Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

W hen Margaret had departed, and the little party had waved the carriage well into the road beyond, they returned to the house. Mrs Dashwood had already entered hastily before them, her eyes still watering from taking leave of her youngest girl, to console herself in solitude. Now Elinor caught Edward's arm, and they walked companionably with Marianne and the Colonel.

‘I hope Mama does not come to regret her decision to send Margaret off to Norland on her own,' said Elinor as they entered the drawing room. ‘I own I do not trust that Fanny does not have some ulterior motive for inviting her. She has shown no interest in Margaret before. Unless you are right, Marianne, and Fanny has been put into a scheme of cajoling Margaret into promising her Mama's very pretty breakfast set!' She laughed.

‘I would not scruple to think Fanny guilty of wishing it,' replied Marianne archly. ‘Meg is a favourite with John, however. I suppose he means to find her a husband! Perhaps that would be no dreadful thing, considering her age. She cannot stay all her life at Barton! She must be exposed to the world eventually. She must fall in love!'

‘Perhaps John intends to find her a suitable match, and that is why he has invited her,' remarked Elinor sensibly.

‘A suitable match ?' cried Marianne. ‘For shame Elinor! How can you be so unmoved, so cool? For my part I wish Meg could know the happiness of being in love!'

‘Then do not forget,' replied Elinor laughingly, ‘that our sister claims she has no interest in matrimony at present, for if you do not take care to remember it, it may be you who is more disappointed in two months' time when she comes home with a heart as unattached as it ever was.'

‘Yes, but you know our Meg—she is as impulsive and naive as I was at her age—she may think she is impervious to the charms of a handsome gentleman now, but I am sure she will not be without admirers, and her notions of remaining single may well be tried!'

‘She is so handsome I think it cannot happen,' remarked Edward thoughtfully. ‘London must bring her suitors even if Norland does not!'

‘And yet, it will be a remarkable man who can tame our Meg,' replied Elinor with a smile. ‘If my brother's intention is to find her a husband, then they will have to make a lady of her first, and that, I am persuaded, will be quite an undertaking!'

‘I suspect,' replied Edward sagely, ‘that if anybody is to succeed, Fanny might do the job creditably. But I hope Meg will not return to us too much altered!'

‘I would not have her at all altered, if it could be helped,' added Elinor fondly.

‘John will look out for her,' reassured Edward. ‘And Margaret, for all her youth, is a sensible girl. She has your example to follow, my dear!'

Colonel Brandon, who had been listening in silence, now interjected. ‘And yet, Margaret is something more than just a regular young lady. She lacks those affectations which most eighteen-year-old females have caught from their peers. She is wholly unspoiled, despite having suffered the adversity of losing her father at a young age—there is a freshness about her, an innocence which I would dislike very much to see jaded by the sophistications of town. Her beauty, I am very much afraid, will mean your brother must be on his guard to protect her less she fall prey to those unsavoury men who lurk unnoticed in the midst of higher sorts of people, and who hide their motives until the last moment, until it is too late.'

Elinor, sensing that this remark had much to do with his past experiences, and his late loss, hastened kindly to add, ‘Yes, Margaret is uncommonly handsome, it is true. But she is hardly aware of herself. Females who are aware of their own consequence, of having a pretty face, or an uncommonly pretty one even, are those who take on those types of affectations—who invite the kind of gentlemen to whom you refer; but you must remember Margaret is as incapable of knowing her own power as she is using it to her advantage.'

‘She does not know her own power, that is true,' agreed Brandon gravely. ‘Those women who seek to use their beauty to catch husbands in the most forward way make themselves more obvious by their willingness to be misled.'

Here, Edward agreed. ‘Margaret may know little of the outside world yet, Brandon, but she is not naturally inclined to coquetry and pretence. She is too innocent for such artifice.'

A pained look passed over Brandon's countenance and Elinor saw Marianne cast a sharp glance at her husband. She, too, suspected that the Colonel must be thinking of his former love, Eliza Williams, who had indeed sold herself to the highest bidder using the currency of her pretty face. Her daughter Beth, as she had been affectionately called, had been in her own turn taken in by just such a man as he was thinking of, and Elinor knew that man was Willoughby, the very same former lover of Marianne's who had broken her heart five years ago. The Colonel had not forgiven Willoughby his crimes against his wife, even if Marianne herself had forgiven them long ago.

Marianne, however, did not acknowledge the name which would bring only pain to her husband to speak aloud, and now she turned to Edward and said, ‘You are right, Edward, my sister could never be accused of coquetry or pretence, but she runs quite wild at home—even you must admit it, Elinor! Mama says she walks by herself for hours in the mornings and does not bother to wear her boots. Here at Delaford, I have seen her come in from the garden in her bare feet and no hat, and here it is just the servants to see her. The commonplace notions of decorum which are natural to us, mean nothing to our sister. I would never accuse her of impropriety, but as for real, ladylike behaviour, she simply does not care for such things. I know she will conduct herself as she ought, when she is with our brother, but in general she cares not for propriety nor what others think of her!'

Elinor smiled at this. ‘It was not so long ago that I recollect warning you to guard against just such a lack of propriety, or had you forgotten the folly of your youth?'

Marianne blushed. ‘I never ran wild like Meg, and besides, that was long ago, Elinor, and it is unfair of you to bring it up, for you know what pain my past behaviour gives me. But that time is long gone, now. I have, I hope, learned from my painful history.'

Elinor would have made another smiling reply but for the appearance of Mrs Dashwood in the doorway, pink-eyed, but having now tolerably composed herself.

‘So, it shall be a party reduced in number tonight,' she said as she sat down beside Elinor. ‘I wonder if I shall ever get used to seeing Margaret's empty chair at table! It will be a sad dinner indeed, our last together! It is well that I return to Barton tomorrow, I think! Oh, how I shall miss her!' She dabbed again at her cheeks.

‘Oh, you are to return so soon?' asked Edward, a little surprised. ‘I had thought you were to remain at least a few days more. Can you not extend your stay a little longer? You are most welcome to stay on at the Parsonage, you know.'

‘Dear Edward!' replied Mrs Dashwood, bestowing upon him her most grateful smiles. ‘You are too generous! However, I have stayed long enough at Delaford, and besides, I am anxious to return to Barton cottage and see how my garden has grown. The bramley-apples will be thick on the trees, and the elderberries will be soon ripened enough to put to jam. No, I shall keep myself well occupied, I think!'

The Colonel added, ‘Then I shall have Johns take you over in the dogcart at whatever time you desire it. I myself take my leave tomorrow also, for I am expected at Whitwell by noon.'

‘You are prodigiously kind, dearest Philip!'

Forthwith, Mrs Dashwood, assured of at least one of her daughters' visiting her in a fort'night night or so, took her leave the following morning. She was followed out of the gate promptly by Colonel Brandon and young William, who sat proudly astride the horse in front of Brandon, and were followed by Beckham, the overseer whom Brandon had had in mind to run Whitwell. Thus the remainder of the two families at Delaford were left again to entertain each other as best they could with a depleted number of persons.

Elinor saw with a growing uneasiness Marianne's low spirits and barely concealed tears at her husband's departure and attributed it to a very natural wish to be by her husband's side. Still, she thought, Brandon would soon be home again, and it was not as if Marianne did not have company only a short walk away at the Parsonage. She said as much to Marianne as they parted.

‘Yes, Elinor, of course you are right!' exclaimed Marianne, her eyes red. ‘I shall keep myself busy and the time will pass by quickly enough! I do not like him to leave us for long, and he is to be gone away a week or perhaps more!'

But the reservedness of her manner, in not at all meeting Elinor's eyes, and her turning away quite quickly, all caused in Elinor an uneasiness which prevailed upon her for some time after their little party broke up, and each family went to its own establishment.

Elinor had hardly entered her own house and got her anxieties for Marianne out of her head, and stopped wondering if Fanny had been put into some odd scheme of getting back the coveted plate, or worse, when another piece of news put her into a much greater anxiety for the household she and Edward had just quit.

In a morning's excursion to the village, one of the man servants who did odd jobs around the Parsonage happened to hear of some terrible news concerning Combe Magna, the seat of John Willoughby and his wife. When Willoughby had brought his wife into Somersetshire, Elinor had been in some anxiety for her sister, since the estate's being no extraordinary distance at fifty miles off meant that Delaford's inhabitants could never find themselves completely impervious to the doings of that house, more especially since one of their servants happened to be brother of Mrs John Willoughby's lady's maid. Elinor had only been glad the estate had not been situated closer as to make meetings between the two sets of families more certain.

But four years had passed and not once had the two parties been obliged to walk on different sides of a street, nor to inspect a shop through its windows before entering it. Situated as Combe was in Somersetshire, and themselves in Dorsetshire, the possibility of chance encounter would be very ill luck indeed. Besides this, Willoughby was of the habit to spend much of the winter in town. Elinor had eventually thought themselves, and Marianne in particular, quite safe from any encounter or from overhearing gossip, and the old servant who had a sister in service with the family had seldom mentioned his sister or her employer.

However, now the old fellow hastened to pass on some most terrible news, not the least bit sensible that Elinor herself might have a very particular interest in the goings-on at Combe. The gist of the news was this: the family was currently in residence there, having just returned from London. The little boy had somehow gotten away from his nurse while being taken for a walk and had been trampled by a horse.

‘I thought the Colonel ought to know of it, Ma'am,' offered the old man, ‘since he is on terms with Mr John Willoughby's aunt. Therefore, I saw fit to take a special interest in the tragedy, you might say. I dare say it will shock everyone in these here parts, even those that don't know the family. Poor, poor wee lad!'

‘How dreadful!' Elinor was excited by varying emotions, not all of them congruent. John Willoughby had caused her sister much heartache, and Elinor had not yet forgiven him, although he had acknowledged his part in Marianne's broken heart and subsequent illness. But that was five years ago and although she was wary of the name "Willoughby" she was not without compassion. ‘That is a tragedy indeed. I am exceedingly sorry to hear it. There is no hope at all for the child?'

‘Kilt, Ma'am, he was, outright as they say. It would ‘ave been a very quick end, poor creature. His mama is in hysterics, my sister says. Their only child, and still in his frocks! The nurse ‘as gotten sent away in disgrace, but still, nothing can ‘elp the lad now, nor ‘is poor mother and father. Tis too bad, too bad!'

Elinor was barely able to express her condolences for she was wondering very much just how poor Marianne would take the news when she heard of it. Her sister was not without compassion, and surely having had a previous connection to Willoughby, this development must cause her some pain when she heard of the little boy's death, if only for Willoughby's sake.

Dismissing the old servant, Elinor thought upon the matter for some time and determined that she ought to be the one to break the news to her sister, in case she heard it in some public arena. She would wish to spare Marianne the pain of not being free to express her shock and distress, or worse, be unable to refrain from such an expression at a most inappropriate moment! Edward, upon hearing the news, was in agreement with this notion and urged her to go at once to the Great House. But as it was nearly dinner time, Elinor determined to go first thing in the morning instead.

It may easily be imagined with what foreboding Elinor undertook the short walk between the two houses the next morning. But Marianne, it seemed, had already been apprised of the tragedy, and when Elinor went to her, she was already tolerably composed.

‘It is a terrible thing for them both, and I feel very much for them, Elinor, but I am no more affected by these events than what would be natural for anyone acquainted with a family who live fifty miles away. I only wonder at the strangeness of life, which dictates that Willoughby should lose his child to Sophia Grey, whom he married over me—a couple whom, by his own admission to you, care not for each other—and yet here are we, raising his illegitimate child, unbeknownst to him. I don't understand life, sometimes, Elinor—it is quite unfair! And yet, I would not for the world wish him to know his would-be heir is here, being raised by my husband. It would, I am sure, quite undo him, in his present state. We must all be very careful never to let a word of suspicion go unaddressed.'

‘We must be thankful that there have been no rumours of William's parentage,' replied Elinor, privately relieved that her sister had taken the news so well. ‘The Colonel has kept everything so quiet that no one but Mrs Jennings has ever suspected a thing, and even she has ceased trying to urge a confidence as to the fate of Eliza's child. The world must go on thinking the boy died peacefully in the arms of his mother.'

‘Yes. For his sake, and for Willoughby's, it must be so,' agreed Marianne. ‘I cannot ever pretend to like his wife, for she is a cold, supercilious creature who married him for his estate, and he married her for her money, and so they are well-matched, I think. But if any a couple so awful can ever deserve my pity and compassion, it must be Willoughby and his wife, now.'

Elinor was glad to see that Marianne had not been so affected by this bad news that she should have cause for alarm, and she left the mansion-house again soon after she had arrived, with a heart as composed as it could be about her sister.