Chapter Chapter 48 · Chapter XLVIII

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects

as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault

themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.

My Fanny, indeed, at this very time, I have the satisfaction of

knowing, must have been happy in spite of everything. She must have

been a happy creature in spite of all that she felt, or thought she

felt, for the distress of those around her. She had sources of delight

that must force their way. She was returned to Mansfield Park, she was

useful, she was beloved; she was safe from Mr. Crawford; and when Sir

Thomas came back she had every proof that could be given in his then

melancholy state of spirits, of his perfect approbation and increased

regard; and happy as all this must make her, she would still have been

happy without any of it, for Edmund was no longer the dupe of Miss

Crawford.

It is true that Edmund was very far from happy himself. He was

suffering from disappointment and regret, grieving over what was, and

wishing for what could never be. She knew it was so, and was sorry; but

it was with a sorrow so founded on satisfaction, so tending to ease,

and so much in harmony with every dearest sensation, that there are few

who might not have been glad to exchange their greatest gaiety for it.

Sir Thomas, poor Sir Thomas, a parent, and conscious of errors in his

own conduct as a parent, was the longest to suffer. He felt that he

ought not to have allowed the marriage; that his daughter’s sentiments

had been sufficiently known to him to render him culpable in

authorising it; that in so doing he had sacrificed the right to the

expedient, and been governed by motives of selfishness and worldly

wisdom. These were reflections that required some time to soften; but

time will do almost everything; and though little comfort arose on Mrs.

Rushworth’s side for the misery she had occasioned, comfort was to be

found greater than he had supposed in his other children. Julia’s match

became a less desperate business than he had considered it at first.

She was humble, and wishing to be forgiven; and Mr. Yates, desirous of

being really received into the family, was disposed to look up to him

and be guided. He was not very solid; but there was a hope of his

becoming less trifling, of his being at least tolerably domestic and

quiet; and at any rate, there was comfort in finding his estate rather

more, and his debts much less, than he had feared, and in being

consulted and treated as the friend best worth attending to. There was

comfort also in Tom, who gradually regained his health, without

regaining the thoughtlessness and selfishness of his previous habits.

He was the better for ever for his illness. He had suffered, and he had

learned to think: two advantages that he had never known before; and

the self-reproach arising from the deplorable event in Wimpole Street,

to which he felt himself accessory by all the dangerous intimacy of his

unjustifiable theatre, made an impression on his mind which, at the age

of six-and-twenty, with no want of sense or good companions, was

durable in its happy effects. He became what he ought to be: useful to

his father, steady and quiet, and not living merely for himself.

Here was comfort indeed! and quite as soon as Sir Thomas could place

dependence on such sources of good, Edmund was contributing to his

father’s ease by improvement in the only point in which he had given

him pain before—improvement in his spirits. After wandering about and

sitting under trees with Fanny all the summer evenings, he had so well

talked his mind into submission as to be very tolerably cheerful again.

These were the circumstances and the hopes which gradually brought

their alleviation to Sir Thomas, deadening his sense of what was lost,

and in part reconciling him to himself; 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, 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

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.

FINIS.