“Thank you very much, cousin,” Fanny replied as she resumed wiping a dust cloth over her volume of Lord McCartney's Journal from China, before placing it in her trunk.
“Are you not feeling a little melancholy, Fanny?”
“Oh yes, but it is to be expected—how could we feel otherwise? Your mother is being remarkably stoic about everything. Susan is with her now, they are sorting through all her old letters.” She straightened up from the trunk, pushed some curls back from her forehead, and paused to look out window. “I fancy this is what I shall miss the most about this room—this view of the park—but I shall always be able to remember how it looks on an autumn day like this, with the sun illuminating the golden leaves on the trees like stained glass—and so long as I have my memories, nothing else matters. But you, cousin, what must you be feeling?”
“I feel a great many things—to relate them all might tire even your patience, but there is one thing in particular—I will stay overnight here and have supper with you all—my father wants to discuss some of the details of the estate with me—but first, Fanny, I want to speak with you alone—I want to apologize to you Fanny, for my blindness—”
“Oh! Cousin! No, you need not, indeed you must not—”
“No, let me say this much, let me overrule you this one last time, and I will have done. I was too much in the habit of taking you for granted, for assuming that you would agree with me in every thing. I flattered myself that our thoughts, our sentiments, our tastes and our principles accorded so well that we would never differ on any point. And, it fed my vanity to suppose that I had indeed played some part in shaping your tastes and convictions. So, when we did differ—as we did on the question of whether I should join the play-acting—I would not do you the justice of even permitting you to disagree with me.
“How often did I silently berate others in my family for treating you as a doll, as an automaton, without due respect for your independence and dignity! Yet, after we were separated, I examined my own conduct and discovered that I was no better—very little better, at any rate! I was blind to my arrogance.
“I do not say that, had I behaved differently, had I listened to you, instead of compelling you to agree with me, events would have transpired differently. I do not place that great of a burden upon your shoulders. The choices that I made were mine, and mine alone.
“I will not ask your forgiveness, for I know you would give it to me instantly. But will you do this for me,” he added, taking her hand. “Will you always be my friend, Fanny? Will you promise me that we will never allow time, or distance, or mischance, to make us forget all that we are to one another?”
“Never, never!” Was all Fanny could trust herself to say.
“And, also, Fanny, would you leave your labours here long enough to come for a walk with me in the shrubbery? It is very fine outside, and it may be our last opportunity to walk those familiar paths together and talk about books and poetry as we used to do.”
“I shall just collect my shawl and bonnet from my room,” Fanny said, starting for the door, when Edmund smiled.
“No, Fanny, I sent a servant to fetch them for you before I came here to find you. I assumed you would fall in with my wishes—as you nearly always do.”
* * * * * *
Edmund returned home from his overnight visit with his parents in tolerably placid spirits. He led his horse to the new stables behind his house, and saw to his surprise that the new gig was gone, along with the little mare. Returning to the house, he gazed in stupefaction at his entry hall, bereft of furniture. He pushed past his housekeeper to the parlour, and found it likewise empty—the paintings on the wall, the draperies in the window, the new furniture—all gone.
“Her uncle, the Admiral, came with men from the city,” the bewildered housekeeper explained. “For, she said, she knew she could not get the hire of enough horses and carts here in the country. She took everything, sir—the furniture, her clothes, her harp—everything.”
Edmund walked slowly upstairs to his empty bedchamber, to examine his own feelings. He felt sorrow and some guilt for having so thoroughly disappointed his wife’s hopes in marriage, but since his own hopes for domestic felicity had dwindled to ashes, he could and did acknowledge to himself, that he felt as a captive feels once released from prison.
* * * * * *
Lady Bertram astonished all who knew her, or knew of her, by her fortitude in quitting Mansfield Park and travelling to such an alien place as Norfolk. The great inducement to leave was the prospect, very pleasing to her Ladyship, of having a grandchild to love. And as is so often the case, the
