Mansfield Park, Jane Austen [ebook reader browser .TXT] 📗

a different quarter; and if I could have altered the weather, you would have had a good sharp east wind blowing on you the whole time⁠—for here are some of my plants which Robert will leave out because the nights are so mild, and I know the end of it will be, that we shall have a sudden change of weather, a hard frost setting in all at once, taking everybody (at least Robert) by surprise, and I shall lose everyone; and what is worse, cook has just been telling me that the turkey, which I particularly wished not to be dressed till Sunday, because I know how much more Dr. Grant would enjoy it on Sunday after the fatigues of the day, will not keep beyond tomorrow. These are something like grievances, and make me think the weather most unseasonably close.”

“The sweets of housekeeping in a country village!” said Miss Crawford archly. “Commend me to the nurseryman and the poulterer.”

“My dear child, commend Dr. Grant to the deanery of Westminster or St. Paul’s, and I should be as glad of your nurseryman and poulterer as you could be. But we have no such people in Mansfield. What would you have me do?”

“Oh! you can do nothing but what you do already: be plagued very often, and never lose your temper.”

“Thank you; but there is no escaping these little vexations, Mary, live where we may; and when you are settled in town and I come to see you, I dare say I shall find you with yours, in spite of the nurseryman and the poulterer, perhaps on their very account. Their remoteness and unpunctuality, or their exorbitant charges and frauds, will be drawing forth bitter lamentations.”

“I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.”

“You intend to be very rich?” said Edmund, with a look which, to Fanny’s eye, had a great deal of serious meaning.

“To be sure. Do not you? Do not we all?”

“I cannot intend anything which it must be so completely beyond my power to command. Miss Crawford may choose her degree of wealth. She has only to fix on her number of thousands a year, and there can be no doubt of their coming. My intentions are only not to be poor.”

“By moderation and economy, and bringing down your wants to your income, and all that. I understand you⁠—and a very proper plan it is for a person at your time of life, with such limited means and indifferent connections. What can you want but a decent maintenance? You have not much time before you; and your relations are in no situation to do anything for you, or to mortify you by the contrast of their own wealth and consequence. Be honest and poor, by all means⁠—but I shall not envy you; I do not much think I shall even respect you. I have a much greater respect for those that are honest and rich.”

“Your degree of respect for honesty, rich or poor, is precisely what I have no manner of concern with. I do not mean to be poor. Poverty is exactly what I have determined against. Honesty, in the something between, in the middle state of worldly circumstances, is all that I am anxious for your not looking down on.”

“But I do look down upon it, if it might have been higher. I must look down upon anything contented with obscurity when it might rise to distinction.”

“But how may it rise? How may my honesty at least rise to any distinction?”

This was not so very easy a question to answer, and occasioned an “Oh!” of some length from the fair lady before she could add, “You ought to be in parliament, or you should have gone into the army ten years ago.”

“That is not much to the purpose now; and as to my being in parliament, I believe I must wait till there is an especial assembly for the representation of younger sons who have little to live on. No, Miss Crawford,” he added, in a more serious tone, “there are distinctions which I should be miserable if I thought myself without any chance⁠—absolutely without chance or possibility of obtaining⁠—but they are of a different character.”

A look of consciousness as he spoke, and what seemed a consciousness of manner on Miss Crawford’s side as she made some laughing answer, was sorrowfull food for Fanny’s observation; and finding herself quite unable to attend as she ought to Mrs. Grant, by whose side she was now following the others, she had nearly resolved on going home immediately, and only waited for courage to say so, when the sound of the great clock at Mansfield Park, striking three, made her feel that she had really been much longer absent than usual, and brought the previous self-inquiry of whether she should take leave or not just then, and how, to a very speedy issue. With undoubting decision she directly began her adieus; and Edmund began at the same time to recollect that his mother had been inquiring for her, and that he had walked down to the Parsonage on purpose to bring her back.

Fanny’s hurry increased; and without in the least expecting Edmund’s attendance, she would have hastened away alone; but the general pace was quickened, and they all accompanied her into the house, through which it was necessary to pass. Dr. Grant was in the vestibule, and as they stopped to speak to him she found, from Edmund’s manner, that he did mean to go with her. He too was taking leave. She could not but be thankful. In the moment of parting, Edmund was invited by Dr. Grant to eat his mutton with him the next day; and Fanny had barely time for an unpleasant feeling on the occasion, when Mrs. Grant, with sudden recollection, turned to her and asked for the pleasure