Chapter 44 Eleanor obeyed the first impulse of her heart in turning instantly to quit the room.
And her hand was already on the lock when its action was suspended by his hastily advancing.
And saying in a voice rather of command.
And supplication Miss Dashwood for half an hour.
For ten minutes I entreat you to stay.
No,
Sir,
" she replied with firmness.
Will it be I shall not stay?
The servants,
I suppose,
Forgot to tell you Mr Palmer was not in the house.
Had thee told me,
He cried with vehemence.
That Mr.
Palmer and all his relations are at the devil.
It would not have turned me from the door.
My business is with you and you only.
With me.
Said Eleanor in the utmost amazement.
Well,
Sir,
Be quick.
And if you can,
Less violent.
Sit down and I will be both,
" he said.
Elena hesitated.
She knew not what to do.
The possibility of Colonel Brandon's arriving and finding him there came across her.
But she had promised to hear him,
And her curiosity,
No less than her honour,
Was engaged.
After a moment's recollection,
Therefore,
She walked silently towards the table and sat down.
Pray be quick,
Sir.
Said Eleanor impatiently,
I have no time to spare.
Your sister.
Said he with abruptness,
A moment afterwards.
Is out of danger.
But is it true?
Is it really true?
Eleanor would not speak.
So he repeated the inquiry with yet greater eagerness.
For God's sake,
Tell me,
Is she out of danger?
We hope she is.
Had I known as much half an hour ago.
But since I am here,
What does it signify?
Miss Dashwood,
Tell me honestly.
A deep glow overspread his cheeks.
Do you think me almost a knave or a fool?
Ellen looked at him with greater astonishment than ever.
She began to think he must be in liquor and with this impression she immediately rose.
Mr.
Willoughby,
I advise you at present to return to Coombe.
Whatever your business may be with me,
It may be better recollected and explained tomorrow.
I understand you.
He replied,
I am very drunk.
A pint of porter with my cold beef at Marlborough was enough to overset me.
Adore.
Yes,
I left London this morning at eight o'clock,
And the only ten minutes I've spent out of my chaise since that time procured me a luncheon at Marlborough.
The steadiness of his manner and the intelligence of his eyes he spoke.
Convincing Eleanor he was not brought here by intoxication.
She said.
Mr.
Willoughby,
You ought to feel,
And I certainly do,
That after what has passed you're coming here in this manner requires a very particular excuse.
What is it you mean by it?
I'm me.
Said he with serious energy.
If I can to make you hate me one degree less than you do now.
I mean to offer some kind of explanation,
Some kind of apology for the past.
I've not always been a rascal.
Is this the real reason of your coming?
Upon my soul it is.
Was his answer,
With a warmth which brought all the former Willoughby to her remembrance as in spite of herself,
It made Eleanor think him sincere.
If that is all,
You may be satisfied already for Marianne does.
She has long forgiven you.
Has she?
He cried in the same eager tone.
Then she's forgiven me before she ought to have done it.
But she shall forgive me again and on more reasonable grounds.
Now will you listen to me?
I learned about her a century ago.
I do not know.
Said he,
How you may have accounted for my behaviour to your sisters.
But when I first became intimate in your family,
I had no other intentions.
And to pass my time pleasantly while I was obliged to remain in Devonshire.
Your sister's lovely person and interesting manners could not but please me.
And her behavior to me,
Almost from the first,
Was of a kind.
It is astonishing when I reflect on what it was and what she was.
That my heart should have been so insensible.
But at first I must confess my vanity only was elevated by it.
Careless of her happiness and thinking only of my own amusement.
I endeavoured by every means in my power to make myself pleasing to her.
Without any design of returning her affection.
Miss Dashwood at this point,
Turning her eyes on him with a most angry contempt,
Stopped him by saying,
It is hardly worthwhile,
Mr.
Willoughby,
For you to relate or for me to listen any longer.
I insist on your hearing the whole of it.
He replied.
My fortune was never large and I had always been expensive.
Every year since my coming of age,
Or even before I believe,
Had added to my debts.
And though the death of my old cousin Mrs Smith.
Was to set me free,
Yet that event being uncertain and possibly far distant,
It had been for some time my intention to re-establish my circumstances by marrying a woman of fortune.
To attach myself to your sister,
Therefore,
Was not a thing to be thought of.
And with a meanness,
Selfishness,
Cruelty.
I was acting in this manner,
Trying to engage her regard,
Without a thought of returning it.
But one thing may be said for me,
Even in that horrid state of selfish vanity.
I did not know the extent of the injury I meditated because I did not know then how it was to love.
But have I ever known it?
Well,
It may be doubted for,
Had I really loved,
Could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity?
To avarice?
Or could I have sacrificed hers?
But I have done it.
To avoid a comparative poverty which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors.
I have by raising myself to affluence.
Lost everything.
That could have made it a blessing.
You did then.
See you there,
Linda.
A little softened.
Believe yourself at one time attached to her.
Yes,
I found myself by insensible degrees sincerely fond of her,
And the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her.
Even then,
However,
When fully determined on paying my addresses to her,
I allowed myself most improperly to put off from day to day the moment of doing it.
From an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed.
At last,
However,
My resolution was taken and I determined as soon as I could to engage her alone.
Justify the attentions I'd so invariably paid her.
And openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to display.
But in the interim,
A circumstance occurred,
An unlucky circumstance,
To ruin all my resolution.
And with it all my comfort.
A discovery took place.
Here he hesitated and looked down.
Mrs Smith had somehow or other been informed.
I imagine by some distant relation.
Of an affair,
A connection.
But I need not explain myself further.
He looked at her with a heightened colour and inquiring eye.
You have probably heard the whole story long ago.
I have.
Returned Eleanor,
Hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him.
I have heard it all.
And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business,
I confess,
Is beyond my comprehension.
Remember!
Cried Willoughby,
From whom you receive the account.
I acknowledge that her situation and her character ought to have been respected by me.
I do not mean to justify myself but at the same time I cannot leave you to suppose that because she was injured she was irreproachable.
And because I was a libertine,
She must be a saint.
If the violence of her passions the weakness of her understanding.
I do not mean,
However,
To defend myself.
I have injured more than herself,
And I have injured one whose affection for me was scarcely less warm than hers.
Your indifference,
However.
Siddhananda.
Towards that unfortunate girl is no apology for your cruel neglect of her.
You must have known that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire,
She was reduced to the extremest sorrow.
But upon my soul I did not know it.
He warmly replied.
I did not recollect I had admitted to give her my direction.
And common sense might have told her how to find it out.
Well,
Sir,
What said Mrs Smith?
She attacks me with the offense at once,
And my confusion may be guessed.
The purity of her life,
The formality of her notions,
Her ignorance of the world.
Everything was against me.
My visit 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 was Mary Eliza.
That could not be,
And I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house.
The night following this affair was spent by me in deliberating on what future conduct I should have.
My affection for Marianne,
My thorough conviction of her attachment to me.
It was all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty.
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 nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do.
I was engaged to dying with you on that very day.
Some apology was therefore necessary for my breaking the engagement.
But whether I should write this apology or deliver it 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.
Why did you call,
Mr Willoughby?
Said Eleanor reproachfully.
A note would have answered every purpose.
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.
The sight of your dear sister,
However,
Was really dreadful,
And to heighten the matter I found her alone.
I had left her only the evening before,
So firmly resolved within myself on doing right.
A few hours were to have engaged her to me forever.
Her sorrow,
Her disappointment and deep regret when I told her I was obliged to leave Devonshire.
I never shall forget.
Oh God,
What a hard-hearted rascal I was.
They were both silent for a few minutes.
And Eleanor first spoke.
Did you tell her you should soon return?
I do not know what I told her,
He replied impatiently.
Less than what was due to the past beyond a doubt,
And in all likelihood more than was justified by the future.
Then came your dear mother to torch me further with all her kindness and confidence.
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.
And so I left all that I loved and went to those to whom at best I was only indifferent.
Well,
Sir,
" said Eleanor,
And this is all.
Ooo 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 reach me.
He went on.
My feelings were very,
Very painful.
Every line,
Every word was a dagger to my heart.
To know that Marianne was in town was a thunderbolt.
Marianne's note,
By assuring me 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.
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 everything was then just settled between Miss Grey and me.
To retreat was impossible.
All that I had to do was avoid you both.
I sent no answer to Marianne,
And for some time was even determined not to call into Barclay Street.
But at last,
Judging it wiser to affect the air of a call 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.
Eleanor exclaimed.
You will be surprised to hear how often I watched you.
Replied Willoughby.
I avoided the Middletons as much as possible.
As well as everybody else who was likely to prove an acquaintance in common.
But 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 I could not frame a sentence.
That evening what agony it was.
Marianne beautiful as an angel on one side,
Calling me Willoughby in such a tone.
And Sophia,
Jealous as the devil on the other hand,
Looking all that was,
Well,
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.
Yet when I thought of her today as really dying,
It was a kind of comfort to me,
To imagine I knew exactly how she would appear to those who saw her last in this world.
A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded.
Then Willoughby,
First rousing himself,
Broke it thus.
Well,
Let me make haste and be gone.
Your sister's certainly better,
Certainly out of danger.
We are assured of it.
Your poor mother too,
Doting on Marianne.
Put the letter,
Mr Willoughby,
Your own letter.
Have you anything to say about that?
Yes,
Yes,
That in particular.
Your sister wrote to me again,
You know,
The very next morning.
You saw what I said.
I was breakfasting at the Ellisons.
And her letter with some others was brought to me there for my lodgings.
It happened to catch Sophia's eye before it caught mine.
She opened the letter directly and read its contents.
She was well paid for her impudence,
And she read what made her wretched.
No wretchedness I could have borne,
But her passion I could have won.
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 why.
But the letter was in your own handwriting.
Yes,
I had only the credit of copying such sentences as I was ashamed to put my name to.
The original design was all her own.
But what could I do?
We were engaged.
Everything in preparation.
The day almost fixed.
I'm talking like a fool.
Preparation day.
In honest words,
Her money was necessary to me.
And in a situation like mine,
Anything was to be done to prevent a rupture.
After all,
What did it signify to my character in the opinion of Marianne and her friends?
In what language my answer was couched?
My business was to declare myself a scoundrel.
And whether I did it with a bow or a bluster was of little importance.
Such were my reasonings.
And in a sort of desperate carelessness I copied my wife's words and parted with the last relics of Marianne.
Her three notes,
The lock of hair.
That too I had always carried about in the same pocketbook.
Which was now searched by Madame with a most ingratiating virulence.
Every memento was then torn from me.
You are very wrong,
Mr Willoughby.
Persisted Eleanor.
You are very blameable.
You ought not to speak in this way either of Mrs.
Willoughby or my sister.
You have made your own choice.
Your wife has a claim to your politeness and your respect at least.
She must be attached to you or she would not have married you.
To treat her with unkindness is no atonement to Marianne.
Do not talk to me of my wife.
Said Willoughby with a heavy sigh.
She does not deserve your compassion.
She knew I had no regard for her when we married.
And now do you pity me,
Miss Dashwood?
Have I explained away any part of my guilt?
Yes,
You have certainly removed something.
You've proved yourself on the whole less faulty than I believed you,
" said Eleanor,
But I hardly know the misery that you've inflicted.
Will you repeat to your sister when she's recovered what I have been telling you?
Tell her of my misery and my penitence.
Tell her my heart was never inconstant to her.
And if you will at this very moment.
Tell her she is dearer to me.
Than ever.
Chapter 45 Eleanor for some time after he left her.
Remained too much oppressed by a crowd of ideas to think even of her sister.
Willoughby,
He whom only half an hour ago she had aboard as the most worthless of men.
Excited a degree of commiseration for the sufferings produced by them,
Which made her think of him as now separated forever from her family,
With a tenderness,
A regret,
Rather in proportion to his wishes.
Than to his merits.
She felt that his influence over her mind was heightened by that still ardent love for Marianne,
Which it was not even innocent to indulge.
When at last she returned to the unconscious Marianne,
She found her just awaking,
Refreshed by so long and sweet a sleep,
To the extent of her hopes.
Eleanor's heart was full.
The past,
The present,
The future.
Willoughby's visit,
Marianne's safety and her mother's expected arrival threw her altogether into an agitation of spirits which kept off every indication of fatigue and made her only fearful of betraying herself to her sister.
Within half an hour after Willoughby's leaving the house,
She was again called downstairs by the sound of another carriage.
Eager to save her mother from every unnecessary moment's horrible suspense,
She ran immediately into the hall and reached the outward door just in time to receive and support her as she entered it.
Mrs Dashwood,
Whose terror as they drew near the house had produced almost the conviction of Marianne's being no more,
Had no voice to inquire after her.
But Eleanor,
Waiting neither for salutation nor inquiry,
Instantly gave the joyful relief.
And her mother,
Catching it with all her usual warmth.
Was in a moment as much overcome by her happiness as she had been before by her fears.
As soon as Mrs Dashwood had recovered herself.
To see Marianne was her first desire.
And in two minutes she was with her beloved child.
Eleanor's delight was only checked by an apprehension of its robbing Marianne of further sleep.
But Mrs Dashwood could be calm when the love of a child was at stake.
And Marianne satisfied in knowing her mother was near and conscious of being too weak for conversation.
Submitted readily to the silence and quiet prescribed by every nurse around her.
Mrs Dashwood would sit up with her all night.
And Eleanor,
In compliance with her mother's entreaty,
Went to bed.
But the rest was kept off by irritation of spirits.
Will you be?
Poor Willoughby as she now allowed herself to call him.
Was constantly in her thoughts.
She would not but have heard his vindication for the world,
And now blamed,
Now acquitted herself for having judged him so harshly.
But her promise of relating it to her sister.
Was invariably painful.
She dreaded what its effect on Marianne might be.
Doubted whether after such an explanation she could ever be happy with another.
And for a moment wished Willoughby a widower.
Then,
Remembering Colonel Brandon.
Reproved herself.
Felt that to his sufferings and his constantly Far more than to his rivals,
The reward of her sister was due.
Marianne continued to mend every day,
And the brightful cheerfulness of Mrs Dashwood's looks and spirits proved her to be,
As she repeatedly declared herself,
One of the happiest women in the world.
Marianne was restored to her from a danger in which,
As she now began to feel her own mistake in judgment in encouraging the unfortunate attachment to Willoughby.
And in her recovery she had yet another source of joy unthought of by Eleanor.
It was thus imparted to her as soon as any opportunity of private conference between them occurred.
At last we are alone.
My Eleanor,
You do not yet know my happiness.
Colonel Brandon loves Marianne.
He has told me so himself.
Eleanor,
Feeling by turns both pleased and pained,
Surprised and not surprised.
With all attention.
You are never like me,
Dear Eleanor,
Or I should wonder at your composure now.
Added her mother.
Had I sat down to wish for any possible good to my family,
I should have fixed on Colonel Brandon's marrying one of you as the object most desirable.
And I believe Marianne will be the most happy with him of the two.
He opened his whole heart to me yesterday as we travelled.
I,
You may well believe,
Could talk of nothing but my child.
He could not conceal his distress.
I saw that it equaled my own,
And he perhaps,
Thinking that mere friendship,
As the world now goes,
Would not justify so warm a sympathy,
Or rather not thinking at all,
I suppose,
Giving way to irresistible feelings,
Made me acquainted with his earnest,
Tender,
Constant affection for Marianne.
He has loved her,
My Eleanor,
Ever since the first moment of seeing her.
His regard for her infinitely surpassing anything that Willoughby ever felt or feigned,
As much more warm,
As more sincere or constant,
Has subsisted through all the knowledge of dear Marianne's unhappy prepossession for that worthless young man.
And without selfishness could he have seen or happy with another.
Such openness,
Such sincerity.
No one can be deceived in him.
Colonel Brandon's character.
Said Eleanor.
As an excellent man.
Is well established.
I know it is,
Replied her mother seriously,
Or after such a warning I should be the last to encourage such affection.
But his coming for me as he did,
With such active,
Such ready friendship,
Is enough to prove him one of the worthiest of men.
His character,
However.
On to the other.
Does not rest on one act of kindness.
To Mrs.
Jennings,
To the Middletons,
He's been long and intimately known,
And so highly do I value and esteem him.
That if Marianne can be happy with him,
I shall be as ready as yourself to think our connection to the greatest blessing to us in the world.
What answer did you give him?
Did you allow him to hope?
I could not then talk of hope to him or myself.
Marianne might at that moment be dying.
Yet after a time I did say,
For at first I was quite overcome.
That if she lived,
As I trusted she might,
My greatest happiness would lie in promoting their marriage.
Time,
A very little time I told him,
Would do for everything.
Marianne's heart is not to be wasted forever on such a man as Willoughby.
His own merits must soon secure it.
To judge from the Colonel's spirits,
However,
Said Eleanor,
You have not yet made him equally sanguine.
No.
He thinks Marianne's affection too deeply rooted for any change in it,
Under a great length of time,
And is too diffident of himself to believe,
With such a difference of age and disposition,
He could ever attach her.
There however,
He is mistaken.
His age is only so much beyond hers as to be an advantage,
As to make his character and principles fixed,
And his disposition,
I am well convinced,
Is exactly the very one to make your sister happy.
And his manners.
The colonel's manners are not only more pleasing to me than Willoughby's ever were.
But they are of a kind I well know to be more solidly attaching to Marianne.
Their gentleness,
Their gentle attention to other people.
Is much more accordant with her real disposition than the liveliness of the other.
I am very sure myself that had Willoughby turned out as really amiable as he's proved himself the contrary,
Marianne would never yet have been so happy with him.
As she will be with Colonel Branagh.
Mrs Dashwood paused.
Her daughter could not quite agree with her,
But her dissent was not heard and therefore gave no offence.
At Delaford,
She will be within an easy reach of me,
" she added,
Even if I remain at Barton.
And in all probability,
Indeed,
There certainly must be some small house or cottage close by.
That would suit us quite as well as our present situation.
Poor Eleanor.
Here was a new scheme for getting her to Delaford.
But her spirit was stubborn.
Then her mother continued.
His fortune too.
Put my time of life,
You know.
Everybody cares about that.
And though I neither know nor desire to know what it really is.
I am sure.
It must be a good one.
Chapter 46 Marianne's illness had not been long enough to make her recovery slow.
And with youth,
Natural strength and her mother's presence in aid,
It proceeded so smoothly as to enable her to remove,
Within four days after the arrival of the latter,
Into Mrs.
Palmer's dressing room.
Winner!
For she was impatient to pour forth her thanks to him for fetching her mother.
Colonel Brandon was invited to visit her.
His emotion in entering the room.
In seeing her altered looks.
Was such as,
In Eleanor's conjecture,
Must arise from something more than his affectionate for Marianne.
And she soon discovered in his melancholy eye,
And varying complexion as he looked at her sister,
The probable recurrence of many past scenes of misery to his mind.
Brought back by that resemblance between Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged and now strengthened by the hollow eye.
And the sickly skin.
Mrs Dashwood saw nothing in the Colonel's behaviour but what arose from the most simple and self-evident sensations.
While in the actions and words of Marianne,
She persuaded herself to think that something more than gratitude already dawned.
At the end of another day or two,
Mrs Dashwood began to talk of removing to Barton.
At Colonel Brandon's and Mrs.
Jennings' united request in return,
Mrs.
Dashwood was prevailed upon to accept the use of his carriage on her journey back.
For the better accommodation of her sick child.
And the Colonel,
At the joint invitation of Mrs Dashwood and Mrs Jennings,
Engaged with pleasure to redeem it by a visit at the cottage in the course of the next few weeks.
The day of separation and departure arrived,
And Marianne,
After taking so particular a length at leave of Mrs.
Jennings,
And bidding Colonel Brandon farewell with the cordiality of a friend,
Was carefully assisted by him into the carriage.
Mrs Dashwood and Ellen have then followed,
And the others were left by themselves to talk of the travellers and feel their own dullness,
Till Mrs Jennings was summoned to her chaise to take comfort in the gossip of her maid for the loss of her two young companions.
And Colonel Brandon immediately afterwards took his solitary way to Delaford.
The Dashwoods were two days on the road.
And Marianne bore her journey on both sides.
Without essential fatigue.
Everything that the most solicitous care could do to render her comfortable was the office of each watchful companion,
And each found their reward in her bodily ease and her calmness of spirit.
Eleanor,
Who had seen her week after week so constantly suffering,
Now saw with a joy which no other could equally share,
An apparent composure of mind,
Which in being the result,
As she trusted,
Of serious reflection.
Must eventually lead her to contentment and cheerfulness.
As they approached Barton,
She grew silent and thoughtful.
And turning her face away from their notice,
Sat earnestly gazing through the window.
But here Eleanor could neither wonder nor blame,
And when she saw as she assisted Marianne from the carriage,
She had been crying.
She saw only an emotion too natural in itself to raise anything less tender than pity.
And in its unobtrusiveness entitled to praise.
No sooner had they entered their common sitting-room than Marianne turned her eyes around it with a look of resolute firmness,
As if determined at once to accustom herself to the sight of every object which the remembrance of Willoughby could be connected.
She said little,
But every sentence aimed at cheerfulness.
And though a sigh sometimes escaped her.
It never passed away without the atonement of a smile.
The next morning produced no abatement in these happy symptoms.
When the weather is settled and I've recovered my strength.
Said she.
We will take long walks together every day.
We'll walk to the farm on the edge of the town and see how the children go on.
It may never to be later than rising,
Till at six,
And from that time till dinner,
I shall divide every moment between music and reading.
There are many works well worth reading at the park,
And there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow from Colonel Brandon.
By reading only six hours a day,
I shall gain in the course of a 12-month a great deal of instruction,
Which I now feel myself to want.
Eleanor honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this.
Though smiling,
To see the same eager fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining now at work,
In introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment,
And virtuous self-control.
Her smile,
However,
Changed to a sigh when she remembered her promise to Willoughby was yet unfilled.
And feared she had to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of Marianne.
Willing therefore to delay the evil hour,
She resolved to wait till her sister's health was more secure before she appointed it.
But the resolution was made.
Only to be broken.
Marianne had been two or three days at home before the weather was fine enough for an invalid like herself to venture out.
But at last a soft genial morning appeared.
And Marianne,
Leaning on Eleanor's arm,
Was authorised to walk as long as she could without fatigue,
In the lane before the house.
They had advanced only so far beyond the house as to admit a full view of the hill.
The important hill behind.
When pausing with her eyes turned towards it,
Marianne calmly said.
Exactly there I fell.
And there I first saw Willoughby.
Her voice sank with a word,
But presently reviving,
She added.
I am grateful to find I can look with so little pain on the spot.
Shall we have a talk on that subject,
Helena?
Hesitatingly,
It was said.
Or will it be so wrong?
I can talk of it now,
I hope,
As I ought to.
Eleanor tenderly invited her to be open.
As for regret.
.
.
Said Marianne.
I have done with that as far as he is concerned.
At present if I could be satisfied on one point.
If I could be allowed to think he was not always acting apart.
Not always deceiving me.
But above all,
If I could be assured that he never was so very wicked as my fears have sometimes fancied him.
Since the story of that unfortunate girl.
.
.
She stopped.
Eleanor joyfully treasured her words as she answered.
If you could be assured of that.
You think you should be easy?
Yes.
Said Marianne.
My peace of mind is doubly involved in it.
For not only is it horrible to suspect a person who has been what he has been to me of such designs,
But what must it make me appear to myself?
How then?
Asked Eleanor.
Would you account for his behavior?
I would suppose him.
Oh,
How gladly would I suppose him do.
Only fickle.
Very,
Very fickle.
Eleanor said no more.
She was debating within herself on the eligibility of beginning her story directly.
Or postponing it till Marianne were in stronger health.
I'm not wishing him too much good,
" said Marianne at last with a sigh.
When I wish his secret reflections may be no more unpleasant than my own.
Do you compare your conduct with his?
Said Eleanor incredulously.
No,
I compare it with what it ought to have been.
I compare it with yours.
Our situations are born in resemblance.
They have borne more than our conduct.
My illness has given me leisure and calmness for serious recollection.
I considered the past.
I saw in my own behaviour since the beginning of our acquaintance with him last autumn.
Nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself.
And want of kindness to others.
I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings,
And that my want of fortitude under them had almost led me to the grave.
My illness,
I well knew,
Had been entirely brought on by myself,
By such negligence of my own health.
As I had felt even at the time to be wrong.
Had I died,
In what peculiar misery should I have left you,
My nurse,
My friend?
My sister.
How I should have lived in your remembrance.
My mother too.
How could you have consoled her?
Everybody seemed injured by me.
The kindness,
The unceasing kindness of Mrs Jennings I had repaid with ungrateful contempt.
To the Middletons,
The Palmers,
The Steeles,
To every common acquaintance even,
I had been insolent and unjust.
To John,
To Fanny,
Yes,
Even to them,
Little as they deserve.
I had given less than they do.
But you,
You above all,
Above my mother,
Had been wronged by me,
Eleanor.
I and only I knew your heart and its sorrows,
Yet to what did it influence me?
Not to any compassion that could benefit you or myself.
Here sees the rapid flow of her self-reproving spirit.
And Ellen.
Impatient to soothe.
Though too honest to flatter.
Gave her instantly that praise and support which her frankness and her contrition so well deserved.
Marianne pressed her hand and replied.
You are very good,
My sister.
The future must be my proof.
I have laid down my plan and if I am capable of adhering to it,
My feelings shall be governed and my temper improved.
I shall now live solely for my family.
You,
My mother and Margaret,
Must henceforth be all the world to me.
You will share my affections entirely between you.
As for Willoughby.
To say that I shall soon,
Or I could ever forget him,
Would be idle.
His remembrance can be overcome by no change of circumstances or opinions,
But it shall be regulated.
It shall be checked by religion.
By reason.
By constant employment.
She paused and added in a lower voice.
If I could but know his heart.
Everything would become easy.
Eleanor,
Who had now been for some time reflecting on the propriety or impropriety of speedily hazarding her narration.
Without feeling at all near a decision than at first,
Heard this.
And perceiving that his reflection did nothing.
Resolution must do all.
And soon found herself leading to the fact.
She managed the recital as she hoped,
With a dress.
She prepared her anxious listener with caution.
Related simply and honestly the chief points on which Willoughby grounded his apology.
Marianne said not a word.
She trembled,
Her eyes were fixed on the ground,
And her lips became whiter than even sickness had left them.
She caught every syllable with panting eagerness.
Her hand,
Unknowingly to herself,
Closely pressed her sister's.
And tears covered her cheeks.
Eleanor,
Dreading her being tired,
Led her towards home.
Until they reach the door of the cottage,
Easily conjecturing what her curiosity must be.
Though no question was suffered to speak it.
Talked of nothing but Willoughby and their conversation together.
As soon as they entered the house,
Marianne,
With a kiss of gratitude,
And these two words,
Just articulate through her tears,
Tell Mama.
Withdrew from her sister and walked slowly upstairs.
Eleanor would not attempt to disturb a solitude so reasonable as what she now saw.
And she turned into the palm tree.
To fulfil her parting injunction.
