It was a bad Idea, Edmund

It was a bad Idea, Edmund

Mary was eating a late breakfast with Flora, as she was now staying with the Stornaways, when Janet burst into her sister’s breakfast parlour with the morning post. She was wide awake, despite the very late hour that the ball had closed the night before, and waving a sealed letter at her friend and sister.

“Mary, you will not believe what has come in the post!” Janet nearly squealed, “He must have thought you were still staying with us.”

Mary tried to reach for the letter but she was prevented by Janet, who held it aloft.

“What is it?” Flora demanded, feeling far too tired for her sister’s high spirits.

“Mr. Edmund Bertram to Miss Mary Crawford,” Janet said in a sing-song tone.

Now Flora was suddenly awake and Mary was anxious to have the letter and be away. She looked sternly at Janet and held out her hand. Janet instead held it towards the light of the window and said, “I wonder if he writes very well. I do wish that Mr. Fraser had proposed by letter. Then I might have kept his words for my later use. You know, when I am feeling cross with him.”

“I doubt your husband would shine in the epistolary form, unless his sister wrote it for him” Mary said dryly and Janet surrendered the letter with a huff. Mary now attempted to leave so she might read it in the privacy of her chamber but this could not be borne.

“No, you cannot take it away. I am already determined to read it. I do remember liking Mr. Bertram,” Flora said.

“If you are so selfish as to conceal the letter, we shall die of boredom this morning,” Janet added. Mary, who undoubtably would have shown them the letter in due course, did wish that the first perusal would be her own, but the sisters were determined. She sat back at the table and opened the letter. Flora and Janet crowded in behind her chair.

“It is a good hand,” Flora began, “he writes very close lines.”

“I must write you all I feel,” Janet read, “Oh this will be a very good proposal. Nothing like that scared boy I turned down when I was sixteen.”

“You know I mean to spend the chief of my year at Thornton Lacey,” Flora read, “Well it is not so very bad to spend the year at your country seat, but will you not miss our company in London?”

Mary said nothing.

“No Flora, look! He is a clergyman, that is undoubtably his parsonage. He writes of parish duties.”

“Oh, I did not know, you clever girl, Mary, keeping us all in the dark. You know, he does not write like any clergyman I have heard.”

“Have you ever listened? I daresay you spend the entire sermon wishing your husband looked at good as your parson!”

Flora demurred, “Perhaps I have missed a liturgy or two. You cannot accuse me of looking for beauty elsewhere, not when I have seen your husband.”

Janet turned back to the letter, “I can offer you only my hand and my fortune, meagre as it may be, well he is honest at least.”

“Oh, listen to this part, you are the only woman I could ever think of as a wife,” Flora read, “a beautifully expressed sentiment to be sure.”

“My dearest object on earth… those sparkling eyes” read Janet, “He has a way with words.”

“You have turned this boy’s head. I simply cannot believe the qualities he has attributed to your character, true generosity and natural delicacy, perhaps there is another Mary Crawford we have not met? Are you so very different in Northampton?” Janet giggled.

“He is not a boy,” Mary objected.

“Then he’s a puppy,” Flora laughed, “Though it is a good letter.”

“A very good letter,” Janet agreed.

“And will you write the response now?” Flora asked, taking her seat at the table again.

Mary blushed; Edmund could not have written her at a worse time! What had he been thinking by proposing by letter? And at such a time, when his own future was entirely uncertain. She had not heard a complete report from Mansfield in days and the letter made no mention of poor Tom. “I have not yet resolved what to write,” said she at last.

“Well you certainly must let him down gently,” said Flora, “Though you will be spared the misery of seeing him displeased.”

Mary was again silent.

“You are not considering accepting!” Janet cried, “Mary, he is a clergyman! You have fortune, education, and beauty. I cannot bear to see you throw yourself away. He is handsome and well-mannered to be sure, but Mary Crawford! confined to the country, attending to old ladies and sewing caps for the latest supernumerary baby of some poor dairymaid? No, we would be deprived of you forever, you cannot accept.”

“Such a small income would not be objectionable you know, if he meant to use it properly and live as a private gentleman. That he insists on remaining in the country is really what I cannot like,” Flora added.

“My sister, Mrs. Grant, does not find it so very disagreeable, perhaps Mr. Bertram could be made at Westminster in time,” Mary tried.

“You will wait nearly ten years and all your youth will be wasted,” Flora objected, “Besides, he does not seem to want it.”

“No, wait a moment Mary, is he the younger brother of Tom Bertram, who we heard has fallen ill?” said Janet.

“Yes, Edmund has gone to care for him,” Mary said, “I did not think much of it at first, you know how some people are always fancying themselves unwell.”

“Is it very grave? Oh, you sly thing! You think he will inherit after all. Then it will not signify what his profession is now. He might give it all up,” Janet said with excitement.

“Yet,” said Flora in a less animated tone, “I have seen Mr. Bertram and he is not of a sickly constitution; he might very well recover.”

“If Mr. Bertram wishes to be safe, you think he would send Edmund back to London. I have never bribed a physician…” Janet trailed off.

Mary finally got up and left the room, and while her friends laughed, they did not attempt to follow her. She read the letter again, alone, and was almost convinced to send an acceptance directly. She took out the paper but she could not bring the pen down to the first word. She looked at the letter again and signed. Finally, she began to write:

Forgive me, my dear Fanny, as soon as you can, for my long silence, and behave as if you could forgive me directly…