Mansfield Park
immediately to turf and shrubs, and all the sweets of pleasure-grounds,
as by one impulse, one wish for air and liberty, all walked out.
“Suppose we turn down here for the present,” said Mrs. Rushworth,
civilly taking the hint and following them. “Here are the greatest
number of our plants, and here are the curious pheasants.”
“Query,” said Mr. Crawford, looking round him, “whether we may not find
something to employ us here before we go farther? I see walls of great
promise. Mr. Rushworth, shall we summon a council on this lawn?”
“James,” said Mrs. Rushworth to her son, “I believe the wilderness will
be new to all the party. The Miss Bertrams have never seen the
wilderness yet.”
No objection was made, but for some time there seemed no inclination to
move in any plan, or to any distance. All were attracted at first by
the plants or the pheasants, and all dispersed about in happy
independence. Mr. Crawford was the first to move forward to examine the
capabilities of that end of the house. The lawn, bounded on each side
by a high wall, contained beyond the first planted area a
bowling-green, and beyond the bowling-green a long terrace walk, backed
by iron palisades, and commanding a view over them into the tops of the
trees of the wilderness immediately adjoining. It was a good spot for
fault-finding. Mr. Crawford was soon followed by Miss Bertram and Mr.
Rushworth; and when, after a little time, the others began to form into
parties, these three were found in busy consultation on the terrace by
Edmund, Miss Crawford, and Fanny, who seemed as naturally to unite, and
who, after a short participation of their regrets and difficulties,
left them and walked on. The remaining three, Mrs. Rushworth, Mrs.
Norris, and Julia, were still far behind; for Julia, whose happy star
no longer prevailed, was obliged to keep by the side of Mrs. Rushworth,
and restrain her impatient feet to that lady’s slow pace, while her
aunt, having fallen in with the housekeeper, who was come out to feed
the pheasants, was lingering behind in gossip with her. Poor Julia, the
only one out of the nine not tolerably satisfied with their lot, was
now in a state of complete penance, and as different from the Julia of
the barouche-box as could well be imagined. The politeness which she
had been brought up to practise as a duty made it impossible for her to
escape; while the want of that higher species of self-command, that
just consideration of others, that knowledge of her own heart, that
principle of right, which had not formed any essential part of her
education, made her miserable under it.
“This is insufferably hot,” said Miss Crawford, when they had taken one
turn on the terrace, and were drawing a second time to the door in the
middle which opened to the wilderness. “Shall any of us object to being
comfortable? Here is a nice little wood, if one can but get into it.
What happiness if the door should not be locked! but of course it is;
for in these great places the gardeners are the only people who can go
where they like.”
The door, however, proved not to be locked, and they were all agreed in
turning joyfully through it, and leaving the unmitigated glare of day
behind. A considerable flight of steps landed them in the wilderness,
which was a planted wood of about two acres, and though chiefly of
larch and laurel, and beech cut down, and though laid out with too much
regularity, was darkness and shade, and natural beauty, compared with
the bowling-green and the terrace. They all felt the refreshment of it,
and for some time could only walk and admire. At length, after a short
pause, Miss Crawford began with, “So you are to be a clergyman, Mr.
Bertram. This is rather a surprise to me.”
“Why should it surprise you? You must suppose me designed for some
profession, and might perceive that I am neither a lawyer, nor a
soldier, nor a sailor.”
“Very true; but, in short, it had not occurred to me. And you know
there is generally an uncle or a grandfather to leave a fortune to the
second son.”
“A very praiseworthy practice,” said Edmund, “but not quite universal.
I am one of the exceptions, and _being_ one, must do something for
myself.”
“But why are you to be a clergyman? I thought _that_ was always the lot
of the youngest, where there were many to chuse before him.”
“Do you think the church itself never chosen, then?”
“_Never_ is a black word. But yes, in the _never_ of conversation,
which means _not_ _very_ _often_, I do think it. For what is to be done
in the church? Men love to distinguish themselves, and in either of the
other lines distinction may be gained, but not in the church. A
clergyman is nothing.”
“The _nothing_ of conversation has its gradations, I hope, as well as
the _never_. A clergyman cannot be high in state or fashion. He must
not head mobs, or set the ton in dress. But I cannot call that
situation nothing which has the charge of all that is of the first
importance to mankind, individually or collectively considered,
temporally and eternally, which has the guardianship of religion and
morals, and consequently of the manners which result from their
influence. No one here can call the _office_ nothing. If the man who
holds it is so, it is by the neglect of his duty, by foregoing its just
importance, and stepping out of his place to appear what he ought not
to appear.”
“_You_ assign greater consequence to the clergyman than one has been
used to hear given, or than I can quite comprehend. One does not see
much of this influence and importance in society, and how can it be
acquired where they are so seldom seen themselves? How can two sermons
a week, even supposing them worth hearing, supposing the preacher to
have the sense to prefer Blair’s to his own, do all that you speak of?
govern the conduct and fashion the manners of a large congregation for
the rest of the week? One scarcely sees a clergyman out of his pulpit.”
“_You_ are speaking of London, _I_ am speaking of the nation at large.”
“The metropolis, I imagine, is a pretty fair sample of the rest.”
“Not, I should hope, of the proportion of virtue to vice throughout the
kingdom. We do not look in great cities for our best morality. It is
not there that respectable people of any denomination can do most good;
and it certainly is not there that the influence of the clergy can be
most felt. A fine preacher is followed and admired; but it is not in
fine preaching only that a good clergyman will be useful in his parish
and his neighbourhood, where the parish and neighbourhood are of a size
capable of knowing his private character, and observing his general
conduct, which in London can rarely be the case. The clergy are lost
there in the crowds of their parishioners. They are known to the
largest part only as preachers. And with regard to their influencing
public manners, Miss Crawford must not misunderstand me, or suppose I
mean to call them the arbiters of good-breeding, the regulators of
refinement and courtesy, the masters of the ceremonies of life. The
_manners_ I speak of might rather be called _conduct_, perhaps, the
result of good principles; the effect, in short, of those doctrines
which it is their duty to teach and recommend; and it will, I believe,
be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought
to be, so are the rest of the nation.”
“Certainly,” said Fanny, with gentle earnestness.
“There,” cried Miss Crawford, “you have quite convinced Miss Price
already.”
“I wish I could convince Miss Crawford too.”
“I do not think you ever will,” said she, with an arch smile; “I am
just as much surprised now as I was at first that you should intend to
take orders. You really are fit for something better. Come, do change
your mind. It is not too late. Go into the law.”
“Go into the law! With as much ease as I was told to go into this
wilderness.”
“Now you are going to say something about law being the worst
wilderness of the two, but I forestall you; remember, I have
forestalled you.”
“You need not hurry when the object is only to prevent my saying a
_bon_ _mot_, for there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very
matter-of-fact, plain-spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a
repartee for half an hour together without striking it out.”
A general silence succeeded. Each was thoughtful. Fanny made the first
interruption by saying, “I wonder that I should be tired with only
walking in this sweet wood; but the next time we come to a seat, if it
is not disagreeable to you, I should be glad to sit down for a little
while.”
“My dear Fanny,” cried Edmund, immediately drawing her arm within his,
“how thoughtless I have been! I hope you are not very tired. Perhaps,”
turning to Miss Crawford, “my other companion may do me the honour of
taking an arm.”
“Thank you, but I am not at all tired.” She took it, however, as she
spoke, and the gratification of having her do so, of feeling such a
connexion for the first time, made him a little forgetful of Fanny.
“You scarcely touch me,” said he. “You do not make me of any use. What
a difference in the weight of a woman’s arm from that of a man! At
Oxford I have been a good deal used to have a man lean on me for the
length of a street, and you are only a fly in the comparison.”
“I am really not tired, which I almost wonder at; for we must have
walked at least a mile in this wood. Do not you think we have?”
“Not half a mile,” was his sturdy answer; for he was not yet so much in
love as to measure distance, or reckon time, with feminine lawlessness.
“Oh! you do not consider how much we have wound about. We have taken
such a very serpentine course, and the wood itself must be half a mile
long in a straight line, for we have never seen the end of it yet since
we left the first great path.”
“But if you remember, before we left that first great path, we saw
directly to the end of it. We looked down the whole vista, and saw it
closed by iron gates, and it could not have been more than a furlong in
length.”
“Oh! I know nothing of your furlongs, but I am sure it is a very long
wood, and that we have been winding in and out ever since we came into
it; and therefore, when I say that we have walked a mile in it, I must
speak within compass.”
“We have been exactly a quarter of an hour here,” said Edmund, taking
out his watch. “Do you think we are walking four miles an hour?”
“Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or
too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.”
A few steps farther brought them out at the bottom of the very walk
they had been talking of; and standing back, well shaded and sheltered,
and looking over a ha-ha into the park, was a comfortable-sized bench,
on which they all sat down.
“I am afraid you are very tired, Fanny,” said Edmund, observing her;
“why would not you speak sooner? This will be a bad day’s amusement for
you if you are to be knocked up. Every sort of exercise fatigues her so
soon, Miss Crawford, except riding.”
“How abominable in you, then, to let me engross her horse as I did all
last week! I am ashamed of you and of myself, but it shall never happen
again.”
“_Your_ attentiveness and consideration makes me more sensible of my
own neglect. Fanny’s interest seems in safer hands with you than with
me.”
“That she should be tired now, however, gives me no surprise; for there
is nothing in the course of one’s duties so fatiguing as what we have
been doing this morning: seeing a great house, dawdling from one room
to another, straining one’s eyes and one’s attention, hearing what one
does not understand, admiring what one does not care for. It is
generally allowed to be the greatest bore in the world, and Miss Price
has found it so, though she did not know it.”