Light footsteps, heavy footsteps, soft voices, deep voices, lights and darkness. Brandy was poured down her throat. Cool hands gently tied up her hair, pulled the chemise off her back and slid on a fresh one, plumped the pillows under her head.
She was restless. The cramps in her belly grew stronger.
She sent for Shelley to come—urgently.
Chapter 22: England, Spring 1819
Mrs. Price cried a little as she bid farewell to Portsmouth, but it was nonetheless, the happiest and proudest day of her life. With what delight did Mrs. Price direct the coach-master to stop in front of a dwelling here, a shop there, so that she might call her old friends out on their doorsteps, to see her travelling by private carriage! Attired in a new silk gown! With handsome new luggage trunks and hat-boxes!
Fanny sat beside her mother, wearing her same old grey travelling dress. Ever since arriving in Portsmouth, Mrs. Price’s affairs had kept Fanny occupied. She had negotiated with Charles’s master to get Charles released from his indentures, for Fanny thought it best that he come with them to Northamptonshire where his mother and she might oversee his progress and encourage him to persevere. Betsey was enrolled in a good boarding school where she would remain until the new home in Huntingdon was ready and she and Charles could travel out together.
Susan and her husband came out to the street to behold the grand sight when Mrs. Price’s coach called at their home, and Susan bid her mother farewell, perhaps forever, with tolerable composure, while Fanny wept in good earnest at parting from her sister.
Susan received the rocking chair to use in her nursery-room, and what little else amongst Mrs. Price’s household furnishings that was worth retaining was packed off to John in London. As Mrs. Price told all her neighbours, her new home in Huntingdon was to be all new furnished.
Certainly Fanny’s expenditures, since coming to live again with her mother, had exceeded her usual restraint. The funds for travelling post, at least, had not come from Fanny’s purse, and she secretly congratulated herself on how she had contrived it all, for when her mother continually spoke of first going into Norfolk, to visit with Sir Thomas and her dear sister Bertram, Fanny wrote to her uncle, to apprise him of the plan, and swiftly came his letter suggesting that Mrs. Price visit Mansfield instead, and he, Sir Thomas, would supply the funds for the journey.
The gratification of travelling by post, rather than being crammed into a mail coach, put all thoughts of seeing Lady Bertram out of Mrs. Price’s head, even though by accepting Sir Thomas’s largesse, she should pay the heavy tax of enduring a fortnight with her sister Norris.
The two days’ journey was accomplished in comfort and Fanny and her mother entered Mansfield on the afternoon of the second day.
Fanny was eager to take a tour of Edmund’s school immediately, but there was not enough time before dinner. For the present, to be alone with her own thoughts, after two days in the carriage with her mother, was enough of a blessing; so she attended to unpacking and arranging her mother’s trunk in the spare bedroom while her mother joined their hostess in the parlour. With two ladies so well-qualified to offer their opinions, and so persistent in giving them, Fanny was not needed to contribute to the conversation, and she did not join them until dinner-time.
At that dinner, the subject of the Grants’ dining-room table was not spared, and the folly and vanity of eating late dinners, then the extravagant doings of young people generally, then the ladies moved on to the danger and nonsense of sea-bathing, and the recklessness of travelling abroad when no foreign country could offer anything worth doing or seeing that was not better done or seen in England.
In the parlour, after their dinner, Mrs. Price settled in very comfortably, picking up both her knitting and her favourite topic, the badness of the Portsmouth servants, and Fanny hoped Edmund might join them for tea.
They had been together only twice in the past seven years, although Edmund had resumed writing to her from Italy, long letters describing his travels, and telling of his children, and how they grew and the clever or funny things they said. She hoped, she expected, to see him every moment, and soon was very little able to attend to her mother or aunt, in her agitation and pleasure. She even found herself stealing a glance into the mirror above the mantel-piece and smoothing her hair. She hoped he would not think her much altered.
He came at last, and drank tea with them all, and Fanny thought he looked very well, especially when he was smiling at her as the older ladies conversed. Their own conversation consisted merely of Edmund promising to Fanny that he would call again on the morrow and take her to the great house to meet his pupils and the Rev. Owen and his sister.
“I should rather you first see my little school in the morning, when the classes are in operation, Fanny,” he said, “although of course my children are anxious to be introduced to you. But I had rather you come in the morning, rather than this evening. And at any rate, it is too wet for you to be abroad.”
“Ha! What is it that you are saying?” cried Mrs. Norris. “Too wet for a walk to the great house? Why, it is not much above a quarter of a mile; I used to pace it three times a day, morning and evening, and in all weathers too. But if Fanny had been more regular in her exercise, she would not shirk from it.”
Edmund was about to speak in Fanny’s
