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 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 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.

[Illustration: _Showing her child to the housekeeper._]

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.

[Illustration: _The gardener's lamentations._]

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.