Chapter 48
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 forever for his illness.He had suffered,and he had learnt 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,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.
