Sense and Sensibility

CHAPTER 31

From a night of more sleep than she had ex­pect­ed, Mar­ianne awoke the next morn­ing to the same con­scious­ness of mis­ery in which she had closed her eyes.

Eli­nor en­cour­aged her as much as pos­si­ble to talk of what she felt; and be­fore break­fast was ready, they had gone through the sub­ject again and again; and with the same steady con­vic­tion and af­fec­tion­ate coun­sel on Eli­nor’s side, the same im­petu­ous feel­ings and vary­ing opin­ions on Mar­ianne’s, as be­fore. Some­times she could be­lieve Willough­by to be as un­for­tu­nate and as in­no­cent as her­self, and at oth­ers, lost ev­ery con­so­la­tion in the im­pos­si­bil­ity of ac­quit­ting him. At one mo­ment she was ab­so­lute­ly in­dif­fer­ent to the ob­ser­va­tion of all the world, at an­oth­er she would se­clude her­self from it for ev­er, and at a third could 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’s en­ter­ing 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 wants is gos­sip, and she on­ly likes me now be­cause I sup­ply it.”

Eli­nor had not need­ed this to be as­sured of the in­jus­tice to which her sis­ter was of­ten led in her opin­ion of oth­ers, by the ir­ri­ta­ble re­fine­ment of her own mind, and the too great im­por­tance placed by her on the del­ica­cies of a strong sen­si­bil­ity, and the graces of a pol­ished man­ner. Like half the rest of the world, if more than half there be that are clever and good, Mar­ianne, with ex­cel­lent abil­ities and an ex­cel­lent dis­po­si­tion, was nei­ther rea­son­able nor can­did. She ex­pect­ed from oth­er peo­ple the same opin­ions and feel­ings as her own, and she judged of their mo­tives by the im­me­di­ate ef­fect of their ac­tions on her­self. Thus a cir­cum­stance oc­curred, while the sis­ters were to­geth­er in their own room af­ter break­fast, which sunk the heart of Mrs. Jen­nings still low­er in 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 im­pulse of the ut­most good­will.

With a let­ter in her out­stretched hand, and coun­te­nance gai­ly smil­ing, from the per­sua­sion of bring­ing com­fort, she en­tered their room, say­ing,

“Now, my dear, I bring you some­thing that I am sure will do you good.”

Mar­ianne heard enough. In one mo­ment her imag­ina­tion placed be­fore her a let­ter from Willough­by, full of ten­der­ness and 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 dis­ap­point­ment which 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, with­in her reach in her mo­ments of hap­pi­est elo­quence, could have ex­pressed; and now she could re­proach her on­ly by the tears which streamed from her eyes with pas­sion­ate vi­olence–a re­proach, how­ev­er, so en­tire­ly lost 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 re­ly­ing as warm­ly as ev­er on his con­stan­cy, had on­ly been roused by Eli­nor’s ap­pli­ca­tion, to in­treat from Mar­ianne greater open­ness to­wards them both; and this, with such ten­der­ness to­wards her, such af­fec­tion for Willough­by, and such a 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 through the very ex­cess of her mis­tak­en con­fi­dence in Willough­by, and she was wild­ly ur­gent to be gone. Eli­nor, un­able her­self to de­ter­mine whether it were bet­ter for Mar­ianne to be in Lon­don or at Bar­ton, of­fered no coun­sel of her own ex­cept of pa­tience till their moth­er’s wish­es could be known; and at length she ob­tained her sis­ter’s con­sent to wait for that knowl­edge.

Mrs. Jen­nings left them ear­li­er than usu­al; for she could not be easy till the Mid­dle­tons and Palmers were able to grieve as much as her­self; and pos­itive­ly re­fus­ing Eli­nor’s of­fered at­ten­dance, went out alone for the rest of the morn­ing. Eli­nor, with a very heavy heart, aware of the pain she was go­ing to com­mu­ni­cate, and per­ceiv­ing, by Mar­ianne’s let­ter, how ill she had suc­ceed­ed in lay­ing any foun­da­tion for it, then sat down to write her moth­er an ac­count of what had passed, and en­treat her di­rec­tions for the fu­ture; while Mar­ianne, who came in­to the draw­ing-​room on Mrs. Jen­nings’s go­ing away, re­mained fixed at the ta­ble where 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 quar­ter of an hour, when Mar­ianne, whose nerves could not then bear any sud­den noise, was star­tled by a rap at the door.

“Who can this be?” cried Eli­nor. “So ear­ly too! I thought 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 no con­science in his in­tru­sion on that of oth­ers.”

The event proved her con­jec­ture right, though it was found­ed on in­jus­tice and er­ror; for Colonel Bran­don DID come in; and Eli­nor, who was con­vinced that so­lic­itude for Mar­ianne brought him thith­er, and who saw THAT 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 me to 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–my wish–my sole wish in de­sir­ing it–I hope, I be­lieve it is–is to be a means of giv­ing com­fort;–no, I must not 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 VERY sin­cere re­gard–noth­ing but an earnest de­sire of be­ing use­ful–I think I am jus­ti­fied–though where so many hours have 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 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.