Mansfield Park - Jane Austen (read book TXT) 📗

she went to her after the two first dances, and said, with a significant look, “Perhaps you can tell me why my brother goes to town tomorrow? He says he has business there, but will not tell me what. The first time he ever denied me his confidence! But this is what we all come to.

All are supplanted sooner or later. Now, I must apply to you for information. Pray, what is Henry going for?”

 

Fanny protested her ignorance as steadily as her embarrassment allowed.

 

“Well, then,” replied Miss Crawford, laughing, “I must suppose it to be purely for the pleasure of conveying your brother, and of talking of you by the way.”

 

Fanny was confused, but it was the confusion of discontent; while Miss Crawford wondered she did not smile, and thought her over-anxious, or thought her odd, or thought her anything rather than insensible of pleasure in Henry’s attentions.

Fanny had a good deal of enjoyment in the course of the evening; but Henry’s attentions had very little to do with it.

She would much rather not have been asked by him again so very soon, and she wished she had not been obliged to suspect that his previous inquiries of Mrs. Norris, about the supper hour, were all for the sake of securing her at that part of the evening. But it was not to be avoided: he made her feel that she was the object of all; though she could not say that it was unpleasantly done, that there was indelicacy or ostentation in his manner; and sometimes, when he talked of William, he was really not unagreeable, and shewed even a warmth of heart which did him credit.

But still his attentions made no part of her satisfaction.

She was happy whenever she looked at William, and saw how perfectly he was enjoying himself, in every five minutes that she could walk about with him and hear his account of his partners; she was happy in knowing herself admired; and she was happy in having the two dances with Edmund still to look forward to, during the greatest part of the evening, her hand being so eagerly sought after that her indefinite engagement with him was in continual perspective.

She was happy even when they did take place; but not from any flow of spirits on his side, or any such expressions of tender gallantry as had blessed the morning.

His mind was fagged, and her happiness sprung from being the friend with whom it could find repose.

“I am worn out with civility,” said he. “I have been talking incessantly all night, and with nothing to say.

But with you, Fanny, there may be peace. You will not want to be talked to. Let us have the luxury of silence.”

Fanny would hardly even speak her agreement. A weariness, arising probably, in great measure, from the same feelings which he had acknowledged in the morning, was peculiarly to be respected, and they went down their two dances together with such sober tranquillity as might satisfy any looker-on that Sir Thomas had been bringing up no wife for his younger son.

 

The evening had afforded Edmund little pleasure. Miss Crawford had been in gay spirits when they first danced together, but it was not her gaiety that could do him good: it rather sank than raised his comfort; and afterwards, for he found himself still impelled to seek her again, she had absolutely pained him by her manner of speaking of the profession to which he was now on the point of belonging.

They had talked, and they had been silent; he had reasoned, she had ridiculed; and they had parted at last with mutual vexation. Fanny, not able to refrain entirely from observing them, had seen enough to be tolerably satisfied.

It was barbarous to be happy when Edmund was suffering.

Yet some happiness must and would arise from the very conviction that he did suffer.

 

When her two dances with him were over, her inclination and strength for more were pretty well at an end; and Sir Thomas, having seen her walk rather than dance down the shortening set, breathless, and with her hand at her side, gave his orders for her sitting down entirely.

From that time Mr. Crawford sat down likewise.

 

“Poor Fanny!” cried William, coming for a moment to visit her, and working away his partner’s fan as if for life, “how soon she is knocked up! Why, the sport is but just begun.

I hope we shall keep it up these two hours. How can you be tired so soon?”

 

“So soon! my good friend,” said Sir Thomas, producing his watch with all necessary caution; “it is three o’clock, and your sister is not used to these sort of hours.”

 

“Well, then, Fanny, you shall not get up tomorrow before I go. Sleep as long as you can, and never mind me.”

 

“Oh! William.”

 

“What! Did she think of being up before you set off?”

 

“Oh! yes, sir,” cried Fanny, rising eagerly from her seat to be nearer her uncle; “I must get up and breakfast with him.

It will be the last time, you know; the last morning.”

 

“You had better not. He is to have breakfasted and be gone by half-past nine. Mr. Crawford, I think you call for him at half-past nine?”

 

Fanny was too urgent, however, and had too many tears in her eyes for denial; and it ended in a gracious “Well, well!”

which was permission.

 

“Yes, half-past nine,” said Crawford to William as the latter was leaving them, “and I shall be punctual, for there will be no kind sister to get up for me.”

And in a lower tone to Fanny, “I shall have only a desolate house to hurry from. Your brother will find my ideas of time and his own very different tomorrow.”

 

After a short consideration, Sir Thomas asked Crawford to join the early breakfast party in that house instead of eating alone: he should himself be of it; and the readiness with which his invitation was accepted convinced him that the suspicions whence, he must confess to himself, this very ball had in great measure sprung, were well founded. Mr. Crawford was in love with Fanny.

He had a pleasing anticipation of what would be. His niece, meanwhile, did not thank him for what he had just done.

She had hoped to have William all to herself the last morning.

It would have been an unspeakable indulgence. But though her wishes were overthrown, there was no spirit of murmuring within her. On the contrary, she was so totally unused to have her pleasure consulted, or to have anything take place at all in the way she could desire, that she was more disposed to wonder and rejoice in having carried her point so far, than to repine at the counteraction which followed.

 

Shortly afterward, Sir Thomas was again interfering a little with her inclination, by advising her to go immediately to bed. “Advise” was his word, but it was the advice of absolute power, and she had only to rise, and, with Mr. Crawford’s very cordial adieus, pass quietly away; stopping at the entrance-door, like the Lady of Branxholm Hall, “one moment and no more,”

to view the happy scene, and take a last look at the five or six determined couple who were still hard at work; and then, creeping slowly up the principal staircase, pursued by the ceaseless country-dance, feverish with hopes and fears, soup and negus, sore-footed and fatigued, restless and agitated, yet feeling, in spite of everything, that a ball was indeed delightful.

 

In thus sending her away, Sir Thomas perhaps might not be thinking merely of her health. It might occur to him that Mr. Crawford had been sitting by her long enough, or he might mean to recommend her as a wife by shewing her persuadableness.