Persuasion
the chair which he had occupied, succeeding to the very spot where he
had leaned and written, her eyes devoured the following words:
“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means
as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.
Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone
for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own
than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say
that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.
I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I
have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For
you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to
have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could
I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I
can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers
me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice
when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature!
You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment
and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most
undeviating, in
F. W.
“I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow
your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to
decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.”
Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from. Half an hour’s
solitude and reflection might have tranquillized her; but the ten
minutes only which now passed before she was interrupted, with all the
restraints of her situation, could do nothing towards tranquillity.
Every moment rather brought fresh agitation. It was overpowering
happiness. And before she was beyond the first stage of full sensation,
Charles, Mary, and Henrietta all came in.
The absolute necessity of seeming like herself produced then an
immediate struggle; but after a while she could do no more. She began
not to understand a word they said, and was obliged to plead
indisposition and excuse herself. They could then see that she looked
very ill, were shocked and concerned, and would not stir without her
for the world. This was dreadful. Would they only have gone away, and
left her in the quiet possession of that room it would have been her
cure; but to have them all standing or waiting around her was
distracting, and in desperation, she said she would go home.
“By all means, my dear,” cried Mrs Musgrove, “go home directly, and
take care of yourself, that you may be fit for the evening. I wish
Sarah was here to doctor you, but I am no doctor myself. Charles, ring
and order a chair. She must not walk.”
But the chair would never do. Worse than all! To lose the possibility
of speaking two words to Captain Wentworth in the course of her quiet,
solitary progress up the town (and she felt almost certain of meeting
him) could not be borne. The chair was earnestly protested against, and
Mrs Musgrove, who thought only of one sort of illness, having assured
herself with some anxiety, that there had been no fall in the case;
that Anne had not at any time lately slipped down, and got a blow on
her head; that she was perfectly convinced of having had no fall; could
part with her cheerfully, and depend on finding her better at night.
Anxious to omit no possible precaution, Anne struggled, and said—
“I am afraid, ma’am, that it is not perfectly understood. Pray be so
good as to mention to the other gentlemen that we hope to see your
whole party this evening. I am afraid there had been some mistake; and
I wish you particularly to assure Captain Harville and Captain
Wentworth, that we hope to see them both.”
“Oh! my dear, it is quite understood, I give you my word. Captain
Harville has no thought but of going.”
“Do you think so? But I am afraid; and I should be so very sorry. Will
you promise me to mention it, when you see them again? You will see
them both this morning, I dare say. Do promise me.”
“To be sure I will, if you wish it. Charles, if you see Captain
Harville anywhere, remember to give Miss Anne’s message. But indeed, my
dear, you need not be uneasy. Captain Harville holds himself quite
engaged, I’ll answer for it; and Captain Wentworth the same, I dare
say.”
Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp
the perfection of her felicity. It could not be very lasting, however.
Even if he did not come to Camden Place himself, it would be in her
power to send an intelligible sentence by Captain Harville. Another
momentary vexation occurred. Charles, in his real concern and good
nature, would go home with her; there was no preventing him. This was
almost cruel. But she could not be long ungrateful; he was sacrificing
an engagement at a gunsmith’s, to be of use to her; and she set off
with him, with no feeling but gratitude apparent.
They were on Union Street, when a quicker step behind, a something of
familiar sound, gave her two moments’ preparation for the sight of
Captain Wentworth. He joined them; but, as if irresolute whether to
join or to pass on, said nothing, only looked. Anne could command
herself enough to receive that look, and not repulsively. The cheeks
which had been pale now glowed, and the movements which had hesitated
were decided. He walked by her side. Presently, struck by a sudden
thought, Charles said—
“Captain Wentworth, which way are you going? Only to Gay Street, or
farther up the town?”
“I hardly know,” replied Captain Wentworth, surprised.
“Are you going as high as Belmont? Are you going near Camden Place?
Because, if you are, I shall have no scruple in asking you to take my
place, and give Anne your arm to her father’s door. She is rather done
for this morning, and must not go so far without help, and I ought to
be at that fellow’s in the Market Place. He promised me the sight of a
capital gun he is just going to send off; said he would keep it
unpacked to the last possible moment, that I might see it; and if I do
not turn back now, I have no chance. By his description, a good deal
like the second size double-barrel of mine, which you shot with one day
round Winthrop.”
There could not be an objection. There could be only the most proper
alacrity, a most obliging compliance for public view; and smiles reined
in and spirits dancing in private rapture. In half a minute Charles was
at the bottom of Union Street again, and the other two proceeding
together: and soon words enough had passed between them to decide their
direction towards the comparatively quiet and retired gravel walk,
where the power of conversation would make the present hour a blessing
indeed, and prepare it for all the immortality which the happiest
recollections of their own future lives could bestow. There they
exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before
seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many,
many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into
the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when
it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a
knowledge of each other’s character, truth, and attachment; more equal
to act, more justified in acting. And there, as they slowly paced the
gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, seeing neither
sauntering politicians, bustling housekeepers, flirting girls, nor
nursery-maids and children, they could indulge in those retrospections
and acknowledgements, and especially in those explanations of what had
directly preceded the present moment, which were so poignant and so
ceaseless in interest. All the little variations of the last week were
gone through; and of yesterday and to-day there could scarcely be an
end.
She had not mistaken him. Jealousy of Mr Elliot had been the retarding
weight, the doubt, the torment. That had begun to operate in the very
hour of first meeting her in Bath; that had returned, after a short
suspension, to ruin the concert; and that had influenced him in
everything he had said and done, or omitted to say and do, in the last
four-and-twenty hours. It had been gradually yielding to the better
hopes which her looks, or words, or actions occasionally encouraged; it
had been vanquished at last by those sentiments and those tones which
had reached him while she talked with Captain Harville; and under the
irresistible governance of which he had seized a sheet of paper, and
poured out his feelings.
Of what he had then written, nothing was to be retracted or qualified.
He persisted in having loved none but her. She had never been
supplanted. He never even believed himself to see her equal. Thus much
indeed he was obliged to acknowledge: that he had been constant
unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her,
and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when
he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because
he had been a sufferer from them. Her character was now fixed on his
mind as perfection itself, maintaining the loveliest medium of
fortitude and gentleness; but he was obliged to acknowledge that only
at Uppercross had he learnt to do her justice, and only at Lyme had he
begun to understand himself. At Lyme, he had received lessons of more
than one sort. The passing admiration of Mr Elliot had at least roused
him, and the scenes on the Cobb and at Captain Harville’s had fixed her
superiority.
In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the
attempts of angry pride), he protested that he had for ever felt it to
be impossible; that he had not cared, could not care, for Louisa;
though till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed
it, he had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which
Louisa’s could so ill bear a comparison, or the perfect unrivalled hold
it possessed over his own. There, he had learnt to distinguish between
the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the
darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind. There
he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had
lost; and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of
resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in
his way.
From that period his penance had become severe. He had no sooner been
free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of
Louisa’s accident, no sooner begun to feel himself alive again, than he
had begun to feel himself, though alive, not at liberty.
“I found,” said he, “that I was considered by Harville an engaged man!
That neither Harville nor his wife entertained a doubt of our mutual
attachment. I was startled and shocked. To a degree, I could contradict
this instantly; but, when I began to reflect that others might have
felt the same—her own family, nay, perhaps herself—I was no longer at
my own disposal. I was hers in honour if she wished it. I had been
unguarded. I had not thought seriously on this subject before. I had
not considered that my excessive intimacy must have its danger of ill
consequence in many ways; and that I had no right to be trying whether
I could attach myself to either of the girls, at the risk of raising
even an unpleasant report, were there no other ill effects. I had been
grossly wrong, and must abide the consequences.”
He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that
precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at
all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him
were what the Harvilles supposed. It determined him to leave Lyme, and