Chapter Text
After a long and painful winter, spring finally arrived in the village of Barton. Elinor had been occupying herself in the garden at the back of their little cottage, alone but for the hills rising up behind her, and was so intent on setting the flower border to rights that, when company arrived, there was no time to rise and flutter and do the ritual dance of pretending that she had in fact nothing to do at all, and she had no choice but to greet her visitor as she was.
“Good morning, Miss Dashwood,” a tall crow, backlit by the sun, said kindly. “Please don’t get up.”
“Colonel Brandon,” Elinor said. “I’m so sorry. Marianne is sleeping, and my mother and Margaret are away to Exeter with Mrs Jennings.”
“Of course.” He cocked his head a little. “I don’t want to interrupt when you’re busy, but do you mind if I sit and enjoy the sunshine? I have been doing much posting about these past few weeks…”
She nodded, awkward. “Can I thank you again for lending us your carriage on the way from Cleveland? It made the journey home so much easier for Marianne.”
He half smiled and shook his head a little. “It was an easy favour. I’ve been ill from time to time myself, I know how it feels.” And he leaned back against the wall of the cottage with his eyes shut, heavy lines engraving his face in the early spring sun. He looked as weary as she felt, Elinor thought with a sigh, and sat back on her heels, wiping her grubby hands on her apron.
“How are Eliza and her baby?” Elinor asked.
“Tired, mostly. Little Beth sleeps quite badly the midwife says, but what would I know? I was there when she was born, did I tell you? She’s a skinny little thing, all legs and arms and huge eyes, and she’s started to look at me is if she knows me. Eliza is—Eliza is just a baby herself. I still remember the first time I saw her, she had such big eyes…”
He trailed off, and Elinor wondered with how many people he was able to share his news about his little family.
“Not so many. Mrs Jennings and Sir John know of Eliza, or at least some of it, but Sir John is a sportsman and Mrs Jennings—Mrs Jennings is very worthy—”
“But she likes to speculate about people’s lives.”
“Tactfully put, Miss Dashwood. There is my sister of course, but she has been away in France these many years. She chose not to foster.”
Elinor could hear the old hurt in her friend’s voice, and pitied him. “Will you excuse me a moment, Colonel? I have something for Miss Williams.” She returned with a little paper packet, and he opened it to find a baby dress, smocked and nicely embroidered.
He frowned, as—Elinor was beginning to realise—he did when sentiment was too great. “This was very kind of you, Miss Dashwood.”
She shook her head. “It was an easy favour. She should have something pretty for the baby, whatever happens to it.”
He thought for a moment. “And how is your sister, Miss Marianne?”
“She is resolved to rise no later than six and embark on a course of serious reading and self-improvement.”
“Oh, poor Elinor,” he said sympathetically. “You will get your sister back soon enough,” and he embarked on a lengthy recounting of a 13-year-old Eliza recovering from the influenza and the dramatic soliloquies and comic interludes this had visited on the rest of the household, to what disruption, until she giggled. She could not tell from his anecdote which Eliza he meant, but perhaps that did not matter much.
There was a great barking of dogs then, and the arrival of the open carriage that carried the noisy Mrs Jennings, and Elinor’s mother and sister, down the lane from the park. Marianne emerged, blinking a little, from the house also, and the crowd of them bustled about in a merry riot. Colonel Brandon stood up then, buttoning himself back into formality, and he was so very civil, so consciously pleasant to Mrs Dashwood and her sisters that it was not until her nightly reflections of the day that Elinor realised Brandon’s that most recent favoured topic of conversation—his plans for the little parsonage to house Edward—had not been mentioned at all.
***
They saw Colonel Brandon two days later, when they had been summoned up to the park to dine for, excepting Mrs Jennings, Sir John Middleton, the two older children, Colonel Brandon, and Lady Middleton’s sister and brother-in-law lately arrived from Somersetshire, poor Lady Middleton had no one in the world to amuse her and risked being left quite alone that evening. Barton Park had a new accoutrement to add to its forcing houses, stew ponds and orchards; Lady Middleton had acquired a new elegance, the presence of two peacocks strutting about the terrace with glorious feathers in the advance, and ungainly jutting fluff guarding their retreat.
“Why do they stick their feathers out so?” Margaret asked, dubious.
“They are asking the young ladies to dance,” Colonel Brandon said, unbending with a smile and making an elaborate bow to the young girl. “My lady?” he asked grandly. Margaret giggled, accepted his hand, and trod a few measures of a minuet, her head held high and proud. Marianne, who was leaning on Elinor’s arm, deigned to laugh, but Elinor could see her sister’s face warm in good humour.
This was Elinor’s and Marianne’s first evening at Barton Park since their return from London: Marianne had been very fatigued and Elinor did not like to leave her alone, and so they were great objects of curiosity with their hosts, or at least with Sir John, who rather liked to tease young women who were in bouncing good health and made pressing suggestions about possets and rest cures that they were hard put to deny. But his wife did venture a solitary remark about how pale Marianne was before lapsing into withdrawn insipidity, so they felt really welcome. Mr Palmer addressed Elinor with two and a half disagreeable observations before he remembered that he had decided to like her, and lapsed into reading the newspaper, leaving Elinor to amuse his wife without any assistance although, as Mrs Palmer always said much more than she thought, this was not difficult.
“Oh,” Elinor said suddenly, realising that Mrs Palmer’s stream of chatter had run dry, and considered the woman’s previous remark, a comment on Colonel Brandon’s stern demeanour. She glanced over at the Colonel, who was patiently helping Margaret with her cards in a game of Speculation, reading the expressions flitting over his face with a tweak of eyebrow here, a slight tilt of his head there, “No, I don’t know how you find him so,” she said to Mrs Palmer absently. “I think nobody would think Colonel Brandon affected in temperament, but he has much warmth for his friends.”
At supper, Brandon sat between the two sisters, and assiduously cornered some of the nicer dishes set on the table to serve them with. With Marianne distracted by some teasing from Sir John, he turned to her and said “You should eat something, Miss Dashwood. All that nursing has been wearing you out,” and he talked quietly to her about some small matters until Elinor had eaten enough of the supper to realise that she was really quite hungry and clean her plate.
***
The next week, Elinor was returning from her walk when she met the colonel almost staggering under the weight of a heavy parcel that transpired, when he entered the cottage, to be three enormous books with antique type and glorious gold leaf illustrations.
“This is The Faerie Queene,” he said to them smiling, carefully laying out the volumes for them to examine. “The bookseller I deal with in London finally found this for me, and I wanted to share the treat. Miss Marianne,” Brandon said, “you should be the first reader—it is always best to read Spenser when it is raining and you are slightly ill. You will like it because there is a lady knight who is very brave and very noble. Miss Margaret (turning a page to show her) I present to you a dragon.”
They sat around the volumes examining the pictures until Marianne and Margaret found something to disagree on and Marianne flounced away in irritation to sit at her little pianoforte, brushed away the small amount of dust upon it, and opened the case with the air of greeting an old friend to begin a savage concerto. Margaret rolled her eyes, their mother looked resigned, and Colonel Brandon shared a comforting glance with Elinor as if to say, “there, I told you you’d get her back.” She ducked her head and went back to examining the glowing art.
There was nothing for it but to invite the man to dinner at which time, of course, her sisters teased their benefactor mercilessly, Brandon taking their raillery with an easy good humour that seemed perfectly natural and unaffected, and Elinor found it hard to remember the reserved soul to whom they had first been introduced. It was an odd thing, she thought, in the after-dinner hour, watching her sisters trade riddles with the colonel, how very quickly in these light spring days he had reached an intimacy with their family after the former politeness of his year-long acquaintance with them. Her mother had always had easy ways and, now, moved by gratitude, was exerting herself to be really pleasing—but it was more than that. Marianne, still weary, was happily accepting another man’s pointer at her feet when she sat in the garden; had accepted another man’s readings of her favourite verse; she had even moved in her sentiments towards the colonel perhaps a little past pity. Margaret had always liked the older man but… Perhaps it was that their mother, who had never really liked being the head of their little household, now saw in Brandon someone who could act as a supporter in the exigencies of navigating an unkind world, had found an ally as she had never found in her step-son.
“What are you thinking, dear Elinor?” her mother asked, as they sat at the table doing some coarse mending that did not need too good a light.
“I am thinking: why is a colonel like plum cake? Their flavour improves over time.”