Fanny's feelings on the occasion were indeed considerably more warm and genuine than her aunt's style of writing.She felt truly for them all.Tom dangerously ill,Edmund gone to attend him,and the sadly small party remaining at Mansfield,were cares to shut out every other care,or almost every other.She could just find selfishness enough to wonder whether Edmund had written to Miss Crawford before this summons came,but no sentiment dwelt long with her,that was not purely affectionate and disinterestedly anxious.Her aunt did not neglect her;she wrote again and again;they were receiving frequent accounts from Edmund,and these accounts were as regularly transmitted to Fanny,in the same diffuse style,and the same medley of trusts,hopes,and fears,all following and producing each other at haphazard.It was a sort of playing at being frightened.The sufferings which Lady Bertram did not see,had little power over her fancy;and she wrote very comfortably about agitation and anxiety,and poor invalids,till Tom was actually conveyed to Mansfield,and her own eyes had beheld his altered appearance.Then,a letter which she had been previously preparing for Fanny,was finished in a different style,in the language of real feeling and alarm;then,she wrote as she might have spoken.‘He is just come,my dear Fanny,and is taken upstairs;and I am so shocked to see him,that I do not know what to do.I am sure he has been very ill.Poor Tom,I am quite grieved for him,and very much frightened,and so is Sir Thomas;and how glad I should be,if you were here to comfort me.But Sir Thomas hopes he will be better tomorrow,and says we must consider his journey.’
The real solicitude now awakened in the maternal bosom was not soon over.Tom's extreme impatience to be removed to Mansfield,and experience those comforts of home and family which had been little thought of in uninterrupted health,had probably induced his being conveyed thither too early,as a return of fever came on,and for a week he was in a more alarming state than ever.They were all very seriously frightened.Lady Bertram wrote her daily terrors to her niece,who might now be said to live upon letters,and pass all her time between suffering from that of today,and looking forward to tomorrow's.Without any particular affection for her eldest cousin,her tenderness of heart made her feel that she could not spare him;and the purity of her principles added yet a keener solicitude,when she considered how little useful,how little self-denying his life had (apparently)been.
Susan was her only companion and listener on this,as on more common occasions.Susan was always ready to hear and to sympathise.Nobody else could be interested in so remote an evil as illness,in a family above an hundred miles off-not even Mrs Price,beyond a brief question or two if she saw her daughter with a letter in her hand,and now and then the quiet observation of,‘My poor sister Bertram must be in a great deal of trouble.’
So long divided,and so differently situated,the ties of blood were little more than nothing.An attachment,originally as tranquil as their tempers,was now become a mere name.Mrs Price did quite as much for Lady Bertram,as Lady Bertram would have done for Mrs Price.Three or four Prices might have been swept away,any or all,except Fanny and William,and Lady Bertram would have thought little about it;or perhaps might have caught from Mrs Norris's lips the cant of its being a very happy thing,and a great blessing to their poor dear sister Price to have them so well provided for.
Chapter 45
At about the week's end from his return to Mansfield,Tom's immediate danger was over,and he was so far pronounced safe,as to make his mother perfectly easy;for being now used to the sight of him in his suffering,helpless state,and hearing only the best,and never thinking beyond what she heard,with no disposition for alarm,and no aptitude at a hint,Lady Bertram was the happiest subject in the world for a little medical imposition.The fever was subdued;the fever had been his complaint,of course he would soon be well again;Lady Bertram could think nothing less,and Fanny shared her aunt's security,till she received a few lines from Edmund,written purposely to give her a clearer idea of his brother's situation,and acquaint her with the apprehensions which he and his father had imbibed from the physician with respect to some strong hectic symptoms,which seemed to seize the frame on the departure of the fever.They judged it best that Lady Bertram should not be harassed by alarms which,it was to be hoped,would prove unfounded,but there was no reason why Fanny should not know the truth.They were apprehensive for his lungs.
A very few lines from Edmund showed her the patient and the sick room in a juster and stronger light than all Lady Bertram's sheets of paper could do.There was hardly anyone in the house who might have not described,from personal observation,better than herself;not one who was not more useful at times to her son.She could do nothing but glide in quietly and look at him;but,when able to talk or be talked to,or read to,Edmund was the companion he preferred.His aunt worried him by her cares,and Sir Thomas knew not how to bring down his conversation or his voice to the level of irritation and feebleness.Edmund was all in all.Fanny would certainly believe him so at least,and must find that her estimation of him was higher than ever when he appeared as the attendant,supporter,cheerer of a suffering brother.There was not only the debility of recent illness to assist;there was also,as she now learnt,nerves much affected,spirits much depressed to calm and raise;and her own imagination added that there must be a mind to be properly guided.
