第 四十 章 · Chapter XL

Fanny was right enough in not expecting to hear from Miss Crawford now

at the rapid rate in which their correspondence had begun; Mary’s next

letter was after a decidedly longer interval than the last, but she was

not right in supposing that such an interval would be felt a great

relief to herself. Here was another strange revolution of mind! She was

really glad to receive the letter when it did come. In her present

exile from good society, and distance from everything that had been

wont to interest her, a letter from one belonging to the set where her

heart lived, written with affection, and some degree of elegance, was

thoroughly acceptable. The usual plea of increasing engagements was

made in excuse for not having written to her earlier; “And now that I

have begun,” she continued, “my letter will not be worth your reading,

for there will be no little offering of love at the end, no three or

four lines _passionnées_ from the most devoted H. C. in the world, for

Henry is in Norfolk; business called him to Everingham ten days ago, or

perhaps he only pretended the call, for the sake of being travelling at

the same time that you were. But there he is, and, by the bye, his

absence may sufficiently account for any remissness of his sister’s in

writing, for there has been no ‘Well, Mary, when do you write to Fanny?

Is not it time for you to write to Fanny?’ to spur me on. At last,

after various attempts at meeting, I have seen your cousins, ‘dear

Julia and dearest Mrs. Rushworth’; they found me at home yesterday, and

we were glad to see each other again. We _seemed_ _very_ glad to see

each other, and I do really think we were a little. We had a vast deal

to say. Shall I tell you how Mrs. Rushworth looked when your name was

mentioned? I did not use to think her wanting in self-possession, but

she had not quite enough for the demands of yesterday. Upon the whole,

Julia was in the best looks of the two, at least after you were spoken

of. There was no recovering the complexion from the moment that I spoke

of ‘Fanny,’ and spoke of her as a sister should. But Mrs. Rushworth’s

day of good looks will come; we have cards for her first party on the

28th. Then she will be in beauty, for she will open one of the best

houses in Wimpole Street. I was in it two years ago, when it was Lady

Lascelle’s, and prefer it to almost any I know in London, and certainly

she will then feel, to use a vulgar phrase, that she has got her

pennyworth for her penny. Henry could not have afforded her such a

house. I hope she will recollect it, and be satisfied, as well as she

may, with moving the queen of a palace, though the king may appear best

in the background; and as I have no desire to tease her, I shall never

_force_ your name upon her again. She will grow sober by degrees. From

all that I hear and guess, Baron Wildenheim’s attentions to Julia

continue, but I do not know that he has any serious encouragement. She

ought to do better. A poor honourable is no catch, and I cannot imagine

any liking in the case, for take away his rants, and the poor baron has

nothing. What a difference a vowel makes! If his rents were but equal

to his rants! Your cousin Edmund moves slowly; detained, perchance, by

parish duties. There may be some old woman at Thornton Lacey to be

converted. I am unwilling to fancy myself neglected for a _young_ one.

Adieu! my dear sweet Fanny, this is a long letter from London: write me

a pretty one in reply to gladden Henry’s eyes, when he comes back, and

send me an account of all the dashing young captains whom you disdain

for his sake.”

There was great food for meditation in this letter, and chiefly for

unpleasant meditation; and yet, with all the uneasiness it supplied, it

connected her with the absent, it told her of people and things about

whom she had never felt so much curiosity as now, and she would have

been glad to have been sure of such a letter every week. Her

correspondence with her aunt Bertram was her only concern of higher

interest.

As for any society in Portsmouth, that could at all make amends for

deficiencies at home, there were none within the circle of her father’s

and mother’s acquaintance to afford her the smallest satisfaction: she

saw nobody in whose favour she could wish to overcome her own shyness

and reserve. The men appeared to her all coarse, the women all pert,

everybody underbred; and she gave as little contentment as she received

from introductions either to old or new acquaintance. The young ladies

who approached her at first with some respect, in consideration of her

coming from a baronet’s family, were soon offended by what they termed

“airs”; for, as she neither played on the pianoforte nor wore fine

pelisses, they could, on farther observation, admit no right of

superiority.

The first solid consolation which Fanny received for the evils of home,

the first which her judgment could entirely approve, and which gave any

promise of durability, was in a better knowledge of Susan, and a hope

of being of service to her. Susan had always behaved pleasantly to

herself, but the determined character of her general manners had

astonished and alarmed her, and it was at least a fortnight before she

began to understand a disposition so totally different from her own.

Susan saw that much was wrong at home, and wanted to set it right. That

a girl of fourteen, acting only on her own unassisted reason, should

err in the method of reform, was not wonderful; and Fanny soon became

more disposed to admire the natural light of the mind which could so

early distinguish justly, than to censure severely the faults of

conduct to which it led. Susan was only acting on the same truths, and

pursuing the same system, which her own judgment acknowledged, but

which her more supine and yielding temper would have shrunk from

asserting. Susan tried to be useful, where _she_ could only have gone

away and cried; and that Susan was useful she could perceive; that

things, bad as they were, would have been worse but for such

interposition, and that both her mother and Betsey were restrained from

some excesses of very offensive indulgence and vulgarity.

In every argument with her mother, Susan had in point of reason the

advantage, and never was there any maternal tenderness to buy her off.

The blind fondness which was for ever producing evil around her she had

never known. There was no gratitude for affection past or present to

make her better bear with its excesses to the others.

All this became gradually evident, and gradually placed Susan before

her sister as an object of mingled compassion and respect. That her

manner was wrong, however, at times very wrong, her measures often

ill-chosen and ill-timed, and her looks and language very often

indefensible, Fanny could not cease to feel; but she began to hope they

might be rectified. Susan, she found, looked up to her and wished for

her good opinion; and new as anything like an office of authority was

to Fanny, new as it was to imagine herself capable of guiding or

informing any one, she did resolve to give occasional hints to Susan,

and endeavour to exercise for her advantage the juster notions of what

was due to everybody, and what would be wisest for herself, which her

own more favoured education had fixed in her.

Her influence, or at least the consciousness and use of it, originated

in an act of kindness by Susan, which, after many hesitations of

delicacy, she at last worked herself up to. It had very early occurred

to her that a small sum of money might, perhaps, restore peace for ever

on the sore subject of the silver knife, canvassed as it now was

continually, and the riches which she was in possession of herself, her

uncle having given her £10 at parting, made her as able as she was

willing to be generous. But she was so wholly unused to confer favours,

except on the very poor, so unpractised in removing evils, or bestowing

kindnesses among her equals, and so fearful of appearing to elevate

herself as a great lady at home, that it took some time to determine

that it would not be unbecoming in her to make such a present. It was

made, however, at last: a silver knife was bought for Betsey, and

accepted with great delight, its newness giving it every advantage over

the other that could be desired; Susan was established in the full

possession of her own, Betsey handsomely declaring that now she had got

one so much prettier herself, she should never want _that_ again; and

no reproach seemed conveyed to the equally satisfied mother, which

Fanny had almost feared to be impossible. The deed thoroughly answered:

a source of domestic altercation was entirely done away, and it was the

means of opening Susan’s heart to her, and giving her something more to

love and be interested in. Susan shewed that she had delicacy: pleased

as she was to be mistress of property which she had been struggling for

at least two years, she yet feared that her sister’s judgment had been

against her, and that a reproof was designed her for having so

struggled as to make the purchase necessary for the tranquillity of the

house.

Her temper was open. She acknowledged her fears, blamed herself for

having contended so warmly; and from that hour Fanny, understanding the

worth of her disposition and perceiving how fully she was inclined to

seek her good opinion and refer to her judgment, began to feel again

the blessing of affection, and to entertain the hope of being useful to

a mind so much in need of help, and so much deserving it. She gave

advice, advice too sound to be resisted by a good understanding, and

given so mildly and considerately as not to irritate an imperfect

temper, and she had the happiness of observing its good effects not

unfrequently. More was not expected by one who, while seeing all the

obligation and expediency of submission and forbearance, saw also with

sympathetic acuteness of feeling all that must be hourly grating to a

girl like Susan. Her greatest wonder on the subject soon became—not

that Susan should have been provoked into disrespect and impatience

against her better knowledge—but that so much better knowledge, so many

good notions should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the

midst of negligence and error, she should have formed such proper

opinions of what ought to be; she, who had had no cousin Edmund to

direct her thoughts or fix her principles.

The intimacy thus begun between them was a material advantage to each.

By sitting together upstairs, they avoided a great deal of the

disturbance of the house; Fanny had peace, and Susan learned to think

it no misfortune to be quietly employed. They sat without a fire; but

that was a privation familiar even to Fanny, and she suffered the less

because reminded by it of the East room. It was the only point of

resemblance. In space, light, furniture, and prospect, there was

nothing alike in the two apartments; and she often heaved a sigh at the

remembrance of all her books and boxes, and various comforts there. By

degrees the girls came to spend the chief of the morning upstairs, at

first only in working and talking, but after a few days, the

remembrance of the said books grew so potent and stimulative that Fanny

found it impossible not to try for books again. There were none in her

father’s house; but wealth is luxurious and daring, and some of hers

found its way to a circulating library. She became a subscriber; amazed

at being anything _in propria persona_, amazed at her own doings in

every way, to be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any

one’s improvement in view in her choice! But so it was. Susan had read

nothing, and Fanny longed to give her a share in her own first

pleasures, and inspire a taste for the biography and poetry which she

delighted in herself.

In this occupation she hoped, moreover, to bury some of the

recollections of Mansfield, which were too apt to seize her mind if her

fingers only were busy; and, especially at this time, hoped it might be

useful in diverting her thoughts from pursuing Edmund to London,

whither, on the authority of her aunt’s last letter, she knew he was

gone. She had no doubt of what would ensue. The promised notification

was hanging over her head. The postman’s knock within the neighbourhood

was beginning to bring its daily terrors, and if reading could banish

the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.