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, boxes, 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 afterpiece, 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 farther 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 would 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 farther 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 set down to wish for it; and my father’s room will be an excellent green room. It seems to join the billiard-room 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 written 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.’
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