Mansfield Park, Jane Austen [i read book TXT] 📗

yours.

It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy difficulties greater than they are. His cheerfulness will counteract this. He sees difficulties nowhere: and his pleasantness and gaiety will be a constant support to you. Your being so far unlike, Fanny, does not in the smallest degree make against the probability of your happiness together: do not imagine it. I am myself convinced that it is rather a favourable circumstance.

I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers had better be unlike: I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in the manners, in the inclination for much or little company, in the propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gay.

Some opposition here is, I am thoroughly convinced, friendly to matrimonial happiness. I exclude extremes, of course; and a very close resemblance in all those points would be the likeliest way to produce an extreme.

A counteraction, gentle and continual, is the best safeguard of manners and conduct.”

 

Full well could Fanny guess where his thoughts were now: Miss Crawford’s power was all returning. He had been speaking of her cheerfully from the hour of his coming home.

His avoiding her was quite at an end. He had dined at the Parsonage only the preceding day.

 

After leaving him to his happier thoughts for some minutes, Fanny, feeling it due to herself, returned to Mr. Crawford, and said, “It is not merely in temper that I consider him as totally unsuited to myself; though, in that

respect, I think the difference between us too great, infinitely too great: his spirits often oppress me; but there is something in him which I object to still more.

I must say, cousin, that I cannot approve his character.

I have not thought well of him from the time of the play.

I then saw him behaving, as it appeared to me, so very improperly and unfeelingly—I may speak of it now because it is all over—so improperly by poor Mr. Rushworth, not seeming to care how he exposed or hurt him, and paying attentions to my cousin Maria, which—in short, at the time of the play, I received an impression which will never be got over.”

 

“My dear Fanny,” replied Edmund, scarcely hearing her to the end, “let us not, any of us, be judged by what we appeared at that period of general folly. The time of the play is a time which I hate to recollect. Maria was wrong, Crawford was wrong, we were all wrong together; but none so wrong as myself. Compared with me, all the rest were blameless. I was playing the fool with my eyes open.”

 

“As a bystander,” said Fanny, “perhaps I saw more than you did; and I do think that Mr. Rushworth was sometimes very jealous.”

 

“Very possibly. No wonder. Nothing could be more improper than the whole business. I am shocked whenever I think that Maria could be capable of it; but, if she could undertake the part, we must not be surprised at the rest.”

 

“Before the play, I am much mistaken if Julia did not think he was paying her attentions.”

 

“Julia! I have heard before from some one of his being in love with Julia; but I could never see anything of it.

And, Fanny, though I hope I do justice to my sisters’

good qualities, I think it very possible that they might, one or both, be more desirous of being admired by Crawford, and might shew that desire rather more unguardedly than was 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