Sense and Sensibility
and friends. I cannot remember the time when I did not love Eliza; and
my affection for her, as we grew up, was such, as perhaps, judging from
my present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think me incapable
of having ever felt. Hers, for me, was, I believe, fervent as the
attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby and it was, though from a
different cause, no less unfortunate. At seventeen she was lost to me
for ever. She was married—married against her inclination to my
brother. Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered.
And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the conduct of one, who
was at once her uncle and guardian. My brother did not deserve her; he
did not even love her. I had hoped that her regard for me would support
her under any difficulty, and for some time it did; but at last the
misery of her situation, for she experienced great unkindness, overcame
all her resolution, and though she had promised me that nothing—but how
blindly I relate! I have never told you how this was brought on. We
were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. The
treachery, or the folly, of my cousin’s maid betrayed us. I was
banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no
liberty, no society, no amusement, till my father’s point was gained. I
had depended on her fortitude too far, and the blow was a severe
one—but had her marriage been happy, so young as I then was, a few
months must have reconciled me to it, or at least I should not have now
to lament it. This however was not the case. My brother had no regard
for her; his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, and from
the first he treated her unkindly. The consequence of this, upon a mind
so young, so lively, so inexperienced as Mrs. Brandon’s, was but too
natural. She resigned herself at first to all the misery of her
situation; and happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those
regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned. But can we wonder that,
with such a husband to provoke inconstancy, and without a friend to
advise or restrain her (for my father lived only a few months after
their marriage, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she
should fall? Had I remained in England, perhaps—but I meant to promote
the happiness of both by removing from her for years, and for that
purpose had procured my exchange. The shock which her marriage had
given me,” he continued, in a voice of great agitation, “was of
trifling weight—was nothing to what I felt when I heard, about two
years afterwards, of her divorce. It was _that_ which threw this
gloom,—even now the recollection of what I suffered—”
He could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few minutes about
the room. Elinor, affected by his relation, and still more by his
distress, could not speak. He saw her concern, and coming to her, took
her hand, pressed it, and kissed it with grateful respect. A few
minutes more of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure.
“It was nearly three years after this unhappy period before I returned
to England. My first care, when I _did_ arrive, was of course to seek
for her; but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy. I could
not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to
fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of
sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor
sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my
brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months
before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it,
that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to
dispose of it for some immediate relief. At last, however, and after I
had been six months in England, I _did_ find her. Regard for a former
servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me to
visit him in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt; and
there, in the same house, under a similar confinement, was my
unfortunate sister. So altered—so faded—worn down by acute suffering of
every kind! hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure
before me, to be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl,
on whom I had once doted. What I endured in so beholding her—but I have
no right to wound your feelings by attempting to describe it—I have
pained you too much already. That she was, to all appearance, in the
last stage of a consumption, was—yes, in such a situation it was my
greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for
a better preparation for death; and that was given. I saw her placed in
comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited her every
day during the rest of her short life: I was with her in her last
moments.”
Again he stopped to recover himself; and Elinor spoke her feelings in
an exclamation of tender concern, at the fate of his unfortunate
friend.
“Your sister, I hope, cannot be offended,” said he, “by the resemblance
I have fancied between her and my poor disgraced relation. Their fates,
their fortunes, cannot be the same; and had the natural sweet
disposition of the one been guarded by a firmer mind, or a happier
marriage, she might have been all that you will live to see the other
be. But to what does all this lead? I seem to have been distressing you
for nothing. Ah! Miss Dashwood—a subject such as this—untouched for
fourteen years—it is dangerous to handle it at all! I _will_ be more
collected—more concise. She left to my care her only child, a little
girl, the offspring of her first guilty connection, who was then about
three years old. She loved the child, and had always kept it with her.
It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have
discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education
myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no
family, no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I
saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother,
(which happened about five years ago, and which left to me the
possession of the family property,) she visited me at Delaford. I
called her a distant relation; but I am well aware that I have in
general been suspected of a much nearer connection with her. It is now
three years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I
removed her from school, to place her under the care of a very
respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four
or five other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I
had every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed her,
(imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to go
to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her father
there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man, and I
thought well of his daughter—better than she deserved, for, with a most
obstinate and ill-judged secrecy, she would tell nothing, would give no
clue, though she certainly knew all. He, her father, a well-meaning,
but not a quick-sighted man, could really, I believe, give no
information; for he had been generally confined to the house, while the
girls were ranging over the town and making what acquaintance they
chose; and he tried to convince me, as thoroughly as he was convinced
himself, of his daughter’s being entirely unconcerned in the business.
In short, I could learn nothing but that she was gone; all the rest,
for eight long months, was left to conjecture. What I thought, what I
feared, may be imagined; and what I suffered too.”
“Good heavens!” cried Elinor, “could it be—could Willoughby!”—
“The first news that reached me of her,” he continued, “came in a
letter from herself, last October. It was forwarded to me from
Delaford, and I received it on the very morning of our intended party
to Whitwell; and this was the reason of my leaving Barton so suddenly,
which I am sure must at the time have appeared strange to every body,
and which I believe gave offence to some. Little did Mr. Willoughby
imagine, I suppose, when his looks censured me for incivility in
breaking up the party, that I was called away to the relief of one whom
he had made poor and miserable; but _had_ he known it, what would it
have availed? Would he have been less gay or less happy in the smiles
of your sister? No, he had already done that, which no man who _can_
feel for another would do. He had left the girl whose youth and
innocence he had seduced, in a situation of the utmost distress, with
no creditable home, no help, no friends, ignorant of his address! He
had left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor
relieved her.”
“This is beyond every thing!” exclaimed Elinor.
“His character is now before you; expensive, dissipated, and worse than
both. Knowing all this, as I have now known it many weeks, guess what I
must have felt on seeing your sister as fond of him as ever, and on
being assured that she was to marry him: guess what I must have felt
for all your sakes. When I came to you last week and found you alone, I
came determined to know the truth; though irresolute what to do when it
_was_ known. My behaviour must have seemed strange to you then; but now
you will comprehend it. To suffer you all to be so deceived; to see
your sister—but what could I do? I had no hope of interfering with
success; and sometimes I thought your sister’s influence might yet
reclaim him. But now, after such dishonorable usage, who can tell what
were his designs on her. Whatever they may have been, however, she may
now, and hereafter doubtless _will_ turn with gratitude towards her own
condition, when she compares it with that of my poor Eliza, when she
considers the wretched and hopeless situation of this poor girl, and
pictures her to herself, with an affection for him so strong, still as
strong as her own, and with a mind tormented by self-reproach, which
must attend her through life. Surely this comparison must have its use
with her. She will feel her own sufferings to be nothing. They proceed
from no misconduct, and can bring no disgrace. On the contrary, every
friend must be made still more her friend by them. Concern for her
unhappiness, and respect for her fortitude under it, must strengthen
every attachment. Use your own discretion, however, in communicating to
her what I have told you. You must know best what will be its effect;
but had I not seriously, and from my heart believed it might be of
service, might lessen her regrets, I would not have suffered myself to
trouble you with this account of my family afflictions, with a recital
which may seem to have been intended to raise myself at the expense of
others.”
Elinor’s thanks followed this speech with grateful earnestness;
attended too with the assurance of her expecting material advantage to
Marianne, from the communication of what had passed.
“I have been more pained,” said she, “by her endeavors to acquit him
than by all the rest; for it irritates her mind more than the most
perfect conviction of his unworthiness can do. Now, though at first she
will suffer much, I am sure she will soon become easier. Have you,” she
continued, after a short silence, “ever seen Mr. Willoughby since you
left him at Barton?”
“Yes,” he replied gravely, “once I have. One meeting was unavoidable.”
Elinor, startled by his manner, looked at him anxiously, saying,
“What? have you met him to—”
“I could meet him no other way. Eliza had confessed to me, though most
reluctantly, the name of her lover; and when he returned to town, which
was within a fortnight after myself, we met by appointment, he to