Chapter 42

by Jane Austen

　　One other short call in Harley Street, in which Elinorreceived her brother's congratulations on their travellingso far towards Barton without any expense, and on ColonelBrandon's being to follow them to Cleveland in a day or two,completed the intercourse of the brother and sistersin town;--and a faint invitation from Fanny, to cometo 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 Johnto Elinor, of the promptitude with which he should cometo see her at Delaford, was all that foretold any meetingin the country.It amused her to observe that all her friends seemeddetermined 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 asher 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 setout 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 comfortin London, and eager as she had long been to quit it,could not, when it came to the point, bid adieu tothe house in which she had for the last time enjoyedthose 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 shecould 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 lingeringthoughts to fix on, she left no creature behind, from whomit would give her a moment's regret to be divided for ever,she was pleased to be free herself from the persecutionof Lucy's friendship, she was grateful for bringingher sister away unseen by Willoughby since his marriage,and she looked forward with hope to what a few monthsof tranquility at Barton might do towards restoringMarianne's peace of mind, and confirming her own.Their journey was safely performed. The secondday brought them into the cherished, or the prohibited,county of Somerset, for as such was it dwelt on by turnsin Marianne's imagination; and in the forenoon of the thirdthey drove up to Cleveland.Cleveland was a spacious, modern-built house,situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but thepleasure-grounds were tolerably extensive; and likeevery 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 ofthem altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars,shut out the offices.Marianne entered the house with a heart swellingwith emotion from the consciousness of being only eightymiles 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 showher child to the housekeeper, she quitted it again,stealing away through the winding shrubberies, now justbeginning to be in beauty, to gain a distant eminence;where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering overa wide tract of country to the south-east, could fondlyrest 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 daywhile she remained with the Palmers, in the indulgence ofsuch solitary rambles.She returned just in time to join the othersas they quitted the house, on an excursion through itsmore immediate premises; and the rest of the morning waseasily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen garden,examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to thegardener's lamentations upon blights, in dawdling throughthe 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 herpoultry-yard, where, in the disappointed hopes of herdairy-maid, by hens forsaking their nests, or beingstolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promisingyoung brood, she found fresh sources of merriment.The morning was fine and dry, and Marianne,in her plan of employment abroad, had not calculatedfor any change of weather during their stay at Cleveland.With great surprise therefore, did she find herself preventedby 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 merelycold or damp would not have deterred her from it;but a heavy and settled rain even she could not fancy dryor 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 wonderedwhether Mr. Palmer and Colonel Brandon would get fartherthan Reading that night. Elinor, however little concernedin it, joined in their discourse; and Marianne, who hadthe 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 constantand friendly good humour could do, to make them feelthemselves welcome. The openness and heartiness of hermanner more than atoned for that want of recollectionand elegance which made her often deficient in the formsof politeness; her kindness, recommended by so prettya face, was engaging; her folly, though evidentwas 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 verylate dinner, affording a pleasant enlargement of the party,and a very welcome variety to their conversation, which along morning of the same continued rain had reduced very low.Elinor had seen so little of Mr. Palmer, and in thatlittle had seen so much variety in his address to hersister and herself, that she knew not what to expectto 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 greatan aptitude to fancy himself as much superior to peoplein general, as he must feel himself to be to Mrs. Jenningsand 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 oughtto have been devoted to business. She liked him, however,upon the whole, much better than she had expected, and inher 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 complacencyon 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 friendof 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 meantto do himself towards removing them.--His behaviourto her in this, as well as in every other particular,his open pleasure in meeting her after an absenceof only ten days, his readiness to converse with her,and his deference for her opinion, might very welljustify 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 couldnot help believing herself the nicest observer of thetwo;--she watched his eyes, while Mrs. Jennings thoughtonly of his behaviour;--and while his looks of anxioussolicitude 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 coulddiscover in them the quick feelings, and needless alarmof a lover.Two delighful twilight walks on the third and fourthevenings of her being there, not merely on the dry gravelof the shrubbery, but all over the grounds, and especiallyin the most distant parts of them, where there was somethingmore of wildness than in the rest, where the trees werethe oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest,had--assisted by the still greater imprudence of sittingin her wet shoes and stockings--given Marianne a coldso violent as, though for a day or two trifled withor denied, would force itself by increasing ailments onthe 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 painin her limbs, and a cough, and a sore throat, a good night'srest was to cure her entirely; and it was with difficultythat Elinor prevailed on her, when she went to bed,to try one or two of the simplest of the remedies.