CHAPTER 42

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 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.