Edmund Bertram's Diary

She picked up her needlework again with a blush, but I could not wonder at Crawford for thinking he had some hope. She had certainly been enraptured by him and I thought that if he could win half so much attention from her in ordinary life he would be a fortunate man. I admired him for persevering, for it showed that he knew Fanny’s value, and knew that she was worth any extra effort he might have to make to overcome her reserve. And I could understand why he would not give her up, for as her needle flashed through her work, her gentleness was matched by her prettiness.

‘That play must be a favorite with you,’ I said to Crawford. ‘You read as if you knew it well.’

‘It will be a favorite, I believe, from this hour,’ he replied. ‘But I do not think I have had a volume of Shakespeare in my hand before since I was fifteen. But Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman’s constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct.’

‘To know him in bits and scraps is common enough; to know him pretty thoroughly is, perhaps, not uncommon; but to read him well aloud is no everyday talent.’

‘Sir, you do me honor,’ said Crawford, with a bow of mock gravity.

‘You have a great turn for acting, I am sure, Mr. Crawford,’ said Mama soon afterwards; ‘and I will tel you what, I think you will have a theatre, some time or other, at your house in Norfolk. I mean when you are settled there. I do indeed. I think you will fit up a theatre at your house in Norfolk.’

‘Do you, ma’am? No, no, that will never be,’ Crawford assured her. I was surprised, for if the plays were well chosen, there could be no objection to Crawford setting up a theatre. He had a good income and was entitled to do with it, and his own home, as he wished. It would certainly give him an outlet for his talents, which were of no common sort in that direction.

Fanny said nothing but I am sure she must have guessed that Crawford’s avowal never to have a theatre must be a compliment to her feelings. She had made them known at the time of our disastrous theatrical affair and I was pleased that Crawford was willing to make such a sacrifice. It boded well for Fanny’s future happiness that he put her own wishes above his own. I asked Crawford where he had learnt to read aloud so well and Fanny listened intently to our discussion. I mentioned that it was not taught as it should be, and Crawford agreed.

‘In my profession it is little studied,’ I said, ‘but a good sermon needs a good delivery and I am glad my father made me read aloud as a boy, so that I could develop a clear and varied speaking voice.’

Crawford asked me about the service I had already performed and Fanny listened avidly. I admired Crawford, for he had found the way to her heart. She was not to be won by gallantry and wit, but by sentiment and feeling, and seriousness on serious subjects; something of which he showed himself eminently capable.

I drew away after a time, giving the two of them some time alone. I took up a newspaper, hoping that Fanny would be persuaded to talk to her lover, and I gave them my own murmurs: ‘A most desirable Estate in South Wales’; ‘To Parents and Guardians’; and a ‘Capital season’d Hunter’

to cover their own.

It did not seem to go well, from what I heard, for Fanny seemed to be berating Crawford for inconstancy, and though I tried not to listen I could not help their words reaching me.

‘You think me unsteady: easily swayed by the whim of the moment, easily tempted, easily put aside,’ I heard Crawford say. ‘With such an opinion, no wonder that... But we shall see. It is not by protestations that I shall endeavor 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.’