Chương Chương 4 · _He_ was not Mr Wentworth, the former curate of Monkford, however

. _He_ was not Mr Wentworth, the former curate of Monkford, however

suspicious appearances may be, but a Captain Frederick Wentworth, his

brother, who being made commander in consequence of the action off St

Domingo, and not immediately employed, had come into Somersetshire, in

the summer of 1806; and having no parent living, found a home for half

a year at Monkford. He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man,

with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy; and Anne an

extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling.

Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for

he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but the

encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail. They were

gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love.

It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the

other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his

declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.

A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one.

Troubles soon arose. Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually

withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the

negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a

professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter. He thought it a

very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell, though with more tempered

and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one.

Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw

herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement

with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no

hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain

profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the

profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to

think of! Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by

a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a

state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! It must not

be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from

one who had almost a mother’s love, and mother’s rights, it would be

prevented.

Captain Wentworth had no fortune. He had been lucky in his profession;

but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing. But he

was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour, he

knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that

would lead to everything he wanted. He had always been lucky; he knew

he should be so still. Such confidence, powerful in its own warmth, and

bewitching in the wit which often expressed it, must have been enough

for Anne; but Lady Russell saw it very differently. His sanguine

temper, and fearlessness of mind, operated very differently on her. She

saw in it but an aggravation of the evil. It only added a dangerous

character to himself. He was brilliant, he was headstrong. Lady Russell

had little taste for wit, and of anything approaching to imprudence a

horror. She deprecated the connexion in every light.

Such opposition, as these feelings produced, was more than Anne could

combat. Young and gentle as she was, it might yet have been possible to

withstand her father’s ill-will, though unsoftened by one kind word or

look on the part of her sister; but Lady Russell, whom she had always

loved and relied on, could not, with such steadiness of opinion, and

such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain. She was

persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing: indiscreet,

improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it. But it was

not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end

to it. Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than

her own, she could hardly have given him up. The belief of being

prudent, and self-denying, principally for _his_ advantage, was her

chief consolation, under the misery of a parting, a final parting; and

every consolation was required, for she had to encounter all the

additional pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and

unbending, and of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a

relinquishment. He had left the country in consequence.

A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance;

but not with a few months ended Anne’s share of suffering from it. Her

attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of

youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting

effect.

More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful

interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much,

perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him, but she had been too

dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place

(except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture), or in any novelty

or enlargement of society. No one had ever come within the Kellynch

circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he

stood in her memory. No second attachment, the only thoroughly natural,

happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been possible to

the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste, in the

small limits of the society around them. She had been solicited, when

about two-and-twenty, to change her name, by the young man, who not

long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger sister; and

Lady Russell had lamented her refusal; for Charles Musgrove was the

eldest son of a man, whose landed property and general importance were

second in that country, only to Sir Walter’s, and of good character and

appearance; and however Lady Russell might have asked yet for something

more, while Anne was nineteen, she would have rejoiced to see her at

twenty-two so respectably removed from the partialities and injustice

of her father’s house, and settled so permanently near herself. But in

this case, Anne had left nothing for advice to do; and though Lady

Russell, as satisfied as ever with her own discretion, never wished the

past undone, she began now to have the anxiety which borders on

hopelessness for Anne’s being tempted, by some man of talents and

independence, to enter a state for which she held her to be peculiarly

fitted by her warm affections and domestic habits.

They knew not each other’s opinion, either its constancy or its change,

on the one leading point of Anne’s conduct, for the subject was never

alluded to; but Anne, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently

from what she had been made to think at nineteen. She did not blame

Lady Russell, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her;

but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to

apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any of such certain

immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good. She was persuaded

that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every

anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays, and

disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in

maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it;

and this, she fully believed, had the usual share, had even more than

the usual share of all such solicitudes and suspense been theirs,

without reference to the actual results of their case, which, as it

happened, would have bestowed earlier prosperity than could be

reasonably calculated on. All his sanguine expectations, all his

confidence had been justified. His genius and ardour had seemed to

foresee and to command his prosperous path. He had, very soon after

their engagement ceased, got employ: and all that he had told her would

follow, had taken place. He had distinguished himself, and early gained

the other step in rank, and must now, by successive captures, have made

a handsome fortune. She had only navy lists and newspapers for her

authority, but she could not doubt his being rich; and, in favour of

his constancy, she had no reason to believe him married.

How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were

her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful

confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems

to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into

prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the

natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

With all these circumstances, recollections and feelings, she could not

hear that Captain Wentworth’s sister was likely to live at Kellynch

without a revival of former pain; and many a stroll, and many a sigh,

were necessary to dispel the agitation of the idea. She often told

herself it was folly, before she could harden her nerves sufficiently

to feel the continual discussion of the Crofts and their business no

evil. She was assisted, however, by that perfect indifference and

apparent unconsciousness, among the only three of her own friends in

the secret of the past, which seemed almost to deny any recollection of

it. She could do justice to the superiority of Lady Russell’s motives

in this, over those of her father and Elizabeth; she could honour all

the better feelings of her calmness; but the general air of oblivion

among them was highly important from whatever it sprung; and in the

event of Admiral Croft’s really taking Kellynch Hall, she rejoiced anew

over the conviction which had always been most grateful to her, of the

past being known to those three only among her connexions, by whom no

syllable, she believed, would ever be whispered, and in the trust that

among his, the brother only with whom he had been residing, had

received any information of their short-lived engagement. That brother

had been long removed from the country and being a sensible man, and,

moreover, a single man at the time, she had a fond dependence on no

human creature’s having heard of it from him.

The sister, Mrs Croft, had then been out of England, accompanying her

husband on a foreign station, and her own sister, Mary, had been at

school while it all occurred; and never admitted by the pride of some,

and the delicacy of others, to the smallest knowledge of it afterwards.

With these supports, she hoped that the acquaintance between herself

and the Crofts, which, with Lady Russell, still resident in Kellynch,

and Mary fixed only three miles off, must be anticipated, need not

involve any particular awkwardness.