Her disappointment in her mother was greater;there she had hoped much,and found almost nothing.Every flattering scheme of being of consequence to her soon fell to the ground.Mrs Price was not unkind-but,instead of gaining on her affection and confidence,and becoming more and more dear,her daughter never met with greater kindness from her,than on the first day of her arrival.The instinct of nature was soon satisfied,and Mrs Price's attachment had no other source.Her heart and her time were already quite full;she had neither leisure nor affection to bestow on Fanny.Her daughters never had been much to her.She was fond of her sons,especially of William,but Betsey was the first of her girls whom she had ever much regarded.To her she was most injudiciously indulgent.William was her pride;Betsey,her darling;and John,Richard,Sam,Tom,and Charles,occupied all the rest of her maternal solicitude,alternately her worries and her comforts.These shared her heart;her time was given chiefly to her house and her servants.Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle;always busy without getting on,always behindhand and lamenting it,without altering her ways;wishing to be an economist,without contrivance or regularity;dissatisfied with her servants,without skill to make them better,and whether helping,or reprimanding,or indulging them,without any power of engaging their respect.
Of her two sisters,Mrs Price very much more resembled Lady Bertram than Mrs Norris.She was a manager by necessity,without any of Mrs Norris's inclination for it,or any of her activity.Her disposition was naturally easy and indolent,like Lady Bertram's;and a situation of similar affluence and do-nothing-ness would have been much more suited to her capacity,than the exertions and self-denials of the one,which her imprudent marriage had placed her in.She might have made just as good a woman of consequence as Lady Bertram,but Mrs Norris would have been a more respectable mother of nine children,on a small income.
Much of all this,Fanny could not but be sensible of.She might scruple to make use of the words,but she must and did feel that her mother was a partial,ill-judging parent,a dawdle,a slattern,who neither taught nor restrained her children,whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end,and who had no talent,no conversation,no affection towards herself;no curiosity to know her better,no desire of her friendship,and no inclination for her company that could lessen her sense of such feelings.
Fanny was very anxious to be useful,and not to appear above her home,or in any way disqualified or disinclined,by her foreign education,from contributing her help to its comforts,and therefore set about working for Sam immediately,and by working early and late,with perseverance and great dispatch,did so much,that the boy was shipped off at last,with more than half his linen ready.She had great pleasure in feeling her usefulness,but could not conceive how they would have managed without her.
Sam,loud and overbearing as he was,she rather regretted when he went,for he was clever and intelligent,and glad to be employed in any errand in the town;and though spurning the remonstrances of Susan,given as they were-though very reasonable in themselves,with ill-timed and powerless warmth,was beginning to be influenced by Fanny's services,and gentle persuasions;and she found that the best of the three younger ones was gone in him;Tom and Charles being at least as many years as they were his juniors distant from that age of feeling and reason,which might suggest the expediency of making friends,and of endeavouring to be less disagreeable.Their sister soon despaired of making the smallest impression on them;they were quite untameable by any means of address which she had spirits or time to attempt.Every afternoon brought a return of their riotous games all over the house;and she very early learnt to sigh at the approach of Saturday's constant half holiday.
Betsey too,a spoilt child,trained up to think the alphabet her greatest enemy,left to be with the servants at her pleasure,and then encouraged to report any evil of them,she was almost as ready to despair of being able to love or assist;and of Susan's temper,she had many doubts.Her continual disagreements with her mother,her rash squabbles with Tom and Charles,and petulance with Betsey,were at least so distressing to Fanny,that though admitting they were by no means without provocation,she feared the disposition that could push them to such length must be far from amiable,and from affording any repose to herself.
Such was the home which was to put Mansfield out of her head,and teach her to think of her cousin Edmund with moderated feelings.On the contrary,she could think of nothing but Mansfield,its beloved inmates,its happy ways.Everything where she now was was in full contrast to it.The elegance,propriety,regularity,harmony-and perhaps,above all,the peace and tranquillity of Mansfield,were brought to her remembrance every hour of the day,by the prevalence of everything opposite to them here.
