Sense and Sensibility

CHAPTER 42

One oth­er short call in Harley Street, in which Eli­nor re­ceived her broth­er’s con­grat­ula­tions on their trav­el­ling so far to­wards Bar­ton with­out any ex­pense, and on Colonel Bran­don’s be­ing to fol­low them to Cleve­land in a day or two, com­plet­ed the in­ter­course of the broth­er and sis­ters in town;–and a faint in­vi­ta­tion from Fan­ny, to come to Nor­land when­ev­er it should hap­pen to be in their way, which of all things was the most un­like­ly to oc­cur, with a more warm, though less pub­lic, as­sur­ance, from John to Eli­nor, of the promp­ti­tude with which he should come to see her at De­laford, was all that fore­told any meet­ing in the coun­try.

It amused her to ob­serve that all her friends seemed de­ter­mined to send her to De­laford;–a place, in which, of all oth­ers, she would now least chuse to vis­it, or wish to re­side; for not on­ly was it con­sid­ered as her fu­ture home by her broth­er and Mrs. Jen­nings, but even Lucy, when they part­ed, gave her a press­ing in­vi­ta­tion to vis­it her there.

Very ear­ly in April, and tol­er­ably ear­ly in the day, the two par­ties from Hanover Square and Berke­ley Street set out from their re­spec­tive homes, to meet, by ap­point­ment, on the road. For the con­ve­nience of Char­lotte and her child, they were to be more than two days on their jour­ney, and Mr. Palmer, trav­el­ling more ex­pe­di­tious­ly with Colonel Bran­don, was to join them at Cleve­land soon af­ter their ar­rival.

Mar­ianne, few as had been her hours of com­fort in Lon­don, and ea­ger as she had long been to quit it, could not, when it came to the point, bid adieu to the house in which she had for the last time en­joyed those hopes, and that con­fi­dence, in Willough­by, which were now ex­tin­guished for ev­er, with­out great pain. Nor could she leave the place in which Willough­by re­mained, busy in new en­gage­ments, and new schemes, in which SHE could have no share, with­out shed­ding many tears.

Eli­nor’s sat­is­fac­tion, at the mo­ment of re­moval, was more pos­itive. She had no such ob­ject for her lin­ger­ing thoughts to fix on, she left no crea­ture be­hind, from whom it would give her a mo­ment’s re­gret to be di­vid­ed for ev­er, she was pleased to be free her­self from the per­se­cu­tion of Lucy’s friend­ship, she was grate­ful for bring­ing her sis­ter away un­seen by Willough­by since his mar­riage, and she looked for­ward with hope to what a few months of tran­quil­ity at Bar­ton might do to­wards restor­ing Mar­ianne’s peace of mind, and con­firm­ing her own.

Their jour­ney was safe­ly per­formed. The sec­ond day brought them in­to the cher­ished, or the pro­hib­it­ed, coun­ty of Som­er­set, for as such was it dwelt on by turns in Mar­ianne’s imag­ina­tion; and in the forenoon of the third they drove up to Cleve­land.

Cleve­land was a spa­cious, mod­ern-​built house, sit­uat­ed on a slop­ing lawn. It had no park, but the plea­sure-​grounds were tol­er­ably ex­ten­sive; and like ev­ery oth­er place of the same de­gree of im­por­tance, it had its open shrub­bery, and clos­er wood walk, a road of smooth grav­el wind­ing round a plan­ta­tion, led to the front, the lawn was dot­ted over with tim­ber, the house it­self was un­der the guardian­ship of the fir, the moun­tain-​ash, and the aca­cia, and a thick screen of them al­to­geth­er, in­ter­spersed with tall Lom­bardy poplars, shut out the of­fices.

Mar­ianne en­tered the house with a heart swelling with emo­tion from the con­scious­ness of be­ing on­ly eighty miles from Bar­ton, and not thir­ty from Combe Magna; and be­fore she had been five min­utes with­in its walls, while the oth­ers were busi­ly help­ing Char­lotte to show her child to the house­keep­er, she quit­ted it again, steal­ing away through the wind­ing shrub­beries, now just be­gin­ning to be in beau­ty, to gain a dis­tant em­inence; where, from its Gre­cian tem­ple, her eye, wan­der­ing over a wide tract of coun­try to the south-​east, could fond­ly rest on the far­thest ridge of hills in the hori­zon, and fan­cy that from their sum­mits Combe Magna might be seen.

In such mo­ments of pre­cious, in­valu­able mis­ery, she re­joiced in tears of agony to be at Cleve­land; and as she re­turned by a dif­fer­ent cir­cuit to the house, feel­ing all the hap­py priv­ilege of coun­try lib­er­ty, of wan­der­ing from place to place in free and lux­uri­ous soli­tude, she re­solved to spend al­most ev­ery hour of ev­ery day while she re­mained with the Palmers, in the in­dul­gence of such soli­tary ram­bles.

She re­turned just in time to join the oth­ers as they quit­ted the house, on an ex­cur­sion through its more im­me­di­ate premis­es; and the rest of the morn­ing was eas­ily whiled away, in loung­ing round the kitchen gar­den, ex­am­in­ing the bloom up­on its walls, and lis­ten­ing to the gar­den­er’s lamen­ta­tions up­on blights, in dawdling through the green-​house, where the loss of her favourite plants, un­war­ily ex­posed, and nipped by the lin­ger­ing frost, raised the laugh­ter of Char­lotte,–and in vis­it­ing her poul­try-​yard, where, in the dis­ap­point­ed hopes of her dairy-​maid, by hens for­sak­ing their nests, or be­ing stolen by a fox, or in the rapid de­crease of a promis­ing young brood, she found fresh sources of mer­ri­ment.

The morn­ing was fine and dry, and Mar­ianne, in her plan of em­ploy­ment abroad, had not cal­cu­lat­ed for any change of weath­er dur­ing their stay at Cleve­land. With great sur­prise there­fore, did she find her­self pre­vent­ed by a set­tled rain from go­ing out again af­ter din­ner. She had de­pend­ed on a twi­light walk to the Gre­cian tem­ple, and per­haps all over the grounds, and an evening mere­ly cold or damp would not have de­terred her from it; but a heavy and set­tled rain even SHE could not fan­cy dry or pleas­ant weath­er for walk­ing.

Their par­ty was small, and the hours passed qui­et­ly away. Mrs. Palmer had her child, and Mrs. Jen­nings her car­pet-​work; they talked of the friends they had left be­hind, ar­ranged La­dy Mid­dle­ton’s en­gage­ments, and won­dered whether Mr. Palmer and Colonel Bran­don would get far­ther than Read­ing that night. Eli­nor, how­ev­er lit­tle con­cerned in it, joined in their dis­course; and Mar­ianne, who had the knack of find­ing her way in ev­ery house to the li­brary, how­ev­er it might be avoid­ed by the fam­ily in gen­er­al, soon pro­cured her­self a book.

Noth­ing was want­ing on Mrs. Palmer’s side that con­stant and friend­ly good hu­mour could do, to make them feel them­selves wel­come. The open­ness and hearti­ness of her man­ner more than atoned for that want of rec­ol­lec­tion and el­egance which made her of­ten de­fi­cient in the forms of po­lite­ness; her kind­ness, rec­om­mend­ed by so pret­ty a face, was en­gag­ing; her fol­ly, though ev­ident was not dis­gust­ing, be­cause it was not con­ceit­ed; and Eli­nor could have for­giv­en ev­ery thing but her laugh.

The two gen­tle­men ar­rived the next day to a very late din­ner, af­ford­ing a pleas­ant en­large­ment of the par­ty, and a very wel­come va­ri­ety to their con­ver­sa­tion, which a long morn­ing of the same con­tin­ued rain had re­duced very low.

Eli­nor had seen so lit­tle of Mr. Palmer, and in that lit­tle had seen so much va­ri­ety in his ad­dress to her sis­ter and her­self, that she knew not what to ex­pect to find him in his own fam­ily. She found him, how­ev­er, per­fect­ly the gen­tle­man in his be­haviour to all his vis­itors, and on­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly rude to his wife and her moth­er; she found him very ca­pa­ble of be­ing a pleas­ant com­pan­ion, and on­ly pre­vent­ed from be­ing so al­ways, by too great an ap­ti­tude to fan­cy him­self as much su­pe­ri­or to peo­ple in gen­er­al, as he must feel him­self to be to Mrs. Jen­nings and Char­lotte. For the rest of his char­ac­ter and habits, they were marked, as far as Eli­nor could per­ceive, with no traits at all un­usu­al in his sex and time of life. He was nice in his eat­ing, un­cer­tain in his hours; fond of his child, though af­fect­ing to slight it; and idled away the morn­ings at bil­liards, which ought to have been de­vot­ed to busi­ness. She liked him, how­ev­er, up­on the whole, much bet­ter than she had ex­pect­ed, and in her heart was not sor­ry that she could like him no more;– not sor­ry to be driv­en by the ob­ser­va­tion of his Epi­curism, his self­ish­ness, and his con­ceit, to rest with com­pla­cen­cy on the re­mem­brance of Ed­ward’s gen­er­ous tem­per, sim­ple taste, and dif­fi­dent feel­ings.

Of Ed­ward, or at least of some of his con­cerns, she now re­ceived in­tel­li­gence from Colonel Bran­don, who had been in­to Dorset­shire late­ly; and who, treat­ing her at once as the dis­in­ter­est­ed friend of Mr. Fer­rars, and the kind of con­fi­dant of him­self, talked to her a great deal of the par­son­age at De­laford, de­scribed its de­fi­cien­cies, and told her what he meant to do him­self to­wards re­mov­ing them.–His be­haviour to her in this, as well as in ev­ery oth­er par­tic­ular, his open plea­sure in meet­ing her af­ter an ab­sence of on­ly ten days, his readi­ness to con­verse with her, and his def­er­ence for her opin­ion, might very well jus­ti­fy Mrs. Jen­nings’s per­sua­sion of his at­tach­ment, and would have been enough, per­haps, had not Eli­nor still, as from the first, be­lieved Mar­ianne his re­al favourite, to make her sus­pect it her­self. But as it was, such a no­tion had scarce­ly ev­er en­tered her head, ex­cept by Mrs. Jen­nings’s sug­ges­tion; and she could not help be­liev­ing her­self the nicest ob­serv­er of the two;–she watched his eyes, while Mrs. Jen­nings thought on­ly of his be­haviour;–and while his looks of anx­ious so­lic­itude on Mar­ianne’s feel­ing, in her head and throat, the be­gin­ning of a heavy cold, be­cause un­ex­pressed by words, en­tire­ly es­caped the lat­ter la­dy’s ob­ser­va­tion;–SHE could dis­cov­er in them the quick feel­ings, and need­less alarm of a lover.

Two de­ligh­ful twi­light walks on the third and fourth evenings of her be­ing there, not mere­ly on the dry grav­el of the shrub­bery, but all over the grounds, and es­pe­cial­ly in the most dis­tant parts of them, where there was some­thing more of wild­ness than in the rest, where the trees were the old­est, and the grass was the longest and wettest, had–as­sist­ed by the still greater im­pru­dence of sit­ting in her wet shoes and stock­ings–giv­en Mar­ianne a cold so vi­olent as, though for a day or two tri­fled with or de­nied, would force it­self by in­creas­ing ail­ments on the con­cern of ev­ery body, and the no­tice of her­self. Pre­scrip­tions poured in from all quar­ters, and as usu­al, were all de­clined. Though heavy and fever­ish, with a pain in her limbs, and a cough, and a sore throat, a good night’s rest was to cure her en­tire­ly; and it was with dif­fi­cul­ty that Eli­nor pre­vailed on her, when she went to bed, to try one or two of the sim­plest of the reme­dies.