Sense and Sensibility

CHAPTER 17

Mrs. Dash­wood was sur­prised on­ly for a mo­ment at see­ing him; for his com­ing to Bar­ton was, in her opin­ion, of all things the most nat­ural. Her joy and ex­pres­sion of re­gard long out­lived her won­der. He re­ceived the kind­est wel­come from her; and shy­ness, cold­ness, re­serve could not stand against such a re­cep­tion. They had be­gun to fail him be­fore he en­tered the house, and they were quite over­come by the cap­ti­vat­ing man­ners of Mrs. Dash­wood. In­deed a man could not very well be in love with ei­ther of her daugh­ters, with­out ex­tend­ing the pas­sion to her; and Eli­nor had the sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing him soon be­come more like him­self. His af­fec­tions seemed to re­an­imate to­wards them all, and his in­ter­est in their wel­fare again be­came per­cep­ti­ble. He was not in spir­its, how­ev­er; he praised their house, ad­mired its prospect, was at­ten­tive, and kind; but still he was not in spir­its. The whole fam­ily per­ceived it, and Mrs. Dash­wood, at­tribut­ing it to some want of lib­er­al­ity in his moth­er, sat down to ta­ble in­dig­nant against all self­ish par­ents.

“What are Mrs. Fer­rars’s views for you at present, Ed­ward?” said she, when din­ner was over and they had drawn round the fire; “are you still to be a great or­ator in spite of your­self?”

“No. I hope my moth­er is now con­vinced that I have no more tal­ents than in­cli­na­tion for a pub­lic life!”

“But how is your fame to be es­tab­lished? for fa­mous you must be to sat­is­fy all your fam­ily; and with no in­cli­na­tion for ex­pense, no af­fec­tion for strangers, no pro­fes­sion, and no as­sur­ance, you may find it a dif­fi­cult mat­ter.”

“I shall not at­tempt it. I have no wish to be dis­tin­guished; and have ev­ery rea­son to hope I nev­er shall. Thank Heav­en! I can­not be forced in­to ge­nius and elo­quence.”

“You have no am­bi­tion, I well know. Your wish­es are all mod­er­ate.”

“As mod­er­ate as those of the rest of the world, I be­lieve. I wish as well as ev­ery body else to be per­fect­ly hap­py; but, like ev­ery body else it must be in my own way. Great­ness will not make me so.”

“Strange that it would!” cried Mar­ianne. “What have wealth or grandeur to do with hap­pi­ness?”

“Grandeur has but lit­tle,” said Eli­nor, “but wealth has much to do with it.”

“Eli­nor, for shame!” said Mar­ianne, “mon­ey can on­ly give hap­pi­ness where there is noth­ing else to give it. Be­yond a com­pe­tence, it can af­ford no re­al sat­is­fac­tion, as far as mere self is con­cerned.”

“Per­haps,” said Eli­nor, smil­ing, “we may come to the same point. YOUR com­pe­tence and MY wealth are very much alike, I dare say; and with­out them, as the world goes now, we shall both agree that ev­ery kind of ex­ter­nal com­fort must be want­ing. Your ideas are on­ly more no­ble than mine. Come, what is your com­pe­tence?”

“About eigh­teen hun­dred or two thou­sand a year; not more than THAT.”

Eli­nor laughed. “TWO thou­sand a year! ONE is my wealth! I guessed how it would end.”

“And yet two thou­sand a-​year is a very mod­er­ate in­come,” said Mar­ianne. “A fam­ily can­not well be main­tained on a small­er. I am sure I am not ex­trav­agant in my de­mands. A prop­er es­tab­lish­ment of ser­vants, a car­riage, per­haps two, and hunters, can­not be sup­port­ed on less.”

Eli­nor smiled again, to hear her sis­ter de­scrib­ing so ac­cu­rate­ly their fu­ture ex­pens­es at Combe Magna.

“Hunters!” re­peat­ed Ed­ward–“but why must you have hunters? Ev­ery body does not hunt.”

Mar­ianne coloured as she replied, “But most peo­ple do.”

“I wish,” said Mar­garet, strik­ing out a nov­el thought, “that some­body would give us all a large for­tune apiece!”

“Oh that they would!” cried Mar­ianne, her eyes sparkling with an­ima­tion, and her cheeks glow­ing with the de­light of such imag­inary hap­pi­ness.

“We are all unan­imous in that wish, I sup­pose,” said Eli­nor, “in spite of the in­suf­fi­cien­cy of wealth.”

“Oh dear!” cried Mar­garet, “how hap­py I should be! I won­der what I should do with it!”

Mar­ianne looked as if she had no doubt on that point.

“I should be puz­zled to spend so large a for­tune my­self,” said Mrs. Dash­wood, “if my chil­dren were all to be rich my help.”

“You must be­gin your im­prove­ments on this house,” ob­served Eli­nor, “and your dif­fi­cul­ties will soon van­ish.”

“What mag­nif­icent or­ders would trav­el from this fam­ily to Lon­don,” said Ed­ward, “in such an event! What a hap­py day for book­sellers, mu­sic-​sell­ers, and print-​shops! You, Miss Dash­wood, would give a gen­er­al com­mis­sion for ev­ery new print of mer­it to be sent you–and as for Mar­ianne, I know her great­ness of soul, there would not be mu­sic enough in Lon­don to con­tent her. And books!–Thom­son, Cow­per, Scott–she would buy them all over and over again: she would buy up ev­ery copy, I be­lieve, to pre­vent their falling in­to un­wor­thy hands; and she would have ev­ery book that tells her how to ad­mire an old twist­ed tree. Should not you, Mar­ianne? For­give me, if I am very saucy. But I was will­ing to shew you that I had not for­got our old dis­putes.”

“I love to be re­mind­ed of the past, Ed­ward–whether it be melan­choly or gay, I love to re­call it–and you will nev­er of­fend me by talk­ing of for­mer times. You are very right in sup­pos­ing how my mon­ey would be spent–some of it, at least–my loose cash would cer­tain­ly be em­ployed in im­prov­ing my col­lec­tion of mu­sic and books.”

“And the bulk of your for­tune would be laid out in an­nu­ities on the au­thors or their heirs.”

“No, Ed­ward, I should have some­thing else to do with it.”

“Per­haps, then, you would be­stow it as a re­ward on that per­son who wrote the ablest de­fence of your favourite max­im, that no one can ev­er be in love more than once in their life–your opin­ion on that point is un­changed, I pre­sume?”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly. At my time of life opin­ions are tol­er­ably fixed. It is not like­ly that I should now see or hear any thing to change them.”

“Mar­ianne is as stead­fast as ev­er, you see,” said Eli­nor, “she is not at all al­tered.”

“She is on­ly grown a lit­tle more grave than she was.”

“Nay, Ed­ward,” said Mar­ianne, “you need not re­proach me. You are not very gay your­self.”

“Why should you think so!” replied he, with a sigh. “But gai­ety nev­er was a part of MY char­ac­ter.”

“Nor do I think it a part of Mar­ianne’s,” said Eli­nor; “I should hard­ly call her a live­ly girl–she is very earnest, very ea­ger in all she does–some­times talks a great deal and al­ways with an­ima­tion–but she is not of­ten re­al­ly mer­ry.”

“I be­lieve you are right,” he replied, “and yet I have al­ways set her down as a live­ly girl.”

“I have fre­quent­ly de­tect­ed my­self in such kind of mis­takes,” said Eli­nor, “in a to­tal mis­ap­pre­hen­sion of char­ac­ter in some point or oth­er: fan­cy­ing peo­ple so much more gay or grave, or in­ge­nious or stupid than they re­al­ly are, and I can hard­ly tell why or in what the de­cep­tion orig­inat­ed. Some­times one is guid­ed by what they say of them­selves, and very fre­quent­ly by what oth­er peo­ple say of them, with­out giv­ing one­self time to de­lib­er­ate and judge.”

“But I thought it was right, Eli­nor,” said Mar­ianne, “to be guid­ed whol­ly by the opin­ion of oth­er peo­ple. I thought our judg­ments were giv­en us mere­ly to be sub­servient to those of neigh­bours. This has al­ways been your doc­trine, I am sure.”

“No, Mar­ianne, nev­er. My doc­trine has nev­er aimed at the sub­jec­tion of the un­der­stand­ing. All I have ev­er at­tempt­ed to in­flu­ence has been the be­haviour. You must not con­found my mean­ing. I am guilty, I con­fess, of hav­ing of­ten wished you to treat our ac­quain­tance in gen­er­al with greater at­ten­tion; but when have I ad­vised you to adopt their sen­ti­ments or to con­form to their judg­ment in se­ri­ous mat­ters?”

“You have not been able to bring your sis­ter over to your plan of gen­er­al ci­vil­ity,” said Ed­ward to Eli­nor, “Do you gain no ground?”

“Quite the con­trary,” replied Eli­nor, look­ing ex­pres­sive­ly at Mar­ianne.

“My judg­ment,” he re­turned, “is all on your side of the ques­tion; but I am afraid my prac­tice is much more on your sis­ter’s. I nev­er wish to of­fend, but I am so fool­ish­ly shy, that I of­ten seem neg­li­gent, when I am on­ly kept back by my nat­ural awk­ward­ness. I have fre­quent­ly thought that I must have been in­tend­ed by na­ture to be fond of low com­pa­ny, I am so lit­tle at my ease among strangers of gen­til­ity!”

“Mar­ianne has not shy­ness to ex­cuse any inat­ten­tion of hers,” said Eli­nor.

“She knows her own worth too well for false shame,” replied Ed­ward. “Shy­ness is on­ly the ef­fect of a sense of in­fe­ri­or­ity in some way or oth­er. If I could per­suade my­self that my man­ners were per­fect­ly easy and grace­ful, I should not be shy.”

“But you would still be re­served,” said Mar­ianne, “and that is worse.”

Ed­ward start­ed–“Re­served! Am I re­served, Mar­ianne?”

“Yes, very.”

“I do not un­der­stand you,” replied he, colour­ing. “Re­served!–how, in what man­ner? What am I to tell you? What can you sup­pose?”

Eli­nor looked sur­prised at his emo­tion; but try­ing to laugh off the sub­ject, she said to him, “Do not you know my sis­ter well enough to un­der­stand what she means? Do not you know she calls ev­ery one re­served who does not talk as fast, and ad­mire what she ad­mires as rap­tur­ous­ly as her­self?”

Ed­ward made no an­swer. His grav­ity and thought­ful­ness re­turned on him in their fullest ex­tent–and he sat for some time silent and dull.