Mansfield Park - Jane Austen (read book TXT) 📗

of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked by her father’s head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca’s hands had first produced it.

Her father read his newspaper, and her mother lamented over the ragged carpet as usual, while the tea was in preparation, and wished Rebecca would mend it; and Fanny was first roused by his calling out to her, after humphing and considering over a particular paragraph: “What’s the name of your great cousins in town, Fan?”

 

A moment’s recollection enabled her to say, “Rushworth, sir.”

 

“And don’t they live in Wimpole Street?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Then, there’s the devil to pay among them, that’s all!

There” (holding out the paper to her); “much good may such fine relations do you. I don’t know what Sir Thomas may think of such matters; he may be too much of the courtier and fine gentleman to like his daughter the less. But, by G—! if she belonged to me, I’d give her the rope’s end as long as I could stand over her. A little flogging for man and woman too would be the best way of preventing such things.”

 

Fanny read to herself that “it was with infinite concern the newspaper had to announce to the world a matrimonial fracas in the family of Mr. R. of Wimpole Street; the beautiful Mrs. R., whose name had not long been enrolled in the lists of Hymen, and who had promised to become so brilliant a leader in the fashionable world, having quitted her husband’s roof in company with the well-known and captivating Mr. C., the intimate friend and associate of Mr. R., and it was not known even to the editor of the newspaper whither they were gone.”

 

“It is a mistake, sir,” said Fanny instantly; “it must be a mistake, it cannot be true; it must mean some other people.”

 

She spoke from the instinctive wish of delaying shame; she spoke with a resolution which sprung from despair, for she spoke what she did not, could not believe herself.

It had been the shock of conviction as she read. The truth rushed on her; and how she could have spoken at all, how she could even have breathed, was afterwards matter of wonder to herself.

 

Mr. Price cared too little about the report to make her much answer. “It might be all a lie,” he acknowledged; “but so many fine ladies were going to the devil nowadays that way, that there was no answering for anybody.”

 

“Indeed, I hope it is not true,” said Mrs. Price plaintively; “it would be so very shocking! If I have spoken once to Rebecca about that carpet, I am sure I have spoke at least a dozen times; have not I, Betsey? And it would not be ten minutes’ work.”

 

The horror of a mind like Fanny’s, as it received the conviction of such guilt, and began to take in some part of the misery that must ensue, can hardly be described.

At first, it was a sort of stupefaction; but every moment was quickening her perception of the horrible evil.

She could not doubt, she dared not indulge a hope, of the paragraph being false. Miss Crawford’s letter, which she had read so often as to make every line her own, was in frightful conformity with it. Her eager defence of her brother, her hope of its being hushed up, her evident agitation, were all of a piece with something very bad; and if there was a woman of character in existence, who could treat as a trifle this sin of the first magnitude, who would try to gloss it over, and desire to have it unpunished, she could believe Miss Crawford to be the woman!

Now she could see her own mistake as to who were gone, or said to be gone. It was not Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth; it was Mrs. Rushworth and Mr. Crawford.

 

Fanny seemed to herself never to have been shocked before.

There was no possibility of rest. The evening passed without a pause of misery, the night was totally sleepless.

She passed only from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror; and from hot fits of fever to cold. The event was so shocking, that there were moments even when her heart revolted from it as impossible: when she thought it could not be. A woman married only six months ago; a man professing himself devoted, even engaged to another; that other her near relation; the whole family, both families connected as they were by tie upon tie; all friends, all intimate together! It was too horrible a confusion of guilt, too gross a complication of evil, for human nature, not in a state of utter barbarism, to be capable of! yet her judgment told her it was so.

His unsettled affections, wavering with his vanity, Maria’s decided attachment, and no sufficient principle on either side, gave it possibility: Miss Crawford’s letter stampt it a fact.

 

What would be the consequence? Whom would it not injure?

Whose views might it not affect? Whose peace would it not cut up for ever? Miss Crawford, herself, Edmund; but it was dangerous, perhaps, to tread such ground.

She confined herself, or tried to confine herself, to the simple, indubitable family misery which must envelop all, if it were indeed a matter of certified guilt and public exposure.

The mother’s sufferings, the father’s; there she paused.

Julia’s, Tom’s, Edmund’s; there a yet longer pause.

They were the two on whom it would fall most horribly.

Sir Thomas’s parental solicitude and high sense of honour and decorum, Edmund’s upright principles, unsuspicious temper, and genuine strength of feeling, made her think it scarcely possible for them to support life and reason under such disgrace; and it appeared to her that, as far as this world alone was concerned, the greatest blessing to every one of kindred with Mrs. Rushworth would be instant annihilation.

 

Nothing happened the next day, or the next, to weaken her terrors. Two posts came in, and brought no refutation, public or private. There was no second letter to explain away the first from Miss Crawford; there was no intelligence from Mansfield, though it was now full time for her to hear again from her aunt. This was an evil omen.

She had, indeed, scarcely the shadow of a hope to soothe her mind, and was reduced to so low and wan and trembling a condition, as no mother, not unkind, except Mrs. Price could have overlooked, when the third day did bring the sickening knock, and a letter was again put into her hands.

It bore the London postmark, and came from Edmund.

 

“Dear Fanny,—You know our present wretchedness.

May God support you under your share! We have been here two days, but there is nothing to be done. They cannot be traced. You may not have heard of the last blow—

Julia’s elopement; she is gone to Scotland with Yates.

She left London a few hours before we entered it.

At any other time this would have been felt dreadfully.

Now it seems nothing; yet it is an heavy aggravation.

My father is not overpowered. More cannot be hoped.

He is still able to think and act; and I write, by his desire, to propose your returning home.

He is anxious to get you there for my mother’s sake.

I shall be at Portsmouth the morning after you receive this, and hope to find you ready to set off for Mansfield.

My father wishes you to invite Susan to go with you for a few months. Settle it as you like; say what is proper; I am sure you will feel such an instance of his kindness at such a moment! Do justice to his meaning, however I may confuse it. You may imagine something of my present state. There is no end of the evil let loose upon us. You will see me early by the mail.—

Yours, etc.”

 

Never had Fanny more wanted a cordial. Never had she felt such a one as this letter contained. 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 combination of blessings as set her heart in a glow, and for a time seemed to distance every pain, and make her incapable of suitably sharing the distress even of those whose distress she thought of most.

Julia’s elopement could affect her comparatively but little; she was amazed and shocked; but it could not occupy her, could not dwell on her mind. She was obliged to call herself to think of it, and acknowledge it to be terrible and grievous, or it was escaping her, in the midst of all the agitating pressing joyful cares attending this summons to herself.

 

There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy, and her occupations were hopeful.

She had so much to do, that not even the horrible story of Mrs. Rushworth—now fixed to the last point of certainty could affect her as it had done before.

She had not time to be miserable. Within twenty-four hours she was hoping to be gone; her father and mother must be spoken to, Susan prepared, everything got ready.

Business followed business; the day was hardly long enough.

The happiness she was imparting, too, happiness very little alloyed by the black communication which must briefly precede it—the joyful consent of her father and mother to Susan’s going with her—the general satisfaction with which the going of both seemed regarded, and the ecstasy of Susan herself, was all serving to support her spirits.

 

The affliction of the Bertrams was little felt in the family.

Mrs. Price talked of her poor sister for a few minutes, but how to find anything to hold Susan’s clothes, because Rebecca took away all the boxes and spoilt them, was much more in her thoughts: and as for Susan, now unexpectedly gratified in the first wish of her heart, and knowing nothing personally of those who had sinned, or of those who were sorrowing—if she could help rejoicing from beginning to end, it was as much as ought to be expected from human virtue at fourteen.

 

As nothing was really left for the decision of Mrs. Price, or the good offices of Rebecca, everything was rationally and duly accomplished, and the girls were ready for the morrow. The advantage of much sleep to prepare them for their journey was impossible. The cousin who was travelling towards them could hardly have less than visited their agitated spirits—one all happiness, the other all varying and indescribable perturbation.

 

By eight in the morning Edmund was in the house. The girls heard his entrance from above, and Fanny went down.

The idea of immediately seeing him, with the knowledge of what he must be suffering, brought back all her own first feelings. He so near her, and in misery. She was ready to sink as she entered the parlour. He was alone, and met her instantly; and she found herself pressed to his heart with only these words, just articulate, “My Fanny, my only sister; my only comfort now!”

She could say nothing; nor for some minutes could