A Different Kind of Woman (Mansfield Trilogy Book 3)

by Lona Manning

  Mrs. McIntosh very kindly banked the kitchen fires and announced she was off for her afternoon lie-down and would Fanny keep an eye on the pot on the back of the stove? Soon brother and sister were alone and Sam found that telling Fanny about the loss of his arm was not so uncomfortable as he had anticipated. She was distressed, but dry-eyed and resolute.

  Had he found lodgings? Was he intending to remain in Bristol or would he go on to Portsmouth?

  He hardly knew. He thought he must go and visit his mother at one time or another. Tomorrow or next week or next month, all would serve, for he had no other plans.

  Fanny nodded, obviously revolving various schemes in her mind. Sometimes she picked up his hand and squeezed it. Then she jumped up from the table, and refilled Sam’s bowl from the stove. “I shall go find Mr. McIntosh—he is husband to the cook who let you in—he is Mrs. Butters’ coachman. I’m sure he can fix up a bed for you in the carriage-house for tonight.”

  “Fanny, there is something else you can do for me. Can you please write to mother, to break the news to her. I should rather not surprise her and come upon her all at once.”

  Fanny nodded. “I will write to her immediately.” And she almost ran to do his bidding at once, so eager was she to show her earnest desire to be of service to him.

  “No, Fanny, stay with me. But if you do write for me later, I need not go to Portsmouth until I have some particular reason.”

  “Are you expecting some prize money, Sam?” asked Fanny, for she knew that Sam’s pay had stopped with his discharge—there was no half-pay for midshipman.

  “Perhaps a few pounds, but I will not see that for many months,” he answered.

  The news of the visitor by now had been carried to Mrs. Butters, who sent word that Sam was welcome to sleep in the carriage-house and dine at the servants’ table.

  One night, by the consent of everyone involved, became every night thereafter. Mr. McIntosh reported that he rose early, and attempted to assist with every means in his limited power, awkwardly shovelling out the stables with one hand. Or else he walked about the streets of Bristol, looking for employment of some kind. He would come back for dinner, tired and discouraged but uncomplaining. He had nothing to show for his exertions but shoes sadly in need of repair.

  When Mrs. Butters was well disposed toward the young man on account of his being Fanny’s brother. When she understood that Sam was anxious to find employment, she enquired of all her friends and acquaintances, but without success, which discomposed her not a little. Her recommendation, she thought, ought to have been enough.

  Sam’s prospects were indeed poor, and Fanny meditated on how she might assist him, without mortifying his pride.

  * * * * * * *

  During this same period of time, one the most prominent visitors to Mrs. Butters’ afternoon gatherings was Mr. Henry Hunt, a well-to-do farmer from Wiltshire who was rising to great prominence in Bristol as a champion of parliamentary reform. Large audiences attended his passionate orations, and his influence among the working classes was not inconsiderable.

  Mr. Hunt was a well-looking man, with just enough polish about him for gentility, but his imposing physique and his powerful voice overpowered the domestic confines of a lady’s drawing room. One morning as everyone was sitting at tea, an admiring female guest declared, “I wonder you did not become a clergyman, Mr. Hunt! With your eloquent powers of expression, you would have been a most eminent divine!”

  This brought a shout of laughter from Mr. Hunt, and he summoned Mrs. Butters’ footman to refill his glass of sherry preparatory to making his reply: “My father—to test my character, I am convinced—offered to send me up to university for that purpose. ‘I have now an opportunity of purchasing the next presentation to a good living,’ he told me, ‘you will have secured to you for life a thousand or perhaps twelve hundred pounds a year; and you will have nothing to do for it, for six days out of the seven, but hunt, shoot, and fish by day, and play cards in the evening.’ Yes, he held out such a soft and easy life to me, but I refused it.”

  Fanny, thinking of Edmund, said gravely, “It is a noble profession.”

  She was not surprised when Mr. Hunt took no notice of her quiet remark, but another lady exclaimed, “Oh tush, tush, Mr. Hunt! Although there is too much truth in the picture you have drawn, you have been a little too severe upon the clergy, when speaking of them in the mass. There are many excellent and worthy men who are an ornament to our society, and do great credit to their profession.”

  Hunt shook his head. “Do not tell me about ornaments to society; they are the parasites of society, for, without contributing anything to the common stock, they feed upon the choicest honey, collected by the labour of the industrious bees... that is all that can be said for the best of them.” And he said this with such an air of finality, with a countenance which announced he intended to overbear all opposition, that he was allowed to have his way, and the talk moved on to other topics.

  Fanny could not like him, and in subsequent meetings, never found a reason to change her opinion. He always assumed the role of chief, and preferably the only speaker, before, during and after dinner; or, he would pause in his remarks only to attend to a question posed by one of his admirers.

  She was initially entertained by some of his stories, but when they were repeated, on subsequent occasions, twice, three times or more, she suspected he only wished to be admired, and could not trouble himself to recall that he had already told Mr. So-and-so an anecdote from his youth, and Mrs. Such-a-one the story of his time in the militia.

  In this fashion he held forth in Mrs. Butters’ dining room, telling her dinner guests the excellent tale about his ancestor, Colonel Hunt, a loyal Royalist who had escaped from prison the night before his execution. “He was captured by Cromwell’s soldiers, tried, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. But his sisters, Elizabeth and Margery, came to visit him the night previous to his execution, which was ordered to take place at day-break the next morning. Now, the regulations of the jail not being so strictly performed as they are now, the sisters were permitted to remain with him for what was supposedly his last night on earth. That evening, two sisters entered the prison, and at sunrise, two departed.

  “But,” he said, leaning forward and holding up a finger, and looking around to assure himself that all eyes were upon him, “but Margery—who must have been a young woman of astonishing resolution and courage—had exchanged clothes with her brother, and it was the colonel who walked out of the prison with Elizabeth. Margery remained behind—while the colonel escaped!”

  Mr. Hunt leaned back in his chair, chuckling and rubbing his hands together with satisfaction.

  “Your ancestor must not have had your height, Mr. Hunt,” said Mrs. Butters. “For I warrant there were not many ladies in Cromwell’s time who were six feet tall. If you ever come to be in prison, you cannot expect to replicate your ancestor’s feat, unless you have a sister who is a giantess.”

  “The authorities would dearly love to clap me in gaol, but I am not so foolish as to step into their snares,” answered Mr. Hunt complacently. “On the one hand, there is Lord Sidmouth, with his spies listening to my every word, and on the other, revolutionary fools who have tried to enlist me in their mad schemes. And I have set my course between them, careful not to veer too close between one or the other—and I keep myself out of prison thereby.”

  Fanny wondered if this was a contemptuous reference to Mr. Gibson, and she looked down at her plate, and pushed her fish about with her fork, while her cheeks glowed with indignation.

  * * * * * * *

  Sam, unlike his sister Fanny, admired Mr. Hunt almost to veneration, after hearing him orate to a large gathering at Brandon Hill on the subject of corruption in the government. Sam was still young, of keen intelligence, and of an age to want to do and achieve great things; it was exceedingly hard on a person of his active temperament to abandon the only profession he had ever known, and be told he was unsuit
ed for any other.

  Sam found an animating passion in the subject of parliamentary reform, which transported him out of his own sorrows.

  His thoughts ran more and more upon the inequities of his country. He and his comrades fought, bled and died to liberate Europe from the Bonaparte, and so the arguments of Mr. Hunt, on the natural rights of man, universal suffrage and fixed elections, kindled a new resolve within him.

  Some days after he last heard Mr. Hunt speak, he accidentally encountered the great orator conversing with some associates in a tavern. Sam hesitated, advanced, paused, and finally plucked up the courage to approach him, to express his admiration, and then to enquire if there were not some way in which he could serve the cause.

  “Well, lad, I employ men to paste handbills up around town. Ah, but—” and Mr. Hunt glanced down at Sam’s empty jacket sleeve.

  Sam nodded, wishing the earth might swallow him up. He understood. Two arms, two hands were required to glue handbills.

  “Then again,” added Mr. Hunt. “Sometimes we hand them out to the public. Do you think you could do that? Give out handbills? It takes some judgement, to know who one ought to approach on the street. If they meet your eye, that is a good sign. I must pay the extortionate government tax on every sheet and I’ll not have them wasted. Do you understand me?”

  Sam eagerly expressed his willingness for the employment—and he was instructed to report to the same tavern in four days’ time. He walked back to Mrs. Butters’ house, in a better frame of mind than he had known for many weeks. But, he began to ask himself how he might hold a parcel of handbills and distribute them, one by one, with only one hand. He pictured himself fumbling awkwardly; he pictured himself dropping the entire bundle in a puddle, he grew angry and mortified. Fanny, spying him from her window as he came up the street, perceived him to be in an unusually strong state of misery, and she slipped down the stairs to intercept him as he made his way through the garden to the carriage-house.

  She prompted and coaxed until he confided his dilemma to her. Fanny exclaimed at once, “Why, Sam, there is no difficulty whatsoever. I will make a satchel for you to wear. Some sturdy type of fabric or burlap, I fancy, would do the trick.”

  Sam cheered up and acknowledged her ingenuity with respect and thanks. She would not have traded her younger brother’s approbation for any commonplace gallantry.

  She set about the task immediately, designing and sewing a sturdy pouch for Sam to sling across his chest.

  Sam gladly commenced the work of distributing Mr. Hunt’s handbills. He had a loud carrying voice, not unlike his new employer, and he enthusiastically cried the news of “Orator” Hunt’s next public appearance through the streets of Bristol. He received a pittance for his efforts—but the dignity of having some employment after weeks of idleness, and feeling that work to be virtuous and useful, greatly improved his spirits, and even Fanny felt gratitude to Mr. Hunt on Sam’s account.

  Chapter 12: England, Autumn 1815

  Margaret Meriwether received the news of Maria Crawford’s engagement to Mr. Orme with a joy approaching rapture, even though Mr. Orme had not been her preferred candidate.

  Mr. Orme’s triumph over his rivals came about in this fashion: after rejecting Mr. Fenwick for his defects of character, and after losing Mr. Greville to a wealthier heiress, (a circumstance upon which Maria was not inclined to dwell,) she began to consider Mr. Orme’s claims to her regard more seriously—she considered him as a parent to her child, as a master for Everingham, as a respectful son-in-law to her parents, and as an intelligent companion for her future years, and she found there was nothing to which she could seriously object.

  When Maria first launched herself into London society, she disliked the idea of marrying a professional man, someone who was not at leisure to attend upon her every day. Now, after enjoying several years of widowhood, during which she had both the liberty and the means to move between London and Everingham as she pleased, and freedom to make all her own decisions, she saw Mr. Orme’s devotion to his legal work as an advantage. He would not be forever at her elbow—there would be no danger of wearing away their mutual regard by exposure to the constant daily rubs and irritations, the unpleasant disclosures of personal shortcomings, which inevitably followed in the train of too much intimacy. She could continue with her own pursuits, friendships and pastimes with little alteration in her mode of living.

  Mr. Orme was a sensible choice, and Maria sensibly resolved to let him win her.

  For his part, Mr. Orme was attracted to Maria Crawford not only for her beauty and intelligence but also because of her air of self-sufficiency. He perceived the lady to be a woman of strong feelings, but she had the merit of keeping her temper under excellent control. He was intrigued by the promise of the passionate woman beneath the regal exterior. But the course of true love never did run smooth, as the bard wrote. The problem was this: Mr. Orme did not immediately comprehend his own good fortune.

  Mr. Orme regarded his suit as hopeless, and his personal modesty hindered him from correctly interpreting a sudden, encouraging change in Maria’s conduct towards him. Having devoted his energies to rising to distinction in his profession, he did not know how to play the gallant. In consequence, the toils of courtship fell upon Maria, but she was equal to the challenge. She sought out his company when in public, she recommended his professional services to her friends, she asked for his opinion on the questions of the day, she even declared herself jealous if he conversed with any other lady!

  And at last, being an intelligent man, he could not deny the evidence of his own eyes and ears—Maria Crawford was giving him as much encouragement as any respectable, well-judging woman would allow herself to give.

  He resolved to risk an application for her hand, and he was accepted!

  Maria made her choice expecting nothing more than security and the regularity of domestic life, having consigned dreams of romance to her youth. She was surprised—happily surprised—to discover the ardour buried under Mr. Orme’s reserved temperament. Her regard for her husband ripened quickly into love, a love that soon gave every promise of enduring the trial of living together, but also withstood an early trial of a separation of some weeks. The happy couple visited Everingham to acquaint her parents with her new husband, but Mr. Orme returned to London in August, and Maria did not follow him back until September. Thus they could add “constancy” to the list of each other’s virtues.

  One of Maria’s first visits upon her return to town was to call upon Margaret Meriwether, who greeted her friend with her customary lively regard and with many solicitous questions concerning Maria’s parents, whom she had never met.

  Maria returned the courtesy with “And how does Mrs. Fraser?” even though she knew that Margaret bore little love for her step-mother.

  “She is well, as always,” replied Margaret, “but, did you not hear the news, Maria, that your brother’s wife is staying with her for the season?”

  “I did understand from my brother that Mary was in London,” Maria replied, “but I took it to mean she would pay a brief visit to do some shopping after being in the wilds of Ireland for so long. Staying for the entire season apart from Edmund? Are you certain? Although, of course,” she added, thinking of her own case, thinking of happy newlyweds who had parted after only a few weeks of marriage, “that could mean nothing.

  “So you do not think there is any… difficulty?” asked Margaret out of a curiousity she could not subdue.

  “Edmund did not say so, in so many words, in his letter,” said Maria. “But he was very mysterious about their reasons for leaving Ireland. I told him he and the children were welcome at Everingham for so long as he wished. My parents will be very happy to receive them.’

  “Will you call upon Mary, or will she call upon you?” asked Margaret. “I wonder if we shall see a great deal of her this season.”

  “We need do little more than exchange calling-cards, I think,” said Maria decisively. “I cannot think
well of Mary. She has wounded my brother too much.”

  “Yes, I believe I shall not visit my step-mother so very much whilst Mary is there,” said Margaret gravely. “I know I should not mention anything of the kind, but since you say it, I must confess that I cannot like Mary. I have tried. She is not like you, Maria—you are always so good to me, but Mary would often be unkind.” Maria saw that her friend was still wounded at the recollection. “I do not have many pleasant memories of those days. She and mother together had a way of laughing at my expense.”

  Maria was temporarily silenced. She felt exceedingly conscious, for when she and her sister Julia first came up to London, they, too, laughed at Margaret behind her back, and said cruel things about her to their acquaintance. She had been no better than Mary in that regard. Her thoughtless malice toward Margaret had arisen out of her own vanity and sense of superiority, and she would be mortified if Margaret ever knew of it.

  Maria reached out a hand and patted Margaret’s plump little hand affectionately. “You are such a good-tempered soul, my dear Margaret, that once someone comes to know you, I wonder that they can be unkind to you. You, who are all kindness and generosity.”

  This declaration did not have the expected effect. Maria was astonished to see Margaret turn away, and look decidedly stricken. “Oh! Do not say so!” she exclaimed. “I have not always been your friend! I have the most frightful guilt upon my conscience, as regards you—it has troubled me for years! I always wondered that someone so clever as you could not guess it.”

  Maria was astonished, but also curious. “Margaret? I cannot imagine to what you are referring. It must be some trifle, over which you have been fretting in vain. Tell me, declare it, and then we can both forget about it. I promise to forgive you instantly.”

  Margaret shook her head. “If I unburden myself to you—I am afraid of losing your friendship forever!”

  Her friend, more curious than ever, reassured her. Finally, Margaret drew a slow breath, and looking away, said in a trembling voice, “It was I—I was the one who betrayed you.”