CHAPTER XXIX.
Before the housemaid had lit their fire the next day, or the sun gained any
power over a cold, gloomy morning in January, Marianne, only half
dressed, was kneeling against one of the window-seats for the sake of all
the little light she could command from it, and writing as fast as a continual
flow of tears would permit her. In this situation, Elinor, roused from sleep
by her agitation and sobs, first perceived her; and after observing her for a
few moments with silent anxiety, said, in a tone of the most considerate
gentleness,
“Marianne, may I ask—?”
“No, Elinor,” she replied, “ask nothing; you will soon know all.”
The sort of desperate calmness with which this was said, lasted no longer
than while she spoke, and was immediately followed by a return of the
same excessive affliction. It was some minutes before she could go on with
her letter, and the frequent bursts of grief which still obliged her, at
intervals, to withhold her pen, were proofs enough of her feeling how more
than probable it was that she was writing for the last time to Willoughby.
Elinor paid her every quiet and unobtrusive attention in her power; and
she would have tried to sooth and tranquilize her still more, had not
Marianne entreated her, with all the eagerness of the most nervous
irritability, not to speak to her for the world. In such circumstances, it was
better for both that they should not be long together; and the restless state of
Marianne’s mind not only prevented her from remaining in the room a
moment after she was dressed, but requiring at once solitude and continual
change of place, made her wander about the house till breakfast time,
avoiding the sight of every body.
At breakfast she neither ate, nor attempted to eat any thing; and Elinor’s
attention was then all employed, not in urging her, not in pitying her, nor in
appearing to regard her, but in endeavouring to engage Mrs. Jennings’s
notice entirely to herself.
As this was a favourite meal with Mrs. Jennings, it lasted a considerable
time, and they were just setting themselves, after it, round the common
working table, when a letter was delivered to Marianne, which she eagerly
caught from the servant, and, turning of a death-like paleness, instantly ran
out of the room. Elinor, who saw as plainly by this, as if she had seen the
direction, that it must come from Willoughby, felt immediately such a
sickness at heart as made her hardly able to hold up her head, and sat in
such a general tremour as made her fear it impossible to escape Mrs.
Jennings’s notice. That good lady, however, saw only that Marianne had
received a letter from Willoughby, which appeared to her a very good joke,
and which she treated accordingly, by hoping, with a laugh, that she would
find it to her liking. Of Elinor’s distress, she was too busily employed in
measuring lengths of worsted for her rug, to see any thing at all; and calmly
continuing her talk, as soon as Marianne disappeared, she said,
“Upon my word, I never saw a young woman so desperately in love in
my life! My girls were nothing to her, and yet they used to be foolish
enough; but as for Miss Marianne, she is quite an altered creature. I hope,
from the bottom of my heart, he won’t keep her waiting much longer, for it
is quite grievous to see her look so ill and forlorn. Pray, when are they to be
married?”
Elinor, though never less disposed to speak than at that moment, obliged
herself to answer such an attack as this, and, therefore, trying to smile,
replied, “And have you really, Ma’am, talked yourself into a persuasion of
my sister’s being engaged to Mr. Willoughby? I thought it had been only a
joke, but so serious a question seems to imply more; and I must beg,
therefore, that you will not deceive yourself any longer. I do assure you that
nothing would surprise me more than to hear of their being going to be
married.”
“For shame, for shame, Miss Dashwood! how can you talk so? Don’t we
all know that it must be a match, that they were over head and ears in love
with each other from the first moment they met? Did not I see them
together in Devonshire every day, and all day long; and did not I know that
your sister came to town with me on purpose to buy wedding clothes?
Come, come, this won’t do. Because you are so sly about it yourself, you
think nobody else has any senses; but it is no such thing, I can tell you, for
it has been known all over town this ever so long. I tell every body of it and
so does Charlotte.”
“Indeed, Ma’am,” said Elinor, very seriously, “you are mistaken. Indeed,
you are doing a very unkind thing in spreading the report, and you will find
that you have though you will not believe me now.”
Mrs. Jennings laughed again, but Elinor had not spirits to say more, and
eager at all events to know what Willoughby had written, hurried away to
their room, where, on opening the door, she saw Marianne stretched on the
bed, almost choked by grief, one letter in her hand, and two or three others
lying by her. Elinor drew near, but without saying a word; and seating
herself on the bed, took her hand, kissed her affectionately several times,
and then gave way to a burst of tears, which at first was scarcely less
violent than Marianne’s. The latter, though unable to speak, seemed to feel
all the tenderness of this behaviour, and after some time thus spent in joint
affliction, she put all the letters into Elinor’s hands; and then covering her
face with her handkerchief, almost screamed with agony. Elinor, who knew
that such grief, shocking as it was to witness it, must have its course,
watched by her till this excess of suffering had somewhat spent itself, and
then turning eagerly to Willoughby’s letter, read as follows:
“Bond Street, January.
MY DEAR MADAM,
“I have just had the honour of receiving your letter, for
which I beg to return my sincere acknowledgments. I am
much concerned to find there was anything in my behaviour
last night that did not meet your approbation; and though I
am quite at a loss to discover in what point I could be so
unfortunate as to offend you, I entreat your forgiveness of
what I can assure you to have been perfectly unintentional. I
shall never reflect on my former acquaintance with your
family in Devonshire without the most grateful pleasure, and
flatter myself it will not be broken by any mistake or
misapprehension of my actions. My esteem for your whole
family is very sincere; but if I have been so unfortunate as to
give rise to a belief of more than I felt, or meant to express, I
shall reproach myself for not having been more guarded in
my professions of that esteem. That I should ever have
meant more you will allow to be impossible, when you
understand that my affections have been long engaged
elsewhere, and it will not be many weeks, I believe, before
this engagement is fulfilled. It is with great regret that I obey
your commands in returning the letters with which I have
been honoured from you, and the lock of hair, which you so
obligingly bestowed on me.
“I am, dear Madam,
“Your most obedient
“humble servant,
“JOHN WILLOUGHBY.”
With what indignation such a letter as this must be read by Miss
Dashwood, may be imagined. Though aware, before she began it, that it
must bring a confession of his inconstancy, and confirm their separation for
ever, she was not aware that such language could be suffered to announce
it; nor could she have supposed Willoughby capable of departing so far
from the appearance of every honourable and delicate feeling—so far from
the common decorum of a gentleman, as to send a letter so impudently
cruel: a letter which, instead of bringing with his desire of a release any
professions of regret, acknowledged no breach of faith, denied all peculiar
affection whatever—a letter of which every line was an insult, and which
proclaimed its writer to be deep in hardened villainy.
She paused over it for some time with indignant astonishment; then read
it again and again; but every perusal only served to increase her abhorrence
of the man, and so bitter were her feelings against him, that she dared not
trust herself to speak, lest she might wound Marianne still deeper by
treating their disengagement, not as a loss to her of any possible good but as
an escape from the worst and most irremediable of all evils, a connection,
for life, with an unprincipled man, as a deliverance the most real, a blessing
the most important.
In her earnest meditations on the contents of the letter, on the depravity
of that mind which could dictate it, and probably, on the very different mind
of a very different person, who had no other connection whatever with the
affair than what her heart gave him with every thing that passed, Elinor
forgot the immediate distress of her sister, forgot that she had three letters
on her lap yet unread, and so entirely forgot how long she had been in the
room, that when on hearing a carriage drive up to the door, she went to the
window to see who could be coming so unreasonably early, she was all
astonishment to perceive Mrs. Jennings’s chariot, which she knew had not
been ordered till one. Determined not to quit Marianne, though hopeless of
contributing, at present, to her ease, she hurried away to excuse herself from
attending Mrs. Jennings, on account of her sister being indisposed. Mrs.
Jennings, with a thoroughly good-humoured concern for its cause, admitted
the excuse most readily, and Elinor, after seeing her safe off, returned to
Marianne, whom she found attempting to rise from the bed, and whom she
reached just in time to prevent her from falling on the floor, faint and giddy
from a long want of proper rest and food; for it was many days since she
had any appetite, and many nights since she had really slept; and now, when
her mind was no longer supported by the fever of suspense, the
consequence of all this was felt in an aching head, a weakened stomach, and
a general nervous faintness. A glass of wine, which Elinor procured for her
directly, made her more comfortable, and she was at last able to express
some sense of her kindness, by saying,
“Poor Elinor! how unhappy I make you!”
“I only wish,” replied her sister, “there were any thing I could do, which
might be of comfort to you.”
This, as every thing else would have been, was too much for Marianne,
who could only exclaim, in the anguish of her heart, “Oh! Elinor, I am
miserable, indeed,” before her voice was entirely lost in sobs.
Elinor could no longer witness this torrent of unresisted grief in silence.
“Exert yourself, dear Marianne,” she cried, “if you would not kill
yourself and all who love you. Think of your mother; think of her misery
while you suffer: for her sake you must exert yourself.”
“I cannot, I cannot,” cried Marianne; “leave me, leave me, if I distress
you; leave me, hate me, forget me! but do not torture me so. Oh! how easy
for those, who have no sorrow of their own to talk of exertion! Happy,
happy Elinor, you cannot have an idea of what I suffer.”
“Do you call me happy, Marianne? Ah! if you knew!—And can you
believe me to be so, while I see you so wretched!”
“Forgive me, forgive me,” throwing her arms round her sister’s neck; “I
know you feel for me; I know what a heart you have; but yet you are—you
must be happy; Edward loves you—what, oh what, can do away such
happiness as that?”
“Many, many circumstances,” said Elinor, solemnly.
“No, no, no,” cried Marianne wildly, “he loves you, and only you. You
can have no grief.”
“I can have no pleasure while I see you in this state.”
“And you will never see me otherwise. Mine is a misery which nothing
can do away.”
“You must not talk so, Marianne. Have you no comforts? no friends? Is
your loss such as leaves no opening for consolation? Much as you suffer
now, think of what you would have suffered if the discovery of his character
had been delayed to a later period—if your engagement had been carried on
for months and months, as it might have been, before he chose to put an end
to it. Every additional day of unhappy confidence, on your side, would have
made the blow more dreadful.”
“Engagement!” cried Marianne, “there has been no engagement.”
“No engagement!”
“No, he is not so unworthy as you believe him. He has broken no faith
with me.”
“But he told you that he loved you.”
“Yes—no—never absolutely. It was every day implied, but never
professedly declared. Sometimes I thought it had been, but it never was.”
“Yet you wrote to him?”
“Yes: could that be wrong after all that had passed? But I cannot talk.”
Elinor said no more, and turning again to the three letters which now
raised a much stronger curiosity than before, directly ran over the contents
of all. The first, which was what her sister had sent him on their arrival in
town, was to this effect.
Berkeley Street, January.
“How surprised you will be, Willoughby, on receiving this;
and I think you will feel something more than surprise, when
you know that I am in town. An opportunity of coming
hither, though with Mrs. Jennings, was a temptation we
could not resist. I wish you may receive this in time to come
here to-night, but I will not depend on it. At any rate I shall
expect you to-morrow. For the present, adieu.
“M.D.”
Her second note, which had been written on the morning after the dance
at the Middletons’, was in these words:—
“I cannot express my disappointment in having missed you
the day before yesterday, nor my astonishment at not having
received any answer to a note which I sent you above a
week ago. I have been expecting to hear from you, and still
more to see you, every hour of the day. Pray call again as
soon as possible, and explain the reason of my having
expected this in vain. You had better come earlier another
time, because we are generally out by one. We were last
night at Lady Middleton’s, where there was a dance. I have
been told that you were asked to be of the party. But could it
be so? You must be very much altered indeed since we
parted, if that could be the case, and you not there. But I will
not suppose this possible, and I hope very soon to receive
your personal assurance of its being otherwise.
“M.D.”
The contents of her last note to him were these:—
“What am I to imagine, Willoughby, by your behaviour last
night? Again I demand an explanation of it. I was prepared
to meet you with the pleasure which our separation naturally
produced, with the familiarity which our intimacy at Barton
appeared to me to justify. I was repulsed indeed! I have
passed a wretched night in endeavouring to excuse a conduct
which can scarcely be called less than insulting; but though I
have not yet been able to form any reasonable apology for
your behaviour, I am perfectly ready to hear your
justification of it. You have perhaps been misinformed, or
purposely deceived, in something concerning me, which
may have lowered me in your opinion. Tell me what it is,
explain the grounds on which you acted, and I shall be
satisfied, in being able to satisfy you. It would grieve me
indeed to be obliged to think ill of you; but if I am to do it, if
I am to learn that you are not what we have hitherto believed
you, that your regard for us all was insincere, that your
behaviour to me was intended only to deceive, let it be told
as soon as possible. My feelings are at present in a state of
dreadful indecision; I wish to acquit you, but certainty on
either side will be ease to what I now suffer. If your
sentiments are no longer what they were, you will return my
notes, and the lock of my hair which is in your possession.
“M.D.”
That such letters, so full of affection and confidence, could have been so
answered, Elinor, for Willoughby’s sake, would have been unwilling to
believe. But her condemnation of him did not blind her to the impropriety
of their having been written at all; and she was silently grieving over the
imprudence which had hazarded such unsolicited proofs of tenderness, not
warranted by anything preceding, and most severely condemned by the
event, when Marianne, perceiving that she had finished the letters, observed
to her that they contained nothing but what any one would have written in
the same situation.
“I felt myself,” she added, “to be as solemnly engaged to him, as if the
strictest legal covenant had bound us to each other.”
“I can believe it,” said Elinor; “but unfortunately he did not feel the
same.”
“He did feel the same, Elinor—for weeks and weeks he felt it. I know he
did. Whatever may have changed him now, (and nothing but the blackest art
employed against me can have done it), I was once as dear to him as my
own soul could wish. This lock of hair, which now he can so readily give
up, was begged of me with the most earnest supplication. Had you seen his
look, his manner, had you heard his voice at that moment! Have you forgot
the last evening of our being together at Barton? The morning that we
parted too! When he told me that it might be many weeks before we met
again—his distress—can I ever forget his distress?”
For a moment or two she could say no more; but when this emotion had
passed away, she added, in a firmer tone,
“Elinor, I have been cruelly used; but not by Willoughby.”
“Dearest Marianne, who but himself? By whom can he have been
instigated?”
“By all the world, rather than by his own heart. I could rather believe
every creature of my acquaintance leagued together to ruin me in his
opinion, than believe his nature capable of such cruelty. This woman of
whom he writes—whoever she be—or any one, in short, but your own dear
self, mama, and Edward, may have been so barbarous to bely me. Beyond
you three, is there a creature in the world whom I would not rather suspect
of evil than Willoughby, whose heart I know so well?”
Elinor would not contend, and only replied, “Whoever may have been so
detestably your enemy, let them be cheated of their malignant triumph, my
dear sister, by seeing how nobly the consciousness of your own innocence
and good intentions supports your spirits. It is a reasonable and laudable
pride which resists such malevolence.”
“No, no,” cried Marianne, “misery such as mine has no pride. I care not
who knows that I am wretched. The triumph of seeing me so may be open
to all the world. Elinor, Elinor, they who suffer little may be proud and
independent as they like—may resist insult, or return mortification—but I
cannot. I must feel—I must be wretched—and they are welcome to enjoy
the consciousness of it that can.”
“But for my mother’s sake and mine—”
“I would do more than for my own. But to appear happy when I am so
miserable—Oh! who can require it?”
Again they were both silent. Elinor was employed in walking
thoughtfully from the fire to the window, from the window to the fire,
without knowing that she received warmth from one, or discerning objects
through the other; and Marianne, seated at the foot of the bed, with her head
leaning against one of its posts, again took up Willoughby’s letter, and, after
shuddering over every sentence, exclaimed,—
“It is too much! Oh, Willoughby, Willoughby, could this be yours! Cruel,
cruel—nothing can acquit you. Elinor, nothing can. Whatever he might
have heard against me—ought he not to have suspended his belief? ought
he not to have told me of it, to have given me the power of clearing myself?
‘The lock of hair, (repeating it from the letter,) which you so obligingly
bestowed on me’—That is unpardonable. Willoughby, where was your heart
when you wrote those words? Oh, barbarously insolent!—Elinor, can he be
justified?”
“No, Marianne, in no possible way.”
“And yet this woman—who knows what her art may have been?—how
long it may have been premeditated, and how deeply contrived by her!—
Who is she?—Who can she be?—Whom did I ever hear him talk of as
young and attractive among his female acquaintance?—Oh! no one, no one
—he talked to me only of myself.”
Another pause ensued; Marianne was greatly agitated, and it ended thus.
“Elinor, I must go home. I must go and comfort mama. Can not we be
gone to-morrow?”
“To-morrow, Marianne!”
“Yes, why should I stay here? I came only for Willoughby’s sake—and
now who cares for me? Who regards me?”
“It would be impossible to go to-morrow. We owe Mrs. Jennings much
more than civility; and civility of the commonest kind must prevent such a
hasty removal as that.”
“Well then, another day or two, perhaps; but I cannot stay here long, I
cannot stay to endure the questions and remarks of all these people. The
Middletons and Palmers—how am I to bear their pity? The pity of such a
woman as Lady Middleton! Oh, what would he say to that!”
Elinor advised her to lie down again, and for a moment she did so; but no
attitude could give her ease; and in restless pain of mind and body she
moved from one posture to another, till growing more and more hysterical,
her sister could with difficulty keep her on the bed at all, and for some time
was fearful of being constrained to call for assistance. Some lavender drops,
however, which she was at length persuaded to take, were of use; and from
that time till Mrs. Jennings returned, she continued on the bed quiet and
motionless.
