Margaret Dashwood

Dining at the Park was an event which possessed neither interest nor novelty. Margaret did not anticipate any pleasure beyond the minor ones of excellent food and elegant surroundings. Her mind was, however, so pleasantly occupied with the event of the morning that she dressed for the engagement with a happy smile and, on joining her mother and Mr. Atherton in the hall, and preparing to set out for their walk to the Park, she looked so pretty that Mrs. Dashwood gazed at her with the tenderest affection and Mr. Atherton with an admiration which for once was genuine.

As they crossed the grounds of the Park, Mrs. Dashwood’s replies were absent-minded and Margaret said nothing at all. Mr. Atherton had to supply all the conversation himself, a feat which was to him no feat at all, for he barely stopped talking all the way, and yet arrived untired and with fresh stores of information to be expended at the dining-table of Barton Park. Here, however, he was unable to have things as he liked. Sir John Middleton was fond of talking himself. Mrs. Jennings had no notion of being silent, and Miss Nancy Steele seldom paused except for breath. It was a thoroughly noisy party, and for the most part a happy one. Lady Middleton was pleased with her appearance, and that of her dining-table, and only Mrs. Dashwood and her daughter fell short of enjoyment.

Mrs. Dashwood was at her best only in her own house. She did not care for dinner engagements or desultory conversation, and the glare, heat and noise at Barton Park were irksome to her. Margaret was as usual the subject of much jesting, but shared this honour with Miss Steele, who soon succeeded in inducing the main stream of the wit to flow in her direction.

Mr. Atherton was placed between them, with the usual allusion to roses and thorns, and it was supposed that Miss Steele and Margaret would enter into competition to secure his notice. Miss Steele’s victory was almost too easy.

“Take care, cousin, the Doctor shall hear of this,” called Sir John from the head of the table. “Don’t imagine you are safe. I have his address I think. Dr. Davis, Dash Street, Plymouth, isn’t it? We’ll soon let him know how you behave.”

“What does it matter to me what the Doctor hears?” called Miss Nancy in delighted protest. “He’d better mind his own business I say, and so I should say if he were here, right to his face.”

“We’ll get him here, cousin. That’s what we’ll do, and see if you don’t call another tune.”

“A fine thing it would be if I couldn’t speak to anyone but him. I wonder what he would have thought of me yesterday, for there was a very fine young man in the coach with me, and he was most excessively polite with the baggage, and asked me if I would have the window up, and did I like a corner seat. Most attentive, he was! And he got down, not half a mile from Barton Park, and I heard him tell the guard he was a stranger, and he asked for some direction, but there was an old woman coughing in the road and I could not hear any more.”

Sir John’s attention was attracted. He did not always pay Miss Steele the compliment of listening to her, but a man in the neighbourhood with whom he was unacquainted, a stranger, was a matter of interest to him. He wondered who could have a guest without his having previous knowledge of it.

Mrs. Jennings surmised. “Was it, perhaps, Mr. Willoughby coming to visit Mrs. Smith?”

Miss Nancy was positive. “La, now! Should I call Mr. Willoughby a stranger after all that’s come and gone? Why, I should be ashamed to mention him in the present company.”

Mrs. Dashwood, on hearing her daughter’s disappointment thus delicately referred to, engaged Lady Middleton in a more animated conversation than that lady often experienced. Margaret, however, heard good Mrs. Jennings say:

“Sh! Sh! We don’t speak of that now. Miss Marianne would not like it remembered! If this was not Mr. Willoughby, who in the world can it have been?”

“His name was Pennington,” said Miss Nancy.

“Ha! Ha! cousin, so you’ve exchanged names and addresses I see. The poor, poor Doctor! I wouldn’t give a button for his chance now.”

“No, Sir John, there you are wrong. I hope I know my dignity better than to be asking a strange young man for his address. I just peeped at the label on his luggage when he got down at a change, and the name was Pennington, as large as life.”

“Pennington? I don’t know a Pennington,” considered Sir John. “But I tell you what, cousin! We will find out and invite him to the ball next week, and we will get the Doctor too, and, with Mr. Atherton here, we will be able to find out who is your beau after all. Only tell ’em from me that if they want to cut each other’s throats they must do it outside on the lawn there. Her ladyship will not have bloodshed in the drawing-room.”

Her ladyship caught only the last word, but it suggested to her a mode of release from a conversation which had become wearisome. She immediately got the ladies moving away from the dining-room, where they left Sir John and Mr. Atherton to discuss their wine and politics, with the usual parting admonition that they should be speedy.

In the drawing-room the party divided into two groups. Lady Middleton and her mother listened with sympathy to the account Mrs. Dashwood gave of Thomas’s health and very ready was the offer of hospitality for Mr. Atherton at the Park to relieve the household at the Cottage of their guest. Mrs. Dashwood again had reason to feel that, however tedious their society might be, they were indeed the kindest of neighbours.

Margaret meanwhile was the recipient of Miss Nancy’s confidences so heart-rendingly curtailed at the dining-table, and it was not long before she became privately convinced that her acquaintance of the morning and Miss Nancy’s beau were one and the same. How far he deserved the latter appellation she was still uncertain. Possibly he did not deserve it at all; but the thought was unpleasant, and she was grateful to Lady Middleton for suggesting that she should try the instrument, which had not been touched for many weeks. She remained there till it was time for tea.

The gentlemen appeared in the drawing-room, and Mr. Atherton received the kindest invitation from Lady Middleton, seconded with prodigious warmth by Sir John, to take up his quarters at the Park until his own house should be ready for him.

Mr. Atherton did not demur. It was not beyond his power to convey suitable thanks to Sir John and Lady Middleton, the right regrets to Mrs. Dashwood, the assurance of undying admiration to Margaret, and the suggestion of increasing attention to Miss Steele all in the same sentence and almost in the same breath. The circumstance was undoubtedly of value to him. His consequence would be increased by his association with Barton Park and, though anxious for some reasons to improve his position with Margaret, opportunities must offer, even when separated from her by half a mile. The society at the Park was very congenial to him. The same obtuseness of feeling, conventionality of expression and denseness in understanding, which were his, also distinguished the inmates of the Park.

At Barton Cottage he had not been perfectly at ease. He had not, he must confess to himself, found Mrs. Dashwood so gracious and charming as he had been led to expect, and the lady whom he held himself destined to install at the parsonage was less able in conversation and not so easily entertained as he had hoped. She had yawned twice during his reading of “The Lady of the Lake,” and was at all times disconcertingly silent. Not that he was disconcerted by her silence. Not in the least! But he must admit to himself that the agreeable circle at the Park had been a great relief.

Margaret heard the invitation given and accepted with calm satisfaction, and the evening ended with a quiet stroll back across the Park grounds with her mother, followed by Sir John’s man, who was to pack Mr. Atherton’s personal belongings and take them to the Park, where he himself remained.

It was a welcome change, and Mrs. Dashwood’s tender solicitude for Thomas when she got home was deepened by the feeling that she and Margaret had reason to feel very much obliged to him indeed.