Mansfield Park
determine whether she ought to keep Edmund and Mary asunder or not. She
had a rule to apply to, which settled everything. Her awe of her uncle,
and her dread of taking a liberty with him, made it instantly plain to
her what she had to do. She must absolutely decline the proposal. If he
wanted, he would send for her; and even to offer an early return was a
presumption which hardly anything would have seemed to justify. She
thanked Miss Crawford, but gave a decided negative. “Her uncle, she
understood, meant to fetch her; and as her cousin’s illness had
continued so many weeks without her being thought at all necessary, she
must suppose her return would be unwelcome at present, and that she
should be felt an encumbrance.”
Her representation of her cousin’s state at this time was exactly
according to her own belief of it, and such as she supposed would
convey to the sanguine mind of her correspondent the hope of everything
she was wishing for. Edmund would be forgiven for being a clergyman, it
seemed, under certain conditions of wealth; and this, she suspected,
was all the conquest of prejudice which he was so ready to congratulate
himself upon. She had only learnt to think nothing of consequence but
money.
CHAPTER XLVI
As Fanny could not doubt that her answer was conveying a real
disappointment, she was rather in expectation, from her knowledge of
Miss Crawford’s temper, of being urged again; and though no second
letter arrived for the space of a week, she had still the same feeling
when it did come.
On receiving it, she could instantly decide on its containing little
writing, and was persuaded of its having the air of a letter of haste
and business. Its object was unquestionable; and two moments were
enough to start the probability of its being merely to give her notice
that they should be in Portsmouth that very day, and to throw her into
all the agitation of doubting what she ought to do in such a case. If
two moments, however, can surround with difficulties, a third can
disperse them; and before she had opened the letter, the possibility of
Mr. and Miss Crawford’s having applied to her uncle and obtained his
permission was giving her ease. This was the letter—
“A most scandalous, ill-natured rumour has just reached me, and I
write, dear Fanny, to warn you against giving the least credit to it,
should it spread into the country. Depend upon it, there is some
mistake, and that a day or two will clear it up; at any rate, that
Henry is blameless, and in spite of a moment’s _etourderie_, thinks of
nobody but you. Say not a word of it; hear nothing, surmise nothing,
whisper nothing till I write again. I am sure it will be all hushed up,
and nothing proved but Rushworth’s folly. If they are gone, I would lay
my life they are only gone to Mansfield Park, and Julia with them. But
why would not you let us come for you? I wish you may not repent
it.—Yours, etc.”
Fanny stood aghast. As no scandalous, ill-natured rumour had reached
her, it was impossible for her to understand much of this strange
letter. She could only perceive that it must relate to Wimpole Street
and Mr. Crawford, and only conjecture that something very imprudent had
just occurred in that quarter to draw the notice of the world, and to
excite her jealousy, in Miss Crawford’s apprehension, if she heard it.
Miss Crawford need not be alarmed for her. She was only sorry for the
parties concerned and for Mansfield, if the report should spread so
far; but she hoped it might not. If the Rushworths were gone themselves
to Mansfield, as was to be inferred from what Miss Crawford said, it
was not likely that anything unpleasant should have preceded them, or
at least should make any impression.
As to Mr. Crawford, she hoped it might give him a knowledge of his own
disposition, convince him that he was not capable of being steadily
attached to any one woman in the world, and shame him from persisting
any longer in addressing herself.
It was very strange! She had begun to think he really loved her, and to
fancy his affection for her something more than common; and his sister
still said that he cared for nobody else. Yet there must have been some
marked display of attentions to her cousin, there must have been some
strong indiscretion, since her correspondent was not of a sort to
regard a slight one.
Very uncomfortable she was, and must continue, till she heard from Miss
Crawford again. It was impossible to banish the letter from her
thoughts, and she could not relieve herself by speaking of it to any
human being. Miss Crawford need not have urged secrecy with so much
warmth; she might have trusted to her sense of what was due to her
cousin.
The next day came and brought no second letter. Fanny was disappointed.
She could still think of little else all the morning; but, when her
father came back in the afternoon with the daily newspaper as usual,
she was so far from expecting any elucidation through such a channel
that the subject was for a moment out of her head.
She was deep in other musing. The remembrance of her first evening in
that room, of her father and his newspaper, came across her. No candle
was now wanted. The sun was yet an hour and half above the horizon. She
felt that she had, indeed, been three months there; and the sun’s rays
falling strongly into the parlour, instead of cheering, made her still
more melancholy, for sunshine appeared to her a totally different thing
in a town and in the country. Here, its power was only a glare: a
stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt
that might otherwise have slept. There was neither health nor gaiety in
sunshine in a town. She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud
of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked
by her father’s head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers,
where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and
saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin
blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than
even Rebecca’s hands had first produced it. Her father read his
newspaper, and her mother lamented over the ragged carpet as usual,
while the tea was in preparation, and wished Rebecca would mend it; and
Fanny was first roused by his calling out to her, after humphing and
considering over a particular paragraph: “What’s the name of your great
cousins in town, Fan?”
A moment’s recollection enabled her to say, “Rushworth, sir.”
“And don’t they live in Wimpole Street?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then, there’s the devil to pay among them, that’s all! There” (holding
out the paper to her); “much good may such fine relations do you. I
don’t know what Sir Thomas may think of such matters; he may be too
much of the courtier and fine gentleman to like his daughter the less.
But, by G—! if she belonged to _me_, I’d give her the rope’s end as
long as I could stand over her. A little flogging for man and woman too
would be the best way of preventing such things.”
Fanny read to herself that “it was with infinite concern the newspaper
had to announce to the world a matrimonial _fracas_ in the family of
Mr. R. of Wimpole Street; the beautiful Mrs. R., whose name had not
long been enrolled in the lists of Hymen, and who had promised to
become so brilliant a leader in the fashionable world, having quitted
her husband’s roof in company with the well-known and captivating Mr.
C., the intimate friend and associate of Mr. R., and it was not known
even to the editor of the newspaper whither they were gone.”
“It is a mistake, sir,” said Fanny instantly; “it must be a mistake, it
cannot be true; it must mean some other people.”
She spoke from the instinctive wish of delaying shame; she spoke with a
resolution which sprung from despair, for she spoke what she did not,
could not believe herself. It had been the shock of conviction as she
read. The truth rushed on her; and how she could have spoken at all,
how she could even have breathed, was afterwards matter of wonder to
herself.
Mr. Price cared too little about the report to make her much answer.
“It might be all a lie,” he acknowledged; “but so many fine ladies were
going to the devil nowadays that way, that there was no answering for
anybody.”
“Indeed, I hope it is not true,” said Mrs. Price plaintively; “it would
be so very shocking! If I have spoken once to Rebecca about that
carpet, I am sure I have spoke at least a dozen times; have not I,
Betsey? And it would not be ten minutes’ work.”
The horror of a mind like Fanny’s, as it received the conviction of
such guilt, and began to take in some part of the misery that must
ensue, can hardly be described. At first, it was a sort of
stupefaction; but every moment was quickening her perception of the
horrible evil. She could not doubt, she dared not indulge a hope, of
the paragraph being false. Miss Crawford’s letter, which she had read
so often as to make every line her own, was in frightful conformity
with it. Her eager defence of her brother, her hope of its being
_hushed_ _up_, her evident agitation, were all of a piece with
something very bad; and if there was a woman of character in existence,
who could treat as a trifle this sin of the first magnitude, who would
try to gloss it over, and desire to have it unpunished, she could
believe Miss Crawford to be the woman! Now she could see her own
mistake as to _who_ were gone, or _said_ to be gone. It was not Mr. and
Mrs. Rushworth; it was Mrs. Rushworth and Mr. Crawford.
Fanny seemed to herself never to have been shocked before. There was no
possibility of rest. The evening passed without a pause of misery, the
night was totally sleepless. She passed only from feelings of sickness
to shudderings of horror; and from hot fits of fever to cold. The event
was so shocking, that there were moments even when her heart revolted
from it as impossible: when she thought it could not be. A woman
married only six months ago; a man professing himself devoted, even
_engaged_ to another; that other her near relation; the whole family,
both families connected as they were by tie upon tie; all friends, all
intimate together! It was too horrible a confusion of guilt, too gross
a complication of evil, for human nature, not in a state of utter
barbarism, to be capable of! yet her judgment told her it was so. _His_
unsettled affections, wavering with his vanity, _Maria’s_ decided
attachment, and no sufficient principle on either side, gave it
possibility: Miss Crawford’s letter stampt it a fact.
What would be the consequence? Whom would it not injure? Whose views
might it not affect? Whose peace would it not cut up for ever? Miss
Crawford, herself, Edmund; but it was dangerous, perhaps, to tread such
ground. She confined herself, or tried to confine herself, to the
simple, indubitable family misery which must envelop all, if it were
indeed a matter of certified guilt and public exposure. The mother’s
sufferings, the father’s; there she paused. Julia’s, Tom’s, Edmund’s;
there a yet longer pause. They were the two on whom it would fall most
horribly. Sir Thomas’s parental solicitude and high sense of honour and
decorum, Edmund’s upright principles, unsuspicious temper, and genuine
strength of feeling, made her think it scarcely possible for them to
support life and reason under such disgrace; and it appeared to her
that, as far as this world alone was concerned, the greatest blessing
to every one of kindred with Mrs. Rushworth would be instant
annihilation.
Nothing happened the next day, or the next, to weaken her terrors. Two
posts came in, and brought no refutation, public or private. There was
no second letter to explain away the first from Miss Crawford; there