Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen

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"I understand you," said Elinor. "You have something
to tell me of Mr. Willoughby, that will open his character
farther. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship
that can be shewn Marianne. MY gratitude will be insured
immediately by any information tending to that end, and HERS
must be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me hear it."

"You shall; and, to be brief, when I quitted Barton
last October,--but this will give you no idea--I must go
farther back. You will find me a very awkward narrator,
Miss Dashwood; I hardly know where to begin. A short
account of myself, I believe, will be necessary, and it
SHALL 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 impression
on you)--a conversation between us one evening at Barton
Park--it was the evening of a dance--in which I alluded
to 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 partiality
of tender recollection, there is a very strong resemblance
between them, as well in mind as person. The same warmth
of heart, the same eagerness of fancy and spirits.
This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from
her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father.
Our ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years
we were playfellows and friends. I cannot remember the
time when I did not love Eliza; and my affection for her,
as we grew up, was such, as perhaps, judging from my
present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think me
incapable of having ever felt. Her's, for me, was, I believe,
fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Willoughby
and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate.
At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was
married--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 the
conduct 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 her
under any difficulty, and for some time it did; but at
last the misery of her situation, for she experienced
great unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and though
she had promised me that nothing--but how blindly I
relate! 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 her
fortitude 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 least
I should not have now to lament it. This however
was 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 consequence
of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced
as Mrs. Brandon's, was but too natural. She resigned
herself at first to all the misery of her situation;
and happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those
regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned. But can we
wonder that, with such a husband to provoke inconstancy,
and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for
my father lived only a few months after their marriage,
and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she
should fall? Had I remained in England, perhaps--but I
meant to promote the happiness of both by removing
from her for years, and for that purpose had procured
my exchange. The shock which her marriage had given me,"
he continued, in a voice of great agitation, "was of
trifling weight--was nothing to what I felt when I heard,
about two years afterwards, of her divorce. It was
THAT which threw this gloom,--even now the recollection
of what I suffered--"

He could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few
minutes about the room. Elinor, affected by his relation,
and still more by his distress, could not speak. He saw
her concern, and coming to her, took her hand, pressed it,
and kissed it with grateful respect. A few minutes more
of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure.

"It was nearly three years after this unhappy
period 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 there
was every reason to fear that she had removed from him
only to sink deeper in a life of sin. Her legal allowance
was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her
comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that
the power of receiving it had been made over some months
before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he
imagine 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 visit
him 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--worn
down by acute suffering of every kind! hardly could I
believe 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 beholding
her--but I have no right to wound your feelings by attempting
to describe it--I have pained you too much already.
That she was, to all appearance, in the last stage
of a consumption, was--yes, in such a situation it was
my 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 day
during the rest of her short life: I was with her in her
last moments."

Again he stopped to recover himself; and Elinor
spoke 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 my
poor disgraced relation. Their fates, their fortunes,
cannot be the same; and had the natural sweet
disposition of the one been guarded by a firmer mind,
or a happier marriage, she might have been all that you
will live to see the other be. But to what does all this
lead? I seem to have been distressing you for nothing.
Ah! Miss Dashwood--a subject such as this--untouched
for fourteen years--it is dangerous to handle it at all!
I WILL be more collected--more concise. She left to my care
her only child, a little girl, the offspring of her first
guilty 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 gladly
would I have discharged it in the strictest sense,
by watching over her education myself, had the nature
of 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 my
brother, (which happened about five years ago, and which
left to me the possession of the family property,) she
visited me at Delaford. I called her a distant relation;
but I am well aware that I have in general been suspected
of a much nearer connection with her. It is now three
years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,)
that I removed her from school, to place her under the care
of a very respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire,
who had the charge of four or five other girls of about
the same time of life; and for two years I had every reason
to be pleased with her situation. But last February,
almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared.
I had allowed her, (imprudently, as it has since turned
out,) at her earnest desire, to go to Bath with one of
her young friends, who was attending her father there
for 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 she
certainly 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 confined
to the house, while the girls were ranging over the town
and making what acquaintance they chose; and he tried
to 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 I
suffered too."

"Good heavens!" cried Elinor, "could it be--could
Willoughby!"--

"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 it
on 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 strange
to every body, and which I believe gave offence to some.
Little did Mr. Willoughby imagine, I suppose, when his
looks censured me for incivility in breaking up the party,
that I was called away to the relief of one whom he
had made poor and miserable; but HAD he known it,
what would it have availed? Would he have been less
gay or less happy in the smiles of your sister? No,
he had already done that, which no man who CAN feel
for another would do. He had left the girl whose
youth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation of
the 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 now
known it many weeks, guess what I must have felt on seeing
your sister as fond of him as ever, and on being assured
that she was to marry him: guess what I must have felt
for all your sakes. When I came to you last week and
found 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 be
so deceived; to see your sister--but what could I do?
I had no hope of interfering with success; and sometimes
I thought your sister's influence might yet reclaim him.
But now, after such dishonorable usage, who can tell what
were his designs on her. Whatever they may have been,
however, she may now, and hereafter doubtless WILL
turn with gratitude towards her own condition, when she
compares it with that of my poor Eliza, when she considers
the 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 tormented
by 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. They
proceed from no misconduct, and can bring no disgrace.
On the contrary, every friend must be made still more
her friend by them. Concern for her unhappiness,
and respect for her fortitude under it, must strengthen
every attachment. Use your own discretion, however,
in communicating to her what I have told you. You must
know 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 suffered
myself to trouble you with this account of my family
afflictions, with a recital which may seem to have been
intended to raise myself at the expense of others."

Elinor's thanks followed this speech with grateful
earnestness; attended too with the assurance of her
expecting material advantage to Marianne, from the
communication of what had passed.

"I have been more pained," said she, "by her
endeavors to acquit him than by all the rest; for it
irritates her mind more than the most perfect conviction
of his unworthiness can do. Now, though at first she
will 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 meeting
was 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 confessed
to me, though most reluctantly, the name of her lover;
and when he returned to town, which was within a fortnight
after 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 mother
and 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 her
child into the country, and there she remains."

Recollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probably
dividing 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.

CHAPTER 32

When the particulars of this conversation were repeated
by Miss Dashwood to her sister, as they very soon were,
the effect on her was not entirely such as the former
had hoped to see. Not that Marianne appeared to distrust
the truth of any part of it, for she listened to it all
with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither
objection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Willoughby,
and seemed to shew by her tears that she felt it to
be impossible. But though this behaviour assured Elinor
that the conviction of this guilt WAS carried home to
her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the effect of it,
in her no longer avoiding Colonel Brandon when he called,
in her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking,
with a kind of compassionate respect, and though she
saw her spirits less violently irritated than before,
she did not see her less wretched. Her mind did become
settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection.
She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily
than she had felt the loss of his heart; his seduction and
desertion of Miss Williams, the misery of that poor girl,
and the doubt of what his designs might ONCE have been
on herself, preyed altogether so much on her spirits,
that she could not bring herself to speak of what she felt
even to Elinor; and, brooding over her sorrows in silence,
gave more pain to her sister than could have been communicated
by the most open and most frequent confession of them.

To give the feelings or the language of Mrs. Dashwood
on receiving and answering Elinor's letter would be only
to give a repetition of what her daughters had already felt
and said; of a disappointment hardly less painful than
Marianne's, and an indignation even greater than Elinor's.
Long letters from her, quickly succeeding each other,
arrived to tell all that she suffered and thought;
to express her anxious solicitude for Marianne, and entreat
she would bear up with fortitude under this misfortune.
Bad indeed must the nature of Marianne's affliction be,
when her mother could talk of fortitude! mortifying
and humiliating must be the origin of those regrets,
which SHE could wish her not to indulge!

Against the interest of her own individual comfort,
Mrs. Dashwood had determined that it would be better for
Marianne to be any where, at that time, than at Barton,
where every thing within her view would be bringing back
the past in the strongest and most afflicting manner,
by constantly placing Willoughby before her, such as
she had always seen him there. She recommended it to
her daughters, therefore, by all means not to shorten their
visit to Mrs. Jennings; the length of which, though never
exactly fixed, had been expected by all to comprise at least
five or six weeks. A variety of occupations, of objects,
and of company, which could not be procured at Barton,
would be inevitable there, and might yet, she hoped,
cheat Marianne, at times, into some interest beyond herself,
and even into some amusement, much as the ideas of both
might now be spurned by her.

From all danger of seeing Willoughby again,
her mother considered her to be at least equally safe
in town as in the country, since his acquaintance must
now be dropped by all who called themselves her friends.
Design could never bring them in each other's way:
negligence could never leave them exposed to a surprise;
and chance had less in its favour in the crowd of London
than even in the retirement of Barton, where it might
force him before her while paying that visit at Allenham
on his marriage, which Mrs. Dashwood, from foreseeing at
first as a probable event, had brought herself to expect
as a certain one.

She had yet another reason for wishing her children
to remain where they were; a letter from her son-in-law
had told her that he and his wife were to be in town
before the middle of February, and she judged it right
that they should sometimes see their brother.

Marianne had promised to be guided by her mother's opinion,
and she submitted to it therefore without opposition,
though it proved perfectly different from what she wished
and expected, though she felt it to be entirely wrong,
formed on mistaken grounds, and that by requiring her
longer continuance in London it deprived her of the only
possible alleviation of her wretchedness, the personal
sympathy of her mother, and doomed her to such society and
such scenes as must prevent her ever knowing a moment's rest.

But it was a matter of great consolation to her,
that what brought evil to herself would bring good to
her sister; and Elinor, on the other hand, suspecting that
it would not be in her power to avoid Edward entirely,
comforted herself by thinking, that though their longer
stay would therefore militate against her own happiness,
it would be better for Marianne than an immediate return
into Devonshire.

Her carefulness in guarding her sister from ever
hearing Willoughby's name mentioned, was not thrown away.
Marianne, though without knowing it herself, reaped all
its advantage; for neither Mrs. Jennings, nor Sir John,
nor even Mrs. Palmer herself, ever spoke of him before her.
Elinor wished that the same forbearance could have extended
towards herself, but that was impossible, and she was
obliged to listen day after day to the indignation of them all.

Sir John, could not have thought it possible.
"A man of whom he had always had such reason to think well!
Such a good-natured fellow! He did not believe there was a
bolder rider in England! It was an unaccountable business.
He wished him at the devil with all his heart. He would
not speak another word to him, meet him where he might,
for all the world! No, not if it were to be by the side
of Barton covert, and they were kept watching for two
hours together. Such a scoundrel of a fellow! such
a deceitful dog! It was only the last time they met
that he had offered him one of Folly's puppies! and this
was the end of it!"

Mrs. Palmer, in her way, was equally angry.
"She was determined to drop his acquaintance immediately,
and she was very thankful that she had never been acquainted
with him at all. She wished with all her heart Combe
Magna was not so near Cleveland; but it did not signify,
for it was a great deal too far off to visit; she hated
him so much that she was resolved never to mention
his name again, and she should tell everybody she saw,
how good-for-nothing he was."

The rest of Mrs. Palmer's sympathy was shewn in procuring
all the particulars in her power of the approaching marriage,
and communicating them to Elinor. She could soon tell
at what coachmaker's the new carriage was building,
by what painter Mr. Willoughby's portrait was drawn,
and at what warehouse Miss Grey's clothes might be seen.

The calm and polite unconcern of Lady Middleton
on the occasion was a happy relief to Elinor's spirits,
oppressed as they often were by the clamorous kindness
of the others. It was a great comfort to her to be sure
of exciting no interest in ONE person at least among their
circle of friends: a great comfort to know that there
was ONE who would meet her without feeling any curiosity
after particulars, or any anxiety for her sister's health.

Every qualification is raised at times, by the
circumstances of the moment, to more than its real value;
and she was sometimes worried down by officious condolence
to rate good-breeding as more indispensable to comfort
than good-nature.

Lady Middleton expressed her sense of the affair
about once every day, or twice, if the subject occurred
very often, by saying, "It is very shocking, indeed!"
and by the means of this continual though gentle vent,
was able not only to see the Miss Dashwoods from the
first without the smallest emotion, but very soon
to see them without recollecting a word of the matter;
and having thus supported the dignity of her own sex,
and spoken her decided censure of what was wrong
in the other, she thought herself at liberty to attend
to the interest of her own assemblies, and therefore
determined (though rather against the opinion of Sir John)
that as Mrs. Willoughby would at once be a woman of elegance
and fortune, to leave her card with her as soon as she married.

Colonel Brandon's delicate, unobtrusive enquiries
were never unwelcome to Miss Dashwood. He had abundantly
earned the privilege of intimate discussion of her
sister's disappointment, by the friendly zeal with
which he had endeavoured to soften it, and they always
conversed with confidence. His chief reward for the
painful exertion of disclosing past sorrows and present
humiliations, was given in the pitying eye with which
Marianne sometimes observed him, and the gentleness
of her voice whenever (though it did not often happen)
she was obliged, or could oblige herself to speak to him.
THESE assured him that his exertion had produced an
increase of good-will towards himself, and THESE gave
Elinor hopes of its being farther augmented hereafter;
but Mrs. Jennings, who knew nothing of all this, who knew
only that the Colonel continued as grave as ever, and that
she could neither prevail on him to make the offer himself,
nor commission her to make it for him, began, at the
end of two days, to think that, instead of Midsummer,
they would not be married till Michaelmas, and by the
end of a week that it would not be a match at all.
The good understanding between the Colonel and Miss
Dashwood seemed rather to declare that the honours
of the mulberry-tree, the canal, and the yew arbour,
would all be made over to HER; and Mrs. Jennings had,
for some time ceased to think at all of Mrs. Ferrars.

Early in February, within a fortnight from the
receipt of Willoughby's letter, Elinor had the painful
office of informing her sister that he was married.
She had taken care to have the intelligence conveyed
to herself, as soon as it was known that the ceremony
was over, as she was desirous that Marianne should not
receive the first notice of it from the public papers,
which she saw her eagerly examining every morning.

She received the news with resolute composure;
made no observation on it, and at first shed no tears;
but after a short time they would burst out, and for the
rest of the day, she was in a state hardly less pitiable
than when she first learnt to expect the event.

The Willoughbys left town as soon as they were married;
and Elinor now hoped, as there could be no danger
of her seeing either of them, to prevail on her sister,
who had never yet left the house since the blow first fell,
to go out again by degrees as she had done before.

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