|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 98
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?'"
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|