Sense and Sensibility

CHAPTER 30

Mrs. Jen­nings came im­me­di­ate­ly to their room on her re­turn, and with­out wait­ing to have her re­quest of ad­mit­tance an­swered, opened the door and walked in with a look of re­al con­cern.

“How do you do my dear?”–said she in a voice of great com­pas­sion to Mar­ianne, who turned away her face with­out at­tempt­ing to an­swer.

“How is she, Miss Dash­wood?–Poor thing! she looks very bad.– No won­der. Ay, it is but too true. He is to be mar­ried very soon–a good-​for-​noth­ing fel­low! I have no pa­tience with him. Mrs. Tay­lor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a par­tic­ular friend of Miss Grey her­self, else I am sure I should not have be­lieved it; and I was al­most ready to sink as it was. Well, said I, all I can say is, that if this be true, he has used a young la­dy of my ac­quain­tance abom­inably ill, and I wish with all my soul his wife may plague his heart out. And so I shall al­ways say, my dear, you may de­pend on it. I have no no­tion of men’s go­ing on in this way; and if ev­er I meet him again, I will give him such a dress­ing as he has not had this many a day. But there is one com­fort, my dear Miss Mar­ianne; he is not the on­ly young man in the world worth hav­ing; and with your pret­ty face you will nev­er want ad­mir­ers. Well, poor thing! I won’t dis­turb her any longer, for she had bet­ter have her cry out at once and have done with. The Par­rys and Sander­sons luck­ily are com­ing tonight you know, and that will amuse her.”

She then went away, walk­ing on tip­toe out of the room, as if she sup­posed her young friend’s af­flic­tion could be in­creased by noise.

Mar­ianne, to the sur­prise of her sis­ter, de­ter­mined on din­ing with them. Eli­nor even ad­vised her against it. But “no, she would go down; she could bear it very well, and the bus­tle about her would be less.” Eli­nor, pleased to have her gov­erned for a mo­ment by such a mo­tive, though be­liev­ing it hard­ly pos­si­ble that she could sit out the din­ner, said no more; and ad­just­ing her dress for her as well as she could, while Mar­ianne still re­mained on the bed, was ready to as­sist her in­to the din­ing room as soon as they were sum­moned to it.

When there, though look­ing most wretched­ly, she ate more and was calmer than her sis­ter had ex­pect­ed. Had she tried to speak, or had she been con­scious of half Mrs. Jen­nings’s well-​meant but ill-​judged at­ten­tions to her, this calm­ness could not have been main­tained; but not a syl­la­ble es­caped her lips; and the ab­strac­tion of her thoughts pre­served her in ig­no­rance of ev­ery thing that was pass­ing be­fore her.

Eli­nor, who did jus­tice to Mrs. Jen­nings’s kind­ness, though its ef­fu­sions were of­ten dis­tress­ing, and some­times al­most ridicu­lous, made her those ac­knowl­edg­ments, and re­turned her those ci­vil­ities, which her sis­ter could not make or re­turn for her­self. Their good friend saw that Mar­ianne was un­hap­py, and felt that ev­ery thing was due to her which might make her at all less so. She treat­ed her there­fore, with all the in­dul­gent fond­ness of a par­ent to­wards a favourite child on the last day of its hol­idays. Mar­ianne was to have the best place by the fire, was to be tempt­ed to eat by ev­ery del­ica­cy in the house, and to be amused by the re­la­tion of all the news of the day. Had not Eli­nor, in the sad coun­te­nance of her sis­ter, seen a check to all mirth, she could have been en­ter­tained by Mrs. Jen­nings’s en­deav­ours to cure a dis­ap­point­ment in love, by a va­ri­ety of sweet­meats and olives, and a good fire. As soon, how­ev­er, as the con­scious­ness of all this was forced by con­tin­ual rep­eti­tion on Mar­ianne, she could stay no longer. With a hasty ex­cla­ma­tion of Mis­ery, and a sign to her sis­ter not to fol­low her, she di­rect­ly got up and hur­ried out of the room.

“Poor soul!” cried Mrs. Jen­nings, as soon as she was gone, “how it grieves me to see her! And I de­clare if she is not gone away with­out fin­ish­ing her wine! And the dried cher­ries too! Lord! noth­ing seems to do her any good. I am sure if I knew of any thing she would like, I would send all over the town for it. Well, it is the odd­est thing to me, that a man should use such a pret­ty girl so ill! But when there is plen­ty of mon­ey on one side, and next to none on the oth­er, Lord bless you! they care no more about such things!–“

“The la­dy then–Miss Grey I think you called her– is very rich?”

“Fifty thou­sand pounds, my dear. Did you ev­er see her? a smart, stylish girl they say, but not hand­some. I re­mem­ber her aunt very well, Bid­dy Hen­shawe; she mar­ried a very wealthy man. But the fam­ily are all rich to­geth­er. Fifty thou­sand pounds! and by all ac­counts, it won’t come be­fore it’s want­ed; for they say he is all to pieces. No won­der! dash­ing about with his cur­ri­cle and hunters! Well, it don’t sig­ni­fy talk­ing; but when a young man, be who he will, comes and makes love to a pret­ty girl, and promis­es mar­riage, he has no busi­ness to fly off from his word on­ly be­cause he grows poor, and a rich­er girl is ready to have him. Why don’t he, in such a case, sell his hors­es, let his house, turn off his ser­vants, and make a thor­ough re­form at once? I war­rant you, Miss Mar­ianne would have been ready to wait till mat­ters came round. But that won’t do now-​a-​days; noth­ing in the way of plea­sure can ev­er be giv­en up by the young men of this age.”

“Do you know what kind of a girl Miss Grey is? Is she said to be ami­able?”

“I nev­er heard any harm of her; in­deed I hard­ly ev­er heard her men­tioned; ex­cept that Mrs. Tay­lor did say this morn­ing, that one day Miss Walk­er hint­ed to her, that she be­lieved Mr. and Mrs. El­li­son would not be sor­ry to have Miss Grey mar­ried, for she and Mrs. El­li­son could nev­er agree.”–

“And who are the El­lisons?”

“Her guardians, my dear. But now she is of age and may choose for her­self; and a pret­ty choice she has made!–What now,” af­ter paus­ing a mo­ment–“your poor sis­ter is gone to her own room, I sup­pose, to moan by her­self. Is there noth­ing one can get to com­fort her? Poor dear, it seems quite cru­el to let her be alone. Well, by-​and-​by we shall have a few friends, and that will amuse her a lit­tle. What shall we play at? She hates whist I know; but is there no round game she cares for?”

“Dear ma’am, this kind­ness is quite un­nec­es­sary. Mar­ianne, I dare say, will not leave her room again this evening. I shall per­suade her if I can to go ear­ly to bed, for I am sure she wants rest.”

“Aye, I be­lieve that will be best for her. Let her name her own sup­per, and go to bed. Lord! no won­der she has been look­ing so bad and so cast down this last week or two, for this mat­ter I sup­pose has been hang­ing over her head as long as that. And so the let­ter that came to­day fin­ished it! Poor soul! I am sure if I had had a no­tion of it, I would not have joked her about it for all my mon­ey. But then you know, how should I guess such a thing? I made sure of its be­ing noth­ing but a com­mon love let­ter, and you know young peo­ple like to be laughed at about them. Lord! how con­cerned Sir John and my daugh­ters will be when they hear it! If I had my sens­es about me I might have called in Con­duit Street in my way home, and told them of it. But I shall see them to­mor­row.”

“It would be un­nec­es­sary I am sure, for you to cau­tion Mrs. Palmer and Sir John against ev­er nam­ing Mr. Willough­by, or mak­ing the slight­est al­lu­sion to what has passed, be­fore my sis­ter. Their own good-​na­ture must point out to them the re­al cru­el­ty of ap­pear­ing to know any thing about it when she is present; and the less that may ev­er be said to my­self on the sub­ject, the more my feel­ings will be spared, as you my dear madam will eas­ily be­lieve.”

“Oh! Lord! yes, that I do in­deed. It must be ter­ri­ble for you to hear it talked of; and as for your sis­ter, I am sure I would not men­tion a word about it to her for the world. You saw I did not all din­ner time. No more would Sir John, nor my daugh­ters, for they are all very thought­ful and con­sid­er­ate; es­pe­cial­ly if I give them a hint, as I cer­tain­ly will. For my part, I think the less that is said about such things, the bet­ter, the soon­er ’tis blown over and for­got. And what does talk­ing ev­er do you know?”

“In this af­fair it can on­ly do harm; more so per­haps than in many cas­es of a sim­ilar kind, for it has been at­tend­ed by cir­cum­stances which, for the sake of ev­ery one con­cerned in it, make it un­fit to be­come the pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion. I must do THIS jus­tice to Mr. Willough­by–he has bro­ken no pos­itive en­gage­ment with my sis­ter.”

“Law, my dear! Don’t pre­tend to de­fend him. No pos­itive en­gage­ment in­deed! af­ter tak­ing her all over Al­len­ham House, and fix­ing on the very rooms they were to live in here­after!”

Eli­nor, for her sis­ter’s sake, could not press the sub­ject far­ther, and she hoped it was not re­quired of her for Willough­by’s; since, though Mar­ianne might lose much, he could gain very lit­tle by the en­force­ment of the re­al truth. Af­ter a short si­lence on both sides, Mrs. Jen­nings, with all her nat­ural hi­lar­ity, burst forth again.

“Well, my dear, ’tis a true say­ing about an ill-​wind, for it will be all the bet­ter for Colonel Bran­don. He will have her at last; aye, that he will. Mind me, now, if they an’t mar­ried by Mid-​sum­mer. Lord! how he’ll chuck­le over this news! I hope he will come tonight. It will be all to one a bet­ter match for your sis­ter. Two thou­sand a year with­out debt or draw­back–ex­cept the lit­tle love-​child, in­deed; aye, I had for­got her; but she may be ‘pren­ticed out at a small cost, and then what does it sig­ni­fy? De­laford is a nice place, I can tell you; ex­act­ly what I call a nice old fash­ioned place, full of com­forts and con­ve­niences; quite shut in with great gar­den walls that are cov­ered with the best fruit-​trees in the coun­try; and such a mul­ber­ry tree in one cor­ner! Lord! how Char­lotte and I did stuff the on­ly time we were there! Then, there is a dove-​cote, some de­light­ful stew-​ponds, and a very pret­ty canal; and ev­ery thing, in short, that one could wish for; and, more­over, it is close to the church, and on­ly a quar­ter of a mile from the turn­pike-​road, so ’tis nev­er dull, for if you on­ly go and sit up in an old yew ar­bour be­hind the house, you may see all the car­riages that pass along. Oh! ’tis a nice place! A butch­er hard by in the vil­lage, and the par­son­age-​house with­in a stone’s throw. To my fan­cy, a thou­sand times pret­ti­er than Bar­ton Park, where they are forced to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neigh­bour near­er than your moth­er. Well, I shall spir­it up the Colonel as soon as I can. One shoul­der of mut­ton, you know, drives an­oth­er down. If we CAN but put Willough­by out of her head!”

“Ay, if we can do THAT, Ma’am,” said Eli­nor, “we shall do very well with or with­out Colonel Bran­don.” And then ris­ing, she went away to join Mar­ianne, whom she found, as she ex­pect­ed, in her own room, lean­ing, in silent mis­ery, over the small re­mains of a fire, which, till Eli­nor’s en­trance, had been her on­ly light.

“You had bet­ter leave me,” was all the no­tice that her sis­ter re­ceived from her.

“I will leave you,” said Eli­nor, “if you will go to bed.” But this, from the mo­men­tary per­verse­ness of im­pa­tient suf­fer­ing, she at first re­fused to do. Her sis­ter’s earnest, though gen­tle per­sua­sion, how­ev­er, soon soft­ened her to com­pli­ance, and Eli­nor saw her lay her aching head on the pil­low, and as she hoped, in a way to get some qui­et rest be­fore she left her.

In the draw­ing-​room, whith­er she then re­paired, she was soon joined by Mrs. Jen­nings, with a wine-​glass, full of some­thing, in her hand.

“My dear,” said she, en­ter­ing, “I have just rec­ol­lect­ed that I have some of the finest old Con­stan­tia wine in the house that ev­er was tast­ed, so I have brought a glass of it for your sis­ter. My poor hus­band! how fond he was of it! When­ev­er he had a touch of his old col­icky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the world. Do take it to your sis­ter.”

“Dear Ma’am,” replied Eli­nor, smil­ing at the dif­fer­ence of the com­plaints for which it was rec­om­mend­ed, “how good you are! But I have just left Mar­ianne in bed, and, I hope, al­most asleep; and as I think noth­ing will be of so much ser­vice to her as rest, if you will give me leave, I will drink the wine my­self.”

Mrs. Jen­nings, though re­gret­ting that she had not been five min­utes ear­li­er, was sat­is­fied with the com­pro­mise; and Eli­nor, as she swal­lowed the chief of it, re­flect­ed, that though its ef­fects on a col­icky gout were, at present, of lit­tle im­por­tance to her, its heal­ing pow­ers, on a dis­ap­point­ed heart might be as rea­son­ably tried on her­self as on her sis­ter.

Colonel Bran­don came in while the par­ty were at tea, and by his man­ner of look­ing round the room for Mar­ianne, Eli­nor im­me­di­ate­ly fan­cied that he nei­ther ex­pect­ed nor wished to see her there, and, in short, that he was al­ready aware of what oc­ca­sioned her ab­sence. Mrs. Jen­nings was not struck by the same thought; for soon af­ter his en­trance, she walked across the room to the tea-​ta­ble where Eli­nor presid­ed, and whis­pered– “The Colonel looks as grave as ev­er you see. He knows noth­ing of it; do tell him, my dear.”

He short­ly af­ter­wards drew a chair close to her’s, and, with a look which per­fect­ly as­sured her of his good in­for­ma­tion, in­quired af­ter her sis­ter.

“Mar­ianne is not well,” said she. “She has been in­dis­posed all day, and we have per­suad­ed her to go to bed.”

“Per­haps, then,” he hes­itat­ing­ly replied, “what I heard this morn­ing may be–there may be more truth in it than I could be­lieve pos­si­ble at first.”

“What did you hear?”

“That a gen­tle­man, whom I had rea­son to think–in short, that a man, whom I KNEW to be en­gaged–but how shall I tell you? If you know it al­ready, as sure­ly you must, I may be spared.”

“You mean,” an­swered Eli­nor, with forced calm­ness, “Mr. Willough­by’s mar­riage with Miss Grey. Yes, we DO know it all. This seems to have been a day of gen­er­al elu­ci­da­tion, for this very morn­ing first un­fold­ed it to us. Mr. Willough­by is un­fath­omable! Where did you hear it?”

“In a sta­tion­er’s shop in Pall Mall, where I had busi­ness. Two ladies were wait­ing for their car­riage, and one of them was giv­ing the oth­er an ac­count of the in­tend­ed match, in a voice so lit­tle at­tempt­ing con­ceal­ment, that it was im­pos­si­ble for me not to hear all. The name of Willough­by, John Willough­by, fre­quent­ly re­peat­ed, first caught my at­ten­tion; and what fol­lowed was a pos­itive as­ser­tion that ev­ery thing was now fi­nal­ly set­tled re­spect­ing his mar­riage with Miss Grey–it was no longer to be a se­cret–it would take place even with­in a few weeks, with many par­tic­ulars of prepa­ra­tions and oth­er mat­ters. One thing, es­pe­cial­ly, I re­mem­ber, be­cause it served to iden­ti­fy the man still more:–as soon as the cer­emo­ny was over, they were to go to Combe Magna, his seat in Som­er­set­shire. My as­ton­ish­ment!–but it would be im­pos­si­ble to de­scribe what I felt. The com­mu­nica­tive la­dy I learnt, on in­quiry, for I stayed in the shop till they were gone, was a Mrs. El­li­son, and that, as I have been since in­formed, is the name of Miss Grey’s guardian.”

“It is. But have you like­wise heard that Miss Grey has fifty thou­sand pounds? In that, if in any thing, we may find an ex­pla­na­tion.”

“It may be so; but Willough­by is ca­pa­ble–at least I think”–he stopped a mo­ment; then added in a voice which seemed to dis­trust it­self, “And your sis­ter– how did she–“

“Her suf­fer­ings have been very se­vere. I have on­ly to hope that they may be pro­por­tion­ate­ly short. It has been, it is a most cru­el af­flic­tion. Till yes­ter­day, I be­lieve, she nev­er doubt­ed his re­gard; and even now, per­haps–but I am al­most con­vinced that he nev­er was re­al­ly at­tached to her. He has been very de­ceit­ful! and, in some points, there seems a hard­ness of heart about him.”

“Ah!” said Colonel Bran­don, “there is, in­deed! But your sis­ter does not–I think you said so–she does not con­sid­er quite as you do?”

“You know her dis­po­si­tion, and may be­lieve how ea­ger­ly she would still jus­ti­fy him if she could.”

He made no an­swer; and soon af­ter­wards, by the re­moval of the tea-​things, and the ar­range­ment of the card par­ties, the sub­ject was nec­es­sar­ily dropped. Mrs. Jen­nings, who had watched them with plea­sure while they were talk­ing, and who ex­pect­ed to see the ef­fect of Miss Dash­wood’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in such an in­stan­ta­neous gai­ety on Colonel Bran­don’s side, as might have be­come a man in the bloom of youth, of hope and hap­pi­ness, saw him, with amaze­ment, re­main the whole evening more se­ri­ous and thought­ful than usu­al.