It was a silver knife.Up jumped Susan,claiming it as her own,and trying to get it away;but the child ran to her mother's protection,and Susan could only reproach,which she did very warmly,and evidently hoping to interest Fanny on her side.‘It was very hard that she was not to have her own knife;it was her own knife;little sister Mary had left it to her upon her deathbed,and she ought to have had it to keep herself long ago.But mamma kept it from her,and was always letting Betsey get hold of it;and the end of it would be that Betsey would spoil it,and get it for her own,though mamma had promised her that Betsey should not have it in her own hands.’
Fanny was quite shocked.Every feeling of duty,honour,and tenderness was wounded by her sister's speech and her mother's reply.
‘Now,Susan,’cried Mrs Price in a complaining voice,‘now,how can you be so cross?You are always quarrelling about that knife.I wish you would not be so quarrelsome.Poor little Betsey;how cross Susan is to you!But you should not have taken it out,my dear,when I sent you to the drawer.You know I told you not to touch it,because Susan is so cross about it.I must hide it another time,Betsey.Poor Mary little thought it would be such a bone of contention when she gave it me to keep,only two hours before she died.Poor little soul,she could but just speak to be heard,and she said so prettily,“Let sister Susan have my knife,mamma,when I am dead and buried.”-Poor little dear!She was so fond of it,Fanny,that she would have it lay by her in bed,all through her illness.It was the gift of her good godmother,old Mrs Admiral Maxwell,only six weeks before she was taken for death.Poor little sweet creature!Well,she was taken away from evil to come.My own Betsey,’(fondling her)‘you have not the luck of such a good godmother.Aunt Norris lives too far off,to think of such little people as you.’
Fanny had indeed nothing to convey from aunt Norris,but a message to say she hoped her god-daughter was a good girl,and learnt her book.There had been at one moment a slight murmur in the drawing-room at Mansfield Park,about sending her a Prayer-book;but no second sound had been heard of such a purpose.Mrs Norris,however,had gone home and taken down two old Prayer-books of her husband,with that idea,but upon examination,the ardour of generosity went off.One was found to have too small a print for a child's eyes,and the other to be too cumbersome for her to carry about.
Fanny fatigued and fatigued again,was thankful to accept the first invitation of going to bed;and before Betsey had finished her cry at being allowed to sit up only one hour extraordinary in honour of sister,she was off,leaving all below in confusion and noise again,the boys begging for toasted cheese,her father calling out for his rum and water,and Rebecca never where she ought to be.
There was nothing to raise her spirits in the confined and scantily-furnished chamber that she was to share with Susan.The smallness of the rooms above and below indeed,and the narrowness of the passage and staircase,struck her beyond her imagination.She soon learnt to think with respect of her own little attic at Mansfield Park,in that house reckoned too small for anybody's comfort.
Chapter 39
Could Sir Thomas have seen all his niece's feelings,when she wrote her first letter to her aunt,he would not have despaired;for though a good night's rest,a pleasant morning,the hope of soon seeing William again,and the comparatively quiet state of the house,from Tom and Charles being gone to school,Sam on some project of his own,and her father on his usual lounges,enabled her to express herself cheerfully on the subject of home,there were still to her own perfect consciousness,many drawbacks suppressed.Could he have seen only half that she felt before the end of a week,he would have thought Mr Crawford sure of her,and been delighted with his own sagacity.
Before the week ended,it was all disappointment.In the first place,William was gone.The Thrush had had her orders,the wind had changed,and he was sailed within four days from their reaching Portsmouth;and during those days,she had seen him only twice,in a short and hurried way,when he had come ashore on duty.There had been no free conversation,no walk on the ramparts,no visit to the dockyard,no acquaintance with the Thrush-nothing of all that they had planned and depended on.Everything in that quarter failed her,except William's affection.His last thought on leaving home was for her.He stepped back again to the door to say,‘Take care of Fanny,mother.She is tender,and not used to rough it like the rest of us.I charge you,take care of Fanny.’
William was gone;-and the home he had left her in was-Fanny could not conceal it from herself-in almost every respect,the very reverse of what she could have wished.It was the abode of noise,disorder,and impropriety.Nobody was in their right place,nothing was done as it ought to be.She could not respect her parents,as she had hoped.On her father,her confidence had not been sanguine,but he was more negligent of his family,his habits were worse,and his manners coarser,than she had been prepared for.He did not want abilities;but he had no curiosity,and no information beyond his profession;he read only the newspaper and the navy-list;he talked only of the dockyard,the harbour,Spithead,and the Motherbank;he swore and he drank,he was dirty and gross.She had never been able to recall anything approaching to tenderness in his former treatment of herself.There had remained only a general impression of roughness and loudness;and now he scarcely ever noticed her,but to make her the object of a coarse joke.