Sense and Sensibility (The Wild and Wanton Edition) (17 page)

“You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate.”

“As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but, like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so.”

“Strange that it would!” cried Marianne. “What have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?”

“Grandeur has but little,” said Elinor, “but wealth has much to do with it.”

“Elinor, for shame!” said Marianne, “money can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned.”

Elinor may have believed similarly once, but time and experience had taught her that the more intangible causes of happiness are fleeting at best. She now knew that society had it right all along — money, financial security, status … those were far more important factors in securing a match than silly things like love and passion. In truth, she was surprised to hear Marianne speak this way — she’d expected her sister to have formed a similar opinion after the events of late. Then again, as evidenced by Marianne’s joyful reaction in mistaking the arriving Mr. Ferrars to actually be Mr. Willoughby, it was clear Marianne was still in possession of hope — a thing which had abandoned Elinor the moment Edward had rebuffed her mention of marriage.

“Perhaps,” said Elinor, forcing herself to smile, “we may come to the same point.
Your
competence and
my
wealth are very much alike, I dare say; and without them, as the world goes now, we shall both agree that every kind of external comfort must be wanting. Your ideas are only more noble than mine. Come, what is your competence?”

“About eighteen hundred or two thousand a year; not more than
that.
”

Elinor laughed. “
Two
thousand a year!
One
is my wealth! I guessed how it would end.”

“And yet two thousand a-year is a very moderate income,” said Marianne. “A family cannot well be maintained on a smaller. I am sure I am not extravagant in my demands. A proper establishment of servants, a carriage, perhaps two, and hunters, cannot be supported on less.”

Elinor smiled again, this time a bit more authentically, to hear her sister describing so accurately their future expenses at Combe Magna.

“Hunters!” repeated Edward; “but why must you have hunters? Every body does not hunt.”

Marianne coloured as she replied, “But most people do.”

“I wish,” said Margaret, striking out a novel thought, “that somebody would give us all a large fortune a-piece!”

“Oh that they would!” cried Marianne, her eyes sparkling with animation, and her cheeks glowing with the delight of such imaginary happiness.

“We are all unanimous in that wish, I suppose,” said Elinor, “in spite of the insufficiency of wealth.”

“Oh dear!” cried Margaret, “how happy I should be! I wonder what I should do with it!”

Marianne looked as if she had no doubt on that point.

“I should be puzzled to spend so large a fortune myself,” said Mrs. Dashwood, “if my children were all to be rich without my help.”

“You must begin your improvements on this house,” observed Elinor, “and your difficulties will soon vanish.”

“What magnificent orders would travel from this family to London,” said Edward, “in such an event! What a happy day for booksellers, music-sellers, and print-shops! You, Miss Dashwood, would give a general commission for every new print of merit to be sent you — and as for Marianne, I know her greatness of soul, there would not be music enough in London to content her. And books! — Thomson, Cowper, Scott — she would buy them all over and over again: she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree. Should not you, Marianne? Forgive me, if I am very saucy. But I was willing to show you that I had not forgot our old disputes.”

“I love to be reminded of the past, Edward — whether it be melancholy or gay, I love to recall it — and you will never offend me by talking of former times. You are very right in supposing how my money would be spent; some of it, at least — my loose cash — would certainly be employed in improving my collection of music and books.”

“And the bulk of your fortune would be laid out in annuities on the authors or their heirs.”

“No, Edward, I should have something else to do with it.”

“Perhaps, then, you would bestow it as a reward on that person who wrote the ablest defence of your favourite maxim, that no one can ever be in love more than once in their life — for your opinion on that point is unchanged, I presume?”

“Undoubtedly. At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear any thing to change them.”

“Marianne is as steadfast as ever, you see,” said Elinor, “she is not at all altered.”

“She is only grown a little more grave than she was.”

“Nay, Edward,” said Marianne, “you need not reproach me. You are not very gay yourself.”

“Why should you think so!” replied he, with a sigh. “But gaiety never was a part of
my
character.”

It was once
, Elinor could not help but think, her face colouring.
There was one day when you were very exultant indeed
. But she simply said, “Nor do I think it a part of Marianne’s. I should hardly call her a lively girl — she is very earnest, very eager in all she does — sometimes talks a great deal and always with animation — but she is not often really merry.”
Especially since the departure of her beloved.

“I believe you are right,” he replied, “and yet I have always set her down as a lively girl.”

“I have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes,” said Elinor pointedly, looking directly at him now, “in a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.”

“But I thought it was right, Elinor,” said Marianne, “to be guided wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours. This has always been your doctrine, I am sure.”

“No, Marianne, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of the understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the behaviour. You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess, of having often wished you to treat our acquaintance in general with greater attention; but when have I advised you to adopt their sentiments or to conform to their judgment in serious matters?”

“You have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of general civility,” said Edward to Elinor, “Do you gain no ground?”

“Quite the contrary,” replied Elinor, looking expressively at Marianne.

“My judgment,” he returned, adopting Elinor’s tone of layered meaning, “is all on your side of the question; but I am afraid my practice is much more on your sister’s. I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. I have frequently thought that I must have been intended by nature to be fond of low company, I am so little at my ease among strangers of gentility!”

“Marianne has not shyness to excuse any inattention of hers,” said Elinor.

“She knows her own worth too well for false shame,” replied Edward. “Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.”

“But you would still be reserved,” said Marianne, “and that is worse.”

Edward started. “Reserved! Am I reserved, Marianne?”

“Yes, very.”

“I do not understand you,” replied he, colouring. “Reserved! — how, in what manner? What am I to tell you? What can you suppose?”

Elinor looked surprised at his emotion; but trying to laugh off the subject, she said to him, “Do not you know my sister well enough to understand what she means? Do not you know she calls every one reserved who does not talk as fast, and admire what she admires as rapturously as herself?”

Edward made no answer. His gravity and thoughtfulness returned on him in their fullest extent — and he sat for some time silent and dull.

Elinor saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend — if he could still be called that. His visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect. It was evident that he was unhappy; she wished it were equally evident that he still distinguished her by the same affection which once she had felt no doubt of inspiring; but hitherto the continuance of his preference seemed very uncertain; and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted one moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding one.

He joined her and Marianne in the breakfast-room the next morning before the others were down; and Marianne, who was always eager to promote their happiness as far as she could, soon left them to themselves. But before she was half way upstairs she heard the parlour door open, and, turning round, was astonished to see Edward himself come out.

“I am going into the village to see my horses,” said he, “as you are not yet ready for breakfast; I shall be back again presently.”

Elinor could not think what to make of his behaviour. Could he truly not stand to be in the same room as her? Was it too uncomfortable for him, after what had passed between them all that time ago at Norland Park? Certainly, it was strange for her too, but she was at least able to be civil. But it seemed he could not even manage that. Elinor knew all too well that he did not wish to repeat their dalliance, but was it possible that he had grown to
regret
it? Was she repulsive to her now, the woman who took a man to her bed — metaphorically speaking — outside the confines of marriage? The woman who forced him to abandon his principles and do the same? Was she so disgusting to him that he could not even bring himself to remain at the breakfast table with her?

Her appetite vanished, Elinor pushed her plate away from her and ran from the room before anyone could see the tears in her eyes.

• • •

Edward returned to them with fresh admiration of the surrounding country — and a fresh layer of humiliation added to his already thick coat of foibles. He’d intended, in his ungraceful exit from breakfast that morning, to silently communication an invitation for Miss Dashwood to meet him. He was under no impression that there would be a repeat occurrence of their last time alone together — she clearly had no interest in him after how he’d behaved — but he needed desperately to speak to her. He needed to explain himself, his feelings, his situation. He owed her at least that much.

He’d foolishly hoped she would understand his meaning in stating he was going to “visit his horses,” seeing as though last time she’d done something similar — leaving breakfast conspicuously and asking him to meet him at the stable and all. But he’d flubbed it up royally, as usual.

He’d waited for hours, but of course she hadn’t met him — she hadn’t even understood. Edward had never been graceful, but it appeared being in love had magnified his shortcomings even farther.

So now he did his best to put on a normal expression and behave as if his life weren’t a complete mess. In his walk to the village, he told the Dashwood sisters, he had seen many parts of the valley to advantage; and the village itself, in a much higher situation than the cottage, afforded a general view of the whole, which had exceedingly pleased him. This was a subject which ensured Marianne’s attention, and she was beginning to describe her own admiration of these scenes, and to question him more minutely on the objects that had particularly struck him, when Edward interrupted her by saying, “You must not enquire too far, Marianne: remember I have no knowledge in the picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste if we come to particulars. I shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere. You must be satisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give. I call it a very fine country, — the hills are steep, the woods seem full of fine timber, and the valley looks comfortable and snug, — with rich meadows and several neat farm houses scattered here and there. It exactly answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with utility — and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me. I know nothing of the picturesque.”

“I am afraid it is but too true,” said Marianne; “but why should you boast of it?”

“I suspect,” said Elinor, “that to avoid one kind of affectation, Edward here falls into another. Because he believes many people pretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really feel, and is disgusted with such pretensions, he affects greater indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he possesses. He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own.”

“It is very true,” said Marianne, “that admiration of landscape scenery is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning.”

“I am convinced,” said Edward, “that you really feel all the delight in a fine prospect which you profess to feel. But, in return, your sister must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower, — and a troop of tidy, happy villages please me better than the finest banditti in the world.”