Murder at Mansfield Park - Lynn Shepherd [112]
‘That, I am afraid, is not very likely, my dear sister,’ said Henry. ‘Indeed, sir,’ turning to Dr Grant, ‘Sir Thomas bade me inform you that, if it is convenient, he wishes the burial services to take place the day after tomorrow.’
CHAPTER XX
Much as Mary might have hoped for an opportunity to see Edmund the following day, Henry was skilful enough to dissuade her from it, arguing that, even if she had no care for propriety, she could not hope to see him alone in a house full of servants, and when he was under close surveillance by one of Maddox’s underlings. In her brother’s view, there was nothing for it but to await the day of the funerals, when the White House domestics would be absent at church, and Henry might be of service in distracting Stornaway for a few moments while she slipped into the house. They had talked, and they had been silent; he had reasoned, she had resisted; but she had ended by acquiescing.
She spent, as a result, a miserable and restless day, unable to work, unable to read, and reluctant even to leave the house. Henry was absent in Northampton on business with Sir Thomas’s attorney, and Mrs Grant, perfectly unaware of what was passing in her sister’s mind, encouraged her to take advantage of the dry weather and walk up to the Park.
‘Even if her ladyship is not well enough to see you, you might sit for an hour with Miss Bertram, or see the corpse of poor Miss Julia, and tell me how it appears.’
Mary could barely repress a shudder; she had never told her sister that it was she who had prepared Fanny Price’s disfigured body for the grave, and she could not face such another experience, not even to pay a final farewell to her sweet dead friend.
By late afternoon the weather had changed; the clouds rolled in, and the sky grew dark. Mary sat at the window watching the first dismal drops of rain, wondering if Edmund might also be looking out, as she was, and whether his thoughts were drawn to her, as hers were, so irresistibly, to him. She could not bear even to contemplate how she must now appear in his eyes: the cold-blooded murderess of the woman he was to have married, driven to an unforgiveable transgression by the basest motives of jealousy and resentment, and too craven to admit to what she had done. Any esteem, any respect, he might once have accorded her must now be utterly done away, and yet he loved her still. He must do so, or why would he be prepared to forfeit his own life in place of hers? To face the gallows without flinching, for love of her. She could not bear to contemplate the pain he must be suffering, and was racked the more from the knowledge that it was in her power to relieve it, could she but find five minutes to speak with him, and tell him the truth.
But that all-satisfying moment would have to wait. She had first to endure an evening with the Grants, without even her brother’s company to support her. Her mind was abstracted and dissatisfied; she could hardly eat any thing at dinner, and could only with difficulty govern her vexation at the tediousness of her brother-in-law, who elected to prepare them for the morrow’s solemnities by filling the interval before bed-time with a peroration from Bishop Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying, concerning ‘the Contingencies and Treatings of our departed friends after death, in order to their Burial’, which he delivered in a tone of the most monotonous pomposity. The good Bishop had provided numerous remedies against impatience, but none that were of any efficacy in stilling Mary’s eagerness, or calming her longing to be some where else altogether.
It continued to rain all night, and Charles Maddox was woken the following morning by the sound of the wind in the trees outside his window. He no longer had such a view as he had enjoyed at the Park, but the steward’s wife was hospitable, and the food only a little inferior to that served in the servants’ hall. By the time he had breakfasted, and spoken at some length to Fraser, who had returned to Mansfield the