Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Part 10 out of 10

though the anguish arising from the conviction of his
own errors in the education of his daughters was never
to be entirely done away.

Too late he became aware how unfavourable to the character
of any young people must be the totally opposite treatment
which Maria and Julia had been always experiencing at home,
where the excessive indulgence and flattery of their aunt
had been continually contrasted with his own severity.
He saw how ill he had judged, in expecting to counteract
what was wrong in Mrs. Norris by its reverse in himself;
clearly saw that he had but increased the evil by teaching
them to repress their spirits in his presence so as to make
their real disposition unknown to him, and sending them
for all their indulgences to a person who had been able
to attach them only by the blindness of her affection,
and the excess of her praise.

Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was,
he gradually grew to feel that it had not been the most
direful mistake in his plan of education. Something must
have been wanting _within_, or time would have worn
away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle,
active principle, had been wanting; that they had never
been properly taught to govern their inclinations and
tempers by that sense of duty which can alone suffice.
They had been instructed theoretically in their religion,
but never required to bring it into daily practice.
To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments,
the authorised object of their youth, could have had no
useful influence that way, no moral effect on the mind.
He had meant them to be good, but his cares had been directed
to the understanding and manners, not the disposition;
and of the necessity of self-denial and humility,
he feared they had never heard from any lips that could
profit them.

Bitterly did he deplore a deficiency which now he
could scarcely comprehend to have been possible.
Wretchedly did he feel, that with all the cost and care
of an anxious and expensive education, he had brought up
his daughters without their understanding their first duties,
or his being acquainted with their character and temper.

The high spirit and strong passions of Mrs. Rushworth,
especially, were made known to him only in their sad result.
She was not to be prevailed on to leave Mr. Crawford.
She hoped to marry him, and they continued together
till she was obliged to be convinced that such hope
was vain, and till the disappointment and wretchedness
arising from the conviction rendered her temper so bad,
and her feelings for him so like hatred, as to make them
for a while each other's punishment, and then induce
a voluntary separation.

She had lived with him to be reproached as the ruin
of all his happiness in Fanny, and carried away no better
consolation in leaving him than that she _had_ divided them.
What can exceed the misery of such a mind in such a situation?

Mr. Rushworth had no difficulty in procuring a divorce;
and so ended a marriage contracted under such circumstances
as to make any better end the effect of good luck not to
be reckoned on. She had despised him, and loved another;
and he had been very much aware that it was so.
The indignities of stupidity, and the disappointments
of selfish passion, can excite little pity. His punishment
followed his conduct, as did a deeper punishment the
deeper guilt of his wife. _He_ was released from the
engagement to be mortified and unhappy, till some other
pretty girl could attract him into matrimony again,
and he might set forward on a second, and, it is to
be hoped, more prosperous trial of the state: if duped,
to be duped at least with good humour and good luck;
while she must withdraw with infinitely stronger feelings
to a retirement and reproach which could allow no second
spring of hope or character.

Where she could be placed became a subject of most
melancholy and momentous consultation. Mrs. Norris,
whose attachment seemed to augment with the demerits
of her niece, would have had her received at home and
countenanced by them all. Sir Thomas would not hear of it;
and Mrs. Norris's anger against Fanny was so much the greater,
from considering _her_ residence there as the motive.
She persisted in placing his scruples to _her_ account,
though Sir Thomas very solemnly assured her that,
had there been no young woman in question, had there
been no young person of either sex belonging to him,
to be endangered by the society or hurt by the character
of Mrs. Rushworth, he would never have offered so great an
insult to the neighbourhood as to expect it to notice her.
As a daughter, he hoped a penitent one, she should be
protected by him, and secured in every comfort, and supported
by every encouragement to do right, which their relative
situations admitted; but farther than _that_ he could not go.
Maria had destroyed her own character, and he would not,
by a vain attempt to restore what never could be restored,
by affording his sanction to vice, or in seeking to lessen
its disgrace, be anywise accessory to introducing such
misery in another man's family as he had known himself.

It ended in Mrs. Norris's resolving to quit Mansfield
and devote herself to her unfortunate Maria, and in an
establishment being formed for them in another country,
remote and private, where, shut up together with little society,
on one side no affection, on the other no judgment,
it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became
their mutual punishment.

Mrs. Norris's removal from Mansfield was the great supplementary
comfort of Sir Thomas's life. His opinion of her had
been sinking from the day of his return from Antigua:
in every transaction together from that period, in their
daily intercourse, in business, or in chat, she had been
regularly losing ground in his esteem, and convincing
him that either time had done her much disservice,
or that he had considerably over-rated her sense,
and wonderfully borne with her manners before. He had
felt her as an hourly evil, which was so much the worse,
as there seemed no chance of its ceasing but with life;
she seemed a part of himself that must be borne for ever.
To be relieved from her, therefore, was so great a
felicity that, had she not left bitter remembrances
behind her, there might have been danger of his learning
almost to approve the evil which produced such a good.

She was regretted by no one at Mansfield. She had never
been able to attach even those she loved best; and since
Mrs. Rushworth's elopement, her temper had been in a state
of such irritation as to make her everywhere tormenting.
Not even Fanny had tears for aunt Norris, not even when
she was gone for ever.

That Julia escaped better than Maria was owing, in some measure,
to a favourable difference of disposition and circumstance,
but in a greater to her having been less the darling
of that very aunt, less flattered and less spoilt.
Her beauty and acquirements had held but a second place.
She had been always used to think herself a little inferior
to Maria. Her temper was naturally the easiest of the two;
her feelings, though quick, were more controllable,
and education had not given her so very hurtful a degree
of self-consequence.

She had submitted the best to the disappointment
in Henry Crawford. After the first bitterness of the
conviction of being slighted was over, she had been
tolerably soon in a fair way of not thinking of him again;
and when the acquaintance was renewed in town,
and Mr. Rushworth's house became Crawford's object,
she had had the merit of withdrawing herself from it,
and of chusing that time to pay a visit to her other friends,
in order to secure herself from being again too much attracted.
This had been her motive in going to her cousin's.
Mr. Yates's convenience had had nothing to do with it.
She had been allowing his attentions some time,
but with very little idea of ever accepting him;
and had not her sister's conduct burst forth as it did,
and her increased dread of her father and of home,
on that event, imagining its certain consequence to herself
would be greater severity and restraint, made her hastily
resolve on avoiding such immediate horrors at all risks,
it is probable that Mr. Yates would never have succeeded.
She had not eloped with any worse feelings than those
of selfish alarm. It had appeared to her the only
thing to be done. Maria's guilt had induced Julia's folly.

Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad
domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded
vanity a little too long. Once it had, by an opening
undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness.
Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one
amiable woman's affections, could he have found sufficient
exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself
into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would
have been every probability of success and felicity for him.
His affection had already done something. Her influence
over him had already given him some influence over her.
Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt
that more would have been obtained, especially when
that marriage had taken place, which would have given
him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her
first inclination, and brought them very often together.
Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have
been his reward, and a reward very voluntarily bestowed,
within a reasonable period from Edmund's marrying Mary.

Had he done as he intended, and as he knew he ought,
by going down to Everingham after his return from Portsmouth,
he might have been deciding his own happy destiny.
But he was pressed to stay for Mrs. Fraser's party;
his staying was made of flattering consequence, and he
was to meet Mrs. Rushworth there. Curiosity and vanity
were both engaged, and the temptation of immediate pleasure
was too strong for a mind unused to make any sacrifice
to right: he resolved to defer his Norfolk journey,
resolved that writing should answer the purpose of it,
or that its purpose was unimportant, and staid. He saw
Mrs. Rushworth, was received by her with a coldness which
ought to have been repulsive, and have established apparent
indifference between them for ever; but he was mortified,
he could not bear to be thrown off by the woman whose
smiles had been so wholly at his command: he must exert
himself to subdue so proud a display of resentment; it was
anger on Fanny's account; he must get the better of it,
and make Mrs. Rushworth Maria Bertram again in her treatment
of himself.

In this spirit he began the attack, and by animated
perseverance had soon re-established the sort of familiar
intercourse, of gallantry, of flirtation, which bounded
his views; but in triumphing over the discretion which,
though beginning in anger, might have saved them both,
he had put himself in the power of feelings on her side
more strong than he had supposed. She loved him;
there was no withdrawing attentions avowedly dear to her.
He was entangled by his own vanity, with as little
excuse of love as possible, and without the smallest
inconstancy of mind towards her cousin. To keep Fanny
and the Bertrams from a knowledge of what was passing
became his first object. Secrecy could not have been
more desirable for Mrs. Rushworth's credit than he
felt it for his own. When he returned from Richmond,
he would have been glad to see Mrs. Rushworth no more.
All that followed was the result of her imprudence;
and he went off with her at last, because he could
not help it, regretting Fanny even at the moment,
but regretting her infinitely more when all the bustle of
the intrigue was over, and a very few months had taught him,
by the force of contrast, to place a yet higher value
on the sweetness of her temper, the purity of her mind,
and the excellence of her principles.

That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace,
should in a just measure attend _his_ share of the offence is,
we know, not one of the barriers which society gives
to virtue. In this world the penalty is less equal than
could be wished; but without presuming to look forward
to a juster appointment hereafter, we may fairly consider
a man of sense, like Henry Crawford, to be providing
for himself no small portion of vexation and regret:
vexation that must rise sometimes to self-reproach, and
regret to wretchedness, in having so requited hospitality,
so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable,
and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom
he had rationally as well as passionately loved.

After what had passed to wound and alienate the two families,
the continuance of the Bertrams and Grants in such
close neighbourhood would have been most distressing;
but the absence of the latter, for some months purposely
lengthened, ended very fortunately in the necessity,
or at least the practicability, of a permanent removal.
Dr. Grant, through an interest on which he had almost
ceased to form hopes, succeeded to a stall in Westminster,
which, as affording an occasion for leaving Mansfield,
an excuse for residence in London, and an increase of
income to answer the expenses of the change, was highly
acceptable to those who went and those who staid.

Mrs. Grant, with a temper to love and be loved, must have
gone with some regret from the scenes and people she
had been used to; but the same happiness of disposition
must in any place, and any society, secure her a great
deal to enjoy, and she had again a home to offer Mary;
and Mary had had enough of her own friends, enough of vanity,
ambition, love, and disappointment in the course of the
last half-year, to be in need of the true kindness of her
sister's heart, and the rational tranquillity of her ways.
They lived together; and when Dr. Grant had brought
on apoplexy and death, by three great institutionary
dinners in one week, they still lived together; for Mary,
though perfectly resolved against ever attaching herself
to a younger brother again, was long in finding among
the dashing representatives, or idle heir-apparents,
who were at the command of her beauty, and her 20,000,
any one who could satisfy the better taste she had acquired
at Mansfield, whose character and manners could authorise
a hope of the domestic happiness she had there learned
to estimate, or put Edmund Bertram sufficiently out of her head.

Edmund had greatly the advantage of her in this respect.
He had not to wait and wish with vacant affections for an
object worthy to succeed her in them. Scarcely had he
done regretting Mary Crawford, and observing to Fanny
how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such
another woman, before it began to strike him whether
a very different kind of woman might not do just as well,
or a great deal better: whether Fanny herself were not
growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles
and all her ways, as Mary Crawford had ever been;
and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful
undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly
regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.

I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion,
that every one may be at liberty to fix their own,
aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the
transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as
to time in different people. I only entreat everybody
to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite
natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier,
Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became
as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.

With such a regard for her, indeed, as his had long been,
a regard founded on the most endearing claims of innocence
and helplessness, and completed by every recommendation
of growing worth, what could be more natural than
the change? Loving, guiding, protecting her, as he
had been doing ever since her being ten years old,
her mind in so great a degree formed by his care,
and her comfort depending on his kindness, an object to him
of such close and peculiar interest, dearer by all his
own importance with her than any one else at Mansfield,
what was there now to add, but that he should learn
to prefer soft light eyes to sparkling dark ones.
And being always with her, and always talking confidentially,
and his feelings exactly in that favourable state
which a recent disappointment gives, those soft light
eyes could not be very long in obtaining the pre-eminence.

Having once set out, and felt that he had done so on
this road to happiness, there was nothing on the side
of prudence to stop him or make his progress slow;
no doubts of her deserving, no fears of opposition of taste,
no need of drawing new hopes of happiness from dissimilarity
of temper. Her mind, disposition, opinions, and habits
wanted no half-concealment, no self-deception on the present,
no reliance on future improvement. Even in the midst
of his late infatuation, he had acknowledged Fanny's
mental superiority. What must be his sense of it now,
therefore? She was of course only too good for him;
but as nobody minds having what is too good for them,
he was very steadily earnest in the pursuit of the blessing,
and it was not possible that encouragement from her should
be long wanting. Timid, anxious, doubting as she was,
it was still impossible that such tenderness as hers
should not, at times, hold out the strongest hope of success,
though it remained for a later period to tell him the whole
delightful and astonishing truth. His happiness in knowing
himself to have been so long the beloved of such a heart,
must have been great enough to warrant any strength of
language in which he could clothe it to her or to himself;
it must have been a delightful happiness. But there
was happiness elsewhere which no description can reach.
Let no one presume to give the feelings of a young woman
on receiving the assurance of that affection of which
she has scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope.

Their own inclinations ascertained, there were no
difficulties behind, no drawback of poverty or parent.
It was a match which Sir Thomas's wishes had even forestalled.
Sick of ambitious and mercenary connexions, prizing more
and more the sterling good of principle and temper,
and chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities
all that remained to him of domestic felicity, he had
pondered with genuine satisfaction on the more than
possibility of the two young friends finding their natural
consolation in each other for all that had occurred
of disappointment to either; and the joyful consent
which met Edmund's application, the high sense of having
realised a great acquisition in the promise of Fanny
for a daughter, formed just such a contrast with his
early opinion on the subject when the poor little girl's
coming had been first agitated, as time is for ever
producing between the plans and decisions of mortals,
for their own instruction, and their neighbours' entertainment.

Fanny was indeed the daughter that he wanted. His charitable
kindness had been rearing a prime comfort for himself.
His liberality had a rich repayment, and the general
goodness of his intentions by her deserved it. He might
have made her childhood happier; but it had been an error
of judgment only which had given him the appearance
of harshness, and deprived him of her early love;
and now, on really knowing each other, their mutual
attachment became very strong. After settling her at
Thornton Lacey with every kind attention to her comfort,
the object of almost every day was to see her there,
or to get her away from it.

Selfishly dear as she had long been to Lady Bertram,
she could not be parted with willingly by _her_.
No happiness of son or niece could make her wish
the marriage. But it was possible to part with her,
because Susan remained to supply her place.
Susan became the stationary niece, delighted to be so;
and equally well adapted for it by a readiness of mind,
and an inclination for usefulness, as Fanny had been
by sweetness of temper, and strong feelings of gratitude.
Susan could never be spared. First as a comfort to Fanny,
then as an auxiliary, and last as her substitute,
she was established at Mansfield, with every appearance
of equal permanency. Her more fearless disposition
and happier nerves made everything easy to her there.
With quickness in understanding the tempers of those she
had to deal with, and no natural timidity to restrain
any consequent wishes, she was soon welcome and useful
to all; and after Fanny's removal succeeded so naturally
to her influence over the hourly comfort of her aunt,
as gradually to become, perhaps, the most beloved of the two.
In _her_ usefulness, in Fanny's excellence, in William's
continued good conduct and rising fame, and in the general
well-doing and success of the other members of the family,
all assisting to advance each other, and doing credit
to his countenance and aid, Sir Thomas saw repeated,
and for ever repeated, reason to rejoice in what he had
done for them all, and acknowledge the advantages of early
hardship and discipline, and the consciousness of being born
to struggle and endure.

With so much true merit and true love, and no want of
fortune and friends, the happiness of the married cousins
must appear as secure as earthly happiness can be.
Equally formed for domestic life, and attached to
country pleasures, their home was the home of affection
and comfort; and to complete the picture of good,
the acquisition of Mansfield living, by the death of
Dr. Grant, occurred just after they had been married long
enough to begin to want an increase of income, and feel
their distance from the paternal abode an inconvenience.

On that event they removed to Mansfield; and the Parsonage
there, which, under each of its two former owners, Fanny had
never been able to approach but with some painful sensation
of restraint or alarm, soon grew as dear to her heart,
and as thoroughly perfect in her eyes, as everything else
within the view and patronage of Mansfield Park had long been.

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