Mansfield Park - Jane Austen (read book TXT) 📗
- Author: Jane Austen
- Performer: 0141439807
Book online «Mansfield Park - Jane Austen (read book TXT) 📗». Author Jane Austen
Mr. Yates was beginning now to understand Sir Thomas’s intentions, though as far as ever from understanding their source.
He and his friend had been out with their guns the chief of the morning, and Tom had taken the opportunity of explaining, with proper apologies for his father’s particularity, what was to be expected. Mr. Yates felt it as acutely as might be supposed. To be a second time disappointed in the same way was an instance of very severe ill-luck; and his indignation was such, that had it not been for delicacy towards his friend, and his friend’s youngest sister, he believed he should certainly attack the baronet on the absurdity of his proceedings, and argue him into a little more rationality. He believed this very stoutly while he was in Mansfield Wood, and all the way home; but there was a something in Sir Thomas, when they sat round the same table, which made Mr. Yates think it wiser to let him pursue his own way, and feel the folly of it without opposition. He had known many disagreeable fathers before, and often been struck with the inconveniences they occasioned, but never, in the whole course of his life, had he seen one of that class so unintelligibly moral, so infamously tyrannical as Sir Thomas. He was not a man to be endured but for his children’s sake, and he might be thankful to his fair daughter Julia that Mr. Yates did yet mean to stay a few days longer under his roof.
The evening passed with external smoothness, though almost every mind was ruffled; and the music which Sir Thomas called for from his daughters helped to conceal the want of real harmony. Maria was in a good deal of agitation.
It was of the utmost consequence to her that Crawford should now lose no time in declaring himself, and she was disturbed that even a day should be gone by without seeming to advance that point. She had been expecting to see him the whole morning, and all the evening, too, was still expecting him. Mr. Rushworth had set off early with the great news for Sotherton; and she had fondly hoped for such an immediate eclaircissement as might save him the trouble of ever coming back again. But they had seen no one from the Parsonage, not a creature, and had heard no tidings beyond a friendly note of congratulation and inquiry from Mrs. Grant to Lady Bertram. It was the first day for many, many weeks, in which the families had been wholly divided. Four-and-twenty hours had never passed before, since August began, without bringing them together in some way or other. It was a sad, anxious day; and the morrow, though differing in the sort of evil, did by no means bring less. A few moments of feverish enjoyment were followed by hours of acute suffering.
Henry Crawford was again in the house: he walked up with Dr. Grant, who was anxious to pay his respects to Sir Thomas, and at rather an early hour they were ushered into the breakfast-room, where were most of the family.
Sir Thomas soon appeared, and Maria saw with delight and agitation the introduction of the man she loved to her father. Her sensations were indefinable, and so were they a few minutes afterwards upon hearing Henry Crawford, who had a chair between herself and Tom, ask the latter in an undervoice whether there were any plans for resuming the play after the present happy interruption (with a courteous glance at Sir Thomas), because, in that case, he should make a point of returning to Mansfield at any time required by the party: he was going away immediately, being to meet his uncle at Bath without delay; but if there were any prospect of a renewal of Lovers’ Vows, he should hold himself positively engaged, he should break through every other claim, he should absolutely condition with his uncle for attending them whenever he might be wanted.
The play should not be lost by his absence.
“From Bath, Norfolk, London, York, wherever I may be,”
said he; “I will attend you from any place in England, at an hour’s notice.”
It was well at that moment that Tom had to speak, and not his sister. He could immediately say with easy fluency, “I am sorry you are going; but as to our play, that is all over—entirely at an end” (looking significantly at his father). “The painter was sent off yesterday, and very little will remain of the theatre tomorrow. I knew how that would be from the first. It is early for Bath.
You will find nobody there.”
“It is about my uncle’s usual time.”
“When do you think of going?”
“I may, perhaps, get as far as Banbury to-day.”
“Whose stables do you use at Bath?” was the next question; and while this branch of the subject was under discussion, Maria, who wanted neither pride nor resolution, was preparing to encounter her share of it with tolerable calmness.
To her he soon turned, repeating much of what he had already said, with only a softened air and stronger expressions of regret. But what availed his expressions or his air? He was going, and, if not voluntarily going, voluntarily intending to stay away; for, excepting what might be due to his uncle, his engagements were all self-imposed.
He might talk of necessity, but she knew his independence.
The hand which had so pressed hers to his heart! the hand and the heart were alike motionless and passive now!
Her spirit supported her, but the agony of her mind was severe.
She had not long to endure what arose from listening to language which his actions contradicted, or to bury the tumult of her feelings under the restraint of society; for general civilities soon called his notice from her, and the farewell visit, as it then became openly acknowledged, was a very short one. He was gone—he had touched her hand for the last time, he had made his parting bow, and she might seek directly all that solitude could do for her. Henry Crawford was gone, gone from the house, and within two hours afterwards from the parish; and so ended all the hopes his selfish vanity had raised in Maria and Julia Bertram.
Julia could rejoice that he was gone. His presence was beginning to be odious to her; and if Maria gained him not, she was now cool enough to dispense with any other revenge.
She did not want exposure to be added to desertion.
Henry Crawford gone, she could even pity her sister.
With a purer spirit did Fanny rejoice in the intelligence.
She heard it at dinner, and felt it a blessing.
By all the others it was mentioned with regret; and his merits honoured with due gradation of feeling—
from the sincerity of Edmund’s too partial regard, to the unconcern of his mother speaking entirely by rote.
Mrs. Norris began to look about her, and wonder that his falling in love with Julia had come to nothing; and could almost fear that she had been remiss herself in forwarding it; but with so many to care for, how was it possible for even her activity to keep pace with her wishes?
Another day or two, and Mr. Yates was gone likewise.
In his departure Sir Thomas felt the chief interest: wanting to be alone with his family, the presence of a stranger superior to Mr. Yates must have been irksome; but of him, trifling and confident, idle and expensive, it was every way vexatious. In himself he was wearisome, but as the friend of Tom and the admirer of Julia he became offensive. Sir Thomas had been quite indifferent to Mr. Crawford’s going or staying: but his good wishes for Mr. Yates’s having a pleasant journey, as he walked with him to the hall-door, were given with genuine satisfaction. Mr. Yates had staid to see the destruction of every theatrical preparation at Mansfield, the removal of everything appertaining to the play: he left the house in all the soberness of its general character; and Sir Thomas hoped, in seeing him out of it, to be rid of the worst object connected with the scheme, and the last that must be inevitably reminding him of its existence.
Mrs. Norris contrived to remove one article from his sight that might have distressed him. The curtain, over which she had presided with such talent and such success, went off with her to her cottage, where she happened to be particularly in want of green baize.
Sir Thomas’s return made a striking change in the ways of the family, independent of Lovers’ Vows. Under his government, Mansfield was an altered place. Some members of their society sent away, and the spirits of many others saddened—
it was all sameness and gloom compared with the past—
a sombre family party rarely enlivened. There was little intercourse with the Parsonage. Sir Thomas, drawing back from intimacies in general, was particularly disinclined, at this time, for any engagements but in one quarter.
The Rushworths were the only addition to his own domestic circle which he could solicit.
Edmund did not wonder that such should be his father’s feelings, nor could he regret anything but the exclusion of the Grants.
“But they,” he observed to Fanny, “have a claim. They seem to belong to us; they seem to be part of ourselves.
I could wish my father were more sensible of their very great attention to my mother and sisters while he was away.
I am afraid they may feel themselves neglected.
But the truth is, that my father hardly knows them.
They had not been here a twelvemonth when he left England.
If he knew them better, he would value their society as it deserves; for they are in fact exactly the sort of people he would like. We are sometimes a little in want of animation among ourselves: my sisters seem out of spirits, and Tom is certainly not at his ease.
Dr. and Mrs. Grant would enliven us, and make our evenings pass away with more enjoyment even to my father.”
“Do you think so?” said Fanny: “in my opinion, my uncle would not like any addition. I think he values the very quietness you speak of, and that the repose of his own family circle is all he wants.
And it does not appear to me that we are more serious than we used to be—I mean before my uncle went abroad.
As well as I can recollect, it was always much the same.
There was never much laughing in his presence; or, if there is any difference, it is not more, I think, than such an absence has a tendency to produce at first.
There must be a sort of shyness; but I cannot recollect that our evenings formerly were ever merry, except when my uncle was in town. No young people’s are, I suppose, when those they look up to are at home”.
“I believe you are right, Fanny,” was his reply, after a short consideration. “I believe our evenings are rather returned to what they were, than assuming a new character.
The novelty was in their being lively. Yet, how strong the impression that only a few weeks will give!
I have been feeling as if we had never lived so before.”
“I suppose I am graver than other people,” said Fanny.
“The evenings do not appear long to me. I love to hear my uncle talk of the West Indies. I could listen to him for an hour together. It entertains me more than many other things have done; but then I am unlike other people, I dare
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