Part 32

“There could be no objection. There could only be a most proper alacrity, a most obliging compliance for public view; and smiles reined in and spirits dancing in private rapture. In half a minute Charles was at the bottom of Union Street again, and the other two proceeding together; and soon words enough had passed between them to decide their direction towards the comparatively quiet and retired gravel walk, where the power of conversation would make the present hour a blessing indeed, and prepare it for all the immortality which the happiest recollections of their own future life could bestow. There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other’s character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting. And there, as they slowly paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, all the little variations of the last week were gone through, and of yesterday and to-day there could scarcely be an end.

“At last Anne was at home again, happier than any one in that house could have conceived.

“The evening came, the drawing-rooms were lighted up, the company assembled. It was but a card party; it was but a mixture of those who had never met before, and those who had met too often; a commonplace business, too numerous for intimacy, too small for variety; but Anne had never found an evening shorter. Glowing and lovely in sensibility and happiness, and more generally admired than she thought about or cared for, she had cheerful or forbearing feelings for every creature around her; with Captain Wentworth some moments of communication constantly occurring and always the hope of more, and always the knowledge of his being there.

“It was in one of these short meetings, each apparently occupied in admiring a fine display of green-house plants, that she told him, with that candour and fairness to herself and everybody which no passion, and no submission to his influence could warp:

“‘I have been thinking over the past, and I must believe that I am right, much as I suffered from it, in being guided by the friend who to me was in the place of a parent. Do not mistake me, however. I am not saying she did not err in her advice. I mean I was right in submitting to it; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman’s portion.’[84]

“He looked at her, looked at Lady Russell, and looking again at her, replied as if in cool deliberation, ‘Not yet. But there are hopes of her being forgiven in time. But I, too, have been thinking over the past, and a question has suggested itself, whether there may not have been one person more my enemy even than that lady. My own self. Tell me, if when I returned to England in the year ’eight, with a few thousand pounds,[85] and was posted into the _Laconia_, if I had then written to you, would you have answered my letter? Would you, in short, have renewed the engagement then?’

“‘Would I?’ was all her answer; but the accent was decisive.

“‘Good God!’ he cried, ‘you would! It is not that I did not think of it, or desire it, as what could alone crown all my other success; but I was proud, too proud to ask again. I did not understand you. Six years of separation and suffering might have been spared. I have been used to the gratification of believing myself to earn every blessing that I enjoyed. I have valued myself on honourable toils and just rewards. Like other great men under reverses,’ he added, with a smile, ‘I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.’”

“Who can doubt what followed?” Jane Austen begins the last chapter. Sir Walter made no objection, and Elizabeth did nothing worse than look cold and unconcerned. Captain Wentworth, with five-and-twenty thousand pounds, and as high in his profession as merit and activity could place him, was no longer a nobody.

Among other results of the marriage, Lady Russell learnt to like the man who made Anne Elliot happy. Captain Wentworth became the cordial and helpful friend of Mrs. Smith. Mr. Elliot, who had been playing a deep game, withdrew from Bath, and caused Mrs. Clay to withdraw also. She gave up Sir Walter, for the sake of his heir. It remained doubtful whether her cunning was not more than a match for his, and whether, in losing the chance of becoming the wife of Sir Walter, she might not wheedle the future Sir William into raising her into the position of Lady Elliot.

It would be impertinent to add a word of praise to a novel which--while it is often as penetrating and unerring in discussing the motives, and as richly humorous in dealing with the absurdities and follies of human nature as “Pride and Prejudice” and “Northanger Abbey”--has a gentle grace and a pathetic feeling all its own, so far as Jane Austen’s novels are concerned. The last warm words of praise to the gallant profession to which two of her brothers belonged, is another testimony to her keen family sympathies, as well as to her quick, womanly response to all that was patriotic and heroic.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] Written in 1816, and published after the Author’s death.

[71] If Jane Austen’s high standing as an artist is granted, what becomes of the heathen saying that “Art has no moral?” Was she simply great in spite of her morals? Again, how shall we dispose of the scornful criticism, which treats the details of domestic life in a novel as twaddle? Jane Austen and twaddle are as far apart as Jane Austen and bombast.

[72] A young Musgrove who had been in the navy, and died abroad.

[73] Anne Elliot’s pathetic position is unique, so far as I know, in the literature of Jane Austen’s day. The contrast of her faded face and subdued spirit with Henrietta and Louisa Musgrove’s fresh bloom and unchecked joyousness, would not be attempted in our day, with the same object in view, by an author who put a supreme value on material advantages, and extolled the attractions of youth beyond all other attractions. No such author--above all in a semi-cynical, semi-sensuous generation--could have anticipated, far less projected, the end of “Persuasion.”

[74] In those days no lady was to be found without her small bottle of “smelling salts” or her vinaigrette with aromatic vinegar. Have we fewer headaches now-a-days, or are we more patient in bearing them?

[75] The manner in which the set-aside, quiet woman, who has yet so much more strength and power of resource than the others, comes to the front, whether she will or no, in the moment of trouble, is fine and true to nature.

[76] The perfect simplicity, unaffectedness, and absence of self-consciousness--including any consciousness of merit, displayed in Anne’s kindness to her former companion, is very refreshing, after those ostentatious representations of doing good, and of making private stock out of public benevolence, which we are constantly encountering both in real life and in books.

[77] The sudden bestowal of Louisa Musgrove and Captain Benwick on each other is one of the most genuine and delightful surprises of fiction. It is not only a triumphant testimony to how the whole destiny, not merely of one person, but of a group of persons, may be altered by what seems the simplest accident--the turning of a straw; it is one of those bits of warm, homely, human inconsistency which baffle all anticipation, are worth a hundred bloodless, laboured, logical sequences, but can only be fitly conceived and carried out in a story, by a great artist.

[78] A hint of defence for what might have been his own case.

[79] A familiarity with Italian used to be considered the graceful crown of a woman’s accomplishments.

[80] The “rattle” of Madame D’Arblay’s novel of “Cecilia.”

[81] The two capital chapters, of which the substance is now to be given, were written by Jane Austen to supersede a cancelled chapter in “Persuasion,” withdrawn after she had finished the story.

[82] The renewal of the good understanding between Anne and Captain Wentworth was contrived in the cancelled chapter of the story, with much less spirit and feeling--as Jane Austen herself judged rightly--by an accidental interview between the lovers in the Crofts’ lodgings; in the course of which Admiral Croft unsuspiciously imposes on his brother-in-law the trying task of conveying to Anne, Admiral and Mrs. Croft’s friendly desire not to stand in the way of the arrangements of Mr. Elliot and his cousin on their marriage; on the contrary, the Crofts offer to vacate Kellynch to them if they wish it.

[83] In the intense sense of reality which all Jane Austen’s stories give us, we are prompted here to go beyond what the author has chosen to tell us, and speculate how the Musgroves, great and small, received the news--not merely of Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot’s engagement, but what they were sure to hear also, sooner or later, that it was the end of an old attachment, utterly unsuspected by all their friends at Uppercross. Would the Musgroves in their good nature content themselves with thinking the couple had kept their secret well, or would there be a general, slightly indignant sense of having been taken in and humbugged, like, in its degree, to that which Emma Woodhouse experienced when she learnt the long-standing engagement between Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax?

[84] No, indeed, it is her chief treasure.

[85] These were the very different days of frequent naval engagements and much prize money.

CASSELL, PETTER, GALPIN & CO., BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS, LONDON, E.C.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation errors have been fixed.

Page 179: “not seen to create” changed to “not seem to create”