Sense and Sensibility

CHAPTER 16

Mar­ianne would have thought her­self very in­ex­cus­able had she been able to sleep at all the first night af­ter part­ing from Willough­by. She would have been ashamed to look her fam­ily in the face the next morn­ing, had she not risen from her bed in more need of re­pose than when she lay down in it. But the feel­ings which made such com­po­sure a dis­grace, left her in no dan­ger of in­cur­ring it. She was awake the whole night, and she wept the great­est part of it. She got up with a headache, was un­able to talk, and un­will­ing to take any nour­ish­ment; giv­ing pain ev­ery mo­ment to her moth­er and sis­ters, and for­bid­ding all at­tempt at con­so­la­tion from ei­ther. Her sen­si­bil­ity was po­tent enough!

When break­fast was over she walked out by her­self, and wan­dered about the vil­lage of Al­len­ham, in­dulging the rec­ol­lec­tion of past en­joy­ment and cry­ing over the present re­verse for the chief of the morn­ing.

The evening passed off in the equal in­dul­gence of feel­ing. She played over ev­ery favourite song that she had been used to play to Willough­by, ev­ery air in which their voic­es had been of­ten­est joined, and sat at the in­stru­ment gaz­ing on ev­ery line of mu­sic that he had writ­ten out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no far­ther sad­ness could be gained; and this nour­ish­ment of grief was ev­ery day ap­plied. She spent whole hours at the pi­anoforte al­ter­nate­ly singing and cry­ing; her voice of­ten to­tal­ly sus­pend­ed by her tears. In books too, as well as in mu­sic, she court­ed the mis­ery which a con­trast be­tween the past and present was cer­tain of giv­ing. She read noth­ing but what they had been used to read to­geth­er.

Such vi­olence of af­flic­tion in­deed could not be sup­port­ed for ev­er; it sunk with­in a few days in­to a calmer melan­choly; but these em­ploy­ments, to which she dai­ly re­curred, her soli­tary walks and silent med­ita­tions, still pro­duced oc­ca­sion­al ef­fu­sions of sor­row as live­ly as ev­er.

No let­ter from Willough­by came; and none seemed ex­pect­ed by Mar­ianne. Her moth­er was sur­prised, and Eli­nor again be­came un­easy. But Mrs. Dash­wood could find ex­pla­na­tions when­ev­er she want­ed them, which at least sat­is­fied her­self.

“Re­mem­ber, Eli­nor,” said she, “how very of­ten Sir John fetch­es our let­ters him­self from the post, and car­ries them to it. We have al­ready agreed that se­cre­cy may be nec­es­sary, and we must ac­knowl­edge that it could not be main­tained if their cor­re­spon­dence were to pass through Sir John’s hands.”

Eli­nor could not de­ny the truth of this, and she tried to find in it a mo­tive suf­fi­cient for their si­lence. But there was one method so di­rect, so sim­ple, and in her opin­ion so el­igi­ble of know­ing the re­al state of the af­fair, and of in­stant­ly re­mov­ing all mys­tery, that she could not help sug­gest­ing it to her moth­er.

“Why do you not ask Mar­ianne at once,” said she, “whether she is or she is not en­gaged to Willough­by? From you, her moth­er, and so kind, so in­dul­gent a moth­er, the ques­tion could not give of­fence. It would be the nat­ural re­sult of your af­fec­tion for her. She used to be all un­re­serve, and to you more es­pe­cial­ly.”

“I would not ask such a ques­tion for the world. Sup­pos­ing it pos­si­ble that they are not en­gaged, what dis­tress would not such an en­quiry in­flict! At any rate it would be most un­gen­er­ous. I should nev­er de­serve her con­fi­dence again, af­ter forc­ing from her a con­fes­sion of what is meant at present to be un­ac­knowl­edged to any one. I know Mar­ianne’s heart: I know that she dear­ly loves me, and that I shall not be the last to whom the af­fair is made known, when cir­cum­stances make the re­veal­ment of it el­igi­ble. I would not at­tempt to force the con­fi­dence of any one; of a child much less; be­cause a sense of du­ty would pre­vent the de­nial which her wish­es might di­rect.”

Eli­nor thought this gen­eros­ity over­strained, con­sid­er­ing her sis­ter’s youth, and urged the mat­ter far­ther, but in vain; com­mon sense, com­mon care, com­mon pru­dence, were all sunk in Mrs. Dash­wood’s ro­man­tic del­ica­cy.

It was sev­er­al days be­fore Willough­by’s name was men­tioned be­fore Mar­ianne by any of her fam­ily; Sir John and Mrs. Jen­nings, in­deed, were not so nice; their wit­ti­cisms added pain to many a painful hour;– but one evening, Mrs. Dash­wood, ac­ci­den­tal­ly tak­ing up a vol­ume of Shake­speare, ex­claimed,

“We have nev­er fin­ished Ham­let, Mar­ianne; our dear Willough­by went away be­fore we could get through it. We will put it by, that when he comes again…But it may be months, per­haps, be­fore THAT hap­pens.”

“Months!” cried Mar­ianne, with strong sur­prise. “No–nor many weeks.”

Mrs. Dash­wood was sor­ry for what she had said; but it gave Eli­nor plea­sure, as it pro­duced a re­ply from Mar­ianne so ex­pres­sive of con­fi­dence in Willough­by and knowl­edge of his in­ten­tions.

One morn­ing, about a week af­ter his leav­ing the coun­try, Mar­ianne was pre­vailed on to join her sis­ters in their usu­al walk, in­stead of wan­der­ing away by her­self. Hith­er­to she had care­ful­ly avoid­ed ev­ery com­pan­ion in her ram­bles. If her sis­ters in­tend­ed to walk on the downs, she di­rect­ly stole away to­wards the lanes; if they talked of the val­ley, she was as speedy in climb­ing the hills, and could nev­er be found when the oth­ers set off. But at length she was se­cured by the ex­er­tions of Eli­nor, who great­ly dis­ap­proved such con­tin­ual seclu­sion. They walked along the road through the val­ley, and chiefly in si­lence, for Mar­ianne’s MIND could not be con­trolled, and Eli­nor, sat­is­fied with gain­ing one point, would not then at­tempt more. Be­yond the en­trance of the val­ley, where the coun­try, though still rich, was less wild and more open, a long stretch of the road which they had trav­elled on first com­ing to Bar­ton, lay be­fore them; and on reach­ing that point, they stopped to look around them, and ex­am­ine a prospect which formed the dis­tance of their view from the cot­tage, from a spot which they had nev­er hap­pened to reach in any of their walks be­fore.

Amongst the ob­jects in the scene, they soon dis­cov­ered an an­imat­ed one; it was a man on horse­back rid­ing to­wards them. In a few min­utes they could dis­tin­guish him to be a gen­tle­man; and in a mo­ment af­ter­wards Mar­ianne rap­tur­ous­ly ex­claimed,

“It is he; it is in­deed;–I know it is!”–and was has­ten­ing to meet him, when Eli­nor cried out,

“In­deed, Mar­ianne, I think you are mis­tak­en. It is not Willough­by. The per­son is not tall enough for him, and has not his air.”

“He has, he has,” cried Mar­ianne, “I am sure he has. His air, his coat, his horse. I knew how soon he would come.”

She walked ea­ger­ly on as she spoke; and Eli­nor, to screen Mar­ianne from par­tic­ular­ity, as she felt al­most cer­tain of its not be­ing Willough­by, quick­ened her pace and kept up with her. They were soon with­in thir­ty yards of the gen­tle­man. Mar­ianne looked again; her heart sunk with­in her; and abrupt­ly turn­ing round, she was hur­ry­ing back, when the voic­es of both her sis­ters were raised to de­tain her; a third, al­most as well known as Willough­by’s, joined them in beg­ging her to stop, and she turned round with sur­prise to see and wel­come Ed­ward Fer­rars.

He was the on­ly per­son in the world who could at that mo­ment be for­giv­en for not be­ing Willough­by; the on­ly one who could have gained a smile from her; but she dis­persed her tears to smile on HIM, and in her sis­ter’s hap­pi­ness for­got for a time her own dis­ap­point­ment.

He dis­mount­ed, and giv­ing his horse to his ser­vant, walked back with them to Bar­ton, whith­er he was pur­pose­ly com­ing to vis­it them.

He was wel­comed by them all with great cor­dial­ity, but es­pe­cial­ly by Mar­ianne, who showed more warmth of re­gard in her re­cep­tion of him than even Eli­nor her­self. To Mar­ianne, in­deed, the meet­ing be­tween Ed­ward and her sis­ter was but a con­tin­ua­tion of that un­ac­count­able cold­ness which she had of­ten ob­served at Nor­land in their mu­tu­al be­haviour. On Ed­ward’s side, more par­tic­ular­ly, there was a de­fi­cien­cy of all that a lover ought to look and say on such an oc­ca­sion. He was con­fused, seemed scarce­ly sen­si­ble of plea­sure in see­ing them, looked nei­ther rap­tur­ous nor gay, said lit­tle but what was forced from him by ques­tions, and dis­tin­guished Eli­nor by no mark of af­fec­tion. Mar­ianne saw and lis­tened with in­creas­ing sur­prise. She be­gan al­most to feel a dis­like of Ed­ward; and it end­ed, as ev­ery feel­ing must end with her, by car­ry­ing back her thoughts to Willough­by, whose man­ners formed a con­trast suf­fi­cient­ly strik­ing to those of his broth­er elect.

Af­ter a short si­lence which suc­ceed­ed the first sur­prise and en­quiries of meet­ing, Mar­ianne asked Ed­ward if he came di­rect­ly from Lon­don. No, he had been in De­von­shire a fort­night.

“A fort­night!” she re­peat­ed, sur­prised at his be­ing so long in the same coun­ty with Eli­nor with­out see­ing her be­fore.

He looked rather dis­tressed as he added, that he had been stay­ing with some friends near Ply­mouth.

“Have you been late­ly in Sus­sex?” said Eli­nor.

“I was at Nor­land about a month ago.”

“And how does dear, dear Nor­land look?” cried Mar­ianne.

“Dear, dear Nor­land,” said Eli­nor, “prob­ably looks much as it al­ways does at this time of the year. The woods and walks thick­ly cov­ered with dead leaves.”

“Oh,” cried Mar­ianne, “with what trans­port­ing sen­sa­tion have I for­mer­ly seen them fall! How have I de­light­ed, as I walked, to see them driv­en in show­ers about me by the wind! What feel­ings have they, the sea­son, the air al­to­geth­er in­spired! Now there is no one to re­gard them. They are seen on­ly as a nui­sance, swept hasti­ly off, and driv­en as much as pos­si­ble from the sight.”

“It is not ev­ery one,” said Eli­nor, “who has your pas­sion for dead leaves.”

“No; my feel­ings are not of­ten shared, not of­ten un­der­stood. But SOME­TIMES they are.”–As she said this, she sunk in­to a rever­ie for a few mo­ments;–but rous­ing her­self again, “Now, Ed­ward,” said she, call­ing his at­ten­tion to the prospect, “here is Bar­ton val­ley. Look up to it, and be tran­quil if you can. Look at those hills! Did you ev­er see their equals? To the left is Bar­ton park, amongst those woods and plan­ta­tions. You may see the end of the house. And there, be­neath that far­thest hill, which ris­es with such grandeur, is our cot­tage.”

“It is a beau­ti­ful coun­try,” he replied; “but these bot­toms must be dirty in win­ter.”

“How can you think of dirt, with such ob­jects be­fore you?”

“Be­cause,” replied he, smil­ing, “among the rest of the ob­jects be­fore me, I see a very dirty lane.”

“How strange!” said Mar­ianne to her­self as she walked on.

“Have you an agree­able neigh­bour­hood here? Are the Mid­dle­tons pleas­ant peo­ple?”

“No, not all,” an­swered Mar­ianne; “we could not be more un­for­tu­nate­ly sit­uat­ed.”

“Mar­ianne,” cried her sis­ter, “how can you say so? How can you be so un­just? They are a very re­spectable fam­ily, Mr. Fer­rars; and to­wards us have be­haved in the friendli­est man­ner. Have you for­got, Mar­ianne, how many pleas­ant days we have owed to them?”

“No,” said Mar­ianne, in a low voice, “nor how many painful mo­ments.”

Eli­nor took no no­tice of this; and di­rect­ing her at­ten­tion to their vis­itor, en­deav­oured to sup­port some­thing like dis­course with him, by talk­ing of their present res­idence, its con­ve­niences, &c. ex­tort­ing from him oc­ca­sion­al ques­tions and re­marks. His cold­ness and re­serve mor­ti­fied her severe­ly; she was vexed and half an­gry; but re­solv­ing to reg­ulate her be­haviour to him by the past rather than the present, she avoid­ed ev­ery ap­pear­ance of re­sent­ment or dis­plea­sure, and treat­ed him as she thought he ought to be treat­ed from the fam­ily con­nec­tion.