 CHAPTER XIV of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 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 won't 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 an 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 pass your name 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 by, his absence may sufficiently account for any remissness of his sisters 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?' desper me on. At last, after various attempts at meeting, I have seen your cousins, dear Julia and dear 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 used to think her wanting and 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 twenty-eighth. Then she will be in beauty, for she will open one of the best houses in Wimpoll Street. I was in it two years ago, when it was Lady LaCelle'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 penny worth for her penny. Henry could not have afforded her such a house. I hope she will recollect it and be satisfied, as well 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 Vildenheim'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 rants were but equal to his rants. Your cousin Edmund moves slowly, detained perchance by parish duties. There may be some old woman at Thornton Lacy to be converted. I am unwilling to fancy myself neglected for a young one. A due, my dear Fanny. This is a long letter from London. Write me a pretty one, 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 is 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 course, 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 piano forte nor wore fine polices, 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 Betsy 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 forever 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 knew as anything like an office of authority was to Fanny knew as it was to imagine herself capable of guiding or informing anyone, 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 forever on the sore subject of the silver knife, canvassed as it now was continually, and the riches which she was in possession herself, her uncle having given her ten pounds 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 unpracticed 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 Betsy 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, Betsy handsomely declaring that now she had got one so much prettier herself she should never want that again, and no approach 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 showed 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 tranquility 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 to sound to be resisted by a good understanding, and given so mildly and considerably as to not 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 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 aside 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 appropriate persona, amazed at her own doings in every way, to be a renter, a chooser of books, and to be having anyone'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. Wither 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. End of Chapter 40 Chapter 41 of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. 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 had 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 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 re-seated, the tears 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 accountants 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 she 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 become 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 it 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 Frasiers. Fanny listened collectively, 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. Just 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 had 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 that they had Samarons 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 stopped, and, un-gentlemanlike 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 and 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. and be the consequence would it might, Fanny's immediate feelings were infinitely soothed. The conclusion of the two gentlemen's abilities 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 misprices 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 further directly, without the smallest consideration for his daughter's 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 dekkers 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, then, 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 stalks 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. Work was what he mostly had 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, 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 dear 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 and 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, Southerton, Thornton-Lacy. He continued. What a society will be comprised in those houses. And at Mikkelmus perhaps a fourth may be added, some small hunting-box in the vicinity of everything so dear. For as to any partnership in Thornton-Lacy, as Edmund Bertram once good-humidly 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 past 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 he 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 accuracy 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 he 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 and 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 Betsy's eating at table without restraint and pulling everything about as she chose were what Fanny herself was not yet enough anewered to for her often to make a tolerable meal. She was nice from only natural delicacy, but he had been brought up in a school of luxury and epicurism. CHAPTER 42 of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 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 did not now 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 dinnertime. 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. There they now went. Mr. Crawford most happy to consider the Miss Price's 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 it 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-hour 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 stopped 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 by coming himself or sending your aunts made 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 unfavorable 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 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 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 Madison. 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 designed 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. Madison 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 duped 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. Goodbye. 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 wile 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 fair bore a very different character, and could he have suspected how many provations 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 feeling 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 fathers, 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 and 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 43 OF MANSFIELD PARK by Jane Austen 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 assertant 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's 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, and the balmy air, the sparkling sea, and your sweet looks and conversation were all together in the most delicious harmony and afforded sensations which to raise ecstasy even in retrospect. This, as well as I understand, is to be the substance of my information. He makes me right, 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, 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 connections must have been gratified to witness, and that her own dress and manners did her the greatest credit. My friend Mrs. Frazier is mad for such a house, and it would not make me miserable. I go to Lady Stormway 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 once he's 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. Frazier, no bad judge, declare 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 North Hamptonshire. My dear little creature, do not stay at Portsmouth to lose your pretty looks. Those vile sea-brees as 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 I should like the scheme, and we would make a little circuit and show 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 fourteenth, 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 I 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, where 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 finally she would 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. Frazier, 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 fourteenth was certainly no concern of hers. Though everything considered, she thought he would go without delay. But 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 exertion 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. But Fanny told her of former times dwelt more in 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 subject 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. Before 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 to stress 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 XIV OF MANSFIELD PARK by Jane Austen 7 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 perfusion 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 than when I left it. My hopes are much weaker. You are probably aware of this already. So very fond of you, as Ms Crawford is, it is most natural that she should tell you enough of her own feelings to furnish a tolerable guest 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 phrases 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 particularize. 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 Storneway, 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 attraction 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'm 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 authorize. 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. Until 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 should 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 advisor 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 acknowledged that they did not meet his 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 Mariah'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 an 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 Lacy. 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 any 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 it not 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, to his 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. Excepted 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, right! Right! Finish it at once. Let there be an end of the 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, at which could never be valued enough. This was the end of it. Everybody at all addicted to letter-writing, without having much 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 treat it 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 correspondence, and formed for herself a very creditable, commonplace, 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 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 Grant's 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 his sickness and solitude, and the attendance only of servants. Instead of being well soon 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 ready as his physician to have a letter dispatched 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 of concern 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 disinterstily 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 has just come, my dear Fanny, and has 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 tomorrow, 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 today 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 a yet 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 sympathize. Nobody else could be interested in so remote and evil as illness in a family above and hundred miles off—not even Mrs. Price, beyond a brief question or two, if she saw her daughter with a letter in 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. End of Chapter 44 Chapter 45 of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 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 had 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 else, 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 showed who the patient and the sick room in a juster and stronger light than all Lady Bertram's sheets of paper could do. There was hardly anyone 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 post-script. 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 in 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. After came particularly late that year, 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 proceed 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 tyrosinium forever 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 on to using the same language. I cannot but say I much regret your being from home at this distressing time. So very trying to my spirit. 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 pleasure 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 verger, 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 slightly of the friendship which had been so dwelt on. It was weeks since she had heard anything of Miss Crawford or of her other connections in town, except through Mansfield, and she was beginning to suppose that she might never know whether Miss Crawford had gone into Norfolk again or not until they met. It 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. Bertam 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 denounced 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 Asquire after his name. With real affection, Fanny, like mine, more might be overlooked. Right 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 fountain-head. 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 topic 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 sister's not being within my reach. Mrs. R. has been spending the Easter with the ailments at Twickenham, as to be sure you know, and is not yet returned, and Julia's with the cousins who live near Bedford Square, but I forget their name and street. And I immediately apply to either, however, I should still prefer you, because it strikes me that they have all 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 their thorough holidays to her. The Elmas 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 was she in the Dower to 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 as apprehended. He saw her this morning. She returns to Wimpole Street to-day. The old lady has come. Now do not make yourself uneasy with any queer fancies, because he's 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 hope, and I join him in it with all my soul. Dear Fanny, write directly and tell us to come. It'll 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 back 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 marry a Sunder 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 incumbrance. 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 46 of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen As Fanny could not doubt that her answer was conveying a real disappointment, she was rather an 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 in 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 atourerie, 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 all be hushed up, and nothing proved but Rushworth's folly. If they are gone I would lay my life there only gone to Mansfield Park, and Julia with them. But why would you not 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 party's concern 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 a half above the horizon. She felt that she had indeed been three months there, and the sun's rays falling strongly into the parlor, 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 brother's. Where stood the teaboard 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 humfing 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 Wimpall Street? Yes, sir. Then there's the devil to pay among them, that's all. There! Holding out the paper to her. Which 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 curtier and fine gentleman to like his daughter the less. But by God, if she belonged to me, I'd give her the ropes and as long as I could stand over her. A little flogging for a 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 fraca in the family of Mr. R. of Wimpall Street. The beautiful Mrs. R., whose name had not long been enrolled in the lists of Hyman, 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 with afterwards matters 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, Betsy? 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 Muston Sue 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 peace with something very bad. And if there was a woman of character and 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 unpublished, 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 when even 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 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, Mariah's decided attachment and no sufficient principle on either side gave it possibility. Miss Crawford's letter stamped 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 yet a 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 for 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 has 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 a 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 you all 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 Moore wanted a cordial. Never had she felt such a one as this letter contained. Tomorrow. To leave Portsmouth tomorrow. 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 culmination 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 allotment 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 birch-hams 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 spoiled 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 she entered the parlor. 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. Not 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 showed 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. Looking 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 they're 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 dinnertime, 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 practiced here was on the point of being called into action. Visions of good and ill breeding, of old vulgarisms and new gentilities, were called 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.