曼斯菲尔德庄园 Chapter 39

CHAPTER XXXIX ,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. ,Her disappointment in her mother was greater: _there_ she had hoped much, and found almost nothing. Every flattering scheme of being of consequence to her soon fell to the ground. Mrs. Price was not unkind; but, instead of gaining on her affection and confidence, and becoming more and more dear, her daughter never met with greater kindness from her than on the first day of her arrival. The instinct of nature was soon satisfied, and Mrs. Price's attachment ⁸ had no other source. Her heart and her time were already quite full; she had neither leisure nor affection to bestow ⁹ on Fanny. Her daughters never had been much to her. She was fond of her sons, especially of William, but Betsey was the first of her girls whom she had ever much regarded. To her she was most injudiciously indulgent. William was her pride; Betsey her darling; and John, Richard, Sam, Tom, and Charles occupied all the rest of her maternal ¹⁰ solicitude ¹¹, alternately her worries and her comforts. These shared her heart: her time was given chiefly to her house and her servants. Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle ¹²; all was busy without getting on, always behindhand and lamenting ¹³ it, without altering her ways; wishing to be an economist ¹⁴, without contrivance or regularity ¹⁵; dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make them better, and whether helping ¹⁶, or reprimanding, or indulging them, without any power of engaging their respect. ,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. ,Fanny was very anxious to be useful, and not to appear above her home, or in any way disqualified or disinclined, by her foreign education, from contributing her help to its comforts, and therefore set about working for Sam immediately; and by working early and late, with perseverance ²⁵ and great despatch ²⁶, did so much that the boy was shipped off at last, with more than half his linen ²⁷ ready. She had great pleasure in feeling her usefulness, but could not conceive how they would have managed without her. ,Sam, loud and overbearing as he was, she rather regretted when he went, for he was clever and intelligent, and glad to be employed in any errand in the town; and though spurning ²⁸ the remonstrances ²⁹ of Susan, given as they were, though very reasonable in themselves, with ill-timed and powerless warmth, was beginning to be influenced by Fanny's services and gentle persuasions ³⁰; and she found that the best of the three younger ones was gone in him: Tom and Charles being at least as many years as they were his juniors distant from that age of feeling and reason, which might suggest the expediency ³¹ of making friends, and of endeavouring to be less disagreeable. Their sister soon despaired of making the smallest impression on _them_; they were quite untameable by any means of address which she had spirits or time to attempt. Every afternoon brought a return of their riotous ³² games all over the house; and she very early learned to sigh at the approach of Saturday's constant half-holiday. ,Betsey, too, a spoiled child, trained up to think the alphabet her greatest enemy, left to be with the servants at her pleasure, and then encouraged to report any evil of them, she was almost as ready to despair of being able to love or assist; and of Susan's temper she had many doubts. Her continual disagreements with her mother, her rash squabbles with Tom and Charles, and petulance ³³ with Betsey, were at least so distressing ³⁴ to Fanny that, though admitting they were by no means without provocation ³⁵, she feared the disposition that could push them to such length must be far from amiable ³⁶, and from affording any repose ³⁷ to herself. ,Such was the home which was to put Mansfield out of her head, and teach her to think of her cousin Edmund with moderated feelings. On the contrary, she could think of nothing but Mansfield, its beloved inmates ³⁸, its happy ways. Everything where she now was in full contrast to it. The elegance ³⁹, propriety ⁵, regularity, harmony, and perhaps, above all, the peace and tranquillity ⁴⁰ of Mansfield, were brought to her remembrance every hour of the day, by the prevalence of everything opposite to them _here_. ,The living in incessant ⁴¹ noise was, to a frame and temper delicate and nervous like Fanny's, an evil which no superadded elegance or harmony could have entirely ⁴² atoned ⁴³ for. It was the greatest misery ⁴⁴ of all. At Mansfield, no sounds of contention ⁴⁵, no raised voice, no abrupt ⁴⁶ bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted. If tenderness could be ever supposed wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place; and as to the little irritations ⁴⁷ sometimes introduced by aunt Norris, they were short, they were trifling ⁴⁸, they were as a drop of water to the ocean, compared with the ceaseless tumult ⁴⁹ of her present abode. Here everybody was noisy, every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her mother's, which resembled the soft monotony of Lady Bertram's, only worn into fretfulness). Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter ⁵⁰, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke ⁵¹. ,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 。