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Page 35
"What glorious weather for the Admiral and my sister! They meant to take
a long drive this morning; perhaps we may hail them from
some of these hills. They talked of coming into this side of the country.
I wonder whereabouts they will upset to-day. Oh! it does happen
very often, I assure you; but my sister makes nothing of it;
she would as lieve be tossed out as not."
"Ah! You make the most of it, I know," cried Louisa, "but if it were
really so, I should do just the same in her place. If I loved a man,
as she loves the Admiral, I would always be with him, nothing should ever
separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, than driven safely
by anybody else."
It was spoken with enthusiasm.
"Had you?" cried he, catching the same tone; "I honour you!"
And there was silence between them for a little while.
Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet scenes
of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet,
fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining
happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together,
blessed her memory. She roused herself to say, as they struck by order
into another path, "Is not this one of the ways to Winthrop?"
But nobody heard, or, at least, nobody answered her.
Winthrop, however, or its environs--for young men are, sometimes
to be met with, strolling about near home--was their destination;
and after another half mile of gradual ascent through large enclosures,
where the ploughs at work, and the fresh made path spoke the farmer
counteracting the sweets of poetical despondence, and meaning
to have spring again, they gained the summit of the most considerable hill,
which parted Uppercross and Winthrop, and soon commanded a full view
of the latter, at the foot of the hill on the other side.
Winthrop, without beauty and without dignity, was stretched before them
an indifferent house, standing low, and hemmed in by the barns and
buildings of a farm-yard.
Mary exclaimed, "Bless me! here is Winthrop. I declare I had no idea!
Well now, I think we had better turn back; I am excessively tired."
Henrietta, conscious and ashamed, and seeing no cousin Charles
walking along any path, or leaning against any gate, was ready
to do as Mary wished; but "No!" said Charles Musgrove, and "No, no!"
cried Louisa more eagerly, and taking her sister aside, seemed to be
arguing the matter warmly.
Charles, in the meanwhile, was very decidedly declaring his resolution
of calling on his aunt, now that he was so near; and very evidently,
though more fearfully, trying to induce his wife to go too.
But this was one of the points on which the lady shewed her strength;
and when he recommended the advantage of resting herself a quarter
of an hour at Winthrop, as she felt so tired, she resolutely answered,
"Oh! no, indeed! walking up that hill again would do her more harm
than any sitting down could do her good;" and, in short,
her look and manner declared, that go she would not.
After a little succession of these sort of debates and consultations,
it was settled between Charles and his two sisters, that he
and Henrietta should just run down for a few minutes, to see their aunt
and cousins, while the rest of the party waited for them at the top
of the hill. Louisa seemed the principal arranger of the plan;
and, as she went a little way with them, down the hill, still talking
to Henrietta, Mary took the opportunity of looking scornfully around her,
and saying to Captain Wentworth--
"It is very unpleasant, having such connexions! But, I assure you,
I have never been in the house above twice in my life."
She received no other answer, than an artificial, assenting smile,
followed by a contemptuous glance, as he turned away, which Anne
perfectly knew the meaning of.
The brow of the hill, where they remained, was a cheerful spot:
Louisa returned; and Mary, finding a comfortable seat for herself
on the step of a stile, was very well satisfied so long as the others
all stood about her; but when Louisa drew Captain Wentworth away,
to try for a gleaning of nuts in an adjoining hedge-row,
and they were gone by degrees quite out of sight and sound,
Mary was happy no longer; she quarrelled with her own seat,
was sure Louisa had got a much better somewhere, and nothing could
prevent her from going to look for a better also. She turned through
the same gate, but could not see them. Anne found a nice seat
for her, on a dry sunny bank, under the hedge-row, in which
she had no doubt of their still being, in some spot or other.
Mary sat down for a moment, but it would not do; she was sure Louisa
had found a better seat somewhere else, and she would go on
till she overtook her.
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