Persuasion
await her complete recovery elsewhere. He would gladly weaken, by any
fair means, whatever feelings or speculations concerning him might
exist; and he went, therefore, to his brother’s, meaning after a while
to return to Kellynch, and act as circumstances might require.
“I was six weeks with Edward,” said he, “and saw him happy. I could
have no other pleasure. I deserved none. He enquired after you very
particularly; asked even if you were personally altered, little
suspecting that to my eye you could never alter.”
Anne smiled, and let it pass. It was too pleasing a blunder for a
reproach. It is something for a woman to be assured, in her
eight-and-twentieth year, that she has not lost one charm of earlier
youth; but the value of such homage was inexpressibly increased to
Anne, by comparing it with former words, and feeling it to be the
result, not the cause of a revival of his warm attachment.
He had remained in Shropshire, lamenting the blindness of his own
pride, and the blunders of his own calculations, till at once released
from Louisa by the astonishing and felicitous intelligence of her
engagement with Benwick.
“Here,” said he, “ended the worst of my state; for now I could at least
put myself in the way of happiness; I could exert myself; I could do
something. But to be waiting so long in inaction, and waiting only for
evil, had been dreadful. Within the first five minutes I said, ‘I will
be at Bath on Wednesday,’ and I was. Was it unpardonable to think it
worth my while to come? and to arrive with some degree of hope? You
were single. It was possible that you might retain the feelings of the
past, as I did; and one encouragement happened to be mine. I could
never doubt that you would be loved and sought by others, but I knew to
a certainty that you had refused one man, at least, of better
pretensions than myself; and I could not help often saying, ‘Was this
for me?’”
Their first meeting in Milsom Street afforded much to be said, but the
concert still more. That evening seemed to be made up of exquisite
moments. The moment of her stepping forward in the Octagon Room to
speak to him: the moment of Mr Elliot’s appearing and tearing her away,
and one or two subsequent moments, marked by returning hope or
increasing despondency, were dwelt on with energy.
“To see you,” cried he, “in the midst of those who could not be my
well-wishers; to see your cousin close by you, conversing and smiling,
and feel all the horrible eligibilities and proprieties of the match!
To consider it as the certain wish of every being who could hope to
influence you! Even if your own feelings were reluctant or indifferent,
to consider what powerful supports would be his! Was it not enough to
make the fool of me which I appeared? How could I look on without
agony? Was not the very sight of the friend who sat behind you, was not
the recollection of what had been, the knowledge of her influence, the
indelible, immoveable impression of what persuasion had once done—was
it not all against me?”
“You should have distinguished,” replied Anne. “You should not have
suspected me now; the case is so different, and my age is so different.
If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to
persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk. When I yielded,
I thought it was to duty, but no duty could be called in aid here. In
marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred,
and all duty violated.”
“Perhaps I ought to have reasoned thus,” he replied, “but I could not.
I could not derive benefit from the late knowledge I had acquired of
your character. I could not bring it into play; it was overwhelmed,
buried, lost in those earlier feelings which I had been smarting under
year after year. I could think of you only as one who had yielded, who
had given me up, who had been influenced by any one rather than by me.
I saw you with the very person who had guided you in that year of
misery. I had no reason to believe her of less authority now. The force
of habit was to be added.”
“I should have thought,” said Anne, “that my manner to yourself might
have spared you much or all of this.”
“No, no! your manner might be only the ease which your engagement to
another man would give. I left you in this belief; and yet, I was
determined to see you again. My spirits rallied with the morning, and I
felt that I had still a motive for remaining here.”
At last Anne was at home again, and happier than any one in that house
could have conceived. All the surprise and suspense, and every other
painful part of the morning dissipated by this conversation, she
re-entered the house so happy as to be obliged to find an alloy in some
momentary apprehensions of its being impossible to last. An interval of
meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything
dangerous in such high-wrought felicity; and she went to her room, and
grew steadfast and fearless in the thankfulness of her enjoyment.
The evening came, the drawing-rooms were lighted up, the company
assembled. It was but a card party, it was but a mixture of those who
had never met before, and those who met too often; a commonplace
business, too numerous for intimacy, too small for variety; but Anne
had never found an evening shorter. Glowing and lovely in sensibility
and happiness, and more generally admired than she thought about or
cared for, she had cheerful or forbearing feelings for every creature
around her. Mr Elliot was there; she avoided, but she could pity him.
The Wallises, she had amusement in understanding them. Lady Dalrymple
and Miss Carteret—they would soon be innoxious cousins to her. She
cared not for Mrs Clay, and had nothing to blush for in the public
manners of her father and sister. With the Musgroves, there was the
happy chat of perfect ease; with Captain Harville, the kind-hearted
intercourse of brother and sister; with Lady Russell, attempts at
conversation, which a delicious consciousness cut short; with Admiral
and Mrs Croft, everything of peculiar cordiality and fervent interest,
which the same consciousness sought to conceal; and with Captain
Wentworth, some moments of communications continually occurring, and
always the hope of more, and always the knowledge of his being there.
It was in one of these short meetings, each apparently occupied in
admiring a fine display of greenhouse plants, that she said—
“I have been thinking over the past, and trying impartially to judge of
the right and wrong, I mean with regard to myself; and I must believe
that I was right, much as I suffered from it, that I was perfectly
right in being guided by the friend whom you will love better than you
do now. To me, she was in the place of a parent. Do not mistake me,
however. I am not saying that she did not err in her advice. It was,
perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the
event decides; and for myself, I certainly never should, in any
circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice. But I mean,
that I was right in submitting to her, and that if I had done
otherwise, I should have suffered more in continuing the engagement
than I did even in giving it up, because I should have suffered in my
conscience. I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in
human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a
strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman’s portion.”
He looked at her, looked at Lady Russell, and looking again at her,
replied, as if in cool deliberation—
“Not yet. But there are hopes of her being forgiven in time. I trust to
being in charity with her soon. But I too have been thinking over the
past, and a question has suggested itself, whether there may not have
been one person more my enemy even than that lady? My own self. Tell me
if, when I returned to England in the year eight, with a few thousand
pounds, and was posted into the Laconia, if I had then written to you,
would you have answered my letter? Would you, in short, have renewed
the engagement then?”
“Would I!” was all her answer; but the accent was decisive enough.
“Good God!” he cried, “you would! It is not that I did not think of it,
or desire it, as what could alone crown all my other success; but I was
proud, too proud to ask again. I did not understand you. I shut my
eyes, and would not understand you, or do you justice. This is a
recollection which ought to make me forgive every one sooner than
myself. Six years of separation and suffering might have been spared.
It is a sort of pain, too, which is new to me. I have been used to the
gratification of believing myself to earn every blessing that I
enjoyed. I have valued myself on honourable toils and just rewards.
Like other great men under reverses,” he added, with a smile. “I must
endeavour to subdue my mind to my fortune. I must learn to brook being
happier than I deserve.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
Who can be in doubt of what followed? When any two young people take it
into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to
carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever
so little likely to be necessary to each other’s ultimate comfort. This
may be bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be truth; and
if such parties succeed, how should a Captain Wentworth and an Anne
Elliot, with the advantage of maturity of mind, consciousness of right,
and one independent fortune between them, fail of bearing down every
opposition? They might in fact, have borne down a great deal more than
they met with, for there was little to distress them beyond the want of
graciousness and warmth. Sir Walter made no objection, and Elizabeth
did nothing worse than look cold and unconcerned. Captain Wentworth,
with five-and-twenty thousand pounds, and as high in his profession as
merit and activity could place him, was no longer nobody. He was now
esteemed quite worthy to address the daughter of a foolish, spendthrift
baronet, who had not had principle or sense enough to maintain himself
in the situation in which Providence had placed him, and who could give
his daughter at present but a small part of the share of ten thousand
pounds which must be hers hereafter.
Sir Walter, indeed, though he had no affection for Anne, and no vanity
flattered, to make him really happy on the occasion, was very far from
thinking it a bad match for her. On the contrary, when he saw more of
Captain Wentworth, saw him repeatedly by daylight, and eyed him well,
he was very much struck by his personal claims, and felt that his
superiority of appearance might be not unfairly balanced against her
superiority of rank; and all this, assisted by his well-sounding name,
enabled Sir Walter at last to prepare his pen, with a very good grace,
for the insertion of the marriage in the volume of honour.
The only one among them, whose opposition of feeling could excite any
serious anxiety was Lady Russell. Anne knew that Lady Russell must be
suffering some pain in understanding and relinquishing Mr Elliot, and
be making some struggles to become truly acquainted with, and do
justice to Captain Wentworth. This however was what Lady Russell had
now to do. She must learn to feel that she had been mistaken with
regard to both; that she had been unfairly influenced by appearances in
each; that because Captain Wentworth’s manners had not suited her own
ideas, she had been too quick in suspecting them to indicate a
character of dangerous impetuosity; and that because Mr Elliot’s
manners had precisely pleased her in their propriety and correctness,
their general politeness and suavity, she had been too quick in
receiving them as the certain result of the most correct opinions and