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, an 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.

THE END

EMMA

By Jane Austen