Sense and Sensibility

CHAPTER 14

The sud­den ter­mi­na­tion of Colonel Bran­don’s vis­it at the park, with his steadi­ness in con­ceal­ing its cause, filled the mind, and raised the won­der of Mrs. Jen­nings for two or three days; she was a great won­der­er, as ev­ery one must be who takes a very live­ly in­ter­est in all the com­ings and go­ings of all their ac­quain­tance. She won­dered, with lit­tle in­ter­mis­sion what could be the rea­son of it; was sure there must be some bad news, and thought over ev­ery kind of dis­tress that could have be­fall­en him, with a fixed de­ter­mi­na­tion that he should not es­cape them all.

“Some­thing very melan­choly must be the mat­ter, I am sure,” said she. “I could see it in his face. Poor man! I am afraid his cir­cum­stances may be bad. The es­tate at De­laford was nev­er reck­oned more than two thou­sand a year, and his broth­er left ev­ery­thing sad­ly in­volved. I do think he must have been sent for about mon­ey mat­ters, for what else can it be? I won­der whether it is so. I would give any­thing to know the truth of it. Per­haps it is about Miss Williams and, by the bye, I dare say it is, be­cause he looked so con­scious when I men­tioned her. May be she is ill in town; noth­ing in the world more like­ly, for I have a no­tion she is al­ways rather sick­ly. I would lay any wa­ger it is about Miss Williams. It is not so very like­ly he should be dis­tressed in his cir­cum­stances NOW, for he is a very pru­dent man, and to be sure must have cleared the es­tate by this time. I won­der what it can be! May be his sis­ter is worse at Avi­gnon, and has sent for him over. His set­ting off in such a hur­ry seems very like it. Well, I wish him out of all his trou­ble with all my heart, and a good wife in­to the bar­gain.”

So won­dered, so talked Mrs. Jen­nings. Her opin­ion vary­ing with ev­ery fresh con­jec­ture, and all seem­ing equal­ly prob­able as they arose. Eli­nor, though she felt re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in the wel­fare of Colonel Bran­don, could not be­stow all the won­der on his go­ing so sud­den­ly away, which Mrs. Jen­nings was de­sirous of her feel­ing; for be­sides that the cir­cum­stance did not in her opin­ion jus­ti­fy such last­ing amaze­ment or va­ri­ety of spec­ula­tion, her won­der was oth­er­wise dis­posed of. It was en­grossed by the ex­traor­di­nary si­lence of her sis­ter and Willough­by on the sub­ject, which they must know to be pe­cu­liar­ly in­ter­est­ing to them all. As this si­lence con­tin­ued, ev­ery day made it ap­pear more strange and more in­com­pat­ible with the dis­po­si­tion of both. Why they should not open­ly ac­knowl­edge to her moth­er and her­self, what their con­stant be­haviour to each oth­er de­clared to have tak­en place, Eli­nor could not imag­ine.

She could eas­ily con­ceive that mar­riage might not be im­me­di­ate­ly in their pow­er; for though Willough­by was in­de­pen­dent, there was no rea­son to be­lieve him rich. His es­tate had been rat­ed by Sir John at about six or sev­en hun­dred a year; but he lived at an ex­pense to which that in­come could hard­ly be equal, and he had him­self of­ten com­plained of his pover­ty. But for this strange kind of se­cre­cy main­tained by them rel­ative to their en­gage­ment, which in fact con­cealed noth­ing at all, she could not ac­count; and it was so whol­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry to their gen­er­al opin­ions and prac­tice, that a doubt some­times en­tered her mind of their be­ing re­al­ly en­gaged, and this doubt was enough to pre­vent her mak­ing any in­quiry of Mar­ianne.

Noth­ing could be more ex­pres­sive of at­tach­ment to them all, than Willough­by’s be­haviour. To Mar­ianne it had all the dis­tin­guish­ing ten­der­ness which a lover’s heart could give, and to the rest of the fam­ily it was the af­fec­tion­ate at­ten­tion of a son and a broth­er. The cot­tage seemed to be con­sid­ered and loved by him as his home; many more of his hours were spent there than at Al­len­ham; and if no gen­er­al en­gage­ment col­lect­ed them at the park, the ex­er­cise which called him out in the morn­ing was al­most cer­tain of end­ing there, where the rest of the day was spent by him­self at the side of Mar­ianne, and by his favourite point­er at her feet.

One evening in par­tic­ular, about a week af­ter Colonel Bran­don left the coun­try, his heart seemed more than usu­al­ly open to ev­ery feel­ing of at­tach­ment to the ob­jects around him; and on Mrs. Dash­wood’s hap­pen­ing to men­tion her de­sign of im­prov­ing the cot­tage in the spring, he warm­ly op­posed ev­ery al­ter­ation of a place which af­fec­tion had es­tab­lished as per­fect with him.

“What!” he ex­claimed–“Im­prove this dear cot­tage! No. THAT I will nev­er con­sent to. Not a stone must be added to its walls, not an inch to its size, if my feel­ings are re­gard­ed.”

“Do not be alarmed,” said Miss Dash­wood, “noth­ing of the kind will be done; for my moth­er will nev­er have mon­ey enough to at­tempt it.”

“I am hearti­ly glad of it,” he cried. “May she al­ways be poor, if she can em­ploy her rich­es no bet­ter.”

“Thank you, Willough­by. But you may be as­sured that I would not sac­ri­fice one sen­ti­ment of lo­cal at­tach­ment of yours, or of any one whom I loved, for all the im­prove­ments in the world. De­pend up­on it that what­ev­er un­em­ployed sum may re­main, when I make up my ac­counts in the spring, I would even rather lay it use­less­ly by than dis­pose of it in a man­ner so painful to you. But are you re­al­ly so at­tached to this place as to see no de­fect in it?”

“I am,” said he. “To me it is fault­less. Nay, more, I con­sid­er it as the on­ly form of build­ing in which hap­pi­ness is at­tain­able, and were I rich enough I would in­stant­ly pull Combe down, and build it up again in the ex­act plan of this cot­tage.”

“With dark nar­row stairs and a kitchen that smokes, I sup­pose,” said Eli­nor.

“Yes,” cried he in the same ea­ger tone, “with all and ev­ery thing be­long­ing to it;–in no one con­ve­nience or IN­con­ve­nience about it, should the least vari­ation be per­cep­ti­ble. Then, and then on­ly, un­der such a roof, I might per­haps be as hap­py at Combe as I have been at Bar­ton.”

“I flat­ter my­self,” replied Eli­nor, “that even un­der the dis­ad­van­tage of bet­ter rooms and a broad­er stair­case, you will here­after find your own house as fault­less as you now do this.”

“There cer­tain­ly are cir­cum­stances,” said Willough­by, “which might great­ly en­dear it to me; but this place will al­ways have one claim of my af­fec­tion, which no oth­er can pos­si­bly share.”

Mrs. Dash­wood looked with plea­sure at Mar­ianne, whose fine eyes were fixed so ex­pres­sive­ly on Willough­by, as plain­ly de­not­ed how well she un­der­stood him.

“How of­ten did I wish,” added he, “when I was at Al­len­ham this time twelve­month, that Bar­ton cot­tage were in­hab­it­ed! I nev­er passed with­in view of it with­out ad­mir­ing its sit­ua­tion, and griev­ing that no one should live in it. How lit­tle did I then think that the very first news I should hear from Mrs. Smith, when I next came in­to the coun­try, would be that Bar­ton cot­tage was tak­en: and I felt an im­me­di­ate sat­is­fac­tion and in­ter­est in the event, which noth­ing but a kind of pre­science of what hap­pi­ness I should ex­pe­ri­ence from it, can ac­count for. Must it not have been so, Mar­ianne?” speak­ing to her in a low­ered voice. Then con­tin­uing his for­mer tone, he said, “And yet this house you would spoil, Mrs. Dash­wood? You would rob it of its sim­plic­ity by imag­inary im­prove­ment! and this dear par­lour in which our ac­quain­tance first be­gan, and in which so many hap­py hours have been since spent by us to­geth­er, you would de­grade to the con­di­tion of a com­mon en­trance, and ev­ery body would be ea­ger to pass through the room which has hith­er­to con­tained with­in it­self more re­al ac­com­mo­da­tion and com­fort than any oth­er apart­ment of the hand­somest di­men­sions in the world could pos­si­bly af­ford.”

Mrs. Dash­wood again as­sured him that no al­ter­ation of the kind should be at­tempt­ed.

“You are a good wom­an,” he warm­ly replied. “Your promise makes me easy. Ex­tend it a lit­tle far­ther, and it will make me hap­py. Tell me that not on­ly your house will re­main the same, but that I shall ev­er find you and yours as un­changed as your dwelling; and that you will al­ways con­sid­er me with the kind­ness which has made ev­ery­thing be­long­ing to you so dear to me.”

The promise was read­ily giv­en, and Willough­by’s be­haviour dur­ing the whole of the evening de­clared at once his af­fec­tion and hap­pi­ness.

“Shall we see you to­mor­row to din­ner?” said Mrs. Dash­wood, when he was leav­ing them. “I do not ask you to come in the morn­ing, for we must walk to the park, to call on La­dy Mid­dle­ton.”

He en­gaged to be with them by four o’clock.