Philip turned round and Eleanor came near, her father waiting impatiently by the door, looking at his watch. “He is waiting for you, Eleanor!” the general said. “Move along.”
Philip reached out to take the book from her.
“A means to an end, my dear Philip.” The smallness in her voice at this admission made his heart break.
ChapterFive
“Iam glad to walk out. To be sure I could not play another game of billiards,” Sir Charles was saying as he and Eleanor walked Welland’s gravel paths, “but why did your father talk so much about improving the grounds at Northanger and then suggest I discuss it withyou?”
“My father takes a walk at the same time every day,” Eleanor said, not wanting to admit to the real reason General Tilney had put her forward, “but he knows that I am the one who frequents and enjoys the park.”
“At Colborne, the park and coppice are unfrequented, but Mr Repton’s plans will change all of that,” he said confidently. “I expect it to be done to my liking while I am gone. I intend to sit for Parliament, you might have heard, and shall need an impressively modern place to host my friends. General Tilney ought to have Northanger’s grounds laid out by an improver.”
Eleanor tried to keep her attention on Sir Charles as she discreetly looked behind her to see if her gown’s train was as ruined as she feared. If it was not irreparably frayed, it was surely filthy.
Her father had insisted that she join Sir Charles directly, and she had no time to change into something suitable for walking on wet gravel. This was the sort of behaviour that she was trying to escape from: the constant, unreasonable demands. If she was a married woman, she could go for a walk when she liked, wherever she liked, and wear whatever she liked while she did so.
What a terribly low standard to aim for when seeking one’s happiness in life.
Sir Charles had by now turned to give her an expectant look. He needed some reply, so she asked, “Is it true that Mr Repton’s terms are five guineas a day?”
“Yes, and if they were ten, I am sureIneed not regard it,” he said with a satisfied smile.
Eleanor was certain that if she married Sir Charles, the expense of anything need not be any impediment. Twelve thousand a year was beyond her idea of competence. It was more wealth than her father had, and the general was an exceedingly wealthy man. Not near to Lord Vaughan’s fifteen thousand, of course, or whatever the fortune the Marquess of Longtown had, but she knew she would be happy with a small income.
Philip had no inclination for expense and lived comfortably on five hundred a year that he earned from the ten thousand pounds his parents had left to him. If she managed Philip’s rented house in Belleville’s estate village, she might afford five pounds per week for all the household expenses; Sir Charles spent five guineas a day to hire Mr Repton.Some might say Philip’s external comforts were wanting, but as far as she was concerned, he had a proper establishment, with three servants and two horses, and his every need met.
She turned from Sir Charles and blinked her eyes a few times, and then looked up at the cloudy sky, exhaling quickly. She would never share that charming home with Philip, so there was no reason to cry over it now. When she had composed herself, she looked back at Sir Charles, ready to make up some excuse for her silence and inattention, but he had not even noticed.
“Longtown has done well enough with Welland’s grounds, I suppose,” he said. Then, pointing at the plantation of trees, he added, “But parts are rather old-looking.”
“Northanger has a narrow winding path through a thick grove of old Scotch firs that I am fond of.”
“It must be a cold and damp path,” he said sharply.
“I suppose it is, but it was my mother’s favourite walk, and her memory must endear it to me now.”
She wondered what her mother had thought of young Captain Tilney when they married nearly thirty years ago. Had she fully known the character of the man she was marrying? Did she ardently love him? How Eleanor wished she had asked her mother those questions while she had had the chance.
She had hoped that Sir Charles would follow her previous comment with questions about her mother, but he said, “You are good to come out with me, Miss Tilney. A shower of rain leaves one with nothing to do.”
“Not at all,” she said, managing a polite smile. A tender remembrance of her mother was always welcome to Eleanor, but perhaps such a discussion was not in Sir Charles’s nature. “I am fond of walking.”
How often had she walked through that grove at Northanger, considering her grief over the sudden loss of her mother and thinking over her memories of her? Philip never minded when she talked about missing her mother because he had experienced that same grief. She had lost her at thirteen, and Philip had lost both of his parents by the time he was twenty-one. He listened well, and never gave advice, and often shared his own parental memories in return.
The first time I kissed Philip was in that secluded grove.
“I asked Vaughan to ride with me, but he claimed the air was still too wet,” Sir Charles went on. “The rain was a mere mist at that time! Can you imagine it?”
“The last thing Lord Vaughan could suffer is a cough.” Eleanor explained his hereditary predisposition for asthma and the violent efforts it took Vaughan to breathe in the midst of one of his rare fits.
“I am shocked that so hale a young man suffers from ill health,” he exclaimed. “I would not have known it from His Lordship’s temperament.”
“I would not call him ill,” she said. It might endear her to a potential husband if she always agreed with him, but Eleanor could not forget who she was. “He did have many asthmatic fits as a child, and now he knows what must be done to avoid them. I remember Mr Brampton saying that Lord Vaughan can have trouble breathing for some time after a paroxysm is over. He wishes to go to Kent soon, you know, so he would not want to risk being wet through today.”
“I cannot think of one illness I have ever had. It is a weakness to be ill, you must agree.”
She certainly did not, thinking of the quick illness that had carried off her mother before Eleanor could even arrive home. The malady itself was one from which her mother had often suffered.“I do not,” she said tightly. “It is not weakness that makes an ill person succumb.”
