Murder at Mansfield Park (37 page)
She rose to her feet. ‘I will detain you no longer, Mr Norris. I must find Mr Maddox, and beg a few minutes’ conversation with him in private.’
Had she doubted his affection before, she could do so no longer; the expression of his face sank gradually to a settled and blank despair. It was as if a lamp had flickered and gone out.
‘I hope you will be happy, Miss Crawford,’ he said, in a low voice, turning his face away.
‘I hope so too, Mr Norris; but it will not be with Mr Maddox, if I am.’
It was said with some thing of her former playfulness, and when he looked up at her, he saw that she was smiling.
‘I have decided to refuse him. After all, how can I marry Mr Maddox when I have already given my heart to another?’
It was a very quiet wedding. Neither Mary nor Edmund had any inclination for needless ostentation, but it would not have escaped the notice of those schooled in matters of fashion, that the refined elegance of the bride’s gown owed as much to the generosity of her brother, in sending for silks from London, as it did to her own skills as a needlewoman. They had been obliged to wait until the three months of deep mourning were over, but that period had been, all things considered, a happy time; Mary had worked on her wedding-clothes, and wandered about the park with Edmund all the autumn evenings, under the last lingering leaves, raising his mind to animation, and his spirits to cheerfulness. His health improved so well under this agreeable regimen that by the time the couple met at the altar he was able to walk from the church unaided, with his bride on his arm. Sir Thomas was not the only onlooker to observe the effect of real affection on his nephew’s disposition, nor the only one to attribute it to Mary’s lively talents and quick understanding. Mr Maddox had been cruelly disappointed by her rejection, even if he had not ranked his chances of success very high, but his self- control in her presence had been punctilious, and when he departed the neighbourhood some few days thereafter, he had called at the parsonage to bid her the farewell of one who wished to remain always her friend.
They had stood on the sweep before his carriage, his trunks and notebooks neatly stowed, and his assistants waiting at a discreet distance.
‘I hope you are leaving us with the reward that is owing to you, Mr Maddox,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘I would rather be leaving with some thing quite different. But, yes, my pockets are well enough lined; Sir Thomas has been very generous. Though he had no compunction in pointing out that there was another, to whom he was almost equally indebted, for bringing the full truth finally to light.’
‘I did very little.’
‘You are, once again, under-valuing your talents. It is a habit I would have cured you of, had I been given the chance.’ He paused. ‘I hear you are to remove to Lessingby with your brother, after you are married.’
‘Indeed so. There is a small house on the estate that we may have—Henry tells me it sits by the side of a lake, and has its own garden leading down to the water. It is peaceful, and the views are said to be beautiful. I think it will be exactly calculated to please us.’
‘And Mr Crawford will take possession of the Hall?’
‘He has already done so—he arrived three days ago, and will return in time for the wedding. He writes that the house is large and draughty, and the grounds are happily in great need of improvement. I imagine he has work enough for two summers at least.’
‘I am glad to hear he will be so usefully employed, with so much money at his disposal, and so little to provoke him.’
It was a strange turn of phrase, and she had seen his dark brows contract. ‘What do you mean, Mr Maddox?’
Maddox looked at her joyful, unsuspecting face, and made a decision. Ever since Fraser’s return from Enfield, he had been debating with himself whether to tell her what his assistant had discovered. Henry Crawford may, or may not, have killed his mistress, but he had lied from the first about his whereabouts on the day of her death. It had not been difficult for a man like Fraser to find the old washer-woman who had claimed to have seen him, nor had it taken long to persuade her to divulge why she had decided to retract her story: Crawford had bribed her, and bribed her very generously, considering his own straitened circumstances at the time. It was enough to make Maddox uneasy, but it was not enough to hang the man, or destroy his sister’s happiness for ever.
‘It is nothing,’ he said at length. ‘A momentary distraction, that is all. You have my most sincere good wishes, Miss Crawford,’ he continued. ‘I hope Norris values you as he should.And you are no empty-headed girl—you understand the nature of the choice you have made, and I am sure you will make the best of it, and not repine for what you might have had.’
‘You do not need to pity me, Mr Maddox,’ she said with a smile. ‘I am sure I shall be quite as happy as I deserve.’
‘But what will you
do
, when you are not submerged in conjugal duties and household chores? How will you occupy yourself?’
‘Oh, as to that, I think I will try my hand at writing. If the book I am reading is aught to go by, there might be an opportunity there for an intelligent woman, with a modicum of wit, to apply her mind, and even, perhaps, earn her own bread.’
‘I wish you luck,’ he said, as they shook hands. ‘I will scour the London booksellers in search of your name.’
‘I fancy I would prefer to remain merely “a lady”,’ she laughed, as he opened the carriage door, ‘but I will most assuredly send you a copy, and with the greatest of pleasure. If I am successful, of course.’
Three months later the happy event took place that was to take her from Mansfield, and in the course of the year that followed she pursued her plan, and sketched out a design for a novel that might appeal to a reader such as herself. Two or three families in a country village seemed the very thing to work on, and once commenced she made rapid progress, and found to her surprise and delight that the work was accepted by the first publisher she approached. Edmund, meanwhile, had found the beauty of the Lakes, and the glory of the scenery, most conducive to productive reflection, and having retrospected the course of his life, the errors he had made, and the lessons he had learned, he began to consider whether he might not make himself useful to others, and secure an income large enough to support his family, without relying on his brother-in-law’s generosity, by taking orders. It was a decision that Mary heartily approved; she had, in fact, long wondered whether becoming a clergyman might not suit him in every respect, and do full justice to his kind heart, gentle temper, strong good sense and uprightness of mind. The resolution taken, all that remained was to find him a suitable living, and here they were indebted to a stroke of good fortune. After talking of the possibility for many years, and almost ceasing to form hopes of it ever coming about, Dr Grant finally succeeded to the stall in Westminster that had long been the object of his ambition, and he and his wife removed to London. The living at Mansfield now falling vacant, Sir Thomas was most heartily gratified to be able to offer it to his nephew, and no less heartily did he welcome the young couple home, having formed such an attachment to Mary, in the weeks after his return from Keswick, as had made him miss her as much as if she had been his own daughter. After settling her in her new home with every kind attention to her comfort, the object of almost every day was to see her there, or to get her away from it.
One might suppose that the prospect of living at the parsonage would revive some painful memories, but these were quickly done away. Mary had always thought it a pretty little house, and now every window in it afforded fine views of a landscape that, thanks to her brother’s improvements, was fast becoming established as one of the beauties of the county. With her husband’s love, and her own rising fame to sustain her, the parsonage soon grew as dear to her heart, and as thoroughly perfect in her eyes, as every thing else, within the view and patronage of Mansfield Park, had long been.
My first and greatest debt is, of course, to Jane Austen herself—not just her wonderful novels, but her letters as well, which I have both mimicked and mined in an effort to recreate her characteristic combination of elegant turns of phrase and delightfully ruthless observations. As a lifelong fan of her work I’ve tried to remain faithful both to the spirit of her writing, and the actual language she used—I’d like to think that if she’d turned her hand to murder it might just have turned out something like this.
Some readers will also have recognised the deliberate reference to Kingsley Amis’s famous condemnation of the original Fanny Price as “a monster of complacency and pride, who under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel”. This comes from an article originally published in
The Spectator
in October 1957, entitled ‘What became of Jane Austen?’
Finally, I’d like to thank my husband Simon for all his support, and my agent, Ben Mason, for everything he did to make this happen—without him, it would never have been published at all.