by Lona Manning
Well, said her visitors, and the parsonage house was just large enough to accommodate the family. There were—what—three young children, and Mr. Bertram and... his wife?
At the mention of Mrs. Bertram, the teacups paused in the air, and all eyes fixed on their hostess.
“My poor nephew,” Mrs. Norris announced with firmness, “was sadly taken in by that woman. I always had my reservations about her, when she came among us. She had ten thousand pounds and a pretty face, but I was never certain of her character, and I did give Edmund a little hint on the matter, but what is done, is done. ‘Whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder.’ I am sure I would be the last to withhold the olive branch, so long as Mary understands that I can never forgive her for running away and deserting Edmund.”
“She left Thornton Lacey directly after so many hardships befell Sir Thomas, was that not so?” asked one of the visiting ladies.
Mrs. Norris nodded vigorously. “Yes, indeed! Shortly after Sir Thomas lost much of his fortune. I did my best to uphold everyone’s spirits of course, but it was still very hard upon dear Sir Thomas and my poor sister. At any rate, Edmund visited here to condole with his parents, and when he rode back to Thornton Lacey he found the parsonage house stripped bare—horses, furniture, linen, everything taken away to London!” She paused to look around at all her guests, to satisfy herself that they comprehended the full depravity of Mary’s actions.
In fact, everyone was already well-acquainted with the particulars; any one of them could have related it to the last detail, but the opportunity to once again express their entire disapprobation, their very great surprise, their utter perturbation, was not to be foregone. The ladies murmured and sighed and shook their heads, and when they were done, Mrs. Norris resumed the tale. “Edmund has laid much of the blame for his wife’s conduct upon her uncle, the Admiral. Apparently he interposed himself in their marriage to a unwarrantable degree, which I have always held is very unwise, and that is why I have always made it a rule not to interfere in my family’s affairs.”
One of the ladies almost choked on her biscuit, and took a quick sip of tea.
“Certainly I might, on occasion, give advice,” Mrs. Norris continued, “out of necessity. But what is to be done in an instance such as this, I am sure I cannot say. Poor Edmund!”
A fortnight later, Mrs. Norris received word from France, assuring her that Edmund and the children were still alive and bearing the journey very well. Young Thomas had developed a decided interest in history, so Edmund had promised to take him to Agincourt, to view the field where “the band of brothers” under Henry the Fifth defeated the French, before proceeding to Calais and taking passage for England.
She then perused the next paragraph and exclaimed out loud: “Why, the unnatural creature! What a dreadful, dreadful woman!”
My wife is not accompanying us at this time. She finds the climate and society in Italy to be more congenial for her health and spirits. She intends to pass the summer in Tuscany, at a place called Bagni di Lucca. Bagni means, baths. There are hot springs there and I am told it is a very popular resort, even for those who are not invalids.
“Well—and my poor nephew is attempting to bring three children safely through France, while their mother takes her ease in some watering-hole in Italy! I must write to my poor sister and Sir Thomas and encourage them to resolutely endure whatever may befall.”
For Mrs. Norris, despite her advanced years, had a spirit of activity, which could not be satisfied till she had written a long letter to Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, filled with her reflections upon the character and morals of Mrs. Edmund Bertram, and predicting all the possible ill consequences, which she shuddered to think of.
Chapter 13: Italy, Spring 1818
Mary Crawford Bertram came down from her apartment wearing an elegant crimson riding suit.
“Madame Ciampi,” she addressed her new landlady in excellent Italian. “Yesterday I arranged to hire a horse, which will be brought to the yard this morning. I shall take some coffee before I set out.”
“Certainly madame. And has Madame employed a guide to go with her?”
“I hardly think it necessary. There is only one road to the forest, is there not?”
“But Madame—”
“That will be all.”
The landlady was about to retort, then clamped her mouth shut firmly and walked away, elaborately shaking her head in disapproval or worry or both. This new summer tenant—was she truly a respectable woman? This was not Venice, thank the blessed saints—here in Tuscany people were sober and decent.
Madame Ciampi relieved her feelings by firmly closing the wooden shutters which framed the windows facing eastward over the Appenine hills, giving them an extra bang for emphasis. Before the war ended, Bagni di Lucca was the preserve of a few wealthy French families, even royalty, relatives of Napoleon himself. But since his downfall, the town had been invaded—taken over—by the English, who, deprived of the ability to tour the continent during the long years of war, poured out of their little island like a plague of locusts. Madame Ciampi was on her feet from morning ‘til night, changing linen, cooking breakfast, dusting and sweeping, and fetching more wine from the cellar.
Peculiar, arrogant, aloof and demanding as the English were, they had restored the old prosperity of Bagni di Lucca. The casino was open again, and a small orchestra played in the evening. In the streets, in the cafés, at the baths, one only heard English spoken. There were soldiers and navy men, taking their well-deserved ease. Nannies herded young children up and down the street. Gout-ridden old men availed themselves of the hot baths. The young English girls walked and rode about, and set up their easels, and sketched picturesque views, or sketched each other sketching picturesque views. The men stayed up very late, enjoying the cool night breezes, and they sat about drinking wine and arguing about who knows what, then slept until noon or later.
This new lodger was ready to go abroad before most of her countrymen awoke, arising from the breakfast table with eagerness when her horse arrived and hurrying outside to inspect her. She stroked the little brown mare’s nose and expertly checked the girth and the harness. How well she looked in her riding habit, how she floated up like a piece of thistledown when the groom assisted her onto her saddle, and how gracefully she sat! Madame Ciampi admitted that her newest lodger was perhaps the most elegant and fashionable-looking visitor in town.
“I shall return for dinner.”
“Very good, Madame Crawford.”
Mary had surprised herself by impulsively signing the register as “Mary Crawford.” But as she did, she felt a rush of elation, as though instead of assuming a disguise, she was throwing one off. She was not a clergyman’s wife, she was Mary Crawford, and the truth was, her marriage was now past saving. How strange to think that her last quarrel with Edmund was probably their final one.
There were few other tourists abroad at that early hour. Mary hoped she would encounter none of her acquaintance from the English expatriate community. She knew their friends in Rome were gossiping and speculating about them. Why had Edmund Bertram gone back to England without his wife? Edmund Bertram, who was the very pattern of a model husband! And the darling children—gone with him. Whatever could be the matter?
What indeed? Why did not anyone understand, least of all her husband, about the dissatisfaction and the disappointment and the resentment which used to rise within her, until she exploded with rage, and the nursery maids hurried the children away, and Edmund locked himself in his study? Why did she need to scream horrible things at him through the door, and finally retreat to her chamber to collapse, sobbing, on her bed?
“Mary, you have your fortune and your freedom,” Edmund had said. She could go anywhere and do anything. She could take an apartment in Paris or Vienna, she could rent a chalet on the shores of Lake Como. She could pursue the kind of life she was meant for, instead of Edmund’s smothering life of duty and obscurity. But how? What would she
do first?
She came to Bagni di Lucca to formulate her future plans.
Mary directed her mount to climb the winding narrow road uphill through the town, keeping the mare at a slow walk, getting to know the horse and letting the horse get to know her. It felt so good to be on horseback again. She passed the villa which her landlady had described; the dwelling of Napoleon’s sister, the Princess Borghese. The Princess had lived apart from her husband for years, because royalty, even upstart Corsican royalty, could do as they pleased.
By now, she supposed, Edmund and the children would be visiting his parents at Everingham. Bitter resentment flooded over her. Everingham—her late brother’s estate, and she an exile from it, banished forever by the cold severity of her father-in-law Sir Thomas! He managed the estate now, and his stupid, lazy wife lay about in the parlour, and her brother’s widow flaunted herself around London with Crawford money.
London, London—where she yearned to return, where she belonged, but which Edmund always opposed, on the grounds of the too-great expense and the danger to the children’s health.
Mary urged her mount forward along the cobbled street, until she spotted the bridle-path made by other wanderers over the years, a path which led into chestnut forests spilling across the hillside. It was fashionable, these days, to fall into raptures over a fine prospect or a lightning-blasted oak, but Mary had never pretended to be an enthusiast for the sublime. She saw Nature, inanimate Nature, with little observation. It was enough that, ill-disposed as she was for human company, she could indulge in the silence afforded by a thick canopy of trees and follow a winding path through patches of dappled sunlight.
She dwelt upon the futility of her efforts to make her husband into what he ought to be. In understanding, appearance, countenance, air, Edmund was exceptional. And after living abroad he now spoke excellent French and passable Italian. Could he but obtain a position in the diplomatic corps, or enter into Parliament! He ought to be a shining character, but he preferred to lead a private life.
Mary had never accepted this fate. Not only were Edmund’s talents wasted, so were hers. She could have been the mainspring behind her husband’s rise to power; with her skills of address, with her connections with the titled and powerful, such as Lord and Lady Delingpole. She was fitted by character and ability to be the wife of a great man, a man whose name and reputation outlived his death, someone whose bust adorned the halls of Parliament.
While living in London with her friend Mrs. Fraser, Mary had collected and made fair copies of her husband’s sermons, intending to have them published. But Edmund’s formal style, so much like his father’s, was of a previous age. She wanted to find a writer who could anonymously revise her husband’s measured, balanced, classical essays and turn them into passionate epistles, but one candidate took her money and produced, after much delay, some very indifferent work, and another had rejected her overture so indignantly that she was too mortified to ask anyone else.
So her aspirations remained unfulfilled and she was approaching her thirtieth year, a fact she contemplated with equal parts incredulity and dread. She admitted to being six-and-twenty in company and her pretty face, lively address and trim figure did not contradict her.
As she revolved these familiar thoughts, she attempted to push anger away and replace it with resolve. Her hands tightened on the reins. How she had tried! How she had sacrificed! Now she must stake everything on her last hand. She must return to London in triumph. She must become an important hostess. She would be a woman of influence, of standing, of lasting fame.
Her thoughts so absorbed her, she didn’t perceive the sound of rushing water until it became so loud so as to obtrude itself on her notice. Whilst at breakfast, she had chanced to hear other lodgers speaking of a waterfall hidden in the midst of the forest and a beautiful stream that flowed along a rocky chasm. She thought the sight would make as good a destination as any for her ride that morning, so she directed her horse to leave the path, and continue uphill through the trees toward the sound of the waterfall.
Before long she passed through a fringe of chestnuts and came to a clearing which revealed a narrow, stony gorge. She halted her horse, slid down from the saddle and tied off the reins before advancing on foot to the edge of the gorge. About four feet below her, a narrow stream flowed, hemmed in by large boulders on either side. She could not judge the water’s depth, for it was so clean and clear she could see the pebbles and sand on the bottom.
Uphill, a tumble of boulders obscured the sight, but not the sound, of a small waterfall. Sunshine illuminated the leaves of a grove of alder trees which had managed to establish itself on top of the rocky escarpment. Apart from the rushing water, the grove was absolutely quiet, and so still that when she sensed a movement amongst the boulders, it startled her. Looking up, she saw a large creature. It was not a bird, because it had no feathers, nor a beast, because it was not covered in fur.
Was she hallucinating? Had all the hours of walking about in Italian palaces and museums, viewing old frescoes of nymphs and fauns disporting themselves in sylvan glades, so affected her fancy? For here, perched on top of the highest boulder, with his back to her, was a naked faun.
But—weren’t fauns covered all over with fur? Or at least, didn’t they have hairy haunches? She tried to recall, with exactness, the paintings she had viewed in Rome and Pisa and Florence. This faun on the rock above her was bare-skinned and so slender that his spine, shoulder blades and ribs were all clearly visible. And, now she could see the faun was reading a book. Did fauns read books?
Just then, her horse noisily passed wind. The sound pulled the attention of the faun from his reading, and he looked around, looked down, and saw her. An amused smile broke over his face.
“Hello!”
The faun rose, turned to face her, and made an exceedingly graceful bow, as though they were both in the Court of St. James. He was completely naked. He made no effort to use his book to shield his private parts. He had long slender legs, Mary observed, which were not hairy. From her vantage point below, she was denied a view of his feet so that she could not determine if he had the hoofs of a goat. Nor could she spy any horns hiding in the dishevelled brown curls which covered his head.
“Welcome to my study,” said the faun. “Or, should this boulder serve as my pulpit? And shall these leaves, ablaze in the sunlight, serve as our stained-glass window? Have you come to hear a monologue or a sermon?” He turned a page in his book, struck an affected attitude and declaimed:
Down Pindus steep Pineus falls
And swift and clear through hill and dale
It flows, and by Larissa’s walls—
Mary gasped in surprise—again. The faun had turned into a man—a real man—a completely naked man, completely at ease with himself. She was more amused than affronted, but propriety demanded that she look away, so she did.
“Pray excuse me, sir, for disturbing your solitude.”
“Oh. I say. I did not intend to discompose you, madam. Well, actually, to tell the truth, I delight in discomposing people. Pray, wait just one moment.” And the young man, who was clearly an Englishman and a gentleman, by his speech and accent, disappeared behind his boulder and emerged at ground level a brief moment later, wearing a loose-fitting lawn shirt and some wide-legged trousers. He was still barefoot.
“How do you do?” said the young man, advancing upon Mary. “What a fine animal you have got there. Is she yours or is she from the local stables? Are you newly arrived at Bagni di Lucca? I only came this morning myself. You are English, I presume. Are you—” and he broke off and stared at Mary with some perplexity.
“Unless I am very much mistaken, madam, we have met before, have we not?” The man ran his hand through his unruly hair as he ransacked his memory. “Did we dine together at the Leigh Hunts, perhaps? Or are you acquainted with Mrs. Boinville?”
Mary was also struck by the idea that this strange man looked familiar to her.
“No, sir,
I do not know those persons. And yet, I do think we have met before. But surely, we should be able to recollect the occasion.”
“Yes!” The young man smiled in a most engaging fashion. “At least, I am certain I could never forget meeting you. Beauty such as yours is not to be forgotten. Perhaps I saw you in a painting by Botticelli.”
“That is just what I was thinking,” exclaimed Mary. “I thought at first you were a faun out of a painting.”
At this, the man threw back his head and laughed—loudly, immoderately. His wild, high-pitched glee instantly recalled to Mary the circumstances of their first meeting.
“You—you are the hermit of Marlow!”
Now it was the young man’s turn to be briefly discomposed.
“I am! That is to say, I once was—but not a handful of people, I think, know that particular pen name. How came you—-” Sudden recollection dawned upon his face. “Ahhh! You are the lady I met at Gray’s Inn. You asked me to be your husband’s amanuensis! Or rather—” with a quicksilver change of mood, he became decidedly less friendly. “You asked me to re-write your husband’s sermons, make them more evangelical, and I refused you.”
“You certainly did refuse me,” said Mary, likewise retreating to a chillier tone. “You fell upon the floor, actually fell upon the floor, laughing me to scorn.”
“I did, too,” said the man, not at all abashed by her reproof. “But, what a preposterous notion, that I—of all people—should write Christian sermons!” He spat out the word “Christian” with particular loathing. “Christianity, or rather, the false creed that profanes the name of one of the wisest, gentlest, noblest beings to walk upon this earth. I—to help keep the labouring classes in superstition and ignorance! Well, madam, if it is any consolation to you, there have been moments since that day when I had ample reason to wish for the handsome fee you offered me.”
“As I recall, you said that no amount of money would induce you to help propagate lies, superstition and idolatry.”