Margaret Dashwood

“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.