Chapter 31

by Jane Austen

　　From a night of more sleep than she had expected,Marianne awoke the next morning to the same consciousnessof misery in which she had closed her eyes.Elinor encouraged her as much as possible to talkof what she felt; and before breakfast was ready, they hadgone through the subject again and again; and with the samesteady conviction and affectionate counsel on Elinor's side,the same impetuous feelings and varying opinions onMarianne's, as before. Sometimes she could believeWilloughby to be as unfortunate and as innocent as herself,and at others, lost every consolation in the impossibilityof acquitting him. At one moment she was absolutelyindifferent to the observation of all the world, at anothershe would seclude herself from it for ever, and at a thirdcould resist it with energy. In one thing, however,she was uniform, when it came to the point, in avoiding,where it was possible, the presence of Mrs. Jennings,and in a determined silence when obliged to endure it.Her heart was hardened against the belief of Mrs. Jennings'sentering into her sorrows with any compassion."No, no, no, it cannot be," she cried;"she cannot feel. Her kindness is not sympathy;her good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wantsis gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it."Elinor had not needed this to be assured of the injusticeto which her sister was often led in her opinion of others,by the irritable refinement of her own mind, and the toogreat importance placed by her on the delicacies of astrong sensibility, and the graces of a polished manner.Like half the rest of the world, if more than half therebe that are clever and good, Marianne, with excellentabilities and an excellent disposition, was neitherreasonable nor candid. She expected from other peoplethe same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judgedof their motives by the immediate effect of their actionson herself. Thus a circumstance occurred, while thesisters were together in their own room after breakfast,which sunk the heart of Mrs. Jennings still lowerin her estimation; because, through her own weakness,it chanced to prove a source of fresh pain to herself,though Mrs. Jennings was governed in it by an impulseof the utmost goodwill.With a letter in her outstretched hand, and countenancegaily smiling, from the persuasion of bringing comfort,she entered their room, saying,"Now, my dear, I bring you something that I am surewill do you good."Marianne heard enough. In one moment her imaginationplaced before her a letter from Willoughby, full of tendernessand contrition, explanatory of all that had passed, satisfactory,convincing; and instantly followed by Willoughby himself,rushing eagerly into the room to inforce, at her feet,by the eloquence of his eyes, the assurances of his letter.The work of one moment was destroyed by the next.The hand writing of her mother, never till then unwelcome,was before her; and, in the acuteness of the disappointmentwhich followed such an ecstasy of more than hope,she felt as if, till that instant, she had never suffered.The cruelty of Mrs. Jennings no language, withinher reach in her moments of happiest eloquence,could have expressed; and now she could reproach heronly by the tears which streamed from her eyes withpassionate violence--a reproach, however, so entirelylost on its object, that after many expressions of pity,she withdrew, still referring her to the letter of comfort.But the letter, when she was calm enough to read it,brought little comfort. Willoughby filled every page.Her mother, still confident of their engagement, and relyingas warmly as ever on his constancy, had only been rousedby Elinor's application, to intreat from Marianne greateropenness towards them both; and this, with such tendernesstowards her, such affection for Willoughby, and sucha conviction of their future happiness in each other,that she wept with agony through the whole of it.All her impatience to be at home again now returned;her mother was dearer to her than ever; dearer throughthe very excess of her mistaken confidence in Willoughby,and she was wildly urgent to be gone. Elinor, unable herselfto determine whether it were better for Marianne to bein London or at Barton, offered no counsel of her ownexcept of patience till their mother's wishes could be known;and at length she obtained her sister's consent to waitfor that knowledge.Mrs. Jennings left them earlier than usual; for shecould not be easy till the Middletons and Palmers were ableto grieve as much as herself; and positively refusingElinor's offered attendance, went out alone for the restof the morning. Elinor, with a very heavy heart, aware ofthe pain she was going to communicate, and perceiving,by Marianne's letter, how ill she had succeeded in layingany foundation for it, then sat down to write her motheran account of what had passed, and entreat her directionsfor the future; while Marianne, who came into the drawing-roomon Mrs. Jennings's going away, remained fixed at the tablewhere Elinor wrote, watching the advancement of her pen,grieving over her for the hardship of such a task,and grieving still more fondly over its effect on her mother.In this manner they had continued about a quarterof an hour, when Marianne, whose nerves could not thenbear any sudden noise, was startled by a rap at the door."Who can this be?" cried Elinor. "So early too! Ithought we had been safe."Marianne moved to the window--"It is Colonel Brandon!" said she, with vexation."We are never safe from him.""He will not come in, as Mrs. Jennings is from home.""I will not trust to that," retreating to her own room."A man who has nothing to do with his own time has noconscience in his intrusion on that of others."The event proved her conjecture right, though itwas founded on injustice and error; for Colonel Brandondid come in; and Elinor, who was convinced thatsolicitude for Marianne brought him thither, and who sawthat solicitude in his disturbed and melancholy look,and in his anxious though brief inquiry after her,could not forgive her sister for esteeming him so lightly."I met Mrs. Jennings in Bond Street," said he,after the first salutation, "and she encouraged meto come on; and I was the more easily encouraged,because I thought it probable that I might find you alone,which I was very desirous of doing. My object--mywish--my sole wish in desiring it--I hope, I believeit is--is to be a means of giving comfort;--no, I mustnot say comfort--not present comfort--but conviction,lasting conviction to your sister's mind. My regard for her,for yourself, for your mother--will you allow me to prove it,by relating some circumstances which nothing but a verysincere regard--nothing but an earnest desire of beinguseful--I think I am justified--though where so many hourshave been spent in convincing myself that I am right,is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?"He stopped."I understand you," said Elinor. "You have somethingto tell me of Mr. Willoughby, that will open his characterfarther. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendshipthat can be shewn Marianne. My gratitude will be insuredimmediately by any information tending to that end, and hersmust be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me hear it.""You shall; and, to be brief, when I quitted Bartonlast October,--but this will give you no idea--I must gofarther back. You will find me a very awkward narrator,Miss Dashwood; I hardly know where to begin. A shortaccount of myself, I believe, will be necessary, and itshall be a short one. On such a subject," sighing heavily,"can I have little temptation to be diffuse."He stopt a moment for recollection, and then,with another sigh, went on."You have probably entirely forgotten a conversation--(it is not to be supposed that it could make any impressionon you)--a conversation between us one evening at BartonPark--it was the evening of a dance--in which I alludedto a lady I had once known, as resembling, in some measure,your sister Marianne.""Indeed," answered Elinor, "I have not forgotten it."He looked pleased by this remembrance, and added,"If I am not deceived by the uncertainty, the partialityof tender recollection, there is a very strong resemblancebetween them, as well in mind as person. The same warmthof heart, the same eagerness of fancy and spirits.This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan fromher infancy, and under the guardianship of my father.Our ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest yearswe were playfellows and friends. I cannot remember thetime when I did not love Eliza; and my affection for her,as we grew up, was such, as perhaps, judging from mypresent forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think meincapable of having ever felt. Her's, for me, was, I believe,fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughbyand it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate.At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She wasmarried--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 theconduct 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 herunder any difficulty, and for some time it did; but atlast the misery of her situation, for she experiencedgreat unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and thoughshe had promised me that nothing--but how blindly Irelate! 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 herfortitude 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 leastI should not have now to lament it. This howeverwas 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 consequenceof this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperiencedas Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resignedherself at first to all the misery of her situation;and happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome thoseregrets which the remembrance of me occasioned. But can wewonder that, with such a husband to provoke inconstancy,and without a friend to advise or restrain her (formy father lived only a few months after their marriage,and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) sheshould fall? Had I remained in England, perhaps--but Imeant to promote the happiness of both by removingfrom her for years, and for that purpose had procuredmy exchange. The shock which her marriage had given me,"he continued, in a voice of great agitation, "was oftrifling weight--was nothing to what I felt when I heard,about two years afterwards, of her divorce. It wasthat which threw this gloom,--even now the recollectionof what I suffered--"He could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a fewminutes about the room. Elinor, affected by his relation,and still more by his distress, could not speak. He sawher concern, and coming to her, took her hand, pressed it,and kissed it with grateful respect. A few minutes moreof silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure."It was nearly three years after this unhappyperiod 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 therewas every reason to fear that she had removed from himonly to sink deeper in a life of sin. Her legal allowancewas not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for hercomfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother thatthe power of receiving it had been made over some monthsbefore to another person. He imagined, and calmly could heimagine 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 visithim in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt;and there, the same house, under a similar confinement,was my unfortunate sister. So altered--so faded--worndown by acute suffering of every kind! hardly could Ibelieve 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 beholdingher--but I have no right to wound your feelings by attemptingto describe it--I have pained you too much already.That she was, to all appearance, in the last stageof a consumption, was--yes, in such a situation it wasmy 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 dayduring the rest of her short life: I was with her in herlast moments."Again he stopped to recover himself; and Elinorspoke 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 mypoor disgraced relation. Their fates, their fortunes,cannot be the same; and had the natural sweetdisposition of the one been guarded by a firmer mind,or a happier marriage, she might have been all that youwill live to see the other be. But to what does all thislead? I seem to have been distressing you for nothing.Ah! Miss Dashwood--a subject such as this--untouchedfor fourteen years--it is dangerous to handle it at all!I will be more collected--more concise. She left to my careher only child, a little girl, the offspring of her firstguilty 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 gladlywould I have discharged it in the strictest sense,by watching over her education myself, had the natureof 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 mybrother, (which happened about five years ago, and whichleft to me the possession of the family property,) shevisited me at Delaford. I called her a distant relation;but I am well aware that I have in general been suspectedof a much nearer connection with her. It is now threeyears ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,)that I removed her from school, to place her under the careof a very respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire,who had the charge of four or five other girls of aboutthe same time of life; and for two years I had every reasonto be pleased with her situation. But last February,almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared.I had allowed her, (imprudently, as it has since turnedout,) at her earnest desire, to go to Bath with one ofher young friends, who was attending her father therefor 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 shecertainly 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 confinedto the house, while the girls were ranging over the townand making what acquaintance they chose; and he triedto 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 Isuffered too.""Good heavens!" cried Elinor, "could it be--couldWilloughby!"--"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 iton 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 strangeto every body, and which I believe gave offence to some.Little did Mr. Willoughby imagine, I suppose, when hislooks censured me for incivility in breaking up the party,that I was called away to the relief of one whom hehad made poor and miserable; but had he known it,what would it have availed? Would he have been lessgay or less happy in the smiles of your sister? No,he had already done that, which no man who can feelfor another would do. He had left the girl whoseyouth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation ofthe 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 nowknown it many weeks, guess what I must have felt on seeingyour sister as fond of him as ever, and on being assuredthat she was to marry him: guess what I must have feltfor all your sakes. When I came to you last week andfound 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 beso deceived; to see your sister--but what could I do?I had no hope of interfering with success; and sometimesI thought your sister's influence might yet reclaim him.But now, after such dishonorable usage, who can tell whatwere his designs on her. Whatever they may have been,however, she may now, and hereafter doubtless willturn with gratitude towards her own condition, when shecompares it with that of my poor Eliza, when she considersthe 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 tormentedby 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. Theyproceed from no misconduct, and can bring no disgrace.On the contrary, every friend must be made still moreher friend by them. Concern for her unhappiness,and respect for her fortitude under it, must strengthenevery attachment. Use your own discretion, however,in communicating to her what I have told you. You mustknow 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 sufferedmyself to trouble you with this account of my familyafflictions, with a recital which may seem to have beenintended to raise myself at the expense of others."Elinor's thanks followed this speech with gratefulearnestness; attended too with the assurance of herexpecting material advantage to Marianne, from thecommunication of what had passed."I have been more pained," said she, "by herendeavors to acquit him than by all the rest; for itirritates her mind more than the most perfect convictionof his unworthiness can do. Now, though at first shewill 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 meetingwas 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 confessedto me, though most reluctantly, the name of her lover;and when he returned to town, which was within a fortnightafter myself, we met by appointment, he to defend,I to punish his conduct. We returned unwounded,and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad."Elinor sighed over the fancied necessity of this;but to a man and a soldier she presumed not to censure it."Such," said Colonel Brandon, after a pause,"has been the unhappy resemblance between the fate of motherand daughter! and so imperfectly have I discharged my trust!""Is she still in town?""No; as soon as she recovered from her lying-in,for I found her near her delivery, I removed her and herchild into the country, and there she remains."Recollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probablydividing Elinor from her sister, he put an end to his visit,receiving from her again the same grateful acknowledgments,and leaving her full of compassion and esteem for him.