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 choose 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 southeast, 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, of 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
greenhouse, 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 had
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 delighted 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.
Sense and Sensibility - Chapter 41 Sense and Sensibility Sense and Sensibility - Chapter 43