Mansfield Park
of the letter, there was nothing in that to soothe irritation. She was
almost vexed into displeasure and anger against Edmund. “There is no
good in this delay,” said she. “Why is not it settled? He is blinded,
and nothing will open his eyes; nothing can, after having had truths
before him so long in vain. He will marry her, and be poor and
miserable. God grant that her influence do not make him cease to be
respectable!” She looked over the letter again. “‘So very fond of me!’
’tis nonsense all. She loves nobody but herself and her brother. Her
friends leading her astray for years! She is quite as likely to have
led _them_ astray. They have all, perhaps, been corrupting one another;
but if they are so much fonder of her than she is of them, she is the
less likely to have been hurt, except by their flattery. ‘The only
woman in the world whom he could ever think of as a wife.’ I firmly
believe it. It is an attachment to govern his whole life. Accepted or
refused, his heart is wedded to her for ever. ‘The loss of Mary I must
consider as comprehending the loss of Crawford and Fanny.’ Edmund, you
do not know me. The families would never be connected if you did not
connect them! Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end
of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself.”
Such sensations, however, were too near akin to resentment to be long
guiding Fanny’s soliloquies. She was soon more softened and sorrowful.
His warm regard, his kind expressions, his confidential treatment,
touched her strongly. He was only too good to everybody. It was a
letter, in short, which she would not but have had for the world, and
which could never be valued enough. This was the end of it.
Everybody at all addicted to letter-writing, without having much to
say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at
least, must feel with Lady Bertram that she was out of luck in having
such a capital piece of Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants
going to Bath, occur at a time when she could make no advantage of it,
and will admit that it must have been very mortifying to her to see it
fall to the share of her thankless son, and treated as concisely as
possible at the end of a long letter, instead of having it to spread
over the largest part of a page of her own. For though Lady Bertram
rather shone in the epistolary line, having early in her marriage, from
the want of other employment, and the circumstance of Sir Thomas’s
being in Parliament, got into the way of making and keeping
correspondents, and formed for herself a very creditable, common-place,
amplifying style, so that a very little matter was enough for her: she
could not do entirely without any; she must have something to write
about, even to her niece; and being so soon to lose all the benefit of
Dr. Grant’s gouty symptoms and Mrs. Grant’s morning calls, it was very
hard upon her to be deprived of one of the last epistolary uses she
could put them to.
There was a rich amends, however, preparing for her. Lady Bertram’s
hour of good luck came. Within a few days from the receipt of Edmund’s
letter, Fanny had one from her aunt, beginning thus—
“My Dear Fanny,—I take up my pen to communicate some very alarming
intelligence, which I make no doubt will give you much concern”.
This was a great deal better than to have to take up the pen to
acquaint her with all the particulars of the Grants’ intended journey,
for the present intelligence was of a nature to promise occupation for
the pen for many days to come, being no less than the dangerous illness
of her eldest son, of which they had received notice by express a few
hours before.
Tom had gone from London with a party of young men to Newmarket, where
a neglected fall and a good deal of drinking had brought on a fever;
and when the party broke up, being unable to move, had been left by
himself at the house of one of these young men to the comforts of
sickness and solitude, and the attendance only of servants. Instead of
being soon well enough to follow his friends, as he had then hoped, his
disorder increased considerably, and it was not long before he thought
so ill of himself as to be as ready as his physician to have a letter
despatched to Mansfield.
“This distressing intelligence, as you may suppose,” observed her
ladyship, after giving the substance of it, “has agitated us
exceedingly, and we cannot prevent ourselves from being greatly alarmed
and apprehensive for the poor invalid, whose state Sir Thomas fears may
be very critical; and Edmund kindly proposes attending his brother
immediately, but I am happy to add that Sir Thomas will not leave me on
this distressing occasion, as it would be too trying for me. We shall
greatly miss Edmund in our small circle, but I trust and hope he will
find the poor invalid in a less alarming state than might be
apprehended, and that he will be able to bring him to Mansfield
shortly, which Sir Thomas proposes should be done, and thinks best on
every account, and I flatter myself the poor sufferer will soon be able
to bear the removal without material inconvenience or injury. As I have
little doubt of your feeling for us, my dear Fanny, under these
distressing circumstances, I will write again very soon.”
Fanny’s feelings on the occasion were indeed considerably more warm and
genuine than her aunt’s style of writing. She felt truly for them all.
Tom dangerously ill, Edmund gone to attend him, and the sadly small
party remaining at Mansfield, were cares to shut out every other care,
or almost every other. She could just find selfishness enough to wonder
whether Edmund _had_ written to Miss Crawford before this summons came,
but no sentiment dwelt long with her that was not purely affectionate
and disinterestedly anxious. Her aunt did not neglect her: she wrote
again and again; they were receiving frequent accounts from Edmund, and
these accounts were as regularly transmitted to Fanny, in the same
diffuse style, and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears, all
following and producing each other at haphazard. It was a sort of
playing at being frightened. The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not
see had little power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably
about agitation, and anxiety, and poor invalids, till Tom was actually
conveyed to Mansfield, and her own eyes had beheld his altered
appearance. Then a letter which she had been previously preparing for
Fanny was finished in a different style, in the language of real
feeling and alarm; then she wrote as she might have spoken. “He is just
come, my dear Fanny, and is taken upstairs; and I am so shocked to see
him, that I do not know what to do. I am sure he has been very ill.
Poor Tom! I am quite grieved for him, and very much frightened, and so
is Sir Thomas; and how glad I should be if you were here to comfort me.
But Sir Thomas hopes he will be better to-morrow, and says we must
consider his journey.”
The real solicitude now awakened in the maternal bosom was not soon
over. Tom’s extreme impatience to be removed to Mansfield, and
experience those comforts of home and family which had been little
thought of in uninterrupted health, had probably induced his being
conveyed thither too early, as a return of fever came on, and for a
week he was in a more alarming state than ever. They were all very
seriously frightened. Lady Bertram wrote her daily terrors to her
niece, who might now be said to live upon letters, and pass all her
time between suffering from that of to-day and looking forward to
to-morrow’s. Without any particular affection for her eldest cousin,
her tenderness of heart made her feel that she could not spare him, and
the purity of her principles added yet a keener solicitude, when she
considered how little useful, how little self-denying his life had
(apparently) been.
Susan was her only companion and listener on this, as on more common
occasions. Susan was always ready to hear and to sympathise. Nobody
else could be interested in so remote an evil as illness in a family
above an hundred miles off; not even Mrs. Price, beyond a brief
question or two, if she saw her daughter with a letter in her hand, and
now and then the quiet observation of, “My poor sister Bertram must be
in a great deal of trouble.”
So long divided and so differently situated, the ties of blood were
little more than nothing. An attachment, originally as tranquil as
their tempers, was now become a mere name. Mrs. Price did quite as much
for Lady Bertram as Lady Bertram would have done for Mrs. Price. Three
or four Prices might have been swept away, any or all except Fanny and
William, and Lady Bertram would have thought little about it; or
perhaps might have caught from Mrs. Norris’s lips the cant of its being
a very happy thing and a great blessing to their poor dear sister Price
to have them so well provided for.
CHAPTER XLV
At about the week’s end from his return to Mansfield, Tom’s immediate
danger was over, and he was so far pronounced safe as to make his
mother perfectly easy; for being now used to the sight of him in his
suffering, helpless state, and hearing only the best, and never
thinking beyond what she heard, with no disposition for alarm and no
aptitude at a hint, Lady Bertram was the happiest subject in the world
for a little medical imposition. The fever was subdued; the fever had
been his complaint; of course he would soon be well again. Lady Bertram
could think nothing less, and Fanny shared her aunt’s security, till
she received a few lines from Edmund, written purposely to give her a
clearer idea of his brother’s situation, and acquaint her with the
apprehensions which he and his father had imbibed from the physician
with respect to some strong hectic symptoms, which seemed to seize the
frame on the departure of the fever. They judged it best that Lady
Bertram should not be harassed by alarms which, it was to be hoped,
would prove unfounded; but there was no reason why Fanny should not
know the truth. They were apprehensive for his lungs.
A very few lines from Edmund shewed her the patient and the sickroom in
a juster and stronger light than all Lady Bertram’s sheets of paper
could do. There was hardly any one in the house who might not have
described, from personal observation, better than herself; not one who
was not more useful at times to her son. She could do nothing but glide
in quietly and look at him; but when able to talk or be talked to, or
read to, Edmund was the companion he preferred. His aunt worried him by
her cares, and Sir Thomas knew not how to bring down his conversation
or his voice to the level of irritation and feebleness. Edmund was all
in all. Fanny would certainly believe him so at least, and must find
that her estimation of him was higher than ever when he appeared as the
attendant, supporter, cheerer of a suffering brother. There was not
only the debility of recent illness to assist: there was also, as she
now learnt, nerves much affected, spirits much depressed to calm and
raise, and her own imagination added that there must be a mind to be
properly guided.
The family were not consumptive, and she was more inclined to hope than
fear for her cousin, except when she thought of Miss Crawford; but Miss
Crawford gave her the idea of being the child of good luck, and to her
selfishness and vanity it would be good luck to have Edmund the only
son.
Even in the sick chamber the fortunate Mary was not forgotten. Edmund’s
letter had this postscript. “On the subject of my last, I had actually
begun a letter when called away by Tom’s illness, but I have now
changed my mind, and fear to trust the influence of friends. When Tom
is better, I shall go.”
Such was the state of Mansfield, and so it continued, with scarcely any