Mansfield Park
“Oh! yes, sir,” cried Fanny, rising eagerly from her seat to be nearer
her uncle; “I must get up and breakfast with him. It will be the last
time, you know; the last morning.”
“You had better not. He is to have breakfasted and be gone by half-past
nine. Mr. Crawford, I think you call for him at half-past nine?”
Fanny was too urgent, however, and had too many tears in her eyes for
denial; and it ended in a gracious “Well, well!” which was permission.
“Yes, half-past nine,” said Crawford to William as the latter was
leaving them, “and I shall be punctual, for there will be no kind
sister to get up for _me_.” And in a lower tone to Fanny, “I shall have
only a desolate house to hurry from. Your brother will find my ideas of
time and his own very different to-morrow.”
After a short consideration, Sir Thomas asked Crawford to join the
early breakfast party in that house instead of eating alone: he should
himself be of it; and the readiness with which his invitation was
accepted convinced him that the suspicions whence, he must confess to
himself, this very ball had in great measure sprung, were well founded.
Mr. Crawford was in love with Fanny. He had a pleasing anticipation of
what would be. His niece, meanwhile, did not thank him for what he had
just done. She had hoped to have William all to herself the last
morning. It would have been an unspeakable indulgence. But though her
wishes were overthrown, there was no spirit of murmuring within her. On
the contrary, she was so totally unused to have her pleasure consulted,
or to have anything take place at all in the way she could desire, that
she was more disposed to wonder and rejoice in having carried her point
so far, than to repine at the counteraction which followed.
Shortly afterward, Sir Thomas was again interfering a little with her
inclination, by advising her to go immediately to bed. “Advise” was his
word, but it was the advice of absolute power, and she had only to
rise, and, with Mr. Crawford’s very cordial adieus, pass quietly away;
stopping at the entrance-door, like the Lady of Branxholm Hall, “one
moment and no more,” to view the happy scene, and take a last look at
the five or six determined couple who were still hard at work; and
then, creeping slowly up the principal staircase, pursued by the
ceaseless country-dance, feverish with hopes and fears, soup and negus,
sore-footed and fatigued, restless and agitated, yet feeling, in spite
of everything, that a ball was indeed delightful.
In thus sending her away, Sir Thomas perhaps might not be thinking
merely of her health. It might occur to him that Mr. Crawford had been
sitting by her long enough, or he might mean to recommend her as a wife
by shewing her persuadableness.
CHAPTER XXIX
The ball was over, and the breakfast was soon over too; the last kiss
was given, and William was gone. Mr. Crawford had, as he foretold, been
very punctual, and short and pleasant had been the meal.
After seeing William to the last moment, Fanny walked back to the
breakfast-room with a very saddened heart to grieve over the melancholy
change; and there her uncle kindly left her to cry in peace,
conceiving, perhaps, that the deserted chair of each young man might
exercise her tender enthusiasm, and that the remaining cold pork bones
and mustard in William’s plate might but divide her feelings with the
broken egg-shells in Mr. Crawford’s. She sat and cried _con_ _amore_ as
her uncle intended, but it was _con_ _amore_ fraternal and no other.
William was gone, and she now felt as if she had wasted half his visit
in idle cares and selfish solicitudes unconnected with him.
Fanny’s disposition was such that she could never even think of her
aunt Norris in the meagreness and cheerlessness of her own small house,
without reproaching herself for some little want of attention to her
when they had been last together; much less could her feelings acquit
her of having done and said and thought everything by William that was
due to him for a whole fortnight.
It was a heavy, melancholy day. Soon after the second breakfast, Edmund
bade them good-bye for a week, and mounted his horse for Peterborough,
and then all were gone. Nothing remained of last night but
remembrances, which she had nobody to share in. She talked to her aunt
Bertram—she must talk to somebody of the ball; but her aunt had seen so
little of what had passed, and had so little curiosity, that it was
heavy work. Lady Bertram was not certain of anybody’s dress or
anybody’s place at supper but her own. “She could not recollect what it
was that she had heard about one of the Miss Maddoxes, or what it was
that Lady Prescott had noticed in Fanny: she was not sure whether
Colonel Harrison had been talking of Mr. Crawford or of William when he
said he was the finest young man in the room—somebody had whispered
something to her; she had forgot to ask Sir Thomas what it could be.”
And these were her longest speeches and clearest communications: the
rest was only a languid “Yes, yes; very well; did you? did he? I did
not see _that_; I should not know one from the other.” This was very
bad. It was only better than Mrs. Norris’s sharp answers would have
been; but she being gone home with all the supernumerary jellies to
nurse a sick maid, there was peace and good-humour in their little
party, though it could not boast much beside.
The evening was heavy like the day. “I cannot think what is the matter
with me,” said Lady Bertram, when the tea-things were removed. “I feel
quite stupid. It must be sitting up so late last night. Fanny, you must
do something to keep me awake. I cannot work. Fetch the cards; I feel
so very stupid.”
The cards were brought, and Fanny played at cribbage with her aunt till
bedtime; and as Sir Thomas was reading to himself, no sounds were heard
in the room for the next two hours beyond the reckonings of the
game—“And _that_ makes thirty-one; four in hand and eight in crib. You
are to deal, ma’am; shall I deal for you?” Fanny thought and thought
again of the difference which twenty-four hours had made in that room,
and all that part of the house. Last night it had been hope and smiles,
bustle and motion, noise and brilliancy, in the drawing-room, and out
of the drawing-room, and everywhere. Now it was languor, and all but
solitude.
A good night’s rest improved her spirits. She could think of William
the next day more cheerfully; and as the morning afforded her an
opportunity of talking over Thursday night with Mrs. Grant and Miss
Crawford, in a very handsome style, with all the heightenings of
imagination, and all the laughs of playfulness which are so essential
to the shade of a departed ball, she could afterwards bring her mind
without much effort into its everyday state, and easily conform to the
tranquillity of the present quiet week.
They were indeed a smaller party than she had ever known there for a
whole day together, and _he_ was gone on whom the comfort and
cheerfulness of every family meeting and every meal chiefly depended.
But this must be learned to be endured. He would soon be always gone;
and she was thankful that she could now sit in the same room with her
uncle, hear his voice, receive his questions, and even answer them,
without such wretched feelings as she had formerly known.
“We miss our two young men,” was Sir Thomas’s observation on both the
first and second day, as they formed their very reduced circle after
dinner; and in consideration of Fanny’s swimming eyes, nothing more was
said on the first day than to drink their good health; but on the
second it led to something farther. William was kindly commended and
his promotion hoped for. “And there is no reason to suppose,” added Sir
Thomas, “but that his visits to us may now be tolerably frequent. As to
Edmund, we must learn to do without him. This will be the last winter
of his belonging to us, as he has done.”
“Yes,” said Lady Bertram, “but I wish he was not going away. They are
all going away, I think. I wish they would stay at home.”
This wish was levelled principally at Julia, who had just applied for
permission to go to town with Maria; and as Sir Thomas thought it best
for each daughter that the permission should be granted, Lady Bertram,
though in her own good-nature she would not have prevented it, was
lamenting the change it made in the prospect of Julia’s return, which
would otherwise have taken place about this time. A great deal of good
sense followed on Sir Thomas’s side, tending to reconcile his wife to
the arrangement. Everything that a considerate parent _ought_ to feel
was advanced for her use; and everything that an affectionate mother
_must_ feel in promoting her children’s enjoyment was attributed to her
nature. Lady Bertram agreed to it all with a calm “Yes”; and at the end
of a quarter of an hour’s silent consideration spontaneously observed,
“Sir Thomas, I have been thinking—and I am very glad we took Fanny as
we did, for now the others are away we feel the good of it.”
Sir Thomas immediately improved this compliment by adding, “Very true.
We shew Fanny what a good girl we think her by praising her to her
face, she is now a very valuable companion. If we have been kind to
_her_, she is now quite as necessary to _us_.”
“Yes,” said Lady Bertram presently; “and it is a comfort to think that
we shall always have _her_.”
Sir Thomas paused, half smiled, glanced at his niece, and then gravely
replied, “She will never leave us, I hope, till invited to some other
home that may reasonably promise her greater happiness than she knows
here.”
“And _that_ is not very likely to be, Sir Thomas. Who should invite
her? Maria might be very glad to see her at Sotherton now and then, but
she would not think of asking her to live there; and I am sure she is
better off here; and besides, I cannot do without her.”
The week which passed so quietly and peaceably at the great house in
Mansfield had a very different character at the Parsonage. To the young
lady, at least, in each family, it brought very different feelings.
What was tranquillity and comfort to Fanny was tediousness and vexation
to Mary. Something arose from difference of disposition and habit: one
so easily satisfied, the other so unused to endure; but still more
might be imputed to difference of circumstances. In some points of
interest they were exactly opposed to each other. To Fanny’s mind,
Edmund’s absence was really, in its cause and its tendency, a relief.
To Mary it was every way painful. She felt the want of his society
every day, almost every hour, and was too much in want of it to derive
anything but irritation from considering the object for which he went.
He could not have devised anything more likely to raise his consequence
than this week’s absence, occurring as it did at the very time of her
brother’s going away, of William Price’s going too, and completing the
sort of general break-up of a party which had been so animated. She
felt it keenly. They were now a miserable trio, confined within doors
by a series of rain and snow, with nothing to do and no variety to hope
for. Angry as she was with Edmund for adhering to his own notions, and
acting on them in defiance of her (and she had been so angry that they
had hardly parted friends at the ball), she could not help thinking of
him continually when absent, dwelling on his merit and affection, and
longing again for the almost daily meetings they lately had. His
absence was unnecessarily long. He should not have planned such an
absence—he should not have left home for a week, when her own departure
from Mansfield was so near. Then she began to blame herself. She wished
she had not spoken so warmly in their last conversation. She was afraid