Mr. Rushworth was at the door to welcome the party with due attention. In the drawing-room they were met with equal cordiality by the mother, and Miss Bertram had all the distinction that she could wish. The doors were thrown open to admit them into the dining-parlour, where a luncheon was prepared with abundance and elegance. Much was said, and ate, and all went well.
Mrs Rushworth then proposed showing the party round the house. They rose accordingly, and under Mrs. Rushworth's guidance were shown through a number of rooms, all lofty, large, and amply furnished in the taste of fifty years back, with shining floors, solid mahogany, rich damask, marble, gilding, and carving, each handsome in its way. There were many pictures, some good, but most were family portraits, no longer anything to anybody but Mrs. Rushworth.
She addressed herself chiefly to Miss Crawford and Fanny. Miss Crawford, who had seen scores of great houses, and cared for none of them, had only the appearance of civilly listening, while Fanny, to whom everything was new, attended earnestly to all that Mrs. Rushworth could relate of the family in former times, delighted to connect anything with the history that she knew, or to warm her imagination with scenes of the past.
There was not much prospect from any of the rooms; and Henry Crawford looked grave, shaking his head at the windows. Every room on the west front looked across a lawn to the beginning of the avenue beyond tall iron palisades.
"Now," said Mrs. Rushworth, "we are coming to the chapel."
They entered. Fanny expected something grander than a spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of devotion: with nothing more striking or solemn than the profusion of mahogany, and crimson velvet cushions.
"I am disappointed," said she quietly to Edmund. "This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions. No banners to be 'blown by the night wind of heaven.'"
"You forget, Fanny, how lately all this has been built, and only for the private use of the family. You must look in the parish church for the banners."
Mrs. Rushworth began, "This chapel was fitted up as you see it, in James the Second's time. Before then, the pews were only wainscot; and the cushions only purple cloth. It is a handsome chapel, and was formerly in constant use. Prayers were read in it by the domestic chaplain, within the memory of many; but the late Mr. Rushworth left it off."
"Every generation has its improvements," said Miss Crawford, with a smile, to Edmund.
"It is a pity," cried Fanny, "that the custom should have been discontinued. It is so much in character with a great house! A whole family assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer is fine!"
"Very fine indeed," said Miss Crawford, laughing. "It must do the heads of the family good to force all the poor housemaids to say their prayers here twice a day, while they are inventing excuses themselves for staying away."
"That is hardly Fanny's idea of a family assembling," said Edmund.
"It is safer to leave people to their own devices on such subjects. Everybody likes to choose their own time and manner of devotion. The obligation of attendance is a formidable thing. Cannot you imagine with what unwilling feelings the former belles of the house came to this chapel? Starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of something very different—especially if the poor chaplain were not worth looking at—and, in those days, I fancy parsons were inferior even to what they are now."
For a few moments she was unanswered. Fanny coloured and looked at Edmund, but felt too angry for speech; and he needed a little recollection before he could say, "Your lively mind can hardly be serious even on serious subjects. You have given us an amusing sketch, and human nature cannot say it was not so. We must all feel at times the difficulty of fixing our thoughts as we could wish; but do you think the minds which are indulged in wanderings in a chapel, would be more collected in a closet?"
"Yes, for two reasons. There would be less to distract the attention, and it would not be taxed so long."
"The mind would always find objects to distract it; and the influence of the place may often rouse better feelings than are begun with. The length of the service I admit to be sometimes too hard upon the mind. I have not yet left Oxford long enough to forget what chapel prayers are."
Meanwhile, Julia called Mr. Crawford's attention to her sister, saying, "Do look at Mr. Rushworth and Maria, standing side by side, exactly as if the wedding ceremony were going to be performed."
Mr. Crawford smiled, and stepping forward to Maria, said, in a voice which she only could hear, "I do not like to see Miss Bertram so near the altar."
Starting, the lady instinctively moved a step or two, but recovering, affected to laugh, and asked him, in a tone not much louder, "If he would give her away?"
"I am afraid I should do it very awkwardly," was his reply, with a look of meaning.
Julia, joining them, carried on the joke.
"It is really a pity that it should not take place directly, if we had a licence, for nothing in the world could be more pleasant." And she talked about it with so little caution as to catch the comprehension of Mr. Rushworth, who whispered gallantries to Maria.
"If Edmund were but in orders!" cried Julia: "My dear Edmund, if you were in orders now, you might perform the ceremony directly. How unlucky that you are not ordained."
Miss Crawford looked almost aghast under this new idea. Fanny pitied her. "How distressed she will be at what she said just now," passed across her mind.
"Ordained!" said Miss Crawford; "are you to be a clergyman?"
"Yes; I shall take orders after my father's return—probably at Christmas."
Miss Crawford, rallying her spirits, replied only, "If I had known this before, I would have spoken of the cloth with more respect," and turned the subject.
The chapel was soon afterwards left to the silence which reigned in it throughout the year. All seemed to feel that they had been there long enough.
The lower part of the house had now been shown, and Mrs. Rushworth would have proceeded towards the staircase if her son had not interposed. "We shall not have time to survey the grounds,” said he. “It is past two, and we are to dine at five."
Mrs. Rushworth submitted; and Mrs. Norris was beginning to arrange by what combination of carriages and horses most could be done, when the young people, meeting with an outward door that opened temptingly on a flight of steps, as by one impulse, all walked out.
"Suppose we turn down here for the present," said Mrs. Rushworth, civilly taking the hint and following them. "Here are the greatest number of our plants, and our pheasants."
"I see walls of great promise,” said Mr Crawford, looking round. He moved forward to examine the end of the house. The lawn, bounded by a high wall, contained a bowling-green, and beyond the bowling-green a long terrace walk, backed by iron palisades, with a view over them into the tree-tops of a wilderness. It was a good spot for fault-finding. Mr. Crawford was followed by Miss Bertram and Mr. Rushworth; and these three were found in busy consultation on the terrace by Edmund, Miss Crawford, and Fanny, who seemed as naturally to unite, and who, after a few words, left them and walked on.
The remaining three, Mrs. Rushworth, Mrs. Norris, and Julia, were still far behind; for Julia, whose happy star no longer prevailed, was obliged to stay with Mrs. Rushworth, and restrain her impatient feet to that lady's slow pace, while her aunt was lingering behind in gossip with the housekeeper. Poor Julia was now as different from the Julia of the barouche-box as could be imagined. Politeness made it impossible for her to escape; while the want of that self-command, that consideration of others, that principle of right, which had not formed any essential part of her education, made her miserable.
"This is insufferably hot," said Miss Crawford, when her group of three had taken a turn on the terrace, and were near the door to the wilderness. "Shall any of us object to being comfortable? Here is a nice little wood, if one can but get into it. What happiness if the door should not be locked! in these great places the gardener
s are the only people who can go where they like."
The door, however, proved not to be locked, and they turned joyfully through it, leaving the glare of day behind. A flight of steps landed them in the wilderness, which was a planted wood of about two acres. Though it was chiefly of larch and laurel, laid out with too much regularity, it was shade and natural beauty compared with the terrace. They all felt refreshed as they walked. At length, Miss Crawford began, "So you are to be a clergyman, Mr. Bertram. This is a surprise to me."
"Why? You must suppose me designed for some profession."
"There is generally an uncle or a grandfather to leave a fortune to the second son."
"A very praiseworthy practice," said Edmund, "but not quite universal. Being one of the exceptions, I must do something for myself."
"But why be a clergyman? I thought that was always the lot of the youngest, where many chose before him."
"Do you think the church itself never chosen, then?"
"Never is a black word. But yes, in the never of conversation, which means not very often, I do think it. For what is to be done in the church? Men love to distinguish themselves, and in other lines distinction may be gained, but not in the church. A clergyman is nothing."
"The nothing of conversation has its gradations too, I hope. A clergyman cannot be high in state or fashion. But I cannot call it nothing to have the charge of all that is of the first importance to mankind, the guardianship of religion and of morals. No one can call the office nothing."
"You give greater consequence to the clergyman than I can comprehend. One does not see much of this importance in society. How can two sermons a week, even supposing them worth hearing, govern the conduct of a large congregation for the rest of the week? One scarcely sees a clergyman out of his pulpit."
"You are speaking of London, I am speaking of the nation at large."
"The metropolis, I imagine, is a pretty fair sample of the rest."
"We do not look in great cities for our best morality. It is not there that the influence of the clergy can be most felt. A fine preacher is admired; but it is not in fine preaching only that a good clergyman will be useful, where the parish and neighbourhood know his character, and can observe his conduct, which in London can rarely be the case. The clergy are lost there in the crowds of their parishioners. They are known only as preachers. It will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation."
"Certainly," said Fanny, with gentle earnestness.
"There," cried Miss Crawford, "you have convinced Miss Price already."
"I wish I could convince Miss Crawford too."
"I do not think you ever will," said she, with an arch smile; "I am still surprised now that you should intend to take orders. You really are fit for something better. Come, change your mind. It is not too late. Go into the law."
"Go into the law! With as much ease as I was told to go into this wilderness."
"Now you are going to say something about law being the worse wilderness of the two, but I forestall you."
"You need not, for there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter-of-fact, plain-spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without getting it out."
A silence followed. Each was thoughtful. Fanny made the first interruption by saying, "I wonder that I should be tired with only walking in this sweet wood; but the next time we come to a seat, I should be glad to sit down for a little while."
"My dear Fanny," cried Edmund, immediately drawing her arm within his, "how thoughtless I have been! I hope you are not very tired. Perhaps," turning to Miss Crawford, "my other companion may do me the honour of taking an arm."
"Thank you, but I am not at all tired." She took it, however, and the gratification of feeling such a connexion for the first time made him a little forgetful of Fanny. "You scarcely touch me," said he. "What a difference in the weight of a woman's arm from that of a man! At Oxford I have been used to have a man lean on me for the length of a street, and you are only a fly in comparison."
"I am really not tired, which I almost wonder at; for we must have walked at least a mile in this wood. Do not you think we have?"
"Not half a mile."
"Oh! consider how much we have wound about. And we have not seen the end of the wood since we left the first path."
"But if you remember, before we left that first path, we saw directly to the end of it. We looked down the whole vista, and saw it closed by iron gates, and it could not have been more than a furlong in length."
"Oh! I know nothing of your furlongs, but I am sure it is a very long wood, and that we have been winding in and out ever since we came into it; and therefore I say that we have walked a mile."
"We have been exactly a quarter of an hour here," said Edmund, taking out his watch. "Do you think we are walking four miles an hour?"
"Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow."
A few steps brought them out at the bottom of the very walk they had been talking of; and well shaded and looking over a deep ditch, a ha-ha, into the park, was a bench, on which they all sat down.
"I am afraid you are very tired, Fanny," said Edmund; "why would not you speak sooner? Every sort of exercise fatigues her so soon, Miss Crawford, except riding."
"How abominable in you, then, to let me engross her horse as I did all last week! I am ashamed of you and of myself, but it shall never happen again."
"Your consideration makes me more aware of my own neglect. Fanny's well-being seems in safer hands with you than with me."
"I am not surprised that she is tired now; for there is nothing so fatiguing as seeing a great house, dawdling from one room to another, straining one's eyes and one's attention, hearing what one does not understand, admiring what one does not care for. It is the greatest bore in the world, and Miss Price has found it so, though she did not know it."
"I shall soon be rested," said Fanny; "to sit in the shade, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment."
After sitting a little while Miss Crawford was up again. "I must move," said she; "resting fatigues me. I have looked across the ha-ha till I am weary. I must go and look through that iron gate at the same view, without being able to see it so well."
Edmund left the seat likewise. "Now, Miss Crawford, if you look up the walk, you will see that it cannot be half a mile long."
"It is an immense distance; I see that with a glance."
He reasoned with her in vain. She would not calculate; she would only smile and assert in a way that was most engaging. At last they agreed to determine the dimensions of the wood by walking a little more about it. They would go to one end of it, and turn a little way in some other direction, and be back in a few minutes.
Fanny said she was rested, and would have moved too, but this was not allowed. Edmund urged her to remain where she was. She was left on the bench to think with pleasure of her cousin's care, but with regret that she was not stronger. She watched them till they had turned the corner, and listened till all sound of them had ceased.
CHAPTER 10