Fanny, meanwhile, vexed with herself for not having been as motionless as she was speechless, and grieved to the heart to see Edmund's arrangements, was trying by everything in the power of her modest, gentle nature, to repulse Mr. Crawford, and avoid both his looks and inquiries; and he, unrepulsable, was persisting in both.
"What did that shake of the head mean?" said he. "What was it meant to express? Disapprobation, I fear. But of what?
What had I been saying to displease you? Did you think me speaking improperly, lightly, irreverently on the subject?
Only tell me if I was. Only tell me if I was wrong.
I want to be set right. Nay, nay, I entreat you; for one moment put down your work. What did that shake of the head mean?"
In vain was her "Pray, sir, don't; pray, Mr. Crawford," repeated twice over; and in vain did she try to move away.
In the same low, eager voice, and the same close neighbourhood, he went on, reurging the same questions as before.
She grew more agitated and displeased.
"How can you, sir? You quite astonish me; I wonder how you can--"
"Do I astonish you?" said he. "Do you wonder? Is there anything in my present entreaty that you do not understand?
I will explain to you instantly all that makes me urge you in this manner, all that gives me an interest in what you look and do, and excites my present curiosity.
I will not leave you to wonder long."
In spite of herself, she could not help half a smile, but she said nothing.
"You shook your head at my acknowledging that I should not like to engage in the duties of a clergyman always for a constancy. Yes, that was the word. Constancy:
I am not afraid of the word. I would spell it, read it, write it with anybody. I see nothing alarming in the word.
Did you think I ought?"
"Perhaps, sir," said Fanny, wearied at last into speaking--
"perhaps, sir, I thought it was a pity you did not always know yourself as well as you seemed to do at that moment."
Crawford, delighted to get her to speak at any rate, was determined to keep it up; and poor Fanny, who had hoped to silence him by such an extremity of reproof, found herself sadly mistaken, and that it was only a change from one object of curiosity and one set of words to another.
He had always something to entreat the explanation of.
The opportunity was too fair. None such had occurred since his seeing her in her uncle's room, none such might occur again before his leaving Mansfield. Lady Bertram's being just on the other side of the table was a trifle, for she might always be considered as only half-awake, and Edmund's advertisements were still of the first utility.
"Well," said Crawford, after a course of rapid questions and reluctant answers; "I am happier than I was, because I now understand more clearly your opinion of me. You think me unsteady: easily swayed by the whim of the moment, easily tempted, easily put aside. With such an opinion, no wonder that. But we shall see. It is not by protestations that I shall endeavour to convince you I am wronged; it is not by telling you that my affections are steady.
My conduct shall speak for me; absence, distance, time shall speak for me. _They_ shall prove that, as far as you can be deserved by anybody, I do deserve you. You are infinitely my superior in merit; all _that_ I know.
You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature.
You have some touches of the angel in you beyond what-- not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees anything like it--but beyond what one fancies might be.
But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question.
It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has the best right to a return. There I build my confidence.
By that right I do and will deserve you; and when once convinced that my attachment is what I declare it, I know you too well not to entertain the warmest hopes.
Yes, dearest, sweetest Fanny. Nay" (seeing her draw back displeased), "forgive me. Perhaps I have as yet no right; but by what other name can I call you? Do you suppose you are ever present to my imagination under any other?
No, it is 'Fanny' that I think of all day, and dream of all night. You have given the name such reality of sweetness, that nothing else can now be descriptive of you."
Fanny could hardly have kept her seat any longer, or have refrained from at least trying to get away in spite of all the too public opposition she foresaw to it, had it not been for the sound of approaching relief, the very sound which she had been long watching for, and long thinking strangely delayed.
The solemn procession, headed by Baddeley, of tea-board, urn, and cake-bearers, made its appearance, and delivered her from a grievous imprisonment of body and mind.
Mr. Crawford was obliged to move. She was at liberty, she was busy, she was protected.
Edmund was not sorry to be admitted again among the number of those who might speak and hear. But though the conference had seemed full long to him, and though on looking at Fanny he saw rather a flush of vexation, he inclined to hope that so much could not have been said and listened to without some profit to the speaker.
