Murder at Mansfield Park Read Free Page A

answer for any thing more than his skill with a pen. Had he known all that was to come of the acquaintance, Sir Thomas would surely have forbad him the house.
    The Crawfords were not young people of fortune. The brother had a small property near London, the sister less than two thousand pounds. They were the children of Mrs Grant’s mother by a second marriage, and when they were young she had been very fond of them; but, as her own marriage had been soon followed by the death of their common parent, which left them to the care of a brother of their father, a man of whom Mrs Grant knew nothing, she had scarcely seen them since. In their uncle’s house near Bedford-square they had found a kind home. He was a single man, and the cheerful company of the brother and sister ensured that his final years had every comfort that he could wish; he doated on the boy, and found both nurse and housekeeper in the girl. Unfortunately, his own property was entailed on a distant relation; and this cousin installing himself in the house within a month of the old gentleman’s sudden death, Mr and Miss Crawford were obliged to look for another home without delay, Mr Crawford’s own house being too small for their joint comfort, and one to which his sister had taken a fixed dislike, for reasons of her own. Having been forced by want of fortune to go into a profession, Mr Crawford had begun with the law, but soon after had discovered a genius for improvement that gave him the excuse he had been wanting to give up his first choice and enter upon another. For the last three years he had spent nine months in every twelve travelling the country from Devon-shire to Derby-shire, visiting gentlemen’s seats, and laying out their grounds, gathering at the same time a list of noble patrons and a competent knowledge of Views, Situations, Prospects and the principles of the Picturesque. What would have been hardship to a more indolent, stay-at-home man was bustle and excitement to him. For Henry Crawford had, luckily, a great dislike to any thing like a permanence of abode, or limitation of society; and he boasted of spending half his life in a post-chaise, and forming more new acquaintances in a fortnight than most men did in a twelvemonth. But, all the same, he was properly aware that it was his duty to provide a comfortable home for Mary, and when the letter from the Park was soon followed by another from the parsonage offering his sister far more suitable accommodations than their present lodgings could afford, he saw it as the happy intervention of a Providence that had ever been his friend.
    The measure was quite as welcome on one side as it could be expedient on the other; for Mrs Grant, having by this time run through all the usual resources of ladies residing in a country parsonage without a family of children to superintend, was very much in want of some domestic diversion.The arrival, therefore, of her brother and sister was highly agreeable; and Mrs Grant was delighted to receive a young man and woman of very pleasant appearance. Henry Crawford was decidedly handsome, with a person, height, and air that many a nobleman might have envied, while Mary had an elegant and graceful beauty, and a strength of understanding that might even exceed her brother’s. This, however, she had the good sense to conceal, at least when first introduced into polite company. Mrs Grant had not waited her sister’s arrival to look out for a desirable match for her, and she had fixed, for want of much variety of suitable young men in the immediate vicinity, on Tom Bertram. He was, she was constrained to admit, but twenty-one, and perhaps an eldest son would in general be thought too good for a girl of less than two thousand pounds, but stranger things have happened, especially where the young woman in question had all the accomplishments which Mrs Grant saw in her sister. Did not Lady Bertram herself have little more than that sum when she captivated Sir Thomas?