Edmund Bertram's Diary

The Crawfords dined with us this evening and Miss Crawford looked lovelier than ever in a simple muslin gown. After tea, as we stood by the window looking out into the twilight, the pearls in her dusky hair glowed like the moon in the darkening sky and I had an urge to lift my hand to her head. It was only with difficulty that I resisted.

‘Your father’s return will be an interesting event,’ she said, turning towards me.

‘It will indeed, after such an absence; an absence not only long, but including so many dangers,’

I agreed.

‘It will be the forerunner also of other interesting events; your sister’s marriage, and your taking orders,’ she said pensively.

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t be affronted,’ she said, with an air both humorous and restless, ‘but it does put me in mind of some of the old heathen heroes, who after performing great exploits in a foreign land, offered sacrifices to the gods on their safe return.’

‘There is no sacrifice in the case,’ I said, glancing at Maria, who sat at the pianoforte with Rushworth, ‘it is entirely her own doing.’

‘Oh yes I know it is. I was merely joking. She has done no more than what every young woman would do; and I have no doubt of her being extremely happy. My other sacrifice, of course, you do not understand.’

But she was wrong; I did understand; and I assured her that my taking orders was also voluntary.

‘It is fortunate that your inclination and your father’s convenience should accord so well,’ she said. ‘There is a very good living kept for you, I understand, hereabouts.’

‘Which you suppose has biased me? It has, but not in any blameworthy way: I do not see why a man should make a worse clergyman because he knows he will have a competence early in life.’

Fanny had joined us and she added her agreement, saying, ‘It is the same sort of thing as for the son of an admiral to go into the Navy, or the son of a general to be in the Army, and nobody sees anything wrong in that. Nobody wonders that they should prefer the line where their friends can serve them best, or suspects them to be less in earnest in it than they appear.’

‘No, my dear Miss Price, and for reasons good,’ said Miss Crawford. ‘The profession, either Navy or Army, is its own justification. It has everything in its favor: heroism, danger, bustle, fashion. Soldiers and sailors are always acceptable in society. Nobody can wonder that men are soldiers and sailors.’

‘But the motives of a man who takes orders with the certainty of preferment may be fairly suspected, you think?’ I asked. ‘To be justified in your eyes, he must do it in the most complete uncertainty of any provision.’

‘What! take orders without a living! No; that is madness indeed; absolute madness.’

‘Shal I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living nor without?’ I asked her in amusement. ‘No; for you certainly would not know what to say.’

At this she smiled, acknowledging the point.

‘But I must beg some advantage to the clergyman from your own argument,’ I went on. ‘As he cannot be influenced by those feelings which you rank highly as temptations to the soldier and sailor in their choice of a profession; as heroism, and noise, and fashion, are all against him, he ought to be less liable to the suspicion of wanting sincerity or good intentions in the choice of his.’

‘Oh! no doubt he is very sincere in preferring an income ready made, to the trouble of working for one; and has the best intentions of doing nothing all the rest of his days but eat, drink, and grow fat,’ she said airily. ‘It is indolence, Mr. Bertram, indeed; indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish — read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine.’

‘You can have been personal y acquainted with very few of a set of men you condemn so conclusively,’ I said, thinking, as before, that her thoughts came from others and not herself, for she had not enough experience to draw such conclusions from the few opportunities she had had to mix with clergymen. ‘You are speaking what you have been told at your uncle’s table.’

But she immediately contradicted me.

‘I have been so little addicted to take my opinions from my uncle that I can hardly suppose —