“You know nothing and you care less, as people say. Never did tone express indifference plainer. Indeed how can one care for those one has never seen?—Well, when your cousin comes back, he will find Mansfield very quiet;—all the noisy ones gone, your brother and mine and myself. I do not like the idea of leaving Mrs. Grant now the time draws near. She does not like my going.”
Fanny felt obliged to speak. “You cannot doubt your being missed by many,” said she. “You will be very much missed.”
Miss Crawford turned her eye on her, as if wanting to hear or see more, and then laughingly said, “Oh! yes, missed as every noisy evil is missed when it is taken away; that is, there is a great difference felt. But I am not fishing; don’t compliment me. If I am missed, it will appear. I may be discovered by those who want to see me. I shall not be in any doubtful, or distant, or unapproachable region.”
Now Fanny could not bring herself to speak, and Miss Crawford was disappointed; for she had hoped to hear some pleasant assurance of her power, from one who she thought must know; and her spirits were clouded again.
“The Miss Owens,” said she soon afterwards—”Suppose you were to have one of the Miss Owens settled at Thornton Lacey; how should you like it? Stranger things have happened. I dare say they are trying for it. And they are quite in the right, for it would be a very pretty establishment for them. I do not at all wonder or blame them.—It is everybody’s duty to do as well for themselves as they can. Sir Thomas Bertram’s son is somebody; and now, he is in their own line. Their father is a clergyman and their brother is a clergyman, and they are all clergymen together. He is their lawful property, he fairly belongs to them. You don’t speak, Fanny—Miss Price—you don’t speak.—But honestly now, do not you rather expect it than otherwise?”
“No,” said Fanny stoutly, “I do not expect it all.”
“Not at all!”—cried Miss Crawford with alacrity. “I wonder at that. But I dare say you know exactly—I always imagine you are—perhaps you do not think him likely to marry at all—or not at present.”
“No, I do not,” said Fanny softly—hoping she did not err either in the belief or the acknowledgment of it.
Her companion looked at her keenly; and gathering greater spirit from the blush soon produced from such a look, only said, “He is best off as he is,” and turned the subject.
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Chapter 30
Miss Crawford’s uneasiness was much lightened by this conversation, and she walked home again in spirits which might have defied almost another week of the same small party in the same bad weather, had they been put to the proof; but as that very evening brought her brother down from London again in quite, or more than quite, his usual cheerfulness, she had nothing further to try her own. His still refusing to tell her what he had gone for, was but the promotion of gaiety; a day before it might have irritated, but now it was a pleasant joke—suspected only of concealing something planned as a pleasant surprise to herself. And the next day did bring a surprise to her. Henry had said he should just go and ask the Bertrams how they did, and be back in ten minutes—but he was gone above an hour; and when his sister, who had been waiting for him to walk with her in the garden, met him at last most impatiently in the sweep, and cried out, “My dear Henry, where can you possibly have been all this time?” he had only to say that he had been sitting with Lady Bertram and Fanny.
“Sitting with them an hour and half!” exclaimed Mary.
But this was only the beginning of her surprise.
“Yes, Mary,” said he, drawing her arm within his, and walking along the sweep as if not knowing where he was—”I could not get away sooner—Fanny looked so lovely!—I am quite determined, Mary. My mind is entirely made up. Will it astonish you? No—You must be aware that I am quite determined to marry Fanny Price.”