Maria and Julia were overjoyed to be released from the schoolroom upon turning seventeen, while Fanny, the youngest, continued for another year, sitting with Miss Lee for several hours every morning, studying French, geography, and natural history, or walking the grounds of the park to collect botanical samples.
Although Miss Lee had less to do as a governess when she had only one pupil, she was required to devote her afternoons and many evenings to attending on Lady Bertram. When the governess was at last discharged from Mansfield Park, Fanny was old enough to supply her place as Lady Bertram’s errand-runner and cribbage partner.
Fanny wondered whether these tasks were rendered less irksome to Miss Lee by the knowledge that she was paid for performing them. Would living among strangers be preferable to living with her cousins, if she received a salary, however small, rather than paying for her bread and board with the coinage of duty, submission, and gratitude?
A tap at the door roused her and her eyes brightened at the sight of Edmund. They had not spoken since Aunt Norris’s cruel rebuke of the night before, and Fanny, her colour rising, anticipated the unlooked-for joy of a private conference with Edmund, in which he would declare his indignation at their aunt, and assure her of his esteem and regard. But no, it was the play, and worse, it was Miss Crawford, that occupied Edmund’s thoughts and occasioned this rare, this precious conversation.
“This acting scheme gets worse and worse, you see. They have chosen almost as bad a play as they could, and now, to complete the business, are going to ask the help of a young man very slightly known to any of us. This is the end of all the privacy and propriety which was talked about at first. I know no harm of Charles Maddox; but the excessive intimacy which must spring from his being admitted amongst us in this manner is highly objectionable, the more than intimacy—the familiarity.”
He came to the East room, he said, for her ‘advice and opinion,’ but a very few moments made it clear to Fanny that he had already made up his mind—he would yield—he would take the part of Anhalt himself rather than see a stranger admitted on such intimate terms. “Put yourself in Miss Crawford's place, Fanny. Consider what it would be to act Amelia with a stranger.”
Fanny protested, she was ‘sorry for Miss Crawford, but more sorry to see him drawn in to do what he had resolved against.’ Would he abandon his objections on behalf of his father? Her last, futile, appeal was to his pride: “It will be such a triumph to the others!”
“They will not have much cause of triumph when they see how infamously I act,” Edmund responded drily, adding that he hoped, by yielding in this fashion, to persuade the others to keep the theatricals private and not involve any others in the neighbourhood, either as performers or audience. “Will not this be worth gaining?”
“Yes, it will be a great point,” Fanny answered, but reluctantly. Then Edmund did, finally, refer to her humiliation of the previous night, but only as a further reason to yield to Miss Crawford and take the part of Anhalt, for Miss Crawford “never appeared more amiable than in her behaviour to you last night. It gave her a very strong claim on my goodwill.”
At this, Fanny could only nod, and Edmund was only too willing to interpret her silence as consent.
He smiled, he spent a few moments looking over her little library with her, when he was clearly eager to be gone, to walk down to the Parsonage and convey his change of sentiments to Miss Crawford. Then he was gone, entirely insensible of the pain he had inflicted.
Had either circumstance—Aunt Norris’ insult or this fresh proof of Edmund’s infatuation—occurred separately, Fanny would surely have spent her morning weeping. But occurring within twelve hours of each other, the absolute misery of the whole was so stupefying that she could no longer weep and, resolving within herself that she would weep no more, Fanny jumped up from her seat and slipped downstairs to the breakfast-room, unobserved by anyone.
Lady Bertram kept her recent correspondence in an elegant little desk there. All of Lady Bertram’s acquaintance, including Miss Lee, had received a note from her Ladyship hinting at the engagement of her eldest daughter to the richest landowner in the county—and the former governess, Fanny knew, had recently replied, wishing her one-time pupil every happiness. The note was postmarked from Bristol, where Miss Lee’s current employers resided.
With a rapidly beating heart, Fanny retraced her steps to the East Room where she composed a letter to Miss Lee, imploring her to keep her secret for now, and asking her advice on whether she thought her youngest pupil at Mansfield Park might be suited to become a governess. No sooner had she sealed her letter than she was summoned to walk into town on an errand for her Aunt Norris, which happily afforded her the opportunity to visit the village post office without the letter passing through the hands of servants at the Park.
She walked by Dr. and Mrs. Grant’s home on the way to the village, and she could hear the lovely rippling strains of harp music issuing from the sitting-room. Miss Crawford was entertaining her cousin Edmund. With tear-filled eyes, Fanny hurried past the parsonage, followed by the faint sounds of Edmund laughing in response to something witty Mary Crawford had said.
Chapter Two
Julia, usually regarded as the more cheerful, lively, and obliging of the two Bertram sisters, had entirely lost her composure when Henry Crawford intervened in the casting of the roles of the play; both sisters recognized his preference for Maria over herself in the part of Agatha as an unspoken avowal of particular regard for the eldest
