Persuasion
life afterwards, or at least till within the last two years of her
life, and can answer any question you may wish to put.”
“Nay,” said Anne, “I have no particular enquiry to make about her. I
have always understood they were not a happy couple. But I should like
to know why, at that time of his life, he should slight my father’s
acquaintance as he did. My father was certainly disposed to take very
kind and proper notice of him. Why did Mr Elliot draw back?”
“Mr Elliot,” replied Mrs Smith, “at that period of his life, had one
object in view: to make his fortune, and by a rather quicker process
than the law. He was determined to make it by marriage. He was
determined, at least, not to mar it by an imprudent marriage; and I
know it was his belief (whether justly or not, of course I cannot
decide), that your father and sister, in their civilities and
invitations, were designing a match between the heir and the young
lady, and it was impossible that such a match should have answered his
ideas of wealth and independence. That was his motive for drawing back,
I can assure you. He told me the whole story. He had no concealments
with me. It was curious, that having just left you behind me in Bath,
my first and principal acquaintance on marrying should be your cousin;
and that, through him, I should be continually hearing of your father
and sister. He described one Miss Elliot, and I thought very
affectionately of the other.”
“Perhaps,” cried Anne, struck by a sudden idea, “you sometimes spoke of
me to Mr Elliot?”
“To be sure I did; very often. I used to boast of my own Anne Elliot,
and vouch for your being a very different creature from—”
She checked herself just in time.
“This accounts for something which Mr Elliot said last night,” cried
Anne. “This explains it. I found he had been used to hear of me. I
could not comprehend how. What wild imaginations one forms where dear
self is concerned! How sure to be mistaken! But I beg your pardon; I
have interrupted you. Mr Elliot married then completely for money? The
circumstances, probably, which first opened your eyes to his
character.”
Mrs Smith hesitated a little here. “Oh! those things are too common.
When one lives in the world, a man or woman’s marrying for money is too
common to strike one as it ought. I was very young, and associated only
with the young, and we were a thoughtless, gay set, without any strict
rules of conduct. We lived for enjoyment. I think differently now; time
and sickness and sorrow have given me other notions; but at that period
I must own I saw nothing reprehensible in what Mr Elliot was doing. ‘To
do the best for himself,’ passed as a duty.”
“But was not she a very low woman?”
“Yes; which I objected to, but he would not regard. Money, money, was
all that he wanted. Her father was a grazier, her grandfather had been
a butcher, but that was all nothing. She was a fine woman, had had a
decent education, was brought forward by some cousins, thrown by chance
into Mr Elliot’s company, and fell in love with him; and not a
difficulty or a scruple was there on his side, with respect to her
birth. All his caution was spent in being secured of the real amount of
her fortune, before he committed himself. Depend upon it, whatever
esteem Mr Elliot may have for his own situation in life now, as a young
man he had not the smallest value for it. His chance for the Kellynch
estate was something, but all the honour of the family he held as cheap
as dirt. I have often heard him declare, that if baronetcies were
saleable, anybody should have his for fifty pounds, arms and motto,
name and livery included; but I will not pretend to repeat half that I
used to hear him say on that subject. It would not be fair; and yet you
ought to have proof, for what is all this but assertion, and you shall
have proof.”
“Indeed, my dear Mrs Smith, I want none,” cried Anne. “You have
asserted nothing contradictory to what Mr Elliot appeared to be some
years ago. This is all in confirmation, rather, of what we used to hear
and believe. I am more curious to know why he should be so different
now.”
“But for my satisfaction, if you will have the goodness to ring for
Mary; stay: I am sure you will have the still greater goodness of going
yourself into my bedroom, and bringing me the small inlaid box which
you will find on the upper shelf of the closet.”
Anne, seeing her friend to be earnestly bent on it, did as she was
desired. The box was brought and placed before her, and Mrs Smith,
sighing over it as she unlocked it, said—
“This is full of papers belonging to him, to my husband; a small
portion only of what I had to look over when I lost him. The letter I
am looking for was one written by Mr Elliot to him before our marriage,
and happened to be saved; why, one can hardly imagine. But he was
careless and immethodical, like other men, about those things; and when
I came to examine his papers, I found it with others still more
trivial, from different people scattered here and there, while many
letters and memorandums of real importance had been destroyed. Here it
is; I would not burn it, because being even then very little satisfied
with Mr Elliot, I was determined to preserve every document of former
intimacy. I have now another motive for being glad that I can produce
it.”
This was the letter, directed to “Charles Smith, Esq. Tunbridge Wells,”
and dated from London, as far back as July, 1803:—
“Dear Smith,
“I have received yours. Your kindness almost overpowers me. I wish
nature had made such hearts as yours more common, but I have lived
three-and-twenty years in the world, and have seen none like it. At
present, believe me, I have no need of your services, being in cash
again. Give me joy: I have got rid of Sir Walter and Miss. They are
gone back to Kellynch, and almost made me swear to visit them this
summer; but my first visit to Kellynch will be with a surveyor, to tell
me how to bring it with best advantage to the hammer. The baronet,
nevertheless, is not unlikely to marry again; he is quite fool enough.
If he does, however, they will leave me in peace, which may be a decent
equivalent for the reversion. He is worse than last year.
“I wish I had any name but Elliot. I am sick of it. The name of Walter
I can drop, thank God! and I desire you will never insult me with my
second W. again, meaning, for the rest of my life, to be only yours
truly,
“WM. ELLIOT.”
Such a letter could not be read without putting Anne in a glow; and Mrs
Smith, observing the high colour in her face, said—
“The language, I know, is highly disrespectful. Though I have forgot
the exact terms, I have a perfect impression of the general meaning.
But it shows you the man. Mark his professions to my poor husband. Can
any thing be stronger?”
Anne could not immediately get over the shock and mortification of
finding such words applied to her father. She was obliged to recollect
that her seeing the letter was a violation of the laws of honour, that
no one ought to be judged or to be known by such testimonies, that no
private correspondence could bear the eye of others, before she could
recover calmness enough to return the letter which she had been
meditating over, and say—
“Thank you. This is full proof undoubtedly; proof of every thing you
were saying. But why be acquainted with us now?”
“I can explain this too,” cried Mrs Smith, smiling.
“Can you really?”
“Yes. I have shewn you Mr Elliot as he was a dozen years ago, and I
will shew him as he is now. I cannot produce written proof again, but I
can give as authentic oral testimony as you can desire, of what he is
now wanting, and what he is now doing. He is no hypocrite now. He truly
wants to marry you. His present attentions to your family are very
sincere: quite from the heart. I will give you my authority: his friend
Colonel Wallis.”
“Colonel Wallis! you are acquainted with him?”
“No. It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that; it takes
a bend or two, but nothing of consequence. The stream is as good as at
first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved
away. Mr Elliot talks unreservedly to Colonel Wallis of his views on
you, which said Colonel Wallis, I imagine to be, in himself, a
sensible, careful, discerning sort of character; but Colonel Wallis has
a very pretty silly wife, to whom he tells things which he had better
not, and he repeats it all to her. She in the overflowing spirits of
her recovery, repeats it all to her nurse; and the nurse knowing my
acquaintance with you, very naturally brings it all to me. On Monday
evening, my good friend Mrs Rooke let me thus much into the secrets of
Marlborough Buildings. When I talked of a whole history, therefore, you
see I was not romancing so much as you supposed.”
“My dear Mrs Smith, your authority is deficient. This will not do. Mr
Elliot’s having any views on me will not in the least account for the
efforts he made towards a reconciliation with my father. That was all
prior to my coming to Bath. I found them on the most friendly terms
when I arrived.”
“I know you did; I know it all perfectly, but—”
“Indeed, Mrs Smith, we must not expect to get real information in such
a line. Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so
many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can
hardly have much truth left.”
“Only give me a hearing. You will soon be able to judge of the general
credit due, by listening to some particulars which you can yourself
immediately contradict or confirm. Nobody supposes that you were his
first inducement. He had seen you indeed, before he came to Bath, and
admired you, but without knowing it to be you. So says my historian, at
least. Is this true? Did he see you last summer or autumn, ‘somewhere
down in the west,’ to use her own words, without knowing it to be you?”
“He certainly did. So far it is very true. At Lyme. I happened to be at
Lyme.”
“Well,” continued Mrs Smith, triumphantly, “grant my friend the credit
due to the establishment of the first point asserted. He saw you then
at Lyme, and liked you so well as to be exceedingly pleased to meet
with you again in Camden Place, as Miss Anne Elliot, and from that
moment, I have no doubt, had a double motive in his visits there. But
there was another, and an earlier, which I will now explain. If there
is anything in my story which you know to be either false or
improbable, stop me. My account states, that your sister’s friend, the
lady now staying with you, whom I have heard you mention, came to Bath
with Miss Elliot and Sir Walter as long ago as September (in short when
they first came themselves), and has been staying there ever since;
that she is a clever, insinuating, handsome woman, poor and plausible,
and altogether such in situation and manner, as to give a general idea,
among Sir Walter’s acquaintance, of her meaning to be Lady Elliot, and
as general a surprise that Miss Elliot should be apparently, blind to
the danger.”
Here Mrs Smith paused a moment; but Anne had not a word to say, and she
continued—
“This was the light in which it appeared to those who knew the family,
long before you returned to it; and Colonel Wallis had his eye upon
your father enough to be sensible of it, though he did not then visit
in Camden Place; but his regard for Mr Elliot gave him an interest in
watching all that was going on there, and when Mr Elliot came to Bath
for a day or two, as he happened to do a little before Christmas,
Colonel Wallis made him acquainted with the appearance of things, and
the reports beginning to prevail. Now you are to understand, that time
had worked a very material change in Mr Elliot’s opinions as to the