She had not mistaken him.Jealousy of Mr Elliot had been the retarding weight,the doubt, the torment.That had begun to operate in the very hour of first meeting her in Bath;that had returned, after a short suspension,to ruin the concert;and that had influenced him in everything he had said and done,or omitted to say and do,in the last four-and-twenty hours.It had been gradually yielding to the better hopes which her looks,or words, or actions occasionally encouraged;it had been vanquished at last by those sentiments and those 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 poured 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 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 his preceding attempts to attach himself to Louisa Musgrove (the attempts of angry pride), he protested that he had for ever felt it to be impossible; that he had not cared, could not care, for Louisa; though till that day, till the leisure for 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 exalt 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 hers in honour if she wished it.I had been unguarded.I had not thought seriously on this subject before.I had not considered that 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 must abide the consequences.”
He found too late, in short,that he had entangled himself;and that precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Louisa at all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him were what the Harvilles supposed. It 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; and he went, therefore, to his brother’s, meaning after a while to return to Kellynch, 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 enquired after you very particularly;asked even if you were personally altered,little suspecting that to my eye 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 eight-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;for now I could at least put myself in the way of happiness;I could 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 that you might retain the feelings of the past,as I did; and one encouragement happened to be mine.I could never doubt that you would be loved and sought by others,but I knew to a certainty that you had refused one man,at least, of better pretensions than myself;and I could not help often saying, ‘Was this for me?’”
Their first meeting in Milsom Street afforded much to be said,but the concert still more.That evening seemed to be made up of exquisite moments.The moment of her stepping forward in the Octagon Room to speak to him:the moment of Mr Elliot’s appearing and tearing her away,and one or two subsequent moments,marked by returning hope or increasing despondency,were dwelt on with energy.
“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 the 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 without agony?Was not the very sight of the friend who sat behind you,was not the recollection of what had been,the knowledge of her influence, the indelible,immoveable impression of what persuasion had once done—was it not all against me?”
“You should have distinguished,” replied Anne.“You should not have 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, who had given me up, who had been influenced by any one rather than by me. I saw you with the very person who had guided you in that year of misery. I had no reason to believe her of less authority now. The force of habit was to be added.”