I could leave a little trifle among them worth their having.’
‘You are very good, but do not trouble yourself about them. They are sure of being well provided for. Sir Thomas will take care of that.’
‘Why, you know, Sir Thomas’s means will be rather straitened if the Antigua estate is to make such poor returns.’
‘Oh! that will soon be settled. Sir Thomas has been writing about it, I know.’
‘Well, Lady Bertram,’ said Mrs Norris, moving to go, ‘I can only say that my sole desire is to be of use to your family; and so, if Sir Thomas should ever speak again about my taking Fanny, you will be able to say that my health and spirits put it quite out of the question; besides that, I really should not have a bed to give her, for I must keep a spare room for a friend.’
Lady Bertram repeated enough of this conversation to her husband to convince him how much he had mistaken his sister-in-law’s views; and she was from that moment perfectly safe from all expectation, or the slightest allusion to it from him. He could not but wonder at her refusing to do anything for a niece whom she had been so forward to adopt; but, as she took early care to make him, as well as Lady Bertram, understand that whatever she possessed was designed for their family, he soon grew reconciled to a distinction which, at the same time that it was advantageous and complimentary to them, would enable him better to provide for Fanny himself.
Fanny soon learnt how unnecessary had been her fears of a removal: and her spontaneous, untaught felicity on the discovery, conveyed some consolation to Edmund for his disappointment in what he had expected to be so essentially serviceable to her. Mrs Norris took possession of the White House, the Grants arrived at the Parsonage, and these events over, everything at Mansfield went on for some time as usual.
The Grants showing a disposition to be friendly and sociable, gave great satisfaction in the main among their new acquaintance. They had their faults, and Mrs Norris soon found them out. The Doctor was very fond of eating, and would have a good dinner every day; and Mrs Grant, instead of contriving to gratify him at little expense, gave her cook as high wages as they did at Mansfield Park and was scarcely ever seen in her offices. Mrs Norris could not speak with any temper of such grievances, nor of the quantity of butter and eggs that were regularly consumed in the house. ‘Nobody loved plenty and hospitality more than herself; nobody more hated pitiful doings; the Parsonage, she believed, had never been wanting in comforts of any sort, had never borne a bad character in her time, but this was a way of going on that she could not understand. A fine lady in a country parsonage was quite out of place. Her store-room, she thought, might have been good enough for Mrs Grant to go into. Enquire where she would, she could not find out that Mrs Grant had ever had more than five thousand pounds.’
Lady Bertram listened without much interest to this sort of invective. She could not enter into the wrongs of an economist, but she felt all the injuries of beauty in Mrs Grant’s being so well settled in life without being handsome, and expressed her astonishment on that point almost as often, though not so diffusely, as Mrs Norris discussed the other.
These opinions had been hardly canvassed a year, before another event arose of such importance in the family, as might fairly claim some place in the thoughts and conversation of the ladies. Sir Thomas found it expedient to go to Antigua himself, for the better arrangement of his affairs, and he took his eldest son with him, in the hope of detaching him from some bad connections at home. They left England with the probability of being nearly a twelvemonth absent.
The necessity of the measure in a pecuniary light, and the hope of its utility to his son, reconciled Sir Thomas to the effort of quitting the rest of his family, and of leaving his daughters to the direction of others at their present most interesting time of life. He could not think Lady Bertram quite equal to supply his place with them, or rather, to perform what should have been her own; but, in Mrs Norris’s watchful attention, and in Edmund’s judgment, he had sufficient confidence to make him go without fears for their conduct.
Lady Bertram did not at all like to have her husband leave her; but she was not disturbed by any alarm for his safety, or solicitude for his comfort, being one of those persons who think nothing can be dangerous or difficult, or fatiguing, to anybody but themselves.
The Miss Bertrams were much to be pitied on the occasion; not for their sorrow, but for their want of it. Their father was no object of love to them; he had never seemed the friend of their pleasures, and his absence was unhappily most welcome. They were relieved by it from all restraint; and without aiming at one gratification that would probably have been forbidden by Sir Thomas, they felt themselves immediately at their own disposal, and to have every indulgence within their reach. Fanny’s relief and her consciousness of it, were quite equal to her cousins’; but a more tender nature suggested that her feelings were ungrateful, and she really grieved because she could not grieve. ‘Sir Thomas, who had done so much for her and her brothers, and who was gone perhaps never to return! that she should see him go without a tear! it was a shameful insensibility.’ He had said to her, moreover, on the very last morning, that he hoped she might see William again in the course of the ensuing winter, and had charged her to write and invite him to Mansfield, as soon as the squadron to which he belonged should be known to be in England. ‘This was so thoughtful and kind!’ and would he only have smiled upon her, and called her ‘my dear Fanny,’ while he said it, every former frown or cold address might have been forgotten. But he had ended his speech in a way to sink her in sad mortification, by adding, ‘If William does come to Mansfield, I hope you may be able to convince him that the many years which have passed since you parted have not been spent on your side entirely without improvement; though, I fear, he must find his sister at sixteen in some respects too much like his sister at ten.’ She cried bitterly over this reflection when her uncle was gone; and her cousins, on seeing her with red eyes, set her down as a hypocrite.
Tom Bertram had of late spent so little of his time at home, that he could be only nominally missed; and Lady Bertram was soon astonished to find how very well they did even without his father, how well Edmund could supply his place in carving, talking to the steward, writing to the attorney, settling with the servants, and equally saving her from all possible fatigue or exertion in every particular, but that of directing her letters.
The earliest intelligence of the travellers’ safe arrival at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs Norris had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Edmund participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others, when Sir Thomas’s assurances of their both being alive and well, made it necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while.
The winter came and passed without their being called for; the accounts continued perfectly good; and Mrs Norris, in promoting gaieties for her nieces, assisting their toilets, displaying their accomplishments, and looking about for their future husbands, had so much to do, as in addition to all her own household cares, some interference in those of her sister, and Mrs Grant’s wasteful doings to overlook, left her very little occasion to be occupied in fears for the absent.
The Miss Bertrams were now fully established among the belles of the neighbourhood; and as they joined to beauty and brilliant acquirements a manner naturally easy, and carefully formed to general civility and obligingness, they possessed its favour as well as its admiration. Their vanity was in such good order, that they seemed to be quite free from it, and gave themselves no airs; while the praise attending such behaviour, secured and brought round by their aunt, served to strengthen them in believing they had no faults.
