Persuasion
contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that
she knew not which prevailed.
Her answers to the kindness and the remarks of her companions were at
first unconsciously given. They had travelled half their way along the
rough lane, before she was quite awake to what they said. She then
found them talking of “Frederick.”
“He certainly means to have one or other of those two girls, Sophy,”
said the Admiral; “but there is no saying which. He has been running
after them, too, long enough, one would think, to make up his mind. Ay,
this comes of the peace. If it were war now, he would have settled it
long ago. We sailors, Miss Elliot, cannot afford to make long
courtships in time of war. How many days was it, my dear, between the
first time of my seeing you and our sitting down together in our
lodgings at North Yarmouth?”
“We had better not talk about it, my dear,” replied Mrs Croft,
pleasantly; “for if Miss Elliot were to hear how soon we came to an
understanding, she would never be persuaded that we could be happy
together. I had known you by character, however, long before.”
“Well, and I had heard of you as a very pretty girl, and what were we
to wait for besides? I do not like having such things so long in hand.
I wish Frederick would spread a little more canvass, and bring us home
one of these young ladies to Kellynch. Then there would always be
company for them. And very nice young ladies they both are; I hardly
know one from the other.”
“Very good humoured, unaffected girls, indeed,” said Mrs Croft, in a
tone of calmer praise, such as made Anne suspect that her keener powers
might not consider either of them as quite worthy of her brother; “and
a very respectable family. One could not be connected with better
people. My dear Admiral, that post! we shall certainly take that post.”
But by coolly giving the reins a better direction herself they happily
passed the danger; and by once afterwards judiciously putting out her
hand they neither fell into a rut, nor ran foul of a dung-cart; and
Anne, with some amusement at their style of driving, which she imagined
no bad representation of the general guidance of their affairs, found
herself safely deposited by them at the Cottage.
CHAPTER XI.
The time now approached for Lady Russell’s return: the day was even
fixed; and Anne, being engaged to join her as soon as she was
resettled, was looking forward to an early removal to Kellynch, and
beginning to think how her own comfort was likely to be affected by it.
It would place her in the same village with Captain Wentworth, within
half a mile of him; they would have to frequent the same church, and
there must be intercourse between the two families. This was against
her; but on the other hand, he spent so much of his time at Uppercross,
that in removing thence she might be considered rather as leaving him
behind, than as going towards him; and, upon the whole, she believed
she must, on this interesting question, be the gainer, almost as
certainly as in her change of domestic society, in leaving poor Mary
for Lady Russell.
She wished it might be possible for her to avoid ever seeing Captain
Wentworth at the Hall: those rooms had witnessed former meetings which
would be brought too painfully before her; but she was yet more anxious
for the possibility of Lady Russell and Captain Wentworth never meeting
anywhere. They did not like each other, and no renewal of acquaintance
now could do any good; and were Lady Russell to see them together, she
might think that he had too much self-possession, and she too little.
These points formed her chief solicitude in anticipating her removal
from Uppercross, where she felt she had been stationed quite long
enough. Her usefulness to little Charles would always give some
sweetness to the memory of her two months’ visit there, but he was
gaining strength apace, and she had nothing else to stay for.
The conclusion of her visit, however, was diversified in a way which
she had not at all imagined. Captain Wentworth, after being unseen and
unheard of at Uppercross for two whole days, appeared again among them
to justify himself by a relation of what had kept him away.
A letter from his friend, Captain Harville, having found him out at
last, had brought intelligence of Captain Harville’s being settled with
his family at Lyme for the winter; of their being therefore, quite
unknowingly, within twenty miles of each other. Captain Harville had
never been in good health since a severe wound which he received two
years before, and Captain Wentworth’s anxiety to see him had determined
him to go immediately to Lyme. He had been there for four-and-twenty
hours. His acquittal was complete, his friendship warmly honoured, a
lively interest excited for his friend, and his description of the fine
country about Lyme so feelingly attended to by the party, that an
earnest desire to see Lyme themselves, and a project for going thither
was the consequence.
The young people were all wild to see Lyme. Captain Wentworth talked of
going there again himself, it was only seventeen miles from Uppercross;
though November, the weather was by no means bad; and, in short,
Louisa, who was the most eager of the eager, having formed the
resolution to go, and besides the pleasure of doing as she liked, being
now armed with the idea of merit in maintaining her own way, bore down
all the wishes of her father and mother for putting it off till summer;
and to Lyme they were to go—Charles, Mary, Anne, Henrietta, Louisa, and
Captain Wentworth.
The first heedless scheme had been to go in the morning and return at
night; but to this Mr Musgrove, for the sake of his horses, would not
consent; and when it came to be rationally considered, a day in the
middle of November would not leave much time for seeing a new place,
after deducting seven hours, as the nature of the country required, for
going and returning. They were, consequently, to stay the night there,
and not to be expected back till the next day’s dinner. This was felt
to be a considerable amendment; and though they all met at the Great
House at rather an early breakfast hour, and set off very punctually,
it was so much past noon before the two carriages, Mr Musgrove’s coach
containing the four ladies, and Charles’s curricle, in which he drove
Captain Wentworth, were descending the long hill into Lyme, and
entering upon the still steeper street of the town itself, that it was
very evident they would not have more than time for looking about them,
before the light and warmth of the day were gone.
After securing accommodations, and ordering a dinner at one of the
inns, the next thing to be done was unquestionably to walk directly
down to the sea. They were come too late in the year for any amusement
or variety which Lyme, as a public place, might offer. The rooms were
shut up, the lodgers almost all gone, scarcely any family but of the
residents left; and, as there is nothing to admire in the buildings
themselves, the remarkable situation of the town, the principal street
almost hurrying into the water, the walk to the Cobb, skirting round
the pleasant little bay, which, in the season, is animated with bathing
machines and company; the Cobb itself, its old wonders and new
improvements, with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to
the east of the town, are what the stranger’s eye will seek; and a very
strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate
environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better. The scenes in its
neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of
country, and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs,
where fragments of low rock among the sands, make it the happiest spot
for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied
contemplation; the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up Lyme;
and, above all, Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic rocks,
where the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth,
declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first
partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state,
where a scene so wonderful and so lovely is exhibited, as may more than
equal any of the resembling scenes of the far-famed Isle of Wight:
these places must be visited, and visited again, to make the worth of
Lyme understood.
The party from Uppercross passing down by the now deserted and
melancholy looking rooms, and still descending, soon found themselves
on the sea-shore; and lingering only, as all must linger and gaze on a
first return to the sea, who ever deserved to look on it at all,
proceeded towards the Cobb, equally their object in itself and on
Captain Wentworth’s account: for in a small house, near the foot of an
old pier of unknown date, were the Harvilles settled. Captain Wentworth
turned in to call on his friend; the others walked on, and he was to
join them on the Cobb.
They were by no means tired of wondering and admiring; and not even
Louisa seemed to feel that they had parted with Captain Wentworth long,
when they saw him coming after them, with three companions, all well
known already, by description, to be Captain and Mrs Harville, and a
Captain Benwick, who was staying with them.
Captain Benwick had some time ago been first lieutenant of the Laconia;
and the account which Captain Wentworth had given of him, on his return
from Lyme before, his warm praise of him as an excellent young man and
an officer, whom he had always valued highly, which must have stamped
him well in the esteem of every listener, had been followed by a little
history of his private life, which rendered him perfectly interesting
in the eyes of all the ladies. He had been engaged to Captain
Harville’s sister, and was now mourning her loss. They had been a year
or two waiting for fortune and promotion. Fortune came, his prize-money
as lieutenant being great; promotion, too, came at _last;_ but Fanny
Harville did not live to know it. She had died the preceding summer
while he was at sea. Captain Wentworth believed it impossible for man
to be more attached to woman than poor Benwick had been to Fanny
Harville, or to be more deeply afflicted under the dreadful change. He
considered his disposition as of the sort which must suffer heavily,
uniting very strong feelings with quiet, serious, and retiring manners,
and a decided taste for reading, and sedentary pursuits. To finish the
interest of the story, the friendship between him and the Harvilles
seemed, if possible, augmented by the event which closed all their
views of alliance, and Captain Benwick was now living with them
entirely. Captain Harville had taken his present house for half a year;
his taste, and his health, and his fortune, all directing him to a
residence inexpensive, and by the sea; and the grandeur of the country,
and the retirement of Lyme in the winter, appeared exactly adapted to
Captain Benwick’s state of mind. The sympathy and good-will excited
towards Captain Benwick was very great.
“And yet,” said Anne to herself, as they now moved forward to meet the
party, “he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have. I
cannot believe his prospects so blighted for ever. He is younger than I
am; younger in feeling, if not in fact; younger as a man. He will rally
again, and be happy with another.”
They all met, and were introduced. Captain Harville was a tall, dark
man, with a sensible, benevolent countenance; a little lame; and from
strong features and want of health, looking much older than Captain
Wentworth. Captain Benwick looked, and was, the youngest of the three,
and, compared with either of them, a little man. He had a pleasing face