It was on a gloomy Tuesday afternoon in March, with a thick rain making all indoor occupations both desirable and pleasant, and Maria was supposed to be visiting with Lady Stornoway in Richmond but was instead lying abed with Henry Crawford, her unbound and tangled hair giving witness against her, and Henry was feeling particularly affectionate and careless about parrying her hints for an elopement.
“My dear Maria,” he laughed, “I know you better than you know yourself. A trip to Gretna Green may satisfy your romantic notions for a time, but soon, you would sorely regret that you were not married in St. George’s, Hanover Square, as you should be—nay, you have a duty to be married in London. Why were you born so beautiful, why were you born a baronet’s daughter, if not to serve as an example to the world? Why be married at all if you do not arouse the proper degree of envy in others? Why be married if you can have no bridesmaids? There will be my sister, and Julia, and any other of your friends, perhaps even that little cousin of yours, if she can be found.”
“Yes, of course I should like to see Fanny at my wedding,” Maria responded absently, “and I know that Edmund truly misses her.” She surmised also that if Henry Crawford located Fanny, her father might be better reconciled to their union, while Henry was not averse to anything that would give him an excuse for putting off naming the own wedding date. Although he thought to himself, I hope Edmund does not wish little Miss Price to be a bridesmaid at his wedding. She would undoubtedly weep through the entire ceremony, and Mary would not care for that.
As Maria could hardly refuse his assistance in finding her cousin, lest she appear indifferent to Fanny, she agreed that he could make some further enquiries.
“Very well. Let us review the letter your cousin sent to your family from Bristol—I believe it was about a month after she left you—the one in which she was most grievously, sincerely, pray-excuse-me sorry. Your lady mother supplied me with a copy of it—it is here in my travelling trunk.” He leapt agilely from the four-poster, and Maria admired the symmetry of his compact figure as he bent over his luggage, throwing his linen around the room as he searched for the letter. “Ha, here it is.”
Resuming his place beside Maria, he read the letter over again attentively, murmuring…. “so sorry…… regret…… apologies……—a-ha!” He looked up, triumphant. “Here is a detail, a morsel buried in the mountain of remorse, the needle in the haystack, the diamond in the coal mine. Your cousin wrote, “an important event occurring in the family who are now my employers, made it impossible for me to send this letter to you in as timely a fashion as I fully intended.” Mmmm-hmm. She did not wish to give her letter to one of her fellow servants to post—yes? Just as, prior to her departure from Mansfield Park, she visited the post office not far from your gentle Aunt Norris’s abode in the village, not once, we have learned, but several times, to prevent the faithful Baddeley or one of the footmen from observing that she was receiving correspondence from a new and unfamiliar quarter. She is saying here she was prevented by the important event, from reaching a post office.”
“Well, obviously,” Maria retorted impatiently, slowly stroking his chest.
“My dear, the ‘important event’ is the key here. What are the important events in life? Marriage—” he leaned over and kissed her nose— “birth—death. The three occasions, we are told, when a lady’s name may with propriety appear in the newspaper.”
He sat bolt upright. “In the newspaper!”
She looked at him, wonderingly.
He flung the letter to the floor. “You have no idea how fortunate you are, Maria. Very few gentlemen can exhaust all their resources and yet recover to meet the demands made on their talents as rapidly as I.”
“You will renew the hunt for my cousin?”
“I was not referring to that, but yes, I shall.”
While Henry Crawford was, in truth, perfectly indifferent as to the question of whether Fanny Price would return to her family, he was still intrigued by her disappearance, in that he flattered himself if anyone could locate her, it was he. The information he gleaned from the landlord of the Raleigh Inn, that Miss Price had left Oxford with a wealthy widow, had fallen into his lap too easily, and in fact he had not pursued the clue, but now that he had bethought himself of another avenue of investigation, he was eager to try it.
Henry Crawford knew of a coffee house in Cowper’s Court that catered to seafaring merchants and captains. Shortly after his interlude with Maria, he visited the Jerusalem, whose subscription room carried all the newspapers from the port cities—Bristol, Portsmouth, and Liverpool. He was able to order a bowl of thick, bitter coffee which he left untouched, take possession of a quiet corner, and thumb through the November and December editions of the Bristol Journal and the Gazette, armed with a pencil and a scrap of paper, perusing the notices which disclosed the names of various Bristol families whose titles or estates confirmed that they were wealthy enough to employ the services of a private governess. Miss So-and So was married, Mr. Thus-and-So died, much lamented, and ah, here— ‘At Keynsham Hill on the 10th inst., the lady of Horace Smallridge, Esq., safely delivered of twin daughters.’ The Smallridges joined a select list of genteel families around Bristol
