Her smile turned into a very miffed expression when Marianne replied, “If you are talking about Mrs. Aubrey and Dr. Maturin, we know them already. We met them by the wildest chance entering London.”
And she was not even given the pleasure of showing them where Mrs. Aubrey and Dr. Maturin were, for the crowd was thin, and the latter two spotted them and came over on their own.
“How glad we are to see you,” said Mrs. Aubrey.
“And we you,” replied Marianne. “Both of you.” She smiled warmly at both of them and shook both of their hands. Dr. Maturin looked a bit surprised. Margaret felt a bit surprised too. But her sister did have a very warm nature, and in the delight of the moment, she probably was glad to see him. She had to be; she didn’t lie about such things.
“Would you care for some refreshment?” Mrs Ferrars asked them, trying desperately to have them see her as more worthy of their attention then each other.
Mrs. Aubrey, as it happened, was a very polite woman and would never behave badly towards a polite host, so she acquiesced, and so did Dr. Maturin, Edward, and the Brandons. Margaret reluctantly nodded.
The refreshments table was some ways away, and Mrs. Ferrars chattered all the way there. “Of course I never had the privilege of meeting your husband, Mrs. Aubrey, but Mrs. Maturin told me oh so much about him, indeed, she admired him a very great deal.” And Margaret did not at all like the slight but knowing glance she gave Dr. Maturin.
Whether he noticed it or not she could not tell, but he merely said, “We all admired him.”
“Oh yes, we certainly all did!” Was that alarm in Mrs. Aubrey’s voice? Had she noticed? “Why, Miss Dashwood may attest to that.”
“I may,” Margaret agreed readily, trying to shoot Mrs. Aubrey a reassuring glance out of Mrs. Ferrars’ sight but failing. “Why, I admired him merely after reading about him once in the newspaper!”
“I don’t suppose you know a very great deal about him, then?” asked Mrs. Ferrars.
It was difficult for Margaret not to laugh her scorn out loud. “We had the fortune of dining with Dr. Maturin and Mrs. Aubrey not a week and a half ago, and they satisfied my curiosity.” Actually, they had not entirely, but Mrs. Ferrars wasn’t going to get to do so, not if Margaret could help it.
She was not to be foiled so easily. “Well, then, you are very easily satisfied. I have discovered over many years that those who love a man best are not the most accurate in describing him.”
Margaret tried to see Dr. Maturin and Mrs. Aubrey’s reactions to this comment, but Mrs. Aubrey was facing away and Dr. Maturin was impassive.
“But you say Mrs. Maturin admired him as well,” Marianne pointed out.
“Well, perhaps not quite as much,” replied Mrs. Ferrars, deliberately emphasizing every word. Margaret could see Mrs. Aubrey’s reaction this time. Alarm had given way to anger.
Yet she quelled it as best she could, saying, “Is that your husband, Mrs. Ferrars?”
It was indeed Robert Ferrars, speaking with a man Margaret didn’t recognize. She kept her focus on him so as to not pay attention to the next words of his wife, until he spotted them and his eyes fell on Dr. Maturin, and Margaret saw recognition in them, which she thought odd, since if he himself had met the Ferrarses, she was certain he would have said so. Indeed, Mrs. Ferrars’ malice seemed a little too strong to Margaret, now that she thought about it, unless she and Mrs. Maturin had truly hated each other.
“We attended plenty of Mrs. Maturin’s soirees, and two of them when her husband was allegedly on land, but he was never there. Your wife told us you...” Suddenly Mrs. Ferrars trailed off, as she saw her husband’s gaze slowly focus in on Dr. Maturin. There was a smug grin on his face, and a flicker of distress on hers. Dr. Maturin’s gaze focused back on Robert, but he merely appeared amused, and slightly contemptuous. Margaret supposed from the way Robert was holding himself and looking like he was swaggering without walking, Dr. Maturin had understood what he was pretty quickly. Or perhaps that swaying was the result of drink.
“Dr. Maturin,” Robert made his way over, and led them the rest of the way to the refreshments table. “We meet at last. I am quite charmed.”
“Thank you.” Dr. Maturin nodded, and when Robert offered his hand, shook it quite quickly and almost slapped it away, before accepting a glass of punch from Mrs. Aubrey.
“Dancing!” Mrs. Ferrars suddenly cried. “We must have dancing! Mrs. Brandon, will you not play the pianoforte?”
Marianne was too stunned to reply, and Mrs. Aubrey started, “I do not think, for the six of us, it would be appropriate..”
“Oh nonsense, you may dance with my dear brother, Mrs. Aubrey, and then you may sit down with him and talk about the Admiral and Elinor Ferrars all night as I suggested.” When their expressions did not change any, she said, “At any rate, I do not see any reason why Dr. Maturin should not dance. He ought to dance with Miss Dashwood.” And she seized Dr. Maturin by the arm and all but shoved him over to Margaret. He now had the oddest smile on his face, but was shaking his head.
This time it was Margaret who held her question back, merely suggesting they be allowed to finish their punch first, and Marianne who said, “I hope you got along with Mrs. Maturin, Mr. Ferrars; you’re behaving rather oddly.”
It was the wrong thing to say, for Robert promptly replied, “Oh, I got along with her very well. Very, very well.” One look at Mrs. Ferrars’ face and Margaret had a terrible suspicion of how well they had gotten along. She cast an anxious look at Stephen, but his expression was still completely neutral. But then, he had slapped Robert’s hand away in that manner, suggesting he in fact already knew, and she hoped had forgiven his wife. But even if he had, it was strange that he did not seem bothered at all to be reminded of it, even amused. Had he had a good relationship with her? What sort of woman had she been?
“I am willing to dance,” said Edward, quite reasonably under the circumstances, and put down his untouched glass of punch.
“It certainly isn’t looking like a bad course of action,” Marianne agreed, drinking back hers as quickly as she could without looking too rude. “Is your pianoforte not in the other room?”
Margaret drank her punch in a similar manner; Colonel Brandon, Dr. Maturin, and Mrs. Aubrey put theirs aside. Robert, seeing this, approached Dr. Maturin, and taking a closer look at him, for he ended up mere inches from her, giving her the urge to shrink back, Margaret did conclude his being at least somewhat drunk, though not so far gone that he did not at least partly know what he was about.
“After you dance with Miss Dashwood, Dr. Maturin, you must seek me out. I am sure there is plenty you wish to talk about with me.”
“I doubt it,” said Dr. Maturin, his face stiffening and his eyes suddenly turning very cold.
“The other room! And dearest, I believe that is the Earl of Matlock, whom you ought to greet as soon as ever you can!” Mrs. Ferrars at this point devoted all her attention to getting Dr. Maturin and her husband into separate rooms.
But now she found an opponent in Margaret. Had she had any less of a liking for Dr. Maturin, she should have taken an enjoyment in this altercation, in which she was certain the man she liked would triumph easily over the man she did not, and while she was considerate of his feelings, anger at Mrs. Ferrars at the manner in which she was willing to physically shove them into the next room overcame this consideration.
“Do you also know the Earl of Matlock, Dr. Maturin?” she asked, inching towards the Earl. She saw Mrs. Ferrars stunned expression.
“I am afraid not,” he replied. “Shall we go into the next room?”
“I do not especially want to dance,” she reminded him.
“You need not dance,” Mrs. Ferrars assured her.
“Well then, what is the point of going into the next room?”
Mrs. Ferrars had no reply for this, save an almost inaudible noise of frustration. But now Margaret was satisfied, and since Dr. Maturin clearly wished to avoid the confrontation as much as Mrs. Ferrars, she said, “But if this room is too crowded, and the next room is not, perhaps that will suffice as a reason, should it not, doctor?”
He agreed that it should, and as Margaret had hoped, this only angered Mrs. Ferrars further. They left her flustered by the refreshments table and made their way into the next room, Margaret all but sauntering.
“I think we really had better dance,” Marianne said to the other five. “There is no certainty that either of them won’t come seek us back out.”
The pianoforte was unoccupied, so she moved over to it and began playing. Her fingers were slightly out of practice; she had not played since Elinor’s death, but the guests would not notice. Many clapped and cheered, and Edward, Mrs. Aubrey, Dr. Maturin, and Margaret were hardly the only ones to aid in the creation of a dance formation. It was so impromptu Margaret did not think Mrs. Ferrars could possibly be unconditionally pleased, and she said so to Dr. Maturin.
“What malice do you bear against that woman?” he all but demanded, and a distressed Margaret realized she had disturbed him.
Yet he listened, patiently and seeming to understand, as Margaret carefully explained the entire history of her family’s dealings with Lucy Ferrars, dancing several dances with him as she did so, due to its length. She started with the business between her, Edward, and Elinor: what she knew for certain, what she believed, and what Marianne had told her two years later and thus might have been altered from the truth by the effect of time on her sister’s memory.
He did not quite respond, however, in the way she had hoped. He pointed out what Mrs. Ferrars’ situation had been, and while conceding that her actions may have brought Margaret’s sister considerable pain, and thus it was only natural that Margaret dislike her, he concluded, “I cannot condemn her for doing what the world forced her to do.” And as for her supposed emotional torment of Elinor, he reminded Margaret that by her own admission she had no certainty of it having happened.
“I do have certainty of it being consistent with her character,” was Margaret’s reply, and she went on to explain what Mrs. Ferrars had done to her. She briefly worried about how to explain the matter of the two lieutenants, when she was not about to admit to the truth of her heart, but to her considerable relief he sensed her discomfort, and eased them past that section of the narration with a “I imagine such men could not care what your actual preference might be, could they? Only what they perceived it to be. And what actions did they take as a result of each other?” and from there Margaret finished the story easily.
Of course they could not dance every dance together, but they did a remarkable job of keeping each other company, and were the object of a number of stares, the majority of them derisive, especially when coming from Lucy Ferrars or Fanny Dashwood. Margaret liked it. Her fascination with Dr. Maturin did not prevent her from observing that he was not at all visually appealing, and thus they were well matched indeed, and this amused her, while leaving them free to keep to each other’s desirable company.
When she had told all, she waited for him to say something about himself, but she waited in vain. Instead he commented, “So now you keep company with Lady Middleton’s children, and have no doubt suffered unbearable envy watching the eldest daughters marry.”
This she hoped he meant in jest, but she had a correction of another sort to supply. “Well, I cannot do that yet, for Lady Middleton shows the most distressing reluctance to allow her daughters out into society. I was her first attempt, you see, because it was far safer to practice on me than on her own daughters, and now even the eldest is pinned up, unbearably envious of me, unable to so much as dance at her father’s winter balls, which distresses him considerably. Perhaps it was my fault, being such a disaster.”
“She is not too old, I hope?”
“Oh no, she is very nearly eighteen. Of course, I was not fully out at that age either, but my sisters were, and anyway, my whole coming out was botched.”
“I admit I do not understand that. Sophie speaks of her own daughters ‘coming out,’ sometime next year, but has never quite explained the significance of that.”
“Well, it means they can go dancing and talk freely with people and travel to London, and they have to start worrying about whom they are going to marry. Though that is how my coming out was, as I said, botched, because for all intents and purposes, I was out at the young age of fifteen at Barton and Delaford, where my sisters lived, but certainly not anywhere else.”
“That sounds like a perfectly sensible arrangement to me.”
There were, Margaret then mused, times when someone like Dr. Maturin would say something that seemingly indicated naivety, but in fact was the most sensible point a person could possibly make. “It was, in a way,” she admitted, to herself also for the first time. “It seemed so to everyone but Lady Middleton, and to me.”
“Yet I do feel for poor Annamaria,” she continued. “To not have your way must be far more unpleasant to those who are not used to such an indignity.”
He chuckled. Margaret felt her heart leap with delight, that she had gotten him to do so. “Is she very spoilt, then?”
Not the kind of question Margaret had been expecting. But one she could answer quite happily. “Oh yes. Her mother is hopeless in that manner, and so are the people Lady Middleton is fond of. It is one of the requirements of being a person she is fond of. Now her mother positively hates her, of course, but I hope she will not for long. Certainly for not as long as Annamaria will hate her mother. But she need not fear. Sir John will forego not having his daughter dance with his guests for only so long. I am certain, by the way, that Mrs. Aubrey could send her daughters to him and he would not even care for how little acquaintance he has with her, though I assume she would.”
“I know enough to know that that is remarkable. Are you so certain?”
“All too much. And how poor Annamaria would react to such an event, I do not want to think!”
After Margaret had told Dr. Maturin a little more about her landlord, he professed to holding a favourable impression. “With such joviality and generousity, he would have found a kindred spirit in my late friend. I should not mind meeting him, should a proper opportunity come up.”
“I will tell him that,” replied she, “and he will see to it that it does.”
“Except,” he continued, “I hope he has no prejudice against navy men.”
“None that I have heard of. At any rate, I know Colonel Brandon does not. Ah, and speaking of Colonel Brandon,” and her words dissolved into laughter, which was hardly surprising considering the sight in front of her eyes: someone else had taken over at the pianoforte, and Marianne had taken her husband out onto the dance floor. He danced awkwardly at best, eyes visibly on his feet in a carefully studied attempt to keep them off of other people’s feet.
It was not as amusing a sight as it usually was, though, because usually Marianne was much more cheerful. This time was unusual in that she did not laugh, nor attempt to coax her husband’s gaze upward. She contemplated his face herself, but then turned her gaze away. Margaret followed it and saw she was watching Edward and Mrs. Aubrey. The two of them were seated and absorbed in conversation, to the point that it warmed Margaret’s heart. She saw too that Marianne looked very satisfied.
In this manner things continued until dinner was served, at which the six companions found themselves seated together. This was of course pleasing, yet Margaret found herself regretful that her time alone with Dr. Maturin had drawn itself to a close; now she must share him with four other people, one of whom had a far superior claim on his company than she.
Mrs. Aubrey did not look happy, and yet Margaret thought she did not look sad either. Dr. Maturin thought this as well, and said as much. Mrs. Aubrey smiled and said, “I do not think I am much of anything tonight.”
“I have seen this mood in widows before,” Edward added. “I admit I have never been sure if it is the best frame of mind for them or not.”
Or for widowers, Margaret thought, but he looked in a similar state. “Can they help it?” she asked gently.
“I should like to believe they could,” replied Edward, but the very nature of his answer said enough.
“How can you help what you feel?” Marianne protested. “How can anyone control the inner workings of their hearts? Why that seems to me to be impossible! Of course, I have learned over the years that one must sometimes control the effect of one’s feelings on one’s behavior, but the feelings themselves? Surely that cannot be done!”
“It may seems strange, indeed, to most, the thought that it could be done,” replied Dr. Maturin, “yet in my experience, it can be done, at least by some people.”
“It certainly seems strange to me,” said Marianne. “If there are such people, I must think that they are shallow in their emotions all together, so to easily discard them.”
“I do not think that need be the case at all!” protested Mrs. Aubrey. “In fact, I do not think it impossible that the very opposite might be true, that they might have feelings so strong and so painful that to experience them would be to die. Then they may simply not feel them purely out of a need for survival.”
“I agree that is possible,” said Edward, “but at the same time, I can not help but think that might not be a wise thing to do.”
“If it is possible,” agreed Marianne, “and perhaps you are right, perhaps it is, then to do that must feel much like death, I should think.”
“It does do so, yes,” said Dr. Maturin, and he spoke, or so it seemed to Margaret, as if this, too, he knew from his own experience.
“So is it better,” she asked, “to feel too little, or too much, do you think?”
Her question was met with a reaction from him that was so strong to Margaret’s eyes, despite his veiling it by pressing his hands into the table and lowering his head, that she immediately regretted asking the question, but she could not think of a way to withdraw it without drawing attention to his condition.
Thankfully Marianne answered it. “It must be worse to feel too little. Because I can not think that you are truly free from that which would haunt you. So you are only left with both the feeling of death and the unease of not feeling what you know you ought to.”
“I admit,” said Dr. Maturin, “I have never thought of it in that way.”
Margaret was considerably relieved when, before he could say anything else, there was a sudden outcry from one of the other tables. After a minute or so of confusion, it became clear that a lady had fainted, and they could see her being carried out of the room.
“What could have distressed that poor lady?” wondered Mrs. Aubrey. “It is not very hot in here.”
“Perhaps she ate something which disagreed with her,” suggested Dr. Maturin.
“You do not insult our hostess?”
“I dare say I do not want to, but there lies the possibility that as a medical man, I may have no choice.”
“Is that a common cause of fainting?” asked Edward. “Disagreeable food?”
Probably very glad for the change of subject, Dr. Maturin spent most of the rest of the dinner detailing the various causes of fainting in both sexes, and the others offering instances they knew about of each. One or two were left out by Marianne, but they were examples she could not be blamed for omitting, and nor would the others bring them up.
When dinner was done, Edward and Dr. Maturin both elected to join the ladies for music very quickly, as it did not take them very long to discover they had little liking for the company of the other men at the party, and even less to contribute to their conversation. “You can hardly expect me to talk much about politics,” Dr. Maturin commented to Margaret, “when in the navy the topic was taboo.”
Again Marianne had been asked to the piano, and she had acquiesced to perform a few of her best. Margaret stood nearby and watched much more than she listened, for she had heard her sister sing all the songs countless times and knew how they went and that Marianne would perform them with superior technique and emotional beauty, but she did not know how Marianne would truly feel. She watched her sister’s hands roam across the keys, her fingers hesitate sometimes before striking, her shoulders grow tense.
“I see you truly are fond of music, Dr. Maturin,” she heard Edward say, and out of the corner of her eye she looked at the doctor, and saw what Edward meant; Dr. Maturin stood transfixed, so much that she might have feared he was taken with Marianne herself, if not for the way he seemed to not be looking at much at all with his eyes, but rather looked with his ears.
When Marianne excused herself from the piano and another woman took over Dr. Maturin walked up to Margaret and said, “Your sister has exceptional musicality.”
“Yes,” said Margaret, “she is the songbird in our family.”
“The only songbird in this room, to put it more accurately. Listen to the woman playing right now. Her technique is bad, but your sister’s technique itself was not entirely sound, and all in all this bad technique might be forgivable if she had any feeling, any sense of what she was doing, if, in fact, she gave any impression of caring whether she played well or not.”
“She looks very young,” Margaret pointed out. “She may grow better with age. And Marianne usually plays better than that; she’s a little distracted right now.”
“I don’t doubt that your sister can play better,” replied Dr. Maturin, “but as to your other remark, I’m afraid her young age and that she is clearly unmarried only makes me more suspicious of her motives. I have often known women to train themselves to play the piano purely as a means to attract men, with no interest in any more musicality than they might be likely to perceive, which in most cases is not much, and once they are married, of course, they never play again. And see how our young woman here continually catches the eye of that gentleman there-the one with the light brown hair.”
“Do you blame her?” Margaret inquired. “Can you indeed, when you excuse the behavior of Mrs. Ferrars to me?”
“I do not ask you to excuse Mrs. Ferrars,” said he, “and so, likewise, I would not have you ask me to excuse this woman. To be sure, I would have disliked her much more intensely once, before I understood that she probably views it as necessary to do what she does, but she still causes me pain.”
“Music truly is a very great passion for you, then,” said Margaret, amazed. “I must never try to play for you, then, or you would hate me; I have no skill.”
“It is not lack of skill, I hate, Miss Dashwood, it is lack of respect for music. I myself enjoy playing the violincello, and I am not the most skillful of players, but I would never treat a piece of music the way that young lady there is doing. It might be any piece and she sees no difference. Is she even aware of any of its aspects beyond those she absolutely must know in order to play it? Could she have any appreciation for the chords, the phrasing, the progression?”
He was speaking with such passion it coloured his face, and made him look very different to Margaret’s eyes. His normal pallour had given way to deep pink with even hints of red, and it seemed as if his eyes had come to life for the first time. It gave him a particular aesthetic quality, she thought; it didn’t make him attractive, but...alluring, still, in the way a character in a novel might be.
“Come,” she said, “let us take a turn about the ballroom together and give your heart time to calm.”
She heard several people murmur as they passed them on their way out of the room, but that was still of no consequence to her. What mattered now is that Dr. Maturin had calmed with the offending pianists out of sight; she had been worried because their music could still be heard, but he seemed better about it. “So you play the violincello?” she asked. “I admit, I do not know many men who play music. They do not learn such skills the way ladies do.”
“My skill is very modest,” said he. “But I have not often had ladies to play music for me, so I have had to play it for myself. I met quite a few musicians in the Navy; it surprises me to hear you never met any of them. My particular friend Admiral Aubrey was truly exceptional on a violin, and many were the duets we played together.”
“A pity my sister is very choosy in whom she duets with,” said Margaret. “And I have never heard her to duet with a cellist.”
“Oh, no,” said Dr. Maturin, “I would not presume to duet with your sister. When I played with the Admiral, I’m afraid he concealed his level of skill to make it sound as if he was no better than me, so I would not feel my inferiority, so there would be nothing for it to blemish. In truth, I would never have known his true skill had I not once heard him playing when he thought noone could hear. I doubt Mrs. Brandon would be willing to do such a thing, or allow such blemishment.”
“Oh no,” said Margaret, “she would think the deception an intolerable evil! And I cannot say I would disagree with her! Were you not insulted?”
Dr. Maturin shook his head. “On the contrary,” he said, “it amazed me that he would do such a thing, merely to spare my feelings.” His voice was so soft, his tone so humbled, awed by his late friend’s sacrifice, that Margaret could not but be deeply moved.
“Perhaps Marianne would not be horrified after all,” she commented. “If she could be brought to see it as an act of love.”
“Best not to test her,” said Dr. Maturin, and Margaret agreed.
And so when Marianne asked her, as they were heading home that night, what she and Dr. Maturin had talked about, she answered only in the most general of terms, about music and about the Middletons. Then her sister was quiet.
But when her husband fell asleep, Marianne suddenly said, “I think I may have some idea as to why I am not entirely comfortable around Dr. Maturin.”
“Why?” asked Margaret, dismayed; she had forgotten about her sister not entirely liking him, and had hoped this was merely a first impression that would pass.
“Margaret, it is in the way he looks at you. I do not like it. I fear he may hope to take advantage of your supposedly being an old maid, of your imagined desperation. Of course we both know you would never marry for desperation, but he might not know it.”
“Do you really think he has any such intentions for me?” demanded Margaret, now truly shocked. “And why do you assume him so mercenary? Perhaps he likes me, perhaps he would form a disinterested attachment. You do not cling to your old belief that he is too old for such feelings?”
“It is not just his age,” said Marianne. “Not any longer. For Robert talked to me during the party and he said other things about him.”
“Robert! Surely you will not heed anything he would tell you!”
“But he told me things, Margaret, that we could determine were either truth or lies. He claims that Dr. Maturin is a Papist, and that he is the natural son of Irish soldier. He might have told me falsehoods, yes, but he did so in front of Mrs. Aubrey, and she made no contradiction.”
To that Margaret could make no argument. She did not want to think ill of Dr. Maturin, but it angered her that he was these things, and that she had not known, and now she must take them into consideration.
By the time she settled into bed that night, it was all flying through her mind; everything about Dr. Maturin she had seen and heard, from both himself and other people. It was a long time before she slept.