Anne was still in the lane;and though instinctively beginning to decline,she was not allowed to proceed.The Admiral’s kind urgency came in support of his wife’s;they would not be refused;they compressed themselves into the smallest possible space to leave her a corner, and Captain Wentworth, without saying a word, turned to her, and quietly obliged her to be assisted into the carriage.
Yes; he had done it. She was in the carriage,and felt that he had placed her there,that his will and his hands had done it,that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue,and his resolution to give her rest.She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her,which all these things made apparent.This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before.She understood him. He could not forgive her,but he could not be unfeeling.Though condemning her for the past,and considering it with high and unjust resentment,though perfectly careless of her,and though becoming attached to another,still he could not see her suffer,without the desire of giving her relief.It was a remainder of former sentiment;it was an impulse of pure,though unacknowledged friendship;it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart,which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.
Her answers to the kindness and the remarks of her companions were at first unconsciously given. They had travelled half their way along the rough lane, before she was quite awake to what they said. She then found them talking of “Frederick.”
“He certainly means to have one or other of those two girls,Sophy,” said the Admiral;“but there is no saying which.He has been running after them, too, long enough,one would think, to make up his mind. Ay,this comes of the peace. If it were war now,he would have settled it long ago. We sailors,Miss Elliot, cannot afford to make long courtships in time of war.How many days was it, my dear,between the first time of my seeing you and our sitting down together in our lodgings at North Yarmouth?”
“We had better not talk about it, my dear,” replied Mrs Croft, pleasantly;“for if Miss Elliot were to hear how soon we came to an understanding,she would never be persuaded that we could be happy together.I had known you by character, however, long before.”
“Well, and I had heard of you as a very pretty girl,and what were we to wait for besides?I do not like having such things so long in hand.I wish Frederick would spread a little more canvass,and bring us home one of these young ladies to Kellynch.Then there would always be company for them.And very nice young ladies they both are;I hardly know one from the other.”
“Very good humoured, unaffected girls, indeed,” said Mrs Croft, in a tone of calmer praise,such as made Anne suspect that her keener powers might not consider either of them as quite worthy of her brother; “and a very respectable family. One could not be connected with better people. My dear Admiral, that post!we shall certainly take that post.”
But by coolly giving the reins a better direction herself they happily passed the danger; and by once afterwards judiciously putting out her hand they neither fell into a rut, nor ran foul of a dung-cart; and Anne, with some amusement at their style of driving, which she imagined no bad representation of the general guidance of their affairs, found herself safely deposited by them at the Cottage.
CHAPTER XI.
The time now approached for Lady Russell’s return:the day was even fixed; and Anne,being engaged to join her as soon as she was resettled,was looking forward to an early removal to Kellynch,and beginning to think how her own comfort was likely to be affected by it.
It would place her in the same village with Captain Wentworth,within half a mile of him;they would have to frequent the same church,and there must be intercourse between the two families.This was against her; but on the other hand,he spent so much of his time at Uppercross,that in removing thence she might be considered rather as leaving him behind,than as going towards him; and, upon the whole,she believed she must, on this interesting question,be the gainer, almost as certainly as in her change of domestic society,in leaving poor Mary for Lady Russell.
She wished it might be possible for her to avoid ever seeing Captain Wentworth at the Hall: those rooms had witnessed former meetings which would be brought too painfully before her; but she was yet more anxious for the possibility of Lady Russell and Captain Wentworth never meeting anywhere. They did not like each other, and no renewal of acquaintance now could do any good; and were Lady Russell to see them together, she might think that he had too much self-possession, and she too little.
These points formed her chief solicitude in anticipating her removal from Uppercross, where she felt she had been stationed quite long enough. Her usefulness to little Charles would always give some sweetness to the memory of her two months’ visit there, but he was gaining strength apace, and she had nothing else to stay for.
The conclusion of her visit, however,was diversified in a way which she had not at all imagined.Captain Wentworth, after being unseen and unheard of at Uppercross for two whole days, appeared again among them to justify himself by a relation of what had kept him away.
A letter from his friend, Captain Harville,having found him out at last,had brought intelligence of Captain Harville’s being settled with his family at Lyme for the winter; of their being therefore, quite unknowingly, within twenty miles of each other. Captain Harville had never been in good health since a severe wound which he received two years before, and Captain Wentworth’s anxiety to see him had determined him to go immediately to Lyme. He had been there for four-and-twenty hours. His acquittal was complete, his friendship warmly honoured, a lively interest excited for his friend, and his description of the fine country about Lyme so feelingly attended to by the party, that an earnest desire to see Lyme themselves, and a project for going thither was the consequence.
The young people were all wild to see Lyme.Captain Wentworth talked of going there again himself,it was only seventeen miles from Uppercross;though November, the weather was by no means bad; and,in short, Louisa, who was the most eager of the eager,having formed the resolution to go,and besides the pleasure of doing as she liked,being now armed with the idea of merit in maintaining her own way,bore down all the wishes of her father and mother for putting it off till summer; and to Lyme they were to go—Charles, Mary, Anne, Henrietta, Louisa, and Captain Wentworth.
The first heedless scheme had been to go in the morning and return at night;but to this Mr Musgrove, for the sake of his horses,would not consent; and when it came to be rationally considered,a day in the middle of November would not leave much time for seeing a new place, after deducting seven hours, as the nature of the country required, for going and returning. They were, consequently, to stay the night there, and not to be expected back till the next day’s dinner. This was felt to be a considerable amendment; and though they all met at the Great House at rather an early breakfast hour, and set off very punctually, it was so much past noon before the two carriages, Mr Musgrove’s coach containing the four ladies, and Charles’s curricle, in which he drove Captain Wentworth, were descending the long hill into Lyme, and entering upon the still steeper street of the town itself, that it was very evident they would not have more than time for looking about them, before the light and warmth of the day were gone.