Which was fortunate, because however fond I truly am of Mrs. Jennings—insatiable curiosity and all—I was also on the verge of hitting her with something large and heavy if she uttered the words ‘never seen a man so in love’ one single time more.
Mrs. Jennings patted her large, red face with a handkerchief. “And I shall make sure to tell Marianne tonight—for it would be cruel to have it sprung on her, and in her condition, too—might do her or the babe some harm. And can you imagine if they should happen to meet by chance?”
“What—” Elinor began.
Mrs. Jennings sat back in her chair. “Well, my dear. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard the news, indeed you could. I heard it from Serena Stash, my friend in Bath, who had it from her friend Mrs. Downing. And I am sure her word may be relied on, for she lives within a mile of Rosford Abbey itself and said that it was quite true. The long and the short of it is this: Who do you suppose has rented a house not four miles from here? None other than John Willoughby! He has been living here for these three weeks already, from all I hear.”
Wednesday 2 June 1802
I had to accompany Mrs. Jennings back to the mansion house yesterday—it would have been rude not to—so that I had no chance of speaking with Elinor alone. This morning, though, I walked down to the parsonage myself instead of visiting Star.
I found Elinor sitting in the parlour and sewing. She welcomed me and bade me to sit down. Though she refused my offer to help with her mending pile. Understandably enough; Mrs. Jennings is perfectly correct that I am nowhere near as accomplished as Elinor—especially not at needlework.
“How is Marianne this morning?” Elinor asked.
“She seems quite well. Fully recovered from yesterday.” We were both silent a moment. Then I said, “We might as well just say straight out what we mean. You do not think—”
And at the same instant, Elinor said, “Surely Marianne would not—”
We stopped. And then I said, slowly, “When we met him yesterday in the village, you and I were utterly shocked to see him. But was Marianne?”
Elinor frowned in remembrance—and I could see her going over the whole of our exchange with Willoughby, just as I was. And coming to the same conclusion that I had done: that Marianne—though shaken by her fright with Mr. Merryman’s horses—had not been especially surprised to see John Willoughby there.
“No.” Elinor shook her head with decision. “No. She would not. Marianne is impulsive, maybe—but she would never be so heedless as to take up with Willoughby again. Not after the way he treated her. And besides, Marianne loves Colonel Brandon now,” Elinor insisted.
“Does she?”
I was not trying to contradict Elinor. I honestly wished to know whether she knew more of Marianne’s true feelings towards Colonel Brandon than I. Because for all Marianne is so open and forthright and candid about all her feelings, there is one area on which—to me, at least—it seems she is very uncharacteristically silent: how she feels about Colonel Christopher Brandon, the man she married just over two years ago.
Colonel Brandon is honourable, intelligent, and kind. It is just that he is very nearly the last man I should ever have picked out for Marianne’s husband.
There is no doubt in my mind that for Colonel Brandon’s part, Marianne has his whole heart. Even after two years of marriage, I have seen him watching her when no one else is looking; he looks at her as though she is the only star in the sky.
But as for Marianne—
Colonel Brandon is nearly twenty years older than she is. She was nineteen when she married him, and he was seven-and-thirty—which is a vast deal of difference in age and experience, however one looks at it. And it is not only their difference in age. Their temperaments are not very alike, either. Colonel Brandon is serious and deliberate, whereas Marianne is impulsive and high-spirited. I have always thought—
I have been sitting and staring at what I have already written—again—trying to think how to write this in a way that will not give the wrong impression of Marianne. I stared so long that Ginger—a cat from the stables that I managed to smuggle past Marianne and into the house—took my inactivity for an invitation and jumped onto my worktable to curl herself up directly on top of the open page. If there are a few lingering cat hairs stuck to the drying ink, that will be why.
However, Ginger has condescended—with much display of affronted dignity—to be removed from the desk and resettled on my lap. She has not yet forgiven me far enough to purr, but at least I can go on writing.
To be honest, I have always wondered whether Marianne married Colonel Brandon in large part because he is so exactly the opposite of John Willoughby in every way—and because he is, above all else, safe. She could be certain that Colonel Brandon would never abandon her or break her heart.
I still do not seem to be putting this all down very well. I do not blame Marianne at all for wishing to be safe and secure, after all the misery Willoughby had put her through—not at all. And I do not mean, either, to say that Marianne is not fond of Colonel Brandon—or that she married him out of some sort of spite against Willoughby. She is fond of Colonel Brandon, I know she is; I know she likes and respects him, and that she is happy in his company. Apart from her chafing at the inevitable inconvenience and discomfort, she has seemed contented—happy, even—to be bearing his child.
But does she love Colonel Brandon as she once did Willoughby? That I do not know.
Elinor must share my doubts, because she rubbed her forehead as though it ached and did not answer.
“Willoughby is married now, too,” I said—in an effort to be comforting.
Elinor only shook her head at that, though. “I never told you, Margaret,” she finally said. “But Willoughby came to see Marianne—just after he had left her to marry Sophia Grey. When Marianne was so ill, and we were all afraid she was going to die.” Elinor’s fingers tightened on the checked muslin of the gown she was hemming, crumpling the fabric, but she did not seem to notice. “He … he did truly love Marianne. So far as John Willoughby is capable of honest, genuine feeling, he truly did love her, and thought of the way he had treated her with sincere regret. And besides—what other reason could he possibly have for settling in this neighbourhood? He can only have come because he knows Marianne is here—because he wished to be able to see her again.”
“Surely Marianne would not forget what he did to Eliza, though.” I had not considered that argument before, but it made me feel much better. “She cannot have done—not with Eliza and little Joanna living actually on the Delaford estate, not when she has fought so hard to ensure that Eliza is not shunned and whispered over in the neighbourhood!”
A little of the worry ebbed from Elinor’s eyes at that. “You are right. You must be right. However much in love with Willoughby she may once have been, there are some crimes that are beyond even Marianne’s capacity to forgive.” Her expression clouded, though, almost at once, and she rubbed her forehead again. “Oh, heavens. Someone is going to have to bring the news to Eliza. Only think what Eliza would feel if she should meet him by chance.”
She looked so worried that I got up and kissed her cheek. “I will do it,” I said. “Their cottage is barely five minutes’ walk from the north pasture—I can easily call the next time I go to check on Star. Besides, I promised to look at Joanna’s puppy in any case.”
A rumble of thunder sounded from outside the window at that moment, and I peered out at the sky. It was still cloudless, and hot enough for shimmers to appear on the horizon—but storms can blow up quickly here, especially in summer. I told Elinor that I had better go, so that I could be back at the mansion house before it started to rain.
We said good-bye, and I left—but had not gone a hundred yards from the parsonage when I realised that I had forgotten my reticule. I had set it down beside my chair.
I ran back into the parsonage—then skidded to a halt at the sound of voices coming from inside the parlour. The door was
still partly open, as I had left it, and through the gap I could see Elinor, still seated, and Edward, standing beside her chair. Edward had one hand on Elinor’s cheek, tilting her face gently up to his, and I heard him ask, “Are you sure that is all that troubles you, love?”
I assumed that Elinor must have just finished telling him about Marianne, and Willoughby’s unexpected arrival. Elinor blinked rapidly. She is not terribly easy to read—but we did grow up together, and in this case, I was certain that she was thinking of the thoughtless hurt Marianne’s words about being with child had done her. I could see the pain of the recollection shadowing Elinor’s grey eyes.
Because of course the wound into which Marianne had unthinkingly poured salt is that Elinor and Edward have no children, despite having been married for nearly four years. And despite Elinor’s words, I know she does desperately wish that she could trade places with Marianne. Or rather, that she could be expecting to have a child of her own in the autumn.
Elinor smiled at Edward, though, and said, “Yes, that is all. Why?”
Edward did not look any more convinced than I was by the assurance, but he did not try to force her into confidence. Instead he smiled. “Well, then, if you will not let me share whatever troubles you”—he bent his head until his mouth touched hers—“I can at least try to distract you from unpleasant thoughts.” He grinned. “In a purely altruistic spirit, of course.”
That made Elinor smile, too—a genuine smile, this time—and she tugged his head down, kissing him again. “Oh, indeed—purely.”
I edged my way—silently—back down the front passage and out of the door, without retrieving the reticule. It is strange. I should never have called Edward my idea of a romantic hero. He is pleasant looking, but not handsome. Kind, but quiet and shy and not in the slightest bit dashing. But seeing him together with Elinor, I felt—
But I ought to stop writing now. The ink in my pot is nearly gone.
At least Ginger has consented to burst into a loud, rumbling purr.
Thursday 3 June 1802
Mrs. Jennings departed for Bath very early this morning. I have been already to the north pasture, where despite every approach I have tried—every scrap of horse-training lore I can remember from when I was small—Star will not let me come near her, still. Even coaxing her with food does not help. She had sooner go hungry than accept anything offered from my hand.
Now, though, the sky has darkened in a way that threatens rain. Which means that I am confined to my room, because Marianne has gone out to visit and take soup to some of the village poor. At least, the note she left for me says that is where she has gone; I hope I believe her.
Anywhere else I go in the house, I am likely to run across Mr. Palmer, who scowls and rattles his newspaper to signal his objection to my mere presence. Or Mrs. Palmer, who comes bouncing out from around corners—how she contrives to bounce while hobbling on a cane I have no idea, but she does—and chatters at me until I am tempted to dab at my ears and check for blood.
So I am writing in this book instead—since I have just realised that I have not yet set down a proper description of Star.
She is a horse, found running wild not far from the Delaford estate on the day after I arrived. The farm labourers who spotted her thought her a handsome animal—and so she is, beneath all the dirt and scars on her coat—and thought she might have escaped from Colonel Brandon’s stables. But no one at Delaford had ever seen her before.
Some of the stablehands went out to try to catch her—thinking that she might make a fine addition to the stables, or that they might at least hold her until her owner could be found. But she flew into a panicked rage every time one of them tried to get near enough to slip a rope bridle over her head. I had gone along to watch—and I saw her bite two of the men, and nearly kick a third in the head.
Dawson, the head groom of the Colonel’s stables, eyed her sweat-frothed neck and rolling eyes and gave it as his opinion that the horse had ‘gone savage’. He is a solid country man of about sixty, with a head of grizzled hair and a face that looks as though it had been carved from wood. He watched his stable-lads struggling with Star for perhaps an hour, then unclamped his teeth from the stem of his pipe long enough to say, “Ye see them scars on her, Miss Dashwood.” He nodded towards the marks on her back, visible even through the dirt and caked mud. “Been beaten, that horse has. Beaten till she’s past saving. And anyone who’d do such a thing to a fine beast like that deserves to be beaten himself, to my way of thinkin’. Still—only thing now is to put her down. Wait till she foals, and then see she’s put out of her misery.”
I could see—we all could—that she was in foal, and likely close to her time; her sides were swollen and heavy.
Dawson shook his head, his mouth grim. “’Twill be a mercy, at that, poor creature.”
But somehow, I could not bear that. Some horses are impossible to gentle or tame—I do know that. And I did not know Star at all, not really—though I had seen enough already to understand Dawson’s point of view. But she was so beautiful—fine breeding in every line of her arched neck and large eyes. She had a pure black coat, save for the blaze of white on her forehead.
I was the one who began calling her Star on that account. Not a terribly imaginative name, I admit—but it was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. And besides, it has proved appropriate—she is fiery and bright, but also every bit as distant as a star.
At any rate, I begged Dawson to let me have a chance with her. It took a great deal of persuading. Dawson did a great deal more head-shaking and muttering under his breath about what Colonel Brandon would say. But I pointed out that I am only Colonel Brandon’s sister-in-law, not his wife—and that both Elinor and Marianne would surely back up Dawson’s account that I was not to be persuaded to simply stand aside, when it was a question of saving an injured animal. Which they both would, having known me all their lives. And finally Dawson—still looking grim about the mouth—stood aside and let me try approaching Star on my own.
As he put the bridle rope into my hands, he looked me up and down and grunted, “Well, ye look like ye could be fast enough, anyway—just promise me you’ll run like blazes if she tries to go for ye.”
Dawson’s fears were very nearly proved correct. I—slowly, slowly—edged my way towards Star. She stood trembling, her ears flat back and her nostrils flaring, but at least she did not rear or bolt. Perhaps she mistrusts men more than she does women.
At any rate, I managed to slip the bridle over her head. But after that, she went quite mad with rage and fear, bucking and squealing and pawing the ground. It took all the strength of the stablehands—those who held the lead-ropes—to get her into the north pasture. Which was the closest enclosure we could think of, as well as being quiet and out of the way.
And she has never let me approach her again. Horses by temperament are not capable of holding grudges, so they say. And yet every time I see the fury and fear in her eyes when she looks at me, I feel as though she has not forgiven me for being the one to trap her, to lead her into the fenced prison where she is now held captive.
She would escape if she could—and I do not doubt that she could, were it not for the bulk of the foal making her too heavy to jump the pasture fence. Today when I went to visit her, I saw a cut on her foreleg, as though she had injured herself in trying to make the leap regardless. Though since she would not let me come anywhere near, the best I can do is to hope that the cut is not too severe.
I have been visiting her every day. I promised Dawson that I would ask his help if she gave me difficulty. But so far I have not summoned him to Star’s pasture at all. I am too afraid that he may succeed in persuading me that whatever abuses Star has suffered have left her beyond my or anyone else’s power to heal.
Friday 4 June 1802
I believe tonight’s gathering may be deserving of some sort of prize—for the most unpleasant dinner party I have ever had to endure.
No, that is not qui
te fair. Once M. de Courtenay ceased to look as though he wished to murder someone, he actually proved an agreeable companion. But the rest—
I returned from visiting Star’s field this afternoon to find that Marianne had accepted an invitation on behalf of the household to dine at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Rushworth, who live at the nearby estate of Fenby Gate. We were all to attend—even Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, whose ankle is healed enough now to endure at least short drives in a well-sprung carriage. And if I did not especially wish to attend, it at least sounded no worse than sitting through yet another meal with only the Palmers for company.
As it turned out, the Rushworths had invited quite a number of other guests—chief among them Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby.
I had never seen Mrs. Willoughby before tonight. She is fair-haired and would be quite handsome if she did not look so cross and proud—her nose perpetually wrinkled, as though the entire world has in her judgement an unpleasant smell. But since she was seated at the far end of the table from me, I had practically nothing to do with her. Mr. Willoughby, on the other hand, was seated directly across the table from me—and directly beside Marianne.
Willoughby was very attentive, and inquired most solicitously after Marianne’s health, hoping that she was fully recovered from her misadventure of two days ago. For an instant, I thought a rather odd expression passed across Marianne’s face at the question—though perhaps it was only remembered fear.
But then she turned in her chair to smile into Willoughby’s eyes. “I know that I thanked you before—but a mere ‘thank you’ seems inadequate,” she said. “If you had not been there—or had not been so quick—”
Willoughby smiled, too, and pressed her hand. “I only thank God that I was.”
Seated where I was, I was witness to Marianne and Willoughby’s every exchange—which went on in more or less the same vein throughout the meal.
Margaret Dashwood's Diary Page 3
