. Again, like quicksilver, his wife changed from resentment to contrition — so quickly, that he had to doubt the sincerity of any of her feelings—did she love him? Could she love?
“Please, Edmund.” She stood, beautiful and beguiling, and gracefully untied his cravat. She had started to tug at his sleeves, to remove his jacket, and he grabbed one of her arms to stop her. At his touch, she submitted and looked up at him pleadingly. He was seized with desire for her, and at the same time he despaired, for he was thoroughly convinced that he had been deceived as to the character of his wife. But had she deceived him, or had he deceived himself? And if he had suffered as a result, had she not suffered even more? Her beloved brother was dead.
“Oh, would to God we had never met!” The bitter cry burst forth from Edmund. In answer, Mary’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she started to swoon away so that he had to catch her to prevent her from falling, senseless, to the ground. He stood irresolute for a moment, looking down at the lovely form lying helplessly in his arms, then her eyelids fluttered, and she looked up at him through her long lashes. “If you must turn me away, Edmund,” she murmured, “please, be my husband again just for one night.” She reached into his shirt to stroke his chest. His knees trembled violently, he almost stumbled; he carried her to their bed and very soon thereafter he made the surprising discovery that, while anger at a wife may cool the heart, it can still heat the blood.
* * * * * *
Mrs. Butters’ carriage, with Fanny and Susan, rolled into Portsmouth in the early days of September, a few days before the court-martial, for a happy reunion with friends and relations. William Gibson was retrieved from the Price’s attic, where little Betsey had been his principal nurse. She had brought him food and hot water, and, to ensure that she would return three times a day, he had told her little stories about a family of monkeys who lived in a cocoa-nut tree.
Mrs. Butters installed him in more comfortable and restful lodgings in the Crown Inn and aggressively nursed and fed him.
William and Fanny had much to relate to each other, and genuine sorrow to share over the death of Henry Crawford. He was thunderstruck that his mild, timid sister had loved him well enough to stoop to such an expedient to win his preferment. The astonishment of his friend William Gibson was no less complete, and his secret satisfaction in learning that Miss Price was not married, played no small part in his recovery from his illness.
Fanny’s father, however, assumed the worst at first and threatened to ‘give Fanny the rope's end as long as he could stand over her.’ He enquired of the landlord of the Crown Inn, and was assured Mr. and Mrs. Crawford had indeed taken separate rooms when visiting there last spring. Fanny was acquitted of immorality, but Mr. Price regretted the loss of his wealthy son-in-law, the son-in-law who had never been, for some time longer.
Even though matters were cleared up, Fanny spent very little time with her parents; she spent her time walking and talking on the ramparts with William, and hearing, once again, all the details of the trip down the African coast, the attack on the French at St. Louis, the loss of the Solebay and the capture of the slave ship.
“Once the authorities uncover the identity of the owners of that ship, they will pay a fine of one hundred pounds for every African that was on board,” William explained to her one morning when they were escorting Mr. Gibson for a brief walk in the sunshine, “and the Clementine will be forfeit, and she was a beauty.”
They came to a comfortable bench, and Fanny suddenly realized that, by prearrangement between her two companions, her brother was going to leave her there for a tête à tête with Mr. Gibson. William Price strolled on, alone, hearing the faint laughter of Fanny and his friend carried on the sea breeze and feeling well pleased with himself.
William Gibson questioned Fanny, in that mild, yet direct way that she fondly recalled from their previous conversations, about her sham marriage to the late Henry Crawford. Fanny blushed and demurred, “You once teased me, Mr. Gibson, that you might drop me into a three-volume novel, but I had no fears of this so long as the life I led was unexceptional—but now—please promise me that you are not inspired to weave a story about my cousins and Mr. Crawford and me! The papers have been full of the scandal of the late ‘Mr. C’ and his erstwhile bride, ‘Miss P’, to my everlasting chagrin.”
“You ask a great deal, Miss Price, given that I have the advantage of being acquainted with one of the principals. I had even thought, when the news of your marriage first reached me, that it was I who had brought it about—that you had taken up my advice to confess your love to the object of your devotion. I had supposed that, thanks to my timely counsel, you were embarked on a lifetime of the greatest felicity with the man of your choice.”
Fanny shook her head and replied calmly, “That gentleman—he—it will never be, it can never be, and I have come some way in schooling myself to feel nothing more than the warmest regard for him.”
“If your affections were less tenacious than they are, they would not be worth the winning,” Gibson observed quietly, and Fanny could only look away from him and blink back the tears that rose to her eyes. After a pause, he added, “Your brother tells me that you and he and your sister Susan are all invited to Northamptonshire.”
“Yes—my uncle has written me, most kindly, and so has my aunt Bertram. How wonderful it will be to see Mansfield again! Even though, I suppose, it will never be the same, for better or for worse. My cousin Maria is in Norfolk, and my cousin Tom is on his way to America—my aunt must have been very lonely these past months.”
“Mansfield Park is a place of some grandeur, I collect?”
“Yes—and I know what you are thinking. You know the source of a goodly portion of my uncle’s wealth, and you cannot think as well of Mansfield Park and my uncle as I could wish.”
“My thoughts are even more radical than you could suppose. I want to one day live in an England where a man who grows rich off the toil and agony of slaves is held in greater contempt by society than… let us say…. a young woman who stoops to folly and is got with child before her marriage. Imagine that! You may feel obliged to condemn your cousin and defend your uncle, along with the rest of the world. But, I understand that your uncle was until recently very severe, very severe indeed, upon you—and I cannot excuse him for that, considering what he himself is guilty of.”
“Oh, you must have heard something from William about it all. Thank you for being my champion, but I only want to be reconciled to my aunt and uncle, and trust I shall be.”
“Very well. I shall say no more about it to you, in deference to your feelings. If I have learned anything in the past few months, it is that family ties are not to be despised. Your brother’s friendship was a great blessing to me, by the bye, and I think I even owe my life to him for his attentions to me when I was struck down by fever.”
“William told me he feared that you would expire in the little attic at my father’s house, with only Betsey to care for you!”
“Betsey was an excellent nurse and companion, Miss Price. I recognize a fellow scribbler in her. She has a capital imagination and a taste for the Gothic. She entertained me with stories about a horrible apparition that haunted your father’s household, a creature that was banished shortly before my arrival, who gave your family no rest by day or by night. She had the eyes and claws of a cat, and she was called the ‘An’norris’—”
Fanny began laughing so heartily that tears sprang to her eyes, and Mr. Gibson paused, gratified but perplexed, doubting whether the flow of his wit, alone, could account for his fair companion’s mirth.
* * * * * *
Edmund often had the sensation of being a spectator at a play, but the play was in fact his own life. The Act I curtain arose on a happy married couple at their little breakfast table. His wife Mary ably directed the servants; they were gratifie
d to learn from her all the little ways of arranging a home and setting out a meal, so as to distinguish their household in elegance and refinement from all their neighbours; they were pleased to think of themselves as serving the master and mistress who set the mode for the parish and who would one day be a baronet and his lady! The husband read his paper and answered his wife’s thoughtful questions about the news of the day and of the parish, she enquired after his comfort and asked, what could she do to help her husband serve his parishioners today? Was there a family stricken with illness? Whom could she visit to bring succour?
In Act II, after breakfast, husband and wife went about their daily duties; he to his study to write and prepare for Sunday, or else he visited his parishioners; she turned to her many tasks as mistress of the parsonage, in which her performance was beyond reproach, or if there was a reproach to be made, it was that she was too extravagant as regards ordering improvements for her husband’s comfort—now that the alterations were nearly finished for the front of the house, she set about re-doing the offices, to make them modern, larger and better equipped.
On these fine September days, she would urge her husband to go riding with her; and, when he could not think of an excuse to refuse, he would yield, for she had no one else to ride with, and they would set out together while she exclaimed on the beauty and freshness of the countryside. In the evening, after tea, she sometimes played the harp for him, which softened his heart toward her as nothing else could, recalling as it did those days, twelve months ago, when he had fallen in love with her.
Act III saw the happy couple alone together, retiring for the night, and as the lights were extinguished, the minister’s wife became an altogether different woman, a woman who had acquired, somehow, skills and knowledge which kept Edmund in thrall to her, and the final curtain often found him, the sole observer of the play, staring into the darkness, while his wife slept sweetly beside him, clinging to his arm.
His was a special kind of torment. He could not persuade himself that all was well between them, nor could he maintain a coldness and reserve toward one whom he had vowed to love and to cherish, who was such an excellent helpmeet by day and such a temptress by night, but his esteem for her was severely shaken. Further, he did feel, and perhaps would always feel, guilt over his hasty challenge of her brother Henry and the string of blunders that led to his death.
As one who preached the gospel, he knew that he was to ask for and practise forgiveness, but he also felt his wife should atone to Fanny, and he dreaded a resumption of those reproaches and recriminations that had revealed his wife’s malignant view of the events of the past few months. He did not raise the subject, excusing himself on the grounds that he and his wife were still wearing mourning ribbons for her brother, and tender subjects should be set aside for a time.
The worst of all was, he could confide his regrets to no other person.
He was a clergyman; and even if divorce had been within his reach, as far as the law went, he would not resort to it. It was a trial on him, a very severe trial of his principles, and one which, as much as possible, for her sake and his, he would not expose to the world. It was as a hair shirt for him to wear—the world would congratulate the fortunate man married to the beautiful, intelligent, witty heiress; he would know the corruption, the venality and the falsehood beneath the seductive surface. As a vicar he might find himself counselling some or other of his parishioners, urging him to be reconciled with his wife, pointing to the scriptural authorities and the will of Providence on the matter, only he would know of the bitter irony, the inner torment as he struggled to practise what he, perforce, must preach!
* * * * * *
As expected, the court-martial was a mere formality, as the Admiralty did not wish to advertise the fact that the crew of the Solebay—two hundred and fifty souls—had been sent on their mission in an old, unseaworthy frigate that tore apart like a rotten burlap sack when she was grounded on a Senegal sandbar. No one was to blame for her loss, least of all the gallant captain and the crew, and William was granted four weeks’ leave.
Fanny then took an affectionate farewell of Mrs. Butters and William Gibson, with a promise to him to renew their long-delayed scheme of a book discussion club by correspondence. Mrs. Butters and Mr. Gibson left for Bristol, while Fanny, William and Susan embarked in high spirits for the trip to Northamptonshire.
Fanny then learned another lesson—we are apt to be unreasonably disconcerted when discovering that those we left behind have carried on with their own pleasures and pursuits, and have made their own alterations and improvements in our absence, rather than being, as she had imagined, frozen in amber, and not altering in the least. Mrs. Grant had planted a small rose garden at the Parsonage, Fanny’s favourite old oak had been struck by lightning, and Sir Thomas had, at his son Tom’s repeated urging, installed a new billiard table. Fanny had fully expected to take her place in the little room in the attic, and found to her gratification that her trunk was delivered instead to Maria’s former bedchamber.
Other aspects of life at the park were just as she remembered them; Lady Bertram still reclined in the same spot, and so did Pug; Baddeley and all the servants she knew and remembered, including Christopher Jackson, were pursuing their usual tasks even though Mrs. Norris was not on hand to superintend and direct them, for the greatest alteration of all was that her aunt was still staying on in the London townhouse.
Lady Bertram was excessively pleased to see Fanny again after so many months, and, as she had barely comprehended all of the disappointments and unexpected reversals relative to her children, Fanny and the Crawfords, Fanny found that her Ladyship had few enquiries to make, and only exclaimed, now that Fanny was home, that ‘now I shall be comfortable.’
Of the younger Bertrams, only Julia was there to welcome her Price cousins. The cordiality with which Julia greeted her cousin Fanny surprised and gratified her.
“Fanny, whatever the world may suspect or say of your false marriage,” Julia confided in her as soon as they were alone, “I shall always defend you. I know that you acted for the best, when you tried to prevent Maria’s marriage to Mr. Crawford. Based upon what you knew then—what you knew of him then, you were quite justified in believing that she ought not to marry him—you knew his deceitful character, and—it is not your fault, for as upright as you are, you could never have suspected that both Maria and I were so weak as to….” she trailed off, seeing Fanny’s surprised and horrified stare.
“No, no, Fanny, I am not—I am still—I did not lie with him. But I will confess that I allowed him, privately, to take many liberties with me. I am so ashamed to recollect it now!” Julia crossed her arms protectively across her bosom, as though she could now, by doing what she ought to have done then, erase the memories which shamed her. “How easily he tempted me into hearing words I ought not to have listened to, and receiving attentions I should have repulsed! How readily I agreed! It was only a matter of time before he would have succeeded with me. But when I understood that he was pursuing Maria in the same way—I finally saw him for what he was.
“It hurts me to confess all this to you Fanny, but I want to tell you—I know that your intentions were for the best. I know you wanted to protect Maria. It was very great-hearted of you, especially as, I own, we were not always as kind and sisterly to you as we ought to have been…” This and similar conversations served to bring the two cousins into the greater confidence and sympathy, and Fanny also told Julia of her belief that Henry Crawford, had he lived, would have reformed himself.
Most precious of all to Fanny’s feelings were the quiet moments she spent walking and talking with Sir Thomas in the shrubbery, during the warm autumn afternoons; she, apologizing for having interfered in his daughter’s private affairs, and he, acknowledging her good intentions toward Maria, and absolving her of any guilt or blame as regards the outcome.
He assured her as well that Maria bore her no lasting ill will, for Maria was candid enough to acknowle
dge that it was her own actions, her folly in meeting with Henry Crawford in secret, which had led to her crisis.
“And, Fanny, I cannot but acknowledge, painful though it may be, that perhaps none of these untoward events would have occurred had I not absented myself in Antigua during such an interesting time in my daughters’ lives—the time when they were of an age to fancy themselves in love and to think of marriage. Even upon my return, I was too taken up with business to give domestic matters all the attention they deserved. But worse than that, I fear,” he added, taking her hand, “were the errors in my system of upbringing of all of you.” She protested, but he explained, “Maria, Julia, all of you, repressed your spirits in my presence so as to make your real dispositions unknown to me, and while my daughters were overindulged and excessively praised by your aunt, I know that you, my child, never knew ought of kindness or indulgence from her, nor, to my regret, from me.”
“Nevertheless, sir, I always knew you to be a man of good principles, of character, and honour, and it was always my desire to please you and learn from you.”
Sir Thomas also shared with her his misgivings about the slave trade, his regret that the family fortunes were bound up in it, and his desire to escape its coils. “My new partners and I have gone into a new venture—the importation of palm oil from Africa, which as you may know, is used for making soap and candles. They expect our investment will yield handsome returns within a twelvemonth and then, I propose to sell the remainder of my Antigua holdings and have done with it.”
In this fashion, on really becoming acquainted with each other, the mutual attachment of uncle and niece became very strong.
Together, the four young people—Fanny, Julia, William and Susan—made the empty halls of Mansfield Park come alive once again. The weather was fine enough for picnics and riding, and croquet on the lawn, and the evening brought them together for music with Julia at the piano and William’s fine tenor voice accompanying hers. Even Fanny was prevailed upon to perform some of the simple pieces she had learned, to much praise and encouragement.