Sense and Sensibility
connection, you understand me,—it would have been far preferable to
her,—it would not have given her half the vexation that _this_ does. I
was exceedingly pleased to hear that Mrs. Ferrars considered it in that
light; a very gratifying circumstance you know to us all. ‘It would
have been beyond comparison,’ she said, ‘the least evil of the two, and
she would be glad to compound _now_ for nothing worse.’ But however,
all that is quite out of the question,—not to be thought of or
mentioned—as to any attachment you know, it never could be: all that is
gone by. But I thought I would just tell you of this, because I knew
how much it must please you. Not that you have any reason to regret, my
dear Elinor. There is no doubt of your doing exceedingly well,—quite as
well, or better, perhaps, all things considered. Has Colonel Brandon
been with you lately?”
Elinor had heard enough, if not to gratify her vanity, and raise her
self-importance, to agitate her nerves and fill her mind;—and she was
therefore glad to be spared from the necessity of saying much in reply
herself, and from the danger of hearing any thing more from her
brother, by the entrance of Mr. Robert Ferrars. After a few moments’
chat, John Dashwood, recollecting that Fanny was yet uninformed of her
sister’s being there, quitted the room in quest of her; and Elinor was
left to improve her acquaintance with Robert, who, by the gay
unconcern, the happy self-complacency of his manner while enjoying so
unfair a division of his mother’s love and liberality, to the prejudice
of his banished brother, earned only by his own dissipated course of
life, and that brother’s integrity, was confirming her most
unfavourable opinion of his head and heart.
They had scarcely been two minutes by themselves, before he began to
speak of Edward; for he, too, had heard of the living, and was very
inquisitive on the subject. Elinor repeated the particulars of it, as
she had given them to John; and their effect on Robert, though very
different, was not less striking than it had been on _him_. He laughed
most immoderately. The idea of Edward’s being a clergyman, and living
in a small parsonage-house, diverted him beyond measure;—and when to
that was added the fanciful imagery of Edward reading prayers in a
white surplice, and publishing the banns of marriage between John Smith
and Mary Brown, he could conceive nothing more ridiculous.
Elinor, while she waited in silence and immovable gravity, the
conclusion of such folly, could not restrain her eyes from being fixed
on him with a look that spoke all the contempt it excited. It was a
look, however, very well bestowed, for it relieved her own feelings,
and gave no intelligence to him. He was recalled from wit to wisdom,
not by any reproof of hers, but by his own sensibility.
“We may treat it as a joke,” said he, at last, recovering from the
affected laugh which had considerably lengthened out the genuine gaiety
of the moment; “but, upon my soul, it is a most serious business. Poor
Edward! he is ruined for ever. I am extremely sorry for it; for I know
him to be a very good-hearted creature; as well-meaning a fellow
perhaps, as any in the world. You must not judge of him, Miss Dashwood,
from _your_ slight acquaintance. Poor Edward! His manners are certainly
not the happiest in nature. But we are not all born, you know, with the
same powers,—the same address. Poor fellow! to see him in a circle of
strangers! To be sure it was pitiable enough; but upon my soul, I
believe he has as good a heart as any in the kingdom; and I declare and
protest to you I never was so shocked in my life, as when it all burst
forth. I could not believe it. My mother was the first person who told
me of it; and I, feeling myself called on to act with resolution,
immediately said to her, ‘My dear madam, I do not know what you may
intend to do on the occasion, but as for myself, I must say, that if
Edward does marry this young woman, _I_ never will see him again.’ That
was what I said immediately. I was most uncommonly shocked, indeed!
Poor Edward! he has done for himself completely,—shut himself out for
ever from all decent society! But, as I directly said to my mother, I
am not in the least surprised at it; from his style of education, it
was always to be expected. My poor mother was half frantic.”
“Have you ever seen the lady?”
“Yes; once, while she was staying in this house, I happened to drop in
for ten minutes; and I saw quite enough of her. The merest awkward
country girl, without style, or elegance, and almost without beauty. I
remember her perfectly. Just the kind of girl I should suppose likely
to captivate poor Edward. I offered immediately, as soon as my mother
related the affair to me, to talk to him myself, and dissuade him from
the match; but it was too late _then_, I found, to do any thing, for
unluckily, I was not in the way at first, and knew nothing of it till
after the breach had taken place, when it was not for me, you know, to
interfere. But had I been informed of it a few hours earlier, I think
it is most probable that something might have been hit on. I certainly
should have represented it to Edward in a very strong light. ‘My dear
fellow,’ I should have said, ‘consider what you are doing. You are
making a most disgraceful connection, and such a one as your family are
unanimous in disapproving.’ I cannot help thinking, in short, that
means might have been found. But now it is all too late. He must be
starved, you know, that is certain; absolutely starved.”
He had just settled this point with great composure, when the entrance
of Mrs. John Dashwood put an end to the subject. But though _she_ never
spoke of it out of her own family, Elinor could see its influence on
her mind, in the something like confusion of countenance with which she
entered, and an attempt at cordiality in her behaviour to herself. She
even proceeded so far as to be concerned to find that Elinor and her
sister were so soon to leave town, as she had hoped to see more of
them;—an exertion in which her husband, who attended her into the room,
and hung enamoured over her accents, seemed to distinguish every thing
that was most affectionate and graceful.
CHAPTER XLII.
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.