Lady Susan, Jane Austen [best books to read in life txt] 📗

be treated with affection. I wish I

could think so too. The poor girl’s heart was almost broke at taking leave

of us. I charged her to write to me very often, and to remember that if she

were in any distress we should be always her friends. I took care to see

her alone, that I might say all this, and I hope made her a little more

comfortable; but I shall not be easy till I can go to town and judge of her

situation myself. I wish there were a better prospect than now appears of

the match which the conclusion of your letter declares your expectations

of. At present, it is not very likely

 

Yours ever, &c.,

 

C. VERNON

CONCLUSION

This correspondence, by a meeting between some of the parties, and a

separation between the others, could not, to the great detriment of the

Post Office revenue, be continued any longer. Very little assistance to the

State could be derived from the epistolary intercourse of Mrs. Vernon and

her niece; for the former soon perceived, by the style of Frederica’s

letters, that they were written under her mother’s inspection! and

therefore, deferring all particular enquiry till she could make it

personally in London, ceased writing minutely or often. Having learnt

enough, in the meanwhile, from her open-hearted brother, of what had passed

between him and Lady Susan to sink the latter lower than ever in her

opinion, she was proportionably more anxious to get Frederica removed from

such a mother, and placed under her own care; and, though with little hope

of success, was resolved to leave nothing unattempted that might offer a

chance of obtaining her sister-in-law’s consent to it. Her anxiety on the

subject made her press for an early visit to London; and Mr. Vernon, who,

as it must already have appeared, lived only to do whatever he was desired,

soon found some accommodating business to call him thither. With a heart

full of the matter, Mrs. Vernon waited on Lady Susan shortly after her

arrival in town, and was met with such an easy and cheerful affection, as

made her almost turn from her with horror. No remembrance of Reginald, no

consciousness of guilt, gave one look of embarrassment; she was in

excellent spirits, and seemed eager to show at once by ever possible

attention to her brother and sister her sense of their kindness, and her

pleasure in their society. Frederica was no more altered than Lady Susan;

the same restrained manners, the same timid look in the presence of her

mother as heretofore, assured her aunt of her situation being

uncomfortable, and confirmed her in the plan of altering it. No unkindness,

however, on the part of Lady Susan appeared. Persecution on the subject of

Sir James was entirely at an end; his name merely mentioned to say that he

was not in London; and indeed, in all her conversation, she was solicitous

only for the welfare and improvement of her daughter, acknowledging, in

terms of grateful delight, that Frederica was now growing every day more

and more what a parent could desire. Mrs. Vernon, surprized and

incredulous, knew not what to suspect, and, without any change in her own

views, only feared greater difficulty in accomplishing them. The first hope

of anything better was derived from Lady Susan’s asking her whether she

thought Frederica looked quite as well as she had done at Churchhill, as

she must confess herself to have sometimes an anxious doubt of London’s

perfectly agreeing with her. Mrs. Vernon, encouraging the doubt, directly

proposed her niece’s returning with them into the country. Lady Susan was

unable to express her sense of such kindness, yet knew not, from a variety

of reasons, how to part with her daughter; and as, though her own plans

were not yet wholly fixed, she trusted it would ere long be in her power to

take Frederica into the country herself, concluded by declining entirely to

profit by such unexampled attention. Mrs. Vernon persevered, however, in

the offer of it, and though Lady Susan continued to resist, her resistance

in the course of a few days seemed somewhat less formidable. The lucky

alarm of an influenza decided what might not have been decided quite so

soon. Lady Susan’s maternal fears were then too much awakened for her to

think of anything but Frederica’s removal from the risk of infection; above

all disorders in the world she most dreaded the influenza for her

daughter’s constitution!

 

Frederica returned to Churchhill with her uncle and aunt; and three

weeks afterwards, Lady Susan announced her being married to Sir James

Martin. Mrs. Vernon was then convinced of what she had only suspected

before, that she might have spared herself all the trouble of urging a

removal which Lady Susan had doubtless resolved on from the first.

Frederica’s visit was nominally for six weeks, but her mother, though

inviting her to return in one or two affectionate letters, was very ready

to oblige the whole party by consenting to a prolongation of her stay, and

in the course of two months ceased to write of her absence, and in the

course of two or more to write to her at all. Frederica was therefore fixed

in the family of her uncle and aunt till such time as Reginald De Courcy

could be talked, flattered, and finessed into an affection for her which,

allowing leisure for the conquest of his attachment to her mother, for his

abjuring all future attachments, and detesting the sex, might be reasonably

looked for in the course of a twelvemonth. Three months might have done it

in general, but Reginald’s feelings were no less lasting than lively.

Whether Lady Susan was or was not happy in her second choice, I do not see

how it can ever be ascertained; for who would take her assurance of it on

either side of the question? The world must judge from probabilities; she

had nothing against her but her husband, and her conscience. Sir James may

seem to have drawn a harder lot than mere folly merited; I leave him,

therefore, to all the pity that anybody can give him. For myself, I confess

that I can pity only Miss Mainwaring; who, coming to town, and putting

herself to an expense in clothes which impoverished her for two years, on

purpose to secure him, was defrauded of her due by a woman ten years older

than herself.

 

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Lady Susan, by Jane Austen