“My dear Margaret,” said Elinor one morning, peering over her young sister's shoulder as the latter wrote with great energy, “do leave us a few sheets of paper if you would, or poor Mama may be reduced to penning a reply to Mrs. Carey's last on Mr. Farnwell's coarse packaging.”
“I thought you were going to scold me for my blots again,” said Margaret, not looking up from the page.
“Should I?”
“It is hard to write neatly when there is so much to tell.”
“Do not mind Elinor, Margaret,” said Mrs. Dashwood. “She has forgotten what it was to be thirteen.”
“Not at all,” Elinor replied.
“That will never do, Mama,” said Marianne with a sideways glance at Elinor. “Surely Elinor's writing was as elegant and concise then as it is now.”
Margaret made a face and asked primly for quiet while she finished her letter. With good-natured laughter, the others complied.
Marianne had come to relish carefree moments at the cottage. All four ladies had occasional bouts of melancholy, singly and severally. It was not so very long ago that they were happy in Sussex at their dear Norland, their family whole and their lives largely free of the cares common to gentlewomen of reduced means.
They had suffered greatly and had emerged from deep mourning into something lighter—at least Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret had done so. Marianne and Elinor had rather traded their sorrow for a new disturbance of mind. The unsettledness of romance complicated by distance kept Marianne's spirits in a continual flutter, and even Elinor's equanimity occasionally faltered while Edward's concerns, if not his heart, remained a mystery to her.
Edward and Elinor knew what it was to love; of that there could be no doubt. Equally doubtless was that something—someone, rather!—stood between them. As for Marianne herself, she knew the colonel loved her, and she felt increasingly certain each day that he did not love in vain. She perceived, however, the lack of some elusive thing to render her entirely convinced, and she wondered what it could possibly be. It was unaccountable, for did she not always know her own mind?
If only he were with them now!
Nevertheless, his excellencies of character shone brilliantly in his absence. Devotion and honour had driven him to assume the duties that had taken him from Barton. Constancy was proven by time and difficulty. Affection—boldness, too!—could be gleaned from every line of his letter to her. How exasperating it was that the cost of seeing his virtues displayed to best advantage should be the testing of her patience! She smiled to think that he, too, wherever he was and whatever he did at this moment, might feel the same impatience.
It came to her that the one thing lacking was his presence. How she missed him! All would be clear when she saw him again. She would know when she looked into his face whether her heart was completely his.
The ladies did not have to wait long to hear from Edward. Mrs. Dashwood directed Elinor to open anything from him, and Elinor insisted on doing so with Marianne rather than by herself. Together the sisters read Edward's first letter since his visit to Barton. It shed little light on his circumstances, though it showed he had remained true to his purpose:
The crucial piece has been managed, though I cannot take the credit for more than expressing my determination to deal plainly and bear the consequences. It was not prettily done, but I believe it was honourably done, and what has resulted from it is more than I dared hope for.His next letter, dated a few days later, increased rather than relieved their curiosity and agitation:
Mother and I have yet to come to an agreement. I am afraid a breach is imminent. I have some few resources of my own, but being largely dependent upon her, I cannot say where things will stand when the rift occurs. Fanny will side with Mother, and I may no longer be welcome at Norland or her house in town. In light of this, I ask you to direct any further correspondence to my rooms at No.—, Pall Mall.“Oh, how can he be so teasing? Of course we will all be pleased, and you especially! He is determined to marry you, Elinor!” Marianne dropped the letter and turned to embrace her sister, who had been reading along with her. “Can you doubt all will turn out beautifully?”
I will say one thing with confidence: when I am able to return to you I expect to do so as my own man, unencumbered by the weight of the past and unhindered by the reserve that was such poor repayment for your warm hospitality. Marianne should be pleased at this, and I dearly hope she shall not be alone in her pleasure.
Elinor looked excited and anxious by turns. “His mother can still make difficulties, lasting ones. She may have done so already.”
“He will not give in to her.”
“It appears not.”
“Such calm language! Do you doubt him?”
“No.” Elinor turned away a little. “But whatever happens, I hope it happens soon. This not knowing is hard to bear.” Elinor blinked, and Marianne watched a tear escape her eyes. “It must be so much the worse for him. After enduring whatever unpleasant scenes he has done of necessity, I hate the thought that he suffers even further at the hands of his own family. There is not one among them who will stand by him.”
Marianne was as disgusted as Elinor herself on that subject. Yet if Edward required support, why should it not be supplied? He was not entirely friendless.
“Let us ask Mama to write to him now,” Marianne begged her sister. “I know you will not write yourself, but we can each add a postscript, even Margaret. You cannot object if we all do it. We will provide the solace his relations deny him.”
Elinor stared at Marianne for what seemed like an age. Marianne saw the exact moment when she capitulated and hurried to call her mother before Elinor could change her mind.
With such delicate matters being communicated through the post, Marianne had thought any threat to their peace would come by way of Sir John's curiosity, but the missives either did not fall into his hands, or they did not draw his notice if they did. Instead, Mrs. Jennings was to blame for moments of acute awkwardness and distress, and oddly not through ill-timed remarks of her own, but through the words of those who visited Barton Park at her invitation. The first of these unwelcome new acquaintances was her own daughter, Mrs. Palmer.
The Palmers were a horridly mismatched pair. Charlotte Palmer was a pretty, empty-headed woman, and her husband was an ill-tempered man who took offence at being forced into conversation with any body on any subject. On the occasion of their first meeting, Elinor managed to be civil and to listen with feigned interest to Mrs. Palmer's chatter. Marianne could not believe her sister had any real interest in anything Mrs. Palmer had to say. One's head ached at the very notion.
“I have been spoilt, Elinor,” Marianne said as soon as Sir John and his guests left the cottage. “Terribly spoilt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our last visitor was not half so tedious.”
“Oh, dear,” Elinor said, blushing and smiling. “But do not you find Mrs. Palmer a 'monstrous pretty girl'? Sir John will be heartbroken.”
“She is pretty enough, though more than her beauty I cannot praise.”
“I cannot like Mr. Palmer's manners towards his wife,” Mrs. Dashwood admitted after they had arranged themselves comfortably in the parlour.
“Nor can we, Mama,” Elinor said. “Mrs. Palmer seems to make the best of her situation, however, so we shall endeavour to do the same.”
Marianne's endeavours in that regard, such as they were, were nearly thwarted the following day when she and her sisters dined at the park. She was prepared for rudeness from Mr. Palmer, which was well supplied. She had not, however, bargained for more than excessive inanities from his wife, and therefore was taken aback by the latter's topic of conversation.
Mrs. Palmer apparently had heard from her relations something of Mr. Willoughby's interest in the middle Dashwood sister, and it was clear whatever details of the matter she was given had merely whetted her appetite. She must have been warned not to mention his name. As a result, it was a moment before Marianne realised who, exactly, was the subject of Mrs. Palmer's convoluted and disjointed discourse. The lady began a remark and then stopped abruptly only to sigh, laugh incongruously, and pick up the topic again. However, the eventual mention of Allenham and then Coombe Magna left no room for misapprehension.
“It is too bad. So handsome!” She actually giggled. “Ah, well. We live very near him in the country, only ten miles apart I think.”
“Twenty-seven,” said her husband.
“Is that so? I have never been inside the house, but it is thought to be a pretty place.”
“Vile.”
Marianne wished Mr. Palmer's brief, discouraging syllables would put an end to his wife's volubility, but she had no such luck.
“Is it truly vile, my love? Then it must be some other place that is so pretty.”
When they were all sat in the dining room, Elinor drew Mrs. Palmer's conversation to herself. Marianne sent a grateful look to her elder sister, whose patience and tolerance were beyond fathoming. She heartily wished they had stayed at home and dined in comfort with Mama! Margaret, at least, was fortunate to have nothing to disturb her beyond the fleeting attentions of their hosts.
Marianne directed her own attention to the meal before her and determined not to hear more than one word in ten from Mrs. Palmer's lips if she could help it. She could not shut out the woman's nattering entirely; alas, she was sat too near for that. She had just begun to feel the tension in her shoulders ease when she heard something that made her grip her fork so fiercely it pained her. She almost wished she had paid more notice, for Mrs. Palmer was speaking not of Willoughby this time, but of the colonel! If she understood correctly, Mrs. Jennings had once intended her younger daughter to become Mrs. Brandon! Marianne stifled an incredulous shriek.
“Miss Marianne, are you well?” came Lady Middleton's voice down the table.
Marianne never had been good at stifling things. “Perfectly,” she said in a steady voice. She was well, for James had been spared the fate of being talked into a stupor every evening by an incurably silly woman! She reached for her glass and downed the wine greedily.
The rest of dinner passed in a blur. Marianne was glad to find herself in the carriage at last, hearing nothing to discompose her either in Margaret's raptures over the ragout or in Elinor's silence.
The Palmers departed for their own home the following morning. It may well have been weeks later, but it seemed to Marianne that the Dashwoods had a very few days to appreciate their reprieve from the couple's discomfiting presence before Sir John was back at the cottage, begging them to come to the park at once and meet his wife's third cousins, Miss Steele and Miss Lucy Steele, who were, in his estimation, the sweetest girls in the world.
“Mrs. Jennings has done it again,” Marianne said to Elinor once Sir John finally gave up his attempts to shepherd them to the park and went back alone. “The woman wastes no time.”
“What has Mrs. Jennings done repeatedly?”
“Invited some nine days' wonder to Barton Park. You cannot believe it was Lady Middleton's idea to invite the Palmers, surely? The sisters barely spoke to one another!”
“They are like night and day,” Elinor admitted.
“Chalk and cheese.”
“Toast and jam,” said Margaret, belatedly joining them.
“Do you even know what we are talking of?” Marianne asked her younger sister.
“Food. At least I was. Did Sir John invite us to dinner?”
“I promised we would call in a day or two to meet his guests,” said Elinor. “A dinner invitation will not likely be far behind.”
“Good,” said Margaret.
The two eldest Dashwood girls made the promised call and found that Sir John's information, as ever, was unreliable. Whether these distant cousins Mrs. Jennings had discovered during a morning's excursion to Exeter and impulsively invited to the park were two of 'the sweetest girls in the world' was subject to debate. Marianne saw little evidence of it, instead finding Miss Steele and Miss Lucy to be among the stupidest and slyest of women, respectively, she had encountered in recent memory. She tried not to look at Elinor every time one of the girls made a vulgar or ingratiating comment. Surprisingly, Lady Middleton seemed thoroughly charmed by the pair. So one conquers insipidity not with sense, Marianne concluded, but with sycophancy! Ha! Small wonder she had failed there.
The Middleton children were little horrors that day. Not even Margaret as the youngest had been allowed to behave in such a wild manner in her nursery years. If the Steele sisters had any redeeming quality between them, endurance under the constant, noisy assault of the Middleton children might be it, though Marianne considered their complaisance quite as likely to result from a lack of proper feeling as an excess of it. Even worse was that when the pilfering of Miss Lucy's scissors elicited an indulgent smile or the pulling of Miss Steele's hair a compliment about the perpetrator, Lady Middleton appeared to take it as her due.
“Are not you relieved to be away at last?” Marianne asked Elinor as they walked back. “I am tempted to skip all the way to the cottage.”
“Refrain, if you please. Is that how you injured yourself before?”
“Oh!” Marianne cried, feeling herself blush at the memory. “Do not remind me of what I did then! Besides, you are not Margaret; you would not join me, and I had rather keep pace with you.”
”I am relieved.”
She grinned. “Relieved that I will restrict myself to a walk, or that we have left that parlour?”
“Both.”
There was something in Elinor's tone that did not sound right.
“Those children!” Marianne said, her expression sobering. “Mama would have been appalled. I am glad she did not come with us.” She looked at Elinor carefully. “But something more than that is bothering you. You are not one to be overset by such childish foolishness or the indulgence of it. What has disturbed you, Elinor?”
“I cannot be sure I did not imagine it, but I do not believe I did.”
“What?”
“Hostility.”
Marianne was bemused. “I cannot recall any thing like a display of temper, beyond the children's tantrums, of course. Who was hostile?”
“I have a strong impression that Miss Lucy Steele feels hostility towards me.”
“You! Why should that be? She does not even know you.”
Elinor was quiet for a moment. With her sister thus disconcerted, Marianne was grateful for every step that increased the distance between them and their new acquaintances.
“I have been thinking on it,” Elinor said at length, “since we said our farewells. I noticed Miss Lucy glare at me more than once. The first instance I mistook for an honest reaction to John's overturning her work-bag, but it seemed her ire was directed at me rather than simply hidden from the child. Another time, the sisters whispered together, and I heard one of them say my name—Elinor, not Miss Dashwood. Then they both turned to face me. Miss Steele looked at me as if I were a curiosity. Miss Lucy was clearly angry, though she smiled when she realised she had been caught staring. Her eyes remained cold, however.”
“Whatever were they about?”
“I have a suspicion.”
“Let me hear it,” said Marianne. They were almost at home now. Marianne altered her route so they might linger outdoors while they discussed this odd circumstance.
Elinor followed. “I found some of their behaviour curious. The younger's chastening of the elder may just be their usual way of going on in company. After all, Miss Steele by far has the poorer manners of the two. But when I consider it, Miss Lucy was only really energetic in suppressing her sister's conversation when the topics veered towards the personal as concerned me, or us: Norland, 'smart beaux', and the like.”
Marianne, not having paid sufficient attention to either the ladies or their conversation, could not confirm or deny Elinor's opinion.
“And there is this,” Elinor said. “The Steeles had been staying with friends in Exeter before coming to Barton. When Edward left us—”
“Edward?” Marianne stopped walking and looked at her sister.
“He returned to Longstaple,” Elinor continued. “From his letters we know he went from there directly to town. But when I walked with him the day before he left, he told me there was some chance he would have to go on to Exeter if he could not accomplish his business at Longstaple.”
Marianne stiffened. Then her eyes widened. “Are you implying they were somehow Edward's business, that one of them is responsible for his difficulties?”
“Former difficulties.”
Marianne was glad to see Elinor's broad smile. She smiled in return before frowning in disgust. “Can it be possible he was attached to one of them? Heaven forbid! I should despair of his taste if I were not certain of his love for you!”
Elinor's brow lifted. “I believe he despaired of it.”
“Indeed! Who would not?” It was difficult to credit. A very young Edward must have made that mistake. She could not imagine him being tempted to do so now, even if he had never met Elinor. “Of the two,” Marianne said, “it must be the younger. It could hardly be the elder.”
“Lucy Steele is very pretty.”
“No prettier than you, and vulgar besides.”
“The idea might never have taken root if her hair were not so very like mine in colour.”
It took Marianne a few moments to understand why her sister had mentioned hair. “The ring,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And you think she hates you. You think she knows who you are. To Edward, that is.”
“If she and Edward had an understanding of long duration, she might have known of my existence at any time after John's marriage. She undoubtedly heard something of me since Edward's visit to Norland, and she must have known he was coming to us here.”
“You cannot think Edward told her who had supplanted her in his affections, can you? Surely he is too discreet!”
“I agree. He would never do so. But what if he mentioned my name too often for that of a casual acquaintance, or talked particularly about our being in company at Norland, or was eager to quit Longstaple for Barton, and hardly happy to return there? In short, there might have been any number of little things an interested party would notice.” Elinor laughed mirthlessly. “She certainly could not have been blind to his disinterest in her. She does not appear to be stupid.”
Marianne reminded herself that the elder sister had impressed her as the stupid one. She thought about Miss Lucy's manner and aspect. “She does not appear to be heartbroken, either.”
“No. Judging by her behaviour towards Lady Middleton and the children, I believe she finds it easy to show more affection than she feels. I doubt there is any love on her side. Perhaps there never was.”
“And that which Edward felt has long faded.” Marianne rubbed her arms, feeling the chill in the air and thinking. “Why did Mrs. Jennings have to discover the Steeles and bring then to our notice? That woman has a surfeit of vexing relations.”
“Her discovering them may be for the best, in a way,” Elinor said.
“What?” Marianne said on an incredulous laugh, marvelling at her sister's calm tone just as much as the content of her words.
“You know the delight Mrs. Jennings takes in playing matchmaker to every body. She just might find Miss Lucy a new beau.”
Marianne laughed in earnest, as did Elinor, and they hurried into the house to get warm.
