He said, “Would you like to sit down?”
She blinked back tears she was far too proud, and too angry, to shed, and chose a chair, saying sarcastically, “ You might as well perform the office of clergyman, and preach to me.”
“I would not intentionally trespass against unwilling ears,” he retorted mildly, as overhead sounded the quick thump of childish footsteps. “Instead, permit me to put to you a question: had we both overcome our separate scruples in order to marry, how long, do you think, before our vows would have become brittle?”
She tossed her head, rejoining a spirited answer, “At risk of sounding conceited, I do not rate my powers so low.”
“Meaning you had convinced yourself that you would have persuaded me against my inclinations, against my better nature, in giving up the church,” he said, still mildly. “Do you not think that this is at heart why marriages fail?”
“Marriages fail because they are founded upon idle wishes or pecuniary want, upon hypocrisy and conniving,” she said.
“So you would have stood up with me in church, believing me capable of all these things?”
“Perhaps I should amend that to ‘most,’” she answered. “You were not guilty of idle wishes, except where I was concerned; you never connived, and your hypocrisies were all charming, as they served my wishes.”
“My offer to take a role in Lovers’ Vows,” he said.
“A gesture perhaps better expressed as gallantry.” Mary could not refrain from gripping her elbows. “It gave me to believe you were capable of better things.”
“And here is where our foundations severed,” he said. “You are cold. I will see to the fire.”
She made an impatient gesture. “Never mind the fire. I am not such a poor creature as to fall into a decline over a wetting. I beg you to explain how our foundations could sever.”
“Your definition of ‘better things’ does not match mine,” he returned, and set about lighting the fire already laid on the grating. “Come, Miss Crawford. Step to the hearth, if you will. We’ll soon have warmth.”
“How do you come to the conclusion that our definitions are so different? Once we found ourselves in agreement on many important subjects.”
“But not the most important,” he said, crossing to his wife’s desk.
His movement left the other half of the room vacant. She understood his superficial intent, to draw her toward the fireplace, but she perceived a deeper motivation, to put distance between them. Was that because he wished her away, or because he did not trust himself?
She crossed to the fireplace, aware of the flattering effect of firelight on hands, on the lines of her gown, even on the golden highlights it struck in her dark hair, because she had heard many compliments in corroboration. Holding out her hands to the flames, she glanced over her shoulder. “Aside from my desire to see you in a place where your shining parts would most benefit the world, where did we disagree in essentials?”
“We might begin,” he said, “with your entertaining ideas of my future predicated upon my brother’s death.”
“And here we are at hypocrisy again.” She turned her back to the fire and faced him. “I will not believe you did not think once what you might do if you were to find yourself the future Sir Edmund. It is entirely human—we do not wish anyone’s death—but those who have not can be forgiven for imagining what it is to have. And never,” she finished, “have I heard that air-dreaming actually hastens the ill into decline.”
He took a turn about, glancing upward at the muffled sound of childish voices. The sudden smile that illuminated his features struck sent a cold pang to the center of Mary’s heart. Just so had he once smiled at her. Or had it never been quite that tender?
He glanced her way. “I foresee an argument about semantics at the very least, and I would forestall that if I may. Such arguments seldom lead to éclaircissement, as you yourself once told me. Yes, I remember most every word you ever spoke to me. And mine in return. I also recollect that, between our first meeting and our last parting, we never advanced a step closer to understanding. We each thought the other might be improved. You could not see how unhappy I was in London, that I only came up to the city for you.”
“And what of your thoughts about me? I am to believe they underwent a vast change for the worse?”
“Come, let us not stray into acrimony,” he pleaded. “Let me say only that I was a long while in recovering, but recover I must. I had too many responsibilities to indulge myself in melancholy, and once I had regained clarity of thought, I knew I must begin by self-judgment. I was guilty of endeavoring to give you an entirely different character, because I loved your grace, your easy manners, your wit. I ended with fervent hopes that you might find someone who could appreciate all your gifts, whose character might complement your own. We never succeed in changing people; that, I believe, is where many marriages founder.”
“So you claim success in matrimony, then, against all history?” Mary asked, adding with a fair attempt at playfulness, “But of course if you do, there is no credit to you. Fanny—Mrs. Bertram—must be a perfect wife. I would say ‘an angel’ but that has become so trite as to be meaningless, and ‘a saint’ has sad connotations, for who would be comfortable in the company of a zealot?”
“Here is another of those places where our definitions must disagree,” he said with a hint of humor. “Why should sainthood equate with zealotry? But perhaps we can lay aside such topics.”
“Yes, yes.” She made a warding gesture. “Please. I think it is safe to say that I am as ill-qualified to make pronouncements on saintliness as you are about life among the beau monde. Each of us makes judgments founded upon a sad lack of knowledge. I have only to admit my error, and make my departure so that you might return the sooner to your domestic bliss.”
“You can,” Edmund said imperturbably. “Or you might wait out the rain, and inform me why you are really here?”
So intent were both on the other, that neither was aware that the rain had entirely stopped.
o0o
Though Fanny did not ask, her companion, perhaps glad to find a sympathetic ear, poured out his tale.
He came from Derbyshire, his family having been long-established there. Brief references to being a second son, and vague references to expectations, caused Fanny to guess that the gentleman’s elder brother was heir to a considerable estate.
The war being ended, Colonel Fitzwilliam found himself thrown on the town again, with time on his hands; he had wasted no time re-acquainting himself with friends there. And, prompted by the happiness his cousin had found in the married state, he had looked about him for a suitable lady.
He had every reason to believe he had found what he had sought in Mary Crawford; he believed he had been given every encouragement.
On finding her summarily departed, “I retreated to my friends in Derbyshire, in flat despair, I must admit. My friend’s wife—a sterling woman—convinced me not to roam around imputing meanings to Miss Crawford’s actions, but to apply to the lady herself. Only she can speak her mind. And so I came away, and, well, here I am.”
Fanny had been thinking hard during this speech. At its conclusion, remembering the strange countenance that Mary Crawford had exhibited on her precipitous arrival, Fanny made a decision.
“As you see,” she said as she pointed to the French doors, “the rain has lifted. Will you take a walk with me?”
o0o
What could Mary say?
She could resort to sarcasm, so frequently the first line of defense: she might reiterate her belief, many times repeated in words she had thought so clever, that of all transactions, marriage is the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.
But Fanny Price had always been honest. If her opinion was sought. She had steadfastly refused to marry Henry, though he was a far better catch than Edmund Bertram.
Mary reflected quickly on the irony of the present circumstances, that
Edmund had as much as admitted that he had fallen in love with a pretty face, while objecting to the mind behind it, whereas Mary had once plumed herself on her generosity in acknowledging Fanny Price’s beauty, without ever troubling herself to ask what Fanny really thought.
She had told Fanny what she ought to think, especially with regard to Henry—who was still, these ten years later, lamentably inclined to extol Fanny’s virtues. He was not yet wise enough to find himself another candidate for wife. Before he had departed in his yacht, he had smiled and said, “Perhaps if I am returned to find you happy in the married state, I might try my luck again.”
Mary looked up at Edmund, who was patiently waiting, and dropping her habit of tonnish dissembling, she said, “I am afraid.”
“You have found someone,” he ventured a new idea.
She listened for jealousy, for another interest, but if he felt it, he did not display it. And yet she sensed he was not unmoved. Nor was she; though she was by now quite warm, and even dry on the side closest the fire, she still trembled.
She turned her mind to Fitzwilliam. He was not by any means handsome, but she had long before ceased thinking him ugly.
“Yes. No,” she said. “I don’t know. Have you no Scriptural wisdom to insert here, no threadbare morals?”
“What I have for you is the ten years’ observations of married persons which my pastoral duties have furnished. I think I can say where there is liking, respect, and truth, there is a fair chance of love enduring, but you must first examine what you mean by ‘love’. If it is chiefly the admiration of a handsome pair of eyes, that can be an unsteady foundation on which to build a life together.”
“You are not going to claim that appearances ought not to have anything to do with marriage.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “I only stipulate it ought not be the single criterion.”
His tone, the tilt of his head, made it plain as if he spoke that whatever he was feeling at her sudden reappearance, he believed himself well out of a scrape.
Moreover, she discovered she could not disagree.
“One last question, O reverend Bertram,” she asked, her mocking tone at odds with the sheen of tears along her eyelids. “How can one avoid the terrible fate of sitting down to the breakfast table one fatal day with someone you discover a total indifference to?”
“I will answer your question with another question. What joys do you share with the unnamed gentleman? If there are none besides his appearance, then you may consider what that means. If there are other joys . . . the little motions of daily life, even the disappointments over which you can laugh together, or even share your grief, then you have another answer.”
And Mary thought, He believes that that fatal day would have come between us, whether I had prevailed and our breakfast was in London, or he had prevailed, and the breakfast took place in this house. He believes we would have looked at one another in indifference, or perhaps even in hatred.
o0o
Outside, Fanny and Colonel Fitzwilliam walked through the shrubbery. Fanny, glancing through the trees at the ruddy firelight glowing through the glass doors, saw the two figures silhouetted against the fire, each completely absorbed in the other.
Her feelings were a-tumble, for there were so many questions here, in a day already full of questions: Sir Thomas and his solicitor, Young Tom arriving back so noisily, Emily’s affairs, William so far away. She could hope for happy outcomes—she longed to talk them all over with Edmund—but first, she must do something in aid of this situation, in hopes of avoiding either tragedy or farce.
“Come this way,” she said, drawing the gentleman’s attention safely toward her until they were well past that revealing scene. She led the colonel around to the front door, and took him directly to Edmund’s book room. Establishing Colonel Fitzwilliam there with the latest magazines and a room full of books, she promised to seek news of Miss Crawford, and to return with refreshments.
She first stopped by the kitchen. The sudden silence among the servants testified to the probable subject. That was to be expected. Fanny ordered tea and cakes, and then, her heart beating fast, she walked to the drawing room, paused, and made a little noise at the latch before she entered the room.
She could not have said why she did it, for she knew Edmund believed in the sanctity of marriage as much as she was secure in his love. And yet, she well remembered the power of attraction; there had been a time when the chief subject of their converse was Mary Crawford.
But when she walked in, she saw the unmistakable relief in Edmund’s eyes, and the painful contraction of Mary’s brow made it clear that whatever had taken place between them was not throwing them back ten years in any significant way.
“I have ordered tea,” Fanny said into the complete silence. “I have also left a gentleman in the book room. He knows only that I seek news of Miss Crawford.”
“Fitzwilliam followed me all the way here?” Mary asked, not displeased.
Fanny took another chance. “I hope you will forgive my observing that he is a man laboring under strong . . . sensibilities.”
Mary laughed. “Always so delicate, Fanny, I remember that about you. I sometimes think that you were the only one among us who understood true delicacy, instead of social pretense.”
With that, she dropped a slight curtsey, and walked out.
A very short time later, the front door was heard to shut, and the Bertrams briefly glimpsed a pair vanishing among the trees.
“I think your tea will have to be served to the children,” Edmund said, as he slid his arm around Fanny.
She pressed a kiss into his arm. “I will summon them.”
The young ones descended on the table like a cloud of locusts, ate everything in sight, and flitted again, leaving only crumbs. Their voices died away upstairs, laughing and chattering about Tom’s new horse, and the prospect of a fair coming to the neighborhood.
Once again, Fanny and Edmund found themselves talking about Mary Crawford. Edmund began with, “I am more convinced than ever that, though she retains all her old power of attraction, I never knew her—remember that for every aspect of her I admired there were two I could criticize, pompous fool that I was? I could not be got to see that I wished her face and form on a very different woman, which is about the most dishonest act I have ever performed.” He sighed. “What sort of man is this Colonel Fitzwilliam?”
“I liked him very much. I hope they can find their way toward happiness,” Fanny stated. “I venture to think that if anyone can give it to her, he can.”
“Happiness,” he repeated, smiling at her over the table full of milky glasses and jam-smeared plates.
o0o
Later on they sat there once more, he with his elbows on the table, she with her workbag at hand, mending a shirt, as they talked over the events of the day.
“Now that the papers are signed making Young Tom heir to my brother, my father wants me to put Young Tom to a tutor, that he might be brought up to the affairs of the estate as well as his learning. I’ve written to my friend Owen, who says his younger brother Septimus just took a first at Oxford—and perhaps of more interest to Tom, he’s a first-rate cricketer . . .”
“I do so wish Tom and Susan had made a match of it.”
A shake of the head. “Tom never had the least interest in matrimony.”
“Nor does Susan. Oh, speaking of matrimony, I trust Emily found a letter waiting for her when she walked to the post . . .”
Though life seldom sustains itself at the high pitch of poesy, they shared a deeper awareness of contentment.
Inevitably, as the day at last drew to its end and they retired to their dressing room, Fanny was drawn back to the subject of Mary Crawford. As she braided her hair, she glanced at Edmund in the mirror. “‘Delicacy?’ I wonder if Mary meant that I am insipid?”
“Insipid?” he repeated. “I’ll prove the untruth of that.”
The door shut on her chuckle.
THE DANCING MONKEYS
This story was inspired by my wondering what William Price’s and Henry Crawford’s relationship would be, given what had happened at the end of Mansfield Park—and also, what might have inspired Frederick Wentworth to return to Kellynch Parish . . .
Henry Crawford gazed at the much-creased and battered letter, the superscription written in his sister’s modish, looping letters, blurred in places from an unknown storm in an unknown location, the ink already turned brown. From that he knew that the letter had been sent from the Stornaways’ London house even if it hadn’t been franked; their chief footman made the worst ink in the city. But the women used it by the quart.
He tossed the letter away unopened, misliking the rush of old sentiments that the sight of Mary’s hand brought. The letter had been probably been two years in transit, chasing him from Everingham to London, thence to Italy, and somehow finding him here in Gibraltar. Or maybe all letters written to purposeless, roaming Englishmen fetched up here.
There were five more from Mary, and two from his bailiff, which he opened and perused, then thrust in his pocket. The last was written in an uneven, blocky fist, from Thos. Bertram, Mansfield Park, Northampton.
Crawford was aware that nothing he would read inside the letter would improve his spirits, but the need to know was greater. As he slid his penknife under the seal, he reflected with self-mockery that this was as close as he would ever come to a penitential act.
Dear Crawford, the letter began. You were good enough to write to me when I was ill, and while things did not fall out as well as everyone might have wished, I did want to thank you for that attention.
So far, so good. Henry Crawford had been playing a part when he wrote those letters inquiring after Tom Bertram’s health; every word was meant to be read to Fanny Price, to exhibit his proper concern.
His last letter to Tom had been penned the morning he was to attend Mrs. Fraser’s party. He looked away at the fire, remembering his intention to keep the letter open, providing him with a conversational gambit. He’d planned his little speech to Maria Rushworth, offering to convey any message she might wish to send to her brother, while knowing full well that it was an act of hypocrisy, but was not hypocrisy the essence of polite society? One pretends a delicacy that no one actually possesses.