Edmund Bertram's Diary

‘There is no need for gratitude between friends,’ I said, smiling. ‘It is enough for me to see you happy and well. shall we ride to the stone cross? Then we can discuss Shakespeare on the way. I have barely seen you since I returned from London, and I have had no one to discuss poetry with whilst I was away.’

The summer afternoon was such as to encourage our taste for poetry and we returned in a happy mood, to while away the evening in the same manner.

SEPTEMBER

Saturday 12 September

It is a good thing I did not wait for my father to come home before providing Fanny with a horse, for I had a letter from him this morning saying that his affairs are still in such a state that he cannot come home until next year. I was not as alarmed by this as I would have been a few months ago, for I have learnt how to manage the estate and I believe it to be prospering.

Friday 25 September

We have all been thrown into an uproar, for Tom is home! He arrived late this afternoon, as careless and laughing as ever, but as brown as a nut, and with hair so bleached by the sun it resembled a piece of driftwood. He was barely recognizable, being slimmer and fitter than when he went away, with his eyes looking so green in the brown of his face that my aunt was moved to say that they looked like a pair of emeralds.

‘Al the better for wooing,’ said Tom merrily, catching her round the waist and spinning her round before putting her down, breathless.

Mama bestirred herself so far as to leave the sofa and kiss him, and he repaid her with a kiss on the cheek. He delighted her by asking after Pug, who sat like a fat potentate on the sofa, and then turned his attention to Maria and Julia. They were pleased to see him, and eager to discover what was in the packages that had followed him into the room. He had brought presents for us all: exotic material for Mama and my aunt — ‘To make you some splendid new gowns. You will be the talk of the neighborhood’ — fans and shoes for Maria and Julia, a pair of shoes for Fanny and a compass for me.

‘How is Sir Thomas?’ asked Mama, when she had seated herself once more on the sofa with Pug on her lap.

‘Very well.’

‘It is a terrible thing for him to be so far from home. I wished he would not go, but he said he must, and there was an end of it. I do not like to think of him in all that heat, on his own. He will miss us all dreadfully.’

‘He scarcely has time. There is plenty to do, and he is busy from morning ’til night.’

‘How are his affairs?’ I asked.

‘Lord knows. I could not make head nor tail of them. Sugar plantations are a mystery to me. Now horses...’

‘You have not been gambling again, Tom?’ asked Aunt Norris.

‘No. I have promised my father not to bet on another card or horse — at least until his affairs are settled!’ he added.

‘Impudent boy!’ said Aunt Norris indulgently. ‘But, were it not for the joy you bring us by returning like this, I cannot help thinking that it must bode ill for Sir Thomas,’ she went on, shaking her head. ‘Indeed, it is a singularly bad portent. It is so like Sir Thomas to send you home if he had a foreboding of evil. I have a terrible presentiment that something dreadful is about to occur.’

Mama was beginning to look worried, and stir anxiously on the sofa, so Fanny put an end to my aunt’s woeful imaginings by saying to Tom, ‘Tel us about Antigua.’

Tom was only too happy to talk, for he was full of energy and liveliness.

‘It was hot,’ he began. ‘Very hot. You would not believe the heat, little Fanny. Not all your hats and fans and parasols would keep you cool. I believe the ladies there were made from less pliable material than those at home, for they bore it well, and managed to walk around with only a little droop, instead of melting like candles.’

‘And were there any ball s?’ asked Maria.

‘Not in all that heat,’ said Mama.

‘Nothing would stop me dancing,’ said Julia. ‘Tel us about them, Tom.’

‘Oh, they were the usual sort of thing, you know,’ he said carelessly.

‘You have been breaking hearts, I warrant,’ said my aunt, putting her presentiments aside for the moment and joining in with the more agreeable conversation.

‘There were so many to break, it would have been ungentlemanly not to.’

‘Tom!’ protested Mama.

‘There is nothing the young ladies like better than the son of an English planter, and I could not disappoint them by refusing to flirt with them.’

‘Especial y not as you are such a fine young man,’ said my aunt. Maria and Julia pull ed faces behind Tom’s back at this, whilst Fanny looked at her new shoes; a fine pair, but two sizes too small.

‘The men were gentlemen, I hope?’ asked my aunt.

‘Lord, yes.’

‘Though not what we are used to over here, I suppose. Maria and Julia have been attracting a great deal of attention whilst you have been away. They are the belles of the neighborhood. all the young men are eager to dance with them, and if Mr. Rushworth does not propose to Maria by Christmas I will be very much surprised.’