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This was followed by a short silence. Miss Bertram began again. ‘You seemed to enjoy your drive here very much this morning. I was glad to see you so well entertained. You and Julia were laughing the whole way.’
‘Were we? Yes, I believe we were; but I have not the least recollection at what. Oh! I believe I was relating to her some ridiculous stories of an old Irish groom of my uncle’s. Your sister loves to laugh.’
‘You think her more light-hearted than I am.’
‘More easily amused,’ he replied, ‘consequently, you know,’ smiling, ‘better company. I could not have hoped to entertain you with Irish anecdotes during a ten miles’ drive.’
‘Naturally, I believe, I am as lively as Julia, but I have more to think of now.’
‘You have, undoubtedly; and there are situations in which very high spirits would denote insensibility. Your prospects, however, are too fair to justify want of spirits. You have a very smiling scene before you.’
‘Do you mean literally or figuratively? Literally, I conclude. Yes, certainly the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. “I cannot get out,” as the starling said.’ As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. ‘Mr Rushworth is so long fetching this key!’
‘And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr Rushworth’s authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited.’
‘Prohibited! nonsense! I certainly can get out that way, and I will. Mr Rushworth will be here in a moment you know; we shall not be out of sight.’
‘Or if we are, Miss Price will be so good as to tell him that he will find us near that knoll: the grove of oak on the knoll.’
Fanny, feeling all this to be wrong, could not help making an effort to prevent it. ‘You will hurt yourself, Miss Bertram,’ she cried; ‘you will certainly hurt yourself against those spikes. You will tear your gown; you will be in danger of slipping into the ha-ha. You had better not go.’
Her cousin was safe on the other side, while these words were spoken, and, smiling with all the good humour of success, she said, ‘Thank you, my dear Fanny, but I and my gown are alive and well, and so good-bye.’
Fanny was again left to her solitude, and with no increase of pleasant feelings, for she was sorry for almost all that she had seen and heard, astonished at Miss Bertram, and angry with Mr Crawford. By taking a circuitous route, and, as it appeared to her, very unreasonable direction to the knoll, they were soon beyond her eye; and for some minutes longer she remained without sight or sound of any companion. She seemed to have the little wood all to herself. She could almost have thought that Edmund and Miss Crawford had left it, but that it was impossible for Edmund to forget her so entirely.
She was again roused from disagreeable musings by sudden footsteps: somebody was coming at a quick pace down the principal walk. She expected Mr Rushworth, but it was Julia, who, hot and out of breath, and with a look of dis appointment, cried out on seeing her, ‘Heyday! Where are the others? I thought Maria and Mr Crawford were with you.’
Fanny explained.
‘A pretty trick, upon my word! I cannot see them anywhere,’ looking eagerly into the park. ‘But they cannot be very far off, and I think I am equal to as much as Maria, even without help.’
‘But, Julia, Mr Rushworth will be here in a moment with the key. Do wait for Mr Rushworth.’
‘Not I, indeed. I have had enough of the family for one morning. Why, child, I have but this moment escaped from his horrible mother. Such a penance as I have been enduring, while you were sitting here so composed and so happy! It might have been as well, perhaps, if you had been in my place, but you always contrive to keep out of these scrapes.’
This was a most unjust reflection, but Fanny could allow for it, and let it pass: Julia was vexed, and her temper was hasty; but she felt that it would not last, and therefore taking no notice, only asked her if she had not seen Mr Rushworth.
‘Yes, yes, we saw him. He was posting away as if upon life and death, and could but just spare time to tell us his errand, and where you all were.’
‘It is a pity he should have so much trouble for nothing.’
‘That is Miss Maria’s concern. I am not obliged to punish myself for her sins. The mother I could not avoid, as long as my tiresome aunt was dancing about with the housekeeper, but the son I can get away from.’
And she immediately scrambled across the fence, and walked away, not attending to Fanny’s last question of whether she had seen anything of Miss Crawford and Edmund. The sort of dread in which Fanny now sat of seeing Mr Rushworth, prevented her thinking so much of their continued absence, however, as she might have done. She felt that he had been very ill used, and was quite unhappy in having to communicate what had passed. He joined her within five minutes after Julia’s exit; and though she made the best of the story, he was evidently mortified and displeased in no common degree. At first he scarcely said anything; his looks only expressed his extreme surprise and vexation, and he walked to the gate and stood there, without seeming to know what to do.
‘They desired me to stay; my cousin Maria charged me to say that you would find them at that knoll, or thereabouts.’
‘I do not believe I shall go any farther,’ said he sullenly; ‘I see nothing of them. By the time I get to the knoll, they may be gone somewhere else. I have had walking enough.’
And he sat down with a most gloomy countenance by Fanny.
‘I am very sorry,’ said she; ‘it is very unlucky.’ And she longed to be able to say something more to the purpose.
After an interval of silence, ‘I think they might as well have stayed for me,’ said he.
‘Miss Bertram thought you would follow her.’
‘I should not have had to follow her if she had stayed.’
This could not be denied, and Fanny was silenced. After another pause, he went on—‘Pray, Miss Price, are you such a great admirer of this Mr Crawford as some people are? For my part, I can see nothing in him.’
‘I do not think him at all handsome.’
‘Handsome! Nobody can call such an under-sized man handsome. He is not five foot nine. I should not wonder if he was not more than five foot eight. I think he is an ill-looking fellow. In my opinion, these Crawfords are no addition at all. We did very well without them.’
A small sigh escaped Fanny here, and she did not know how to contradict him.
‘If I had made any difficulty about fetching the key, there might have been some excuse, but I went the very moment she said she wanted it.’
‘Nothing could be more obliging than your manner, I am sure, and I dare say you walked as fast as you could; but still it is some distance, you know, from this spot to the house, quite into the house; and when people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five.’
He got up and walked to the gate again, and ‘wished he had had the key about him at the time.’ Fanny thought she discerned in his standing there an indication of relenting, which encouraged her to another attempt, and she said, therefore, ‘It is a pity you should not join them. They expected to have a better view of the house from that part of the park, and will be thinking how it may be improved; and nothing of that sort, you know, can be settled without you.’
She found herself more successful in sending away, than in retaining a companion. Mr Rushworth was worked on. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘if you really think I had better go: it would be foolish to bring the key for nothing.’ And letting himself out, he walked off without further ceremony.
Fanny’s thoughts were now all engrossed by the two who had left her so long ago, and getting quite impatient, she resolved to go in search of them. She followed their steps along the bottom walk, and had just turned up into another, when the voice and the laugh of Miss Crawford once more caught her ear; the sound approached, and a few more windings brought them before her. They were just returned into the wilderness from the park, to which a side-gate, not fastened, had tempted them very soon after their leaving her, and they had been across a portion of the park into the very avenue which Fanny had been hoping the whole morning to reach at last, and had been sitting down under one of the trees. This was their history. It was evident that they had been spending their time pleasantly, and were not aware of the length of their absence. Fanny’s best consolation was in being assured that Edmund had wished for her very much, and that he should certainly have come back for her, had she not been tired already; but this was not quite sufficient to do away with the pain of having been left a whole hour, when he had talked of only a few minutes, nor to banish the sort of curiosity she felt, to know what they had been conversing about all that time; and the result of the whole was to her disappointment and depression, as they prepared, by general agreement, to return to the house.
On reaching the bottom of the steps to the terrace, Mrs Rushworth and Mrs Norris presented themselves at the top, just ready for the wilderness, at the end of an hour and a half from their leaving the house. Mrs Norris had been too well employed to move faster. Whatever cross accidents had occurred to intercept the pleasures of her nieces, she had found a morning of complete enjoyment; for the housekeeper, after a great many curtseys on the subject of pheasants, had taken her to the dairy, told her all about their cows, and given her the receipt for a famous cream cheese; and since Julia’s leaving them, they had been met by the gardener, with whom she had made a most satisfactory acquaintance, for she had set him right as to his grandson’s illness, convinced him that it was an ague, and promised him a charm for it; and he, in return, had shown her all his choicest nursery of plants, and actually presented her with a very curious specimen of heath.
On this rencontre they all returned to the house together, there to lounge away the time as they could with sofas, and chit-chat, and Quarterly Reviews, till the return of the others, and the arrival of dinner. It was late before the Miss Bertrams and the two gentlemen came in, and their ramble did not appear to have been more than partially agreeable, or at all productive of anything useful with regard to the object of the day. By their own accounts they had been all walking after each other, and the junction which had taken place at last seemed, to Fanny’s observation, to have been as much too late for re-establishing harmony, as it confessedly had been for determining on any alteration. She felt, as she looked at Julia and Mr Rushworth, that hers was not the only dissatisfied bosom amongst them; there was gloom on the face of each. Mr Crawford and Miss Bertram were much more gay, and she thought that he was taking particular pains, during dinner, to do away with any little resentment of the other two, and restore general good humour.
Dinner was soon followed by tea and coffee, a ten miles’ drive home allowed no waste of hours; and from the time of their sitting down to table, it was a quick succession of busy nothings till the carriage came to the door, and Mrs Norris, having fidgeted about, and obtained a few pheasants’ eggs and a cream cheese from the housekeeper, and made abundance of civil speeches to Mrs Rushworth, was ready to lead the way. At the same moment, Mr Crawford, approaching Julia, said, ‘I hope I am not to lose my companion, unless she is afraid of the evening air in so exposed a seat.’ The request had not been foreseen, but was very graciously received, and Julia’s day was likely to end almost as well as it began. Miss Bertram had made up her mind to something different, and was a little disappointed; but her conviction of being really the one preferred, comforted her under it, and enabled her to receive Mr Rushworth’s parting attentions as she ought. He was certainly better pleased to hand her into the barouche than to assist her in ascending the box, and his complacency seemed confirmed by the arrangement.
‘Well, Fanny, this has been a fine day for you, upon my word,’ said Mrs Norris, as they drove through the park. ‘Nothing but pleasure from beginning to end! I am sure you ought to be very much obliged to your Aunt Bertram and me, for contriving to let you go. A pretty good day’s amusement you have had!’
Maria was just discontented enough to say directly, ‘I think you have done pretty well yourself, ma’am. Your lap seems full of good things, and here is a basket of something between us, which has been knocking my elbow unmercifully.’
‘My dear, it is only a beautiful little heath, which that nice old gardener would make me take; but if it is in your way, I will have it in my lap directly. There, Fanny, you shall carry that parcel for me; take great care of it: do not let it fall: it is a cream cheese, just like the excellent one we had at dinner. Nothing would satisfy that good old Mrs Whitaker, but my taking one of the cheeses. I stood out as long as I could, till the tears almost came into her eyes, and I knew it was just the sort that my sister would be delighted with. That Mrs Whitaker is a treasure! She was quite shocked when I asked her whether wine was allowed at the second table, and she has turned away two housemaids for wearing white gowns. Take care of the cheese, Fanny. Now I can manage the other parcel and the basket very well.’
‘What else have you been sponging?’ said Maria half pleased that Sotherton should be so complimented.
‘Sponging, my dear! It is nothing but four of those beautiful pheasants’ eggs, which Mrs Whitaker would quite force upon me; she would not take a denial. She said it must be such an amusement to me, as she understood I lived quite alone, to have a few living creatures of that sort; and so to be sure it will. I shall get the dairymaid to set them under the first spare hen, and if they come to good I can have them moved to my own house and borrow a coop; and it will be a great delight to me in my lonely hours to attend to them. And if I have good luck, your mother shall have some.’
It was a beautiful evening, mild and still, and the drive was as pleasant as the serenity of Nature could make it; but when Mrs Norris ceased speaking, it was altogether a silent drive to those within. Their spirits were, in general, exhausted; and to determine whether the day had afforded most pleasure or pain, might occupy the meditations of almost all.
CHAPTER 11 (#ulink_77827eac-c1ff-5491-bd51-01b6546dcf7c)
The day at Sotherton, with all its imperfections, afforded the Miss Bertrams much more agreeable feelings than were derived from the letters from Antigua, which soon afterwards reached Mansfield. It was much pleasanter to think of Henry Crawford than of their father; and to think of their father in England again within a certain period, which these letters obliged them to do, was a most unwelcome exercise.
November was the black month fixed for his return. Sir Thomas wrote of it with as much decision as experience and anxiety could authorise. His business was so nearly concluded as to justify him in proposing to take his passage in the September packet, and he consequently looked forward with the hope of being with his beloved family again early in November.
Maria was more to be pitied than Julia; for to her the father brought a husband, and the return of the friend most solicitous for her happiness would unite her to the lover, on whom she had chosen that happiness should depend. It was a gloomy prospect, and all she could do was to throw a mist over it, and hope when the mist cleared away she should see something else. It would hardly be early in November, there were generally delays, a bad passage or something; that favouring something which everybody who shuts their eyes while they look, or their understandings while they reason, feels the comfort of. It would probably be the middle of November at least; the middle of November was three months off. Three months comprised thirteen weeks. Much might happen in thirteen weeks.
Sir Thomas would have been deeply mortified by a suspicion of half that his daughters felt on the subject of his return, and would hardly have found consolation in a knowledge of the interest it excited in the breast of another young lady. Miss Crawford, on walking up with her brother to spend the evening at Mansfield Park, heard the good news; and though seeming to have no concern in the affair beyond politeness, and to have vented all her feelings in a quiet congratulation, heard it with an attention not so easily satisfied. Mrs Norris gave the particulars of the letters, and the subject was dropped; but after tea, as Miss Crawford was standing at an open window with Edmund and Fanny looking out on a twilight scene, while the Miss Bertrams, Mr Rushworth, and Henry Crawford were all busy with candles at the pianoforte, she suddenly revived it by turning round towards the group, and saying, ‘How happy Mr Rushworth looks! He is thinking of November.’
Edmund looked round at Mr Rushworth too, but had nothing to say.
‘Your father’s return will be a very interesting event.’
‘It will, indeed, after such an absence; an absence not only long, but including so many dangers.’
‘It will be the forerunner also of other interesting events; your sister’s marriage, and your taking orders.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t be affronted,’ said she, laughing, ‘but it does put me in mind of some of the old heathen heroes, who, after performing great exploits in a foreign land, offered sacrifices to the gods on their safe return.’
‘There is no sacrifice in the case,’ replied Edmund, with a serious smile, and glancing at the pianoforte again, ‘it is entirely her own doing.’
‘Oh, yes! I know it is. I was merely joking. She has done no more than what every young woman would do; and I have no doubt of her being extremely happy. My other sacrifice of course you do not understand.’
‘My taking orders, I assure you, is quite as voluntary as Maria’s marrying.’
‘It is fortunate that your inclination and your father’s convenience should accord so well. There is a very good living kept for you, I understand, hereabouts.’
‘Which you suppose has biased me?’
‘But that I am sure it has not,’ cried Fanny.
‘Thank you for your good word, Fanny, but it is more than I would affirm myself. On the contrary, the knowing that there was such a provision for me probably did bias me. Nor can I think it wrong that it should. There was no natural disinclination to be overcome, and I see no reason why a man should make a worse clergyman for knowing that he will have a competence early in life. I was in safe hands. I hope I should not have been influenced myself in a wrong way, and I am sure my father was too conscientious to have allowed it. I have no doubt that I was biased, but I think it was blamelessly.’
‘It is the same sort of thing,’ said Fanny, after a short pause, ‘as for the son of an admiral to go into the navy or the son of a general to go into the army, and nobody sees anything wrong in that. Nobody wonders that they should prefer the line where their friends can serve them best, or suspects them to be less in earnest in it than they appear.’
‘No, my dear Miss Price, and for reasons good. The profession, either navy or army, is its own justification. It has everything in its favour; heroism, danger, bustle, fashion. Soldiers and sailors are always acceptable in society. Nobody can wonder that men are soldiers and sailors.’
‘But the motives of a man who takes orders with the certainty of preferment may be fairly suspected you think?’ said Edmund. ‘To be justified in your eyes, he must do it in the most complete uncertainty of any provision.’
‘What! take orders without a living! No; that is madness indeed; absolute madness.’
‘Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living, nor without? No; for you certainly would not know what to say. But I must beg some advantage to the clergyman from your own argument. As he cannot be influenced by those feelings which you rank highly as temptation and reward to the soldier and sailor, in their choice of a profession, as heroism, and noise, and fashion, are all against him, he ought to be less liable to the suspicion of wanting sincerity or good intentions in the choice of his.’
‘Oh! no doubt he is very sincere in preferring an income ready made, to the trouble of working for one: and has the best intentions of doing nothing all the rest of his days but eat, drink, and grow fat. It is indolence, Mr Bertram, indeed. Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine.’
‘There are such clergymen, no doubt, but I think they are not so common as to justify Miss Crawford in esteeming it their general character. I suspect that in this comprehensive and (may I say) commonplace censure, you are not judging from yourself, but from prejudiced persons, whose opinions you have been in the habit of hearing. It is impossible that your own observation can have given you much knowledge of the clergy. You can have been personally acquainted with very few of a set of men you condemn so conclusively. You are speaking what you have been told at your uncle’s table.’
‘I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct. Though I have not seen much of the domestic lives of clergymen, it is seen by too many to leave any deficiency of information.’
‘Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information or’ (smiling) ‘of something else. Your uncle, and his brother admirals, perhaps knew little of clergymen beyond the chaplains whom, good or bad, they were always wishing away.’
‘Poor William! He has met with great kindness from the chaplain of the Antwerp,’ was a tender apostrophe of Fanny’s, very much to the purpose of her own feelings, if not of the conversation.
‘I have been so little addicted to take my opinions from my uncle,’ said Miss Crawford, ‘that I can hardly suppose—and since you push me so hard, I must observe, that I am not entirely without the means of seeing what clergymen are, being at this present time the guest of my own brother, Dr Grant. And though Dr Grant is most kind and obliging to me, and though he is really a gentleman, and, I dare say, a good scholar and clever, and often preaches good sermons, and is very respectable, I see him to be an indolent, selfish bon vivant, who must have his palate consulted in everything; who will not stir a finger for the convenience of any one; and who, moreover, if the cook makes a blunder, is out of humour with his excellent wife. To own the truth, Henry and I were partly driven out this very evening by a disappointment about a green goose, which he could not get the better of. My poor sister was forced to stay and bear it.’
‘I do not wonder at your disapprobation, upon my word. It is a great defect of temper, made worse by a very faulty habit of self-indulgence; and to see your sister suffering from it must be exceedingly painful to such feelings as yours. Fanny, it goes against us. We cannot attempt to defend Dr Grant.’
‘No,’ replied Fanny, ‘but we need not give up his profession for all that; because, whatever profession Dr Grant had chosen, he would have taken a—not a good temper into it; and as he must, either in the navy or army, have had a great many more people under his command than he has now, I think more would have been made unhappy by him as a sailor or soldier than as a clergyman. Besides, I cannot but suppose that whatever there may be to wish otherwise in Dr Grant, would have been in a greater danger of becoming worse in a more active and worldly profession, where he would have had less time and obligation—where he might have escaped that knowledge of himself, the frequency, at least, of that knowledge which it is impossible he should escape as he is now. A man—a sensible man like Dr Grant, cannot be in the habit of teaching others their duty every week, cannot go to church twice every Sunday, and preach such very good sermons in so good a manner as he does, without being the better for it himself. It must make him think; and I have no doubt that he oftener endeavours to restrain himself than he would if he had been anything but a clergyman.’
‘We cannot prove to the contrary, to be sure; but I wish you a better fate, Miss Price, than to be the wife of a man whose amiableness depends upon his own sermons; for, though he may preach himself into a good humour every Sunday, it will be bad enough to have him quarrelling about green geese from Monday morning till Saturday night.’
‘I think the man who could often quarrel with Fanny,’ said Edmund affectionately, ‘must be beyond the reach of any sermons.’
Fanny turned farther into the window; and Miss Crawford had only time to say, in a pleasant manner, ‘I fancy Miss Price has been more used to deserve praise than to hear it;’ when being earnestly invited by the Miss Bertrams to join in a glee, she tripped off to the instrument, leaving Edmund looking after her in an ecstasy of admiration of all her many virtues, from her obliging manners down to her light and graceful tread.
‘There goes good humour, I am sure,’ said he presently. ‘There goes a temper which would never give pain! How well she walks! and how readily she falls in with the inclination of others! joining them the moment she is asked. What a pity,’ he added, after an instant’s reflection, ‘that she should have been in such hands!’
Fanny agreed to it, and had the pleasure of seeing him continue at the window with her, in spite of the expected glee; and of having his eyes soon turned, like hers, towards the scene without, where all that was solemn, and soothing, and lovely, appeared in the brilliancy of an unclouded night, and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods. Fanny spoke her feelings. ‘Here’s harmony!’ said she; ‘here’s repose! Here’s what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry only can attempt to describe! Here’s what may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.’
‘I like to hear your enthusiasm, Fanny. It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.’
‘You taught me to think and feel on the subject, cousin.’
‘I had a very apt scholar. There’s Arcturus looking very bright.’
‘Yes, and the Bear. I wish I could see Cassiopeia.’
‘We must go out on the lawn for that. Should you be afraid?’
‘Not in the least. It is a great while since we have had any star-gazing.’
‘Yes; I do not know how it has happened.’ The glee began. ‘We will stay till this is finished, Fanny,’ said he, turning his back on the window; and as it advanced, she had the mortification of seeing him advance too, moving forward by gentle degrees towards the instrument, and when it ceased, he was close by the singers, among the most urgent in requesting to hear the glee again.
Fanny sighed alone at the window till scolded away by Mrs Norris’s threats of catching cold.
CHAPTER 12 (#ulink_dc00a027-80dd-5216-8d7d-d3eced9d7af6)
Sir Thomas was to return in November, and his eldest son had duties to call him earlier home. The approach of September brought tidings of Mr Bertram, first in a letter to the gamekeeper, and then in a letter to Edmund; and by the end of August he arrived himself, to be gay, agreeable, and gallant again as occasion served, or Miss Crawford demanded; to tell of races and Weymouth, and parties and friends, to which she might have listened six weeks before with some interest, and altogether to give her the fullest conviction, by the power of actual comparison, of her preferring his younger brother.
It was very vexatious, and she was heartily sorry for it; but so it was; and so far from now meaning to marry the elder, she did not even want to attract him beyond what the simplest claims of conscious beauty required; his lengthened absence from Mansfield, without anything but pleasure in view, and his own will to consult, made it perfectly clear that he did not care about her; and his indifference was so much more than equalled by her own, that were he now to step forth the owner of Mansfield Park, the Sir Thomas complete, which he was to be in time, she did not believe she could accept him.
The season and duties which brought Mr Bertram back to Mansfield took Mr Crawford into Norfolk. Everingham could not do without him in the beginning of September. He went for a fortnight—a fortnight of such dullness to the Miss Bertrams as ought to have put them both on their guard, and made even Julia admit, in her jealousy of her sister, the absolute necessity of distrusting his attentions, and wishing him not to return; and a fortnight of sufficient leisure, in the intervals of shooting and sleeping to have convinced the gentleman that he ought to keep longer away, had he been more in the habit of examining his own motives, and of reflecting to what the indulgence of his idle vanity was tending; but, thoughtless and selfish from prosperity and bad example, he would not look beyond the present moment. The sisters, handsome, clever, and encouraging, were an amusement to his sated mind; and finding nothing in Norfolk to equal the social pleasures of Mansfield, he gladly returned to it at the time appointed, and was welcomed thither quite as gladly by those whom he came to trifle with further.
Maria, with only Mr Rushworth to attend to her, and doomed to the repeated details of his day’s sport, good or bad, his boast of his dogs, his jealousy of his neighbours, his doubts of their qualifications, and his zeal after poachers, subjects which will not find their way to female feelings without some talent on one side or some attachment on the other, had missed Mr Crawford grievously; and Julia, unengaged and unemployed, felt all the right of missing him much more. Each sister believed herself the favourite. Julia might be justified in so doing by the hints of Mrs Grant, inclined to credit what she wished, and Maria, by the hints of Mr Crawford himself. Everything returned into the same channel as before his absence; his manners being to each so animated and agreeable as to lose no ground with either, and just stopping short of the consistence, the steadiness, the solicitude, and the warmth which might excite general notice.
Fanny was the only one of the party who found anything to dislike; but since the day at Sotherton, she could never see Mr Crawford with either sister without observation, and seldom without wonder or censure; and had her confidence in her own judgment been equal to her exercise of it in every other respect, had she been sure that she was seeing clearly, and judging candidly, she would probably have made some important communications to her usual confidant. As it was, however, she only hazarded a hint, and the hint was lost. ‘I am rather surprised,’ said she, ‘that Mr Crawford should come back again so soon, after being here so long before, full seven weeks; for I had understood he was so very fond of change and moving about, that I thought something would certainly occur when he was once gone, to take him elsewhere. He is used to much gayer places than Mansfield.’
‘It is to his credit,’ was Edmund’s answer; ‘and I dare say it gives his sister pleasure. She does not like his unsettled habits.’
‘What a favourite he is with my cousins!’
