It was sad to Fanny to lose all the
pleasures
of spring.
Austen - Mansfield Park
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.
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.
