By not one of the circle was he listened to with such unbroken unalloyed enjoyment as by his wife,who was really extremely happy to see him,and whose feelings were so warmed by his sudden arrival,as to place her nearer agitation than she had been for the last twenty years.She had been almost fluttered for a few minutes,and still remained so sensibly animated as to put away her work,move Pug from her side,and give all her attention and all the rest of her sofa to her husband.She had no anxieties for anybody to cloud her pleasure;her own time had been irreproachably spent during his absence;she had done a great deal of carpet work and made many yards of fringe;and she would have answered as freely for the good conduct and useful pursuits of all the young people as for her own.It was so agreeable to her to see him again,and hear him talk,to have her ear amused and her whole comprehension filled by his narratives,that she began particularly to feel how dreadfully she must have missed him,and how impossible it would have been for her to bear a lengthened absence.
Mrs Norris was by no means to be compared in happiness to her sister.Not that she was incommoded by many fears of Sir Thomas's disapprobation when the present state of his house should be known,for her judgment had been so blinded,that except by the instinctive caution with which she had whisked away Mr Rushworth's pink satin cloak as her brother-in-law entered,she could hardly be said to show any sign of alarm;but she was vexed by the manner of his return.It had left her nothing to do.Instead of being sent for out of the room,and seeing him first,and having to spread the happy news through the house,Sir Thomas,with a very reasonable dependence perhaps on the nerves of his wife and children,had sought no confidant but the butler,and had been following him almost instantaneously into the drawing-room.Mrs Norris felt herself defrauded of an office on which she had always depended,whether his arrival or his death were to be the thing unfolded;and was now trying to be in a bustle without having anything to bustle about,and labouring to be important where nothing was wanted but tranquillity and silence.Would Sir Thomas have consented to eat,she might have gone to the housekeeper with troublesome directions,and insulted the footmen with injunctions of dispatch;but Sir Thomas resolutely declined all dinner;he would take nothing,nothing till tea came-he would rather wait for tea.Still Mrs Norris was at intervals urging something different,and in the most interesting moment of his passage to England,when the alarm of a French privateer was at the height,she burst through his recital with the proposal of soup.‘Sure,my dear Sir Thomas,a basin of soup would be a much better thing for you than tea.Do have a basin of soup.’
Sir Thomas could not be provoked.‘Still the same anxiety for everybody's comfort,my dear Mrs Norris,’was his answer.‘But indeed I would rather have nothing but tea.’
‘Well then,Lady Bertram,suppose you speak for tea directly,suppose you hurry Baddeley a little,he seems behind hand tonight.’She carried this point,and Sir Thomas's narrative proceeded.
At length there was a pause.His immediate communications were exhausted,and it seemed enough to be looking joyfully around him,now at one,now at another of the beloved circle;but the pause was not long:in the elation of her spirits Lady Bertram became talkative,and what were the sensations of her children upon hearing her say,‘How do you think the young people have been amusing themselves lately,Sir Thomas?They have been acting.We have been all alive with acting.’
‘Indeed!and what have you been acting?’
‘Oh!They'll tell you all about it.’
‘The all will be soon told,’cried Tom hastily,and with affected unconcern;‘but it is not worth while to bore my father with it now.You will hear enough of it to-morrow,sir.We have just been trying,by way of doing something,and amusing my mother,just within the last week,to get up a few scenes,a mere trifle.We have had such incessant rains almost since October began,that we have been nearly confined to the house for days together.I have hardly taken out a gun since the third.Tolerable sport the first three days,but there has been no attempting anything since.The first day I went over Mansfield Wood,and Edmund took the copses beyond Easton,and we brought home six brace between us,and might each have killed six times as many;but we respect your pheasants,sir,I assure you,as much as you could desire.I do not think you will find your woods by any means worse stocked than they were.I never saw Mansfield Wood so full of pheasants in my life as this year.I hope you will take a day's sport there yourself,sir,soon.’
For the present the danger was over,and Fanny's sick feelings subsided;but when tea was soon afterwards brought in,and Sir Thomas,getting up,said that he found he could not be any longer in the house without just looking into his own dear room,every agitation was returning.He was gone before anything had been said to prepare him for the change he must find there;and a pause of alarm followed his disappearance.Edmund was the first to speak:
‘Something must be done,’said he.
‘It is time to think of our visitors,’said Maria,still feeling her hand pressed to Henry Crawford's heart,and caring little for anything else.-‘Where did you leave Miss Crawford,Fanny?’
Fanny told of their departure,and delivered their message.
‘Then poor Yates is all alone,’cried Tom.‘I will go and fetch him.He will be no bad assistant when it all comes out.’
