Murder at Mansfield Park (10 page)

Every thing was quickly in a regular train; theatre, actors, actresses, and dresses, were all getting forward, and the scene painter being still at work at Sotherton, a temporary theatre was quickly fitted out in the billiard-room at Mansfield. As the days passed Mary reasoned herself into a greater degree of composure, and could even derive some amusement from the actions of the others, both on and off the stage. Henry had proved to be considerably the best actor of them all, despite the trifling nature of his part, and his consequent frustration was severely aggravated by being constrained to witness the repeated, and soon unnecessary, rehearsals of the opening scene between Mr Rushworth and Miss Price. Everyone else had their own little cares, their own little anxieties—there was so much employment, solicitude, and bustle that the unhappiness of the one member of the party who did
not
act was soon overlooked. Maria had loved Mr Rushworth—or thought she had—and now endured all the suffering of such a public disappointment, made worse by a strong sense of ill-usage. Her heart was sore, and she was not above hoping for some scandalous end to the affair, some punishment to Fanny for conduct so disgraceful towards herself, as well as towards Edmund. Such bitter feelings might have escaped the notice of the rest of the family, but Mary saw them, though the few attempts she made to shew her kindness or sympathy were repulsed as liberties. Nonetheless Mary could not see her sitting by disregarded with her mother and Julia, or walking alone in the garden, without feeling great pity.

A day was soon set for the first regular rehearsal of as much of the play as could be managed without Edmund. The actors were in the theatre at an early hour; Julia, though still delicate after her recent indisposition, was invested with the office of prompter, and the first scene began. Rushworth made his entrance, and Frederick encountered his mother with much amazement.

‘
For God’s sake, what is this!
’ cried Mr Rushworth, beholding Miss Price kneeling in an attitude of elegant despair. ‘
Why do I find my mother thus? Speak!
’

‘
My dear Frederick!
’ she said, embracing him with ardour
.
‘
The joy is too great—I was not prepared—
’

‘
Dear Mother, compose yourself. How she trembles! She is
fainting
,’ he cried, as Miss Price leant gracefully against him, observing the directions with the most scrupulous exactness. The pause that then followed was so prolonged that Julia felt it necessary to prompt Miss Price with her next speech. Casting a look of some irritation in her cousin’s direction, Miss Price continued. ‘
He talked of love, and promised me
marriage
,’ she said, in tones of becoming modesty. ‘
He was the
first man who had ever spoken to me on such a subject
—
don’t look
at me, dear Frederick! I can say no more
,’ and indeed she did not, though there was a certain half-glance at Mr Rushworth that seemed designed to convey a private meaning.

Mr Rushworth composed himself into yet another attitude of manly vigour, and pressed his companion’s hand next to his heart.

‘
Oh! My son!
’ she sighed. ‘
I was intoxicated by the fervent
caresses of
—
’

‘You must excuse me, Fanny,’ said Julia, rising from her seat, ‘but this passage has been omitted.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Miss Price quickly, returning to her own voice, ‘I recall. Mr Rushworth, we now move on to the next page.You begin again with “
Proceed, proceed
”.’

Lady Bertram and her sister happened to choose this moment to join the small audience, and therefore witnessed only the closing moments of the scene. Mrs Norris was loud in her disappointment at missing Fanny’s triumph, but eventually accepted her assurance that there were several more scenes of equal potential, and took her seat.

The next scene brought Mr Yates to the stage for the first time. He had been severely displeased to find that his blue cloak was still unfinished, a failure he did not scruple to attribute to Mrs Norris’s insistence on completing it without sending out for another roll of satin. It took some moments for him to rant himself back into a good humour, but by the point of Mary’s entrance he was in full voice.

‘
The name of Wildenhaim will die with me!
’ he stormed. ‘
Oh! Why was not my Amelia a boy?

’ Mr Yates’s voice was so thunderous, his manner so ridiculous, that it was as much as Mary could do to avoid laughing aloud. In consequence, she did the comedy of the scene some credit, and they proceeded with great
éclat,
especially after the entrance of Henry, whose appearance in a cocked hat he had discovered in the Mansfield schoolroom was such a piece of true comic acting as Mary would not have lost upon any account.

They were obliged to stop half way through the act, where Mr Norris’s character would have entered, and Mary returned to her seat to watch Rushworth and Yates roar through the next scene. Frederick drew his sword upon his unknown father, and the Baron imprisoned his unknown son, both hallooing at one another from a distance of less than a yard. The act closed with the solemn pronouncement from Mr Yates that ‘
Vice is never half so dangerous, as when
it assumes the garb of morality
’, and the fervent applause of the spectators. Both audience and actors then repaired to the dining-parlour, where a collation had been prepared, and the company began upon the cold meat and cake with equal enthusiasm.

Everyone was too much engaged in compliment and criticism to be struck by an unusual noise in the other part of the house, until the door of the room was thrown open, and Maria appearing at it, with a look of meaning at her cousin and Mr Rushworth, announced in trembling tones, ‘Edmund has come! He is in the hall at this moment!’

Not a word was spoken for half a minute, but there was no time for further consternation, for Edmund was following his cousin almost instantaneously into the dining-room, intent on losing no time in giving them a full report of his uncle’s health, and the particulars of their journey.

‘And what of you all?’ he asked at the end of it. ‘How does the play go on?’

‘We have chosen
Lovers’Vows
,’ replied Mr Yates, his voice still rather hoarse from his exertions. ‘And I take Baron Wildenhaim.’

‘I see,’ said Edmund, then, ‘I am afraid I do not know the play,’ unaware of the relief this declaration afforded to at least one person present.

‘You are to be Anhalt, Edmund,’ said Tom quickly. ‘We have cast all the other men. Indeed, we were in the midst of a rehearsal when you arrived.’

‘Pray do not leave off on my account, Tom,’said Edmund with a smile. ‘I will join the audience and spur you on.’

‘Would it not be better,’ began Miss Price, with a look at Mr Rushworth, ‘if Anhalt were to read through his scene with Amelia here, in the dining-parlour? The rest might then take the opportunity to have another rehearsal of the first act.’

No-one making any objection, and some amongst them being anxious to be gone, the greater part of the party returned to the theatre. Mr Norris was evidently surprised to see that Miss Price made one of them, while Mary made no movement to leave the room.

‘He must have thought they were to act together,’ thought Mary with a sigh, as she rose and called Julia back again. ‘Miss Julia! Forgive me, but I am sure Mr Norris would welcome your assistance as prompter. As, indeed, would I.’

Edmund took up a copy of the play, and directed by Julia, found the scene in question.

‘I am at your service,’ he said, looking from one to the other, ‘but clearly I will only be able to
read
the part.’

They began, and Mary had never felt her opening lines so apt as she did now: ‘
I feel very low-spirited—some thing must
be the matter.

’ Mr Norris stumbled over his first speeches, but it was soon apparent that he had the happiest knack of adapting his posture and voice to whatever was to be expressed, and whether it were dignity or tenderness, he could do it with equal beauty. It was truly dramatic, and caught between their theatrical and their real parts, between their present embarrassment and their past misunderstanding, they both gave such nature and feeling to the parts they were playing that Julia could not always pay attention to the book. In some confusion Mary watched as Edmund finally began upon the long-dreaded words, ‘
When two sympathetic hearts
meet in the marriage state, matrimony may be called a happy life.
’ He was in the middle of the speech before he suspected its purport, and his reading gradually slackened, until at last, the eyes which had been fixed so studiously on the book were raised towards Mary. Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of each were overspread with the deepest blush.

‘
This picture is pleasing,
’ continued Edmund, rising from his chair,‘
but I must beg you not to forget that there is another on
the same subject. When convenience, and fair appearance, joined to
folly and ill-humour, forge the fetters of matrimony—
’

He turned away to recover himself, and when he spoke again, though his voice still faltered, his manner shewed the wish of self-command.

‘I must apologise,’ he said after a pause, turning back to the young ladies, both of whom had risen from their seats in surprise and concern. ‘The fatigue of so long a journey is proving to be no trifling evil. I beg your indulgence and your pity. I deserve the latter, at least,’ he said, his voice sinking a little, ‘more than you can ever surmise.’

He was gone as he spoke, and Mary followed him almost as quickly, very much afraid lest he should choose this moment to look in upon the rehearsals taking place in the billiard-room. She proved, however, to be too late. As she reached the theatre she found Edmund at the door, his hand still on the lock, his eyes fixed on the performers before him. Mr Rushworth’s indefatigable Frederick was supporting Agatha in his arms, as she fainted most charmingly against his breast.

‘
I will, now, never leave you more
,’ he stormed. ‘
Look how tall
and strong I am grown. These arms can now afford you support.
They can, and shall, procure you subsistence
.’

Rushworth was so totally unconscious of any thing beyond the stage that he did not notice the uneasy movements of many of the audience, and it was not until Tom gave a decided and uneasy ‘hem’ that he was at all aware of Edmund’s presence, at which he immediately gave perhaps the very best start he had ever given in the whole course of his rehearsals.

‘Ah—Norris!—my dear Norris!—’ he cried, ‘you find us at a most interesting moment! Miss Price’s character has just been recounting her sad tale to her son. It was most affecting; we are fortunate indeed to have such an excellent Agatha, there is some thing so
maternal
in her manner, so completely
maternal
in her voice and countenance.’

Mr Rushworth continued in the same eager tone, unmindful of Mr Norris’s expression as he turned to look at Miss Price. She, however, returned his gaze with a bold eye; even now, Mr Rushworth retained her hand, and the very circumstance which had occasioned their present embarrassment, was to her the sweetest support. Ever since the ball her manner to Edmund had been careless and cold, and she wanted only the certainty of a more eligible offer to break off an engagement that had now become a source of regret and disappointment, however public the rupture must prove to be.

The eyes of everyone present were still fixed on Miss Price, and only Mary was so placed as to see the expression of shock and alarm on Mrs Norris’s face. It was apparent at once that she was under the influence of a tumult of new and very unwelcome ideas. She looked almost aghast, but it was not the arrival of her son that was the cause of it; for many weeks now she had considered Mary to be the principal threat to a union that she had looked forward to for so long, and which was even now on the point of accomplishment. But in devoting so much energy to hindering Mary, and disparaging her, she had entirely overlooked another, and far more insidious development. There was now no room for error. The conviction that had rushed over her mind, and driven the colour from her cheeks, could no longer be denied: the true daemon of the piece was not the upstart, under-bred Mary, but the smooth and plausible Mr Rushworth, a man she had been flattering and encouraging all the while, thinking him to be the admirer of Maria, and a good enough match for her and her seven thousand pounds. But now Mrs Norris’s eyes were opened, and her fury and indignation were only too evident.

‘If I must say what
I
think,’ she said, in a cold, determined manner, ‘it is very disagreeable to be always rehearsing. I think we are a great deal better employed, sitting comfortably here among ourselves, and doing nothing.’

Edmund replied with an increase of gravity which was not lost on anyone present, ‘I am happy to find our sentiments on this subject so much the same, madam. There will be no more rehearsals.’

There was indeed no question of resuming. Mr Rushworth clearly considered it as only a temporary interruption, a disaster for the day, and even suggested the possibility of the rehearsal being renewed after tea. But to Mary, the conclusion of the play was a certainty; the total cessation of the scheme was inevitably at hand, and the tender scene between herself and Mr Norris would go no further forward.

CHAPTER VII

The price to be paid for the doubtful pleasure of private theatricals was in Mary’s thoughts the whole of the following day, and an evening of backgammon with Dr Grant was felicity to it. It was the first day for many, many days, in which the households had been wholly divided. Four-and-twenty hours had never passed before, since April began, without bringing them all together in some way or other. At the Park the evening passed with external serenity, though almost every mind was ruffled, and the music which Lady Bertram called for from Julia helped to conceal the want of real harmony. Maria kept to her room, complaining of a cold, while Fanny sat quietly with her needle, a smile of secret delight now and again playing about her lips. In the more retired seclusion of the White House, Mrs Norris gave way to a bitter invective against Rushworth, inciting her son to exert himself, it being within his power to remedy all these evils, if he would but act like a man, with fortitude and resolution. Edmund’s private feelings in the face of such a tirade may only be guessed at.