One short call finishes their time in town. John congratulates them on travelling so far toward Barton at no expense to him, and on Colonel Brandon's following them to Cleveland in a day or two. Fanny's invitation to Norland is faint, and unlikely ever to be in their way. It amuses Elinor that everyone seems determined to send her to Delaford, the place she would now least choose to visit. Her brother and Mrs Jennings already treat it as her future home. Even Lucy, at parting, presses her to come there.
They set out very early in April. Marianne, eager as she has been to quit London, cannot leave the house of her last hope in Willoughby without pain, or the city where he remains, busy in schemes she can have no share in, without tears. Elinor's relief is plainer. She leaves nobody she would regret, she is free of Lucy's friendship, and her sister has not been seen by Willoughby since his marriage. On the third day they reach Cleveland, a modern house on a sloping lawn, shut in by fir, mountain ash, and acacia. Marianne is inside five minutes, and then gone, through the shrubbery to a Grecian temple. From there she can rest her eye on the farthest ridge and fancy that Combe Magna might be seen from its summit. Barton is eighty miles off. Combe Magna is not thirty. She resolves to spend almost every hour of every day in such walks.
A settled rain keeps her in after dinner. She had depended on a twilight return to the temple, and an evening merely cold or damp would not have stopped her. The gentlemen come the next day. Colonel Brandon talks of the parsonage at Delaford, its deficiencies, and what he means to do to them. His pleasure in meeting her, and his deference for her opinion, might justify Mrs Jennings. Elinor still believes Marianne his real favourite. She watches his eyes. Mrs Jennings watches his behaviour. The anxious look at Marianne's head and throat, the beginning of a heavy cold, is not spoken, and Mrs Jennings never sees it. Two twilight walks, on the third and fourth evenings, not on the dry gravel but where the trees are oldest and the grass longest and wettest, and the greater imprudence of sitting in wet shoes and stockings, give Marianne a cold she trifles with or denies. A good night's rest is to cure her entirely. Elinor prevails on her, with difficulty, to try one or two of the simplest remedies. Will a night's rest still be named as the cure, after the longest grass and the wet shoes?
Coming Up in Chapter 43
Marianne gets up at her usual time and tells every inquiry that she is better. She tries to prove it by returning to her usual employments. A day spent shivering over the fire with a book she cannot read does not support the claim, and she goes early to bed more indisposed than before.
