MANSFIELD PARK by Jane Austen

for you had not had time to attach yourself--but I think
you perfectly right. Can it admit of a question?
It is disgraceful to us if it does. You did not love him;
nothing could have justified your accepting him."
Fanny had not felt so comfortable for days and days.
"So far your conduct has been faultless, and they were quite
mistaken who wished you to do otherwise. But the matter
does not end here. Crawford's is no common attachment;
he perseveres, with the hope of creating that regard
which had not been created before. This, we know,
must be a work of time. But" (with an affectionate smile)
"let him succeed at last, Fanny, let him succeed at last.
You have proved yourself upright and disinterested,
prove yourself grateful and tender-hearted; and then you
will be the perfect model of a woman which I have always
believed you born for."
"Oh! never, never, never! he never will succeed with me."
And she spoke with a warmth which quite astonished Edmund,
and which she blushed at the recollection of herself,
when she saw his look, and heard him reply, "Never! Fanny!--
so very determined and positive! This is not like yourself,
your rational self."
"I mean," she cried, sorrowfully correcting herself,
"that I _think_ I never shall, as far as the future can
be answered for; I think I never shall return his regard."
"I must hope better things. I am aware, more aware
than Crawford can be, that the man who means to make
you love him (you having due notice of his intentions)
must have very uphill work, for there are all your early
attachments and habits in battle array; and before he
can get your heart for his own use he has to unfasten it
from all the holds upon things animate and inanimate,
which so many years' growth have confirmed, and which are
considerably tightened for the moment by the very idea
of separation. I know that the apprehension of being
forced to quit Mansfield will for a time be arming you
against him. I wish he had not been obliged to tell you
what he was trying for. I wish he had known you as well as
I do, Fanny. Between us, I think we should have won you.
My theoretical and his practical knowledge together could
not have failed. He should have worked upon my plans.
I must hope, however, that time, proving him (as I firmly
believe it will) to deserve you by his steady affection,
will give him his reward. I cannot suppose that you have
not the _wish_ to love him--the natural wish of gratitude.
You must have some feeling of that sort. You must be sorry
for your own indifference."
"We are so totally unlike," said Fanny, avoiding a
direct answer, "we are so very, very different in all
our inclinations and ways, that I consider it as quite
impossible we should ever be tolerably happy together,
even if I _could_ like him. There never were two people
more dissimilar. We have not one taste in common.
We should be miserable.
"You are mistaken, Fanny. The dissimilarity is not so strong.
You are quite enough alike. You _have_ tastes in common.
You have moral and literary tastes in common. You have
both warm hearts and benevolent feelings; and, Fanny,
who that heard him read, and saw you listen to Shakespeare
the other night, will think you unfitted as companions?
You forget yourself: there is a decided difference
in your tempers, I allow. He is lively, you are serious;
but so much the better: his spirits will support yours.
It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy
difficulties greater than they are. His cheerfulness
will counteract this. He sees difficulties nowhere:
and his pleasantness and gaiety will be a constant support
to you. Your being so far unlike, Fanny, does not in
the smallest degree make against the probability of your
happiness together: do not imagine it. I am myself
convinced that it is rather a favourable circumstance.
I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers had better be unlike:
I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in the manners,
in the inclination for much or little company, in the
propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gay.
Some opposition here is, I am thoroughly convinced,
friendly to matrimonial happiness. I exclude extremes,
of course; and a very close resemblance in all those
points would be the likeliest way to produce an extreme.
A counteraction, gentle and continual, is the best safeguard
of manners and conduct."
Full well could Fanny guess where his thoughts were now:
Miss Crawford's power was all returning. He had been
speaking of her cheerfully from the hour of his coming home.
His avoiding her was quite at an end. He had dined at the
Parsonage only the preceding day.
After leaving him to his happier thoughts for some minutes,
Fanny, feeling it due to herself, returned to Mr. Crawford,
and said, "It is not merely in _temper_ that I consider
him as totally unsuited to myself; though, in _that_
respect, I think the difference between us too great,
infinitely too great: his spirits often oppress me;
but there is something in him which I object to still more.
I must say, cousin, that I cannot approve his character.
I have not thought well of him from the time of the play.
I then saw him behaving, as it appeared to me, so very
improperly and unfeelingly--I may speak of it now because
it is all over--so improperly by poor Mr. Rushworth,
not seeming to care how he exposed or hurt him,
and paying attentions to my cousin Maria, which--in short,
at the time of the play, I received an impression which
will never be got over."
"My dear Fanny," replied Edmund, scarcely hearing her
to the end, "let us not, any of us, be judged by what we
appeared at that period of general folly. The time of the
play is a time which I hate to recollect. Maria was wrong,
Crawford was wrong, we were all wrong together; but none
so wrong as myself. Compared with me, all the rest
were blameless. I was playing the fool with my eyes open."
"As a bystander," said Fanny, "perhaps I saw more than
you did; and I do think that Mr. Rushworth was sometimes
very jealous."
"Very possibly. No wonder. Nothing could be more improper
than the whole business. I am shocked whenever I think
that Maria could be capable of it; but, if she could
undertake the part, we must not be surprised at the rest."
"Before the play, I am much mistaken if _Julia_ did
not think he was paying her attentions.
"Julia! I have heard before from some one of his being
in love with Julia; but I could never see anything of it.
And, Fanny, though I hope I do justice to my sisters'
good qualities, I think it very possible that they might,
one or both, be more desirous of being admired by Crawford,
and might shew that desire rather more unguardedly than was
perfectly prudent. I can remember that they were evidently
fond of his society; and with such encouragement, a man
like Crawford, lively, and it may be, a little unthinking,
might be led on to--there could be nothing very striking,
because it is clear that he had no pretensions: his heart
was reserved for you. And I must say, that its being
for you has raised him inconceivably in my opinion.
It does him the highest honour; it shews his proper estimation
of the blessing of domestic happiness and pure attachment.
It proves him unspoilt by his uncle. It proves him, in short,
everything that I had been used to wish to believe him,
and feared he was not."
"I am persuaded that he does not think, as he ought,
on serious subjects."
"Say, rather, that he has not thought at all upon serious
subjects, which I believe to be a good deal the case.
How could it be otherwise, with such an education and adviser?
Under the disadvantages, indeed, which both have had,
is it not wonderful that they should be what they are?
Crawford's _feelings_, I am ready to acknowledge, have hitherto
been too much his guides. Happily, those feelings have
generally been good. You will supply the rest; and a most
fortunate man he is to attach himself to such a creature--
to a woman who, firm as a rock in her own principles, has a
gentleness of character so well adapted to recommend them.
He has chosen his partner, indeed, with rare felicity.
He will make you happy, Fanny; I know he will make you happy;
but you will make him everything."
"I would not engage in such a charge," cried Fanny, in a
shrinking accent; "in such an office of high responsibility!"
"As usual, believing yourself unequal to anything!
fancying everything too much for you! Well, though I
may not be able to persuade you into different feelings,
you will be persuaded into them, I trust.
I confess myself sincerely anxious that you may.
I have no common interest in Crawford's well-doing. Next
to your happiness, Fanny, his has the first claim on me.
You are aware of my having no common interest in Crawford."
Fanny was too well aware of it to have anything to say;
and they walked on together some fifty yards in mutual
silence and abstraction. Edmund first began again--
"I was very much pleased by her manner of speaking
of it yesterday, particularly pleased, because I had not
depended upon her seeing everything in so just a light.
I knew she was very fond of you; but yet I was afraid
of her not estimating your worth to her brother quite
as it deserved, and of her regretting that he had not
rather fixed on some woman of distinction or fortune.
I was afraid of the bias of those worldly maxims, which she
has been too much used to hear. But it was very different.
She spoke of you, Fanny, just as she ought. She desires
the connexion as warmly as your uncle or myself.
We had a long talk about it. I should not have mentioned
the subject, though very anxious to know her sentiments;
but I had not been in the room five minutes before she
began introducing it with all that openness of heart,
and sweet peculiarity of manner, that spirit and ingenuousness
which are so much a part of herself. Mrs. Grant laughed
at her for her rapidity."
"Was Mrs. Grant in the room, then?"
"Yes, when I reached the house I found the two sisters
together by themselves; and when once we had begun,
we had not done with you, Fanny, till Crawford and Dr. Grant
came in."
"It is above a week since I saw Miss Crawford."
"Yes, she laments it; yet owns it may have been best.
You will see her, however, before she goes. She is very
angry with you, Fanny; you must be prepared for that.
She calls herself very angry, but you can imagine her anger.
It is the regret and disappointment of a sister,
who thinks her brother has a right to everything he may
wish for, at the first moment. She is hurt, as you would
be for William; but she loves and esteems you with all
her heart."
"I knew she would be very angry with me."
"My dearest Fanny," cried Edmund, pressing her arm closer
to him, "do not let the idea of her anger distress you.
It is anger to be talked of rather than felt. Her heart
is made for love and kindness, not for resentment.
I wish you could have overheard her tribute of praise;
I wish you could have seen her countenance, when she said
that you _should_ be Henry's wife. And I observed that she
always spoke of you as 'Fanny,' which she was never used to do;
and it had a sound of most sisterly cordiality."
"And Mrs. Grant, did she say--did she speak; was she
there all the time?"
"Yes, she was agreeing exactly with her sister. The surprise
of your refusal, Fanny, seems to have been unbounded.
That you could refuse such a man as Henry Crawford seems
more than they can understand. I said what I could for you;
but in good truth, as they stated the case--you must
prove yourself to be in your senses as soon as you can
by a different conduct; nothing else will satisfy them.
But this is teasing you. I have done. Do not turn away
from me."
"I _should_ have thought," said Fanny, after a pause
of recollection and exertion, "that every woman must
have felt the possibility of a man's not being approved,
not being loved by some one of her sex at least, let him
be ever so generally agreeable. Let him have all the
perfections in the world, I think it ought not to be set
down as certain that a man must be acceptable to every
woman he may happen to like himself. But, even supposing
it is so, allowing Mr. Crawford to have all the claims
which his sisters think he has, how was I to be prepared
to meet him with any feeling answerable to his own?
He took me wholly by surprise. I had not an idea that
his behaviour to me before had any meaning; and surely I
was not to be teaching myself to like him only because
he was taking what seemed very idle notice of me.
In my situation, it would have been the extreme of vanity
to be forming expectations on Mr. Crawford. I am sure
his sisters, rating him as they do, must have thought it so,
supposing he had meant nothing. How, then, was I to be--
to be in love with him the moment he said he was with me?
How was I to have an attachment at his service, as soon
as it was asked for? His sisters should consider me
as well as him. The higher his deserts, the more improper
for me ever to have thought of him. And, and--we think
very differently of the nature of women, if they can imagine
a woman so very soon capable of returning an affection
as this seems to imply."
"My dear, dear Fanny, now I have the truth. I know this
to be the truth; and most worthy of you are such feelings.
I had attributed them to you before. I thought I could
understand you. You have now given exactly the explanation
which I ventured to make for you to your friend and Mrs. Grant,
and they were both better satisfied, though your warm-hearted
friend was still run away with a little by the enthusiasm
of her fondness for Henry. I told them that you were
of all human creatures the one over whom habit had most
power and novelty least; and that the very circumstance
of the novelty of Crawford's addresses was against him.
Their being so new and so recent was all in their disfavour;
that you could tolerate nothing that you were not used to;
and a great deal more to the same purpose, to give them
a knowledge of your character. Miss Crawford made us
laugh by her plans of encouragement for her brother.
She meant to urge him to persevere in the hope of being
loved in time, and of having his addresses most kindly
received at the end of about ten years' happy marriage."
Fanny could with difficulty give the smile that was
here asked for. Her feelings were all in revolt.
She feared she had been doing wrong: saying too much,
overacting the caution which she had been fancying necessary;
in guarding against one evil, laying herself open
to another; and to have Miss Crawford's liveliness
repeated to her at such a moment, and on such a subject,
was a bitter aggravation.
Edmund saw weariness and distress in her face,
and immediately resolved to forbear all farther discussion;
and not even to mention the name of Crawford again,
except as it might be connected with what _must_ be agreeable
to her. On this principle, he soon afterwards observed--
"They go on Monday. You are sure, therefore, of seeing
your friend either to-morrow or Sunday. They really go
on Monday; and I was within a trifle of being persuaded
to stay at Lessingby till that very day! I had almost
promised it. What a difference it might have made!
Those five or six days more at Lessingby might have been
felt all my life."
"You were near staying there?"
"Very. I was most kindly pressed, and had nearly consented.
Had I received any letter from Mansfield, to tell me how you
were all going on, I believe I should certainly have staid;
but I knew nothing that had happened here for a fortnight,
and felt that I had been away long enough."
"You spent your time pleasantly there?"
"Yes; that is, it was the fault of my own mind if I did not.
They were all very pleasant. I doubt their finding me so.
I took uneasiness with me, and there was no getting rid
of it till I was in Mansfield again."
"The Miss Owens--you liked them, did not you?"
"Yes, very well. Pleasant, good-humoured, unaffected girls.
But I am spoilt, Fanny, for common female society.
Good-humoured, unaffected girls will not do for a man
who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct
orders of being. You and Miss Crawford have made me
too nice."
Still, however, Fanny was oppressed and wearied;
he saw it in her looks, it could not be talked away;
and attempting it no more, he led her directly, with the
kind authority of a privileged guardian, into the house.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Edmund now believed himself perfectly acquainted with all
that Fanny could tell, or could leave to be conjectured
of her sentiments, and he was satisfied. It had been,
as he before presumed, too hasty a measure on Crawford's side,
and time must be given to make the idea first familiar,
and then agreeable to her. She must be used to the
consideration of his being in love with her, and then
a return of affection might not be very distant.
He gave this opinion as the result of the conversation
to his father; and recommended there being nothing more said
to her: no farther attempts to influence or persuade;
but that everything should be left to Crawford's assiduities,
and the natural workings of her own mind.
Sir Thomas promised that it should be so. Edmund's account
of Fanny's disposition he could believe to be just;
he supposed she had all those feelings, but he must consider
it as very unfortunate that she _had_; for, less willing
than his son to trust to the future, he could not help
fearing that if such very long allowances of time and habit
were necessary for her, she might not have persuaded
herself into receiving his addresses properly before
the young man's inclination for paying them were over.
There was nothing to be done, however, but to submit
quietly and hope the best.
The promised visit from "her friend," as Edmund called
Miss Crawford, was a formidable threat to Fanny,
and she lived in continual terror of it. As a sister,
so partial and so angry, and so little scrupulous of what
she said, and in another light so triumphant and secure,
she was in every way an object of painful alarm.
Her displeasure, her penetration, and her happiness were
all fearful to encounter; and the dependence of having
others present when they met was Fanny's only support
in looking forward to it. She absented herself as little
as possible from Lady Bertram, kept away from the East room,
and took no solitary walk in the shrubbery, in her caution
to avoid any sudden attack.
She succeeded. She was safe in the breakfast-room, with her aunt,
when Miss Crawford did come; and the first misery over,
and Miss Crawford looking and speaking with much less
particularity of expression than she had anticipated,
Fanny began to hope there would be nothing worse
to be endured than a half-hour of moderate agitation.
But here she hoped too much; Miss Crawford was not the slave
of opportunity. She was determined to see Fanny alone,
and therefore said to her tolerably soon, in a low voice,
"I must speak to you for a few minutes somewhere";
words that Fanny felt all over her, in all her pulses
and all her nerves. Denial was impossible. Her habits
of ready submission, on the contrary, made her almost
instantly rise and lead the way out of the room.
She did it with wretched feelings, but it was inevitable.
They were no sooner in the hall than all restraint
of countenance was over on Miss Crawford's side.
She immediately shook her head at Fanny with arch,
yet affectionate reproach, and taking her hand,
seemed hardly able to help beginning directly.
She said nothing, however, but, "Sad, sad girl!
I do not know when I shall have done scolding you,"
and had discretion enough to reserve the rest till they
might be secure of having four walls to themselves.
Fanny naturally turned upstairs, and took her guest to the
apartment which was now always fit for comfortable use;
opening the door, however, with a most aching heart,
and feeling that she had a more distressing scene before
her than ever that spot had yet witnessed. But the evil
ready to burst on her was at least delayed by the sudden
change in Miss Crawford's ideas; by the strong effect
on her mind which the finding herself in the East room
again produced.
"Ha!" she cried, with instant animation, "am I here again?
The East room! Once only was I in this room before";
and after stopping to look about her, and seemingly
to retrace all that had then passed, she added, "Once
only before. Do you remember it? I came to rehearse.
Your cousin came too; and we had a rehearsal. You were
our audience and prompter. A delightful rehearsal.
I shall never forget it. Here we were, just in this
part of the room: here was your cousin, here was I,
here were the chairs. Oh! why will such things ever
pass away?"
Happily for her companion, she wanted no answer.
Her mind was entirely self-engrossed. She was in a reverie
of sweet remembrances.
"The scene we were rehearsing was so very remarkable!
The subject of it so very--very--what shall I say?
He was to be describing and recommending matrimony to me.
I think I see him now, trying to be as demure and composed
as Anhalt ought, through the two long speeches.
'When two sympathetic hearts meet in the marriage state,
matrimony may be called a happy life.' I suppose no time
can ever wear out the impression I have of his looks
and voice as he said those words. It was curious,
very curious, that we should have such a scene to play!
If I had the power of recalling any one week of my existence,
it should be that week--that acting week. Say what
you would, Fanny, it should be _that_; for I never knew
such exquisite happiness in any other. His sturdy spirit
to bend as it did! Oh! it was sweet beyond expression.
But alas, that very evening destroyed it all. That very
evening brought your most unwelcome uncle. Poor Sir Thomas,
who was glad to see you? Yet, Fanny, do not imagine I would
now speak disrespectfully of Sir Thomas, though I certainly
did hate him for many a week. No, I do him justice now.
He is just what the head of such a family should be.
Nay, in sober sadness, I believe I now love you all."
And having said so, with a degree of tenderness and
consciousness which Fanny had never seen in her before,
and now thought only too becoming, she turned away
for a moment to recover herself. "I have had a little
fit since I came into this room, as you may perceive,"
said she presently, with a playful smile, "but it is
over now; so let us sit down and be comfortable; for as to
scolding you, Fanny, which I came fully intending to do,
I have not the heart for it when it comes to the point."
And embracing her very affectionately, "Good, gentle Fanny!
when I think of this being the last time of seeing you for I
do not know how long, I feel it quite impossible to do anything
but love you."
Fanny was affected. She had not foreseen anything of this,
and her feelings could seldom withstand the melancholy
influence of the word "last." She cried as if she
had loved Miss Crawford more than she possibly could;
and Miss Crawford, yet farther softened by the sight
of such emotion, hung about her with fondness, and said,
"I hate to leave you. I shall see no one half so amiable
where I am going. Who says we shall not be sisters?
I know we shall. I feel that we are born to be connected;
and those tears convince me that you feel it too,
dear Fanny."
Fanny roused herself, and replying only in part, said,
"But you are only going from one set of friends to another.
You are going to a very particular friend."
"Yes, very true. Mrs. Fraser has been my intimate friend
for years. But I have not the least inclination to go
near her. I can think only of the friends I am leaving:
my excellent sister, yourself, and the Bertrams in general.
You have all so much more _heart_ among you than one
finds in the world at large. You all give me a feeling
of being able to trust and confide in you, which in common
intercourse one knows nothing of. I wish I had settled
with Mrs. Fraser not to go to her till after Easter, a much
better time for the visit, but now I cannot put her off.
And when I have done with her I must go to her sister,
Lady Stornaway, because _she_ was rather my most particular
friend of the two, but I have not cared much for _her_
these three years."
After this speech the two girls sat many minutes silent,
each thoughtful: Fanny meditating on the different sorts
of friendship in the world, Mary on something of less
philosophic tendency. _She_ first spoke again.
"How perfectly I remember my resolving to look for
you upstairs, and setting off to find my way to the
East room, without having an idea whereabouts it was!
How well I remember what I was thinking of as I came along,
and my looking in and seeing you here sitting at this
table at work; and then your cousin's astonishment,
when he opened the door, at seeing me here! To be sure,
your uncle's returning that very evening! There never
was anything quite like it."
Another short fit of abstraction followed, when,
shaking it off, she thus attacked her companion.
"Why, Fanny, you are absolutely in a reverie.
Thinking, I hope, of one who is always thinking of you.
Oh! that I could transport you for a short time into
our circle in town, that you might understand how your
power over Henry is thought of there! Oh! the envyings
and heartburnings of dozens and dozens; the wonder,
the incredulity that will be felt at hearing what you
have done! For as to secrecy, Henry is quite the hero
of an old romance, and glories in his chains. You should
come to London to know how to estimate your conquest.
If you were to see how he is courted, and how I am courted
for his sake! Now, I am well aware that I shall not be
half so welcome to Mrs. Fraser in consequence of his
situation with you. When she comes to know the truth
she will, very likely, wish me in Northamptonshire again;
for there is a daughter of Mr. Fraser, by a first wife,
whom she is wild to get married, and wants Henry to take.
Oh! she has been trying for him to such a degree.
Innocent and quiet as you sit here, you cannot have an
idea of the _sensation_ that you will be occasioning,
of the curiosity there will be to see you, of the endless
questions I shall have to answer! Poor Margaret Fraser
will be at me for ever about your eyes and your teeth,
and how you do your hair, and who makes your shoes.
I wish Margaret were married, for my poor friend's sake,
for I look upon the Frasers to be about as unhappy as most
other married people. And yet it was a most desirable
match for Janet at the time. We were all delighted.
She could not do otherwise than accept him, for he was rich,
and she had nothing; but he turns out ill-tempered
and _exigeant_, and wants a young woman, a beautiful young
woman of five-and-twenty, to be as steady as himself.
And my friend does not manage him well; she does not seem
to know how to make the best of it. There is a spirit
of irritation which, to say nothing worse, is certainly
very ill-bred. In their house I shall call to mind the
conjugal manners of Mansfield Parsonage with respect.
Even Dr. Grant does shew a thorough confidence in my sister,
and a certain consideration for her judgment, which makes
one feel there _is_ attachment; but of that I shall
see nothing with the Frasers. I shall be at Mansfield
for ever, Fanny. My own sister as a wife, Sir Thomas
Bertram as a husband, are my standards of perfection.
Poor Janet has been sadly taken in, and yet there was
nothing improper on her side: she did not run into the
match inconsiderately; there was no want of foresight.
She took three days to consider of his proposals,
and during those three days asked the advice of everybody
connected with her whose opinion was worth having,
and especially applied to my late dear aunt, whose
knowledge of the world made her judgment very generally
and deservedly looked up to by all the young people
of her acquaintance, and she was decidedly in favour
of Mr. Fraser. This seems as if nothing were a security
for matrimonial comfort. I have not so much to say
for my friend Flora, who jilted a very nice young man
in the Blues for the sake of that horrid Lord Stornaway,
who has about as much sense, Fanny, as Mr. Rushworth,
but much worse-looking, and with a blackguard character.
I _had_ my doubts at the time about her being right,
for he has not even the air of a gentleman, and now I am
sure she was wrong. By the bye, Flora Ross was dying
for Henry the first winter she came out. But were I
to attempt to tell you of all the women whom I have
known to be in love with him, I should never have done.
It is you, only you, insensible Fanny, who can think
of him with anything like indifference. But are you
so insensible as you profess yourself? No, no, I see you
are not."
There was, indeed, so deep a blush over Fanny's face
at that moment as might warrant strong suspicion
in a predisposed mind.
"Excellent creature! I will not tease you. Everything shall
take its course. But, dear Fanny, you must allow that you
were not so absolutely unprepared to have the question asked
as your cousin fancies. It is not possible but that you
must have had some thoughts on the subject, some surmises
as to what might be. You must have seen that he was
trying to please you by every attention in his power.
Was not he devoted to you at the ball? And then before
the ball, the necklace! Oh! you received it just as it
was meant. You were as conscious as heart could desire.
I remember it perfectly."
"Do you mean, then, that your brother knew of the
necklace beforehand? Oh! Miss Crawford, _that_ was not fair."
"Knew of it! It was his own doing entirely, his own thought.
I am ashamed to say that it had never entered my head,
but I was delighted to act on his proposal for both
your sakes."
"I will not say," replied Fanny, "that I was not half
afraid at the time of its being so, for there was something
in your look that frightened me, but not at first;
I was as unsuspicious of it at first--indeed, indeed I was.
It is as true as that I sit here. And had I had an idea of it,
nothing should have induced me to accept the necklace.
As to your brother's behaviour, certainly I was sensible of
a particularity: I had been sensible of it some little time,
perhaps two or three weeks; but then I considered it as
meaning nothing: I put it down as simply being his way,
and was as far from supposing as from wishing him to have
any serious thoughts of me. I had not, Miss Crawford,
been an inattentive observer of what was passing between him
and some part of this family in the summer and autumn.
I was quiet, but I was not blind. I could not but see
that Mr. Crawford allowed himself in gallantries which did
mean nothing."
"Ah! I cannot deny it. He has now and then been a sad flirt,
and cared very little for the havoc he might be making in
young ladies' affections. I have often scolded him for it,
but it is his only fault; and there is this to be said,
that very few young ladies have any affections worth
caring for. And then, Fanny, the glory of fixing one
who has been shot at by so many; of having it in one's
power to pay off the debts of one's sex! Oh! I am sure
it is not in woman's nature to refuse such a triumph."
Fanny shook her head. "I cannot think well of a man
who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often
be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of."
"I do not defend him. I leave him entirely to your mercy,
and when he has got you at Everingham, I do not care how much
you lecture him. But this I will say, that his fault,
the liking to make girls a little in love with him, is not
half so dangerous to a wife's happiness as a tendency to fall
in love himself, which he has never been addicted to.
And I do seriously and truly believe that he is attached
to you in a way that he never was to any woman before;
that he loves you with all his heart, and will love you
as nearly for ever as possible. If any man ever loved
a woman for ever, I think Henry will do as much for you."
Fanny could not avoid a faint smile, but had nothing
to say.
"I cannot imagine Henry ever to have been happier,"
continued Mary presently, "than when he had succeeded
in getting your brother's commission."
She had made a sure push at Fanny's feelings here.
"Oh! yes. How very, very kind of him."
"I know he must have exerted himself very much, for I know
the parties he had to move. The Admiral hates trouble,
and scorns asking favours; and there are so many
young men's claims to be attended to in the same way,
that a friendship and energy, not very determined,
is easily put by. What a happy creature William must be!
I wish we could see him."
Poor Fanny's mind was thrown into the most distressing
of all its varieties. The recollection of what had
been done for William was always the most powerful
disturber of every decision against Mr. Crawford;
and she sat thinking deeply of it till Mary, who had been
first watching her complacently, and then musing on
something else, suddenly called her attention by saying:
"I should like to sit talking with you here all day,
but we must not forget the ladies below, and so good-bye,
my dear, my amiable, my excellent Fanny, for though we
shall nominally part in the breakfast-parlour, I must
take leave of you here. And I do take leave, longing for
a happy reunion, and trusting that when we meet again,
it will be under circumstances which may open our hearts
to each other without any remnant or shadow of reserve."
A very, very kind embrace, and some agitation of manner,
accompanied these words.
"I shall see your cousin in town soon: he talks of
being there tolerably soon; and Sir Thomas, I dare say,
in the course of the spring; and your eldest cousin,
and the Rushworths, and Julia, I am sure of meeting again
and again, and all but you. I have two favours to ask,
Fanny: one is your correspondence. You must write to me.
And the other, that you will often call on Mrs. Grant,
and make her amends for my being gone."
The first, at least, of these favours Fanny would rather
not have been asked; but it was impossible for her to refuse
the correspondence; it was impossible for her even not to
accede to it more readily than her own judgment authorised.
There was no resisting so much apparent affection.
Her disposition was peculiarly calculated to value a fond
treatment, and from having hitherto known so little of it,
she was the more overcome by Miss Crawford's. Besides,
there was gratitude towards her, for having made their
_tete-a-tete_ so much less painful than her fears had predicted.
It was over, and she had escaped without reproaches
and without detection. Her secret was still her own;
and while that was the case, she thought she could resign
herself to almost everything.
In the evening there was another parting. Henry Crawford
came and sat some time with them; and her spirits not being
previously in the strongest state, her heart was softened
for a while towards him, because he really seemed to feel.
Quite unlike his usual self, he scarcely said anything.
He was evidently oppressed, and Fanny must grieve for him,
though hoping she might never see him again till he were the
husband of some other woman.
When it came to the moment of parting, he would take her hand,
he would not be denied it; he said nothing, however,
or nothing that she heard, and when he had left the room,
she was better pleased that such a token of friendship
had passed.
On the morrow the Crawfords were gone.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Mr. Crawford gone, Sir Thomas's next object was that he
should be missed; and he entertained great hope that his
niece would find a blank in the loss of those attentions
which at the time she had felt, or fancied, an evil.
She had tasted of consequence in its most flattering form;
and he did hope that the loss of it, the sinking again
into nothing, would awaken very wholesome regrets
in her mind. He watched her with this idea; but he
could hardly tell with what success. He hardly knew
whether there were any difference in her spirits or not.
She was always so gentle and retiring that her emotions
were beyond his discrimination. He did not understand her:
he felt that he did not; and therefore applied to Edmund
to tell him how she stood affected on the present occasion,
and whether she were more or less happy than she
had been.
Edmund did not discern any symptoms of regret, and thought
his father a little unreasonable in supposing the first
three or four days could produce any.
What chiefly surprised Edmund was, that Crawford's sister,
the friend and companion who had been so much to her,
should not be more visibly regretted. He wondered that Fanny
spoke so seldom of _her_, and had so little voluntarily
to say of her concern at this separation.
Alas! it was this sister, this friend and companion,
who was now the chief bane of Fanny's comfort. If she
could have believed Mary's future fate as unconnected
with Mansfield as she was determined the brother's
should be, if she could have hoped her return thither
to be as distant as she was much inclined to think his,
she would have been light of heart indeed; but the more
she recollected and observed, the more deeply was she
convinced that everything was now in a fairer train
for Miss Crawford's marrying Edmund than it had ever
been before. On his side the inclination was stronger,
on hers less equivocal. His objections, the scruples of
his integrity, seemed all done away, nobody could tell how;
and the doubts and hesitations of her ambition were
equally got over--and equally without apparent reason.
It could only be imputed to increasing attachment.
His good and her bad feelings yielded to love, and such
love must unite them. He was to go to town as soon as
some business relative to Thornton Lacey were completed--
perhaps within a fortnight; he talked of going,
he loved to talk of it; and when once with her again,
Fanny could not doubt the rest. Her acceptance must
be as certain as his offer; and yet there were bad
feelings still remaining which made the prospect of it
most sorrowful to her, independently, she believed,
independently of self.
In their very last conversation, Miss Crawford, in spite
of some amiable sensations, and much personal kindness,
had still been Miss Crawford; still shewn a mind led astray
and bewildered, and without any suspicion of being so;
darkened, yet fancying itself light. She might love,
but she did not deserve Edmund by any other sentiment.
Fanny believed there was scarcely a second feeling
in common between them; and she may be forgiven by older
sages for looking on the chance of Miss Crawford's future
improvement as nearly desperate, for thinking that if Edmund's
influence in this season of love had already done so little
in clearing her judgment, and regulating her notions,
his worth would be finally wasted on her even in years
of matrimony.
Experience might have hoped more for any young people
so circumstanced, and impartiality would not have denied
to Miss Crawford's nature that participation of the general
nature of women which would lead her to adopt the opinions
of the man she loved and respected as her own. But as such
were Fanny's persuasions, she suffered very much from them,
and could never speak of Miss Crawford without pain.
Sir Thomas, meanwhile, went on with his own hopes and
his own observations, still feeling a right, by all his
knowledge of human nature, to expect to see the effect
of the loss of power and consequence on his niece's spirits,
and the past attentions of the lover producing a craving
for their return; and he was soon afterwards able to account
for his not yet completely and indubitably seeing all this,
by the prospect of another visitor, whose approach he
could allow to be quite enough to support the spirits
he was watching. William had obtained a ten days'
leave of absence, to be given to Northamptonshire,
and was coming, the happiest of lieutenants, because the
latest made, to shew his happiness and describe his uniform.
He came; and he would have been delighted to shew his uniform
there too, had not cruel custom prohibited its appearance
except on duty. So the uniform remained at Portsmouth,
and Edmund conjectured that before Fanny had any chance
of seeing it, all its own freshness and all the freshness
of its wearer's feelings must be worn away. It would be sunk
into a badge of disgrace; for what can be more unbecoming,
or more worthless, than the uniform of a lieutenant,
who has been a lieutenant a year or two, and sees
others made commanders before him? So reasoned Edmund,
till his father made him the confidant of a scheme which
placed Fanny's chance of seeing the second lieutenant
of H.M.S. Thrush in all his glory in another light.
This scheme was that she should accompany her brother
back to Portsmouth, and spend a little time with her
own family. It had occurred to Sir Thomas, in one of his
dignified musings, as a right and desirable measure;
but before he absolutely made up his mind, he consulted
his son. Edmund considered it every way, and saw nothing
but what was right. The thing was good in itself,
and could not be done at a better time; and he had no doubt
of it being highly agreeable to Fanny. This was enough
to determine Sir Thomas; and a decisive "then so it shall be"
closed that stage of the business; Sir Thomas retiring
from it with some feelings of satisfaction, and views
of good over and above what he had communicated to his son;
for his prime motive in sending her away had very little
to do with the propriety of her seeing her parents again,
and nothing at all with any idea of making her happy.
He certainly wished her to go willingly, but he as certainly
wished her to be heartily sick of home before her visit ended;
and that a little abstinence from the elegancies and luxuries
of Mansfield Park would bring her mind into a sober state,
and incline her to a juster estimate of the value
of that home of greater permanence, and equal comfort,
of which she had the offer.
It was a medicinal project upon his niece's understanding,
which he must consider as at present diseased.
A residence of eight or nine years in the abode of wealth
and plenty had a little disordered her powers of comparing
and judging. Her father's house would, in all probability,
teach her the value of a good income; and he trusted that
she would be the wiser and happier woman, all her life,
for the experiment he had devised.
Had Fanny been at all addicted to raptures, she must have
had a strong attack of them when she first understood
what was intended, when her uncle first made her the offer
of visiting the parents, and brothers, and sisters,
from whom she had been divided almost half her life;
of returning for a couple of months to the scenes of
her infancy, with William for the protector and companion
of her journey, and the certainty of continuing to see
William to the last hour of his remaining on land.
Had she ever given way to bursts of delight, it must have
been then, for she was delighted, but her happiness was
of a quiet, deep, heart-swelling sort; and though never
a great talker, she was always more inclined to silence
when feeling most strongly. At the moment she could
only thank and accept. Afterwards, when familiarised
with the visions of enjoyment so suddenly opened, she could
speak more largely to William and Edmund of what she felt;
but still there were emotions of tenderness that could
not be clothed in words. The remembrance of all her
earliest pleasures, and of what she had suffered in being
torn from them, came over her with renewed strength,
and it seemed as if to be at home again would heal
every pain that had since grown out of the separation.
To be in the centre of such a circle, loved by so many,
and more loved by all than she had ever been before;
to feel affection without fear or restraint; to feel
herself the equal of those who surrounded her; to be at
peace from all mention of the Crawfords, safe from every
look which could be fancied a reproach on their account.
This was a prospect to be dwelt on with a fondness that could
be but half acknowledged.
Edmund, too--to be two months from _him_ (and perhaps
she might be allowed to make her absence three)
must do her good. At a distance, unassailed by his looks
or his kindness, and safe from the perpetual irritation
of knowing his heart, and striving to avoid his confidence,
she should be able to reason herself into a properer state;
she should be able to think of him as in London,
and arranging everything there, without wretchedness.
What might have been hard to bear at Mansfield was to become
a slight evil at Portsmouth.
The only drawback was the doubt of her aunt Bertram's being
comfortable without her. She was of use to no one else;
but _there_ she might be missed to a degree that she did
not like to think of; and that part of the arrangement
was, indeed, the hardest for Sir Thomas to accomplish,
and what only _he_ could have accomplished at all.
But he was master at Mansfield Park. When he had really
resolved on any measure, he could always carry it through;
and now by dint of long talking on the subject,
explaining and dwelling on the duty of Fanny's sometimes
seeing her family, he did induce his wife to let her go;
obtaining it rather from submission, however, than conviction,
for Lady Bertram was convinced of very little more than
that Sir Thomas thought Fanny ought to go, and therefore
that she must. In the calmness of her own dressing-room,
in the impartial flow of her own meditations, unbiassed by
his bewildering statements, she could not acknowledge any
necessity for Fanny's ever going near a father and mother
who had done without her so long, while she was so useful
to herself And as to the not missing her, which under
Mrs. Norris's discussion was the point attempted to be proved,
she set herself very steadily against admitting any such thing.
Sir Thomas had appealed to her reason, conscience, and dignity.
He called it a sacrifice, and demanded it of her goodness
and self-command as such. But Mrs. Norris wanted to persuade
her that Fanny could be very well spared--_she_ being
ready to give up all her own time to her as requested--
and, in short, could not really be wanted or missed.
"That may be, sister," was all Lady Bertram's reply.
"I dare say you are very right; but I am sure I shall miss
her very much."
The next step was to communicate with Portsmouth. Fanny wrote
to offer herself; and her mother's answer, though short,
was so kind--a few simple lines expressed so natural and
motherly a joy in the prospect of seeing her child again,
as to confirm all the daughter's views of happiness in
being with her--convincing her that she should now find
a warm and affectionate friend in the "mama" who had
certainly shewn no remarkable fondness for her formerly;
but this she could easily suppose to have been her own
fault or her own fancy. She had probably alienated love
by the helplessness and fretfulness of a fearful temper,
or been unreasonable in wanting a larger share than
any one among so many could deserve. Now, when she
knew better how to be useful, and how to forbear,
and when her mother could be no longer occupied by the
incessant demands of a house full of little children,
there would be leisure and inclination for every comfort,
and they should soon be what mother and daughter ought
to be to each other.
William was almost as happy in the plan as his sister.
It would be the greatest pleasure to him to have her there
to the last moment before he sailed, and perhaps find
her there still when he came in from his first cruise.
And besides, he wanted her so very much to see the Thrush
before she went out of harbour--the Thrush was certainly
the finest sloop in the service--and there were several
improvements in the dockyard, too, which he quite longed to
shew her.
He did not scruple to add that her being at home
for a while would be a great advantage to everybody.
"I do not know how it is," said he; "but we seem to want
some of your nice ways and orderliness at my father's. The
house is always in confusion. You will set things going
in a better way, I am sure. You will tell my mother how it
all ought to be, and you will be so useful to Susan, and you
will teach Betsey, and make the boys love and mind you.
How right and comfortable it will all be!"
By the time Mrs. Price's answer arrived, there remained
but a very few days more to be spent at Mansfield;
and for part of one of those days the young travellers
were in a good deal of alarm on the subject of their
journey, for when the mode of it came to be talked of,
and Mrs. Norris found that all her anxiety to save her
brother-in-law's money was vain, and that in spite of her
wishes and hints for a less expensive conveyance of Fanny,
they were to travel post; when she saw Sir Thomas actually
give William notes for the purpose, she was struck with
the idea of there being room for a third in the carriage,
and suddenly seized with a strong inclination to go
with them, to go and see her poor dear sister Price.
She proclaimed her thoughts. She must say that she
had more than half a mind to go with the young people;
it would be such an indulgence to her; she had not seen
her poor dear sister Price for more than twenty years;
and it would be a help to the young people in their journey
to have her older head to manage for them; and she could
not help thinking her poor dear sister Price would feel it
very unkind of her not to come by such an opportunity.
William and Fanny were horror-struck at the idea.
All the comfort of their comfortable journey would
be destroyed at once. With woeful countenances they
looked at each other. Their suspense lasted an hour
or two. No one interfered to encourage or dissuade.
Mrs. Norris was left to settle the matter by herself;
and it ended, to the infinite joy of her nephew and niece,
in the recollection that she could not possibly be spared
from Mansfield Park at present; that she was a great deal
too necessary to Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram for her to be
able to answer it to herself to leave them even for a week,
and therefore must certainly sacrifice every other pleasure
to that of being useful to them.
It had, in fact, occurred to her, that though taken
to Portsmouth for nothing, it would be hardly possible
for her to avoid paying her own expenses back again.
So her poor dear sister Price was left to all the
disappointment of her missing such an opportunity,
and another twenty years' absence, perhaps, begun.
Edmund's plans were affected by this Portsmouth journey,
this absence of Fanny's. He too had a sacrifice to make
to Mansfield Park as well as his aunt. He had intended,
about this time, to be going to London; but he could
not leave his father and mother just when everybody else
of most importance to their comfort was leaving them;
and with an effort, felt but not boasted of, he delayed
for a week or two longer a journey which he was looking
forward to with the hope of its fixing his happiness
for ever.
He told Fanny of it. She knew so much already,
that she must know everything. It made the substance
of one other confidential discourse about Miss Crawford;
and Fanny was the more affected from feeling it to be
the last time in which Miss Crawford's name would ever
be mentioned between them with any remains of liberty.
Once afterwards she was alluded to by him. Lady Bertram had
been telling her niece in the evening to write to her soon
and often, and promising to be a good correspondent herself;
and Edmund, at a convenient moment, then added in a whisper,
"And _I_ shall write to you, Fanny, when I have anything
worth writing about, anything to say that I think you
will like to hear, and that you will not hear so soon
from any other quarter." Had she doubted his meaning
while she listened, the glow in his face, when she looked
up at him, would have been decisive.
For this letter she must try to arm herself. That a
letter from Edmund should be a subject of terror!
She began to feel that she had not yet gone through all
the changes of opinion and sentiment which the progress
of time and variation of circumstances occasion in this
world of changes. The vicissitudes of the human mind
had not yet been exhausted by her.
Poor Fanny! though going as she did willingly and eagerly,
the last evening at Mansfield Park must still
be wretchedness. Her heart was completely sad at parting.
She had tears for every room in the house, much more
for every beloved inhabitant. She clung to her aunt,
because she would miss her; she kissed the hand of her
uncle with struggling sobs, because she had displeased him;
and as for Edmund, she could neither speak, nor look,
nor think, when the last moment came with _him_; and it
was not till it was over that she knew he was giving
her the affectionate farewell of a brother.
All this passed overnight, for the journey was to
begin very early in the morning; and when the small,
diminished party met at breakfast, William and Fanny
were talked of as already advanced one stage.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The novelty of travelling, and the happiness of being
with William, soon produced their natural effect on
Fanny's spirits, when Mansfield Park was fairly left behind;
and by the time their first stage was ended, and they
were to quit Sir Thomas's carriage, she was able to take
leave of the old coachman, and send back proper messages,
with cheerful looks.
Of pleasant talk between the brother and sister there
was no end. Everything supplied an amusement to the high
glee of William's mind, and he was full of frolic and
joke in the intervals of their higher-toned subjects,
all of which ended, if they did not begin, in praise
of the Thrush, conjectures how she would be employed,
schemes for an action with some superior force,
which (supposing the first lieutenant out of the way,
and William was not very merciful to the first lieutenant)
was to give himself the next step as soon as possible,
or speculations upon prize-money, which was to be generously
distributed at home, with only the reservation of enough
to make the little cottage comfortable, in which he and Fanny
were to pass all their middle and later life together.
Fanny's immediate concerns, as far as they involved
Mr. Crawford, made no part of their conversation.
William knew what had passed, and from his heart lamented
that his sister's feelings should be so cold towards a man
whom he must consider as the first of human characters;
but he was of an age to be all for love, and therefore
unable to blame; and knowing her wish on the subject,
he would not distress her by the slightest allusion.
She had reason to suppose herself not yet forgotten by
Mr. Crawford. She had heard repeatedly from his sister within
the three weeks which had passed since their leaving Mansfield,
and in each letter there had been a few lines from himself,
warm and determined like his speeches. It was a correspondence
which Fanny found quite as unpleasant as she had feared.
Miss Crawford's style of writing, lively and affectionate,
was itself an evil, independent of what she was thus
forced into reading from the brother's pen, for Edmund
would never rest till she had read the chief of the letter
to him; and then she had to listen to his admiration
of her language, and the warmth of her attachments.
There had, in fact, been so much of message, of allusion,
of recollection, so much of Mansfield in every letter,
that Fanny could not but suppose it meant for him to hear;
and to find herself forced into a purpose of that kind,
compelled into a correspondence which was bringing her
the addresses of the man she did not love, and obliging
her to administer to the adverse passion of the man she did,
was cruelly mortifying. Here, too, her present removal
promised advantage. When no longer under the same roof
with Edmund, she trusted that Miss Crawford would have no
motive for writing strong enough to overcome the trouble,
and that at Portsmouth their correspondence would dwindle
into nothing.
With such thoughts as these, among ten hundred others,
Fanny proceeded in her journey safely and cheerfully,
and as expeditiously as could rationally be hoped
in the dirty month of February. They entered Oxford,
but she could take only a hasty glimpse of Edmund's
college as they passed along, and made no stop anywhere
till they reached Newbury, where a comfortable meal,
uniting dinner and supper, wound up the enjoyments and
fatigues of the day.
The next morning saw them off again at an early hour;
and with no events, and no delays, they regularly advanced,
and were in the environs of Portsmouth while there was yet
daylight for Fanny to look around her, and wonder at the
new buildings. They passed the drawbridge, and entered
the town; and the light was only beginning to fail as,
guided by William's powerful voice, they were rattled
into a narrow street, leading from the High Street,
and drawn up before the door of a small house now inhabited
by Mr. Price.
Fanny was all agitation and flutter; all hope and apprehension.
The moment they stopped, a trollopy-looking maidservant,
seemingly in waiting for them at the door, stepped forward,
and more intent on telling the news than giving them any help,
immediately began with, "The Thrush is gone out of harbour,
please sir, and one of the officers has been here to--
" She was interrupted by a fine tall boy of eleven years old,
who, rushing out of the house, pushed the maid aside,
and while William was opening the chaise-door himself,
called out, "You are just in time. We have been looking
for you this half-hour. The Thrush went out of harbour
this morning. I saw her. It was a beautiful sight.
And they think she will have her orders in a day or two.
And Mr. Campbell was here at four o'clock to ask for you:
he has got one of the Thrush's boats, and is going off
to her at six, and hoped you would be here in time to go
with him."
A stare or two at Fanny, as William helped her out of
the carriage, was all the voluntary notice which this
brother bestowed; but he made no objection to her
kissing him, though still entirely engaged in detailing
farther particulars of the Thrush's going out of harbour,
in which he had a strong right of interest, being to
commence his career of seamanship in her at this very time.
Another moment and Fanny was in the narrow entrance-passage
of the house, and in her mother's arms, who met her
there with looks of true kindness, and with features
which Fanny loved the more, because they brought her aunt
Bertram's before her, and there were her two sisters:
Susan, a well-grown fine girl of fourteen, and Betsey,
the youngest of the family, about five--both glad to see
her in their way, though with no advantage of manner
in receiving her. But manner Fanny did not want.
Would they but love her, she should be satisfied.
She was then taken into a parlour, so small that her
first conviction was of its being only a passage-room
to something better, and she stood for a moment expecting
to be invited on; but when she saw there was no other door,
and that there were signs of habitation before her,
she called back her thoughts, reproved herself, and grieved
lest they should have been suspected. Her mother,
however, could not stay long enough to suspect anything.
She was gone again to the street-door, to welcome William.
"Oh! my dear William, how glad I am to see you.
But have you heard about the Thrush? She is gone out of
harbour already; three days before we had any thought of it;
and I do not know what I am to do about Sam's things,
they will never be ready in time; for she may have her orders
to-morrow, perhaps. It takes me quite unawares. And now
you must be off for Spithead too. Campbell has been here,
quite in a worry about you; and now what shall we do?
I thought to have had such a comfortable evening with you,
and here everything comes upon me at once."
Her son answered cheerfully, telling her that everything
was always for the best; and making light of his own
inconvenience in being obliged to hurry away so soon.
"To be sure, I had much rather she had stayed in harbour,
that I might have sat a few hours with you in comfort;
but as there is a boat ashore, I had better go off at once,
and there is no help for it. Whereabouts does the Thrush
lay at Spithead? Near the Canopus? But no matter;
here's Fanny in the parlour, and why should we stay in
the passage? Come, mother, you have hardly looked at your
own dear Fanny yet."
In they both came, and Mrs. Price having kindly kissed
her daughter again, and commented a little on her growth,
began with very natural solicitude to feel for their
fatigues and wants as travellers.
"Poor dears! how tired you must both be! and now,
what will you have? I began to think you would never come.
Betsey and I have been watching for you this half-hour.
And when did you get anything to eat? And what would you
like to have now? I could not tell whether you would be
for some meat, or only a dish of tea, after your journey,
or else I would have got something ready. And now I
am afraid Campbell will be here before there is time
to dress a steak, and we have no butcher at hand.
It is very inconvenient to have no butcher in the street.
We were better off in our last house. Perhaps you would
like some tea as soon as it can be got."
They both declared they should prefer it to anything.
"Then, Betsey, my dear, run into the kitchen and see if Rebecca
has put the water on; and tell her to bring in the tea-things
as soon as she can. I wish we could get the bell mended;
but Betsey is a very handy little messenger."
Betsey went with alacrity, proud to shew her abilities
before her fine new sister.
"Dear me!" continued the anxious mother, "what a sad
fire we have got, and I dare say you are both starved
with cold. Draw your chair nearer, my dear. I cannot
think what Rebecca has been about. I am sure I told her
to bring some coals half an hour ago. Susan, you should
have taken care of the fire."
"I was upstairs, mama, moving my things," said Susan,
in a fearless, self-defending tone, which startled Fanny.
"You know you had but just settled that my sister Fanny
and I should have the other room; and I could not get
Rebecca to give me any help."
Farther discussion was prevented by various bustles:
first, the driver came to be paid; then there was a squabble
between Sam and Rebecca about the manner of carrying up
his sister's trunk, which he would manage all his own way;
and lastly, in walked Mr. Price himself, his own loud
voice preceding him, as with something of the oath kind
he kicked away his son's port-manteau and his daughter's
bandbox in the passage, and called out for a candle;
no candle was brought, however, and he walked into the room.
Fanny with doubting feelings had risen to meet him,
but sank down again on finding herself undistinguished
in the dusk, and unthought of. With a friendly shake
of his son's hand, and an eager voice, he instantly began--
"Ha! welcome back, my boy. Glad to see you. Have you heard
the news? The Thrush went out of harbour this morning.
Sharp is the word, you see! By G--, you are just in time!
The doctor has been here inquiring for you: he has got
one of the boats, and is to be off for Spithead by six,
so you had better go with him. I have been to Turner's
about your mess; it is all in a way to be done.
I should not wonder if you had your orders to-morrow:
but you cannot sail with this wind, if you are to cruise
to the westward; and Captain Walsh thinks you will certainly
have a cruise to the westward, with the Elephant.
By G--, I wish you may! But old Scholey was saying,
just now, that he thought you would be sent first to
the Texel. Well, well, we are ready, whatever happens.
But by G--, you lost a fine sight by not being here
in the morning to see the Thrush go out of harbour!
I would not have been out of the way for a thousand pounds.
Old Scholey ran in at breakfast-time, to say she had
slipped her moorings and was coming out, I jumped up,
and made but two steps to the platform. If ever there
was a perfect beauty afloat, she is one; and there she lays
at Spithead, and anybody in England would take her for an
eight-and-twenty. I was upon the platform two hours this
afternoon looking at her. She lays close to the Endymion,
between her and the Cleopatra, just to the eastward of the
sheer hulk."
"Ha!" cried William, "_that's_ just where I should have
put her myself. It's the best berth at Spithead.
But here is my sister, sir; here is Fanny," turning and
leading her forward; "it is so dark you do not see her."
With an acknowledgment that he had quite forgot her,
Mr. Price now received his daughter; and having given
her a cordial hug, and observed that she was grown into
a woman, and he supposed would be wanting a husband soon,
seemed very much inclined to forget her again.
Fanny shrunk back to her seat, with feelings sadly
pained by his language and his smell of spirits;
and he talked on only to his son, and only of the Thrush,
though William, warmly interested as he was in that subject,
more than once tried to make his father think of Fanny,
and her long absence and long journey.
After sitting some time longer, a candle was obtained;
but as there was still no appearance of tea, nor, from
Betsey's reports from the kitchen, much hope of any under
a considerable period, William determined to go and change
his dress, and make the necessary preparations for his removal
on board directly, that he might have his tea in comfort
afterwards.
As he left the room, two rosy-faced boys, ragged and dirty,
about eight and nine years old, rushed into it just released
from school, and coming eagerly to see their sister,
and tell that the Thrush was gone out of harbour;
Tom and Charles. Charles had been born since Fanny's
going away, but Tom she had often helped to nurse,
and now felt a particular pleasure in seeing again.
Both were kissed very tenderly, but Tom she wanted
to keep by her, to try to trace the features of the baby
she had loved, and talked to, of his infant preference
of herself. Tom, however, had no mind for such treatment:
he came home not to stand and be talked to, but to run about
and make a noise; and both boys had soon burst from her,
and slammed the parlour-door till her temples ached.
She had now seen all that were at home; there remained
only two brothers between herself and Susan,
one of whom was a clerk in a public office in London,
and the other midshipman on board an Indiaman.
But though she had _seen_ all the members of the family,
she had not yet _heard_ all the noise they could make.
Another quarter of an hour brought her a great deal more.
William was soon calling out from the landing-place
of the second story for his mother and for Rebecca.
He was in distress for something that he had left there,
and did not find again. A key was mislaid, Betsey accused
of having got at his new hat, and some slight, but essential
alteration of his uniform waistcoat, which he had been
promised to have done for him, entirely neglected.
Mrs. Price, Rebecca, and Betsey all went up to defend themselves,
all talking together, but Rebecca loudest, and the job
was to be done as well as it could in a great hurry;
William trying in vain to send Betsey down again, or keep
her from being troublesome where she was; the whole of which,
as almost every door in the house was open, could be plainly
distinguished in the parlour, except when drowned at intervals
by the superior noise of Sam, Tom, and Charles chasing
each other up and down stairs, and tumbling about and hallooing.
Fanny was almost stunned. The smallness of the house
and thinness of the walls brought everything so close
to her, that, added to the fatigue of her journey, and all
her recent agitation, she hardly knew how to bear it.
_Within_ the room all was tranquil enough, for Susan having
disappeared with the others, there were soon only her father
and herself remaining; and he, taking out a newspaper,
the accustomary loan of a neighbour, applied himself to
studying it, without seeming to recollect her existence.
The solitary candle was held between himself and the paper,
without any reference to her possible convenience;
but she had nothing to do, and was glad to have the light
screened from her aching head, as she sat in bewildered,
broken, sorrowful contemplation.
She was at home. But, alas! it was not such a home,
she had not such a welcome, as--she checked herself;
she was unreasonable. What right had she to be of importance
to her family? She could have none, so long lost sight of!
William's concerns must be dearest, they always had been,
and he had every right. Yet to have so little said
or asked about herself, to have scarcely an inquiry made
after Mansfield! It did pain her to have Mansfield forgotten;
the friends who had done so much--the dear, dear friends!
But here, one subject swallowed up all the rest.
Perhaps it must be so. The destination of the Thrush
must be now preeminently interesting. A day or two
might shew the difference. _She_ only was to blame.
Yet she thought it would not have been so at Mansfield.
No, in her uncle's house there would have been a
consideration of times and seasons, a regulation of subject,
a propriety, an attention towards everybody which there
was not here.
The only interruption which thoughts like these received
for nearly half an hour was from a sudden burst of her
father's, not at all calculated to compose them. At a more
than ordinary pitch of thumping and hallooing in the passage,
he exclaimed, "Devil take those young dogs! How they are
singing out! Ay, Sam's voice louder than all the rest!
That boy is fit for a boatswain. Holla, you there!
Sam, stop your confounded pipe, or I shall be after you."
This threat was so palpably disregarded, that though
within five minutes afterwards the three boys all burst
into the room together and sat down, Fanny could not
consider it as a proof of anything more than their being
for the time thoroughly fagged, which their hot faces
and panting breaths seemed to prove, especially as they
were still kicking each other's shins, and hallooing
out at sudden starts immediately under their father's eye.
The next opening of the door brought something more welcome:
it was for the tea-things, which she had begun almost
to despair of seeing that evening. Susan and an
attendant girl, whose inferior appearance informed Fanny,
to her great surprise, that she had previously seen the
upper servant, brought in everything necessary for the meal;
Susan looking, as she put the kettle on the fire and glanced
at her sister, as if divided between the agreeable triumph
of shewing her activity and usefulness, and the dread
of being thought to demean herself by such an office.
"She had been into the kitchen," she said, "to hurry Sally
and help make the toast, and spread the bread and butter,
or she did not know when they should have got tea,
and she was sure her sister must want something after
her journey."
Fanny was very thankful. She could not but own that she
should be very glad of a little tea, and Susan immediately
set about making it, as if pleased to have the employment
all to herself; and with only a little unnecessary bustle,
and some few injudicious attempts at keeping her brothers
in better order than she could, acquitted herself very well.
Fanny's spirit was as much refreshed as her body; her head
and heart were soon the better for such well-timed kindness.
Susan had an open, sensible countenance; she was like William,
and Fanny hoped to find her like him in disposition
and goodwill towards herself.
In this more placid state of things William reentered,
followed not far behind by his mother and Betsey.
He, complete in his lieutenant's uniform, looking and
moving all the taller, firmer, and more graceful for it,
and with the happiest smile over his face, walked up directly
to Fanny, who, rising from her seat, looked at him for a
moment in speechless admiration, and then threw her arms
round his neck to sob out her various emotions of pain and
pleasure.
Anxious not to appear unhappy, she soon recovered herself;
and wiping away her tears, was able to notice and admire
all the striking parts of his dress; listening with reviving
spirits to his cheerful hopes of being on shore some part
of every day before they sailed, and even of getting
her to Spithead to see the sloop.
The next bustle brought in Mr. Campbell, the surgeon
of the Thrush, a very well-behaved young man, who came
to call for his friend, and for whom there was with some
contrivance found a chair, and with some hasty washing of
the young tea-maker's, a cup and saucer; and after another
quarter of an hour of earnest talk between the gentlemen,
noise rising upon noise, and bustle upon bustle, men and
boys at last all in motion together, the moment came
for setting off; everything was ready, William took leave,
and all of them were gone; for the three boys, in spite
of their mother's entreaty, determined to see their brother
and Mr. Campbell to the sally-port; and Mr. Price walked
off at the same time to carry back his neighbour's newspaper.
Something like tranquillity might now be hoped for;
and accordingly, when Rebecca had been prevailed on
to carry away the tea-things, and Mrs. Price had walked
about the room some time looking for a shirt-sleeve, which
Betsey at last hunted out from a drawer in the kitchen,
the small party of females were pretty well composed,
and the mother having lamented again over the impossibility
of getting Sam ready in time, was at leisure to think
of her eldest daughter and the friends she had come from.
A few inquiries began: but one of the earliest--"How did
sister Bertram manage about her servants? "Was she
as much plagued as herself to get tolerable servants?"--
soon led her mind away from Northamptonshire, and fixed it
on her own domestic grievances, and the shocking character
of all the Portsmouth servants, of whom she believed her
own two were the very worst, engrossed her completely.
The Bertrams were all forgotten in detailing the faults
of Rebecca, against whom Susan had also much to depose,
and little Betsey a great deal more, and who did seem
so thoroughly without a single recommendation, that Fanny
could not help modestly presuming that her mother meant
to part with her when her year was up.
"Her year!" cried Mrs. Price; "I am sure I hope I
shall be rid of her before she has staid a year,
for that will not be up till November. Servants are come
to such a pass, my dear, in Portsmouth, that it is quite
a miracle if one keeps them more than half a year.
I have no hope of ever being settled; and if I was to
part with Rebecca, I should only get something worse.
And yet I do not think I am a very difficult mistress
to please; and I am sure the place is easy enough,
for there is always a girl under her, and I often do half
the work myself."
Fanny was silent; but not from being convinced that there
might not be a remedy found for some of these evils.
As she now sat looking at Betsey, she could not but think
particularly of another sister, a very pretty little girl,
whom she had left there not much younger when she went
into Northamptonshire, who had died a few years afterwards.
There had been something remarkably amiable about her.
Fanny in those early days had preferred her to Susan;
and when the news of her death had at last reached Mansfield,
had for a short time been quite afflicted. The sight
of Betsey brought the image of little Mary back again,
but she would not have pained her mother by alluding to her
for the world. While considering her with these ideas,
Betsey, at a small distance, was holding out something to
catch her eyes, meaning to screen it at the same time from
Susan's.
"What have you got there, my love?" said Fanny;
"come and shew it to me."
It was a silver knife. Up jumped Susan, claiming it
as her own, and trying to get it away; but the child ran
to her mother's protection, and Susan could only reproach,
which she did very warmly, and evidently hoping to
interest Fanny on her side. "It was very hard that she
was not to have her _own_ knife; it was her own knife;
little sister Mary had left it to her upon her deathbed,
and she ought to have had it to keep herself long ago.
But mama kept it from her, and was always letting Betsey
get hold of it; and the end of it would be that Betsey
would spoil it, and get it for her own, though mama
had _promised_ her that Betsey should not have it in her
own hands."
Fanny was quite shocked. Every feeling of duty,
honour, and tenderness was wounded by her sister's
speech and her mother's reply.
"Now, Susan," cried Mrs. Price, in a complaining voice,
"now, how can you be so cross? You are always quarrelling
about that knife. I wish you would not be so quarrelsome.
Poor little Betsey; how cross Susan is to you! But you
should not have taken it out, my dear, when I sent you
to the drawer. You know I told you not to touch it,
because Susan is so cross about it. I must hide it
another time, Betsey. Poor Mary little thought it would
be such a bone of contention when she gave it me to keep,
only two hours before she died. Poor little soul! she could
but just speak to be heard, and she said so prettily, "Let sister
Susan have my knife, mama, when I am dead and buried."
Poor little dear! she was so fond of it, Fanny, that she
would have it lay by her in bed, all through her illness.
It was the gift of her good godmother, old Mrs. Admiral
Maxwell, only six weeks before she was taken for death.
Poor little sweet creature! Well, she was taken away
from evil to come. My own Betsey" (fondling her),
"_you_ have not the luck of such a good godmother.
Aunt Norris lives too far off to think of such little
people as you."
Fanny had indeed nothing to convey from aunt Norris,
but a message to say she hoped that her god-daughter
was a good girl, and learnt her book. There had been
at one moment a slight murmur in the drawing-room
at Mansfield Park about sending her a prayer-book;
but no second sound had been heard of such a purpose.
Mrs. Norris, however, had gone home and taken down two
old prayer-books of her husband with that idea; but,
upon examination, the ardour of generosity went off.
One was found to have too small a print for a child's eyes,
and the other to be too cumbersome for her to carry about.
Fanny, fatigued and fatigued again, was thankful to accept
the first invitation of going to bed; and before Betsey
had finished her cry at being allowed to sit up only one
hour extraordinary in honour of sister, she was off,
leaving all below in confusion and noise again; the boys
begging for toasted cheese, her father calling out for his
rum and water, and Rebecca never where she ought to be.
There was nothing to raise her spirits in the confined
and scantily furnished chamber that she was to share
with Susan. The smallness of the rooms above and below,
indeed, and the narrowness of the passage and staircase,
struck her beyond her imagination. She soon learned to think
with respect of her own little attic at Mansfield Park,
in _that_ house reckoned too small for anybody's comfort.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Could Sir Thomas have seen all his niece's feelings,
when she wrote her first letter to her aunt, he would
not have despaired; for though a good night's rest,
a pleasant morning, the hope of soon seeing William again,
and the comparatively quiet state of the house, from Tom
and Charles being gone to school, Sam on some project of
his own, and her father on his usual lounges, enabled her
to express herself cheerfully on the subject of home,
there were still, to her own perfect consciousness,
many drawbacks suppressed. Could he have seen only half
that she felt before the end of a week, he would have
thought Mr. Crawford sure of her, and been delighted with
his own sagacity.
Before the week ended, it was all disappointment.
In the first place, William was gone. The Thrush
had had her orders, the wind had changed, and he was
sailed within four days from their reaching Portsmouth;
and during those days she had seen him only twice,
in a short and hurried way, when he had come ashore
on duty. There had been no free conversation, no walk
on the ramparts, no visit to the dockyard, no acquaintance
with the Thrush, nothing of all that they had planned
and depended on. Everything in that quarter failed her,
except William's affection. His last thought on leaving
home was for her. He stepped back again to the door
to say, "Take care of Fanny, mother. She is tender,
and not used to rough it like the rest of us. I charge you,
take care of Fanny."
William was gone: and the home he had left her in was,
Fanny could not conceal it from herself, in almost every
respect the very reverse of what she could have wished.
It was the abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety.
Nobody was in their right place, nothing was done as it ought
to be. She could not respect her parents as she had hoped.
On her father, her confidence had not been sanguine, but he
was more negligent of his family, his habits were worse,
and his manners coarser, than she had been prepared for.
He did not want abilities but he had no curiosity,
and no information beyond his profession; he read only
the newspaper and the navy-list; he talked only of
the dockyard, the harbour, Spithead, and the Motherbank;
he swore and he drank, he was dirty and gross.
She had never been able to recall anything approaching
to tenderness in his former treatment of herself.
There had remained only a general impression of roughness
and loudness; and now he scarcely ever noticed her,
but to make her the object of a coarse joke.
Her disappointment in her mother was greater:
_there_ she had hoped much, and found almost nothing.
Every flattering scheme of being of consequence to her
soon fell to the ground. Mrs. Price was not unkind;
but, instead of gaining on her affection and confidence,
and becoming more and more dear, her daughter never met
with greater kindness from her than on the first day of
her arrival. The instinct of nature was soon satisfied,
and Mrs. Price's attachment had no other source.
Her heart and her time were already quite full;
she had neither leisure nor affection to bestow on Fanny.
Her daughters never had been much to her. She was fond
of her sons, especially of William, but Betsey was the first
of her girls whom she had ever much regarded. To her she
was most injudiciously indulgent. William was her pride;
Betsey her darling; and John, Richard, Sam, Tom, and Charles
occupied all the rest of her maternal solicitude, alternately
her worries and her comforts. These shared her heart:
her time was given chiefly to her house and her servants.
Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; all was busy
without getting on, always behindhand and lamenting it,
without altering her ways; wishing to be an economist,
without contrivance or regularity; dissatisfied with
her servants, without skill to make them better,
and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them,
without any power of engaging their respect.
Of her two sisters, Mrs. Price very much more resembled Lady
Bertram than Mrs. Norris. She was a manager by necessity,
without any of Mrs. Norris's inclination for it, or any
of her activity. Her disposition was naturally easy
and indolent, like Lady Bertram's; and a situation of similar
affluence and do-nothingness would have been much more
suited to her capacity than the exertions and self-denials
of the one which her imprudent marriage had placed her in.
She might have made just as good a woman of consequence
as Lady Bertram, but Mrs. Norris would have been a more
respectable mother of nine children on a small income.
Much of all this Fanny could not but be sensible of.
She might scruple to make use of the words, but she
must and did feel that her mother was a partial,
ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught
nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene
of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end,
and who had no talent, no conversation, no affection
towards herself; no curiosity to know her better,
no desire of her friendship, and no inclination for her
company that could lessen her sense of such feelings.
Fanny was very anxious to be useful, and not to appear above
her home, or in any way disqualified or disinclined, by her
foreign education, from contributing her help to its comforts,
and therefore set about working for Sam immediately;
and by working early and late, with perseverance and
great despatch, did so much that the boy was shipped
off at last, with more than half his linen ready.
She had great pleasure in feeling her usefulness, but could
not conceive how they would have managed without her.
Sam, loud and overbearing as he was, she rather regretted
when he went, for he was clever and intelligent, and glad
to be employed in any errand in the town; and though
spurning the remonstrances of Susan, given as they were,
though very reasonable in themselves, with ill-timed
and powerless warmth, was beginning to be influenced
by Fanny's services and gentle persuasions; and she found
that the best of the three younger ones was gone in him:
Tom and Charles being at least as many years as they were
his juniors distant from that age of feeling and reason,
which might suggest the expediency of making friends,
and of endeavouring to be less disagreeable. Their sister
soon despaired of making the smallest impression on _them_;
they were quite untameable by any means of address which she
had spirits or time to attempt. Every afternoon brought
a return of their riotous games all over the house; and she
very early learned to sigh at the approach of Saturday's
constant half-holiday.
Betsey, too, a spoiled child, trained up to think the
alphabet her greatest enemy, left to be with the servants
at her pleasure, and then encouraged to report any evil
of them, she was almost as ready to despair of being
able to love or assist; and of Susan's temper she had
many doubts. Her continual disagreements with her mother,
her rash squabbles with Tom and Charles, and petulance
with Betsey, were at least so distressing to Fanny that,
though admitting they were by no means without provocation,
she feared the disposition that could push them to such
length must be far from amiable, and from affording
any repose to herself.
Such was the home which was to put Mansfield out of
her head, and teach her to think of her cousin Edmund with
moderated feelings. On the contrary, she could think of
nothing but Mansfield, its beloved inmates, its happy ways.
Everything where she now was in full contrast to it.
The elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony, and perhaps,
above all, the peace and tranquillity of Mansfield,
were brought to her remembrance every hour of the day,
by the prevalence of everything opposite to them _here_.
The living in incessant noise was, to a frame and temper
delicate and nervous like Fanny's, an evil which no
superadded elegance or harmony could have entirely
atoned for. It was the greatest misery of all.
At Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice,
no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard;
all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness;
everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings
were consulted. If tenderness could be ever supposed wanting,
good sense and good breeding supplied its place; and as to
the little irritations sometimes introduced by aunt Norris,
they were short, they were trifling, they were as a drop
of water to the ocean, compared with the ceaseless
tumult of her present abode. Here everybody was noisy,
every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her mother's,
which resembled the soft monotony of Lady Bertram's,
only worn into fretfulness). Whatever was wanted was
hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses
from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging,
the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without
a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command
attention when they spoke.
In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her
before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply
to them Dr. Johnson's celebrated judgment as to matrimony
and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might
have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.
CHAPTER XL
Fanny was right enough in not expecting to hear from Miss
Crawford now at the rapid rate in which their correspondence
had begun; Mary's next letter was after a decidedly longer
interval than the last, but she was not right in supposing
that such an interval would be felt a great relief
to herself. Here was another strange revolution of mind!
She was really glad to receive the letter when it did come.
In her present exile from good society, and distance from
everything that had been wont to interest her, a letter
from one belonging to the set where her heart lived,
written with affection, and some degree of elegance,
was thoroughly acceptable. The usual plea of increasing
engagements was made in excuse for not having
written to her earlier; "And now that I have begun,"
she continued, "my letter will not be worth your reading,
for there will be no little offering of love at the end,
no three or four lines _passionnees_ from the most
devoted H. C. in the world, for Henry is in Norfolk;
business called him to Everingham ten days ago,
or perhaps he only pretended to call, for the sake of being
travelling at the same time that you were. But there
he is, and, by the bye, his absence may sufficiently account
for any remissness of his sister's in writing, for there
has been no 'Well, Mary, when do you write to Fanny?
Is not it time for you to write to Fanny?' to spur me on.
At last, after various attempts at meeting, I have seen
your cousins, 'dear Julia and dearest Mrs. Rushworth';
they found me at home yesterday, and we were glad to
see each other again. We _seemed_ _very_ glad to see
each other, and I do really think we were a little.
We had a vast deal to say. Shall I tell you how
Mrs. Rushworth looked when your name was mentioned?
I did not use to think her wanting in self-possession,
but she had not quite enough for the demands of yesterday.
Upon the whole, Julia was in the best looks of the two,
at least after you were spoken of. There was no
recovering the complexion from the moment that I spoke
of 'Fanny,' and spoke of her as a sister should.
But Mrs. Rushworth's day of good looks will come;
we have cards for her first party on the 28th. Then she
will be in beauty, for she will open one of the best
houses in Wimpole Street. I was in it two years ago,
when it was Lady Lascelle's, and prefer it to almost
any I know in London, and certainly she will then feel,
to use a vulgar phrase, that she has got her pennyworth
for her penny. Henry could not have afforded her such
a house. I hope she will recollect it, and be satisfied,
as well as she may, with moving the queen of a palace,
though the king may appear best in the background;
and as I have no desire to tease her, I shall never _force_
your name upon her again. She will grow sober by degrees.
From all that I hear and guess, Baron Wildenheim's
attentions to Julia continue, but I do not know that he
has any serious encouragement. She ought to do better.
A poor honourable is no catch, and I cannot imagine any
liking in the case, for take away his rants, and the poor
baron has nothing. What a difference a vowel makes!
If his rents were but equal to his rants! Your cousin
Edmund moves slowly; detained, perchance, by parish duties.
There may be some old woman at Thornton Lacey to be converted.
I am unwilling to fancy myself neglected for a _young_ one.
Adieu! my dear sweet Fanny, this is a long letter from London:
write me a pretty one in reply to gladden Henry's eyes,
when he comes back, and send me an account of all the dashing
young captains whom you disdain for his sake."
There was great food for meditation in this letter,
and chiefly for unpleasant meditation; and yet, with all
the uneasiness it supplied, it connected her with the absent,
it told her of people and things about whom she had never
felt so much curiosity as now, and she would have been
glad to have been sure of such a letter every week.
Her correspondence with her aunt Bertram was her only
concern of higher interest.
As for any society in Portsmouth, that could at all make
amends for deficiencies at home, there were none within
the circle of her father's and mother's acquaintance
to afford her the smallest satisfaction: she saw nobody
in whose favour she could wish to overcome her own
shyness and reserve. The men appeared to her all coarse,
the women all pert, everybody underbred; and she gave
as little contentment as she received from introductions
either to old or new acquaintance. The young ladies who
approached her at first with some respect, in consideration
of her coming from a baronet's family, were soon offended
by what they termed "airs"; for, as she neither played
on the pianoforte nor wore fine pelisses, they could,
on farther observation, admit no right of superiority.
The first solid consolation which Fanny received for
the evils of home, the first which her judgment could
entirely approve, and which gave any promise of durability,
was in a better knowledge of Susan, and a hope of being
of service to her. Susan had always behaved pleasantly
to herself, but the determined character of her general
manners had astonished and alarmed her, and it was at least
a fortnight before she began to understand a disposition
so totally different from her own. Susan saw that much
was wrong at home, and wanted to set it right. That a girl
of fourteen, acting only on her own unassisted reason,
should err in the method of reform, was not wonderful;
and Fanny soon became more disposed to admire the natural
light of the mind which could so early distinguish justly,
than to censure severely the faults of conduct to which it led.
Susan was only acting on the same truths, and pursuing
the same system, which her own judgment acknowledged,
but which her more supine and yielding temper would
have shrunk from asserting. Susan tried to be useful,
where _she_ could only have gone away and cried; and that
Susan was useful she could perceive; that things, bad as
they were, would have been worse but for such interposition,
and that both her mother and Betsey were restrained from
some excesses of very offensive indulgence and vulgarity.
In every argument with her mother, Susan had in point
of reason the advantage, and never was there any maternal
tenderness to buy her off. The blind fondness which was
for ever producing evil around her she had never known.
There was no gratitude for affection past or present
to make her better bear with its excesses to the others.
All this became gradually evident, and gradually placed
Susan before her sister as an object of mingled compassion
and respect. That her manner was wrong, however, at times
very wrong, her measures often ill-chosen and ill-timed,
and her looks and language very often indefensible,
Fanny could not cease to feel; but she began to hope they
might be rectified. Susan, she found, looked up to her
and wished for her good opinion; and new as anything like an
office of authority was to Fanny, new as it was to imagine
herself capable of guiding or informing any one, she did
resolve to give occasional hints to Susan, and endeavour
to exercise for her advantage the juster notions of what was
due to everybody, and what would be wisest for herself,
which her own more favoured education had fixed in her.
Her influence, or at least the consciousness and use of it,
originated in an act of kindness by Susan, which, after many
hesitations of delicacy, she at last worked herself up to.
It had very early occurred to her that a small sum
of money might, perhaps, restore peace for ever on the
sore subject of the silver knife, canvassed as it now
was continually, and the riches which she was in possession
of herself, her uncle having given her 10 at parting,
made her as able as she was willing to be generous.
But she was so wholly unused to confer favours,
except on the very poor, so unpractised in removing evils,
or bestowing kindnesses among her equals, and so fearful
of appearing to elevate herself as a great lady at home,
that it took some time to determine that it would not be
unbecoming in her to make such a present. It was made,
however, at last: a silver knife was bought for Betsey,
and accepted with great delight, its newness giving it
every advantage over the other that could be desired;
Susan was established in the full possession of her own,
Betsey handsomely declaring that now she had got one so much
prettier herself, she should never want _that_ again; and no
reproach seemed conveyed to the equally satisfied mother,
which Fanny had almost feared to be impossible. The deed
thoroughly answered: a source of domestic altercation
was entirely done away, and it was the means of opening
Susan's heart to her, and giving her something more to love
and be interested in. Susan shewed that she had delicacy:
pleased as she was to be mistress of property which she
had been struggling for at least two years, she yet
feared that her sister's judgment had been against her,
and that a reproof was designed her for having so struggled
as to make the purchase necessary for the tranquillity of
the house.
Her temper was open. She acknowledged her fears,
blamed herself for having contended so warmly;
and from that hour Fanny, understanding the worth of her
disposition and perceiving how fully she was inclined
to seek her good opinion and refer to her judgment,
began to feel again the blessing of affection, and to
entertain the hope of being useful to a mind so much in
need of help, and so much deserving it. She gave advice,
advice too sound to be resisted by a good understanding,
and given so mildly and considerately as not to irritate
an imperfect temper, and she had the happiness of observing
its good effects not unfrequently. More was not expected
by one who, while seeing all the obligation and expediency
of submission and forbearance, saw also with sympathetic
acuteness of feeling all that must be hourly grating
to a girl like Susan. Her greatest wonder on the subject
soon became--not that Susan should have been provoked into
disrespect and impatience against her better knowledge--
but that so much better knowledge, so many good notions
should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the
midst of negligence and error, she should have formed
such proper opinions of what ought to be; she, who had
had no cousin Edmund to direct her thoughts or fix her principles.
The intimacy thus begun between them was a material
advantage to each. By sitting together upstairs,
they avoided a great deal of the disturbance of the house;
Fanny had peace, and Susan learned to think it no
misfortune to be quietly employed. They sat without
a fire; but that was a privation familiar even to Fanny,
and she suffered the less because reminded by it of
the East room. It was the only point of resemblance.
In space, light, furniture, and prospect, there was nothing
alike in the two apartments; and she often heaved a sigh
at the remembrance of all her books and boxes, and various
comforts there. By degrees the girls came to spend the
chief of the morning upstairs, at first only in working
and talking, but after a few days, the remembrance of the
said books grew so potent and stimulative that Fanny found
it impossible not to try for books again. There were none
in her father's house; but wealth is luxurious and daring,
and some of hers found its way to a circulating library.
She became a subscriber; amazed at being anything _in_
_propria_ _persona_, amazed at her own doings in every way,
to be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any
one's improvement in view in her choice! But so it was.
Susan had read nothing, and Fanny longed to give her
a share in her own first pleasures, and inspire a taste
for the biography and poetry which she delighted in herself.
In this occupation she hoped, moreover, to bury some
of the recollections of Mansfield, which were too apt
to seize her mind if her fingers only were busy;
and, especially at this time, hoped it might be useful
in diverting her thoughts from pursuing Edmund to London,
whither, on the authority of her aunt's last letter,
she knew he was gone. She had no doubt of what would ensue.
The promised notification was hanging over her head.
The postman's knock within the neighbourhood was beginning
to bring its daily terrors, and if reading could banish
the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.
CHAPTER XLI
A week was gone since Edmund might be supposed
in town, and Fanny had heard nothing of him.
There were three different conclusions to be drawn from
his silence, between which her mind was in fluctuation;
each of them at times being held the most probable.
Either his going had been again delayed, or he had yet
procured no opportunity of seeing Miss Crawford alone,
or he was too happy for letter-writing!
One morning, about this time, Fanny having now been nearly
four weeks from Mansfield, a point which she never failed
to think over and calculate every day, as she and Susan
were preparing to remove, as usual, upstairs, they were
stopped by the knock of a visitor, whom they felt they could
not avoid, from Rebecca's alertness in going to the door,
a duty which always interested her beyond any other.
It was a gentleman's voice; it was a voice that Fanny
was just turning pale about, when Mr. Crawford walked
into the room.
Good sense, like hers, will always act when really
called upon; and she found that she had been able to name
him to her mother, and recall her remembrance of the name,
as that of "William's friend," though she could not
previously have believed herself capable of uttering a
syllable at such a moment. The consciousness of his being
known there only as William's friend was some support.
Having introduced him, however, and being all reseated,
the terrors that occurred of what this visit might lead
to were overpowering, and she fancied herself on the point
of fainting away.
While trying to keep herself alive, their visitor, who had
at first approached her with as animated a countenance
as ever, was wisely and kindly keeping his eyes away,
and giving her time to recover, while he devoted himself
entirely to her mother, addressing her, and attending to
her with the utmost politeness and propriety, at the same
time with a degree of friendliness, of interest at least,
which was making his manner perfect.
Mrs. Price's manners were also at their best. Warmed by
the sight of such a friend to her son, and regulated
by the wish of appearing to advantage before him, she was
overflowing with gratitude--artless, maternal gratitude--
which could not be unpleasing. Mr. Price was out,
which she regretted very much. Fanny was just recovered
enough to feel that _she_ could not regret it; for to her
many other sources of uneasiness was added the severe
one of shame for the home in which he found her.
She might scold herself for the weakness, but there was
no scolding it away. She was ashamed, and she would have
been yet more ashamed of her father than of all the rest.
They talked of William, a subject on which Mrs. Price
could never tire; and Mr. Crawford was as warm in his
commendation as even her heart could wish. She felt
that she had never seen so agreeable a man in her life;
and was only astonished to find that, so great and so
agreeable as he was, he should be come down to Portsmouth
neither on a visit to the port-admiral, nor the commissioner,
nor yet with the intention of going over to the island,
nor of seeing the dockyard. Nothing of all that she
had been used to think of as the proof of importance,
or the employment of wealth, had brought him to Portsmouth.
He had reached it late the night before, was come for a
day or two, was staying at the Crown, had accidentally
met with a navy officer or two of his acquaintance since
his arrival, but had no object of that kind in coming.
By the time he had given all this information, it was not
unreasonable to suppose that Fanny might be looked at
and spoken to; and she was tolerably able to bear his eye,
and hear that he had spent half an hour with his sister
the evening before his leaving London; that she had sent
her best and kindest love, but had had no time for writing;
that he thought himself lucky in seeing Mary for even half
an hour, having spent scarcely twenty-four hours in London,
after his return from Norfolk, before he set off again;
that her cousin Edmund was in town, had been in town,
he understood, a few days; that he had not seen him himself,
but that he was well, had left them all well at Mansfield,
and was to dine, as yesterday, with the Frasers.
Fanny listened collectedly, even to the last-mentioned
circumstance; nay, it seemed a relief to her worn
mind to be at any certainty; and the words, "then by
this time it is all settled," passed internally,
without more evidence of emotion than a faint blush
After talking a little more about Mansfield, a subject
in which her interest was most apparent, Crawford began
to hint at the expediency of an early walk. "It was a
lovely morning, and at that season of the year a fine morning
so often turned off, that it was wisest for everybody not
to delay their exercise"; and such hints producing nothing,
he soon proceeded to a positive recommendation to Mrs. Price
and her daughters to take their walk without loss of time.
Now they came to an understanding. Mrs. Price, it appeared,
scarcely ever stirred out of doors, except of a Sunday;
she owned she could seldom, with her large family,
find time for a walk. "Would she not, then, persuade her
daughters to take advantage of such weather, and allow
him the pleasure of attending them?" Mrs. Price was
greatly obliged and very complying. "Her daughters
were very much confined; Portsmouth was a sad place;
they did not often get out; and she knew they had some
errands in the town, which they would be very glad to do."
And the consequence was, that Fanny, strange as it was--
strange, awkward, and distressing--found herself and Susan,
within ten minutes, walking towards the High Street
with Mr. Crawford.
It was soon pain upon pain, confusion upon confusion;
for they were hardly in the High Street before they met
her father, whose appearance was not the better from its
being Saturday. He stopt; and, ungentlemanlike as he looked,
Fanny was obliged to introduce him to Mr. Crawford.
She could not have a doubt of the manner in which
Mr. Crawford must be struck. He must be ashamed
and disgusted altogether. He must soon give her up,
and cease to have the smallest inclination for the match;
and yet, though she had been so much wanting his affection
to be cured, this was a sort of cure that would be almost
as bad as the complaint; and I believe there is scarcely
a young lady in the United Kingdoms who would not rather
put up with the misfortune of being sought by a clever,
agreeable man, than have him driven away by the vulgarity
of her nearest relations.
Mr. Crawford probably could not regard his future
father-in-law with any idea of taking him for a model
in dress; but (as Fanny instantly, and to her great
relief, discerned) her father was a very different man,
a very different Mr. Price in his behaviour to this most
highly respected stranger, from what he was in his own
family at home. His manners now, though not polished,
were more than passable: they were grateful, animated, manly;
his expressions were those of an attached father,
and a sensible man; his loud tones did very well in the
open air, and there was not a single oath to be heard.
Such was his instinctive compliment to the good manners
of Mr. Crawford; and, be the consequence what it might,
Fanny's immediate feelings were infinitely soothed.
The conclusion of the two gentlemen's civilities was an offer
of Mr. Price's to take Mr. Crawford into the dockyard,
which Mr. Crawford, desirous of accepting as a favour
what was intended as such, though he had seen the dockyard
again and again, and hoping to be so much the longer
with Fanny, was very gratefully disposed to avail himself of,
if the Miss Prices were not afraid of the fatigue;
and as it was somehow or other ascertained, or inferred,
or at least acted upon, that they were not at all afraid,
to the dockyard they were all to go; and but for
Mr. Crawford, Mr. Price would have turned thither directly,
without the smallest consideration for his daughters'
errands in the High Street. He took care, however, that they
should be allowed to go to the shops they came out expressly
to visit; and it did not delay them long, for Fanny could
so little bear to excite impatience, or be waited for,
that before the gentlemen, as they stood at the door,
could do more than begin upon the last naval regulations,
or settle the number of three-deckers now in commission,
their companions were ready to proceed.
They were then to set forward for the dockyard at once,
and the walk would have been conducted--according to
Mr. Crawford's opinion--in a singular manner,
had Mr. Price been allowed the entire regulation of it,
as the two girls, he found, would have been left
to follow, and keep up with them or not, as they could,
while they walked on together at their own hasty pace.
He was able to introduce some improvement occasionally,
though by no means to the extent he wished; he absolutely
would not walk away from them; and at any crossing
or any crowd, when Mr. Price was only calling out,
"Come, girls; come, Fan; come, Sue, take care of yourselves;
keep a sharp lookout!" he would give them his particular
attendance.
Once fairly in the dockyard, he began to reckon upon
some happy intercourse with Fanny, as they were very soon
joined by a brother lounger of Mr. Price's, who was come
to take his daily survey of how things went on, and who
must prove a far more worthy companion than himself;
and after a time the two officers seemed very well satisfied
going about together, and discussing matters of equal
and never-failing interest, while the young people sat down
upon some timbers in the yard, or found a seat on board
a vessel in the stocks which they all went to look at.
Fanny was most conveniently in want of rest. Crawford could
not have wished her more fatigued or more ready to sit down;
but he could have wished her sister away. A quick-looking
girl of Susan's age was the very worst third in the world:
totally different from Lady Bertram, all eyes and ears;
and there was no introducing the main point before her.
He must content himself with being only generally agreeable,
and letting Susan have her share of entertainment,
with the indulgence, now and then, of a look or hint
for the better-informed and conscious Fanny. Norfolk was
what he had mostly to talk of: there he had been some time,
and everything there was rising in importance from his
present schemes. Such a man could come from no place,
no society, without importing something to amuse;
his journeys and his acquaintance were all of use,
and Susan was entertained in a way quite new to her.
For Fanny, somewhat more was related than the accidental
agreeableness of the parties he had been in.
For her approbation, the particular reason of his going into
Norfolk at all, at this unusual time of year, was given.
It had been real business, relative to the renewal of a
lease in which the welfare of a large and--he believed--
industrious family was at stake. He had suspected his
agent of some underhand dealing; of meaning to bias him
against the deserving; and he had determined to go himself,
and thoroughly investigate the merits of the case.
He had gone, had done even more good than he had foreseen,
had been useful to more than his first plan had comprehended,
and was now able to congratulate himself upon it, and to
feel that in performing a duty, he had secured agreeable
recollections for his own mind. He had introduced himself
to some tenants whom he had never seen before; he had begun
making acquaintance with cottages whose very existence,
though on his own estate, had been hitherto unknown to him.
This was aimed, and well aimed, at Fanny. It was pleasing
to hear him speak so properly; here he had been acting
as he ought to do. To be the friend of the poor and
the oppressed! Nothing could be more grateful to her;
and she was on the point of giving him an approving look,
when it was all frightened off by his adding a something
too pointed of his hoping soon to have an assistant,
a friend, a guide in every plan of utility or charity
for Everingham: a somebody that would make Everingham
and all about it a dearer object than it had ever been
yet.
She turned away, and wished he would not say such things.
She was willing to allow he might have more good
qualities than she had been wont to suppose. She began
to feel the possibility of his turning out well at last;
but he was and must ever be completely unsuited to her,
and ought not to think of her.
He perceived that enough had been said of Everingham,
and that it would be as well to talk of something else,
and turned to Mansfield. He could not have chosen better;
that was a topic to bring back her attention and her looks
almost instantly. It was a real indulgence to her to hear
or to speak of Mansfield. Now so long divided from
everybody who knew the place, she felt it quite the voice
of a friend when he mentioned it, and led the way to her
fond exclamations in praise of its beauties and comforts,
and by his honourable tribute to its inhabitants allowed
her to gratify her own heart in the warmest eulogium,
in speaking of her uncle as all that was clever and good,
and her aunt as having the sweetest of all sweet tempers.
He had a great attachment to Mansfield himself; he said so;
he looked forward with the hope of spending much, very much,
of his time there; always there, or in the neighbourhood.
He particularly built upon a very happy summer and
autumn there this year; he felt that it would be so:
he depended upon it; a summer and autumn infinitely superior
to the last. As animated, as diversified, as social,
but with circumstances of superiority undescribable.
"Mansfield, Sotherton, Thornton Lacey," he continued;
"what a society will be comprised in those houses!
And at Michaelmas, perhaps, a fourth may be added:
some small hunting-box in the vicinity of everything so dear;
for as to any partnership in Thornton Lacey, as Edmund
Bertram once good-humouredly proposed, I hope I foresee
two objections: two fair, excellent, irresistible objections
to that plan."
Fanny was doubly silenced here; though when the moment
was passed, could regret that she had not forced herself into
the acknowledged comprehension of one half of his meaning,
and encouraged him to say something more of his sister
and Edmund. It was a subject which she must learn to speak of,
and the weakness that shrunk from it would soon be quite
unpardonable.
When Mr. Price and his friend had seen all that they wished,
or had time for, the others were ready to return;
and in the course of their walk back, Mr. Crawford contrived
a minute's privacy for telling Fanny that his only
business in Portsmouth was to see her; that he was come
down for a couple of days on her account, and hers only,
and because he could not endure a longer total separation.
She was sorry, really sorry; and yet in spite of this and the
two or three other things which she wished he had not said,
she thought him altogether improved since she had seen him;
he was much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other
people's feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield;
she had never seen him so agreeable--so _near_ being agreeable;
his behaviour to her father could not offend, and there
was something particularly kind and proper in the notice
he took of Susan. He was decidedly improved. She wished
the next day over, she wished he had come only for one day;
but it was not so very bad as she would have expected:
the pleasure of talking of Mansfield was so very great!
Before they parted, she had to thank him for another pleasure,
and one of no trivial kind. Her father asked him to do
them the honour of taking his mutton with them, and Fanny
had time for only one thrill of horror, before he declared
himself prevented by a prior engagement. He was engaged
to dinner already both for that day and the next; he had met
with some acquaintance at the Crown who would not be denied;
he should have the honour, however, of waiting on them
again on the morrow, etc., and so they parted--Fanny in
a state of actual felicity from escaping so horrible an evil!
To have had him join their family dinner-party, and see
all their deficiencies, would have been dreadful!
Rebecca's cookery and Rebecca's waiting, and Betsey's
eating at table without restraint, and pulling everything
about as she chose, were what Fanny herself was not yet
enough inured to for her often to make a tolerable meal.
_She_ was nice only from natural delicacy, but _he_ had been
brought up in a school of luxury and epicurism.
CHAPTER XLII
The Prices were just setting off for church the next day
when Mr. Crawford appeared again. He came, not to stop,
but to join them; he was asked to go with them to the
Garrison chapel, which was exactly what he had intended,
and they all walked thither together.
The family were now seen to advantage. Nature had given
them no inconsiderable share of beauty, and every Sunday
dressed them in their cleanest skins and best attire.
Sunday always brought this comfort to Fanny, and on this
Sunday she felt it more than ever. Her poor mother now
did not look so very unworthy of being Lady Bertram's
sister as she was but too apt to look. It often grieved
her to the heart to think of the contrast between them;
to think that where nature had made so little difference,
circumstances should have made so much, and that her mother,
as handsome as Lady Bertram, and some years her junior,
should have an appearance so much more worn and faded,
so comfortless, so slatternly, so shabby. But Sunday
made her a very creditable and tolerably cheerful-looking
Mrs. Price, coming abroad with a fine family of children,
feeling a little respite of her weekly cares, and only
discomposed if she saw her boys run into danger, or Rebecca
pass by with a flower in her hat.
In chapel they were obliged to divide, but Mr. Crawford
took care not to be divided from the female branch;
and after chapel he still continued with them, and made
one in the family party on the ramparts.
Mrs. Price took her weekly walk on the ramparts every
fine Sunday throughout the year, always going directly
after morning service and staying till dinner-time. It
was her public place: there she met her acquaintance,
heard a little news, talked over the badness of the
Portsmouth servants, and wound up her spirits for the six
days ensuing.
Thither they now went; Mr. Crawford most happy to consider
the Miss Prices as his peculiar charge; and before they
had been there long, somehow or other, there was no
saying how, Fanny could not have believed it, but he
was walking between them with an arm of each under his,
and she did not know how to prevent or put an end to it.
It made her uncomfortable for a time, but yet there
were enjoyments in the day and in the view which would
be felt.
The day was uncommonly lovely. It was really March;
but it was April in its mild air, brisk soft wind,
and bright sun, occasionally clouded for a minute;
and everything looked so beautiful under the influence
of such a sky, the effects of the shadows pursuing each
other on the ships at Spithead and the island beyond,
with the ever-varying hues of the sea, now at high water,
dancing in its glee and dashing against the ramparts with
so fine a sound, produced altogether such a combination
of charms for Fanny, as made her gradually almost careless
of the circumstances under which she felt them. Nay, had she
been without his arm, she would soon have known that she
needed it, for she wanted strength for a two hours'
saunter of this kind, coming, as it generally did,
upon a week's previous inactivity. Fanny was beginning
to feel the effect of being debarred from her usual
regular exercise; she had lost ground as to health
since her being in Portsmouth; and but for Mr. Crawford
and the beauty of the weather would soon have been knocked
up now.
The loveliness of the day, and of the view, he felt
like herself. They often stopt with the same sentiment
and taste, leaning against the wall, some minutes,
to look and admire; and considering he was not Edmund,
Fanny could not but allow that he was sufficiently open
to the charms of nature, and very well able to express
his admiration. She had a few tender reveries now and then,
which he could sometimes take advantage of to look in her
face without detection; and the result of these looks was,
that though as bewitching as ever, her face was less
blooming than it ought to be. She _said_ she was
very well, and did not like to be supposed otherwise;
but take it all in all, he was convinced that her present
residence could not be comfortable, and therefore could
not be salutary for her, and he was growing anxious for
her being again at Mansfield, where her own happiness,
and his in seeing her, must be so much greater.
"You have been here a month, I think?" said he.
"No; not quite a month. It is only four weeks to-morrow
since I left Mansfield."
"You are a most accurate and honest reckoner. I should
call that a month."
"I did not arrive here till Tuesday evening."
"And it is to be a two months' visit, is not?"
"Yes. My uncle talked of two months. I suppose it
will not be less."
"And how are you to be conveyed back again? Who comes
for you?"
"I do not know. I have heard nothing about it yet
from my aunt. Perhaps I may be to stay longer.
It may not be convenient for me to be fetched exactly
at the two months' end."
After a moment's reflection, Mr. Crawford replied,
"I know Mansfield, I know its way, I know its faults
towards _you_. I know the danger of your being so
far forgotten, as to have your comforts give way to the
imaginary convenience of any single being in the family.
I am aware that you may be left here week after week,
if Sir Thomas cannot settle everything for coming himself,
or sending your aunt's maid for you, without involving
the slightest alteration of the arrangements which he
may have laid down for the next quarter of a year.
This will not do. Two months is an ample allowance;
I should think six weeks quite enough. I am considering
your sister's health," said he, addressing himself to Susan,
"which I think the confinement of Portsmouth unfavourable to.
She requires constant air and exercise. When you know her
as well as I do, I am sure you will agree that she does,
and that she ought never to be long banished from the free air
and liberty of the country. If, therefore" (turning again
to Fanny), "you find yourself growing unwell, and any
difficulties arise about your returning to Mansfield,
without waiting for the two months to be ended,
_that_ must not be regarded as of any consequence,
if you feel yourself at all less strong or comfortable
than usual, and will only let my sister know it, give her
only the slightest hint, she and I will immediately
come down, and take you back to Mansfield. You know
the ease and the pleasure with which this would be done.
You know all that would be felt on the occasion."
Fanny thanked him, but tried to laugh it off.
"I am perfectly serious," he replied, "as you perfectly know.
And I hope you will not be cruelly concealing any
tendency to indisposition. Indeed, you shall _not_;
it shall not be in your power; for so long only as you
positively say, in every letter to Mary, 'I am well,'
and I know you cannot speak or write a falsehood, so long
only shall you be considered as well."
Fanny thanked him again, but was affected and distressed
to a degree that made it impossible for her to say much,
or even to be certain of what she ought to say.
This was towards the close of their walk. He attended
them to the last, and left them only at the door of their
own house, when he knew them to be going to dinner,
and therefore pretended to be waited for elsewhere.
"I wish you were not so tired," said he, still detaining
Fanny after all the others were in the house--"I wish I
left you in stronger health. Is there anything I can
do for you in town? I have half an idea of going into
Norfolk again soon. I am not satisfied about Maddison.
I am sure he still means to impose on me if possible,
and get a cousin of his own into a certain mill, which I
design for somebody else. I must come to an understanding
with him. I must make him know that I will not be
tricked on the south side of Everingham, any more than on
the north: that I will be master of my own property.
I was not explicit enough with him before. The mischief
such a man does on an estate, both as to the credit of his
employer and the welfare of the poor, is inconceivable.
I have a great mind to go back into Norfolk directly,
and put everything at once on such a footing as cannot
be afterwards swerved from. Maddison is a clever fellow;
I do not wish to displace him, provided he does not try
to displace _me_; but it would be simple to be duped
by a man who has no right of creditor to dupe me,
and worse than simple to let him give me a hard-hearted,
griping fellow for a tenant, instead of an honest man,
to whom I have given half a promise already. Would it not
be worse than simple? Shall I go? Do you advise it?"
"I advise! You know very well what is right."
"Yes. When you give me your opinion, I always know
what is right. Your judgment is my rule of right."
"Oh, no! do not say so. We have all a better guide
in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person
can be. Good-bye; I wish you a pleasant journey to-morrow."
"Is there nothing I can do for you in town?"
"Nothing; I am much obliged to you."
"Have you no message for anybody?"
"My love to your sister, if you please; and when you see
my cousin, my cousin Edmund, I wish you would be so good
as to say that I suppose I shall soon hear from him."
"Certainly; and if he is lazy or negligent, I will write
his excuses myself."
He could say no more, for Fanny would be no longer detained.
He pressed her hand, looked at her, and was gone.
_He_ went to while away the next three hours as he could,
with his other acquaintance, till the best dinner that
a capital inn afforded was ready for their enjoyment,
and _she_ turned in to her more simple one immediately.
Their general fare bore a very different character;
and could he have suspected how many privations, besides that
of exercise, she endured in her father's house, he would
have wondered that her looks were not much more affected
than he found them. She was so little equal to Rebecca's
puddings and Rebecca's hashes, brought to table, as they
all were, with such accompaniments of half-cleaned plates,
and not half-cleaned knives and forks, that she was very
often constrained to defer her heartiest meal till she could
send her brothers in the evening for biscuits and buns.
After being nursed up at Mansfield, it was too late in the
day to be hardened at Portsmouth; and though Sir Thomas,
had he known all, might have thought his niece in the
most promising way of being starved, both mind and body,
into a much juster value for Mr. Crawford's good company
and good fortune, he would probably have feared to push
his experiment farther, lest she might die under the cure.
Fanny was out of spirits all the rest of the day.
Though tolerably secure of not seeing Mr. Crawford again,
she could not help being low. It was parting with somebody
of the nature of a friend; and though, in one light,
glad to have him gone, it seemed as if she was now
deserted by everybody; it was a sort of renewed separation
from Mansfield; and she could not think of his returning
to town, and being frequently with Mary and Edmund,
without feelings so near akin to envy as made her hate
herself for having them.
Her dejection had no abatement from anything passing
around her; a friend or two of her father's, as always
happened if he was not with them, spent the long,
long evening there; and from six o'clock till half-past nine,
there was little intermission of noise or grog. She was
very low. The wonderful improvement which she still
fancied in Mr. Crawford was the nearest to administering
comfort of anything within the current of her thoughts.
Not considering in how different a circle she had been
just seeing him, nor how much might be owing to contrast,
she was quite persuaded of his being astonishingly
more gentle and regardful of others than formerly.
And, if in little things, must it not be so in great?
So anxious for her health and comfort, so very feeling
as he now expressed himself, and really seemed, might not
it be fairly supposed that he would not much longer
persevere in a suit so distressing to her?
CHAPTER XLIII
It was presumed that Mr. Crawford was travelling back,
to London, on the morrow, for nothing more was seen
of him at Mr. Price's; and two days afterwards, it was
a fact ascertained to Fanny by the following letter from
his sister, opened and read by her, on another account,
with the most anxious curiosity:--
"I have to inform you, my dearest Fanny, that Henry
has been down to Portsmouth to see you; that he had a
delightful walk with you to the dockyard last Saturday,
and one still more to be dwelt on the next day,
on the ramparts; when the balmy air, the sparkling sea,
and your sweet looks and conversation were altogether
in the most delicious harmony, and afforded sensations
which are to raise ecstasy even in retrospect. This, as well
as I understand, is to be the substance of my information.
He makes me write, but I do not know what else is to
be communicated, except this said visit to Portsmouth,
and these two said walks, and his introduction to
your family, especially to a fair sister of yours, a fine
girl of fifteen, who was of the party on the ramparts,
taking her first lesson, I presume, in love. I have
not time for writing much, but it would be out of place
if I had, for this is to be a mere letter of business,
penned for the purpose of conveying necessary information,
which could not be delayed without risk of evil. My dear,
dear Fanny, if I had you here, how I would talk to you!
You should listen to me till you were tired, and advise
me till you were still tired more; but it is impossible
to put a hundredth part of my great mind on paper,
so I will abstain altogether, and leave you to guess what
you like. I have no news for you. You have politics,
of course; and it would be too bad to plague you with
the names of people and parties that fill up my time.
I ought to have sent you an account of your cousin's
first party, but I was lazy, and now it is too long ago;
suffice it, that everything was just as it ought to be,
in a style that any of her connexions must have been
gratified to witness, and that her own dress and manners did
her the greatest credit. My friend, Mrs. Fraser, is mad
for such a house, and it would not make _me_ miserable.
I go to Lady Stornaway after Easter; she seems in high spirits,
and very happy. I fancy Lord S. is very good-humoured
and pleasant in his own family, and I do not think him so
very ill-looking as I did--at least, one sees many worse.
He will not do by the side of your cousin Edmund.
Of the last-mentioned hero, what shall I say? If I
avoided his name entirely, it would look suspicious.
I will say, then, that we have seen him two or three times,
and that my friends here are very much struck with his
gentlemanlike appearance. Mrs. Fraser (no bad judge)
declares she knows but three men in town who have so good
a person, height, and air; and I must confess, when he dined
here the other day, there were none to compare with him,
and we were a party of sixteen. Luckily there is no
distinction of dress nowadays to tell tales, but--but--
but Yours affectionately."
I had almost forgot (it was Edmund's fault: he gets into
my head more than does me good) one very material thing I
had to say from Henry and myself--I mean about our taking
you back into Northamptonshire. My dear little creature,
do not stay at Portsmouth to lose your pretty looks.
Those vile sea-breezes are the ruin of beauty and health.
My poor aunt always felt affected if within ten miles
of the sea, which the Admiral of course never believed,
but I know it was so. I am at your service and Henry's,
at an hour's notice. I should like the scheme, and we would
make a little circuit, and shew you Everingham in our way,
and perhaps you would not mind passing through London,
and seeing the inside of St. George's, Hanover Square.
Only keep your cousin Edmund from me at such a time:
I should not like to be tempted. What a long letter!
one word more. Henry, I find, has some idea of going
into Norfolk again upon some business that _you_ approve;
but this cannot possibly be permitted before the middle
of next week; that is, he cannot anyhow be spared till
after the l4th, for _we_ have a party that evening.
The value of a man like Henry, on such an occasion,
is what you can have no conception of; so you must take it
upon my word to be inestimable. He will see the Rushworths,
which own I am not sorry for--having a little curiosity,
and so I think has he--though he will not acknowledge
it."
This was a letter to be run through eagerly, to be
read deliberately, to supply matter for much reflection,
and to leave everything in greater suspense than ever.
The only certainty to be drawn from it was, that nothing
decisive had yet taken place. Edmund had not yet spoken.
How Miss Crawford really felt, how she meant to act,
or might act without or against her meaning; whether his
importance to her were quite what it had been before
the last separation; whether, if lessened, it were likely
to lessen more, or to recover itself, were subjects
for endless conjecture, and to be thought of on that day
and many days to come, without producing any conclusion.
The idea that returned the oftenest was that Miss Crawford,
after proving herself cooled and staggered by a return
to London habits, would yet prove herself in the end
too much attached to him to give him up. She would
try to be more ambitious than her heart would allow.
She would hesitate, she would tease, she would condition,
she would require a great deal, but she would finally
accept.
This was Fanny's most frequent expectation. A house
in town--that, she thought, must be impossible.
Yet there was no saying what Miss Crawford might not ask.
The prospect for her cousin grew worse and worse.
The woman who could speak of him, and speak only of
his appearance! What an unworthy attachment! To be
deriving support from the commendations of Mrs. Fraser!
_She_ who had known him intimately half a year!
Fanny was ashamed of her. Those parts of the letter which
related only to Mr. Crawford and herself, touched her,
in comparison, slightly. Whether Mr. Crawford went
into Norfolk before or after the 14th was certainly
no concern of hers, though, everything considered,
she thought he _would_ go without delay. That Miss
Crawford should endeavour to secure a meeting between him
and Mrs. Rushworth, was all in her worst line of conduct,
and grossly unkind and ill-judged; but she hoped _he_
would not be actuated by any such degrading curiosity.
He acknowledged no such inducement, and his sister
ought to have given him credit for better feelings than
her own.
She was yet more impatient for another letter from
town after receiving this than she had been before;
and for a few days was so unsettled by it altogether,
by what had come, and what might come, that her usual
readings and conversation with Susan were much suspended.
She could not command her attention as she wished.
If Mr. Crawford remembered her message to her cousin,
she thought it very likely, most likely, that he would write
to her at all events; it would be most consistent with his
usual kindness; and till she got rid of this idea, till it
gradually wore off, by no letters appearing in the course
of three or four days more, she was in a most restless,
anxious state
At length, a something like composure succeeded.
Suspense must be submitted to, and must not be allowed
to wear her out, and make her useless. Time did something,
her own exertions something more, and she resumed her
attentions to Susan, and again awakened the same interest
in them.
Susan was growing very fond of her, and though without
any of the early delight in books which had been
so strong in Fanny, with a disposition much less
inclined to sedentary pursuits, or to information for
information's sake, she had so strong a desire of not
_appearing_ ignorant, as, with a good clear understanding,
made her a most attentive, profitable, thankful pupil.
Fanny was her oracle. Fanny's explanations and remarks
were a most important addition to every essay, or every
chapter of history. What Fanny told her of former times
dwelt more on her mind than the pages of Goldsmith; and she
paid her sister the compliment of preferring her style
to that of any printed author. The early habit of reading was
wanting.
Their conversations, however, were not always on subjects
so high as history or morals. Others had their hour;
and of lesser matters, none returned so often,
or remained so long between them, as Mansfield Park,
a description of the people, the manners, the amusements,
the ways of Mansfield Park. Susan, who had an innate taste
for the genteel and well-appointed, was eager to hear,
and Fanny could not but indulge herself in dwelling on
so beloved a theme. She hoped it was not wrong; though,
after a time, Susan's very great admiration of everything
said or done in her uncle's house, and earnest longing
to go into Northamptonshire, seemed almost to blame
her for exciting feelings which could not be gratified.
Poor Susan was very little better fitted for home
than her elder sister; and as Fanny grew thoroughly
to understand this, she began to feel that when her
own release from Portsmouth came, her happiness would
have a material drawback in leaving Susan behind.
That a girl so capable of being made everything good should
be left in such hands, distressed her more and more.
Were _she_ likely to have a home to invite her to,
what a blessing it would be! And had it been possible
for her to return Mr. Crawford's regard, the probability
of his being very far from objecting to such a measure would
have been the greatest increase of all her own comforts.
She thought he was really good-tempered, and could fancy
his entering into a plan of that sort most pleasantly.
CHAPTER XLIV
Seven weeks of the two months were very nearly gone,
when the one letter, the letter from Edmund, so long expected,
was put into Fanny's hands. As she opened, and saw
its length, she prepared herself for a minute detail
of happiness and a profusion of love and praise towards
the fortunate creature who was now mistress of his fate.
These were the contents--
"My Dear Fanny,--Excuse me that I have not written before.
Crawford told me that you were wishing to hear from me,
but I found it impossible to write from London,
and persuaded myself that you would understand my silence.
Could I have sent a few happy lines, they should not
have been wanting, but nothing of that nature was ever
in my power. I am returned to Mansfield in a less assured
state that when I left it. My hopes are much weaker.
You are probably aware of this already. So very fond of you
as Miss Crawford is, it is most natural that she should tell
you enough of her own feelings to furnish a tolerable guess
at mine. I will not be prevented, however, from making my
own communication. Our confidences in you need not clash.
I ask no questions. There is something soothing in the
idea that we have the same friend, and that whatever
unhappy differences of opinion may exist between us,
we are united in our love of you. It will be a comfort
to me to tell you how things now are, and what are my
present plans, if plans I can be said to have. I have been
returned since Saturday. I was three weeks in London,
and saw her (for London) very often. I had every attention
from the Frasers that could be reasonably expected.
I dare say I was not reasonable in carrying with me
hopes of an intercourse at all like that of Mansfield.
It was her manner, however, rather than any unfrequency
of meeting. Had she been different when I did see her,
I should have made no complaint, but from the very first
she was altered: my first reception was so unlike
what I had hoped, that I had almost resolved on leaving
London again directly. I need not particularise.
You know the weak side of her character, and may imagine
the sentiments and expressions which were torturing me.
She was in high spirits, and surrounded by those who
were giving all the support of their own bad sense
to her too lively mind. I do not like Mrs. Fraser.
She is a cold-hearted, vain woman, who has married entirely
from convenience, and though evidently unhappy in her marriage,
places her disappointment not to faults of judgment,
or temper, or disproportion of age, but to her being,
after all, less affluent than many of her acquaintance,
especially than her sister, Lady Stornaway, and is the
determined supporter of everything mercenary and ambitious,
provided it be only mercenary and ambitious enough. I look
upon her intimacy with those two sisters as the greatest
misfortune of her life and mine. They have been leading
her astray for years. Could she be detached from them!--
and sometimes I do not despair of it, for the affection
appears to me principally on their side. They are very
fond of her; but I am sure she does not love them as she
loves you. When I think of her great attachment to you,
indeed, and the whole of her judicious, upright conduct
as a sister, she appears a very different creature,
capable of everything noble, and I am ready to blame
myself for a too harsh construction of a playful manner.
I cannot give her up, Fanny. She is the only woman
in the world whom I could ever think of as a wife.
If I did not believe that she had some regard for me,
of course I should not say this, but I do believe it.
I am convinced that she is not without a decided preference.
I have no jealousy of any individual. It is the influence
of the fashionable world altogether that I am jealous of.
It is the habits of wealth that I fear. Her ideas are
not higher than her own fortune may warrant, but they
are beyond what our incomes united could authorise.
There is comfort, however, even here. I could better
bear to lose her because not rich enough, than because
of my profession. That would only prove her affection
not equal to sacrifices, which, in fact, I am scarcely
justified in asking; and, if I am refused, that, I think,
will be the honest motive. Her prejudices, I trust,
are not so strong as they were. You have my thoughts
exactly as they arise, my dear Fanny; perhaps they are
sometimes contradictory, but it will not be a less faithful
picture of my mind. Having once begun, it is a pleasure
to me to tell you all I feel. I cannot give her up.
Connected as we already are, and, I hope, are to be,
to give up Mary Crawford would be to give up the society
of some of those most dear to me; to banish myself from
the very houses and friends whom, under any other distress,
I should turn to for consolation. The loss of Mary I must
consider as comprehending the loss of Crawford and of Fanny.
Were it a decided thing, an actual refusal, I hope I
should know how to bear it, and how to endeavour to weaken
her hold on my heart, and in the course of a few years--
but I am writing nonsense. Were I refused, I must bear it;
and till I am, I can never cease to try for her.
This is the truth. The only question is _how_? What may
be the likeliest means? I have sometimes thought of going
to London again after Easter, and sometimes resolved on
doing nothing till she returns to Mansfield. Even now,
she speaks with pleasure of being in Mansfield in June;
but June is at a great distance, and I believe I shall
write to her. I have nearly determined on explaining
myself by letter. To be at an early certainty is a
material object. My present state is miserably irksome.
Considering everything, I think a letter will be decidedly
the best method of explanation. I shall be able to write
much that I could not say, and shall be giving her time
for reflection before she resolves on her answer,
and I am less afraid of the result of reflection
than of an immediate hasty impulse; I think I am.
My greatest danger would lie in her consulting Mrs. Fraser,
and I at a distance unable to help my own cause.
A letter exposes to all the evil of consultation,
and where the mind is anything short of perfect decision,
an adviser may, in an unlucky moment, lead it to do what it
may afterwards regret. I must think this matter over
a little. This long letter, full of my own concerns alone,
will be enough to tire even the friendship of a Fanny.
The last time I saw Crawford was at Mrs. Fraser's party.
I am more and more satisfied with all that I see and hear
of him. There is not a shadow of wavering. He thoroughly
knows his own mind, and acts up to his resolutions:
an inestimable quality. I could not see him and my eldest
sister in the same room without recollecting what you
once told me, and I acknowledge that they did not meet
as friends. There was marked coolness on her side.
They scarcely spoke. I saw him draw back surprised,
and I was sorry that Mrs. Rushworth should resent any
former supposed slight to Miss Bertram. You will wish
to hear my opinion of Maria's degree of comfort as a wife.
There is no appearance of unhappiness. I hope they get
on pretty well together. I dined twice in Wimpole Street,
and might have been there oftener, but it is mortifying
to be with Rushworth as a brother. Julia seems to enjoy
London exceedingly. I had little enjoyment there,
but have less here. We are not a lively party. You are
very much wanted. I miss you more than I can express.
My mother desires her best love, and hopes to hear
from you soon. She talks of you almost every hour,
and I am sorry to find how many weeks more she is likely
to be without you. My father means to fetch you himself,
but it will not be till after Easter, when he has
business in town. You are happy at Portsmouth, I hope,
but this must not be a yearly visit. I want you at home,
that I may have your opinion about Thornton Lacey.
I have little heart for extensive improvements till
I know that it will ever have a mistress. I think I
shall certainly write. It is quite settled that the
Grants go to Bath; they leave Mansfield on Monday.
I am glad of it. I am not comfortable enough to be fit
for anybody; but your aunt seems to feel out of luck
that such an article of Mansfield news should fall
to my pen instead of hers.--Yours ever, my dearest
Fanny."
"I never will, no, I certainly never will wish for a
letter again," was Fanny's secret declaration as she
finished this. "What do they bring but disappointment
and sorrow? Not till after Easter! How shall I bear it?
And my poor aunt talking of me every hour!"
Fanny checked the tendency of these thoughts as well as
she could, but she was within half a minute of starting
the idea that Sir Thomas was quite unkind, both to her aunt
and to herself. As for the main subject of the letter,
there was nothing in that to soothe irritation. She was
almost vexed into displeasure and anger against Edmund.
"There is no good in this delay," said she. "Why is not
it settled? He is blinded, and nothing will open his eyes;
nothing can, after having had truths before him so long
in vain. He will marry her, and be poor and miserable.
God grant that her influence do not make him cease
to be respectable!" She looked over the letter again.
"'So very fond of me!' 'tis nonsense all. She loves
nobody but herself and her brother. Her friends leading
her astray for years! She is quite as likely to have led
_them_ astray. They have all, perhaps, been corrupting
one another; but if they are so much fonder of her than
she is of them, she is the less likely to have been hurt,
except by their flattery. 'The only woman in the world
whom he could ever think of as a wife.' I firmly
believe it. It is an attachment to govern his whole life.
Accepted or refused, his heart is wedded to her for ever.
'The loss of Mary I must consider as comprehending the loss
of Crawford and Fanny.' Edmund, you do not know me.
The families would never be connected if you did not
connect them! Oh! write, write. Finish it at once.
Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit,
condemn yourself."
Such sensations, however, were too near akin to
resentment to be long guiding Fanny's soliloquies.
She was soon more softened and sorrowful. His warm regard,
his kind expressions, his confidential treatment,
touched her strongly. He was only too good to everybody.
It was a letter, in short, which she would not but have had
for the world, and which could never be valued enough.
This was the end of it.
Everybody at all addicted to letter-writing, without
having much to say, which will include a large proportion
of the female world at least, must feel with Lady Bertram
that she was out of luck in having such a capital piece of
Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants going to Bath,
occur at a time when she could make no advantage of it,
and will admit that it must have been very mortifying
to her to see it fall to the share of her thankless son,
and treated as concisely as possible at the end of a
long letter, instead of having it to spread over the largest
part of a page of her own. For though Lady Bertram rather
shone in the epistolary line, having early in her marriage,
from the want of other employment, and the circumstance
of Sir Thomas's being in Parliament, got into the way
of making and keeping correspondents, and formed for
herself a very creditable, common-place, amplifying style,
so that a very little matter was enough for her: she could
not do entirely without any; she must have something
to write about, even to her niece; and being so soon
to lose all the benefit of Dr. Grant's gouty symptoms
and Mrs. Grant's morning calls, it was very hard upon her
to be deprived of one of the last epistolary uses she could put
them to.
There was a rich amends, however, preparing for her.
Lady Bertram's hour of good luck came. Within a few days
from the receipt of Edmund's letter, Fanny had one from
her aunt, beginning thus--
"My Dear Fanny,--I take up my pen to communicate some
very alarming intelligence, which I make no doubt will
give you much concern".
This was a great deal better than to have to take up the pen
to acquaint her with all the particulars of the Grants'
intended journey, for the present intelligence was of a
nature to promise occupation for the pen for many days
to come, being no less than the dangerous illness of her
eldest son, of which they had received notice by express
a few hours before.
Tom had gone from London with a party of young men
to Newmarket, where a neglected fall and a good deal
of drinking had brought on a fever; and when the party
broke up, being unable to move, had been left by himself
at the house of one of these young men to the comforts of
sickness and solitude, and the attendance only of servants.
Instead of being soon well enough to follow his friends,
as he had then hoped, his disorder increased considerably,
and it was not long before he thought so ill of himself
as to be as ready as his physician to have a letter
despatched to Mansfield.
"This distressing intelligence, as you may suppose,"
observed her ladyship, after giving the substance of it,
"has agitated us exceedingly, and we cannot prevent
ourselves from being greatly alarmed and apprehensive
for the poor invalid, whose state Sir Thomas fears may
be very critical; and Edmund kindly proposes attending
his brother immediately, but I am happy to add that Sir
Thomas will not leave me on this distressing occasion,
as it would be too trying for me. We shall greatly miss
Edmund in our small circle, but I trust and hope he
will find the poor invalid in a less alarming state than
might be apprehended, and that he will be able to bring
him to Mansfield shortly, which Sir Thomas proposes
should be done, and thinks best on every account, and I
flatter myself the poor sufferer will soon be able to bear
the removal without material inconvenience or injury.
As I have little doubt of your feeling for us, my dear Fanny,
under these distressing circumstances, I will write again
very soon."
Fanny's feelings on the occasion were indeed considerably
more warm and genuine than her aunt's style of writing.
She felt truly for them all. Tom dangerously ill,
Edmund gone to attend him, and the sadly small party
remaining at Mansfield, were cares to shut out every
other care, or almost every other. She could just find
selfishness enough to wonder whether Edmund _had_ written
to Miss Crawford before this summons came, but no sentiment
dwelt long with her that was not purely affectionate and
disinterestedly anxious. Her aunt did not neglect her:
she wrote again and again; they were receiving frequent
accounts from Edmund, and these accounts were as regularly
transmitted to Fanny, in the same diffuse style,
and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears,
all following and producing each other at haphazard.
It was a sort of playing at being frightened.
The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not see had little
power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably
about agitation, and anxiety, and poor invalids, till Tom
was actually conveyed to Mansfield, and her own eyes had
beheld his altered appearance. Then a letter which she
had been previously preparing for Fanny was finished
in a different style, in the language of real feeling
and alarm; then she wrote as she might have spoken.
"He is just come, my dear Fanny, and is taken upstairs;
and I am so shocked to see him, that I do not know
what to do. I am sure he has been very ill. Poor Tom!
I am quite grieved for him, and very much frightened,
and so is Sir Thomas; and how glad I should be if you
were here to comfort me. But Sir Thomas hopes he
will be better to-morrow, and says we must consider
his journey."
The real solicitude now awakened in the maternal bosom
was not soon over. Tom's extreme impatience to be
removed to Mansfield, and experience those comforts
of home and family which had been little thought of in
uninterrupted health, had probably induced his being
conveyed thither too early, as a return of fever came on,
and for a week he was in a more alarming state than ever.
They were all very seriously frightened. Lady Bertram
wrote her daily terrors to her niece, who might now be said
to live upon letters, and pass all her time between suffering
from that of to-day and looking forward to to-morrow's.
Without any particular affection for her eldest cousin,
her tenderness of heart made her feel that she could
not spare him, and the purity of her principles added yet
a keener solicitude, when she considered how little useful,
how little self-denying his life had (apparently) been.
Susan was her only companion and listener on this, as on
more common occasions. Susan was always ready to hear and
to sympathise. Nobody else could be interested in so remote
an evil as illness in a family above an hundred miles off;
not even Mrs. Price, beyond a brief question or two,
if she saw her daughter with a letter in her hand,
and now and then the quiet observation of, "My poor
sister Bertram must be in a great deal of trouble."
So long divided and so differently situated, the ties
of blood were little more than nothing. An attachment,
originally as tranquil as their tempers, was now become
a mere name. Mrs. Price did quite as much for Lady
Bertram as Lady Bertram would have done for Mrs. Price.
Three or four Prices might have been swept away,
any or all except Fanny and William, and Lady Bertram
would have thought little about it; or perhaps might have
caught from Mrs. Norris's lips the cant of its being
a very happy thing and a great blessing to their poor
dear sister Price to have them so well provided for.
CHAPTER XLV
At about the week's end from his return to Mansfield,
Tom's immediate danger was over, and he was so far
pronounced safe as to make his mother perfectly easy;
for being now used to the sight of him in his suffering,
helpless state, and hearing only the best, and never thinking
beyond what she heard, with no disposition for alarm
and no aptitude at a hint, Lady Bertram was the happiest
subject in the world for a little medical imposition.
The fever was subdued; the fever had been his complaint;
of course he would soon be well again. Lady Bertram could
think nothing less, and Fanny shared her aunt's security,
till she received a few lines from Edmund, written purposely
to give her a clearer idea of his brother's situation,
and acquaint her with the apprehensions which he and his
father had imbibed from the physician with respect to some
strong hectic symptoms, which seemed to seize the frame
on the departure of the fever. They judged it best
that Lady Bertram should not be harassed by alarms which,
it was to be hoped, would prove unfounded; but there was
no reason why Fanny should not know the truth. They were
apprehensive for his lungs.
A very few lines from Edmund shewed her the patient
and the sickroom in a juster and stronger light than
all Lady Bertram's sheets of paper could do. There was
hardly any one in the house who might not have described,
from personal observation, better than herself;
not one who was not more useful at times to her son.
She could do nothing but glide in quietly and look at him;
but when able to talk or be talked to, or read to,
Edmund was the companion he preferred. His aunt worried
him by her cares, and Sir Thomas knew not how to bring down
his conversation or his voice to the level of irritation
and feebleness. Edmund was all in all. Fanny would
certainly believe him so at least, and must find that her
estimation of him was higher than ever when he appeared
as the attendant, supporter, cheerer of a suffering brother.
There was not only the debility of recent illness to assist:
there was also, as she now learnt, nerves much affected,
spirits much depressed to calm and raise, and her own
imagination added that there must be a mind to be
properly guided.
The family were not consumptive, and she was more inclined
to hope than fear for her cousin, except when she thought
of Miss Crawford; but Miss Crawford gave her the idea
of being the child of good luck, and to her selfishness
and vanity it would be good luck to have Edmund the only son.
Even in the sick chamber the fortunate Mary was
not forgotten. Edmund's letter had this postscript.
"On the subject of my last, I had actually begun a letter
when called away by Tom's illness, but I have now changed
my mind, and fear to trust the influence of friends.
When Tom is better, I shall go."
Such was the state of Mansfield, and so it continued,
with scarcely any change, till Easter. A line occasionally
added by Edmund to his mother's letter was enough for
Fanny's information. Tom's amendment was alarmingly slow.
Easter came particularly late this year, as Fanny had most
sorrowfully considered, on first learning that she had
no chance of leaving Portsmouth till after it. It came,
and she had yet heard nothing of her return--nothing even
of the going to London, which was to precede her return.
Her aunt often expressed a wish for her, but there was
no notice, no message from the uncle on whom all depended.
She supposed he could not yet leave his son, but it was a cruel,
a terrible delay to her. The end of April was coming on;
it would soon be almost three months, instead of two,
that she had been absent from them all, and that her days
had been passing in a state of penance, which she loved
them too well to hope they would thoroughly understand;
and who could yet say when there might be leisure to think
of or fetch her?
Her eagerness, her impatience, her longings to be with them,
were such as to bring a line or two of Cowper's Tirocinium
for ever before her. "With what intense desire she wants
her home," was continually on her tongue, as the truest
description of a yearning which she could not suppose
any schoolboy's bosom to feel more keenly.
When she had been coming to Portsmouth, she had loved to call
it her home, had been fond of saying that she was going home;
the word had been very dear to her, and so it still was,
but it must be applied to Mansfield. _That_ was now
the home. Portsmouth was Portsmouth; Mansfield was home.
They had been long so arranged in the indulgence of her
secret meditations, and nothing was more consolatory
to her than to find her aunt using the same language:
"I cannot but say I much regret your being from home
at this distressing time, so very trying to my spirits.
I trust and hope, and sincerely wish you may never be absent
from home so long again," were most delightful sentences
to her. Still, however, it was her private regale.
Delicacy to her parents made her careful not to betray
such a preference of her uncle's house. It was always:
"When I go back into Northamptonshire, or when I return
to Mansfield, I shall do so and so." For a great
while it was so, but at last the longing grew stronger,
it overthrew caution, and she found herself talking of what
she should do when she went home before she was aware.
She reproached herself, coloured, and looked fearfully towards
her father and mother. She need not have been uneasy.
There was no sign of displeasure, or even of hearing her.
They were perfectly free from any jealousy of Mansfield.
She was as welcome to wish herself there as to be there.
It was sad to Fanny to lose all the pleasures of spring.
She had not known before what pleasures she _had_ to lose
in passing March and April in a town. She had not known
before how much the beginnings and progress of vegetation
had delighted her. What animation, both of body and mind,
she had derived from watching the advance of that season
which cannot, in spite of its capriciousness, be unlovely,
and seeing its increasing beauties from the earliest
flowers in the warmest divisions of her aunt's garden,
to the opening of leaves of her uncle's plantations,
and the glory of his woods. To be losing such pleasures
was no trifle; to be losing them, because she was in
the midst of closeness and noise, to have confinement,
bad air, bad smells, substituted for liberty,
freshness, fragrance, and verdure, was infinitely worse:
but even these incitements to regret were feeble,
compared with what arose from the conviction of being
missed by her best friends, and the longing to be useful
to those who were wanting her!
Could she have been at home, she might have been of service
to every creature in the house. She felt that she must
have been of use to all. To all she must have saved some
trouble of head or hand; and were it only in supporting
the spirits of her aunt Bertram, keeping her from the evil
of solitude, or the still greater evil of a restless,
officious companion, too apt to be heightening danger
in order to enhance her own importance, her being there
would have been a general good. She loved to fancy how she
could have read to her aunt, how she could have talked
to her, and tried at once to make her feel the blessing
of what was, and prepare her mind for what might be;
and how many walks up and down stairs she might have
saved her, and how many messages she might have carried.
It astonished her that Tom's sisters could be satisfied
with remaining in London at such a time, through an
illness which had now, under different degrees of danger,
lasted several weeks. _They_ might return to Mansfield
when they chose; travelling could be no difficulty to _them_,
and she could not comprehend how both could still keep away.
If Mrs. Rushworth could imagine any interfering obligations,
Julia was certainly able to quit London whenever she chose.
It appeared from one of her aunt's letters that Julia
had offered to return if wanted, but this was all.
It was evident that she would rather remain where she was.
Fanny was disposed to think the influence of London
very much at war with all respectable attachments.
She saw the proof of it in Miss Crawford, as well as in
her cousins; _her_ attachment to Edmund had been respectable,
the most respectable part of her character; her friendship
for herself had at least been blameless. Where was
either sentiment now? It was so long since Fanny had had
any letter from her, that she had some reason to think
lightly of the friendship which had been so dwelt on.
It was weeks since she had heard anything of Miss Crawford
or of her other connexions in town, except through Mansfield,
and she was beginning to suppose that she might never
know whether Mr. Crawford had gone into Norfolk again
or not till they met, and might never hear from his
sister any more this spring, when the following letter
was received to revive old and create some new sensations--
"Forgive me, my dear Fanny, as soon as you can, for my
long silence, and behave as if you could forgive me directly.
This is my modest request and expectation, for you are so good,
that I depend upon being treated better than I deserve,
and I write now to beg an immediate answer. I want to know
the state of things at Mansfield Park, and you, no doubt,
are perfectly able to give it. One should be a brute not
to feel for the distress they are in; and from what I hear,
poor Mr. Bertram has a bad chance of ultimate recovery.
I thought little of his illness at first. I looked
upon him as the sort of person to be made a fuss with,
and to make a fuss himself in any trifling disorder,
and was chiefly concerned for those who had to nurse him;
but now it is confidently asserted that he is really
in a decline, that the symptoms are most alarming,
and that part of the family, at least, are aware of it.
If it be so, I am sure you must be included in that part,
that discerning part, and therefore entreat you to let
me know how far I have been rightly informed. I need
not say how rejoiced I shall be to hear there has been
any mistake, but the report is so prevalent that I confess
I cannot help trembling. To have such a fine young man
cut off in the flower of his days is most melancholy.
Poor Sir Thomas will feel it dreadfully. I really am quite
agitated on the subject. Fanny, Fanny, I see you smile
and look cunning, but, upon my honour, I never bribed
a physician in my life. Poor young man! If he is to die,
there will be _two_ poor young men less in the world;
and with a fearless face and bold voice would I say to any one,
that wealth and consequence could fall into no hands
more deserving of them. It was a foolish precipitation
last Christmas, but the evil of a few days may be blotted
out in part. Varnish and gilding hide many stains.
It will be but the loss of the Esquire after his name.
With real affection, Fanny, like mine, more might be overlooked.
Write to me by return of post, judge of my anxiety,
and do not trifle with it. Tell me the real truth,
as you have it from the fountainhead. And now, do not
trouble yourself to be ashamed of either my feelings or
your own. Believe me, they are not only natural, they are
philanthropic and virtuous. I put it to your conscience,
whether 'Sir Edmund' would not do more good with all
the Bertram property than any other possible 'Sir.'
Had the Grants been at home I would not have troubled you,
but you are now the only one I can apply to for the truth,
his sisters not being within my reach. Mrs. R. has
been spending the Easter with the Aylmers at Twickenham
(as to be sure you know), and is not yet returned;
and Julia is with the cousins who live near Bedford Square,
but I forget their name and street. Could I immediately
apply to either, however, I should still prefer you,
because it strikes me that they have all along been so
unwilling to have their own amusements cut up, as to shut
their eyes to the truth. I suppose Mrs. R.'s Easter
holidays will not last much longer; no doubt they are
thorough holidays to her. The Aylmers are pleasant people;
and her husband away, she can have nothing but enjoyment.
I give her credit for promoting his going dutifully down
to Bath, to fetch his mother; but how will she and the
dowager agree in one house? Henry is not at hand, so I
have nothing to say from him. Do not you think Edmund would
have been in town again long ago, but for this illness?--
Yours ever, Mary."
"I had actually begun folding my letter when Henry walked in,
but he brings no intelligence to prevent my sending it.
Mrs. R. knows a decline is apprehended; he saw her this morning:
she returns to Wimpole Street to-day; the old lady is come.
Now do not make yourself uneasy with any queer fancies
because he has been spending a few days at Richmond.
He does it every spring. Be assured he cares for nobody
but you. At this very moment he is wild to see you,
and occupied only in contriving the means for doing so,
and for making his pleasure conduce to yours. In proof,
he repeats, and more eagerly, what he said at Portsmouth
about our conveying you home, and I join him in it with all
my soul. Dear Fanny, write directly, and tell us to come.
It will do us all good. He and I can go to the Parsonage,
you know, and be no trouble to our friends at Mansfield Park.
It would really be gratifying to see them all again, and a
little addition of society might be of infinite use to them;
and as to yourself, you must feel yourself to be so wanted there,
that you cannot in conscience--conscientious as you are--
keep away, when you have the means of returning.
I have not time or patience to give half Henry's messages;
be satisfied that the spirit of each and every one is
unalterable affection."
Fanny's disgust at the greater part of this letter,
with her extreme reluctance to bring the writer of it
and her cousin Edmund together, would have made her (as
she felt) incapable of judging impartially whether
the concluding offer might be accepted or not.
To herself, individually, it was most tempting. To be
finding herself, perhaps within three days, transported
to Mansfield, was an image of the greatest felicity,
but it would have been a material drawback to be owing
such felicity to persons in whose feelings and conduct,
at the present moment, she saw so much to condemn:
the sister's feelings, the brother's conduct,
_her_ cold-hearted ambition, _his_ thoughtless vanity.
To have him still the acquaintance, the flirt perhaps,
of Mrs. Rushworth! She was mortified. She had thought
better of him. Happily, however, she was not left to weigh
and decide between opposite inclinations and doubtful
notions of right; there was no occasion to determine
whether she ought to keep Edmund and Mary asunder or not.
She had a rule to apply to, which settled everything.
Her awe of her uncle, and her dread of taking a liberty
with him, made it instantly plain to her what she
had to do. She must absolutely decline the proposal.
If he wanted, he would send for her; and even to offer
an early return was a presumption which hardly anything
would have seemed to justify. She thanked Miss Crawford,
but gave a decided negative. "Her uncle, she understood,
meant to fetch her; and as her cousin's illness had continued
so many weeks without her being thought at all necessary,
she must suppose her return would be unwelcome at present,
and that she should be felt an encumbrance."
Her representation of her cousin's state at this time
was exactly according to her own belief of it, and such
as she supposed would convey to the sanguine mind of her
correspondent the hope of everything she was wishing for.
Edmund would be forgiven for being a clergyman, it seemed,
under certain conditions of wealth; and this, she suspected,
was all the conquest of prejudice which he was so ready
to congratulate himself upon. She had only learnt to think
nothing of consequence but money.
CHAPTER XLVI
As Fanny could not doubt that her answer was conveying
a real disappointment, she was rather in expectation,
from her knowledge of Miss Crawford's temper, of being
urged again; and though no second letter arrived for the
space of a week, she had still the same feeling when it
did come.
On receiving it, she could instantly decide on its
containing little writing, and was persuaded of its
having the air of a letter of haste and business.
Its object was unquestionable; and two moments were
enough to start the probability of its being merely
to give her notice that they should be in Portsmouth
that very day, and to throw her into all the agitation
of doubting what she ought to do in such a case.
If two moments, however, can surround with difficulties,
a third can disperse them; and before she had opened
the letter, the possibility of Mr. and Miss Crawford's
having applied to her uncle and obtained his permission
was giving her ease. This was the letter--
"A most scandalous, ill-natured rumour has just reached me,
and I write, dear Fanny, to warn you against giving the
least credit to it, should it spread into the country.
Depend upon it, there is some mistake, and that a day or two
will clear it up; at any rate, that Henry is blameless,
and in spite of a moment's _etourderie_, thinks of
nobody but you. Say not a word of it; hear nothing,
surmise nothing, whisper nothing till I write again.
I am sure it will be all hushed up, and nothing proved
but Rushworth's folly. If they are gone, I would lay
my life they are only gone to Mansfield Park, and Julia
with them. But why would not you let us come for you?
I wish you may not repent it.--Yours, etc."
Fanny stood aghast. As no scandalous, ill-natured rumour
had reached her, it was impossible for her to understand
much of this strange letter. She could only perceive
that it must relate to Wimpole Street and Mr. Crawford,
and only conjecture that something very imprudent had just
occurred in that quarter to draw the notice of the world,
and to excite her jealousy, in Miss Crawford's apprehension,
if she heard it. Miss Crawford need not be alarmed
for her. She was only sorry for the parties concerned
and for Mansfield, if the report should spread so far;
but she hoped it might not. If the Rushworths were gone
themselves to Mansfield, as was to be inferred from
what Miss Crawford said, it was not likely that anything
unpleasant should have preceded them, or at least should
make any impression.
As to Mr. Crawford, she hoped it might give him a knowledge
of his own disposition, convince him that he was not capable
of being steadily attached to any one woman in the world,
and shame him from persisting any longer in addressing herself.
It was very strange! She had begun to think he really
loved her, and to fancy his affection for her something
more than common; and his sister still said that he cared
for nobody else. Yet there must have been some marked
display of attentions to her cousin, there must have
been some strong indiscretion, since her correspondent
was not of a sort to regard a slight one.
Very uncomfortable she was, and must continue, till she
heard from Miss Crawford again. It was impossible to
banish the letter from her thoughts, and she could not
relieve herself by speaking of it to any human being.
Miss Crawford need not have urged secrecy with so much warmth;
she might have trusted to her sense of what was due
to her cousin.
The next day came and brought no second letter.
Fanny was disappointed. She could still think of little
else all the morning; but, when her father came back
in the afternoon with the daily newspaper as usual,
she was so far from expecting any elucidation through such
a channel that the subject was for a moment out of her head.
She was deep in other musing. The remembrance of her first
evening in that room, of her father and his newspaper,
came across her. No candle was now wanted.
The sun was yet an hour and half above the horizon.
She felt that she had, indeed, been three months there;
and the sun's rays falling strongly into the parlour,
instead of cheering, made her still more melancholy,
for sunshine appeared to her a totally different thing
in a town and in the country. Here, its power was only
a glare: a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring
forward stains and dirt that might otherwise have slept.
There was neither health nor gaiety in sunshine in a town.
She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of
moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls,
marked by her father's head, to the table cut and notched
by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never
thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks,
the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue,
and the bread and butter growing every minute more
greasy than even Rebecca's hands had first produced it.
Her father read his newspaper, and her mother lamented
over the ragged carpet as usual, while the tea was
in preparation, and wished Rebecca would mend it;
and Fanny was first roused by his calling out to her,
after humphing and considering over a particular paragraph:
"What's the name of your great cousins in town, Fan?"
A moment's recollection enabled her to say, "Rushworth, sir."
"And don't they live in Wimpole Street?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then, there's the devil to pay among them, that's all!
There" (holding out the paper to her); "much good may such
fine relations do you. I don't know what Sir Thomas may
think of such matters; he may be too much of the courtier
and fine gentleman to like his daughter the less. But, by G--
! if she belonged to _me_, I'd give her the rope's end
as long as I could stand over her. A little flogging for
man and woman too would be the best way of preventing such things."
Fanny read to herself that "it was with infinite concern
the newspaper had to announce to the world a matrimonial
_fracas_ in the family of Mr. R. of Wimpole Street;
the beautiful Mrs. R., whose name had not long been
enrolled in the lists of Hymen, and who had promised
to become so brilliant a leader in the fashionable world,
having quitted her husband's roof in company with the
well-known and captivating Mr. C., the intimate friend
and associate of Mr. R., and it was not known even
to the editor of the newspaper whither they were gone."
"It is a mistake, sir," said Fanny instantly; "it must be
a mistake, it cannot be true; it must mean some other people."
She spoke from the instinctive wish of delaying shame;
she spoke with a resolution which sprung from despair,
for she spoke what she did not, could not believe herself.
It had been the shock of conviction as she read. The truth
rushed on her; and how she could have spoken at all, how she
could even have breathed, was afterwards matter of wonder
to herself.
Mr. Price cared too little about the report to make her
much answer. "It might be all a lie," he acknowledged;
"but so many fine ladies were going to the devil nowadays
that way, that there was no answering for anybody."
"Indeed, I hope it is not true," said Mrs. Price plaintively;
"it would be so very shocking! If I have spoken once
to Rebecca about that carpet, I am sure I have spoke at
least a dozen times; have not I, Betsey? And it would
not be ten minutes' work."
The horror of a mind like Fanny's, as it received the
conviction of such guilt, and began to take in some part
of the misery that must ensue, can hardly be described.
At first, it was a sort of stupefaction; but every moment
was quickening her perception of the horrible evil.
She could not doubt, she dared not indulge a hope,
of the paragraph being false. Miss Crawford's letter,
which she had read so often as to make every line her own,
was in frightful conformity with it. Her eager defence
of her brother, her hope of its being _hushed_ _up_,
her evident agitation, were all of a piece with something
very bad; and if there was a woman of character in existence,
who could treat as a trifle this sin of the first magnitude,
who would try to gloss it over, and desire to have it
unpunished, she could believe Miss Crawford to be the woman!
Now she could see her own mistake as to _who_ were gone,
or _said_ to be gone. It was not Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth;
it was Mrs. Rushworth and Mr. Crawford.
Fanny seemed to herself never to have been shocked before.
There was no possibility of rest. The evening passed
without a pause of misery, the night was totally sleepless.
She passed only from feelings of sickness to shudderings
of horror; and from hot fits of fever to cold. The event
was so shocking, that there were moments even when her
heart revolted from it as impossible: when she thought
it could not be. A woman married only six months ago;
a man professing himself devoted, even _engaged_ to another;
that other her near relation; the whole family,
both families connected as they were by tie upon tie;
all friends, all intimate together! It was too horrible
a confusion of guilt, too gross a complication of evil,
for human nature, not in a state of utter barbarism,
to be capable of! yet her judgment told her it was so.
_His_ unsettled affections, wavering with his vanity,
_Maria's_ decided attachment, and no sufficient principle
on either side, gave it possibility: Miss Crawford's
letter stampt it a fact.
What would be the consequence? Whom would it not injure?
Whose views might it not affect? Whose peace would it
not cut up for ever? Miss Crawford, herself, Edmund;
but it was dangerous, perhaps, to tread such ground.
She confined herself, or tried to confine herself, to the simple,
indubitable family misery which must envelop all, if it were
indeed a matter of certified guilt and public exposure.
The mother's sufferings, the father's; there she paused.
Julia's, Tom's, Edmund's; there a yet longer pause.
They were the two on whom it would fall most horribly.
Sir Thomas's parental solicitude and high sense of honour
and decorum, Edmund's upright principles, unsuspicious temper,
and genuine strength of feeling, made her think it
scarcely possible for them to support life and reason
under such disgrace; and it appeared to her that, as far
as this world alone was concerned, the greatest blessing
to every one of kindred with Mrs. Rushworth would be
instant annihilation.
Nothing happened the next day, or the next, to weaken
her terrors. Two posts came in, and brought no refutation,
public or private. There was no second letter to explain
away the first from Miss Crawford; there was no intelligence
from Mansfield, though it was now full time for her
to hear again from her aunt. This was an evil omen.
She had, indeed, scarcely the shadow of a hope to soothe
her mind, and was reduced to so low and wan and trembling
a condition, as no mother, not unkind, except Mrs. Price
could have overlooked, when the third day did bring the
sickening knock, and a letter was again put into her hands.
It bore the London postmark, and came from Edmund.
"Dear Fanny,--You know our present wretchedness.
May God support you under your share! We have been here
two days, but there is nothing to be done. They cannot
be traced. You may not have heard of the last blow--
Julia's elopement; she is gone to Scotland with Yates.
She left London a few hours before we entered it.
At any other time this would have been felt dreadfully.
Now it seems nothing; yet it is an heavy aggravation.
My father is not overpowered. More cannot be hoped.
He is still able to think and act; and I write,
by his desire, to propose your returning home.
He is anxious to get you there for my mother's sake.
I shall be at Portsmouth the morning after you receive this,
and hope to find you ready to set off for Mansfield.
My father wishes you to invite Susan to go with you for a
few months. Settle it as you like; say what is proper;
I am sure you will feel such an instance of his
kindness at such a moment! Do justice to his meaning,
however I may confuse it. You may imagine something
of my present state. There is no end of the evil let
loose upon us. You will see me early by the mail.--
Yours, etc."
Never had Fanny more wanted a cordial. Never had she felt
such a one as this letter contained. To-morrow! to leave
Portsmouth to-morrow! She was, she felt she was, in the
greatest danger of being exquisitely happy, while so many
were miserable. The evil which brought such good to her!
She dreaded lest she should learn to be insensible of it.
To be going so soon, sent for so kindly, sent for as
a comfort, and with leave to take Susan, was altogether
such a combination of blessings as set her heart in
a glow, and for a time seemed to distance every pain,
and make her incapable of suitably sharing the distress
even of those whose distress she thought of most.
Julia's elopement could affect her comparatively but little;
she was amazed and shocked; but it could not occupy her,
could not dwell on her mind. She was obliged to call
herself to think of it, and acknowledge it to be terrible
and grievous, or it was escaping her, in the midst of all
the agitating pressing joyful cares attending this summons
to herself.
There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment,
for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy,
may dispel melancholy, and her occupations were hopeful.
She had so much to do, that not even the horrible
story of Mrs. Rushworth--now fixed to the last point
of certainty could affect her as it had done before.
She had not time to be miserable. Within twenty-four
hours she was hoping to be gone; her father and mother
must be spoken to, Susan prepared, everything got ready.
Business followed business; the day was hardly long enough.
The happiness she was imparting, too, happiness very little
alloyed by the black communication which must briefly
precede it--the joyful consent of her father and mother
to Susan's going with her--the general satisfaction with
which the going of both seemed regarded, and the ecstasy
of Susan herself, was all serving to support her spirits.
The affliction of the Bertrams was little felt in the family.
Mrs. Price talked of her poor sister for a few minutes,
but how to find anything to hold Susan's clothes,
because Rebecca took away all the boxes and spoilt them,
was much more in her thoughts: and as for Susan,
now unexpectedly gratified in the first wish of her heart,
and knowing nothing personally of those who had sinned,
or of those who were sorrowing--if she could help rejoicing
from beginning to end, it was as much as ought to be expected
from human virtue at fourteen.
As nothing was really left for the decision of Mrs. Price,
or the good offices of Rebecca, everything was rationally
and duly accomplished, and the girls were ready for
the morrow. The advantage of much sleep to prepare
them for their journey was impossible. The cousin
who was travelling towards them could hardly have less
than visited their agitated spirits--one all happiness,
the other all varying and indescribable perturbation.
By eight in the morning Edmund was in the house. The girls
heard his entrance from above, and Fanny went down.
The idea of immediately seeing him, with the knowledge
of what he must be suffering, brought back all her own
first feelings. He so near her, and in misery. She was
ready to sink as she entered the parlour. He was alone,
and met her instantly; and she found herself pressed
to his heart with only these words, just articulate,
"My Fanny, my only sister; my only comfort now!"
She could say nothing; nor for some minutes could he
say more.
He turned away to recover himself, and when he spoke again,
though his voice still faltered, his manner shewed
the wish of self-command, and the resolution of avoiding
any farther allusion. "Have you breakfasted? When shall
you be ready? Does Susan go?" were questions following
each other rapidly. His great object was to be off
as soon as possible. When Mansfield was considered,
time was precious; and the state of his own mind made
him find relief only in motion. It was settled that he
should order the carriage to the door in half an hour.
Fanny answered for their having breakfasted and being quite
ready in half an hour. He had already ate, and declined
staying for their meal. He would walk round the ramparts,
and join them with the carriage. He was gone again;
glad to get away even from Fanny.
He looked very ill; evidently suffering under
violent emotions, which he was determined to suppress.
She knew it must be so, but it was terrible to her.
The carriage came; and he entered the house again at
the same moment, just in time to spend a few minutes with
the family, and be a witness--but that he saw nothing--
of the tranquil manner in which the daughters were
parted with, and just in time to prevent their sitting
down to the breakfast-table, which, by dint of much
unusual activity, was quite and completely ready as
the carriage drove from the door. Fanny's last meal
in her father's house was in character with her first:
she was dismissed from it as hospitably as she had been welcomed.
How her heart swelled with joy and gratitude as she
passed the barriers of Portsmouth, and how Susan's face
wore its broadest smiles, may be easily conceived.
Sitting forwards, however, and screened by her bonnet,
those smiles were unseen.
The journey was likely to be a silent one. Edmund's deep
sighs often reached Fanny. Had he been alone with her,
his heart must have opened in spite of every resolution;
but Susan's presence drove him quite into himself, and his
attempts to talk on indifferent subjects could never be
long supported.
Fanny watched him with never-failing solicitude,
and sometimes catching his eye, revived an affectionate smile,
which comforted her; but the first day's journey passed
without her hearing a word from him on the subjects
that were weighing him down. The next morning produced
a little more. Just before their setting out from Oxford,
while Susan was stationed at a window, in eager observation
of the departure of a large family from the inn,
the other two were standing by the fire; and Edmund,
particularly struck by the alteration in Fanny's looks,
and from his ignorance of the daily evils of her
father's house, attributing an undue share of the change,
attributing _all_ to the recent event, took her hand,
and said in a low, but very expressive tone, "No wonder--
you must feel it--you must suffer. How a man who had
once loved, could desert you! But _yours_--your regard
was new compared with----Fanny, think of _me_!"
The first division of their journey occupied a long day,
and brought them, almost knocked up, to Oxford;
but the second was over at a much earlier hour.
They were in the environs of Mansfield long before
the usual dinner-time, and as they approached the
beloved place, the hearts of both sisters sank a little.
Fanny began to dread the meeting with her aunts and Tom,
under so dreadful a humiliation; and Susan to feel with
some anxiety, that all her best manners, all her lately
acquired knowledge of what was practised here, was on
the point of being called into action. Visions of good
and ill breeding, of old vulgarisms and new gentilities,
were before her; and she was meditating much upon
silver forks, napkins, and finger-glasses. Fanny had
been everywhere awake to the difference of the country
since February; but when they entered the Park her
perceptions and her pleasures were of the keenest sort.
It was three months, full three months, since her
quitting it, and the change was from winter to summer.
Her eye fell everywhere on lawns and plantations of the
freshest green; and the trees, though not fully clothed,
were in that delightful state when farther beauty is known
to be at hand, and when, while much is actually given
to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination.
Her enjoyment, however, was for herself alone. Edmund could
not share it. She looked at him, but he was leaning back,
sunk in a deeper gloom than ever, and with eyes closed,
as if the view of cheerfulness oppressed him, and the
lovely scenes of home must be shut out.
It made her melancholy again; and the knowledge of what must
be enduring there, invested even the house, modern, airy,
and well situated as it was, with a melancholy aspect.
By one of the suffering party within they were expected
with such impatience as she had never known before.
Fanny had scarcely passed the solemn-looking servants,
when Lady Bertram came from the drawing-room to meet her;
came with no indolent step; and falling on her neck, said,
"Dear Fanny! now I shall be comfortable.
CHAPTER XLVII
It had been a miserable party, each of the three believing
themselves most miserable. Mrs. Norris, however, as most
attached to Maria, was really the greatest sufferer.
Maria was her first favourite, the dearest of all;
the match had been her own contriving, as she had been
wont with such pride of heart to feel and say, and this
conclusion of it almost overpowered her.
She was an altered creature, quieted, stupefied, indifferent to
everything that passed. The being left with her sister
and nephew, and all the house under her care, had been
an advantage entirely thrown away; she had been unable
to direct or dictate, or even fancy herself useful.
When really touched by affliction, her active powers
had been all benumbed; and neither Lady Bertram nor Tom
had received from her the smallest support or attempt
at support. She had done no more for them than they
had done for each other. They had been all solitary,
helpless, and forlorn alike; and now the arrival of the
others only established her superiority in wretchedness.
Her companions were relieved, but there was no good
for _her_. Edmund was almost as welcome to his brother
as Fanny to her aunt; but Mrs. Norris, instead of having
comfort from either, was but the more irritated by the
sight of the person whom, in the blindness of her anger,
she could have charged as the daemon of the piece.
Had Fanny accepted Mr. Crawford this could not have happened.
Susan too was a grievance. She had not spirits to notice
her in more than a few repulsive looks, but she felt
her as a spy, and an intruder, and an indigent niece,
and everything most odious. By her other aunt, Susan was
received with quiet kindness. Lady Bertram could not
give her much time, or many words, but she felt her,
as Fanny's sister, to have a claim at Mansfield,
and was ready to kiss and like her; and Susan was more
than satisfied, for she came perfectly aware that nothing
but ill-humour was to be expected from aunt Norris;
and was so provided with happiness, so strong in that
best of blessings, an escape from many certain evils,
that she could have stood against a great deal more
indifference than she met with from the others.
She was now left a good deal to herself, to get acquainted
with the house and grounds as she could, and spent her
days very happily in so doing, while those who might
otherwise have attended to her were shut up, or wholly
occupied each with the person quite dependent on them,
at this time, for everything like comfort; Edmund trying
to bury his own feelings in exertions for the relief
of his brother's, and Fanny devoted to her aunt Bertram,
returning to every former office with more than former zeal,
and thinking she could never do enough for one who seemed
so much to want her.
To talk over the dreadful business with Fanny, talk and lament,
was all Lady Bertram's consolation. To be listened to and
borne with, and hear the voice of kindness and sympathy
in return, was everything that could be done for her.
To be otherwise comforted was out of the question.
The case admitted of no comfort. Lady Bertram did not
think deeply, but, guided by Sir Thomas, she thought
justly on all important points; and she saw, therefore,
in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither
endeavoured herself, nor required Fanny to advise her,
to think little of guilt and infamy.
Her affections were not acute, nor was her mind tenacious.
After a time, Fanny found it not impossible to direct
her thoughts to other subjects, and revive some interest
in the usual occupations; but whenever Lady Bertram _was_
fixed on the event, she could see it only in one light,
as comprehending the loss of a daughter, and a disgrace
never to be wiped off.
Fanny learnt from her all the particulars which had
yet transpired. Her aunt was no very methodical narrator,
but with the help of some letters to and from Sir Thomas,
and what she already knew herself, and could reasonably
combine, she was soon able to understand quite as much
as she wished of the circumstances attending the story.
Mrs. Rushworth had gone, for the Easter holidays,
to Twickenham, with a family whom she had just grown
intimate with: a family of lively, agreeable manners,
and probably of morals and discretion to suit, for to _their_
house Mr. Crawford had constant access at all times.
His having been in the same neighbourhood Fanny already knew.
Mr. Rushworth had been gone at this time to Bath, to pass
a few days with his mother, and bring her back to town,
and Maria was with these friends without any restraint,
without even Julia; for Julia had removed from Wimpole Street
two or three weeks before, on a visit to some relations
of Sir Thomas; a removal which her father and mother were
now disposed to attribute to some view of convenience
on Mr. Yates's account. Very soon after the Rushworths'
return to Wimpole Street, Sir Thomas had received a
letter from an old and most particular friend in London,
who hearing and witnessing a good deal to alarm him
in that quarter, wrote to recommend Sir Thomas's coming
to London himself, and using his influence with his
daughter to put an end to the intimacy which was already
exposing her to unpleasant remarks, and evidently making
Mr. Rushworth uneasy.
Sir Thomas was preparing to act upon this letter, without
communicating its contents to any creature at Mansfield,
when it was followed by another, sent express from the
same friend, to break to him the almost desperate situation
in which affairs then stood with the young people.
Mrs. Rushworth had left her husband's house: Mr. Rushworth
had been in great anger and distress to _him_ (Mr. Harding)
for his advice; Mr. Harding feared there had been _at_
_least_ very flagrant indiscretion. The maidservant
of Mrs. Rushworth, senior, threatened alarmingly. He was
doing all in his power to quiet everything, with the hope
of Mrs. Rushworth's return, but was so much counteracted
in Wimpole Street by the influence of Mr. Rushworth's mother,
that the worst consequences might be apprehended.
This dreadful communication could not be kept from the rest
of the family. Sir Thomas set off, Edmund would go with him,
and the others had been left in a state of wretchedness,
inferior only to what followed the receipt of the next
letters from London. Everything was by that time public
beyond a hope. The servant of Mrs. Rushworth, the mother,
had exposure in her power, and supported by her mistress,
was not to be silenced. The two ladies, even in the short
time they had been together, had disagreed; and the bitterness
of the elder against her daughter-in-law might perhaps arise
almost as much from the personal disrespect with which
she had herself been treated as from sensibility for her son.
However that might be, she was unmanageable. But had she
been less obstinate, or of less weight with her son,
who was always guided by the last speaker, by the person
who could get hold of and shut him up, the case would
still have been hopeless, for Mrs. Rushworth did not
appear again, and there was every reason to conclude
her to be concealed somewhere with Mr. Crawford,
who had quitted his uncle's house, as for a journey,
on the very day of her absenting herself.
Sir Thomas, however, remained yet a little longer in town,
in the hope of discovering and snatching her from farther vice,
though all was lost on the side of character.
_His_ present state Fanny could hardly bear to think of.
There was but one of his children who was not at this time
a source of misery to him. Tom's complaints had been
greatly heightened by the shock of his sister's conduct,
and his recovery so much thrown back by it, that even
Lady Bertram had been struck by the difference, and all
her alarms were regularly sent off to her husband;
and Julia's elopement, the additional blow which had met
him on his arrival in London, though its force had been
deadened at the moment, must, she knew, be sorely felt.
She saw that it was. His letters expressed how much he
deplored it. Under any circumstances it would have been
an unwelcome alliance; but to have it so clandestinely
formed, and such a period chosen for its completion,
placed Julia's feelings in a most unfavourable light,
and severely aggravated the folly of her choice.
He called it a bad thing, done in the worst manner,
and at the worst time; and though Julia was yet as more
pardonable than Maria as folly than vice, he could not
but regard the step she had taken as opening the worst
probabilities of a conclusion hereafter like her sister's.
Such was his opinion of the set into which she had
thrown herself.
Fanny felt for him most acutely. He could have no comfort
but in Edmund. Every other child must be racking his heart.
His displeasure against herself she trusted, reasoning
differently from Mrs. Norris, would now be done away.
_She_ should be justified. Mr. Crawford would have
fully acquitted her conduct in refusing him; but this,
though most material to herself, would be poor consolation
to Sir Thomas. Her uncle's displeasure was terrible to her;
but what could her justification or her gratitude and
attachment do for him? His stay must be on Edmund alone.
She was mistaken, however, in supposing that Edmund gave
his father no present pain. It was of a much less poignant
nature than what the others excited; but Sir Thomas
was considering his happiness as very deeply involved
in the offence of his sister and friend; cut off by it,
as he must be, from the woman whom he had been pursuing
with undoubted attachment and strong probability of success;
and who, in everything but this despicable brother,
would have been so eligible a connexion. He was aware
of what Edmund must be suffering on his own behalf,
in addition to all the rest, when they were in town:
he had seen or conjectured his feelings; and, having reason
to think that one interview with Miss Crawford had taken place,
from which Edmund derived only increased distress, had been
as anxious on that account as on others to get him out of town,
and had engaged him in taking Fanny home to her aunt,
with a view to his relief and benefit, no less than theirs.
Fanny was not in the secret of her uncle's feelings,
Sir Thomas not in the secret of Miss Crawford's character.
Had he been privy to her conversation with his son, he would
not have wished her to belong to him, though her twenty
thousand pounds had been forty.
That Edmund must be for ever divided from Miss Crawford did
not admit of a doubt with Fanny; and yet, till she knew
that he felt the same, her own conviction was insufficient.
She thought he did, but she wanted to be assured of it.
If he would now speak to her with the unreserve which
had sometimes been too much for her before, it would
be most consoling; but _that_ she found was not to be.
She seldom saw him: never alone. He probably avoided
being alone with her. What was to be inferred? That his
judgment submitted to all his own peculiar and bitter share
of this family affliction, but that it was too keenly
felt to be a subject of the slightest communication.
This must be his state. He yielded, but it was with
agonies which did not admit of speech. Long, long would
it be ere Miss Crawford's name passed his lips again,
or she could hope for a renewal of such confidential
intercourse as had been.
It _was_ long. They reached Mansfield on Thursday,
and it was not till Sunday evening that Edmund began
to talk to her on the subject. Sitting with her on
Sunday evening--a wet Sunday evening--the very time of
all others when, if a friend is at hand, the heart must
be opened, and everything told; no one else in the room,
except his mother, who, after hearing an affecting sermon,
had cried herself to sleep, it was impossible not to speak;
and so, with the usual beginnings, hardly to be traced
as to what came first, and the usual declaration that
if she would listen to him for a few minutes, he should
be very brief, and certainly never tax her kindness
in the same way again; she need not fear a repetition;
it would be a subject prohibited entirely: he entered
upon the luxury of relating circumstances and sensations
of the first interest to himself, to one of whose
affectionate sympathy he was quite convinced
How Fanny listened, with what curiosity and concern,
what pain and what delight, how the agitation of his
voice was watched, and how carefully her own eyes were
fixed on any object but himself, may be imagined.
The opening was alarming. He had seen Miss Crawford.
He had been invited to see her. He had received a note
from Lady Stornaway to beg him to call; and regarding
it as what was meant to be the last, last interview
of friendship, and investing her with all the feelings
of shame and wretchedness which Crawford's sister ought
to have known, he had gone to her in such a state of mind,
so softened, so devoted, as made it for a few moments
impossible to Fanny's fears that it should be the last.
But as he proceeded in his story, these fears were over.
She had met him, he said, with a serious--certainly a serious--
even an agitated air; but before he had been able
to speak one intelligible sentence, she had introduced
the subject in a manner which he owned had shocked him.
"'I heard you were in town,' said she; 'I wanted to see you.
Let us talk over this sad business. What can equal the folly
of our two relations?' I could not answer, but I believe
my looks spoke. She felt reproved. Sometimes how quick
to feel! With a graver look and voice she then added,
'I do not mean to defend Henry at your sister's expense.'
So she began, but how she went on, Fanny, is not fit,
is hardly fit to be repeated to you. I cannot recall
all her words. I would not dwell upon them if I could.
Their substance was great anger at the _folly_ of each.
She reprobated her brother's folly in being drawn on
by a woman whom he had never cared for, to do what must
lose him the woman he adored; but still more the folly of
poor Maria, in sacrificing such a situation, plunging into
such difficulties, under the idea of being really loved
by a man who had long ago made his indifference clear.
Guess what I must have felt. To hear the woman whom--
no harsher name than folly given! So voluntarily,
so freely, so coolly to canvass it! No reluctance,
no horror, no feminine, shall I say, no modest loathings?
This is what the world does. For where, Fanny, shall we
find a woman whom nature had so richly endowed? Spoilt,
spoilt!"
After a little reflection, he went on with a sort
of desperate calmness. "I will tell you everything,
and then have done for ever. She saw it only as folly,
and that folly stamped only by exposure. The want of
common discretion, of caution: his going down to Richmond
for the whole time of her being at Twickenham; her putting
herself in the power of a servant; it was the detection,
in short--oh, Fanny! it was the detection, not the offence,
which she reprobated. It was the imprudence which had
brought things to extremity, and obliged her brother
to give up every dearer plan in order to fly with her."
He stopt. "And what," said Fanny (believing herself
required to speak), "what could you say?"
"Nothing, nothing to be understood. I was like a man stunned.
She went on, began to talk of you; yes, then she began
to talk of you, regretting, as well she might, the loss
of such a--. There she spoke very rationally. But she
has always done justice to you. 'He has thrown away,'
said she, 'such a woman as he will never see again.
She would have fixed him; she would have made him happy
for ever.' My dearest Fanny, I am giving you, I hope,
more pleasure than pain by this retrospect of what might
have been--but what never can be now. You do not wish me
to be silent? If you do, give me but a look, a word, and I
have done."
No look or word was given.
"Thank God," said he. "We were all disposed to wonder,
but it seems to have been the merciful appointment
of Providence that the heart which knew no guile
should not suffer. She spoke of you with high praise
and warm affection; yet, even here, there was alloy,
a dash of evil; for in the midst of it she could exclaim,
'Why would not she have him? It is all her fault.
Simple girl! I shall never forgive her. Had she accepted
him as she ought, they might now have been on the point
of marriage, and Henry would have been too happy and too
busy to want any other object. He would have taken
no pains to be on terms with Mrs. Rushworth again.
It would have all ended in a regular standing flirtation,
in yearly meetings at Sotherton and Everingham.' Could you
have believed it possible? But the charm is broken.
My eyes are opened."
"Cruel!" said Fanny, "quite cruel. At such a moment to
give way to gaiety, to speak with lightness, and to you!
Absolute cruelty."
"Cruelty, do you call it? We differ there. No, hers is
not a cruel nature. I do not consider her as meaning
to wound my feelings. The evil lies yet deeper:
in her total ignorance, unsuspiciousness of there being
such feelings; in a perversion of mind which made it
natural to her to treat the subject as she did. She was
speaking only as she had been used to hear others speak,
as she imagined everybody else would speak. Hers are
not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give
unnecessary pain to any one, and though I may deceive myself,
I cannot but think that for me, for my feelings, she would--
Hers are faults of principle, Fanny; of blunted delicacy
and a corrupted, vitiated mind. Perhaps it is best for me,
since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however.
Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of
losing her, rather than have to think of her as I do.
I told her so."
"Did you?"
"Yes; when I left her I told her so."
"How long were you together?"
"Five-and-twenty minutes. Well, she went on to say that
what remained now to be done was to bring about a marriage
between them. She spoke of it, Fanny, with a steadier
voice than I can." He was obliged to pause more than once
as he continued. "'We must persuade Henry to marry her,'
said she; 'and what with honour, and the certainty of having
shut himself out for ever from Fanny, I do not despair
of it. Fanny he must give up. I do not think that even
_he_ could now hope to succeed with one of her stamp,
and therefore I hope we may find no insuperable difficulty.
My influence, which is not small shall all go that way;
and when once married, and properly supported by her
own family, people of respectability as they are, she may
recover her footing in society to a certain degree.
In some circles, we know, she would never be admitted,
but with good dinners, and large parties, there will
always be those who will be glad of her acquaintance;
and there is, undoubtedly, more liberality and candour
on those points than formerly. What I advise is,
that your father be quiet. Do not let him injure his own
cause by interference. Persuade him to let things take
their course. If by any officious exertions of his,
she is induced to leave Henry's protection, there will be
much less chance of his marrying her than if she remain
with him. I know how he is likely to be influenced.
Let Sir Thomas trust to his honour and compassion, and it
may all end well; but if he get his daughter away, it will
be destroying the chief hold.'"
After repeating this, Edmund was so much affected that Fanny,
watching him with silent, but most tender concern,
was almost sorry that the subject had been entered
on at all. It was long before he could speak again.
At last, "Now, Fanny," said he, "I shall soon have done.
I have told you the substance of all that she said.
As soon as I could speak, I replied that I had not
supposed it possible, coming in such a state of mind
into that house as I had done, that anything could
occur to make me suffer more, but that she had been
inflicting deeper wounds in almost every sentence.
That though I had, in the course of our acquaintance,
been often sensible of some difference in our opinions,
on points, too, of some moment, it had not entered my
imagination to conceive the difference could be such as she
had now proved it. That the manner in which she treated
the dreadful crime committed by her brother and my sister
(with whom lay the greater seduction I pretended not to say),
but the manner in which she spoke of the crime itself,
giving it every reproach but the right; considering its ill
consequences only as they were to be braved or overborne
by a defiance of decency and impudence in wrong; and last
of all, and above all, recommending to us a compliance,
a compromise, an acquiescence in the continuance of the sin,
on the chance of a marriage which, thinking as I now thought
of her brother, should rather be prevented than sought;
all this together most grievously convinced me that I had
never understood her before, and that, as far as related
to mind, it had been the creature of my own imagination,
not Miss Crawford, that I had been too apt to dwell on
for many months past. That, perhaps, it was best for me;
I had less to regret in sacrificing a friendship, feelings,
hopes which must, at any rate, have been torn from me now.
And yet, that I must and would confess that, could I
have restored her to what she had appeared to me before,
I would infinitely prefer any increase of the pain
of parting, for the sake of carrying with me the right of
tenderness and esteem. This is what I said, the purport
of it; but, as you may imagine, not spoken so collectedly
or methodically as I have repeated it to you. She was
astonished, exceedingly astonished--more than astonished.
I saw her change countenance. She turned extremely red.
I imagined I saw a mixture of many feelings: a great,
though short struggle; half a wish of yielding to truths,
half a sense of shame, but habit, habit carried it.
She would have laughed if she could. It was a sort of laugh,
as she answered, 'A pretty good lecture, upon my word.
Was it part of your last sermon? At this rate you will
soon reform everybody at Mansfield and Thornton Lacey;
and when I hear of you next, it may be as a celebrated preacher
in some great society of Methodists, or as a missionary
into foreign parts.' She tried to speak carelessly,
but she was not so careless as she wanted to appear.
I only said in reply, that from my heart I wished her well,
and earnestly hoped that she might soon learn to think
more justly, and not owe the most valuable knowledge we
could any of us acquire, the knowledge of ourselves and of
our duty, to the lessons of affliction, and immediately
left the room. I had gone a few steps, Fanny, when I
heard the door open behind me. 'Mr. Bertram,' said she.
I looked back. 'Mr. Bertram,' said she, with a smile;
but it was a smile ill-suited to the conversation that
had passed, a saucy playful smile, seeming to invite
in order to subdue me; at least it appeared so to me.
I resisted; it was the impulse of the moment to resist,
and still walked on. I have since, sometimes, for a moment,
regretted that I did not go back, but I know I was right,
and such has been the end of our acquaintance. And what
an acquaintance has it been! How have I been deceived!
Equally in brother and sister deceived! I thank you for
your patience, Fanny. This has been the greatest relief,
and now we will have done."
And such was Fanny's dependence on his words, that for five
minutes she thought they _had_ done. Then, however, it all
came on again, or something very like it, and nothing
less than Lady Bertram's rousing thoroughly up could
really close such a conversation. Till that happened,
they continued to talk of Miss Crawford alone, and how she
had attached him, and how delightful nature had made her,
and how excellent she would have been, had she fallen into
good hands earlier. Fanny, now at liberty to speak openly,
felt more than justified in adding to his knowledge
of her real character, by some hint of what share his
brother's state of health might be supposed to have in
her wish for a complete reconciliation. This was not an
agreeable intimation. Nature resisted it for a while.
It would have been a vast deal pleasanter to have had
her more disinterested in her attachment; but his vanity
was not of a strength to fight long against reason.
He submitted to believe that Tom's illness had influenced her,
only reserving for himself this consoling thought,
that considering the many counteractions of opposing habits,
she had certainly been _more_ attached to him than could
have been expected, and for his sake been more near
doing right. Fanny thought exactly the same; and they were
also quite agreed in their opinion of the lasting effect,
the indelible impression, which such a disappointment
must make on his mind. Time would undoubtedly abate
somewhat of his sufferings, but still it was a sort
of thing which he never could get entirely the better of;
and as to his ever meeting with any other woman who could--
it was too impossible to be named but with indignation.
Fanny's friendship was all that he had to cling to.
CHAPTER XLVIII
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious
subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody,
not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort,
and to have done with all the rest.
My Fanny, indeed, at this very time, I have the satisfaction
of knowing, must have been happy in spite of everything.
She must have been a happy creature in spite of all that she felt,
or thought she felt, for the distress of those around her.
She had sources of delight that must force their way.
She was returned to Mansfield Park, she was useful,
she was beloved; she was safe from Mr. Crawford;
and when Sir Thomas came back she had every proof that
could be given in his then melancholy state of spirits,
of his perfect approbation and increased regard;
and happy as all this must make her, she would still have
been happy without any of it, for Edmund was no longer
the dupe of Miss Crawford.
It is true that Edmund was very far from happy himself.
He was suffering from disappointment and regret,
grieving over what was, and wishing for what could never be.
She knew it was so, and was sorry; but it was with a
sorrow so founded on satisfaction, so tending to ease,
and so much in harmony with every dearest sensation,
that there are few who might not have been glad to exchange
their greatest gaiety for it.
Sir Thomas, poor Sir Thomas, a parent, and conscious of errors
in his own conduct as a parent, was the longest to suffer.
He felt that he ought not to have allowed the marriage;
that his daughter's sentiments had been sufficiently known
to him to render him culpable in authorising it; that in so
doing he had sacrificed the right to the expedient, and been
governed by motives of selfishness and worldly wisdom.
These were reflections that required some time to soften;
but time will do almost everything; and though little
comfort arose on Mrs. Rushworth's side for the misery she
had occasioned, comfort was to be found greater than he had
supposed in his other children. Julia's match became a less
desperate business than he had considered it at first.
She was humble, and wishing to be forgiven; and Mr. Yates,
desirous of being really received into the family, was disposed
to look up to him and be guided. He was not very solid;
but there was a hope of his becoming less trifling,
of his being at least tolerably domestic and quiet;
and at any rate, there was comfort in finding his estate
rather more, and his debts much less, than he had feared,
and in being consulted and treated as the friend best
worth attending to. There was comfort also in Tom,
who gradually regained his health, without regaining the
thoughtlessness and selfishness of his previous habits.
He was the better for ever for his illness. He had suffered,
and he had learned to think: two advantages that he had
never known before; and the self-reproach arising from
the deplorable event in Wimpole Street, to which he felt
himself accessory by all the dangerous intimacy of his
unjustifiable theatre, made an impression on his mind which,
at the age of six-and-twenty, with no want of sense
or good companions, was durable in its happy effects.
He became what he ought to be: useful to his father,
steady and quiet, and not living merely for himself.
Here was comfort indeed! and quite as soon as Sir
Thomas could place dependence on such sources of good,
Edmund was contributing to his father's ease by improvement
in the only point in which he had given him pain before--
improvement in his spirits. After wandering about and
sitting under trees with Fanny all the summer evenings,
he had so well talked his mind into submission as to be
very tolerably cheerful again.
These were the circumstances and the hopes which gradually
brought their alleviation to Sir Thomas, deadening his sense
of what was lost, and in part reconciling him to himself;
though the anguish arising from the conviction of his
own errors in the education of his daughters was never
to be entirely done away.
Too late he became aware how unfavourable to the character
of any young people must be the totally opposite treatment
which Maria and Julia had been always experiencing at home,
where the excessive indulgence and flattery of their aunt
had been continually contrasted with his own severity.
He saw how ill he had judged, in expecting to counteract
what was wrong in Mrs. Norris by its reverse in himself;
clearly saw that he had but increased the evil by teaching
them to repress their spirits in his presence so as to make
their real disposition unknown to him, and sending them
for all their indulgences to a person who had been able
to attach them only by the blindness of her affection,
and the excess of her praise.
Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was,
he gradually grew to feel that it had not been the most
direful mistake in his plan of education. Something must
have been wanting _within_, or time would have worn
away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle,
active principle, had been wanting; that they had never
been properly taught to govern their inclinations and
tempers by that sense of duty which can alone suffice.
They had been instructed theoretically in their religion,
but never required to bring it into daily practice.
To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments,
the authorised object of their youth, could have had no
useful influence that way, no moral effect on the mind.
He had meant them to be good, but his cares had been directed
to the understanding and manners, not the disposition;
and of the necessity of self-denial and humility,
he feared they had never heard from any lips that could
profit them.
Bitterly did he deplore a deficiency which now he
could scarcely comprehend to have been possible.
Wretchedly did he feel, that with all the cost and care
of an anxious and expensive education, he had brought up
his daughters without their understanding their first duties,
or his being acquainted with their character and temper.
The high spirit and strong passions of Mrs. Rushworth,
especially, were made known to him only in their sad result.
She was not to be prevailed on to leave Mr. Crawford.
She hoped to marry him, and they continued together
till she was obliged to be convinced that such hope
was vain, and till the disappointment and wretchedness
arising from the conviction rendered her temper so bad,
and her feelings for him so like hatred, as to make them
for a while each other's punishment, and then induce
a voluntary separation.
She had lived with him to be reproached as the ruin
of all his happiness in Fanny, and carried away no better
consolation in leaving him than that she _had_ divided them.
What can exceed the misery of such a mind in such a situation?
Mr. Rushworth had no difficulty in procuring a divorce;
and so ended a marriage contracted under such circumstances
as to make any better end the effect of good luck not to
be reckoned on. She had despised him, and loved another;
and he had been very much aware that it was so.
The indignities of stupidity, and the disappointments
of selfish passion, can excite little pity. His punishment
followed his conduct, as did a deeper punishment the
deeper guilt of his wife. _He_ was released from the
engagement to be mortified and unhappy, till some other
pretty girl could attract him into matrimony again,
and he might set forward on a second, and, it is to
be hoped, more prosperous trial of the state: if duped,
to be duped at least with good humour and good luck;
while she must withdraw with infinitely stronger feelings
to a retirement and reproach which could allow no second
spring of hope or character.
Where she could be placed became a subject of most
melancholy and momentous consultation. Mrs. Norris,
whose attachment seemed to augment with the demerits
of her niece, would have had her received at home and
countenanced by them all. Sir Thomas would not hear of it;
and Mrs. Norris's anger against Fanny was so much the greater,
from considering _her_ residence there as the motive.
She persisted in placing his scruples to _her_ account,
though Sir Thomas very solemnly assured her that,
had there been no young woman in question, had there
been no young person of either sex belonging to him,
to be endangered by the society or hurt by the character
of Mrs. Rushworth, he would never have offered so great an
insult to the neighbourhood as to expect it to notice her.
As a daughter, he hoped a penitent one, she should be
protected by him, and secured in every comfort, and supported
by every encouragement to do right, which their relative
situations admitted; but farther than _that_ he could not go.
Maria had destroyed her own character, and he would not,
by a vain attempt to restore what never could be restored,
by affording his sanction to vice, or in seeking to lessen
its disgrace, be anywise accessory to introducing such
misery in another man's family as he had known himself.
It ended in Mrs. Norris's resolving to quit Mansfield
and devote herself to her unfortunate Maria, and in an
establishment being formed for them in another country,
remote and private, where, shut up together with little society,
on one side no affection, on the other no judgment,
it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became
their mutual punishment.
Mrs. Norris's removal from Mansfield was the great supplementary
comfort of Sir Thomas's life. His opinion of her had
been sinking from the day of his return from Antigua:
in every transaction together from that period, in their
daily intercourse, in business, or in chat, she had been
regularly losing ground in his esteem, and convincing
him that either time had done her much disservice,
or that he had considerably over-rated her sense,
and wonderfully borne with her manners before. He had
felt her as an hourly evil, which was so much the worse,
as there seemed no chance of its ceasing but with life;
she seemed a part of himself that must be borne for ever.
To be relieved from her, therefore, was so great a
felicity that, had she not left bitter remembrances
behind her, there might have been danger of his learning
almost to approve the evil which produced such a good.
She was regretted by no one at Mansfield. She had never
been able to attach even those she loved best; and since
Mrs. Rushworth's elopement, her temper had been in a state
of such irritation as to make her everywhere tormenting.
Not even Fanny had tears for aunt Norris, not even when
she was gone for ever.
That Julia escaped better than Maria was owing, in some measure,
to a favourable difference of disposition and circumstance,
but in a greater to her having been less the darling
of that very aunt, less flattered and less spoilt.
Her beauty and acquirements had held but a second place.
She had been always used to think herself a little inferior
to Maria. Her temper was naturally the easiest of the two;
her feelings, though quick, were more controllable,
and education had not given her so very hurtful a degree
of self-consequence.
She had submitted the best to the disappointment
in Henry Crawford. After the first bitterness of the
conviction of being slighted was over, she had been
tolerably soon in a fair way of not thinking of him again;
and when the acquaintance was renewed in town,
and Mr. Rushworth's house became Crawford's object,
she had had the merit of withdrawing herself from it,
and of chusing that time to pay a visit to her other friends,
in order to secure herself from being again too much attracted.
This had been her motive in going to her cousin's.
Mr. Yates's convenience had had nothing to do with it.
She had been allowing his attentions some time,
but with very little idea of ever accepting him;
and had not her sister's conduct burst forth as it did,
and her increased dread of her father and of home,
on that event, imagining its certain consequence to herself
would be greater severity and restraint, made her hastily
resolve on avoiding such immediate horrors at all risks,
it is probable that Mr. Yates would never have succeeded.
She had not eloped with any worse feelings than those
of selfish alarm. It had appeared to her the only
thing to be done. Maria's guilt had induced Julia's folly.
Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad
domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded
vanity a little too long. Once it had, by an opening
undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness.
Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one
amiable woman's affections, could he have found sufficient
exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself
into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would
have been every probability of success and felicity for him.
His affection had already done something. Her influence
over him had already given him some influence over her.
Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt
that more would have been obtained, especially when
that marriage had taken place, which would have given
him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her
first inclination, and brought them very often together.
Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have
been his reward, and a reward very voluntarily bestowed,
within a reasonable period from Edmund's marrying Mary.
Had he done as he intended, and as he knew he ought,
by going down to Everingham after his return from Portsmouth,
he might have been deciding his own happy destiny.
But he was pressed to stay for Mrs. Fraser's party;
his staying was made of flattering consequence, and he
was to meet Mrs. Rushworth there. Curiosity and vanity
were both engaged, and the temptation of immediate pleasure
was too strong for a mind unused to make any sacrifice
to right: he resolved to defer his Norfolk journey,
resolved that writing should answer the purpose of it,
or that its purpose was unimportant, and staid. He saw
Mrs. Rushworth, was received by her with a coldness which
ought to have been repulsive, and have established apparent
indifference between them for ever; but he was mortified,
he could not bear to be thrown off by the woman whose
smiles had been so wholly at his command: he must exert
himself to subdue so proud a display of resentment; it was
anger on Fanny's account; he must get the better of it,
and make Mrs. Rushworth Maria Bertram again in her treatment
of himself.
In this spirit he began the attack, and by animated
perseverance had soon re-established the sort of familiar
intercourse, of gallantry, of flirtation, which bounded
his views; but in triumphing over the discretion which,
though beginning in anger, might have saved them both,
he had put himself in the power of feelings on her side
more strong than he had supposed. She loved him;
there was no withdrawing attentions avowedly dear to her.
He was entangled by his own vanity, with as little
excuse of love as possible, and without the smallest
inconstancy of mind towards her cousin. To keep Fanny
and the Bertrams from a knowledge of what was passing
became his first object. Secrecy could not have been
more desirable for Mrs. Rushworth's credit than he
felt it for his own. When he returned from Richmond,
he would have been glad to see Mrs. Rushworth no more.
All that followed was the result of her imprudence;
and he went off with her at last, because he could
not help it, regretting Fanny even at the moment,
but regretting her infinitely more when all the bustle of
the intrigue was over, and a very few months had taught him,
by the force of contrast, to place a yet higher value
on the sweetness of her temper, the purity of her mind,
and the excellence of her principles.
That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace,
should in a just measure attend _his_ share of the offence is,
we know, not one of the barriers which society gives
to virtue. In this world the penalty is less equal than
could be wished; but without presuming to look forward
to a juster appointment hereafter, we may fairly consider
a man of sense, like Henry Crawford, to be providing
for himself no small portion of vexation and regret:
vexation that must rise sometimes to self-reproach, and
regret to wretchedness, in having so requited hospitality,
so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable,
and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom
he had rationally as well as passionately loved.
After what had passed to wound and alienate the two families,
the continuance of the Bertrams and Grants in such
close neighbourhood would have been most distressing;
but the absence of the latter, for some months purposely
lengthened, ended very fortunately in the necessity,
or at least the practicability, of a permanent removal.
Dr. Grant, through an interest on which he had almost
ceased to form hopes, succeeded to a stall in Westminster,
which, as affording an occasion for leaving Mansfield,
an excuse for residence in London, and an increase of
income to answer the expenses of the change, was highly
acceptable to those who went and those who staid.
Mrs. Grant, with a temper to love and be loved, must have
gone with some regret from the scenes and people she
had been used to; but the same happiness of disposition
must in any place, and any society, secure her a great
deal to enjoy, and she had again a home to offer Mary;
and Mary had had enough of her own friends, enough of vanity,
ambition, love, and disappointment in the course of the
last half-year, to be in need of the true kindness of her
sister's heart, and the rational tranquillity of her ways.
They lived together; and when Dr. Grant had brought
on apoplexy and death, by three great institutionary
dinners in one week, they still lived together; for Mary,
though perfectly resolved against ever attaching herself
to a younger brother again, was long in finding among
the dashing representatives, or idle heir-apparents,
who were at the command of her beauty, and her 20,000,
any one who could satisfy the better taste she had acquired
at Mansfield, whose character and manners could authorise
a hope of the domestic happiness she had there learned
to estimate, or put Edmund Bertram sufficiently out of her head.
Edmund had greatly the advantage of her in this respect.
He had not to wait and wish with vacant affections for an
object worthy to succeed her in them. Scarcely had he
done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny
how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such
another woman, before it began to strike him whether
a very different kind of woman might not do just as well,
or a great deal better: whether Fanny herself were not
growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles
and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been;
and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful
undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly
regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.
I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion,
that every one may be at liberty to fix their own,
aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the
transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as
to time in different people. I only entreat everybody
to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite
natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier,
Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became
as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.
With such a regard for her, indeed, as his had long been,
a regard founded on the most endearing claims of innocence
and helplessness, and completed by every recommendation
of growing worth, what could be more natural than
the change? Loving, guiding, protecting her, as he
had been doing ever since her being ten years old,
her mind in so great a degree formed by his care,
and her comfort depending on his kindness, an object to him
of such close and peculiar interest, dearer by all his
own importance with her than any one else at Mansfield,
what was there now to add, but that he should learn
to prefer soft light eyes to sparkling dark ones.
And being always with her, and always talking confidentially,
and his feelings exactly in that favourable state
which a recent disappointment gives, those soft light
eyes could not be very long in obtaining the pre-eminence.
Having once set out, and felt that he had done so on
this road to happiness, there was nothing on the side
of prudence to stop him or make his progress slow;
no doubts of her deserving, no fears of opposition of taste,
no need of drawing new hopes of happiness from dissimilarity
of temper. Her mind, disposition, opinions, and habits
wanted no half-concealment, no self-deception on the present,
no reliance on future improvement. Even in the midst
of his late infatuation, he had acknowledged Fanny's
mental superiority. What must be his sense of it now,
therefore? She was of course only too good for him;
but as nobody minds having what is too good for them,
he was very steadily earnest in the pursuit of the blessing,
and it was not possible that encouragement from her should
be long wanting. Timid, anxious, doubting as she was,
it was still impossible that such tenderness as hers
should not, at times, hold out the strongest hope of success,
though it remained for a later period to tell him the whole
delightful and astonishing truth. His happiness in knowing
himself to have been so long the beloved of such a heart,
must have been great enough to warrant any strength of
language in which he could clothe it to her or to himself;
it must have been a delightful happiness. But there
was happiness elsewhere which no description can reach.
Let no one presume to give the feelings of a young woman
on receiving the assurance of that affection of which
she has scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope.
Their own inclinations ascertained, there were no
difficulties behind, no drawback of poverty or parent.
It was a match which Sir Thomas's wishes had even forestalled.
Sick of ambitious and mercenary connexions, prizing more
and more the sterling good of principle and temper,
and chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities
all that remained to him of domestic felicity, he had
pondered with genuine satisfaction on the more than
possibility of the two young friends finding their natural
consolation in each other for all that had occurred
of disappointment to either; and the joyful consent
which met Edmund's application, the high sense of having
realised a great acquisition in the promise of Fanny
for a daughter, formed just such a contrast with his
early opinion on the subject when the poor little girl's
coming had been first agitated, as time is for ever
producing between the plans and decisions of mortals,
for their own instruction, and their neighbours' entertainment.
Fanny was indeed the daughter that he wanted. His charitable
kindness had been rearing a prime comfort for himself.
His liberality had a rich repayment, and the general
goodness of his intentions by her deserved it. He might
have made her childhood happier; but it had been an error
of judgment only which had given him the appearance
of harshness, and deprived him of her early love;
and now, on really knowing each other, their mutual
attachment became very strong. After settling her at
Thornton Lacey with every kind attention to her comfort,
the object of almost every day was to see her there,
or to get her away from it.
Selfishly dear as she had long been to Lady Bertram,
she could not be parted with willingly by _her_.
No happiness of son or niece could make her wish
the marriage. But it was possible to part with her,
because Susan remained to supply her place.
Susan became the stationary niece, delighted to be so;
and equally well adapted for it by a readiness of mind,
and an inclination for usefulness, as Fanny had been
by sweetness of temper, and strong feelings of gratitude.
Susan could never be spared. First as a comfort to Fanny,
then as an auxiliary, and last as her substitute,
she was established at Mansfield, with every appearance
of equal permanency. Her more fearless disposition
and happier nerves made everything easy to her there.
With quickness in understanding the tempers of those she
had to deal with, and no natural timidity to restrain
any consequent wishes, she was soon welcome and useful
to all; and after Fanny's removal succeeded so naturally
to her influence over the hourly comfort of her aunt,
as gradually to become, perhaps, the most beloved of the two.
In _her_ usefulness, in Fanny's excellence, in William's
continued good conduct and rising fame, and in the general
well-doing and success of the other members of the family,
all assisting to advance each other, and doing credit
to his countenance and aid, Sir Thomas saw repeated,
and for ever repeated, reason to rejoice in what he had
done for them all, and acknowledge the advantages of early
hardship and discipline, and the consciousness of being born
to struggle and endure.
With so much true merit and true love, and no want of
fortune and friends, the happiness of the married cousins
must appear as secure as earthly happiness can be.
Equally formed for domestic life, and attached to
country pleasures, their home was the home of affection
and comfort; and to complete the picture of good,
the acquisition of Mansfield living, by the death of
Dr. Grant, occurred just after they had been married long
enough to begin to want an increase of income, and feel
their distance from the paternal abode an inconvenience.
On that event they removed to Mansfield; and the Parsonage
there, which, under each of its two former owners, Fanny had
never been able to approach but with some painful sensation
of restraint or alarm, soon grew as dear to her heart,
and as thoroughly perfect in her eyes, as everything else
within the view and patronage of Mansfield Park had long been.