When Mr Price and his friend had seen all that they wished,or had time for,the others were ready to return;and in the course of their walk back,Mr Crawford contrived a minute's privacy for telling Fanny that his only business in Portsmouth was to see her,that he was come down for a couple of days on her account and hers only,and because he could not endure a longer total separation.She was sorry,really sorry;and yet,in spite of this and the two or three other things which she wished he had not said,she thought him altogether improved since she had seen him;he was much more gentle,obliging,and attentive to other people's feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield;she had never seen him so near being agreeable;his behaviour to her father could not offend,and there was something particularly kind and proper in the notice he took of Susan.He was decidedly improved.She wished the next day over,she wished he had come only for one day-but it was not so very bad as she would have expected;the pleasure of talking of Mansfield was so very great!
Before they parted,she had to thank him for another pleasure,and one of no trivial kind.Her father asked him to do them the honour of taking his mutton with them,and Fanny had time for only one thrill of horror,before he declared himself prevented by a prior engagement.He was engaged to dinner already both for that day and the next;he had met with some acquaintance at the Crown who would not be denied;he should have the honour,however,of waiting on them again on the morrow,etc.and so they parted-Fanny in a state of actual felicity from escaping so horrible an evil!
To have had him join their family dinner-party and see all their deficiencies would have been dreadful!Rebecca's cookery and Rebecca's waiting,and Betsey's eating at table without restraint,and pulling everything about as she chose,were what Fanny herself was not yet enough inured to,for her often to make a tolerable meal.She was nice only from natural delicacy,but he had been brought up in a school of luxury and epicurism.
Chapter 42
The Prices were just setting off for church the next day when Mr Crawford appeared again.He came-not to stop-but to join them;he was asked to go with them to the Garrison chapel,which was exactly what he had intended,and they all walked thither together.
The family were now seen to advantage.Nature had given them no inconsiderable share of beauty,and every Sunday dressed them in their cleanest skins and best attire.Sunday always brought this comfort to Fanny,and on this Sunday she felt it more than ever.Her poor mother now did not look so very unworthy of being Lady Bertram's sister as she was but too apt to look.It often grieved her to the heart-to think of the contrast between them-to think that where nature had made so little difference,circumstances should have made so much,and that her mother,as handsome as Lady Bertram,and some years her junior,should have an appearance so much more worn and faded,so comfortless,so slatternly,so shabby.But Sunday made her a very creditable and tolerably cheerful looking Mrs Price,coming abroad with a fine family of children,feeling a little respite of her weekly cares,and only discomposed if she saw her boys run into danger,or Rebecca pass by with a flower in her hat.
In chapel they were obliged to divide,but Mr Crawford took care not to be divided from the female branch;and after chapel he still continued with them,and made one in the family party on the ramparts.
Mrs Price took her weekly walk on the ramparts every fine Sunday throughout the year,always going directly after morning service and staying till dinner-time.It was her public place;there she met her acquaintance,heard a little news,talked over the badness of the Portsmouth servants,and wound up her spirits for the six days ensuing.
Thither they now went;Mr Crawford most happy to consider the Miss Prices as his peculiar charge;and before they had been there long somehow or other-there was no saying how-Fanny could not have believed it-but he was walking between them with an arm of each under his,and she did not know how to prevent or put an end to it.It made her uncomfortable for a time-but yet there were enjoyments in the day and in the view which would be felt.
The day was uncommonly lovely.It was really March;but it was April in its mild air,brisk soft wind,and bright sun,occasionally clouded for a minute;and everything looked so beautiful under the influence of such a sky,the effects of the shadows pursuing each other,on the ships at Spithead and the island beyond,with the ever-varying hues of the sea now at high water,dancing in its glee and dashing against the ramparts with so fine a sound,produced altogether such a combination of charms for Fanny,as made her gradually almost careless of the circumstances under which she felt them.Nay,had she been without his arm,she would soon have known that she needed it,for she wanted strength for a two hours'saunter of this kind,coming as it generally did upon a week's previous inactivity.Fanny was beginning to feel the effect of being debarred from her usual,regular exercise;she had lost ground as to health since her being in Portsmouth,and but for Mr Crawford and the beauty of the weather,would soon have been knocked up now.