Mansfield Park
But go on, go on. Tell me more. What are your plans? Does she know her
own happiness?”
“No.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“For—for very little more than opportunity. Mary, she is not like her
cousins; but I think I shall not ask in vain.”
“Oh no! you cannot. Were you even less pleasing—supposing her not to
love you already (of which, however, I can have little doubt)—you would
be safe. The gentleness and gratitude of her disposition would secure
her all your own immediately. From my soul I do not think she would
marry you _without_ love; that is, if there is a girl in the world
capable of being uninfluenced by ambition, I can suppose it her; but
ask her to love you, and she will never have the heart to refuse.”
As soon as her eagerness could rest in silence, he was as happy to tell
as she could be to listen; and a conversation followed almost as deeply
interesting to her as to himself, though he had in fact nothing to
relate but his own sensations, nothing to dwell on but Fanny’s charms.
Fanny’s beauty of face and figure, Fanny’s graces of manner and
goodness of heart, were the exhaustless theme. The gentleness, modesty,
and sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on; that
sweetness which makes so essential a part of every woman’s worth in the
judgment of man, that though he sometimes loves where it is not, he can
never believe it absent. Her temper he had good reason to depend on and
to praise. He had often seen it tried. Was there one of the family,
excepting Edmund, who had not in some way or other continually
exercised her patience and forbearance? Her affections were evidently
strong. To see her with her brother! What could more delightfully prove
that the warmth of her heart was equal to its gentleness? What could be
more encouraging to a man who had her love in view? Then, her
understanding was beyond every suspicion, quick and clear; and her
manners were the mirror of her own modest and elegant mind. Nor was
this all. Henry Crawford had too much sense not to feel the worth of
good principles in a wife, though he was too little accustomed to
serious reflection to know them by their proper name; but when he
talked of her having such a steadiness and regularity of conduct, such
a high notion of honour, and such an observance of decorum as might
warrant any man in the fullest dependence on her faith and integrity,
he expressed what was inspired by the knowledge of her being well
principled and religious.
“I could so wholly and absolutely confide in her,” said he; “and _that_
is what I want.”
Well might his sister, believing as she really did that his opinion of
Fanny Price was scarcely beyond her merits, rejoice in her prospects.
“The more I think of it,” she cried, “the more am I convinced that you
are doing quite right; and though I should never have selected Fanny
Price as the girl most likely to attach you, I am now persuaded she is
the very one to make you happy. Your wicked project upon her peace
turns out a clever thought indeed. You will both find your good in it.”
“It was bad, very bad in me against such a creature; but I did not know
her then; and she shall have no reason to lament the hour that first
put it into my head. I will make her very happy, Mary; happier than she
has ever yet been herself, or ever seen anybody else. I will not take
her from Northamptonshire. I shall let Everingham, and rent a place in
this neighbourhood; perhaps Stanwix Lodge. I shall let a seven years’
lease of Everingham. I am sure of an excellent tenant at half a word. I
could name three people now, who would give me my own terms and thank
me.”
“Ha!” cried Mary; “settle in Northamptonshire! That is pleasant! Then
we shall be all together.”
When she had spoken it, she recollected herself, and wished it unsaid;
but there was no need of confusion; for her brother saw her only as the
supposed inmate of Mansfield parsonage, and replied but to invite her
in the kindest manner to his own house, and to claim the best right in
her.
“You must give us more than half your time,” said he. “I cannot admit
Mrs. Grant to have an equal claim with Fanny and myself, for we shall
both have a right in you. Fanny will be so truly your sister!”
Mary had only to be grateful and give general assurances; but she was
now very fully purposed to be the guest of neither brother nor sister
many months longer.
“You will divide your year between London and Northamptonshire?”
“Yes.”
“That’s right; and in London, of course, a house of your own: no longer
with the Admiral. My dearest Henry, the advantage to you of getting
away from the Admiral before your manners are hurt by the contagion of
his, before you have contracted any of his foolish opinions, or learned
to sit over your dinner as if it were the best blessing of life! _You_
are not sensible of the gain, for your regard for him has blinded you;
but, in my estimation, your marrying early may be the saving of you. To
have seen you grow like the Admiral in word or deed, look or gesture,
would have broken my heart.”
“Well, well, we do not think quite alike here. The Admiral has his
faults, but he is a very good man, and has been more than a father to
me. Few fathers would have let me have my own way half so much. You
must not prejudice Fanny against him. I must have them love one
another.”
Mary refrained from saying what she felt, that there could not be two
persons in existence whose characters and manners were less accordant:
time would discover it to him; but she could not help _this_ reflection
on the Admiral. “Henry, I think so highly of Fanny Price, that if I
could suppose the next Mrs. Crawford would have half the reason which
my poor ill-used aunt had to abhor the very name, I would prevent the
marriage, if possible; but I know you: I know that a wife you _loved_
would be the happiest of women, and that even when you ceased to love,
she would yet find in you the liberality and good-breeding of a
gentleman.”
The impossibility of not doing everything in the world to make Fanny
Price happy, or of ceasing to love Fanny Price, was of course the
groundwork of his eloquent answer.
“Had you seen her this morning, Mary,” he continued, “attending with
such ineffable sweetness and patience to all the demands of her aunt’s
stupidity, working with her, and for her, her colour beautifully
heightened as she leant over the work, then returning to her seat to
finish a note which she was previously engaged in writing for that
stupid woman’s service, and all this with such unpretending gentleness,
so much as if it were a matter of course that she was not to have a
moment at her own command, her hair arranged as neatly as it always is,
and one little curl falling forward as she wrote, which she now and
then shook back, and in the midst of all this, still speaking at
intervals to _me_, or listening, and as if she liked to listen, to what
I said. Had you seen her so, Mary, you would not have implied the
possibility of her power over my heart ever ceasing.”
“My dearest Henry,” cried Mary, stopping short, and smiling in his
face, “how glad I am to see you so much in love! It quite delights me.
But what will Mrs. Rushworth and Julia say?”
“I care neither what they say nor what they feel. They will now see
what sort of woman it is that can attach me, that can attach a man of
sense. I wish the discovery may do them any good. And they will now see
their cousin treated as she ought to be, and I wish they may be
heartily ashamed of their own abominable neglect and unkindness. They
will be angry,” he added, after a moment’s silence, and in a cooler
tone; “Mrs. Rushworth will be very angry. It will be a bitter pill to
her; that is, like other bitter pills, it will have two moments’ ill
flavour, and then be swallowed and forgotten; for I am not such a
coxcomb as to suppose her feelings more lasting than other women’s,
though _I_ was the object of them. Yes, Mary, my Fanny will feel a
difference indeed: a daily, hourly difference, in the behaviour of
every being who approaches her; and it will be the completion of my
happiness to know that I am the doer of it, that I am the person to
give the consequence so justly her due. Now she is dependent, helpless,
friendless, neglected, forgotten.”
“Nay, Henry, not by all; not forgotten by all; not friendless or
forgotten. Her cousin Edmund never forgets her.”
“Edmund! True, I believe he is, generally speaking, kind to her, and so
is Sir Thomas in his way; but it is the way of a rich, superior,
long-worded, arbitrary uncle. What can Sir Thomas and Edmund together
do, what _do_ they do for her happiness, comfort, honour, and dignity
in the world, to what I _shall_ do?”
CHAPTER XXXI
Henry Crawford was at Mansfield Park again the next morning, and at an
earlier hour than common visiting warrants. The two ladies were
together in the breakfast-room, and, fortunately for him, Lady Bertram
was on the very point of quitting it as he entered. She was almost at
the door, and not chusing by any means to take so much trouble in vain,
she still went on, after a civil reception, a short sentence about
being waited for, and a “Let Sir Thomas know” to the servant.
Henry, overjoyed to have her go, bowed and watched her off, and without
losing another moment, turned instantly to Fanny, and, taking out some
letters, said, with a most animated look, “I must acknowledge myself
infinitely obliged to any creature who gives me such an opportunity of
seeing you alone: I have been wishing it more than you can have any
idea. Knowing as I do what your feelings as a sister are, I could
hardly have borne that any one in the house should share with you in
the first knowledge of the news I now bring. He is made. Your brother
is a lieutenant. I have the infinite satisfaction of congratulating you
on your brother’s promotion. Here are the letters which announce it,
this moment come to hand. You will, perhaps, like to see them.”
Fanny could not speak, but he did not want her to speak. To see the
expression of her eyes, the change of her complexion, the progress of
her feelings, their doubt, confusion, and felicity, was enough. She
took the letters as he gave them. The first was from the Admiral to
inform his nephew, in a few words, of his having succeeded in the
object he had undertaken, the promotion of young Price, and enclosing
two more, one from the Secretary of the First Lord to a friend, whom
the Admiral had set to work in the business, the other from that friend
to himself, by which it appeared that his lordship had the very great
happiness of attending to the recommendation of Sir Charles; that Sir
Charles was much delighted in having such an opportunity of proving his
regard for Admiral Crawford, and that the circumstance of Mr. William
Price’s commission as Second Lieutenant of H.M. Sloop Thrush being made
out was spreading general joy through a wide circle of great people.
While her hand was trembling under these letters, her eye running from
one to the other, and her heart swelling with emotion, Crawford thus
continued, with unfeigned eagerness, to express his interest in the
event—
“I will not talk of my own happiness,” said he, “great as it is, for I
think only of yours. Compared with you, who has a right to be happy? I
have almost grudged myself my own prior knowledge of what you ought to
have known before all the world. I have not lost a moment, however. The
post was late this morning, but there has not been since a moment’s
delay. How impatient, how anxious, how wild I have been on the subject,
I will not attempt to describe; how severely mortified, how cruelly
disappointed, in not having it finished while I was in London! I was
kept there from day to day in the hope of it, for nothing less dear to