After very little farther discourse,it was finally settled that the invitation should be fully accepted.Mrs Jennings received the information with a great deal of joy,and many assurances of kindness and care;nor was it a matter of pleasure merely to her.Sir John was delighted;for to a man whose prevailing anxiety was the dread of being alone,the acquisition of two to the number of inhabitants in London was something.Even Lady Middleton took the trouble of being delighted,which was putting herself rather out of her way;and as for the Miss Steeles,especially Lucy,they had never been so happy in their lives as this intelligence made them.
Elinor submitted to the arrangement which counteracted her wishes with less reluctance than she had expected to feel.With regard to herself,it was now a matter of unconcern whether she went to town or not;and when she saw her mother so thoroughly pleased with the plan,and her sister exhilarated by it in look,voice,and manner,restored to all her usual animation,and elevated to more than her usual gaiety,she could not be dissatisfied with the cause,and would hardly allow herself to distrust the consequence.
Marianne's joy was almost a degree beyond happiness,so great was the perturbation of her spirits and her impatience to be gone.Her unwillingness to quit her mother was her only restorative to calmness;and at the moment of parting her grief on that score was excessive.Her mother's affliction was hardly less,and Elinor was the only one of the three who seemed to consider the separation as anything short of eternal.
Their departure took place in the first week in January.The Middletons were to follow in about a week.The Miss Steeles kept their station at the Park,and were to quit it only with the rest of the family.
Chapter 26
Elinor could not find herself in the carriage with Mrs Jennings,and beginning a journey to London under her protection,and as her guest,without wondering at her own situation,so short had their acquaintance with that lady been,so wholly unsuited were they in age and disposition,and so many had been her objections against such a measure only a few days before!But these objections had all,with that happy ardour of youth which Marianne and her mother equally shared,been overcome or overlooked;and Elinor,in spite of every occasional doubt of Willoughby's constancy,could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of Marianne,without feeling how blank was her own prospect,how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison,and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of Marianne's situation to have the same animating object in view,the same possibility of hope.A short,a very short time,however,must now decide what Willoughby's intentions were:in all probability he was already in town.Marianne's eagerness to be gone declared her dependence on finding him there;and Elinor was resolved not only upon gaining every new light as to his character which her own observation or the intelligence of others could give her,but likewise upon watching his behaviour to her sister with such zealous attention,as to ascertain what he was,and what he meant,before many meetings had taken place.Should the result of her observations be unfavourable,she was determined at all events to open the eyes of her sister;should it be otherwise,her exertions would be of a different nature-she must then learn to avoid every selfish comparison,and banish every regret which might lessen her satisfaction in the happiness of Marianne.
They were three days on their journey,and Marianne's behaviour as they travelled was a happy specimen of what future complaisance and companionableness to Mrs Jennings might be expected to be.She sat in silence almost all the way,wrapt in her own meditations,and scarcely ever voluntarily speaking,except when any object of picturesque beauty within their view drew from her an exclamation of delight exclusively addressed to her sister.To atone for this conduct,therefore,Elinor took immediate possession of the post of civility which she had assigned herself,behaved with the greatest attention to Mrs Jennings,talked with her,laughed with her,and listened to her whenever she could;and Mrs Jennings on her side treated them both with all possible kindness,was solicitous on every occasion for their ease and enjoyment,and only disturbed that she could not make them choose their own dinners at the inn,nor extort a confession of their preferring salmon to cod,or boiled fowls to veal cutlets.They reached town by three o'clock the third day,glad to be released,after such a journey,from the confinement of a carriage,and ready to enjoy all the luxury of a good fire.
The house was handsome and handsomely fitted up,and the young ladies were immediately put in possession of a very comfortable apartment.It had formerly been Charlotte's,and over the mantelpiece still hung a landscape in coloured silks of her performance,in proof of her having spent seven years at a great school in town to some effect.
As dinner was not to be ready in less than two hours from their arrival,Elinor determined to employ the interval in writing to her mother,and sat down for that purpose.In a few moments Marianne did the same.‘I am writing home,Marianne,’said Elinor;‘had not you better defer your letter for a day or two?’
