‘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,box,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 out do 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 could 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 sat down to wish for it.And my father's room will be an excellent greenroom.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.’
‘And I am convinced to the contrary.-Nobody is fonder of the exercise of talent in young people,or promotes it more,than my father;and for anything of the acting,spouting,reciting kind,I think he has always a decided taste.I am sure he encouraged it in us as boys.How many a time have we mourned over the dead body of Julius Caesar,and to be'd and not to be'd in this very room,for his amusement!And I am sure,my name was Norval,every evening of my life through one Christmas holidays.’
‘It was a very different thing.-You must see the difference yourself.My father wished us,as schoolboys,to speak well,but he would never wish his grown up daughters to be acting plays.His sense of decorum is strict.’
‘I know all that,’said Tom displeased.‘I know my father as well as you do,and I'll take care that his daughters do nothing to distress him.Manage your own concerns,Edmund,and I'll take care of the rest of the family.’
