Mansfield Park
perfectly prudent. I can remember that they were evidently fond of his
society; and with such encouragement, a man like Crawford, lively, and
it may be, a little unthinking, might be led on to—there could be
nothing very striking, because it is clear that he had no pretensions:
his heart was reserved for you. And I must say, that its being for you
has raised him inconceivably in my opinion. It does him the highest
honour; it shews his proper estimation of the blessing of domestic
happiness and pure attachment. It proves him unspoilt by his uncle. It
proves him, in short, everything that I had been used to wish to
believe him, and feared he was not.”
“I am persuaded that he does not think, as he ought, on serious
subjects.”
“Say, rather, that he has not thought at all upon serious subjects,
which I believe to be a good deal the case. How could it be otherwise,
with such an education and adviser? Under the disadvantages, indeed,
which both have had, is it not wonderful that they should be what they
are? Crawford’s _feelings_, I am ready to acknowledge, have hitherto
been too much his guides. Happily, those feelings have generally been
good. You will supply the rest; and a most fortunate man he is to
attach himself to such a creature—to a woman who, firm as a rock in her
own principles, has a gentleness of character so well adapted to
recommend them. He has chosen his partner, indeed, with rare felicity.
He will make you happy, Fanny; I know he will make you happy; but you
will make him everything.”
“I would not engage in such a charge,” cried Fanny, in a shrinking
accent; “in such an office of high responsibility!”
“As usual, believing yourself unequal to anything! fancying everything
too much for you! Well, though I may not be able to persuade you into
different feelings, you will be persuaded into them, I trust. I confess
myself sincerely anxious that you may. I have no common interest in
Crawford’s well-doing. Next to your happiness, Fanny, his has the first
claim on me. You are aware of my having no common interest in
Crawford.”
Fanny was too well aware of it to have anything to say; and they walked
on together some fifty yards in mutual silence and abstraction. Edmund
first began again—
“I was very much pleased by her manner of speaking of it yesterday,
particularly pleased, because I had not depended upon her seeing
everything in so just a light. I knew she was very fond of you; but yet
I was afraid of her not estimating your worth to her brother quite as
it deserved, and of her regretting that he had not rather fixed on some
woman of distinction or fortune. I was afraid of the bias of those
worldly maxims, which she has been too much used to hear. But it was
very different. She spoke of you, Fanny, just as she ought. She desires
the connexion as warmly as your uncle or myself. We had a long talk
about it. I should not have mentioned the subject, though very anxious
to know her sentiments; but I had not been in the room five minutes
before she began introducing it with all that openness of heart, and
sweet peculiarity of manner, that spirit and ingenuousness which are so
much a part of herself. Mrs. Grant laughed at her for her rapidity.”
“Was Mrs. Grant in the room, then?”
“Yes, when I reached the house I found the two sisters together by
themselves; and when once we had begun, we had not done with you,
Fanny, till Crawford and Dr. Grant came in.”
“It is above a week since I saw Miss Crawford.”
“Yes, she laments it; yet owns it may have been best. You will see her,
however, before she goes. She is very angry with you, Fanny; you must
be prepared for that. She calls herself very angry, but you can imagine
her anger. It is the regret and disappointment of a sister, who thinks
her brother has a right to everything he may wish for, at the first
moment. She is hurt, as you would be for William; but she loves and
esteems you with all her heart.”
“I knew she would be very angry with me.”
“My dearest Fanny,” cried Edmund, pressing her arm closer to him, “do
not let the idea of her anger distress you. It is anger to be talked of
rather than felt. Her heart is made for love and kindness, not for
resentment. I wish you could have overheard her tribute of praise; I
wish you could have seen her countenance, when she said that you
_should_ be Henry’s wife. And I observed that she always spoke of you
as ‘Fanny,’ which she was never used to do; and it had a sound of most
sisterly cordiality.”
“And Mrs. Grant, did she say—did she speak; was she there all the
time?”
“Yes, she was agreeing exactly with her sister. The surprise of your
refusal, Fanny, seems to have been unbounded. That you could refuse
such a man as Henry Crawford seems more than they can understand. I
said what I could for you; but in good truth, as they stated the
case—you must prove yourself to be in your senses as soon as you can by
a different conduct; nothing else will satisfy them. But this is
teasing you. I have done. Do not turn away from me.”
“I _should_ have thought,” said Fanny, after a pause of recollection
and exertion, “that every woman must have felt the possibility of a
man’s not being approved, not being loved by some one of her sex at
least, let him be ever so generally agreeable. Let him have all the
perfections in the world, I think it ought not to be set down as
certain that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to
like himself. But, even supposing it is so, allowing Mr. Crawford to
have all the claims which his sisters think he has, how was I to be
prepared to meet him with any feeling answerable to his own? He took me
wholly by surprise. I had not an idea that his behaviour to me before
had any meaning; and surely I was not to be teaching myself to like him
only because he was taking what seemed very idle notice of me. In my
situation, it would have been the extreme of vanity to be forming
expectations on Mr. Crawford. I am sure his sisters, rating him as they
do, must have thought it so, supposing he had meant nothing. How, then,
was I to be—to be in love with him the moment he said he was with me?
How was I to have an attachment at his service, as soon as it was asked
for? His sisters should consider me as well as him. The higher his
deserts, the more improper for me ever to have thought of him. And,
and—we think very differently of the nature of women, if they can
imagine a woman so very soon capable of returning an affection as this
seems to imply.”
“My dear, dear Fanny, now I have the truth. I know this to be the
truth; and most worthy of you are such feelings. I had attributed them
to you before. I thought I could understand you. You have now given
exactly the explanation which I ventured to make for you to your friend
and Mrs. Grant, and they were both better satisfied, though your
warm-hearted friend was still run away with a little by the enthusiasm
of her fondness for Henry. I told them that you were of all human
creatures the one over whom habit had most power and novelty least; and
that the very circumstance of the novelty of Crawford’s addresses was
against him. Their being so new and so recent was all in their
disfavour; that you could tolerate nothing that you were not used to;
and a great deal more to the same purpose, to give them a knowledge of
your character. Miss Crawford made us laugh by her plans of
encouragement for her brother. She meant to urge him to persevere in
the hope of being loved in time, and of having his addresses most
kindly received at the end of about ten years’ happy marriage.”
Fanny could with difficulty give the smile that was here asked for. Her
feelings were all in revolt. She feared she had been doing wrong:
saying too much, overacting the caution which she had been fancying
necessary; in guarding against one evil, laying herself open to
another; and to have Miss Crawford’s liveliness repeated to her at such
a moment, and on such a subject, was a bitter aggravation.
Edmund saw weariness and distress in her face, and immediately resolved
to forbear all farther discussion; and not even to mention the name of
Crawford again, except as it might be connected with what _must_ be
agreeable to her. On this principle, he soon afterwards observed—“They
go on Monday. You are sure, therefore, of seeing your friend either
to-morrow or Sunday. They really go on Monday; and I was within a
trifle of being persuaded to stay at Lessingby till that very day! I
had almost promised it. What a difference it might have made! Those
five or six days more at Lessingby might have been felt all my life.”
“You were near staying there?”
“Very. I was most kindly pressed, and had nearly consented. Had I
received any letter from Mansfield, to tell me how you were all going
on, I believe I should certainly have staid; but I knew nothing that
had happened here for a fortnight, and felt that I had been away long
enough.”
“You spent your time pleasantly there?”
“Yes; that is, it was the fault of my own mind if I did not. They were
all very pleasant. I doubt their finding me so. I took uneasiness with
me, and there was no getting rid of it till I was in Mansfield again.”
“The Miss Owens—you liked them, did not you?”
“Yes, very well. Pleasant, good-humoured, unaffected girls. But I am
spoilt, Fanny, for common female society. Good-humoured, unaffected
girls will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They
are two distinct orders of being. You and Miss Crawford have made me
too nice.”
Still, however, Fanny was oppressed and wearied; he saw it in her
looks, it could not be talked away; and attempting it no more, he led
her directly, with the kind authority of a privileged guardian, into
the house.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Edmund now believed himself perfectly acquainted with all that Fanny
could tell, or could leave to be conjectured of her sentiments, and he
was satisfied. It had been, as he before presumed, too hasty a measure
on Crawford’s side, and time must be given to make the idea first
familiar, and then agreeable to her. She must be used to the
consideration of his being in love with her, and then a return of
affection might not be very distant.
He gave this opinion as the result of the conversation to his father;
and recommended there being nothing more said to her: no farther
attempts to influence or persuade; but that everything should be left
to Crawford’s assiduities, and the natural workings of her own mind.
Sir Thomas promised that it should be so. Edmund’s account of Fanny’s
disposition he could believe to be just; he supposed she had all those
feelings, but he must consider it as very unfortunate that she _had_;
for, less willing than his son to trust to the future, he could not
help fearing that if such very long allowances of time and habit were
necessary for her, she might not have persuaded herself into receiving
his addresses properly before the young man’s inclination for paying
them were over. There was nothing to be done, however, but to submit
quietly and hope the best.
The promised visit from “her friend,” as Edmund called Miss Crawford,
was a formidable threat to Fanny, and she lived in continual terror of
it. As a sister, so partial and so angry, and so little scrupulous of
what she said, and in another light so triumphant and secure, she was
in every way an object of painful alarm. Her displeasure, her
penetration, and her happiness were all fearful to encounter; and the
dependence of having others present when they met was Fanny’s only
support in looking forward to it. She absented herself as little as
possible from Lady Bertram, kept away from the East room, and took no
solitary walk in the shrubbery, in her caution to avoid any sudden
attack.