Meantime, Fanny, as the only young lady left at the Park, became of importance. Sir Thomas decided that she was pretty; Miss Crawford cultivated her society; and Mrs. Grant asked her to dinner. This last-mentioned attention disturbed Lady Bertram.
"So strange!" she said. "For Mrs. Grant never used to ask her."
"But it is very natural," observed Edmund, "that Mrs. Grant should wish to procure so agreeable a visitor for her sister."
"Nothing can be more natural," said Sir Thomas, after a short deliberation; "nor, were there no sister in the case, could anything, in my opinion, be more natural. Mrs. Grant's showing civility to Miss Price, to Lady Bertram's niece, could never want explanation. The only surprise I can feel is that this should be the first time of its being paid. Fanny was right in giving only a conditional answer. She appears to feel as she ought. But, as I conclude that she wishes to go, since all young people like to be together, I can see no reason why she should be denied this indulgence."
"Upon my word, Fanny," said Mrs. Norris, "you are in high luck to meet with such attention and indulgence. You ought to be very much obliged to Mrs. Grant for thinking of you, and to your aunt for letting you go, and you ought to look upon it as something extraordinary; for I hope you are aware that there is no real occasion for your going into company in this sort of way, or ever dining out at all; and it is what you must not depend upon ever being repeated. Nor must you be fancying that the invitation is meant as a compliment to you; the compliment is intended to your uncle and aunt and me. Mrs. Grant thinks it a civility due to us to take a little notice of you, or else it would never have come into her head, and you may be certain that if your cousin Julia had been at home you would not have been asked."
Mrs. Norris fetched breath, and went on.
"I think it right to give you a hint, Fanny, now that you are going into company without any of us; and I do beseech and entreat you not to be putting yourself forward, and talking and giving your opinion as if you were one of your cousins--as if you were dear Mrs. Rushworth or Julia. That will never do, believe me. Remember, wherever you are, you must be the lowest and last; and though Miss Crawford is in a manner at home at the Parsonage, you are not to be taking place of her. And as to coming away at night, you are to stay just as long as Edmund chooses."
"Yes, ma'am. I should not think of anything else."
"And if it should rain--which I think likely, for I never saw it more threatening for a wet evening in my life--you must manage as well as you can, and not be expecting the carriage to be sent for you."
"Walk!" said Sir Thomas, in a tone of unanswerable dignity, and, coming further into the room: "My niece walk to an engagement at this time of the year! Fanny, will twenty minutes after four suit you?"
A few weeks later Fanny was made happy by a visit from her brother William, now, through Sir Thomas's influence, a midshipman; and soon the former intercourse between the families at the Park and at the Parsonage was revived, Sir Thomas perceiving, in a careless way, that Mr. Crawford, who was back again at Mansfield, was somewhat distinguishing his niece.
Harry, indeed, was beginning to be rather piqued by Fanny's indifference.
"I do not quite know what to make of Miss Fanny," he said to his sister. "Is she solemn? Is she queer? Is she prudish? I can hardly get her to speak. I never was so long in company with a girl in my life, trying to entertain her, and succeeded so ill! Never met with a girl who looked so grave on me."
"Foolish fellow!" said Mary. "And so this is her attraction after all! This it is--her not caring for you--which gives her such a soft skin and makes her so much taller, and produces all these charms and graces! I do desire that you will not be making her really unhappy. A little love, perhaps, may animate and do her good; but I will not have you plunge her deep, for she is as good a little creature as ever lived, and has a great deal of feeling."
"It can be but for a fortnight," said Harry, "and if a fortnight can kill her she must have a constitution which nothing could save! No, I will not do her any harm. I only want her to look kindly on me, to give me smiles as well as blushes, to keep a chair for me by herself wherever we are, and be all animation when I take it and talk to her; to think as I think, to be interested in all my possessions and pleasures, try to keep me longer at Mansfield, and feel when I go away that she shall never be happy again. I want nothing more."
"Moderation itself!" replied Mary. "I can have no scruples now. Well, you will have opportunities enough of endeavouring to recommend yourself, for we are a great deal together."
Harry was unable to make any impression on Fanny; and though he fell deeply in love with her, got her brother William made lieutenant, and, after a ball given in her honour by Sir Thomas, proposed to her, he was unable to win her favour. She was in love with Edmund; and Edmund was torn between love for Mary, despair of winning her, and disapproval of her principles.
IV.--Wedding Bells at Mansfield
Mr. William Price, second lieutenant of H.M.S. Thrush, having obtained a ten days' leave of absence, again went down to see his sister; and Sir Thomas, as a kind of medicinal project on his niece's understanding, just to enable her to contrast with her father's shabby dwelling an abode of wealth and plenty like Mansfield Park, arranged that she should accompany her brother back to Portsmouth, and spend a little time with her own family. Within four days from their arrival William had to sail; and Fanny could not conceal it from herself that the home he had left her in was, in almost every respect, the very reverse of what she could have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder and impropriety. Nobody was in his right place; nothing was done as it ought to be. She could not respect her parents as she had hoped. Her father was more negligent of his family, worse in his habits, coarser in his manners, than she had been prepared for. He did not want abilities; but he had no curiosity, and no information beyond his profession. He read only the newspaper and the Navy List. He talked only of the dockyard, the harbour, Spithead, and the Motherbank. He swore and he drank; he was dirty and gross.
She had never been able to recall anything approaching to tenderness in his former treatment of herself. There had remained only a general impression of roughness, and now he scarcely ever noticed her but to make her the object of a coarse joke.
Her disappointment in her mother was greater. There she had hoped much, and found almost nothing. She discovered, indeed, that her mother was a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no conversation, no affection towards herself; no curiosity to know her better, no desire of her friendship, and no inclination for her company that could lessen her sense of such knowledge.
At the end of the fourth week of her visit Harry Crawford came to see Fanny, made himself very agreeable to her and her family, and then went back to town to see his sister, and to meet such friends as Edmund Bertram and the Rushworths. Fanny heard from Mary of Maria's fine house in Wimpole Street, of the splendours of the first party, and of the attentions paid to Julia by that would-be amateur actor, the Honourable John Yates; while from Edmund she gathered that his hopes of securing Mary were weaker than those he had cherished when he had left Mansfield, and that he was more satisfied with all that he saw and heard of Harry Crawford.