“Have they stopped at all the coach houses along the route?”
“They intended to do so, and I am sure they have. They promised to write twice daily at least.”
“A missing young lady! Has she been abducted? Does she have a lover? Has she been deceiving the family or has she fallen and knocked her head and forgotten her very name?”
“The family assumed she had gone to Portsmouth but, upon re-reading the letters—the letter, that is, that she left behind—she does not say so in so many words. She spoke only of ‘returning to her own sphere.’ So, for my part, I think she has deliberately misled everyone—her secrecy about her correspondents would suggest so—although I would be the first to agree with you that it strains all credulity to think that Fanny Price had the guile to impose on everyone in this manner.”
“Ha! This is a mystery peculiarly suited to my energies and talents.”
“Have a care, sir,” Dr. Grant cried. “You look positively cheerful. This is the gravest matter. Consider, Miss Price has been gone, no one knows where, for a fortnight! I hope you will compose yourself into a different frame of mind should you discuss this awful circumstance with any of the Bertrams.”
“But of course, my dear sir,” returned Henry. “In fact, you will acquit me of any charge of levity once you understand that I intend to offer my services in finding the young lady. There is not a moment to lose. My own happiness must wait until Miss Price is recovered. My Maria would not be a happy bride, I know, if the whereabouts of her cousin, the playfellow of her childhood days, the young lady who is almost a sister to her, remains unknown. So, I will pay my respects at the Park, enjoy a brief reunion with my Maria, then prepare for another journey, perhaps an extended one, until I can return Miss Price safely to her family.”
“Are we going to begin the search at Portsmouth? Will we visit her family there?” Mary asked.
“If the one thing we know for a certainty is that she is not in Portsmouth, I don’t see the necessity of going there. Perhaps we should—but Mary, what are you saying? Are you determined to accompany me? With the greatest pleasure, I am sure, but why?”
“Ought not you to reconsider, Miss Crawford?” Dr. Grant cautioned. “‘Tis almost mid-November—should you be travelling to who-knows-where at this time of year, my dear? Enduring bad roads, uncomfortable lodging and infamous dinners at roadside inns?”
“I thank you for your kind solicitude, Dr. Grant,” responded Mary, “but knowing of Miss Price’s reserved and formal nature, I do not believe that, once located, she could be prevailed upon to travel with Henry unaccompanied.”
“By heaven, that’s so,” Henry agreed. “Pack your trunk, Mary. We shall commence tomorrow at first light. First to Oxford to overtake the Bertrams, then we will act upon any intelligence they may have gathered. We will search the length and breadth of England if we must!”
“But first,” Mary replied, “you, Henry, shall meet the Sir Thomas himself. How I wish I could be present to watch as you exercise all your abilities on him! But my introduction to him shall await another day. My vanity requires no less—I will not have him divide his attentions between wayward nieces and the latest claimant for his daughter’s hand—and me. Go, go and make them all love you.”
* * * * * *
Sir Thomas judged that, from a pecuniary and worldly view, Maria’s union with Mr. Crawford was inferior in every respect to the now ruptured engagement with Mr. Rushworth; and having heard nothing but the highest praise of Mr. Rushworth in letters from home when he was in Antigua, he was perplexed that this paragon amongst men had failed to retain his daughter’s affections, until Edmund had privately given him a better understanding of Rushworth’s deficiencies in sense and education. But the substitution of Crawford for Rushworth did not placate him; he suspected that the young man lived beyond his means, and lived purely for pleasure. An old friend who lived in the City, upon being applied to by Sir Thomas on the very day of his return, sent no good report of his reputation, describing him as an idler and a man who raised the hope and expectation of marriage in many young ladies, conquering one heart after another for his own amusement, and hinted that Miss Bertram was not to depend upon being married to Henry Crawford unless they were actually at the altar, with the church doors locked securely behind them!
Sir Thomas greeted Henry Crawford, therefore, with even more than his usual dignity and formality, as his daughter Maria could not fail to perceive. However, when once seated at dinner, Sir Thomas could not but allow that Henry Crawford’s powers of address were superior to what is generally met with, not excepting his own two sons, for Crawford had more ease of manner than Edmund and more sense and information than Tom.
When Mr. Crawford petitioned to be permitted to go and search for Miss Price on the family’s behalf, in a manner so determined, with a countenance so truly manly and resolute, expressing himself so warmly and yet so properly, speaking of his ties of affection to the Bertrams, the need for discretion and dispatch, etc., Sir Thomas wondered if his old friend from the City had confused this Henry Crawford with some other gentleman!
Indeed, Crawford little suspected with what misgivings Sir Thomas first greeted him, or he would have congratulated himself still more on his ability to captivate. He hoped that any marriage to Maria would remain a distant event, but to know himself to be the centre of attention, to watch as
