Sense and Sensibility
understanding on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours.
You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in
Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was
reduced to the extremest indigence.”
“But, upon my soul, I did _not_ know it,” he warmly replied; “I did not
recollect that I had omitted to give her my direction; and common sense
might have told her how to find it out.”
“Well, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?”
“She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be
guessed. The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her
ignorance of the world—every thing was against me. The matter itself I
could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was
previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in
general, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention,
the very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my
present visit. In short, it ended in a total breach. By one measure I
might have saved myself. In the height of her morality, good woman! she
offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could not
be—and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house. The
night following this affair—I was to go the next morning—was spent by
me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be. The struggle
was great—but it ended too soon. My affection for Marianne, my thorough
conviction of her attachment to me—it was all insufficient to outweigh
that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the
necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and
expensive society had increased. I had reason to believe myself secure
of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself
to think that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. A
heavy scene however awaited me, before I could leave Devonshire;—I was
engaged to dine with you on that very day; some apology was therefore
necessary for my breaking this engagement. But whether I should write
this apology, or deliver it in person, was a point of long debate. To
see Marianne, I felt, would be dreadful, and I even doubted whether I
could see her again, and keep to my resolution. In that point, however,
I undervalued my own magnanimity, as the event declared; for I went, I
saw her, and saw her miserable, and left her miserable—and left her
hoping never to see her again.”
“Why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?” said Elinor, reproachfully; “a note
would have answered every purpose. Why was it necessary to call?”
“It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the
country in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the
neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between
Mrs. Smith and myself—and I resolved therefore on calling at the
cottage, in my way to Honiton. The sight of your dear sister, however,
was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone.
You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening
before, so fully, so firmly resolved within my self on doing right! A
few hours were to have engaged her to me for ever; and I remember how
happy, how gay were my spirits, as I walked from the cottage to
Allenham, satisfied with myself, delighted with every body! But in
this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense
of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her sorrow,
her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged
to leave Devonshire so immediately—I never shall forget it—united too
with such reliance, such confidence in me!—Oh, God!—what a hard-hearted
rascal I was!”
They were both silent for a few moments. Elinor first spoke.
“Did you tell her that you should soon return?”
“I do not know what I told her,” he replied, impatiently; “less than
was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more
than was justified by the future. I cannot think of it.—It won’t
do.—Then came your dear mother to torture me farther, with all her
kindness and confidence. Thank Heaven! it _did_ torture me. I was
miserable. Miss Dashwood, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it
gives me to look back on my own misery. I owe such a grudge to myself
for the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, that all my past
sufferings under it are only triumph and exultation to me now. Well, I
went, left all that I loved, and went to those to whom, at best, I was
only indifferent. My journey to town—travelling with my own horses, and
therefore so tediously—no creature to speak to—my own reflections so
cheerful—when I looked forward every thing so inviting!—when I looked
back at Barton, the picture so soothing!—oh, it was a blessed journey!”
He stopped.
“Well, sir,” said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for
his departure, “and this is all?”
“All!—no:—have you forgot what passed in town? That infamous letter?
Did she show it you?”
“Yes, I saw every note that passed.”
“When the first of hers reached me (as it immediately did, for I was in
town the whole time,) what I felt is—in the common phrase, not to be
expressed; in a more simple one—perhaps too simple to raise any
emotion—my feelings were very, very painful.—Every line, every word
was—in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here,
would forbid—a dagger to my heart. To know that Marianne was in town
was—in the same language—a thunderbolt.—Thunderbolts and daggers!—what
a reproof would she have given me!—her taste, her opinions—I believe
they are better known to me than my own,—and I am sure they are
dearer.”
Elinor’s heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this
extraordinary conversation, was now softened again;—yet she felt it her
duty to check such ideas in her companion as the last.
“This is not right, Mr. Willoughby.—Remember that you are married.
Relate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to
hear.”
“Marianne’s note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in
former days,—that in spite of the many, many weeks we had been
separated, she was as constant in her own feelings, and as full of
faith in the constancy of mine as ever,—awakened all my remorse. I say
awakened, because time and London, business and dissipation, had in
some measure quieted it, and I had been growing a fine hardened
villain, fancying myself indifferent to her, and chusing to fancy that
she too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of our
past attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my
shoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach,
overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, ‘I shall be
heartily glad to hear she is well married.’ But this note made me know
myself better. I felt that she was infinitely dearer to me than any
other woman in the world, and that I was using her infamously. But
every thing was then just settled between Miss Grey and me. To retreat
was impossible. All that I had to do, was to avoid you both. I sent no
answer to Marianne, intending by that to preserve myself from her
farther notice; and for some time I was even determined not to call in
Berkeley Street;—but at last, judging it wiser to affect the air of a
cool, common acquaintance than anything else, I watched you all safely
out of the house one morning, and left my name.”
“Watched us out of the house!”
“Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how
often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a
shop to avoid your sight, as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in
Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse
of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant watchfulness
on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep out of your
sight, could have separated us so long. I avoided the Middletons as
much as possible, as well as everybody else who was likely to prove an
acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being in town, however, I
blundered on Sir John, I believe, the first day of his coming, and the
day after I had called at Mrs. Jennings’s. He asked me to a party, a
dance at his house in the evening. Had he _not_ told me as an
inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I should have
felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. The next morning
brought another short note from Marianne—still affectionate, open,
artless, confiding—everything that could make _my_ conduct most
hateful. I could not answer it. I tried—but could not frame a sentence.
But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day. If you _can_
pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was _then_. With my
head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy
lover to another woman! Those three or four weeks were worse than all.
Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what
a sweet figure I cut! what an evening of agony it was! Marianne,
beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Willoughby in such a
tone! Oh, God! holding out her hand to me, asking me for an
explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking
solicitude on my face! and Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other
hand, looking all that was—Well, it does not signify; it is over now.
Such an evening! I ran away from you all as soon as I could; but not
before I had seen Marianne’s sweet face as white as death. _That_ was
the last, last look I ever had of her; the last manner in which she
appeared to me. It was a horrid sight! yet when I thought of her to-day
as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew
exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her last in this world.
She was before me, constantly before me, as I travelled, in the same
look and hue.”
A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Willoughby first
rousing himself, broke it thus:
“Well, let me make haste and be gone. Your sister is certainly better,
certainly out of danger?”
“We are assured of it.”
“Your poor mother, too!—doting on Marianne.”
“But the letter, Mr. Willoughby, your own letter; have you any thing to
say about that?”
“Yes, yes, _that_ in particular. Your sister wrote to me again, you
know, the very next morning. You saw what she said. I was breakfasting
at the Ellisons,—and her letter, with some others, was brought to me
there from my lodgings. It happened to catch Sophia’s eye before it
caught mine—and its size, the elegance of the paper, the hand-writing
altogether, immediately gave her a suspicion. Some vague report had
reached her before of my attachment to some young lady in Devonshire,
and what had passed within her observation the preceding evening had
marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous than ever.
Affecting that air of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a
woman one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read its contents.
She was well paid for her impudence. She read what made her wretched.
Her wretchedness I could have borne, but her passion—her malice—At all
events it must be appeased. And, in short—what do you think of my
wife’s style of letter-writing?—delicate—tender—truly feminine—was it
not?”
“Your wife!—The letter was in your own hand-writing.”
“Yes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as
I was ashamed to put my name to. The original was all her own—her own
happy thoughts and gentle diction. But what could I do!—we were
engaged, every thing in preparation, the day almost fixed—But I am
talking like a fool. Preparation! Day! In honest words, her money was
necessary to me, and in a situation like mine, any thing was to be done