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SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
by Jane Austen (1811)
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 ***,
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 delightful 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.