Do you not begin to understand how it is you broke my heart?
I envy the devotion you express for your parents, and I envy your sister and your cousin. You still have a family— my own was shattered when I lost my brother. They have your love, and they have each other regardless of the errors and follies they committed and the falsehoods they perpetrated. I alone stand outside your family circle, waiting, petitioning, hoping, for re-admittance.
My unhappiness makes me unwise—I should not upbraid you thus—I can only hope that time, absence, distance will soften your severity and reanimate your love for
Your lonely wife,
Mary
The note was so brief that he read the whole, twice over, before he passed Mansfield Parsonage. He had intended to stop and pay his respects, but he could not sufficiently master his emotions so as to meet the Grants with composure, after reading such a letter. A letter that once again blamed him, for her betrayal.
* * * * * * *
After losing her husband, Harriet Butters was left with an ample jointure. She chose to leave Bristol and settle in Stoke Newington, to be near her only son and his family. However, Fanny observed, while Mrs. Butters sometimes called upon her son George in his law offices, she seldom met with her daughter-in-law or the family all together. There appeared to be some estrangement.
Mrs. Butters’ daughter-in-law Cecilia Butters was an active, clever woman; discontented with her lot in life, but blessed with sufficient discernment to understand the source of her difficulties—her unhappiness was owing to the faults of her husband and his mother.
Those qualities which once attracted her, not fifteen years ago, to Mr. George Butters—namely, his gentle wit and his placid temperament—were precisely those which now aroused her contempt. Her husband was a solicitor, but his ambition and his income did not answer her wishes.
The younger Mrs. Butters was a devoted horsewoman and her three daughters were in the saddle not long after they were able to walk. Unfortunately the expense of maintaining a stable of horses was such as could not be easily borne by her husband.
In addition to her horses, Cecilia Butters kept an ill-disciplined menagerie of dogs and cats, which Mrs. Butters was unable to tolerate. After only five minutes in her daughter-in-law’s shabby parlour, her eyes began to water excessively, and she started to gasp for breath. Nor could Mrs. Butters observe the disorder around her with any composure, or refrain from inwardly lamenting that the income earned by her son was spent by his wife on the acquisition of animals who seemed bent on the destruction of every item of furniture in the house, including those pieces she had bestowed upon them. The veneer on the pianoforte was reduced to shreds, the wainscoting and doors were all scratched and marred, and the carpets were stained.
A coolness had arisen between the mother and daughter-in-law, for the younger Mrs. Butters could not always conceal her expectation that the older lady ought to do more for her son, and her disappointment when she did not. The fact that Mrs. Butters had given away much of her fortune to philanthropic causes, such as fighting the slave trade, was particularly galling to Cecilia Butters, who subscribed to the maxim that charity begins at home. Nor did Cecilia Butters scruple to teach her daughters to think as she did. Instead of duty and courtesy, forbearance and respect, the three girls were tutored in resentment and envy.
Mrs. Butters, for her part, contended that she had done as much and more than most would do.
This difference of opinion between the two principals was seldom carried out openly, save in the form of veiled barbs and dropped hints. With the censure of selfishness and folly reposing in one female breast, and accusations of ingratitude and ill-breeding in the other, the meetings between the two households were few and marked by frosty politeness.
Mrs. Butters’ solicitations to her family to come and spend a day, an afternoon, or an evening at her home, were declined more often than not, on the pretext of some ailment of one of the children or even a mishap to one of her horses, who came a close second to her children in Cecilia Butters’ affections.
More recently, a new cause of contention had arisen between the ladies: Mrs. Butters’ dining room table. The younger Mrs. Butters refused to dine with her mother-in-law until the table was replaced, for she declared she absolutely would not eat off a table on which a dying man had once been laid. (Without having been apprised of any other of the particulars, she knew Mrs. Butters once offered assistance to a man terribly injured in a carriage accident.)
The demand to discard the table was vigorously resisted by Mrs. Butters. She liked her dining room table very well; it had been a gift from her husband on their tenth wedding anniversary.
Both ladies were implacable, and the impasse continued for several months. For the sake of seeing her granddaughters again, Mrs. Butters finally relented, most grudgingly.
“I suppose many women would feel the same, Fanny, but you know we placed a mattress and many blankets on the table before we laid poor Mr. Crawford upon it, so it makes no earthly difference whatsoever. Cecilia is not in the least squeamish or sentimental, and no-one who spends most of their waking hours in a stable or paddock can claim to be superfine or fastidious, in my opinion. But if I was ever to see my own granddaughters again, I needs must do as she commands!”
The family was accordingly re-united—although the longed-for granddaughters, the eldest of whom was ten years old, were banished to the breakfast room, at the desire of their
