I am aware, more aware than Crawford can be, that the man who means to make you love him (you having due notice of his intentions) must have very uphill work, for there are all your early attachments and habits in battle array; and before he can get your heart for his own use he has to unfasten it from all the holds upon things animate and inanimate, which so many years' growth have confirmed, and which are considerably tightened for the moment by the very idea of separation.
I know that the apprehension of being forced to quit Mansfield will for a time be arming you against him.
I wish he had not been obliged to tell you what he was trying for.
I wish he had known you as well as I do, Fanny.
Between us, I think we should have won you.
My theoretical and his practical knowledge together could not have failed.
He should have worked upon my plans.
I must hope, however, that time, proving him (as I firmly believe it will) to deserve you by his steady affection, will give him his reward.
I cannot suppose that you have not the wish to love him - the natural wish of gratitude.
You must have some feeling of that sort.
You must be sorry for your own indifference."
"We are so totally unlike," said Fanny, avoiding a direct answer, "we are so very, very different in all our inclinations and ways, that I consider it as quite impossible we should ever be tolerably happy together, even if I could like him.
There never were two people more dissimilar.
We have not one taste in common.
We should be miserable."
"You are mistaken, Fanny.
The dissimilarity is not so strong.
You are quite enough alike.
You have tastes in common.
You have moral and literary tastes in common.
You have both warm hearts and benevolent feelings; and, Fanny, who that heard him read, and saw you listen to Shakespeare the other night, will think you unfitted as companions?
You forget yourself: there is a decided difference in your tempers, I allow.
He is lively, you are serious; but so much the better: his spirits will support yours.
It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy difficulties greater than they are.
His cheerfulness will counteract this.
He sees difficulties nowhere: and his pleasantness and gaiety will be a constant support to you.
Your being so far unlike, Fanny, does not in the smallest degree make against the probability of your happiness together: do not imagine it.
I am myself convinced that it is rather a favourable circumstance.
I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers had better be unlike: I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in the manners, in the inclination for much or little company, in the propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gay.
Some opposition here is, I am thoroughly convinced, friendly to matrimonial happiness.
I exclude extremes, of course; and a very close resemblance in all those points would be the likeliest way to produce an extreme.
A counteraction, gentle and continual, is the best safeguard of manners and conduct."
Full well could Fanny guess where his thoughts were now: Miss Crawford's power was all returning.
He had been speaking of her cheerfully from the hour of his coming home.
His avoiding her was quite at an end.
He had dined at the Parsonage only the preceding day.
After leaving him to his happier thoughts for some minutes, Fanny, feeling it due to herself, returned to Mr. Crawford, and said,
"It is not merely in temper that I consider him as totally unsuited to myself; though, in that respect, I think the difference between us too great, infinitely too great: his spirits often oppress me; but there is something in him which I object to still more.
I must say, cousin, that I cannot approve his character.
I have not thought well of him from the time of the play.
I then saw him behaving, as it appeared to me, so very improperly and unfeelingly - I may speak of it now because it is all over - so improperly by poor Mr. Rushworth, not seeming to care how he exposed or hurt him, and paying attentions to my cousin Maria, which - in short, at the time of the play, I received an impression which will never be got over."
"My dear Fanny," replied Edmund, scarcely hearing her to the end, "let us not, any of us, be judged by what we appeared at that period of general folly.
The time of the play is a time which I hate to recollect.
Maria was wrong, Crawford was wrong, we were all wrong together; but none so wrong as myself.
Compared with me, all the rest were blameless.
I was playing the fool with my eyes open."
"As a bystander," said Fanny, "perhaps I saw more than you did; and I do think that Mr. Rushworth was sometimes very jealous."
"Very possibly.
No wonder.
Nothing could be more improper than the whole business.