I will make her very happy, Mary; happier than she has ever yet been herself, or ever seen anybody else.
I will not take her from Northamptonshire.
I shall let Everingham, and rent a place in this neighbourhood; perhaps Stanwix Lodge.
I shall let a seven years' lease of Everingham.
I am sure of an excellent tenant at half a word.
I could name three people now, who would give me my own terms and thank me."
"Ha!" cried Mary; "settle in Northamptonshire!
That is pleasant!
Then we shall be all together."
When she had spoken it, she recollected herself, and wished it unsaid; but there was no need of confusion; for her brother saw her only as the supposed inmate of Mansfield parsonage, and replied but to invite her in the kindest manner to his own house, and to claim the best right in her.
"You must give us more than half your time," said he.
"I cannot admit Mrs. Grant to have an equal claim with Fanny and myself, for we shall both have a right in you.
Fanny will be so truly your sister!"
Mary had only to be grateful and give general assurances; but she was now very fully purposed to be the guest of neither brother nor sister many months longer.
"You will divide your year between London and Northamptonshire?"
"Yes."
"That's right; and in London, of course, a house of your own: no longer with the Admiral.
My dearest Henry, the advantage to you of getting away from the Admiral before your manners are hurt by the contagion of his, before you have contracted any of his foolish opinions, or learned to sit over your dinner as if it were the best blessing of life!
You are not sensible of the gain, for your regard for him has blinded you; but, in my estimation, your marrying early may be the saving of you.
To have seen you grow like the Admiral in word or deed, look or gesture, would have broken my heart."
"Well, well, we do not think quite alike here.
The Admiral has his faults, but he is a very good man, and has been more than a father to me.
Few fathers would have let me have my own way half so much.
You must not prejudice Fanny against him.
I must have them love one another."
Mary refrained from saying what she felt, that there could not be two persons in existence whose characters and manners were less accordant: time would discover it to him; but she could not help this reflection on the Admiral.
"Henry, I think so highly of Fanny Price, that if I could suppose the next Mrs. Crawford would have half the reason which my poor ill-used aunt had to abhor the very name, I would prevent the marriage, if possible; but I know you: I know that a wife you loved would be the happiest of women, and that even when you ceased to love, she would yet find in you the liberality and good-breeding of a gentleman."
The impossibility of not doing everything in the world to make Fanny Price happy, or of ceasing to love Fanny Price, was of course the groundwork of his eloquent answer.
"Had you seen her this morning, Mary," he continued, "attending with such ineffable sweetness and patience to all the demands of her aunt's stupidity, working with her, and for her, her colour beautifully heightened as she leant over the work, then returning to her seat to finish a note which she was previously engaged in writing for that stupid woman's service, and all this with such unpretending gentleness, so much as if it were a matter of course that she was not to have a moment at her own command, her hair arranged as neatly as it always is, and one little curl falling forward as she wrote, which she now and then shook back, and in the midst of all this, still speaking at intervals to me, or listening, and as if she liked to listen, to what I said.
Had you seen her so, Mary, you would not have implied the possibility of her power over my heart ever ceasing."
"My dearest Henry," cried Mary, stopping short, and smiling in his face, "how glad I am to see you so much in love!
It quite delights me.
But what will Mrs. Rushworth and Julia say?"
"I care neither what they say nor what they feel.
They will now see what sort of woman it is that can attach me, that can attach a man of sense.
I wish the discovery may do them any good.
And they will now see their cousin treated as she ought to be, and I wish they may be heartily ashamed of their own abominable neglect and unkindness.
They will be angry," he added, after a moment's silence, and in a cooler tone;
"Mrs. Rushworth will be very angry.
It will be a bitter pill to her; that is, like other bitter pills, it will have two moments' ill flavour, and then be swallowed and forgotten; for I am not such a coxcomb as to suppose her feelings more lasting than other women's, though I was the object of them.
Yes, Mary, my Fanny will feel a difference indeed: a daily, hourly difference, in the behaviour of every being who approaches her; and it will be the completion of my happiness to know that I am the doer of it, that I am the person to give the consequence so justly her due.
Now she is dependent, helpless, friendless, neglected, forgotten."
"Nay, Henry, not by all; not forgotten by all; not friendless or forgotten.
Her cousin Edmund never forgets her."
"Edmund! True, I believe he is, generally speaking, kind to her, and so is Sir Thomas in his way; but it is the way of a rich, superior, long-worded, arbitrary uncle.
What can Sir Thomas and Edmund together do, what do they do for her happiness, comfort, honour, and dignity in the world, to what I shall do?"
CHAPTER XXXI
Henry Crawford was at Mansfield Park again the next morning, and at an earlier hour than common visiting warrants.
The two ladies were together in the breakfast-room, and, fortunately for him, Lady Bertram was on the very point of quitting it as he entered.
She was almost at the door, and not chusing by any means to take so much trouble in vain, she still went on, after a civil reception, a short sentence about being waited for, and a "Let Sir Thomas know" to the servant.