an epilogue…
Everyone sat in stunned silence just after Fanny returned the mummies to their immobile states.
Lady Bertram came out of her daze and gazed around the room. “What happened? I thought I was in Egypt. What happened to the dining room? The state of it is deplorable! I cannot have it get out that my home is in such a state! I would never live it down…..” she ranted continuously. She had no recollection of anything that had happened.
Everyone ignored her rambling and helped clean the huge mess.
All the Egyptian antiquities were sold, given away, or thrown out. No one ever wanted to see any of them ever again. They tried to donate them to museums, sell them to private collectors, and so on.
The pharaoh’s body along with his sarcophagus now sits in the local museum. His head is still exposed because the linens he had ripped off are gone. Guests of the museum reported to feel chills and feel that someone is watching them when they are near this particular mummy.
Fanny had felt that in the brief moments she had seen the dead pharaoh, he had seemed familiar in some way. She dismissed it as a passing fancy and concluded that it was useless to dwell on. Everyone else required quite well (except for Josephine) and “not a single mummy more was ever seen at Mansfield Park.”*
* from Mansfield Park and Mummies by Jane Austen and Vera Nazarian, pg. 555
* guest post from Titania of Fishmuffins of Doom
* image source Lady Bertram
