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It was a truth universally recognized among those who frequented Barton Park, that even an individual not usually wont to gossip would become an accomplice to it in the company of Mrs. Jennings. However, Colonel Brandon had to acknowledge, Mrs. Jennings could sometimes be extremely of use, for her inattentive ear had, on more than one occasion, provided a suitably respectable cover for him to speak his mind and share confidences with Elinor.
“I have heard,” said he, with great compassion, “of the injustice your friend Mr. Ferrars has suffered from his family; for if I understand the matter right, he has been entirely cast off by them for persevering in his engagement with a very deserving young woman. Have I been rightly informed? Is it so?”
To the veracity of Lucy’s deservingness, Elinor would much rather not testify. Barring a good marriage, Lucy would have nothing; and even in her union with Edward, her joys must lie in his character rather than his fortune, for he was guaranteed of but two thousand pounds. While Elinor felt the obligation to extend compassion to one who had less fortune and connexions than herself, the meanness of jealousy was an emotion experienced at least once in a lifetime by even the best of people.
“To the nature of Mr. Ferrars’ predicament, you have the right of the matter,” she replied, “but to the deservingness of his object – ” She could not finish that sentence with any semblance of equanimity; it was too much, indeed!
Elinor’s discomposure came as a complete shock to Colonel Brandon. She, who was always so circumspect and proper, to imply such censure! Though their friendship by now allowed them to speak frankly of many things, he felt keenly the impropriety of further enquiry on a subject the lady deemed indelicate to speak of.
“The cruelty, the impolitic cruelty,” he replied, with great feeling, "of dividing, or attempting to divide, two young people long attached to each other, is terrible.” At that, Elinor visibly paled, her mouth hanging slightly agape; though she uttered no words, Colonel Brandon recognized the distress that had long cast a pall on him after his forced separation from Eliza, the companion of his youth to whom he had been most dearly attached. Could Elinor – surely, it was impossible – and yet, had he not become adept enough at concealing his own sensibilities to detect the signs of such in others? He recalled Mrs. Jennings’ raillery at the letter “F”, and how he had perceived Elinor’s discomfiture at it, and in that moment, he knew the truth. It was, indeed, the most impolitic cruelty – but not just for the young Mr. Ferrars and Miss Lucy Steele. Nay, the greatest injustice of it all was that Elinor, always the picture of sense and propriety, should be so destined to be a fool in love; to be divided forever from the object of her affections, even if no one else were to know.
“It is, indeed,” acknowledged Elinor, scarcely able to hold back the tears pooling in her eyes. “And you, sir, would not wish to see that inflicted onto others.” She knew, and admired, the fact that his pain had not made him bitter, but instead sharpened his sense of compassion.
“I would not,” Colonel Brandon confirmed, “and especially not on the dearest of friends.” The request that had been on the tip of his tongue would never be uttered; he was not capable of such ruthlessness. To make Elinor the instrument of securing Mr. Ferrars’ happiness, at the utter sacrifice of her own! He was thankful he had stayed his hand; men’s lives, the outcomes of battles, the welfare of his tenants, and the shreds of his ward Eliza Williams’ tattered reputation all lay within his power to influence, but he had never felt more the weight of his immense responsibility than now. To advance the interests of Edward would be to spare one young man the miserable fate of his own younger self, but still, the thought of Elinor, her hopes eternally dashed - he could not bring himself to act, though to remain silent would mean the misery of two people while he could ameliorate that of one.
Thus, the living of Delaford went to one Edward Wentworth, a young curate from Monkford in Somersetshire. He expressed his joy in being settled not too far away from Portsmouth and Plymouth, as it would mean that his seafaring brother could visit him with not too much difficulty while on shore. After consulting with Colonel Brandon and Elinor, Mr. Wentworth agreed to put in a recommendation for Mr. Ferrars for the curacy of Monkford. It was not much, but not any better than Mr. Ferrars himself had expected; and in the least, it ensured he would have a roof over his head instead of living at lodgings and taverns.
Miss Anne Elliot regularly visited almost every house in the parish, and it was in this manner that she encountered Mr. Edward Ferrars, the new curate of Monkford, for the very first time. He could not bear less resemblance to another young man of three-and-twenty with whom she had once been intimately acquainted; that one had been, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit and brilliancy; while Edward Ferrars was shy, diffident, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. Furthermore, his countenance was weighed down by low spirits; she detected in him a kindred soul in heartbreak, though he would not divulge the source. He would not read Cowper, but she did not encourage him to, firm as she stood in her belief that prose would be the most effective to rouse and fortify the mind by the highest precepts, and the strongest examples of moral and religious endurances.
“Have you ever known grief of any kind?” asked Edward, handing back the first stack of tomes she had loaned him. “Begging your pardon, Miss Anne – I know it is not my place to make such enquiries.”
“I do not mind.” Anne rarely shared her deepest confidences with others, but if she could not confide in a man of the cloth, with whom else could she share her burden? “I have lost two of the dearest people in my life, beyond all hope of existence. My mother passed from this earth when I was thirteen, and I had long believed she was the only kindred spirit I had on this earth. Until – ”
“Until you met another?” Edward gently probed. “Sometimes, the people closest to you may not always be family.” He spoke from personal experience, though as a clergyman he would never disparage his family members to anyone else.
“It would not be right to disrespect my family. Yet, there was a time when I knew of someone that I would wish to add to it! But it cannot be – perhaps, it can never be. I have turned him away, and I am certain he must despise me for it. I believed myself to have done so in prudence – in the utmost self-denial – and yet, you must think, indeed, everyone must believe me to be weak. That when I was put to the test, I could not renounce the life of a baronet’s daughter.”
“You are still young,” said Edward, “and sometimes I wonder if I have not made an unnatural or an inexcusable piece of folly, to engage myself before I was nineteen.”
“At nineteen!” Anne exclaimed, the parallels of their situations resonating with her. “Nineteen is full young to bind oneself to another, I was told. And yet, I believe, it is not too young to know one’s own mind. I have now less than a year before I come of age, and there are things I would have done at nineteen that I would rather not have the need to regret.”
“It was a foolish, idle inclination on my side,” said he, “the consequence of ignorance of the world, and of want of employment. Had my mother given me some active profession when I was removed at eighteen from the care of my tutor, Mr. Pratt, I think, nay, I am sure, it would never have happened; for though I left Longstaple with what I thought, at the time, a most unconquerable preference for his niece, yet had I then but any pursuit, any object to engage my time and keep me at a distance from her for a few months, I should very soon have outgrown the fancied attachment, especially by mixing more with the world as in such case I must have done.”
He had not been idle, of that Anne was sure. In fact, Captain Wentworth was the very antithesis of idleness. Perhaps, in that half year where they had been thrown in each other’s company, he had nothing to do, and she had hardly any body to love, that half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough. Had he outgrown her after he went back to sea? Perhaps she did indeed lack the mettle to commit herself to a life where she must relinquish many of the comforts that she had become accustomed to at Kellynch Hall. Edward, in contrast, had been brave, giving up a genteel life in his mother’s home to honour a youthful engagement and facing a huge reduction in income by being a curate. She knew enough of the world to see that he lived on less than Captain Wentworth had even as a newly made Commander. After all, Captain Wentworth’s brother, who happened to be his namesake, had had the very same curacy before him and not believed himself able to entertain the thought of marrying.
“You have done what I did not,” said Anne. “I might now make myself believe that I would have, most willingly, had I not listened to the advice of a most respected friend, but that is neither here nor there. I must commend the bravery of your lady to maintain her constancy in the light of your trials.”
“Ah, but that is the worst of my folly!” cried Edward. “Now, I do not have the ability to seek even the comparison of her with another.”
Anne sighed, thinking of how decisions one made in the dawn of life could carry on to haunt oneself for ever after. How could prudence be as much a folly as recklessness was? But she admired Edward’s fortitude in coming down from a life of the gentry to become a simple country curate, and soon they became firm friends. This did not escape Lady Russell’s sharp eye, and she soon found occasion to warn Anne.
“I hope you are not on the verge of making another imprudent match,” she admonished.
“I am not in danger,” Anne assured her. “Besides, the gentleman’s heart is secured elsewhere. He has been in a long engagement since before he was nineteen, I am told.”
Lady Russell harrumphed loudly. “That cannot be a fit clergyman, to be sure,” she remarked. “A long engagement, without the certainty of ever having the means to be married! He is not setting a good example for the parish.”
“On the contrary,” said Anne softly, “I believe a knowledge of the pain of his people makes a clergyman better able to administer to his flock. The want of money need not denote a want of character.”
Captain Frederick Wentworth returned to England in the year eight, finding a home briefly at the Delaford parsonage with his brother. Mrs. Jennings could not decide if she should feel put out that Colonel Brandon would invariably face a new round of competition for the hearts of the Misses Dashwood – for she still could not make up her mind as to whether he was enamoured of Elinor or Marianne – or if she should rejoice in having yet another potential suitor for the young ladies.
“Miss Marianne, you will be setting her cap at him now, and never think of poor Brandon,” speculated Sir John Middleton after seeing the pair in a particularly lively dance.
“I do not set my cap after any one,” protested Marianne. “After the imprudence of my former conduct, I would hope to have improved, to be more considerate of propriety and the needs of others.”
“And you have, Miss Marianne,” observed Colonel Brandon. “In the past two years, you have acquitted yourself admirably.” He had known he had no chance, for thirty-eight and nineteen could scarcely go together any better than thirty-six and seventeen. Yet he could not help taking secret consolation in how she glowed with happiness at his praise.
“Perhaps Miss Dashwood then,” suggested Mrs. Jennings. “If you would not have Colonel Brandon’s offer of marriage two years ago, surely you cannot mean to stay on the shelf all your life! You are now one-and-twenty, take care that you do not become an old maid!” Elinor never knew if Mrs. Jennings truly believed that the tete-a-tete of long ago had been an actual offer of marriage, but her friendship with Colonel Brandon had led to much speculation until the frequency and intimacy of Marianne’s discourse with him equaled and perhaps surpassed hers, shifting Mrs. Jennings’ matchmaking mind back towards another object.
“I do not believe,” said Elinor, who had been sitting out the dancing and conversing with Mr. Wentworth, “that Captain Wentworth is looking to attach his affections. His manners are pleasing enough, but he maintains his distance. He has not danced more than one set with any lady here tonight.”
Eager to provide his parson’s guest with the best of entertainments, Colonel Brandon arranged an outing to Whitwell, which contained a noble piece of water, a sail on which was to form a great part of the morning’s amusement. Elinor packed the cold provisions for the trip and observed with keen curiosity as the two men trimmed the sails. Though she knew it might not be perfectly proper, she asked if she may assist them.
“Your capability and practicality…” observed Captain Wentworth, “they remind me of another. Would that I could! But I believe, she is lost to me forever.”
Colonel Brandon remembered a time when he had used those very words to describe his unfortunate alliance with his cousin Eliza. Though that tragedy had now passed one-and-twenty years ago, it had not been till more recent times that his friendship with the Dashwood sisters had started to assuage the pain.
“If she lives yet,” he advised, “you may still have a chance. Death, and perhaps sometimes marriage, are the only two things in this world that are truly irrevocable.”
“I wish I should never again entertain the thought!” exclaimed Captain Wentworth. “For I was thrown over most cruelly. When it came to the crux of things, she would not have her family disown her.”
“I know of one,” said Elinor, “who has been disowned by his family with hardly a penny to live on, and yet he has not the liberty to pursue his happiness.” She usually prided herself on being pragmatic but not bitter, yet the words sounded tart to her even as she said them. The thought that Lucy would have to be Edward’s source of forbidden happiness, here and beyond, still stung as much as it had two years prior, though from what she heard of him through her half-brother and sister-in-law, they were nowhere closer to a wedding than they had been under their secret engagement. At least Lucy was prudent, thought Elinor, for she would have consented to be the wife of a curate though she did not know what kind of a life they would be able to have on two hundred pounds a year. Perhaps as Marianne was getting to become a woman of sense, all the excess sensibility had now flowed over to Elinor.
Though Colonel Brandon had long guessed the fact, the words from Elinor’s lips was a final confirmation of what he suspected. She would throw away the rest of her days, then, pining away for the unfortunate Mr. Ferrars. While he lacked the ability to amend that situation for her, he strongly believed that Captain Wentworth’s predicament was not yet beyond redemption.
“Should you wish to find out if you might yet have a chance to redeem matters,” he offered, “you may have the use of any horse from my stables to travel to her. I can spare a horse for as long as you need, so you need not worry about distance being an obstacle for you.”
“She is not situated so far away,” said Captain Wentworth. “I shall only need to go to Somersetshire. But you are right; if she yet lives, perhaps the only thing I have to sacrifice is my pride.” He sighed. “When all that one possesses are one’s achievements, pride is not a trivial matter. To be deemed unworthy for my lack of rank is to deprecate all that I have ever stood for.”
“I spent a large portion of my life believing that I would have nothing,” said Colonel Brandon in reply. “In fact, I was passed over in fortune and in love for the mere reason of being the younger son, by none other than the hand of my own father. It is not a disclosure I share widely, but I want you to know that you are by no means alone in your circumstances. There is a risk in seeking your redemption, for which worthy endeavour is not without risk? And yet, you need not see out the rest of your days in disappointment, as some of us might be resigned to do.” A fine wind was blowing, and Colonel Brandon let out the boat’s sail so she could tear downstream on a run, the breeze sending the loose tendrils of Marianne’s hair flapping. She and Margaret, he noticed, were especially thrilled when the boat picked up speed.
“Then, I am much indebted to you,” Captain Wentworth nodded in thanks and acknowledgement. The next day, he was gone to Somersetshire, with his brother’s instruction to enquire after the health of Mr. Ferrars while he was there.
Anne had learned prudence early in her youth, and she had yet to come to the realization that the world was not entirely devoid of romance. Therefore, the sight of a strange horse coming up the drive to Kellynch Hall did not immediately appeal to her imagination; she supposed it must be some stranger, perhaps a creditor, coming to meet her father. It was only when the rider came close enough for her to behold the face and figure of a person, two years lost but no less well remembered, and she leapt up willingly into a pair of waiting arms, and renewed promises that they had both believed long forsaken, that she re-entered a state of such exquisite felicity that she believed could not be possible on this earth.
“I am now of age,” she assured him, “and thus, there should be no more obstacles. Had I not imagined myself consulting your good, even more than my own, I could hardly have given you up the last time. The belief of being prudent, and self-denying, principally for your advantage, has been my chief consolation these past two years.”
“Too good, too excellent creature!” he exclaimed. “I do not deserve you.”
“To be crossed in love is not a matter of one’s deserving,” observed the ever-compassionate Anne. “I speak of someone – the successor of your brother at the parish of Monkford. Now that we have regained our happiness, we should see what we can do to help him procure his.”
Captain Wentworth, it must be acknowledged to his possible shame and detriment, was not immediately sympathetic to the plight of Edward Ferrars. While he could empathize with Edward’s impulse of entering an early engagement, he could not help feeling that the latter gentleman had displayed a lack of discernment when identifying the object of his attachment. A letter had arrived for Edward during Captain Wentworth’s sojourn in Somersetshire; it contained the news of Miss Lucy Steele’s elopement with his brother Robert Ferrars, who was lately come down from Oxford and settled with a thousand a year from his mother.
“You must think me a profligate of the worst kind, to be thankful for a broken engagement,” he confided to Anne, and thus in the audience of Captain Wentworth, who now never left her side. “But my sincere belief in Lucy’s warm attachment to me has been my only consolation for a long time. I thought it my duty, independent of my feelings, to give her the option of continuing the engagement or not, when I was renounced by my mother, and stood to all appearance without a friend in the world to assist me. In such a situation as that, where there seemed nothing to tempt the avarice or the vanity of any living creature, how could I suppose, when she so earnestly, so warmly insisted on sharing my fate, whatever it might be, that any thing but the most disinterested affection was her inducement? And even now, I cannot comprehend on what motive she acted, or what fancied advantage it could be to her, to be fettered to a man for whom she had not the smallest regard, and who had only two thousand pounds in the world.”
Though Captain Wentworth had his pay, being made post of late, and a few thousand pounds (but not that much more than two thousand), Anne knew of a time when the presence of two thousand might have made all the difference in her decision. “For any woman who truly loved,” she said, “two thousand pounds might be all you needed to secure her happiness.” And though she said the words to Edward, it was to Captain Wentworth that she directed a glance pregnant with meaning.
“Truly?” The glimmer of fragile hope in Edward’s eyes was a pitiful sight indeed, and Captain Wentworth had to admit that perhaps his own anger had been in part a cover to avoid being an object of pity. “Do you think two thousand will be enough for me to seek the hand and heart of another?”
Imprudent though the match may have seemed to Sir Walter and Lady Russell, Captain Wentworth could not bring himself to think that his first proposal to Anne had been a folly. He had just spent two years at sea, commanding the Asp to the West Indies, and it would have been a consolation, in the times of utter peril to his life, to be assured of Anne’s undying affection. And yet, here was this parson who had been engaged to one lady while now professing that his heart belonged to another! Precipitate though he might have been in proposing, Captain Wentworth could at least believe that careful deliberation and constancy had been in his own favour at the time.
“I can only speak for myself,” declared Anne, “but I do genuinely believe that in spite of the hardships that such a reduction in income must result in, the uncommon sources of felicity from a life of mutual understanding, esteem and affection should make up for the difference.” If Captain Wentworth had believed he saw the highest perfection in Anne before, he could not help but feel that his admiration reached a new pinnacle on hearing those words from her lips.
“But I do not have the means to travel.” Just as rapidly as Edward’s spirits had lifted, he became downcast again at the realization of the constraints of his meagre income. “I would need to go to Devonshire to make my intentions known.”
“Devonshire?” In spite of himself, Captain Wentworth spoke. “There had been a time of my life when to me, the travel would have been no trivial expense, but I believe I can assist you at least as far as Dorset. The horse I came on was borrowed from one Colonel Brandon of Delaford, where my brother is the incumbent of the living. We shall eventually need to go back that way again, but as we shall need to travel by post and not on horseback, I would be most obliged to you if you could bring Colonel Brandon’s horse back to him on my behalf.”
“Captain, I thank you most kindly!” Edward jumped up, very unlike his usual timid self. “And if I may, I shall set out with the least possible delay!”
“Certainly,” said Captain Wentworth, “and please bring a note to my brother for me.”
When Edward arrived at Delaford, calling at the manor-house to ask directions to the stables, the sound of familiar pianoforte music wafted to his ears. Not since the days of his last visit to Barton Cottage had he heard the sound of Miss Marianne’s playing, and though he had not the ear to appreciate the finer points of the composition, he still found that the nuances of feeling stirred his soul.
“The Misses Dashwood are visiting,” explained Colonel Brandon when he greeted his visitor, confirming the source of the music. “I suppose you must be wishing to be reacquainted with them.”
“Ay, that would be my greatest wish!” said Edward. “I do not know if you have heard, but Miss Lucy Steele is now Mrs. Robert Ferrars.”
Colonel Brandon had indeed heard – for no gossip ever failed to reach his ears when Mrs. Fanny Dashwood and Mrs. Jennings were in existence to speed up its progress. Upon receiving such intelligence, Elinor’s manner had been so inscrutable that he guessed rather than discerned her hopes, but the means of fulfilling them could only lie in the hands of the person at which they were directed. And apparently, Captain Wentworth had returned the favour – and his horse – by providing Edward with the means to travel forth and act, if he so wished.
“Come,” he said to Edward. “I will bring you to them. Sir John’s carriage will be coming for them in the afternoon, so you may ride with them to Barton if you wish to visit.”
“Dear, dear Edward!” It was Marianne, not Elinor, who noticed him first and leapt up from her feet. “You are come back at last!”
“I am afraid it can be but for a few days at most,” admitted Edward ruefully. “For I have duties at my parish to fulfil. But I have come, as quickly as I have been able – ” here, he met the gaze of Elinor above the top of her easel – “for one purpose alone. Should you, Miss Dashwood, be able to divine my objective?”
Elinor had always endeavoured to be mistress of herself, but now she could sit it no longer. Even in front of her sister and her friend, she could not contain her tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease. They would need to go back to Barton to secure her mother’s blessing, but Edward saw, and heard, and felt, every part of her emotion, and he knew before he could ask the question, what his answer might be.
With Elinor’s engagement, and her eager preparations to travel to Somersetshire, Marianne and Colonel Brandon were left to rely on each other for companionship even more than before. Once upon a time, Marianne would have decreed that she would only marry for the greatest of love, an irresistible passion; but now, having found her only pleasures in retirement and study for the past two years, and on the verge of losing her closest confidante to distance, she surmised that a quieter companionship might still bring a pleasantness to her days.
“Colonel,” she said, handing him a bunch of roses picked from the gardens of Delaford with his leave, “do you still believe in second attachments?”
“I have long had the reason to hope they may exist for me,” he replied, “but I would not wish to dash your ideals or convictions.”
“You will forgive a girl of seventeen,” said Marianne, “for believing the falsehood of her own opinions. I have since engaged in much study and reflection, and now I know the maxims I held most dear were but delusions. Sir, I would like you to know that I now believe Romeo and Juliet to be not the grand romance that we must all hold our expectations to, but a fiction, a work of art, to convey the sensation of a great passion that burns through oneself like a flame. I no longer have the desire to self-immolate; perhaps, like Elinor, I might wish instead to give myself the opportunity to truly live.”
And that was all the encouragement Colonel Brandon needed, to speak of the intentions he had held within him so patiently without any hope of their coming to pass. In securing Marianne’s affections, he was consoled for every past affliction; - her regard and her society restored his mind to animation, and his spirits to cheerfulness; and that Marianne found her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend.
Thus, it came to be that all the most impolitic cruelties of a lack of means in the face of an early attachment were righted, and Elinor, Marianne and Anne spent the rest of their days in happy communion with their respective husbands. Despite the distance that now separated them from Elinor, Mrs. Dashwood, Marianne and Margaret still kept up that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate; and the kind-hearted Musgrove family often loaned their coach to Elinor and Edward to journey to Delaford and Barton for the holidays. Their joy would become complete when Mr. Edward Wentworth became enamoured of a woman residing in Shropshire, and with there being a natural candidate to succeed the Delaford living, Colonel and Mrs. Brandon saw no reason why Mr. Wentworth should not pursue his happiness. Such was the means by which, before Margaret came even fully of age, the Dashwood sisters were reunited in the utmost of felicity.
THE END