Mansfield Park - 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 ¹ 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 ² it from herself, in almost every respect the very reverse of what she could have wished. It was the abode ³ of noise, disorder ⁴, 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 ⁶, but he was more negligent ⁷ 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., , ,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 ¹⁷ for it, or any of her activity. Her disposition ¹⁸ was naturally easy and indolent, like Lady Bertram's; and a situation of similar affluence ¹⁹ and do-nothingness would have been much more suited to her capacity than the exertions ²⁰ 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 ²¹ to make use of the words, but she must and did feel that her mother was a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle ²², a slattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort ²³ 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 ²⁴ her sense of such feelings., ,He laid hold of the rope and pulled the boat ashore.他抓住绳子拉船靠岸。,He had to conceal his identity to escape the police.为了躲避警方，他只好隐瞒身份 。