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Mr. Crawford gone, Sir Thomas’ next object was that he should be missed; and he entertained the hope that his niece would find a blank in the loss of those attentions which at the time she had felt, or fancied, an evil. She had tasted of consequence in its most flattering form; and he did hope that the loss of it, the sinking again into nothing, would awaken very wholesome regrets in her mind.
The promotion of William Price to second lieutenant of H.M.S. Thrush soon gave Sir Thomas this opportunity, as he was granted ten days’ leave to travel to Northamptonshire, and was coming, the happiest of lieutenants, because the latest made, to shew his happiness and describe his uniform.
Therein, Sir Thomas hatched his Machiavellian scheme of how he would bring Fanny into a proper attitude of gratitude and subservience. Where else but Mansfield would she have the opportunity to open a ball with a gentleman, to be given the proper coming-out of a lady of society? And yet, the ungrateful chit had the temerity to spurn the one who had been her brother’s benefactor. Upon his father’s consultation of his thoughts regarding the scheme, Edmund considered it every way, and saw nothing but what was right. It was a medicinal project upon Fanny’s understanding, which Sir Thomas must at present consider diseased. A residence of eight or nine years in the abode of wealth and plenty had a little disordered her powers of comparing and judging. Her father’s house would, in all probability, teach her the value of a good income; and he trusted that she would become the wiser and happier woman, all her life, for the experiment he devised.
However, Providence had higher power than any human, and William soon bore news that Fanny was needed – and needed in the worst way – not in the house of her father, but to repay the kindness of William’s former commander, Captain Harville, who had been brought to shore after their last excursion with a severe gunshot wound to the leg. With the lieutenant having stepped up to assist in the command of the Antwerp, William had stepped into the role of lieutenant very capably, and it was the mere recounting of his deeds to the Admiralty that secured his well-deserved promotion. In short, for all that Miss Crawford had postured about how her uncle the Admiral scorned asking favours, the only true service he had rendered was the conveyance of the information into the right set of ears; unlike the all too common cases that were often put forth, William had sufficient merit that gaining the next step in rank was hardly any trouble in fact.
“The doctor says he will likely be lame the rest of his days,” wrote William, “and his wife will need someone to assist her to keep house and oversee the education of their three children. They are lodging in Portsmouth for the moment, but as soon as he is back on his feet, he wishes to take up a house in Lyme. Fanny, dear sister, I know it may be a bit of a come down to exchange a place like Mansfield for a simple home in Lyme, but they are good people, and with your nice ways and orderliness, you will set things going in a better way, I am sure, than if Mrs. Harville were left to shift for herself. It is the least we could do, to shew my gratitude to one to whom I have owed my life on several occasions. If you are amenable to the scheme, I will propose that you shall spend a six-month with them, and that should suffice to see them settled.”
Mrs. Bertram was horror-struck at the idea; the original proposal had been for Fanny to spend two months at her father’s house, and she scarcely knew how she could part with Fanny for that long, but for her now to be away from Mansfield for three times that! Her laments were only silenced by Mrs. Norris’ proclamations that Fanny could be very well spared – Mrs. Norris herself being ready to give up her own time to Lady Bertram as requested – and in short, could not really be wanted or missed.
Fanny could not really decide if this journey were a punishment or an adventure. Though going as she did willingly and eagerly, the last evening at Mansfield Park must still be wretchedness. Calling Mansfield her home for the past eight years had left her little accustomed to the life she had been born to, and to her, this was now her family, and the Bertrams were more her parents than the father and mother who had birthed her. Her heart was completely sad at parting. She had tears for every room in the house, much more for every beloved inhabitant. She clung to her aunt, because she would miss her; she kissed the hand of her uncle with struggling sobs, because she had displeased him; and as for Edmund, she could neither speak, nor look, nor think, when the last moment came with him; and it was not till it was over that she knew he was giving her the affectionate farewell of a brother.
However, the novelty of travelling, and the happiness of being with William, soon produced their natural effect on Fanny’s spirits, and the lively discourse which they embarked upon eclipsed her thoughts of the growing distance between them and Mansfield. They spoke of the future which they would have after he gained further rank; the prize money he would bring home from successive captures; how they would furnish the little cottage that he would procure for them to pass all their middle and later life together. He told her, too, of Captain Harville’s acts of courage, and the kindliness of his wife, and the lively inquisitiveness of their three little children.
“They are named Tom, Charles, and Betsey, just like our own little brothers and sister,” related William, “but I dare say Mrs. Harville has more aptitude at managing than our mother, and beneath all their liveliness – for which child under ten does not have an excess of energy? – you shall soon enough discern the sweetness of their natures.”
Fanny was little used to the noise, and the bustle, and the narrowness, which greeted her at the small house in a narrow street where Mr. and Mrs. Price resided with the remainder of their brood. She thought their maidservant trollopy, and found the manner of her sisters wanting, and could not believe their parlour was not only a passage-room to something better; living half her life at Mansfield, it seemed, had made her too fine for her own home. She soon learned to think with respect of her own little attic at Mansfield Park, in that house reckoned too small for anybody’s comfort.
Yet what a shock she was in for, when William escorted her to the Harvilles’ lodgings! Captain Harville was tall and dark, with strong features; he was not handsome and was obviously in pain, but when he spoke, he did not use oaths the way her father did; he was a perfect gentleman, unaffected, warm, and obliging. Mrs. Harville, a degree less polished than her husband, seemed, however, to have the same good feelings; and nothing could be more pleasant than their desire of considering Fanny, alongside William, as friends of their own. They made do with lodging in rooms while they were at Portsmouth, so they could conserve their funds to lease a proper home when they could repair to Lyme. But though their space was such that Fanny could no longer consider her father’s house small, it was perfectly ordered and the little Harvilles played with ingeniously crafted wooden toys that their father had contrived during the few hours he had for leisure on the Antwerp. Fanny had not thought there could possibly be a home poorer than what she had now to own as hers, but yet, on encountering one, she discovered that not every abode of an impoverished sailor must needs be incommoding.
“Your brother Sam is going to sea, I hear?” enquired Captain Harville. Although Fanny knew that he would not be aware of the comings and goings of the little Prices beyond any stories William chose to relay from his family correspondence, he made her believe that he truly cared about them.
“Ay,” she replied, “and Susan is doing the best she can to get him ready, though she is but fourteen and scarce knows what he will need. I have endeavoured to assist her, but I am ashamed to admit, I may have grown too fine to have a proper acquaintance with what might be the appropriate provision for a ship’s boy.” She reddened a little, averting her gaze to her feet with the usual diffidence she displayed whenever she fancied herself to have displeased her aunt and uncle. It would not do to offend the people who would be taking her into service for a few months, but she had no idea where she might begin, when the life in Portsmouth was now as a foreign land to her.
“Do not worry, my dear,” said Mrs. Harville. “I am sure my Thomas can spare me for a few hours, and I would be more than happy to check everything over and make out a list for you.”
“Truly?” Fanny could not believe her ears. “But surely, the children shall need you; I cannot ask – why, it is I who am supposed to be a help to you, not an imposition!”
“They know full well not to stir from these rooms while I am away,” said Phoebe Harville firmly. “I shall be there, and I will give you the direction of where to procure any things you may need.”
With the guidance of Mrs. Harville, and Fanny’s efforts working early and late, with perseverance and despatch, Sam had all the items he needed in place when he was shipped off at last. It should have been a desolate time for Fanny; the Thrush had been given its orders and she had waved William off within four days of their reaching Portsmouth. Her mother had been distant, and her father, coarse; even though she was their eldest daughter, nobody in the house gave her the slightest of regard, accustomed as they had been to her absence. Not even the prospect of her leaving again, for Captain Harville improved by the day in his condition and was now able to hobble around a few steps with his cane, could influence them to care much for her health and spirits, when Mrs. Price’s heart and her time were already quite full; she had neither leisure nor affection to bestow on Fanny. Her daughters had never been much to her. She was fond of her sons, especially of William, but five-year-old Betsey, the youngest, was the first of her girls whom she had ever much regarded.
Thus, she was sent, not long after Sam’s departure, on her journey with the Harvilles to Lyme. Mrs. Price consoled herself readily, and not inaccurately, that the change of air might be beneficial to Fanny’s health; and it was no surprise that Mr. Price would treat her with anything but the careless negligence he extended to the rest of his family. Only Susan and Betsey regarded her with anything of sorrow at their parting, for Fanny had used a portion of the ten pounds her uncle had given her to procure another silver knife, so that Betsey would no longer steal the one their sadly departed sister Mary had bequeathed to Susan.
“You shall write, shan’t you?” Susan entreated as she waved away the mail-coach that carried Fanny and the Harvilles to Lyme, a journey which was substantial though not quite as long as the distance from Northamptonshire to Portsmouth.
Fanny gave her sincerest promises to maintain the correspondence; it touched her heart that her intervention and advice, no matter how meagre it may sound to her when compared to the superior wisdom of Edmund, was so dearly heeded by Susan. Her purchase of the silver knife had ended the squabble between Susan and Betsey, but the sight of a fourteen-year-old holding herself in remonstrance for merely defending the property that was rightfully her own nearly broke Fanny’s heart in two. Susan was now old enough to know what was wrong in her household and sought to right it; and Fanny now saw her own weakness in the face of the sister who stood up and fought for what she thought was right, where Fanny would have simply run away and cried. How had she gone away and deemed herself superior for so long, while doing nothing to assist her sister? Fanny resolved that from now on, she would try her best to promote further intimacy between herself and Susan, despite the distance, and seek a way to assist her in bettering her situation as soon as it was in her power to do so.
Yet when they took up residence at the house in Lyme, situated near the foot of an old pier of unknown date, Fanny found that although the only room the Harvilles could give her was in the attic, opposite that of their one servant, a warm fire always burned in the hearth, and Mrs. Harville prepared simple but healthful foods for all of them, and she always had leave to walk along the Cobb for an hour or so of her chusing each day. Though they could not afford a governess’ pay, they treated her as a member of the family and gave her several shillings a month to spend as she wished. For all that it was ostensibly a life of service, Fanny found that she had more freedom than at Mansfield or Portsmouth, and as she ventured often out of doors, sometimes with the children, the bracing sea air blew colour into her cheeks, and she grew stronger and less easily fagged.
William’s letters were a thing to be awaited by the entire household; he always wrote one thick letter to be read by all, within which he enclosed a smaller envelope of his private thoughts to Fanny. Even though William had been the universal favourite of her parents, she never saw her brother so celebrated and well thought of as with the Harvilles, who genuinely rejoiced in his achievements.
Susan wrote too, and not only to seek Fanny’s guidance on household matters, but also for recommendations of books to borrow from the circulating library, for which Fanny had procured a subscription on her sister’s behalf. Thus, Fanny was able to share some of the learning she had availed herself of at Mansfield, though Mrs. Harville’s efficient running of the house in Lyme soon taught her that she was not worldly or practical enough to be of much use to Susan when it came to her education in being mistress of a home on limited means. She was remedying that, though, under the tutelage of Mrs. Harville, who offered to show her everything a sailor’s wife should know, so that she could make a match amongst their acquaintance in the Navy when the time came. Before Fanny was two months parted from Mansfield, which she had once believed to be the only place where she could belong, she had the firm conviction that she was not desolate in any way.
Those belonging to the set where her heart had once lived would not lower themselves to correspond with a poor relation who had gone into service; as Lady Bertram did not write, it fell to Miss Crawford to provide Fanny with intelligence of Mansfield and Everingham, and even that was a duty she discharged at increasingly longer intervals, and as she never failed to repeat, almost solely at the exhortations of Edmund and her brother. To her surprise, Fanny found that instead of being really glad to receive the letters when they did come, the delays were in fact a relief, for she did not like to hear how little welcome her name was to Mrs. Rushworth. It reminded her too much of the utter lack of regard with which she had been treated in her own parents’ home.
“Mrs. Rushworth’s day of good looks will come,” wrote Mary, “we have cards for her first party on the 28th. Then she will be in beauty, for she will open one of the best houses in Wimpole Street. I was in it two years ago, when it was Lady Lascelle’s, and prefer it to almost any I know in London, and certainly then she will feel, to use a vulgar phrase, that she has got her pennyworth for a penny. Henry could not have afforded her such a house. I hope she will recollect it, and be satisfied, as well as she may, with moving her queen of a palace, though the king may appear best in the background; and as I have no desire to tease her, I shall never force your name upon her again.”
And she need not, Fanny realized, for what use were relations to whom one’s name had to be forced, when there were non-relations who treated her like a member of the family? To Fanny’s surprise, about three months after she had been in residence with the Harvilles, the servant announced that there was a gentleman at the door, and Fanny could recognize his voice when Mr. Crawford entered the room.
Fanny would have been ashamed to introduce him to her parents’ household, but here there was only puzzlement as to why he would come to call upon her when he knew she was in service. She introduced him to Captain and Mrs. Harville as “William’s friend”, and they spoke most agreeably of William for a while, before Crawford began to hint at the expediency of an early walk.
“By all means, Fanny,” said Captain Harville, for she was now “Fanny” to them and insisted that they be “Tom” and “Phoebe” to her. In fact, Captain Harville had gone so far as to relay the information that he had a sister, also named Fanny, who was working as an instructress at Mrs. Goddard’s school in Highbury, while awaiting the return of her fiancé, a Lieutenant James Benwick, from sea. “And if you please, perhaps you can bring the children with you.”
Little Tom, Charles, and Betsey Harville, aged ten, eight and six, were hardly like their namesakes from the Price family. They hopped and skipped along the Cobb and made but one innocent-sounding entreaty for sweetmeats, but otherwise they hardly interrupted the discourse between Crawford and Fanny. He spoke of the business that brought him up to Everingham, which consisted of some legal troubles pertaining to his tenants, but it soon transpired that the only object of his trip to Lyme was to see her. She thought him altogether improved since she had last seen him; he was much more gentle, obliging and attentive to other people’s feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield; she had never seen him so agreeable – so near being agreeable; his behaviour to Captain and Mrs. Harville could not offend, and there was something particularly kind and proper in the notice he took of the Harville children. And yet, she could not take full pleasure in his visit, when he pressed upon her a suit that was not in her power to accept. He spoke of his hoping soon to have an assistant, a friend, a guide in every plan of utility or charity of Everingham: a somebody that would make Everingham and all about it a dearer object than it had ever been yet.
“I wish you would not say such things, Mr. Crawford,” replied Fanny. “It is not proper, when I am so unsuited to the circles that you must move in. Besides, I am yet obliged to the Harvilles – William’s safety has been so long in the hands of Captain Harville that I can hardly leave him alone in his convalescence!”
“Indeed, there is no peer to your kindness,” said Crawford, with much admiration, “and this little speech of yours can only shew me how perfect a creature you are. For now, we shall say no more – but how should you like to hear about Mansfield?”
Though Fanny was now in a fair way to preferring Lyme to Mansfield, she could not resist an opportunity to satisfy her curiosity about Edmund, whom she still regarded with the closeness of a brother. He spoke expansively of his warm attachment to Mansfield, and his hopes of returning there in the autumn, and offered to convey her personally should she express the slightest wish to return.
“However, I must say, you look extremely well,” he observed, with a gaze that only served to discomfit her with its intensity.
Fortunately for Fanny, little Betsey Harville expressed her tiredness rather vociferously and had to be conveyed back to the house; Crawford sat her upon his shoulders as they headed back towards the Harville residence. Captain Harville thanked him profusely for his efforts upon their arrival and offered Crawford an invitation to sit down with them for their evening meal, but Crawford claimed another engagement and was not to be seen again.
Three more months passed, and Captain Harville was now able to walk around without assistance, albeit with a limp. Although he was not a reader, he built shelves along the walls to hold the books that Fanny brought back for the children from the circulating library and was back to whittling out toys for the children from wood. He even made some for Fanny to send to Portsmouth for the benefit of her three youngest siblings, who were roughly of an age to his children, to her immense gratitude. Although they were coming unto the close of the originally agreed upon six-month, Fanny found herself loath to leave, for she had come to regard this place, where she had regained her health and was respected and cherished, to be the only home she ever had.
And yet, the news from Mansfield made her wish that if only her uncle would send for her! It was Lady Bertram who wrote, for the urgency of the matter superseded her reservations around their difference in status. Tom was ill – gravely ill, it seemed, from a fall that had brought on a fever, and Edmund had gone to London to see if he could be recovered enough to remove him to Mansfield. It was then that Fanny felt the obligation to travel to Northamptonshire, yet no summons from her uncle came.
Instead, a most distressing missive from Miss Crawford arrived. It consisted chiefly of speculation as to Tom’s rapid decline, and raptures about the potential for Edmund’s future good in the title of “Sir”. Lady Bertram had written to convey that Tom was out of danger, but this piece of correspondence threw Fanny into a fresh frenzy of worry. Had Tom taken a turn for the worse, but with Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram loath to speak of it?
She could no longer bear the suspense of it and knowing that Captain and Mrs. Harville would be ill-equipped to bear the expense of her journey to Mansfield, she applied to Crawford via his sister for his conveyance there.
“Only,” she confided to Captain and Mrs. Harville, “I fear that he might importune me on the journey. Is there any way I could possibly arrange for a chaperone to accompany me?”
It was decided that Mrs. Harville and her servant would ride post with Fanny as far as Portsmouth, and from there, Susan would accompany Fanny on the journey to Northamptonshire while Mrs. Harville journeyed back to Lyme. The tales of life at Mansfield that Fanny had shared in their correspondences intrigued Susan immensely, and they had long agreed that if Fanny were to return to Mansfield, she should bring Susan along with her. That prospect had not seemed likely on the horizon and so Fanny had not thought to seek leave from her aunt and uncle, but now, the flouting of propriety on that front bore little consequence to Fanny’s concern for her own reputation in travelling under the protection of Mr. Henry Crawford. Even his own sister had termed him “a sad flirt”, and Mary’s letters had given her reason enough to suspect that his sojourns to Richmond when Mrs. Rushworth was in residence at Twickenham might indicate that he was less than capable of fidelity. To have him the acquaintance, the flirt perhaps, of Mrs Rushworth! It mortified her that she was at the mercy of such a man to convey her to Mansfield, and yet her utter dependence meant that she had no alternative.
But when Mrs. Harville delivered her to the door of her father’s house at Portsmouth, it was Susan, not the servant Rebecca, who opened it, and from her pallor of countenance, Fanny surmised that something had to be extremely wrong. Mutely, Susan handed her a letter, which had been sent express – it was in the hand of Miss Crawford, and read:
A most scandalous, ill-natured rumour has just reached me, and I write, dear Fanny, to warn you against giving the least credit to it, should it spread into the country. Depend upon it, there is some mistake, and that a day or two will clear it up; at any rate, that Henry is blameless, and in spite of a moment’s etourderie, thinks of nobody but you. Say not a word of it; hear nothing, surmise nothing, whisper nothing till I write again. I am sure it will all be hushed up, and nothing proved but Rushworth’s folly. If they are gone, I would lay my life they are only gone to Mansfield Park, and will stop by to bring you with them. When you see them, you may attest to their innocence. – Yours, etc.”
Although Fanny was ignorant of any scandal, it did not take long for her to grasp the import of the letter – there had to be a flirtation at Wimpole Street, and though Miss Crawford believed her brother was still en route to Portsmouth to pick up Fanny and Susan, she did not think it very likely. If they were to Northamptonshire, Portsmouth must be out of the way, and even if they were to detour, how mortifying it would be to witness Crawford’s flirtations with her married cousin on the journey there!
Crawford did not come that day or the next, so Fanny spent her days trapped at her father’s house in the oppressive summer heat, with nothing to do but to observe how the plates and knives and jugs were all half-washed at best, and the motes floating in her saucer of milk. How came they, with two servants to their name, to have such disregard for cleanliness when the Harvilles managed to keep everything spick and span even with their one servant and the three little ones at home? She had barely embarked on this journey, and she repented it already; she wondered when she could return to the Harvilles’, where they had assured her before her departure that she would always have a home.
Fanny suffered through her father thrusting the newspaper in her face, and his oath-laden harrumphs about how her “great cousins in town” were now so come down in the world, and how he would have given them a good flogging if Mrs. Rushworth had been his offspring. Though she denied it out of shame, she was increasingly aware that it was true – and the shame of her uncle, her aunt, of Julia, and Tom, and Edmund – it was enough for her to spend many a sleepless night tossing and turning.
There were not so many nights before a letter arrived from Edmund, stating his intention to travel to Portsmouth and convey her and Susan to Mansfield. He had heard, then, from Miss Crawford of her request for transport from there. But his letter contained yet more distressing news – Julia and Yates had eloped from London and were on the road to Scotland as he wrote. The Bertram family was thus completely thrown into scandal, and his father and mother had entreated him to bring Fanny as their sole remaining comfort.
As they journeyed forth, Edmund in all of his distress took her hand, and said, in a low, very expressive tone, “No wonder – you must feel it – you must suffer. How a man who once loved, could desert you! But yours – your regard was new compared with – Fanny, think of me!”
She did think of him, but not as he supposed; she wondered now how she could ever have regarded him as more than a brother when he had been so neglectful of her wishes and her needs, so much that it could be argued that he deserted her even before Mr. Crawford had. There was no deception in Crawford’s flirting, she had never believed him capable of single-mindedness. But Edmund, with his kindness and his piety, still overlooked to see to the simplest of her needs such as a fire and a horse for her exercise, and now that she was accustomed to a home where she was treated truly as an equal, she could not help but see the selfishness of his entreaty.
When Fanny arrived at Mansfield, she found that she was as much needed as she might have conjectured. The whole household was in a shambles; Tom’s complaints had been greatly heightened by the shock of his sister’s conduct, and his recovery so much thrown back by it, that even Lady Bertram had been struck by the difference; Sir Thomas was still in London; and Mrs. Norris, far from being of use to everybody as she oft professed, was now an altered creature, quieted, stupefied, indifferent to everything that passed. She had the gall to blame Fanny for causing this disgrace by not accepting Mr. Crawford, and casting Susan a few repulsive looks, for she felt her as a spy, and an intruder, and an indigent niece, and everything most odious. Had Tom’s illness not been so serious, Fanny would have wanted to be gone in an instant, but at least Lady Bertram was kind to her two nieces, having lost both her daughters to vice, and needing their substitutes.
It was a long, hard period of realization for all the members of the Bertram family, and Edmund, in particular – for Edmund had to contend with the complete disillusionment of his prior belief in Miss Crawford’s charm and character. In all this, he applied to her consolation as a friend, and she heard many repetitions of his recounting his last conversation with her. To all and sundry, Fanny was certainly very much of use; but having known a taste, however small, of being her own mistress, she also recognized her years at Mansfield for the unpaid servitude that they were.
Eventually, Tom gradually regained his health, without regaining the thoughtlessness or selfishness of his previous habits. He became what he ought to be: useful to his father, steady and quiet, and not living merely for himself. With the presence of Tom and Edmund to offer her aunt and uncle consolation, and Susan to take her former place, Fanny knew what she wanted to do; she would return to Lyme.
She returned to the Harvilles’ to find everyone in deep mourning, and a new inhabitant at the house in Lyme. The same putrid illness that Tom had contracted had been going around other parts of London and made its way to the establishment where Fanny Harville had been at, and she had not been as fortunate as Tom to survive. Thus, Captain James Benwick now had prize money and promotion, but now there was naught for him and the Harvilles to do but to mourn her loss.
“I am intruding,” she said, rather apologetically. “If it will be easier, I may stay at my father’s home in Portsmouth.” This last was uttered with no small amount of reluctance, but now at nineteen, she could count down the months until she came of age, and perhaps hope for a small independence.
“No, you must stay,” urged Phoebe. “You cannot imagine how much of use you have been to us.”
Despite her sadness for the Harvilles, Fanny’s heart leapt at being admitted back into their simple company, and she endeavoured to help as best as she could with keeping house and reading to Captain Benwick and the children. He was wont to indulge in romantic and melancholy poetry, but in the name of the children’s education, Fanny re-directed him to essays and histories, and together they ensured that by the time little Tom reached his twelfth year and was bound for the Naval Academy, he was already more well read than Susan had been at fourteen.
It was obvious, by then, that the doctor’s prophecy had been correct, and Captain Harville would never go on board ship again. While Fanny enjoyed their company, and the contribution of Captain Benwick’s half-pay while on shore afforded the Harville home the occasional little luxury, she worried about her dependence and how she could make a match. Perhaps the next time when William came back into port, she thought, she might journey to Portsmouth to meet some naval acquaintances of his.
Captain Benwick, however, had other ideas. Fanny’s steady and quiet presence had shone a beacon of light for him in his grief, just as she had for Edmund. For a long time, he had not the ability to contemplate marrying any but Fanny Harville, but now that she was taken from him altogether, it was left for time to heal that wound, and over the gradual space of two years, for another Fanny to take her place.
By the time that they wed, Fanny had such an ingrained place in the hearts of Captain and Mrs. Harville that he could not begrudge her for supplanting his sister, and Mr. Price was all too eager to grant her the regard he never had now that she was a Captain’s wife. He walked all over the ramparts with Fanny and Captain Benwick and waxed lyrical about the Grappler as they went to see her in the dockyard before she went out of harbour.
Fanny, the ever-domestic creature that she was, could never have imagined that her future would involve going out to sea, formed as she had believed she was for hearth and home. But now, though there was no little cottage for her to keep with William, nor the parsonage of Thornton Lacey with Edmund, she knew that she was more content than she would have been in either of those two situations. Gratitude she had for those who had removed her from her father’s house and given her a genteel education, and gratitude she had still for the kindness of her brother and the charity of his former captain, but the greatest gratitude she reserved for the love of the husband who made her feel the poetry in his soul.
THE END