Jane Austen's Mansfield Park: Abridged

by Emma Laybourn

As Fanny could not doubt that her answer would give Miss Crawford real disappointment, she rather expected to be urged again; and though no second letter arrived for a week, she had still the same feeling when it did come.

  On receiving it, she was instantly persuaded of its having the air of a brief letter of haste and business. In all probability it would be 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. 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. Depend upon it, there is some mistake, and a day or two will clear it up; Henry is blameless, and in spite of a moment's rashness, 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.

  Miss Crawford need not be alarmed for her. She was only sorry for the parties concerned and for Mansfield, if the report should spread that far; but she hoped it might not. If the Rushworths were gone to Mansfield, as she gathered from Miss Crawford’s words, it was not likely that anything unpleasant should have preceded them.

  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, 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 speak of it to anyone.

  The next day came and brought no second letter. Fanny was disappointed. She could still think of little else all morning; but, when her father came back in the afternoon with the newspaper as usual, she was deep in musing. The remembrance of her first evening in that room, of her father and his newspaper, came across her. She felt that she had, indeed, been three months there; and the sun's rays falling strongly into the parlour made her still more melancholy, for sunshine appeared to her a totally different thing in a town from in the country. Here, its power was only a glare: a stifling, sickly glare, bringing neither health nor gaiety. She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the table cut and notched by her brothers, to 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 Fanny was first roused by his calling out to her: "What's the name of your great cousins in town, Fan?"

  "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; but, by G—! if she belonged to me, I'd give her the rope's end. 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 a matrimonial fracas in the family of Mr. R. of Wimpole Street; the beautiful Mrs. R., not long married, 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 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 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 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 was afterwards a matter of wonder.

  Mr. Price cared too little to make much answer. "It might be all a lie, but so many fine ladies were going to the devil nowadays, 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? It would not be ten minutes' work."

  The horror of Fanny's mind, as it received the conviction of such guilt, and began to take in the misery that must follow, can hardly be described. At first, it was a sort of stupefaction; but every moment was quickening her perception of the horrible evil. She dared not hope of the paragraph being false. Miss Crawford's letter was in frightful agreement 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, she could believe Miss Crawford to be the woman! Now she could see her own mistake as to who were gone. It was not Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth; it was Mrs. Rushworth and Mr. Crawford.

  Fanny felt herself never to have been shocked before. The evening passed without a pause of misery, the night was totally sleepless. She passed only from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror. The event was so shocking, that there were moments even when her heart revolted from it as impossible: it could not be. A woman married only six months ago; a man professing himself devoted to another; 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 civilized human nature to be capable of! yet her judgment told her it was so. His unsettled affections, Maria's decided attachment, and no sufficient principle on either side, gave it possibility: Miss Crawford's letter stamped it a fact.

  What would be the consequence? Whom would it not injure? Whose peace would it not cut up for ever? Miss Crawford, herself, Edmund; but it was dangerous, perhaps, to tread such ground. She tried to confine herself to the indubitable family misery which must envelop all. 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 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. She felt as if the greatest blessing for everyone related to 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 denial, no second letter from Miss Crawford to explain away the first; there was no news 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 trembling a condition, as no mother except Mrs. Price could have overlooked, when the third day did bring the sickening knock, and a letter was 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 in London 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; I am sure you will feel 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."

  Tomorrow! to leave Portsmouth tomorrow! 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 careless of it. To be going so soon, sent for so kindly, and with permission 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 sharing the distress even of those she thought of most. Julia's elopement could affect her but little; she was amazed and shocked; but it could not dwell on her mind. She acknowledged it to be grievous, but it almost escaped her, in the midst of all the joyful cares attending this summons.

  There is nothing like employment for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy, and her occupations were hopeful. She had so much to do that she had not time to be miserable. 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,—the joyful consent of her father and mother to Susan's going with her, and the ecstasy of Susan herself, were 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 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 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.

  Everything was duly accomplished, and the girls were ready for the morrow. They slept little: one was all happiness, the other all indescribable perturbation.

  By eight in the morning Edmund was in the house, and Fanny went down to him. The idea of 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 she found herself pressed to his heart with these words, just articulate, "My Fanny, my only sister; my only comfort now!" She could say nothing; nor for some minutes could he say more.

  He turned away to recover himself, and when he spoke again, though his voice still faltered, his manner showed the wish of self-command. "Have you breakfasted? When shall you be ready? Does Susan go?" were questions following each other rapidly. His great object was to be off as soon as possible. Time was precious; and the state of his mind made him find relief only in motion. It was settled that he should order the carriage to the door in half an hour. Fanny answered for their having breakfasted and being quite ready. He declined staying for their meal. He would walk round the ramparts, and join them with the carriage. He was gone again; glad to get away even from Fanny.

  He looked very ill; evidently suffering under violent emotions, which he was determined to suppress. She knew it must be so, but it was terrible to her.

  The carriage came; and he entered the house again, just in time to spend a few minutes with the family, and be a witness—except that he saw nothing—of the tranquil manner in which the daughters were parted with, and just in time to prevent their sitting down to the breakfast-table, which by dint of unusual activity was completely ready as the carriage drove from the door. Fanny's last meal in her father's house was in character with her first: she was dismissed from it as hospitably as she had been welcomed.

  How her heart swelled with joy and gratitude as she left Portsmouth, and how Susan's face wore its broadest smiles, may be easily conceived. Sitting forwards, however, and screened by her bonnet, those smiles were unseen.

  The journey was a silent one. Edmund's deep sighs often reached Fanny. Had he been alone with her, his heart must have opened; but Susan's presence drove him quite into himself, and his attempts to talk on indifferent subjects could never be long supported.

  Fanny watched him with never-failing solicitude, and sometimes catching his eye, revived an affectionate smile, which comforted her; but the first day's journey passed without her hearing a word from him on the subjects that were weighing him down.

  The next morning produced a little more. Just before their setting out from Oxford, while Susan was eagerly looking from a window, the other two were standing by the fire; and Edmund, struck by the alteration in Fanny's looks, and ignorant of the daily evils of her father's house, attributed the change in her to the recent event. He took her hand, and said in a low expressive tone, "No wonder—you must suffer. How a man who had once loved, could desert you! But your regard was new compared with——Fanny, think of me!"

  The second part of their journey was soon over. They were close to Mansfield long before the usual dinner-time, and as they approached, the hearts of both sisters sank a little. Fanny began to dread the meeting with her aunts and Tom; and Susan to feel with some anxiety, that all her best manners were on the point of being called into action. Visions of good and ill breeding were before her; and she was meditating much upon silver forks, napkins, and finger-glasses.

  It was full three months since Fanny’s quitting Mansfield, and winter had changed to summer. Her eye fell everywhere on lawns and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees were in that delightful state when farther beauty is known to be at hand. Her enjoyment, however, was for herself alone. Edmund could not share it. She looked at him, but he was leaning back, sunk in a deeper gloom than ever, and with eyes closed, as if the lovely scenes of home must be shut out.

  It made her melancholy again; and the knowledge of what the family must be enduring there, invested even the house with a melancholy aspect.

  By one of the suffering party within, they were expected with such impatience as she had never known before. Fanny had scarcely passed the solemn-looking servants, when Lady Bertram came from the drawing-room to meet her; came almost hastily; and falling on her neck, said, "Dear Fanny! now I shall be comfortable."

  CHAPTER 47