Persuasion
when you must have so many pleasanter demands upon your time.”
Anne heard nothing of this. She was still in the astonishment and
confusion excited by her friend’s penetration, unable to imagine how
any report of Captain Wentworth could have reached her. After another
short silence—
“Pray,” said Mrs Smith, “is Mr Elliot aware of your acquaintance with
me? Does he know that I am in Bath?”
“Mr Elliot!” repeated Anne, looking up surprised. A moment’s reflection
shewed her the mistake she had been under. She caught it
instantaneously; and recovering her courage with the feeling of safety,
soon added, more composedly, “Are you acquainted with Mr Elliot?”
“I have been a good deal acquainted with him,” replied Mrs Smith,
gravely, “but it seems worn out now. It is a great while since we met.”
“I was not at all aware of this. You never mentioned it before. Had I
known it, I would have had the pleasure of talking to him about you.”
“To confess the truth,” said Mrs Smith, assuming her usual air of
cheerfulness, “that is exactly the pleasure I want you to have. I want
you to talk about me to Mr Elliot. I want your interest with him. He
can be of essential service to me; and if you would have the goodness,
my dear Miss Elliot, to make it an object to yourself, of course it is
done.”
“I should be extremely happy; I hope you cannot doubt my willingness to
be of even the slightest use to you,” replied Anne; “but I suspect that
you are considering me as having a higher claim on Mr Elliot, a greater
right to influence him, than is really the case. I am sure you have,
somehow or other, imbibed such a notion. You must consider me only as
Mr Elliot’s relation. If in that light there is anything which you
suppose his cousin might fairly ask of him, I beg you would not
hesitate to employ me.”
Mrs Smith gave her a penetrating glance, and then, smiling, said—
“I have been a little premature, I perceive; I beg your pardon. I ought
to have waited for official information. But now, my dear Miss Elliot,
as an old friend, do give me a hint as to when I may speak. Next week?
To be sure by next week I may be allowed to think it all settled, and
build my own selfish schemes on Mr Elliot’s good fortune.”
“No,” replied Anne, “nor next week, nor next, nor next. I assure you
that nothing of the sort you are thinking of will be settled any week.
I am not going to marry Mr Elliot. I should like to know why you
imagine I am?”
Mrs Smith looked at her again, looked earnestly, smiled, shook her
head, and exclaimed—
“Now, how I do wish I understood you! How I do wish I knew what you
were at! I have a great idea that you do not design to be cruel, when
the right moment occurs. Till it does come, you know, we women never
mean to have anybody. It is a thing of course among us, that every man
is refused, till he offers. But why should you be cruel? Let me plead
for my—present friend I cannot call him, but for my former friend.
Where can you look for a more suitable match? Where could you expect a
more gentlemanlike, agreeable man? Let me recommend Mr Elliot. I am
sure you hear nothing but good of him from Colonel Wallis; and who can
know him better than Colonel Wallis?”
“My dear Mrs Smith, Mr Elliot’s wife has not been dead much above half
a year. He ought not to be supposed to be paying his addresses to any
one.”
“Oh! if these are your only objections,” cried Mrs Smith, archly, “Mr
Elliot is safe, and I shall give myself no more trouble about him. Do
not forget me when you are married, that’s all. Let him know me to be a
friend of yours, and then he will think little of the trouble required,
which it is very natural for him now, with so many affairs and
engagements of his own, to avoid and get rid of as he can; very
natural, perhaps. Ninety-nine out of a hundred would do the same. Of
course, he cannot be aware of the importance to me. Well, my dear Miss
Elliot, I hope and trust you will be very happy. Mr Elliot has sense to
understand the value of such a woman. Your peace will not be
shipwrecked as mine has been. You are safe in all worldly matters, and
safe in his character. He will not be led astray; he will not be misled
by others to his ruin.”
“No,” said Anne, “I can readily believe all that of my cousin. He seems
to have a calm decided temper, not at all open to dangerous
impressions. I consider him with great respect. I have no reason, from
any thing that has fallen within my observation, to do otherwise. But I
have not known him long; and he is not a man, I think, to be known
intimately soon. Will not this manner of speaking of him, Mrs Smith,
convince you that he is nothing to me? Surely this must be calm enough.
And, upon my word, he is nothing to me. Should he ever propose to me
(which I have very little reason to imagine he has any thought of
doing), I shall not accept him. I assure you I shall not. I assure you,
Mr Elliot had not the share which you have been supposing, in whatever
pleasure the concert of last night might afford: not Mr Elliot; it is
not Mr Elliot that—”
She stopped, regretting with a deep blush that she had implied so much;
but less would hardly have been sufficient. Mrs Smith would hardly have
believed so soon in Mr Elliot’s failure, but from the perception of
there being a somebody else. As it was, she instantly submitted, and
with all the semblance of seeing nothing beyond; and Anne, eager to
escape farther notice, was impatient to know why Mrs Smith should have
fancied she was to marry Mr Elliot; where she could have received the
idea, or from whom she could have heard it.
“Do tell me how it first came into your head.”
“It first came into my head,” replied Mrs Smith, “upon finding how much
you were together, and feeling it to be the most probable thing in the
world to be wished for by everybody belonging to either of you; and you
may depend upon it that all your acquaintance have disposed of you in
the same way. But I never heard it spoken of till two days ago.”
“And has it indeed been spoken of?”
“Did you observe the woman who opened the door to you when you called
yesterday?”
“No. Was not it Mrs Speed, as usual, or the maid? I observed no one in
particular.”
“It was my friend Mrs Rooke; Nurse Rooke; who, by-the-bye, had a great
curiosity to see you, and was delighted to be in the way to let you in.
She came away from Marlborough Buildings only on Sunday; and she it was
who told me you were to marry Mr Elliot. She had had it from Mrs Wallis
herself, which did not seem bad authority. She sat an hour with me on
Monday evening, and gave me the whole history.” “The whole history,”
repeated Anne, laughing. “She could not make a very long history, I
think, of one such little article of unfounded news.”
Mrs Smith said nothing.
“But,” continued Anne, presently, “though there is no truth in my
having this claim on Mr Elliot, I should be extremely happy to be of
use to you in any way that I could. Shall I mention to him your being
in Bath? Shall I take any message?”
“No, I thank you: no, certainly not. In the warmth of the moment, and
under a mistaken impression, I might, perhaps, have endeavoured to
interest you in some circumstances; but not now. No, I thank you, I
have nothing to trouble you with.”
“I think you spoke of having known Mr Elliot many years?”
“I did.”
“Not before he was married, I suppose?”
“Yes; he was not married when I knew him first.”
“And—were you much acquainted?”
“Intimately.”
“Indeed! Then do tell me what he was at that time of life. I have a
great curiosity to know what Mr Elliot was as a very young man. Was he
at all such as he appears now?”
“I have not seen Mr Elliot these three years,” was Mrs Smith’s answer,
given so gravely that it was impossible to pursue the subject farther;
and Anne felt that she had gained nothing but an increase of curiosity.
They were both silent: Mrs Smith very thoughtful. At last—
“I beg your pardon, my dear Miss Elliot,” she cried, in her natural
tone of cordiality, “I beg your pardon for the short answers I have
been giving you, but I have been uncertain what I ought to do. I have
been doubting and considering as to what I ought to tell you. There
were many things to be taken into the account. One hates to be
officious, to be giving bad impressions, making mischief. Even the
smooth surface of family-union seems worth preserving, though there may
be nothing durable beneath. However, I have determined; I think I am
right; I think you ought to be made acquainted with Mr Elliot’s real
character. Though I fully believe that, at present, you have not the
smallest intention of accepting him, there is no saying what may
happen. You might, some time or other, be differently affected towards
him. Hear the truth, therefore, now, while you are unprejudiced. Mr
Elliot is a man without heart or conscience; a designing, wary,
cold-blooded being, who thinks only of himself; whom for his own
interest or ease, would be guilty of any cruelty, or any treachery,
that could be perpetrated without risk of his general character. He has
no feeling for others. Those whom he has been the chief cause of
leading into ruin, he can neglect and desert without the smallest
compunction. He is totally beyond the reach of any sentiment of justice
or compassion. Oh! he is black at heart, hollow and black!”
Anne’s astonished air, and exclamation of wonder, made her pause, and
in a calmer manner, she added,
“My expressions startle you. You must allow for an injured, angry
woman. But I will try to command myself. I will not abuse him. I will
only tell you what I have found him. Facts shall speak. He was the
intimate friend of my dear husband, who trusted and loved him, and
thought him as good as himself. The intimacy had been formed before our
marriage. I found them most intimate friends; and I, too, became
excessively pleased with Mr Elliot, and entertained the highest opinion
of him. At nineteen, you know, one does not think very seriously; but
Mr Elliot appeared to me quite as good as others, and much more
agreeable than most others, and we were almost always together. We were
principally in town, living in very good style. He was then the
inferior in circumstances; he was then the poor one; he had chambers in
the Temple, and it was as much as he could do to support the appearance
of a gentleman. He had always a home with us whenever he chose it; he
was always welcome; he was like a brother. My poor Charles, who had the
finest, most generous spirit in the world, would have divided his last
farthing with him; and I know that his purse was open to him; I know
that he often assisted him.”
“This must have been about that very period of Mr Elliot’s life,” said
Anne, “which has always excited my particular curiosity. It must have
been about the same time that he became known to my father and sister.
I never knew him myself; I only heard of him; but there was a something
in his conduct then, with regard to my father and sister, and
afterwards in the circumstances of his marriage, which I never could
quite reconcile with present times. It seemed to announce a different
sort of man.”
“I know it all, I know it all,” cried Mrs Smith. “He had been
introduced to Sir Walter and your sister before I was acquainted with
him, but I heard him speak of them for ever. I know he was invited and
encouraged, and I know he did not choose to go. I can satisfy you,
perhaps, on points which you would little expect; and as to his
marriage, I knew all about it at the time. I was privy to all the fors
and againsts; I was the friend to whom he confided his hopes and plans;
and though I did not know his wife previously, her inferior situation
in society, indeed, rendered that impossible, yet I knew her all her