A night’s good slumber, when it can be had, is the best cure for most ills. Against all her expectations Mrs. Dashwood slept well, and when she woke the world was hopeful again. It was impossible now to dream of romance, but there was still good to be had from honest work and a life of moderation. Today Margaret was outside exploring, and she was sitting companionably with the big girls after breakfast, but tomorrow they would would rise at six and embark on an ambitious program of economy. Perhaps she would work new covers for the chairs in the sitting room, or concoct a batch of polish for the furniture from the receipt in her book of household management, if there was still beeswax to be found. Today they should have a hearty ragout to fortify them for the work ahead…
“Mama, it is three miles to the nearest butcher, and you did not order meat for a ragout,” said Elinor, in that tone which meant she was practicing cheerful fortitude. “Do you not recall that you accepted an invitation to dine again at Barton Park this evening? I wondered at it, for you were out of sorts yesterday, but Sir John pressed so that it was difficult to refuse.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Dashwood, chagrined at herself. “I… I did not recall. My head pounded so by the time the carriage came around, that I must have been willing to say almost anything to get one step closer to home.” She closed the receipt book with more force than she meant, and a torn corner fluttered to the floor. “It is not becoming to be so dependent on Barton, for dinner or for a carriage. We must be a byword in the neighborhood, the poor relatives spunging on Sir John and Lady Middleton.”
“I do not believe it troubles anyone but us,” said Elinor. “At least, it seems to be a great relief to Colonel Brandon to have us in the house. Lady Middleton’s habits of conversation are less to his taste than yours are.”
Mrs. Dashwood darted a glance at her daughter, but Elinor was bent with studied attention over the chair cover she was embroidering.
“Colonel Brandon is an amiable gentleman,” Marianne moaned, “but must we always talk of him? Naturally his talents are superior to dear Sir John’s, but why can he not use them for some grand purpose? Yesterday the wind was stirring up the trees in the valley — such a sad and solemn sound! And when I murmured Cowper’s lines on mortality—
“Like crowded forest-trees we stand,
And some are marked to fall”
—he only urged me to put on a shawl against taking a chill, like an old grandfather.”
“He was quite right, Marianne,” said Elinor slyly. “You will catch your death of cold if you persist in your irrational disdain of flannel waistcoats.”
Mrs. Dashwood sighed as the girls dissolved into giggles. Colonel Brandon’s flannel waistcoat was a running joke with them, a sign of everything prudent and unyouthful. Even Elinor, who defended the Colonel with scrupulous fairness, was inclined to treat him as a venerable elder rather than a man of wisdom and experience. Marianne was actually cruel, though unconsciously so, in her reflections on his age and infirmity, as she called it. To be considered infirm because one’s joints ached! To be considered unable to love because one was old enough to be her father!
“Your father wore flannel waistcoats when I met him,” she said, speaking lightly, as if it was a subject of no import. “Surely you would not hold Colonel Brandon to a different standard than your own dear father? And although I was eighteen and he thirty-five, as Colonel Brandon is now, somehow the waistcoat seemed less important than the dear man himself.”
“But there can be no comparison with Papa,” insisted Marianne. “You were the one great love of his life, and that is a circumstance of such romance as to make a flannel waistcoat completely irrelevant. It might be different if he had truly been in love with John’s mother, but of course he married her for her money.”
“How can you say such a thing?” cried Mrs. Dashwood. “One does not become unloveable because one has ten thousand pounds. I could not know the first Mrs. Dashwood, of course, but Mr. Dashwood always spoke of her with real affection. The match may also have been advantageous, but it would be a terrible reflection on your father’s character to accuse him of marrying without love. Perhaps John derives some weakness of character from his mother, but he also inherits her loyalty and devotion to those he loves.”
“But a first love is sacred,” argued Marianne, jumping up and pacing, carried away as always by the excess of her enthusiasm. “All the poets attest to it. There is no comparison between the purity and intensity of the youth’s first love, and the utilitarian compact of convenience with an older man who needs a nursemaid as well as a companion. Every sensibility revolts at the idea.”
“Marianne,” said Elinor quietly, but with enough firmness to make Marianne fold up sulkily in a chair and subside.
“You have a prejudice against second attachments, Marianne,” said Mrs. Dashwood in a trembling voice, “but I assure you that the first all-consuming ardor of one’s youth is not the deepest or truest form of love. Believe it or not, one can even fall in love again with the same man, again and again, and each time richer than the last.”
“Of course, Mama,” murmured Marianne, entirely unconvinced.
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