Mansfield Park
Miss Bertram could now speak with decided information of what she had
known nothing about when Mr. Rushworth had asked her opinion; and her
spirits were in as happy a flutter as vanity and pride could furnish,
when they drove up to the spacious stone steps before the principal
entrance.
CHAPTER IX
Mr. Rushworth was at the door to receive his fair lady; and the whole
party were welcomed by him with due attention. In the drawing-room they
were met with equal cordiality by the mother, and Miss Bertram had all
the distinction with each that she could wish. After the business of
arriving was over, it was first necessary to eat, and the doors were
thrown open to admit them through one or two intermediate rooms into
the appointed dining-parlour, where a collation was prepared with
abundance and elegance. Much was said, and much was ate, and all went
well. The particular object of the day was then considered. How would
Mr. Crawford like, in what manner would he chuse, to take a survey of
the grounds? Mr. Rushworth mentioned his curricle. Mr. Crawford
suggested the greater desirableness of some carriage which might convey
more than two. “To be depriving themselves of the advantage of other
eyes and other judgments, might be an evil even beyond the loss of
present pleasure.”
Mrs. Rushworth proposed that the chaise should be taken also; but this
was scarcely received as an amendment: the young ladies neither smiled
nor spoke. Her next proposition, of shewing the house to such of them
as had not been there before, was more acceptable, for Miss Bertram was
pleased to have its size displayed, and all were glad to be doing
something.
The whole party rose accordingly, and under Mrs. Rushworth’s guidance
were shewn through a number of rooms, all lofty, and many large, and
amply furnished in the taste of fifty years back, with shining floors,
solid mahogany, rich damask, marble, gilding, and carving, each
handsome in its way. Of pictures there were abundance, and some few
good, but the larger part were family portraits, no longer anything to
anybody but Mrs. Rushworth, who had been at great pains to learn all
that the housekeeper could teach, and was now almost equally well
qualified to shew the house. On the present occasion she addressed
herself chiefly to Miss Crawford and Fanny, but there was no comparison
in the willingness of their attention; for Miss Crawford, who had seen
scores of great houses, and cared for none of them, had only the
appearance of civilly listening, while Fanny, to whom everything was
almost as interesting as it was new, attended with unaffected
earnestness to all that Mrs. Rushworth could relate of the family in
former times, its rise and grandeur, regal visits and loyal efforts,
delighted to connect anything with history already known, or warm her
imagination with scenes of the past.
The situation of the house excluded the possibility of much prospect
from any of the rooms; and while Fanny and some of the others were
attending Mrs. Rushworth, Henry Crawford was looking grave and shaking
his head at the windows. Every room on the west front looked across a
lawn to the beginning of the avenue immediately beyond tall iron
palisades and gates.
Having visited many more rooms than could be supposed to be of any
other use than to contribute to the window-tax, and find employment for
housemaids, “Now,” said Mrs. Rushworth, “we are coming to the chapel,
which properly we ought to enter from above, and look down upon; but as
we are quite among friends, I will take you in this way, if you will
excuse me.”
They entered. Fanny’s imagination had prepared her for something
grander than a mere spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of
devotion: with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion
of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge
of the family gallery above. “I am disappointed,” said she, in a low
voice, to Edmund. “This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing
awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no
arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be ‘blown
by the night wind of heaven.’ No signs that a ‘Scottish monarch sleeps
below.’”
“You forget, Fanny, how lately all this has been built, and for how
confined a purpose, compared with the old chapels of castles and
monasteries. It was only for the private use of the family. They have
been buried, I suppose, in the parish church. _There_ you must look for
the banners and the achievements.”
“It was foolish of me not to think of all that; but I am disappointed.”
Mrs. Rushworth began her relation. “This chapel was fitted up as you
see it, in James the Second’s time. Before that period, as I
understand, the pews were only wainscot; and there is some reason to
think that the linings and cushions of the pulpit and family seat were
only purple cloth; but this is not quite certain. It is a handsome
chapel, and was formerly in constant use both morning and evening.
Prayers were always read in it by the domestic chaplain, within the
memory of many; but the late Mr. Rushworth left it off.”
“Every generation has its improvements,” said Miss Crawford, with a
smile, to Edmund.
Mrs. Rushworth was gone to repeat her lesson to Mr. Crawford; and
Edmund, Fanny, and Miss Crawford remained in a cluster together.
“It is a pity,” cried Fanny, “that the custom should have been
discontinued. It was a valuable part of former times. There is
something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great
house, with one’s ideas of what such a household should be! A whole
family assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer is fine!”
“Very fine indeed,” said Miss Crawford, laughing. “It must do the heads
of the family a great deal of good to force all the poor housemaids and
footmen to leave business and pleasure, and say their prayers here
twice a day, while they are inventing excuses themselves for staying
away.”
“_That_ is hardly Fanny’s idea of a family assembling,” said Edmund.
“If the master and mistress do _not_ attend themselves, there must be
more harm than good in the custom.”
“At any rate, it is safer to leave people to their own devices on such
subjects. Everybody likes to go their own way—to chuse their own time
and manner of devotion. The obligation of attendance, the formality,
the restraint, the length of time—altogether it is a formidable thing,
and what nobody likes; and if the good people who used to kneel and
gape in that gallery could have foreseen that the time would ever come
when men and women might lie another ten minutes in bed, when they woke
with a headache, without danger of reprobation, because chapel was
missed, they would have jumped with joy and envy. Cannot you imagine
with what unwilling feelings the former belles of the house of
Rushworth did many a time repair to this chapel? The young Mrs.
Eleanors and Mrs. Bridgets—starched up into seeming piety, but with
heads full of something very different—especially if the poor chaplain
were not worth looking at—and, in those days, I fancy parsons were very
inferior even to what they are now.”
For a few moments she was unanswered. Fanny coloured and looked at
Edmund, but felt too angry for speech; and he needed a little
recollection before he could say, “Your lively mind can hardly be
serious even on serious subjects. You have given us an amusing sketch,
and human nature cannot say it was not so. We must all feel _at_
_times_ the difficulty of fixing our thoughts as we could wish; but if
you are supposing it a frequent thing, that is to say, a weakness grown
into a habit from neglect, what could be expected from the _private_
devotions of such persons? Do you think the minds which are suffered,
which are indulged in wanderings in a chapel, would be more collected
in a closet?”
“Yes, very likely. They would have two chances at least in their
favour. There would be less to distract the attention from without, and
it would not be tried so long.”
“The mind which does not struggle against itself under _one_
circumstance, would find objects to distract it in the _other_, I
believe; and the influence of the place and of example may often rouse
better feelings than are begun with. The greater length of the service,
however, I admit to be sometimes too hard a stretch upon the mind. One
wishes it were not so; but I have not yet left Oxford long enough to
forget what chapel prayers are.”
While this was passing, the rest of the party being scattered about the
chapel, Julia called Mr. Crawford’s attention to her sister, by saying,
“Do look at Mr. Rushworth and Maria, standing side by side, exactly as
if the ceremony were going to be performed. Have not they completely
the air of it?”
Mr. Crawford smiled his acquiescence, and stepping forward to Maria,
said, in a voice which she only could hear, “I do not like to see Miss
Bertram so near the altar.”
Starting, the lady instinctively moved a step or two, but recovering
herself in a moment, affected to laugh, and asked him, in a tone not
much louder, “If he would give her away?”
“I am afraid I should do it very awkwardly,” was his reply, with a look
of meaning.
Julia, joining them at the moment, carried on the joke.
“Upon my word, it is really a pity that it should not take place
directly, if we had but a proper licence, for here we are altogether,
and nothing in the world could be more snug and pleasant.” And she
talked and laughed about it with so little caution as to catch the
comprehension of Mr. Rushworth and his mother, and expose her sister to
the whispered gallantries of her lover, while Mrs. Rushworth spoke with
proper smiles and dignity of its being a most happy event to her
whenever it took place.
“If Edmund were but in orders!” cried Julia, and running to where he
stood with Miss Crawford and Fanny: “My dear Edmund, if you were but in
orders now, you might perform the ceremony directly. How unlucky that
you are not ordained; Mr. Rushworth and Maria are quite ready.”
Miss Crawford’s countenance, as Julia spoke, might have amused a
disinterested observer. She looked almost aghast under the new idea she
was receiving. Fanny pitied her. “How distressed she will be at what
she said just now,” passed across her mind.
“Ordained!” said Miss Crawford; “what, are you to be a clergyman?”
“Yes; I shall take orders soon after my father’s return—probably at
Christmas.”
Miss Crawford, rallying her spirits, and recovering her complexion,
replied only, “If I had known this before, I would have spoken of the
cloth with more respect,” and turned the subject.
The chapel was soon afterwards left to the silence and stillness which
reigned in it, with few interruptions, throughout the year. Miss
Bertram, displeased with her sister, led the way, and all seemed to
feel that they had been there long enough.
The lower part of the house had been now entirely shewn, and Mrs.
Rushworth, never weary in the cause, would have proceeded towards the
principal staircase, and taken them through all the rooms above, if her
son had not interposed with a doubt of there being time enough. “For
if,” said he, with the sort of self-evident proposition which many a
clearer head does not always avoid, “we are _too_ long going over the
house, we shall not have time for what is to be done out of doors. It
is past two, and we are to dine at five.”
Mrs. Rushworth submitted; and the question of surveying the grounds,
with the who and the how, was likely to be more fully agitated, and
Mrs. Norris was beginning to arrange by what junction of carriages and
horses most could be done, when the young people, meeting with an
outward door, temptingly open on a flight of steps which led