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Persuasion by Jane Austen Book 2,
Volume 11 Further,
Further,
Continued Anne considered all that had passed.
She had not mistaken Captain Wentworth.
Jealousy of Mr Elliot had been the retarding weight,
The doubt and the torment that had begun to operate in the very hour of her first meeting at Bath,
That had returned after a short suspension to ruin the concert,
And that had influenced him in everything he said and did,
Or omitted to say and do,
In the last 24 hours.
It had been gradually healed into the better hopes which her looks or words or actions occasionally encouraged.
It had been vanquished at last by those sentiments and tones which had reached him while she talked with Captain Harville,
And under the irresistible governance of which he had seized a sheet of paper and pulled out his feelings.
Of what he had then written,
Nothing was to be retracted or qualified.
He persisted in having loved none but her.
She had never been supplanted.
He had never even believed himself to see her equal.
Thus much,
Indeed,
He was obliged to acknowledge that he had been constant,
Unconsciously,
Nay,
Unintentionally,
That he had meant to forget her and believed it to be done.
He had imagined himself indifferent when he had only been angry,
And he had been unjust to her merits because he had been a sufferer from them.
Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself,
Maintaining the loveliest medium of fortitude and gentleness,
But he was obliged to acknowledge that only at Uppercross had he learnt to do her justice,
And only at Lyme had he begun to understand himself.
At Lyme he had received lessons of more than one sort.
The passing admiration of Mr Elliot had at least roused him,
And the scenes on the Cobb and at Captain Harville's had fixed her superiority.
In Wentworth's preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove,
The attempts of angry pride,
He protested he had for ever felt it to be impossible,
That he had not cared and could not care for Louisa,
Though till that day,
Till the leisureful reflection which followed it,
He had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which Louisa's could so ill bear a comparison.
Or the perfect unrivalled hold it possessed over his own.
There he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will,
Between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.
There he had seen everything to exult in his estimation the woman he had lost,
And there begun to deplore the pride,
The folly,
The madness of resentment which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.
From that period his penance had become severe.
He had no sooner been free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of Louisa's accident,
No sooner begun to feel himself alive again,
Than he had begun to feel himself,
Though alive,
Not at liberty.
I found,
Said he,
That I was considered by Harville an engaged man,
That neither Harville nor his wife entertained a doubt of our mutual attachment.
I was startled and shocked.
To a degree I could contradict this instantly,
But when I began to reflect that others might have felt the same,
Her own family,
Nay,
Perhaps herself,
I was no longer at my own disposal.
I was Louisa's in honour if she wished it.
I had been unguarded.
I had not thought seriously on this subject before.
I had not considered my excessive intimacy must have its danger of ill consequence in many ways,
And that I had no right to be trying whether I could attach myself to either of the girls at the risk of raising even an unpleasant report,
Were there no other ill effects.
I had been grossly wrong and I must abide the consequences.
Captain Wentworth found too late,
In short,
That he had entangled himself with Louisa,
And that precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for her at all,
He must regard himself as bound to her if her sentiments for him were what the Harvilles supposed.
This determined him to leave Lyme and await her complete recovery elsewhere.
He would gladly weaken by any fair means whatever feelings or speculations concerning him might exist.
So he went therefore to his brothers,
Meaning after a while,
To return to Kenninginch 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 inquired after you very particularly and even asked if you were personally altered,
Little suspecting that to my eye,
Anne,
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 eighth 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.
Now at least I could put myself in the way of happiness and 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 you might retain the feelings of the past,
As I did,
And one encouragement happened to be mine.
I could never doubt you would be loved and sought by others,
But I knew to a certainty you had refused one man at least of better pretensions than myself,
And I could not help often saying,
Was that for me?
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 a 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 it,
Mr Elliot,
Without agony?
Was not the sight of the friend who sat beside you,
Was not the recollection of what had been,
The knowledge of her influence,
The indelible,
Immovable impression of what persuasion had once done?
Was it not all against me?
You should have distinguished,
Replied Anne.
You should have not 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,
Given me up,
Been influenced by anyone rather than me.
I saw you by the very person who had guided you in that year of misery.
I had no reason to believe her of any 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 I still had a motive for remaining here.
At last Anne was home again,
And happier than anyone 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 it 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 the very things those who had never met before,
And those who met too often.
But Anne had never found an evening shorter.
Mr Elliot was there,
She avoided but she could pity him.
The Wallises,
She had amusement in understanding them.
Lady Dalrymple and Miss Catteret,
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,
Or her 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'm not saying 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.
Captain Wentworth looked at her,
Then he looked at Lady Russell,
And looking back to Anne,
He replied,
As if in cool deliberation,
Not yet,
But there are hopes of her being forgiven in time.
I trust her 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,
Than in that lady.
Perhaps myself,
My own self.
Tell me,
When I returned to England in the year eight,
With a few thousand pounds,
And was posted to the Laconia,
If I had then written to you,
Would you have answered my letter?
Would you 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,
Anne.
I shut my eyes and would not understand you,
Or do you justice.
This is a recollection which ought to make me forgive everyone 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 I enjoyed.
I have valued myself on honourable toils and just rewards.
Like other great men under reserves,
He added with a smile.
I must endeavour to subdue my mind to my fortune,
And I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.
