Fanny took the work very quietly, without attempting any defense.
Presently, her aunt Norris exclaimed “Bother! I came away this morning without the green thread for the curtains. Fanny, go to my house and ask Betty for the green thread—stay, come back, take this bit of pink satin with you, I can use this little leftover piece to repair a cushion on my sofa.”
Thus, Fanny was able to run upstairs, and seal her reply to Mrs. Jos. Butters, care of the Raleigh Inn, which assured that lady of her attendance in two days’ time. Fanny hurried to the village, the letter was posted and the green thread retrieved. She debated whether she should reserve her seat on the mail coach, but to do so she would need to give her name, which might cost her the absolute secrecy she required. It would never have occurred to Fanny Price, as she then was, to give a false one.
Chapter Three
A dress rehearsal of the first three acts of Lovers' Vows was to take place in the following evening: The players were all assembled in the billiard room and were waiting only the arrival of Mrs. Grant and the Crawfords to begin. With great bustle and satisfaction Mrs. Norris entered, followed, as a sovereign by her attendants, or a peacock by his tail, by two housemaids carrying the green baize curtains over which she had bestowed so much care.
“All the rings are sewn on, and we may hang the curtains now. Now you shall have a proper theatre!” She glanced up at the ceiling and her look of triumph disappeared, to be replaced with a mortified expression.
“Tom! Tom! How were we supposed to hang the curtains?”
“The ceiling, Aunt? I—I don’t know, the thought had never occurred to me. Send for Christopher Jackson, what has he been about? I told him I required a proper theatre.”
As everyone waited, some exclaiming about the absolute necessity of having curtains, while two of the party privately sighed over the needless additional expense, the housemaids began to sink under their burden and Mrs. Norris, growing increasingly vexed, ordered them to fold the curtains in a neat pile on a corner of the stage.
Jackson swiftly arrived from the servants’ hall. “Your pardon, Mr. Bertram sir, but you told me you wished me to build a stage, but constructed so as not to mar the paneling or the floors. No one as told me you wished to hang curtains.”
“You should have known, you tiresome fellow,” interposed Mrs. Norris. “Every stage has one of those—one of those….” she gestured overhead.
“A proscenium arch, ma’am?” asked Jackson.
“Whatever you may call it! A means to hang the curtains!”
“I’m very sorry, ma’am, sir, for this blunder, but I did build as I was asked to build and no one—”
“Never mind that now,” interposed Tom Bertram. “Tomorrow morning, at first light, I want you to fetch more lumber and build a proscenium arch.”
“Very well, sir. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two, sir. And a fair quantity of lumber, sir.”
“See to it.”
Mrs. Norris was extremely put out that the rehearsal would take place on a bare stage with no curtains, and many a reflection on Christopher Jackson and his sly, lazy, cunning ways was needed to dispel the worst of her vexation. She was still expostulating when Henry and Mary Crawford arrived, but without their sister Mrs. Grant, who could not come. Dr. Grant, professing an indisposition, for which he had little credit with his fair sister-in-law, could not spare his wife.
“Dr. Grant is ill,” said she, with mock solemnity. “He has been ill ever since he did not eat any of the pheasant today. He fancied it tough, sent away his plate, and has been suffering ever since.”
Here was disappointment! What was to be done? After a pause of perplexity, some eyes began to be turned toward Fanny, and a voice or two to say, “If Miss Price would be so good as to read the part.” She was immediately surrounded by supplications; everybody asked it; even Edmund said, “Do, Fanny, if it is not very disagreeable to you.”
“And I do believe she can say every word of it,” added Maria, “for she could put Mrs. Grant right the other day in twenty places. Fanny, I am sure you know the part.”
Fanny could not say she did not; and as they all persevered, as Edmund repeated his wish, and with a look of even fond dependence on her good-nature, she must yield. She would do her best.
Their audience was composed of Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris. Julia stayed pointedly away. Mr. Rushworth, resplendent in his pink satin cape, watched glumly through the first act as his fiancée Maria explained to her son, as portrayed by Henry Crawford, how she had come to be seduced by the Baron Wildenhaim; Frederick knelt before the anguished Agatha, took her hand, and pressed it against his heart as she declaimed:
Oh! oh! my son! I was intoxicated by the fervent caresses of a young, inexperienced, capricious man, and did not recover from the delirium till it was too late.
Fanny, watching from the wings, thought Rushworth would exclaim aloud, but his scowl merely darkened.
The second and third acts brought Fanny’s time of suffering, as she watched Miss Crawford—in her guise as the impudent, bewitching Amelia—make love to the noble-minded Anhalt. The words of love spoken to each other, while powerfully painful for Fanny to hear, were yet not so troubling
