Murder at Mansfield Park - Lynn Shepherd [83]
‘Go on, Miss Bertram,’ he said softly.‘We shall soon have done.’
‘I know she meant those words as provocation; I know she meant to insult and offend; but that was no excuse. I will think of what followed with shame and regret for the rest of my life. I struck her, Mr Maddox. I struck her full across the face, and she staggered. She had not expected it— how could she? She could not conceive of anyone having the audaciousness to raise a hand to her—to Miss Price, the heiress of Lessingby. I could scarcely believe it myself, and as I watched her sink on her knees before me in the mud every thing seemed to be happening with strange and unnatural slowness. And then the full horror of what I had done rushed in upon me, and I ran away.’
The two sat in silence for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. At last Maria rose to her feet, and made as if to return to the house. She was a few feet away when Maddox called her back.
‘You are quite sure she said she had left here with a man—that she had eloped?’
Maria nodded.
‘But she did not say with whom? You do not know who it was?’
‘No, Mr Maddox. I am sorry, but I cannot assist you. She never told me his name.’
Some time before this, Mary had returned to the relative peace of the parsonage, and, finding both Dr Grant and her sister departed on business to the village, she sat down in the parlour to write to Henry. She had not heard from him for some days, and had not written herself since Miss Price’s disappearance: as catastrophe had succeeded catastrophe she had not known how to begin, or how best to convey such terrible and unexpected news; preparing him for the disappointment to be occasioned by the cessation of all work on the improvements was only the least of her concerns.
She had arranged her paper, pen, and inkstand, and even gone so far as to write ‘My very dear Henry’, when she was suddenly aware of an unusual noise in the hall. A moment later the door of the room was thrown open, and Henry himself rushed into the room, his clothes bespattered with the dirt of the road, and his hat still in his hands.
‘Is she here?’ he cried, in a state of agitation. ‘Have you seen her?’
‘What can you mean?’ said Mary, rising to her feet in dismay. ‘Whom do you mean?’
‘My wife, of course—who else? I’ve come back to find her—I’ve come back to find Fanny.’
CHAPTER XV
Mary would remember the hour that followed to the end of her days. She could only be grateful that they were accorded the luxury of spending that hour alone, without even her sister or Dr Grant to overhear or intercede. It was hardly possible to take in all her brother had to say, and it was many, many minutes before she could form a distinct idea of what had occurred. It seemed that while Henry had, indeed, travelled to Sir Robert Ferrars’s estate, he had staid there no more than two days; hearing of Mr Rushworth’s engagement, he had decided, in a moment of rash impetuosity, to return to Mansfield in secret, and contrive to see Fanny. She, as Mary well knew, had taken to walking in the garden alone in the morning, and it was there that he had met her—met her, made love to her, and persuaded her, at last, to run away with him. It was clear that, on her side at least, it was a decision owing nothing to passion, and every thing to hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity, to the misery of disappointed affection,