Posted on Tuesday, 31 October 2006
"A play? How lovely!" said Fanny. "Do let's have a tragedy."
Everyone turned around to look at her.
"Will you act, Cousin Fanny?" asked Edmund, in shock.
"Oh no, you know I am much too shy and retiring to perform like that!" exclaimed the shrinking Fanny, blushing prettily.
"In reward for your handsome enthusiasm, then, you shall choose the play," suggested Henry Crawford, with an ingratiating bow.
Fanny bent over her needlework, hiding her face. "Oh I have so very little experience of plays! I wouldn't know what to say! But I should dearly love to see you all in a tragedy!"
"It is not Fanny's place to approve, disapprove, discuss, suggest, comment on, or think of plays," decreed Aunt Norris. "Acting is dangerous for girls in Fanny's precarious position. But I will engage that Fanny shall make whatever you need to produce the play, because otherwise she might have leisure to think about the play, or happen to catch a glimpse of the acting."
"Fanny shall be our stage manager!" shouted Tom, after a short, confused silence.
Aunt Norris was shocked. "I am shocked!" said Aunt Norris. "You are very careless, Tom, to suggest such a thing. Fanny is very lucky to have me to guard her virtue!"
"I am grateful to you, Aunt, for your constant concern on my behalf" said Fanny in a soft, trembling voice.
"You are so very wise, Mrs. Norris," put in Mary Crawford. "We certainly shall not have Fanny as stage manager. Instead, we'll keep her busy opening the curtains, turning on and off lights, carrying messages when it's time to go on, and arranging our props."
"That sounds better," agreed Mrs. Norris.
"But-that's just the same as-" began Tom, but both of his feet were suddenly stomped on by both quick Crawfords at once, and he fell over in agonizing pain.
They began rehearsals right away. Fanny scampered to and fro like an anxious bunny, and all her extra time was spent stitching costumes. She was so exhausted she couldn't possibly keep an eye on everything at once, so no one could possibly blame her for what happened. Except Mrs. Norris. Mrs. Norris never found any difficulties in her ability to blame Fanny.
They had been decorating and setting up the room even while the rehearsal was going on, and the curtains were already up, hung on a long rod supported on the bookcases, with a complicated system of pulleys for drawing the draperies back and forth.
"Mr. Rushworth!" exclaimed Fanny. "I do believe this cape is rather long. Perhaps you ought to try wearing it in your upcoming scene, and tell me if it gets in your way."
"That's very kind of you, Miss-er, Miss Price, but I would hate for it to be too short. It must have a certain billow to it. It must definitely billow, you know. My dear Maria said she was sure a billowing cape would look immensely gallant. To think! Me in a billowing cape! Immensely gallant, those were her very words."
"To be sure," agreed Fanny timidly. "But you would not look very gallant if you tripped. It were best to try it on, just in case. I would feel most upset if you tripped through my faulty measuring!"
"Oh no, to trip would destroy the effect! The billowing effect, you know. Are you sure it should not be trimmed a bit now? Most ungallant to trip during the rehearsal!"
"No, I am sure you will carry it off with a gallant flair, Mr. Rushworth! But I do just wish to be absolutely sure. The effect must be just right, for you have a most impressive entrance."
"Well, yes, it is a very gallant entrance, with a billowing cape. To think-a billowing gallant cape! Me! I am much obliged, Miss Price."
"Of course," said Fanny, smiling. "I am anxious to see the effect."
Mr. Rushworth felt himself impelled strongly toward the stage. It was almost a push, indeed! Surely-but not the demure Miss Price. She was incapable of shoving. Quite overcome by his billowing appearance, she was-why she seemed to be burying her face in her hands as if completely mastered by the sight of him!
Unfortunately, as he made his entrance, the billowing cape seemed to catch on something; Mr. Rushworth tripped and stumbled across the edge of the curtains, and at once the whole curtain mechanism tumbled down on his head. There was a muffled cry and a struggle, but alas! By the time they had untangled Mr. Rushworth from the stifling folds of baize, he was quite dead.
"Suffocated, poor fellow," said Tom sadly. "What a thing to have happen!"
"Very lucky that we discovered the weakness in the curtain supports before going much further," remarked Mr. Crawford. "We shall have to brace them now."
"But you're surely not going on with the play?" gasped Edmund.
"Why not?" asked Julia. "It does not signify a whit, for Mr. Rushworth's part can be cut out as well as not."
"Indeed!" exclaimed the bereaved Maria. "I must have something to distract me and while away my hours of grief!"
Rehearsals went on with great progress, all things considered. Fanny finished making Maria's costume, and of course she needn't worry about completing Mr. Rushworth's anymore. Fanny felt she was getting along quite well-or she would have been, if not for the fastidious Maria. Miss Bertram had already tried on her costume eight times, but she had always some adjustments to request.
"Oh dear, this costume is so tiresomely intractable, I despair of getting any of the others finished!" cried Fanny at the ninth fitting.
"Dear Fanny, you are so obliging," yawned Maria. "But you must see that I cannot act with this bow at such a ridiculous angle. I'd look such a quiz!"
"Of course, dear cousin Maria," returned Fanny gently. "Let me pin it again. There."
"You stupid girl!" screeched Miss Bertram. "You've poked me with the pin! Haven't you any sense at all?"
"Oh no! I am so sorry," said Fanny, almost in tears, her face working terribly.
How could she have known that the scratch would become infected? That evening, Maria complained of a feverish headache; by the next morning she was dead.
To forget their pain at the tragic death of Maria Bertram, the rest of the players threw themselves into their practicing with a will. Mrs. Grant had agreed to take her place, so the play itself could go on.
Fanny sat sewing in a corner while Tom and Henry Crawford practiced their swordfight. They had some old fencing rapiers and they had worked out quite a dramatic display. The clash and clang of meeting blades sounded almost soothing, Fanny thought. Calm had settled over her as she altered Maria's costume to fit Mrs. Grant, snipping off the offending bow in the process.
Tom and Henry stopped to take a break, wiping the perspiration from their manly brows, and Fanny averted her maidenly eyes as they came to sit down, their dampened shirts clinging to their muscular forms.
"Let me get you some cool lemonade," she suggested. "I'll only be a moment."
"Hot work, eh, Crawford," shouted Tom enthusiastically. "But it'll be magnificent, the moment when I stab you, with one mighty thrust-yah!"
Fanny jumped.
"What do you think, Fanny?" queried Mr. Crawford slyly, as she returned with a pitcher of lemonade and some glasses on a tray. "Does it make you tingle with excitement to see the fight?"
"I find it very frightening," said Fanny primly, deftly removing his hand from her person. She lowered her eyes.
"Come on, Crawford, enough groping my cousin. Back to work, sir!" cried Tom jovially. "Now Fanny, be a good girl and tell us where we left our rapiers."
"Aren't they just there, on the stage?"
"Not a sign of them!"
Fanny got up again to help them look, and she was the one who found the swords resting against a table by the door. She helpfully brought them back to the stage. Tom took his and sliced it through the air fiercely.
"En garde, Crawford!" he cried happily.
The fight was perfect, but unfortunately when they got to the final stab to the heart Tom found his rapier sinking right into Mr. Crawford's chest with a most realistic spurt of blood.
"Blast it!" he exclaimed, wiping away globs of blood in order to see the blade better. "This blade's not meant to be sharp!"
At that moment Julia entered the room, only to be greeted with the sight of Mr. Crawford expiring in a puddle of gore. She at once shrieked and fainted to the floor. Fortunately, Fanny had kept her head-no one so capable as Fanny! She bent over the table, pouring a glass of lemonade with steady hands.
"Here, Cousin, take this," said Fanny in tones of tender compassion, lifting Julia's head with gentle hands, and wetting her ruby lips with the golden liquid.
Unfortunately, the lemonade seemed to have gone bad already, for Julia never recovered from her faint.
"The cast is sadly depleted. I don't know how we shall go on without cutting a good deal of scenes!" mourned Tom that evening. "Edmund, you shall have to take Crawford's place, of course."
"I don't know ... would it be quite the thing?" protested Edmund.
"I am sure Henry would have wanted you to take it," said Mary Crawford, her voice subdued with the deepest emotion. Tom was already going on.
"Aha! I have it! And then, Fanny shall take Julia's part. That's perfect! We can go on after all."
Fanny demurred, of course, but she might have given in had not Aunt Norris stepped in.
"Nonsense! You have not asked me yet, but there is no need for such delicacy with me. I am no actress, but in times of such stress and crisis, we all must sacrifice a little. I will be glad to take Julia's place."
"Er," said Tom after some minutes of silence. "You do know Julia had the comic part?"
"You don't think I am comical?" demanded Aunt Norris with offended dignity. After that, of course no one could object.
Alas, Aunt Norris never fulfilled her dreams of thespian glory-not in this life at least. When they came down for rehearsal the next morning, they found her posed most dramatically on the stage. That careless John had been constructing some wooden scene pieces, and had left a large axe up on a shelf, from whence it toppled all too easily.
It was only sheer bad luck, of course, that it fell right into Aunt Norris's head.
After everyone had recovered from their profound mourning for Aunt Norris, Fanny offered to take the part after all.
"Let's get started, then," said Tom, with renewed cheerfulness. "The morning is still young!"
"I'm not ready," protested Mary Crawford. "I think I need some private practice with my part. Dear Henry's death has flustered me, and well! Some of these lines are so very-you know, under the circumstances!"
They agreed to meet back on the stage in an hour. "That'll be better anyway," said Tom. "If we give the blood time to dry it won't be quite so slippery underfoot. Can't have another accident, you know! Haha! We've been quite plagued with them, haven't we, Fanny? Don't you think it's practically an epidemic, Cousin Fanny?"
Fanny brought her handkerchief to her eyes. "Yes, Cousin Tom, it certainly is. Terrible-" She had to leave the room, overcome by emotion.
"In that case, won't you help me practice my lines, Mr. Edmund? You are a clergyman, you will be able to advise me on the propriety of my speeches," asked Mary. They went up the stairs together, and when Fanny returned to her East Room a few minutes later, she found grief-stricken Mary being thoroughly comforted by her compassionate cousin Edmund. Fanny almost hated to disturb them.
Unfortunately for the cozy pair, attics are such unhealthy places! The cold and damp-and then the spiders! When she heard the screams, Fanny ran back into the East Room and helped to hold Mary's thrashing limbs as well as she could. The paralysis took some time to affect the victim, it seemed.
The house was in uproar all afternoon.
"Peace at last!" sighed exhausted Fanny, sinking into a chair with a cup of tea. "Are you all right, Edmund?" she asked anxiously.
"I-I-"
"I never should have guessed that Tom had a secret passion for Mary Crawford, should you?" she asked, reading over Tom's suicide note for the twentieth time, and absentmindedly admiring his dashing handwriting. "Or that he would be such a romantic as to kill himself in grief," she added thoughtfully.
Edmund said nothing.
"Fanny! Fanny!" came a whining cry from the other room.
"Yes, dear Aunt Bertram! I'm coming!" Fanny got up at once and hurried to the shawl-draped sofa in the drawing room. "Yes Aunt Bertram, all is well," she murmured. "Do not worry. I know it's been unpleasant, but all is quiet and peaceful now, you see. Yes, I'm sure Sir Thomas will be home very soon. What did you say, dear Aunt? Yes, yes, rest easy-I did it all just as you told me. The note was a brilliant idea, Aunt. Edmund'll never suspect us..."