Mansfield Park
or three weeks; but then I considered it as meaning nothing: I put it
down as simply being his way, and was as far from supposing as from
wishing him to have any serious thoughts of me. I had not, Miss
Crawford, been an inattentive observer of what was passing between him
and some part of this family in the summer and autumn. I was quiet, but
I was not blind. I could not but see that Mr. Crawford amused himself
in gallantries which did mean nothing.”
“Ah! I cannot deny it. He has now and then been a sad flirt, and cared
very little for the havoc he might be making in young ladies’
affections. I have often scolded him for it, but it is his only fault;
and there is this to be said, that very few young ladies have any
affections worth caring for. And then, Fanny, the glory of fixing one
who has been shot at by so many; of having it in one’s power to pay off
the debts of one’s sex! Oh! I am sure it is not in woman’s nature to
refuse such a triumph.”
Fanny shook her head. “I cannot think well of a man who sports with any
woman’s feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered
than a stander-by can judge of.”
“I do not defend him. I leave him entirely to your mercy, and when he
has got you at Everingham, I do not care how much you lecture him. But
this I will say, that his fault, the liking to make girls a little in
love with him, is not half so dangerous to a wife’s happiness as a
tendency to fall in love himself, which he has never been addicted to.
And I do seriously and truly believe that he is attached to you in a
way that he never was to any woman before; that he loves you with all
his heart, and will love you as nearly for ever as possible. If any man
ever loved a woman for ever, I think Henry will do as much for you.”
Fanny could not avoid a faint smile, but had nothing to say.
“I cannot imagine Henry ever to have been happier,” continued Mary
presently, “than when he had succeeded in getting your brother’s
commission.”
She had made a sure push at Fanny’s feelings here.
“Oh! yes. How very, very kind of him.”
“I know he must have exerted himself very much, for I know the parties
he had to move. The Admiral hates trouble, and scorns asking favours;
and there are so many young men’s claims to be attended to in the same
way, that a friendship and energy, not very determined, is easily put
by. What a happy creature William must be! I wish we could see him.”
Poor Fanny’s mind was thrown into the most distressing of all its
varieties. The recollection of what had been done for William was
always the most powerful disturber of every decision against Mr.
Crawford; and she sat thinking deeply of it till Mary, who had been
first watching her complacently, and then musing on something else,
suddenly called her attention by saying: “I should like to sit talking
with you here all day, but we must not forget the ladies below, and so
good-bye, my dear, my amiable, my excellent Fanny, for though we shall
nominally part in the breakfast-parlour, I must take leave of you here.
And I do take leave, longing for a happy reunion, and trusting that
when we meet again, it will be under circumstances which may open our
hearts to each other without any remnant or shadow of reserve.”
A very, very kind embrace, and some agitation of manner, accompanied
these words.
“I shall see your cousin in town soon: he talks of being there
tolerably soon; and Sir Thomas, I dare say, in the course of the
spring; and your eldest cousin, and the Rushworths, and Julia, I am
sure of meeting again and again, and all but you. I have two favours to
ask, Fanny: one is your correspondence. You must write to me. And the
other, that you will often call on Mrs. Grant, and make her amends for
my being gone.”
The first, at least, of these favours Fanny would rather not have been
asked; but it was impossible for her to refuse the correspondence; it
was impossible for her even not to accede to it more readily than her
own judgment authorised. There was no resisting so much apparent
affection. Her disposition was peculiarly calculated to value a fond
treatment, and from having hitherto known so little of it, she was the
more overcome by Miss Crawford’s. Besides, there was gratitude towards
her, for having made their _tête-à-tête_ so much less painful than her
fears had predicted.
It was over, and she had escaped without reproaches and without
detection. Her secret was still her own; and while that was the case,
she thought she could resign herself to almost everything.
In the evening there was another parting. Henry Crawford came and sat
some time with them; and her spirits not being previously in the
strongest state, her heart was softened for a while towards him,
because he really seemed to feel. Quite unlike his usual self, he
scarcely said anything. He was evidently oppressed, and Fanny must
grieve for him, though hoping she might never see him again till he
were the husband of some other woman.
When it came to the moment of parting, he would take her hand, he would
not be denied it; he said nothing, however, or nothing that she heard,
and when he had left the room, she was better pleased that such a token
of friendship had passed.
On the morrow the Crawfords were gone.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Mr. Crawford gone, Sir Thomas’s next object was that he should be
missed; and he entertained great hope that his niece would find a blank
in the loss of those attentions which at the time she had felt, or
fancied, an evil. She had tasted of consequence in its most flattering
form; and he did hope that the loss of it, the sinking again into
nothing, would awaken very wholesome regrets in her mind. He watched
her with this idea; but he could hardly tell with what success. He
hardly knew whether there were any difference in her spirits or not.
She was always so gentle and retiring that her emotions were beyond his
discrimination. He did not understand her: he felt that he did not; and
therefore applied to Edmund to tell him how she stood affected on the
present occasion, and whether she were more or less happy than she had
been.
Edmund did not discern any symptoms of regret, and thought his father a
little unreasonable in supposing the first three or four days could
produce any.
What chiefly surprised Edmund was, that Crawford’s sister, the friend
and companion who had been so much to her, should not be more visibly
regretted. He wondered that Fanny spoke so seldom of _her_, and had so
little voluntarily to say of her concern at this separation.
Alas! it was this sister, this friend and companion, who was now the
chief bane of Fanny’s comfort. If she could have believed Mary’s future
fate as unconnected with Mansfield as she was determined the brother’s
should be, if she could have hoped her return thither to be as distant
as she was much inclined to think his, she would have been light of
heart indeed; but the more she recollected and observed, the more
deeply was she convinced that everything was now in a fairer train for
Miss Crawford’s marrying Edmund than it had ever been before. On his
side the inclination was stronger, on hers less equivocal. His
objections, the scruples of his integrity, seemed all done away, nobody
could tell how; and the doubts and hesitations of her ambition were
equally got over—and equally without apparent reason. It could only be
imputed to increasing attachment. His good and her bad feelings yielded
to love, and such love must unite them. He was to go to town as soon as
some business relative to Thornton Lacey were completed—perhaps within
a fortnight; he talked of going, he loved to talk of it; and when once
with her again, Fanny could not doubt the rest. Her acceptance must be
as certain as his offer; and yet there were bad feelings still
remaining which made the prospect of it most sorrowful to her,
independently, she believed, independently of self.
In their very last conversation, Miss Crawford, in spite of some
amiable sensations, and much personal kindness, had still been Miss
Crawford; still shewn a mind led astray and bewildered, and without any
suspicion of being so; darkened, yet fancying itself light. She might
love, but she did not deserve Edmund by any other sentiment. Fanny
believed there was scarcely a second feeling in common between them;
and she may be forgiven by older sages for looking on the chance of
Miss Crawford’s future improvement as nearly desperate, for thinking
that if Edmund’s influence in this season of love had already done so
little in clearing her judgment, and regulating her notions, his worth
would be finally wasted on her even in years of matrimony.
Experience might have hoped more for any young people so circumstanced,
and impartiality would not have denied to Miss Crawford’s nature that
participation of the general nature of women which would lead her to
adopt the opinions of the man she loved and respected as her own. But
as such were Fanny’s persuasions, she suffered very much from them, and
could never speak of Miss Crawford without pain.
Sir Thomas, meanwhile, went on with his own hopes and his own
observations, still feeling a right, by all his knowledge of human
nature, to expect to see the effect of the loss of power and
consequence on his niece’s spirits, and the past attentions of the
lover producing a craving for their return; and he was soon afterwards
able to account for his not yet completely and indubitably seeing all
this, by the prospect of another visitor, whose approach he could allow
to be quite enough to support the spirits he was watching. William had
obtained a ten days’ leave of absence, to be given to Northamptonshire,
and was coming, the happiest of lieutenants, because the latest made,
to shew his happiness and describe his uniform.
He came; and he would have been delighted to shew his uniform there
too, had not cruel custom prohibited its appearance except on duty. So
the uniform remained at Portsmouth, and Edmund conjectured that before
Fanny had any chance of seeing it, all its own freshness and all the
freshness of its wearer’s feelings must be worn away. It would be sunk
into a badge of disgrace; for what can be more unbecoming, or more
worthless, than the uniform of a lieutenant, who has been a lieutenant
a year or two, and sees others made commanders before him? So reasoned
Edmund, till his father made him the confidant of a scheme which placed
Fanny’s chance of seeing the second lieutenant of H.M.S. Thrush in all
his glory in another light.
This scheme was that she should accompany her brother back to
Portsmouth, and spend a little time with her own family. It had
occurred to Sir Thomas, in one of his dignified musings, as a right and
desirable measure; but before he absolutely made up his mind, he
consulted his son. Edmund considered it every way, and saw nothing but
what was right. The thing was good in itself, and could not be done at
a better time; and he had no doubt of it being highly agreeable to
Fanny. This was enough to determine Sir Thomas; and a decisive “then so
it shall be” closed that stage of the business; Sir Thomas retiring
from it with some feelings of satisfaction, and views of good over and
above what he had communicated to his son; for his prime motive in
sending her away had very little to do with the propriety of her seeing
her parents again, and nothing at all with any idea of making her
happy. He certainly wished her to go willingly, but he as certainly
wished her to be heartily sick of home before her visit ended; and that
a little abstinence from the elegancies and luxuries of Mansfield Park
would bring her mind into a sober state, and incline her to a juster
estimate of the value of that home of greater permanence, and equal
comfort, of which she had the offer.