Sense and Sensibility
brother, who came with a most serious aspect to talk over the dreadful
affair, and bring them news of his wife.
“You have heard, I suppose,” said he with great solemnity, as soon as
he was seated, “of the very shocking discovery that took place under
our roof yesterday.”
They all looked their assent; it seemed too awful a moment for speech.
“Your sister,” he continued, “has suffered dreadfully. Mrs. Ferrars
too—in short it has been a scene of such complicated distress—but I
will hope that the storm may be weathered without our being any of us
quite overcome. Poor Fanny! she was in hysterics all yesterday. But I
would not alarm you too much. Donavan says there is nothing materially
to be apprehended; her constitution is a good one, and her resolution
equal to any thing. She has borne it all, with the fortitude of an
angel! She says she never shall think well of anybody again; and one
cannot wonder at it, after being so deceived!—meeting with such
ingratitude, where so much kindness had been shown, so much confidence
had been placed! It was quite out of the benevolence of her heart, that
she had asked these young women to her house; merely because she
thought they deserved some attention, were harmless, well-behaved
girls, and would be pleasant companions; for otherwise we both wished
very much to have invited you and Marianne to be with us, while your
kind friend there, was attending her daughter. And now to be so
rewarded! ‘I wish, with all my heart,’ says poor Fanny in her
affectionate way, ‘that we had asked your sisters instead of them.’”
Here he stopped to be thanked; which being done, he went on.
“What poor Mrs. Ferrars suffered, when first Fanny broke it to her, is
not to be described. While she with the truest affection had been
planning a most eligible connection for him, was it to be supposed that
he could be all the time secretly engaged to another person!—such a
suspicion could never have entered her head! If she suspected _any_
prepossession elsewhere, it could not be in _that_ quarter. ‘_There_,
to be sure,’ said she, ‘I might have thought myself safe.’ She was
quite in an agony. We consulted together, however, as to what should be
done, and at last she determined to send for Edward. He came. But I am
sorry to relate what ensued. All that Mrs. Ferrars could say to make
him put an end to the engagement, assisted too as you may well suppose
by my arguments, and Fanny’s entreaties, was of no avail. Duty,
affection, every thing was disregarded. I never thought Edward so
stubborn, so unfeeling before. His mother explained to him her liberal
designs, in case of his marrying Miss Morton; told him she would settle
on him the Norfolk estate, which, clear of land-tax, brings in a good
thousand a-year; offered even, when matters grew desperate, to make it
twelve hundred; and in opposition to this, if he still persisted in
this low connection, represented to him the certain penury that must
attend the match. His own two thousand pounds she protested should be
his all; she would never see him again; and so far would she be from
affording him the smallest assistance, that if he were to enter into
any profession with a view of better support, she would do all in her
power to prevent him advancing in it.”
Here Marianne, in an ecstasy of indignation, clapped her hands
together, and cried, “Gracious God! can this be possible!”
“Well may you wonder, Marianne,” replied her brother, “at the obstinacy
which could resist such arguments as these. Your exclamation is very
natural.”
Marianne was going to retort, but she remembered her promises, and
forbore.
“All this, however,” he continued, “was urged in vain. Edward said very
little; but what he did say, was in the most determined manner. Nothing
should prevail on him to give up his engagement. He would stand to it,
cost him what it might.”
“Then,” cried Mrs. Jennings with blunt sincerity, no longer able to be
silent, “he has acted like an honest man! I beg your pardon, Mr.
Dashwood, but if he had done otherwise, I should have thought him a
rascal. I have some little concern in the business, as well as
yourself, for Lucy Steele is my cousin, and I believe there is not a
better kind of girl in the world, nor one who more deserves a good
husband.”
John Dashwood was greatly astonished; but his nature was calm, not open
to provocation, and he never wished to offend anybody, especially
anybody of good fortune. He therefore replied, without any resentment,
“I would by no means speak disrespectfully of any relation of yours,
madam. Miss Lucy Steele is, I dare say, a very deserving young woman,
but in the present case you know, the connection must be impossible.
And to have entered into a secret engagement with a young man under her
uncle’s care, the son of a woman especially of such very large fortune
as Mrs. Ferrars, is perhaps, altogether a little extraordinary. In
short, I do not mean to reflect upon the behaviour of any person whom
you have a regard for, Mrs. Jennings. We all wish her extremely happy;
and Mrs. Ferrars’s conduct throughout the whole, has been such as every
conscientious, good mother, in like circumstances, would adopt. It has
been dignified and liberal. Edward has drawn his own lot, and I fear it
will be a bad one.”
Marianne sighed out her similar apprehension; and Elinor’s heart wrung
for the feelings of Edward, while braving his mother’s threats, for a
woman who could not reward him.
“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Jennings, “and how did it end?”
“I am sorry to say, ma’am, in a most unhappy rupture:—Edward is
dismissed for ever from his mother’s notice. He left her house
yesterday, but where he is gone, or whether he is still in town, I do
not know; for _we_ of course can make no inquiry.”
“Poor young man!—and what is to become of him?”
“What, indeed, ma’am! It is a melancholy consideration. Born to the
prospect of such affluence! I cannot conceive a situation more
deplorable. The interest of two thousand pounds—how can a man live on
it?—and when to that is added the recollection, that he might, but for
his own folly, within three months have been in the receipt of two
thousand, five hundred a-year (for Miss Morton has thirty thousand
pounds,) I cannot picture to myself a more wretched condition. We must
all feel for him; and the more so, because it is totally out of our
power to assist him.”
“Poor young man!” cried Mrs. Jennings, “I am sure he should be very
welcome to bed and board at my house; and so I would tell him if I
could see him. It is not fit that he should be living about at his own
charge now, at lodgings and taverns.”
Elinor’s heart thanked her for such kindness towards Edward, though she
could not forbear smiling at the form of it.
“If he would only have done as well by himself,” said John Dashwood,
“as all his friends were disposed to do by him, he might now have been
in his proper situation, and would have wanted for nothing. But as it
is, it must be out of anybody’s power to assist him. And there is one
thing more preparing against him, which must be worse than all—his
mother has determined, with a very natural kind of spirit, to settle
_that_ estate upon Robert immediately, which might have been Edward’s,
on proper conditions. I left her this morning with her lawyer, talking
over the business.”
“Well!” said Mrs. Jennings, “that is _her_ revenge. Everybody has a way
of their own. But I don’t think mine would be, to make one son
independent, because another had plagued me.”
Marianne got up and walked about the room.
“Can anything be more galling to the spirit of a man,” continued John,
“than to see his younger brother in possession of an estate which might
have been his own? Poor Edward! I feel for him sincerely.”
A few minutes more spent in the same kind of effusion, concluded his
visit; and with repeated assurances to his sisters that he really
believed there was no material danger in Fanny’s indisposition, and
that they need not therefore be very uneasy about it, he went away;
leaving the three ladies unanimous in their sentiments on the present
occasion, as far at least as it regarded Mrs. Ferrars’s conduct, the
Dashwoods’, and Edward’s.
Marianne’s indignation burst forth as soon as he quitted the room; and
as her vehemence made reserve impossible in Elinor, and unnecessary in
Mrs. Jennings, they all joined in a very spirited critique upon the
party.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Mrs. Jennings was very warm in her praise of Edward’s conduct, but only
Elinor and Marianne understood its true merit. _They_ only knew how
little he had had to tempt him to be disobedient, and how small was the
consolation, beyond the consciousness of doing right, that could remain
to him in the loss of friends and fortune. Elinor gloried in his
integrity; and Marianne forgave all his offences in compassion for his
punishment. But though confidence between them was, by this public
discovery, restored to its proper state, it was not a subject on which
either of them were fond of dwelling when alone. Elinor avoided it upon
principle, as tending to fix still more upon her thoughts, by the too
warm, too positive assurances of Marianne, that belief of Edward’s
continued affection for herself which she rather wished to do away; and
Marianne’s courage soon failed her, in trying to converse upon a topic
which always left her more dissatisfied with herself than ever, by the
comparison it necessarily produced between Elinor’s conduct and her
own.
She felt all the force of that comparison; but not as her sister had
hoped, to urge her to exertion now; she felt it with all the pain of
continual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that she had never
exerted herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence,
without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened that she
still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only
dispirited her more.
Nothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards, of affairs
in Harley Street, or Bartlett’s Buildings. But though so much of the
matter was known to them already, that Mrs. Jennings might have had
enough to do in spreading that knowledge farther, without seeking after
more, she had resolved from the first to pay a visit of comfort and
inquiry to her cousins as soon as she could; and nothing but the
hindrance of more visitors than usual, had prevented her going to them
within that time.
The third day succeeding their knowledge of the particulars, was so
fine, so beautiful a Sunday as to draw many to Kensington Gardens,
though it was only the second week in March. Mrs. Jennings and Elinor
were of the number; but Marianne, who knew that the Willoughbys were
again in town, and had a constant dread of meeting them, chose rather
to stay at home, than venture into so public a place.
An intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Jennings joined them soon after they
entered the Gardens, and Elinor was not sorry that by her continuing
with them, and engaging all Mrs. Jennings’s conversation, she was
herself left to quiet reflection. She saw nothing of the Willoughbys,
nothing of Edward, and for some time nothing of anybody who could by
any chance whether grave or gay, be interesting to her. But at last she
found herself with some surprise, accosted by Miss Steele, who, though
looking rather shy, expressed great satisfaction in meeting them, and
on receiving encouragement from the particular kindness of Mrs.
Jennings, left her own party for a short time, to join their’s. Mrs.
Jennings immediately whispered to Elinor,
“Get it all out of her, my dear. She will tell you any thing if you
ask. You see I cannot leave Mrs. Clarke.”
It was lucky, however, for Mrs. Jennings’s curiosity and Elinor’s too,