Donald McIntosh, who also found it prudent to be out of his wife’s way when it was spring cleaning time, drove the party to Oxford, where Fanny affectionately parted from Mrs. Butters and Madame Orly. Fanny was confident about completing the trip to Mansfield without an escort; after all, she had made the journey once before, when she was even younger and more inexperienced.
The following day, Fanny stepped down from the coach at an inn on the outskirts of Mansfield, the same establishment wherefrom she had run away from home, three years before. Her cousin Julia was there with a pony cart to take her to Thornton Lacey. “I am learning how to drive, and I am exceedingly fond of it, so I begged Edmund to let me retrieve you. Welcome, Fanny!”
Fanny rejoiced in her return to her beloved countryside at a time of year in which a receptive mind may contemplate the triumph of the revolving year over the dead hand of winter, and wonder at the tenacity of nature. The soft pale green buds, revealing that life pulsed within the dead-seeming branches of the bare trees; the tender purple crocus under the hedges, all caused her to marvel once again at the method by which a kindly Providence has designed these first effusions of spring to be enchantingly lovely to human eyes.
Julia maintained an eager flow of conversation on the ride from Mansfield. Fanny, always a courteous listener, was interested in hearing about the new house—which she had not yet seen—Julia’s garden, and Julia’s frequent visits to London. She would have liked to hear Julia’s opinion of Edmund’s health and spirits, but her quiet enquiry was met with: “Oh! Yes, Edmund is very well, he is always walking and riding about. Did you know that I lost my dear old mare, Lady, this past winter? I cried and cried over it, for I have had her since I was fifteen or sixteen, I think...” and Fanny contented herself with waiting until the pony cart pulled up at the elegant parsonage-house, and she could see Edmund for herself.
Edmund was more than a little surprised when he first beheld Fanny after such a long separation—At first, he thought her much altered in her looks, then decided it was her manner which had undergone the greatest change. His quiet cousin was still very demure, still more fitted for a listener than a talker, but her movements, her glance, her air, while tranquil and graceful, were all decidedly more assured and mature.
He, no less than she, had altered a great deal in the past few years. While his marriage had brought disillusionment, his occupation had strengthened him. In assisting his parishioners, he had also enriched himself. He was better acquainted with the hopes, sorrows, and fears of his fellow man, and also understood more of their self-deceptions and weaknesses. He had held bereft and weeping fathers who had to bury their little children. He had whispered hope and encouragement to a young boy living with a tyrannical father. He had pretended he hadn’t seen the look of naked longing in the eyes of a young widow. He had joined couples in marriage, and a year later—or sometimes much sooner—baptized their first born. He had stood and intoned the service for the dead as the cold wind whipped his cassock about him and the leaves whisked around the graveyard, flying in and out of the freshly-dug grave like a swarm of restless souls. He had mediated in disputes between neighbours, between mothers and daughters, and pleaded leniency for poachers and thieves, and scolded drunkards and bullies, and praised the patient, quiet, hard-working men and women who toiled without ceasing, just to keep their families fed.
Edmund had always been his father’s pride, owing to his upright nature and his strict sense of honour and decorum. But to this he added a new humanity which softened his character. From better understanding the private burdens of his parishioners, and on account of his own errors, he had learned humility, and was now more inclined to pardon and excuse, than remark and condemn.
Fanny could not but perceive the changes which time and experience had wrought in Edmund. She admired him all the more for his goodness—so evident by the respect and affection which the villagers showed for him—his kindness to Julia and his composure in the face of private sorrow.
Edmund appeared to derive as much pleasure as she from the resumption of their old habits of talking, reading, and riding together, he the chief speaker, she the chief listener.
But their renewed avowals of friendship, however sincerely made, could not completely restore the intimacy of the past. She was not a sheltered naïve girl looking up to Edmund as her only arbiter of truth and knowledge. He was occupied with his duties in the parish, and he was more taciturn and withdrawn than in his youth, which she could not wonder at. He was an excellent master to his servants, an excellent vicar, a good friend, a kind brother, and he would have been, thought Fanny, the best of husbands and fathers, had his marriage prospered well.
Fanny also observed that the reverses endured by the Bertrams in the past few years had improved Julia’s character. She was no longer the same self-satisfied Miss Julia Bertram of Mansfield Park. Her first acquaintance with sorrow had come when she realized that Henry Crawford was not in love with her. Then came the loss of her family’s fortune and the removal from their home, a reversal which Julia bore with a self-possession that surprised Fanny.
Resentment against her cousin for past slights and neglect was
