Mansfield Park (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (22 page)

‘An after-piece instead of a comedy,’ said Mr. Bertram. ‘Lovers’ Vows were at an end, and Lord and Lady Ravenshaw left to act My Grandmother by themselves. Well, the jointure may comfort
him;
and, perhaps, between friends, he began to tremble for his credit and his lungs in the Baron, and was not sorry to withdraw; and to make
you
amends, Yates, I think we must raise a little theatre at Mansfield, and ask you to be our manager.’

This, though the thought of the moment, did not end with the moment; for the inclination to act was awakened, and in no one more strongly than in him who was now master of the house; and who having so much leisure as to make almost any novelty a certain good, had likewise such a degree of lively talents and comic taste as were exactly adapted to the novelty of acting. The thought returned again and again. ‘Oh for the Ecclesford theatre and scenery to try something with!’ Each sister could echo the wish; and Henry Crawford, to whom in all the riot of his gratifications it was yet an untasted pleasure, was quite alive at the idea. ‘I really believe,’ said he, ‘I could be fool enough at this moment to undertake any character that ever was written, from Shylock or Richard III. down to the singing hero of a farce in his scarlet coat and cocked hat. I feel as if I could be anything or everything, as if I could rant and storm, or sigh or cut capers, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language. Let us be doing something. Be it only half a play—an act—a scene; what should prevent us? Not these countenances, I am sure,’ looking towards the Miss Bertrams; ‘and for a theatre, what signifies a theatre? We shall be only amusing ourselves. Any room in this house might suffice.’

‘We must have a curtain,’ said Tom Bertram, ‘a few yards of green baize for a curtain, and perhaps that may be enough.’

‘Oh, quite enough,’ cried Mr. Yates, ‘with only just a side wing or two run up, doors in flat, and three or four scenes to be let down; nothing more would be necessary on such a plan as this. For mere amusement among ourselves we should want nothing more.’

‘I believe we must be satisfied with
less,’
said Maria. ‘There would not be time, and other difficulties would arise. We must rather adopt Mr. Crawford’s views, and make the
performance,
not the
theatre,
our object. Many parts of our best plays are independent of scenery.’

‘Nay,’ said Edmund, who began to listen with alarm. ‘Let us do nothing by halves. If we are to act, let it be in a theatre completely fitted up with pit, box, and gallery, and let us have a play entire from beginning to end; so as it be a German play, no matter what, with a good tricking, shifting after-piece and a figure-dance, and a hornpipe, and a song between the acts. If we do not outdo Ecclesford, we do nothing.’

‘Now, Edmund, do not be disagreeable,’ said Julia. ‘Nobody loves a play better than you do, or can have gone much further to see one.’

‘True, to see real acting, good hardened real acting; but I would hardly walk from this room to the next to look at the raw efforts of those who have not been bred to the trade,—a set of gentlemen and ladies, who have all the disadvantages of education and decorum to struggle through.’

After a short pause, however, the subject still continued, and was discussed with unabated eagerness, every one’s inclination increasing by the discussion, and a knowledge of the inclination of the rest; and though nothing was settled but that Tom Bertram would prefer a comedy, and his sisters and Henry Crawford a tragedy, and that nothing in the world could be easier than to find a piece which would please them all, the resolution to act something or other seemed so decided as to make Edmund quite uncomfortable. He was determined to prevent it, if possible, though his mother, who equally heard the conversation which passed at table, did not evince the least disapprobation.

The same evening afforded him an opportunity of trying his strength. Maria, Julia, Henry Crawford, and Mr. Yates, were in the billiard-room. Tom, returning from them into the drawing-room, where Edmund was standing thoughtfully by the fire, while Lady Bertram was on the sofa at a little distance, and Fanny close beside her arranging her work, thus began as he entered—

‘Such a horribly vile billiard-table as ours is not to be met with, I believe, above ground! I can stand it no longer, and I think I may say that nothing shall ever tempt me to it again;—but one good thing I have just ascertained, it is the very room for a theatre, precisely the shape and length for it; and the doors at the further end, communicating with each other, as they may be made to do in five minutes, by merely moving the bookcase in my father’s room, is the very thing we could have desired, if we had sat down to wish for it. And my father’s room will be an excellent green-room. It seems to join the billiardroom on purpose.

‘You are not serious, Tom, in meaning to act?’ said Edmund in a low voice, as his brother approached the fire.

‘Not serious! never more so, I assure you. What is there to surprise you in it?’

‘I think it would be very wrong. In a
general
light, private theatricals are open to some objections, but as
we
are circumstanced, I must think it would be highly injudicious, and more than injudicious, to attempt anything of the kind. It would show great want of feeling on my father’s account, absent as he is, and in some degree of constant danger; and it would be imprudent, I think, with regard to Maria, whose situation is a very delicate one, considering everything, extremely delicate.’

‘You take up a thing so seriously! as if we were going to act three times a week till my father’s return, and invite all the country. But it is not to be a display of that sort. We mean nothing but a little amusement among ourselves, just to vary the scene, and exercise our powers in something new. We want no audience, no publicity. We may be trusted, I think, in choosing some play most perfectly unexceptionable; and I can conceive no greater harm or danger to any of us in conversing in the elegant language of some respectable author than in chattering in words of our own. I have no fears, and no scruples. And as to my father’s being absent, it is so far from an objection, that I consider it rather as a motive; for the expectation of his return must be a very anxious period to my mother; and if we can be the means of amusing that anxiety, and keeping up her spirits for the next few weeks, I shall think our time very well spent, and so I am sure will he. It is a very anxious period for her.’

As he said this, each looked towards their mother. Lady Bertram, sunk back in one corner of the sofa, the picture of health, wealth, ease and tranquillity, was just falling into a gentle doze, while Fanny was getting through the few difficulties of her work for her.

Edmund smiled and shook his head.

‘By Jove! this won’t do,’ cried Tom, throwing himself into a chair with a hearty laugh. ‘To be sure, my dear mother, your anxiety,—I was unlucky there.’

‘What is the matter?’ asked her Ladyship, in the heavy tone of one half-roused:—‘I was not asleep.’

‘Oh dear, no, ma’am—nobody suspected you.—Well, Edmund,’ he continued, returning to the former subject, posture, and voice, as soon as Lady Bertram began to nod again, ‘but
this
I
will
maintain,—that we shall be doing no harm.’

‘I cannot agree with you—I am convinced that my father would totally disapprove it.’

‘And I am convinced to the contrary. Nobody is fonder of the exercise of talent in young people, or promotes it more, than my father; and for anything of the acting, spouting, reciting kind, I think he has always a decided taste. I am sure he encouraged it in us as boys. How many a time have we mourned over the dead body of Julius Cæsar, and
to be’d
and
not to be’d
in this very room for his amusement! And I am sure
my name was Norval
every evening of my life through one Christmas holidays.’

‘It was a very different thing. You must see the difference yourself. My father wished us, as schoolboys, to speak well, but he would never wish his grown-up daughters to be acting plays. His sense of decorum is strict.’

‘I know all that,’ said Tom, displeased. ‘I know my father as well as you do; and I’ll take care that his daughters do nothing to distress him. Manage your own concerns, Edmund, and I’ll take care of the rest of the family.’

‘If you are resolved on acting,’ replied the persevering Edmund, ‘I must hope it will be in a very small and quiet way; and I think a theatre ought not to be attempted. It would be taking liberties with my father’s house in his absence which could not be justified.’

‘For everything of that nature I will be answerable, said Tom, in a decided tone. ‘His house shall not be hurt. I have quite as great an interest in being careful of his house as you can have; and as to such alterations as I was suggesting just now, such as moving a bookcase, or unlocking a door, or even as using the billiard-room for the space of a week without playing at billiards in it, you might just as well suppose he would object to our sitting more in this room, and less in the breakfast-room, than we did before he went away, or to my sisters‘ pianoforte being moved from one side of the room to the other. Absolute nonsense!’

‘The innovation, if not wrong as an innovation, will be wrong as an expense.’

‘Yes, the expense of such an undertaking would be prodigious! Perhaps it might cost a whole twenty pounds. Something of a theatre we must have undoubtedly, but it will be on the simplest plan; a green curtain and a little carpenter’s work—and that’s all; and as the carpenter’s work may be all done at home by Christopher Jackson himself, it will be too absurd to talk of expense; and as long as Jackson is employed, everything will be right with Sir Thomas. Don’t imagine that nobody in this house can see or judge but yourself. Don’t act yourself, if you do not like it, but don’t expect to govern everybody else.’

‘No, as to acting myself,’ said Edmund,
‘that
I absolutely protest against.’

Tom walked out of the room as he said it, and Edmund was left to sit down and stir the fire in thoughtful vexation.

Fanny, who had heard it all, and borne Edmund company in every feeling throughout the whole, now ventured to say, in her anxiety to suggest some comfort, ‘Perhaps they may not be able to find any play to suit them. Your brother’s taste and your sisters’ seem very different.’

‘I have no hope there, Fanny. If they persist in the scheme, they will find something. I shall speak to my sisters, and try to dissuade
them,
and that is all I can do.’

‘I should think my aunt Norris would be on your side.’

‘I daresay she would, but she has no influence with either Tom or my sisters that could be of any use; and if I cannot convince them myself, I shall let things take their course, without attempting it through her. Family squabbling is the greatest evil of all, and we had better do anything than be altogether by the ears.’

His sisters, to whom he had an opportunity of speaking the next morning, were quite as impatient of his advice, quite as unyielding to his representation, quite as determined in the cause of pleasure, as Tom. Their mother had no objection to the plan, and they were not in the least afraid of their father’s disapprobation. There could be no harm in what had been done in so many respectable families, and by so many women of the first consideration; and it must be scrupulousness run mad that could see anything to censure in a plan like theirs, comprehending only brothers and sisters, and intimate friends, and which would never be heard of beyond themselves. Julia
did
seem inclined to admit that Maria’s situation might require particular caution and delicacy—but that could not extend to
her
—
she
was at liberty; and Maria evidently considered her engagement as only raising her so much more above restraint, and leaving her less occasion than Julia to consult either father or mother. Edmund had little to hope, but he was still urging the subject, when Henry Crawford entered the room, fresh from the Parsonage, calling out, ‘No want of hands in our theatre, Miss Bertram. No want of under-strappers; my sister desires her love, and hopes to be admitted into the company, and will be happy to take the part of any old duenna, or tame confidante, that you may not like to do yourselves.’

Maria gave Edmund a glance, which meant, ‘What say you now? Can we be wrong if Mary Crawford feels the same?’ And Edmund, silenced, was obliged to acknowledge that the charm of acting might well carry fascination to the mind of genius; and with the ingenuity of love, to dwell more on the obliging, accommodating purport of the message than on anything else.

The scheme advanced. Opposition was vain; and as to Mrs. Norris, he was mistaken in supposing she would wish to make any. She started no difficulties that were not talked down in five minutes by her eldest nephew and niece, who were all-powerful with her; and, as the whole arrangement was to bring very little expense to anybody, and none at all to herself, as she foresaw in it all the comforts of hurry, bustle, and importance, and derived the immediate advantage of fancying herself obliged to leave her own house, where she had been living a month at her own cost, and take up her abode in theirs, that every hour might be spent in their service, she was, in fact, exceedingly delighted with the project.