Mansfield Park
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, a 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