“I was very much surprised yesterday, mamma,” began Mrs. Ferrars,
when she and her mother met next morning at the breakfast table. “Mr.
Willoughby was at Newton, and seemed to wish to renew our acquaintance.
He has strange ideas of decorum. I was vexed that Margaret danced with
him. In my opinion we should have nothing to say to him.”
Mrs. Dashwood immediately asked to be made acquainted with all that had
happened. Elinor’s account was not too partial either to Willoughby or
Margaret, but it was as accurate as a statement of the sort usually
is, when a good deal more is felt than can be wisely expressed. Mrs.
Dashwood’s opinion was that there could be no help for it. They must
admit Mr. Willoughby to their acquaintance or be for ever plagued by
meeting him and being under the necessity of ignoring him. Both were
evils, but Mrs. Dashwood had no difficulty in deciding on the least.
They would meet him as an acquaintance. No doubt it would be as well to
discourage Margaret from dancing or talking with him, and if possible
they would give him the idea that he was but tolerated as being
unworthy of serious resentment.
“After all,” she said, “he has done no harm to anyone but himself.”
Elinor could not avoid a smile. Her recollections of Marianne’s agony
of mind, and her mother’s misery at the time, were at variance with
the present statement, but she could only envy and try to emulate such
happy forgetfulness. In fact, Mrs. Dashwood was rather looking forward
to meeting Mr. Willoughby again. There was something attractive in
the thought that he was still attached to her daughter; it gave her
an interest in him which she had never expected to feel again, and,
though she could not think it right, she found it lessened rather than
increased her blame of him. There could be no doubt that he would be
present at the theatricals on Thursday.
The dress-rehearsal was to be on Wednesday afternoon, and all were glad
of a day’s interval for rest and ordinary occupations. All Tuesday
Margaret felt an increasing desire to lie down, but encouraged herself
to her usual activities, walked with Elinor, talked with her mother,
and succeeded in concealing the fact of her weariness and malaise. The
afternoon of Wednesday was damp and cold. The dress-rehearsal was
achieved, as they so often are, in a series of pauses and rushes. Some
people were not ready for their cues, and others came on too soon. The
dresses needed alteration and the stage readjustment. It was over at
last, and Margaret arrived home with wet feet and an aching head.
Mrs. Dashwood at once recommended bed, and her advice was thankfully
accepted. It was soon clear to Elinor, and later to her mother, that
Margaret was quite unfit to take her part on the morrow, and word to
that effect was hastily sent to the Park.
Thomas was the messenger of woe. The Careys were all staying the night
at the Park, and it was to Walter as stage-manager that the note was
addressed, and by him read aloud to Sir John and Mr. Atherton in the
library.
It was the misfortune to the play that chiefly affected Sir John, but
Walter had a deeper concern in Margaret’s illness. He was very young,
but it has not been discovered that youth is any bar to falling in
love, though it is often found to be an obstacle to marriage. He was
for giving the play up altogether, and at once; or possibly postponing
it, he added, when Sir John’s crestfallen look suggested the amendment.
Mr. Atherton offered a suggestion of greater efficacy in removing the
gloom from Sir John’s good-natured face.
“Miss Fairfield knows the song,” he said, “and has been present at
every rehearsal. She would do the part very well or I am no judge of an
actor.”
All was well for Sir John. No thought of the suffering Margaret could
be allowed to cloud his happiness. He carried the note into the
drawing-room with an expression which bore no relation to his opening
words.
“Here’s bad news,” he began. “Miss Margaret ill in bed; but we do
not need to give up our play, for Miss Fairfield can take the part.
That is, if she will be so good,” looking round the room for her.
“She can do it just as well, Atherton says, and she is just about
Miss Margaret’s size, so can wear the dress. I suppose she is in the
school-room with the children. Let us go and tell her she is to be
Sabrina.”
Lady Middleton, however, insisted that she should first understand the
matter, and then in a more formal manner advise Miss Fairfield of the
happiness in store for her. She went herself, and having told Miss
Fairfield of the misfortune begged her to be so kind as to assist them
in their difficulty. For all the cold formality of her manner, the
impression received was not different in essentials from that which
Sir John would have given if he had had his way, and gone to tell her
she “was to be Sabrina.” Miss Fairfield, however, though well aware
that she could not refuse, had not for that reason any wish to do so.
She had not the least disinclination to oblige, and would much enjoy
taking the part, and wearing the dress, and very soon was happily
planning the arrangement of her “amber dropping hair.”
Walter was soon on his way to the Cottage to inquire for Margaret, and
to tell them how the difficulty was to be met. He found Mrs. Ferrars
alone, as Mrs. Dashwood was in attendance on Margaret. He was very
unhappy, and said so. Elinor remembered the visit of another anxious
young man when Marianne was ill, and compared the two to the advantage
of the one before her. Willoughby, ashamed and maddened by the sense
of his unworthy conduct, dependent on his wife, and disgraced in many
quarters. Walter, young, ardent, with only boyhood behind him, and
happy prospects before, well liked, and the only son of a rich baronet.
He made no attempt to hide his concern for Margaret, and the message
with which he was charged, that Miss Fairfield would take the part,
was only valuable to him as a possible alleviation to her mind. She
must not trouble about the play. She must not trouble about anything.
It would all be well arranged. All she had to do was to get well as
quickly as was possible.
Elinor promised him that her sister should have every attention from
her mother and herself, and at last he went away with something less of
anxiety in his mind.
Margaret was feeling very ill. She had been exerting herself beyond her
strength for some weeks, constantly keeping her mind at work to prevent
herself from thinking, and her body active to induce sleep at night.
The long and exciting day on Monday had brought on a feverish attack,
which was increased by the wet and discomfort of the rehearsal at the
Park. Her voice had gone, her head ached, and she could not rest,
although in bed. She had a wretched night of fitful dreams and fancies,
but was better in the morning, and ready to urge her mother and Elinor
to go to the Park in the afternoon to see the play.
Elinor had seen so much of it that she resolutely declined, but Mrs.
Dashwood, with her lighter spirit, was not unwilling. She declared at
first affectionately that she could not leave her Margaret when she
was ill, but her Margaret protested that she very much wished to hear
about the play, and that no one would give so good an account of it
as her mother, and that she would do very well with Elinor at home.
She charged her mother with many special points on which she was to be
observant--to look out for the eccentricities of Miss Steele’s dress,
which Margaret had not attempted to restrain, to notice if the Brothers
handled their swords well, if the children in the rout kept their
stockings up, and whether the attendant Spirit forgot his words.
The morning passed quietly. The apothecary came and went, having
ordered that she was on no account to leave her bed till all symptoms
of fever had subsided. Margaret was not unwilling to rest her tired
body. Her brain was still too feverish to think for long coherently,
and she spent the day dozing and waking, tired and ill, but not unhappy.
A basket of fruit and flowers was brought from the Park by Walter
with a particular hope embalmed in a formal little note from Lady
Middleton that Miss Margaret went on well, and that Mrs. Dashwood and
Mrs. Ferrars would be able to leave their patient in the afternoon and
honour them at the Park.
Mrs. Dashwood would only consent to leave her daughter for the hour or
so to be occupied by the play. The day was fine and she would walk
up to the Park and walk back, without being included in those lesser
festivities of reception and refreshment which had inevitably gathered
round the performance.