CHAPTER VI

ne 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 Clevel and 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 Magnaltry-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" title="a.自负的；自夸的">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 confidante 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 delighful 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.

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

luxurioussolitude, 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 pou
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