As I remembered the past, I felt a spark of anger for her vacillating character, and an ache of bruised pride at the way she had treated me. And then I calmed myself. I knew I would have to accustom myself to seeing her, for we would often be together, and it would not do for me to let any trace of resentment show. I made up my mind not to mention the past and I decided that I would treat her with perfect good humour, simply as a woman I once knew.
But even so, I could not help my thoughts dwelling on her as I went inside. Anne Elliot, I thought, after so many years.
Anne Elliot.
Saturday 15 October
I joined the Musgroves early for breakfast. The Miss Musgroves were as pretty a pair of breakfast companions as any man had a right to expect, and were just as animated as they had been yesterday. They talked constantly during breakfast and kept trying to delay Charles and me, until Charles could bear the delays no longer and stood up, saying it was time for us to set out. The girls could not bear to part with us—let me confess it, with me! for what interest has a brother to his own sisters?—and declared their intention of coming with us as far as the Cottage. Their excuse was a desire to call on their nephew and see how he went on, though they had not mentioned him all morning.
I was content to have their company, for what man could resist the attentions of two such pretty girls? But again I felt a reluctance to see Anne. It could not be avoided, however, and so I thought it better to give her notice of it. Why I was anxious to spare her a sudden shock I did not know, but so it was.
We reached the Cottage and I could not help smiling at its name, for it was in fact an extended farmhouse, very spacious, with French windows looking over neatly trimmed gardens and a pretty veranda.
The girls giggled and chattered by my side as we went in. I saw Mrs Musgrove at once and looked around for Anne, but I saw no one except a dull, faded creature of hesitant manner who was that moment attending to a little boy. I thought she was a nursery governess until she turned towards me and, with a start, I realized it was Anne.
‘You might remember my sister, Miss Anne Elliot,’ said Mary.
So. She had not married, and it was hardly surprising, for her beauty had gone. The bloom of her cheek; the brightness of her eye; all had disappeared. Her figure was bowed; and she was, in fact, so careworn, that I would not have believed it possible she could have changed so much in only eight years.
‘Miss Elliot,’ I said.
‘Captain Wentworth.’
Our eyes half met. I bowed, she curtseyed. And all the time I kept thinking: Once, we would have had eyes for no one but each other.
I continued to move and speak, though without any idea of what I was saying. And then, mercifully, Charles appeared at the window, having collected the dogs, and we were away.
In a few brief minutes, all my memories of Anne’s beauty and grace had been demolished, and I was left with nothing but anger and bitterness, for if she had only had a little more resolution then it could all have been otherwise.
‘What do you think of Anne?’ asked Miss Musgrove, as we reached the end of the village.
‘She is so altered I would not have known her again,’ I said.
As I spoke, I remembered her as I had seen her on that first morning, walking by the river, with the sun shining on her hair. I remembered the light catching the ripples on the water; and I remembered her eyes being even brighter than the ripples as she laughed at me.
But that Anne had gone forever. She had let me down, deserted me, disappointed me, and shown a feebleness of temper that I could not understand or forgive. She had given me up to please others, and I could still feel the pain of it, but now it was a dull ache and nothing more. Fate had thrown us together again, but her power over me had gone.
The Miss Musgroves walked with us to the end of the village. Their bright spirits formed a marked contrast to the scene we had just left, but even their butterfly minds could not lift me out of my dark thoughts. It was only after a morning’s strenuous exercise that I was able to feel myself again.
I parted from Charles at last, thanking him for the morning’s activity, and then I returned home and sat with Sophia. She told me about her morning, and about her plans to buy a one-horse chaise so that she and Benjamin could drive around the country. Then, after listening to my account of my morning, she asked me, ‘And what do you think of the Musgrove girls?’
‘They are pretty, lively creatures,’ I said.
‘And do you think that you could marry either of them? You ought to be thinking of settling down, you know.’
‘I dare say I have a heart for either of them, if they could catch it,’ I returned lightly. ‘I would have any pleasing young woman who came in my way.’
Except Anne Elliot, I thought.
She smiled at my levity, then said, ‘I think either of them would make an agreeable wife. Have you no preference?’
‘None at all. I am quite ready to make a foolish match. A little beauty, and a few smiles, and a few compliments to the Navy, and I am a lost man. Should not this be enough for a sailor, who has had no society among women to make him nice?’
She laughed at me, knowing I spoke in jest, and said I was the most fastidious man she had ever known.
‘Do you not have any virtues in mind?’ she asked. ‘Any tastes or desires that would help you choose one of the Miss Musgroves over the other?’
‘A strong mind, with sweetness of manner,’ I said. ‘That is all I ask. Something a little inferior I shall of course put up with, but it must not be much. If I am a fool, I shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than most men.’
‘Then you have thought about it quite enough, and it is now time for action. I would like to see you settled, Frederick, and I am sure you will find your strong, but sweet, young lady soon. Who knows, but she may be residing at the Great House this very minute!’
We took luncheon together, then I set out for my afternoon ride.
A strong mind, I thought, that is my essential requirement. I will have no weak woman who will change her mind to please others. I will not marry until I find someone with strength of character and a mind of her own.
Thursday 20 October
Benjamin returned home today, and it was charming to see with what warmth my sister welcomed him. Theirs has been a happy marriage indeed.
Friday 21 October
Sophia, Benjamin and I dined with the Musgroves this evening, and we were quite a large party. Mr and Mrs Charles Musgrove were there. So, too, were some cousins of the Musgroves, the Hayters, who lived nearby. And, as little Charles was much recovered, Anne also dined with us.
As I walked into the room, I remembered that there was a time, long ago, when we had opened our hearts to each other, but, although we spoke once or twice this evening our remarks never went beyond the commonplace, indeed, she said very little altogether. I did not know what to make of her silence, whether it was a general thing with her to be silent; or whether she was embarrassed, remembering past times; or whether, indeed, she had grown as proud as her family, and thought me beneath her notice.
It was a relief, then, to find that the Miss Hayters were just as noisy as the Miss Musgroves, for their chatter hid any awkward pauses, and the girls entertained us all with their nonsense.
They were fascinated by my life at sea and, gradually their questions brought me out of my introspection and drew me into the present. Their ignorance of seafaring matters was profound, and Miss Musgrove was astonished to find that we had food on board ship.
‘But how did you suppose we lived, if we had no food?’ I asked her. ‘We would starve to death!’
‘I suppose I thought you ate when you reached land,’ she said.
‘And how often would that be?’
‘I do not know, I am sure,’ she remarked. ‘Once a week, perhaps?’
I laughed, and she continued, saying, ‘Then, if you have regular meals, you must have shops on board? How wonderful! I woul
d dearly love to see them.’
‘The very idea! Shops on board, indeed! Where would we put them?’ Benjamin asked her.
‘On deck,’ she supplied.
‘What! On deck? Do you think there is room amongst the cannons? Our ships are spacious, I grant you, but they are not as large as London!’
‘Well, then, below deck,’ she said, laughing. ‘I am sure you must have room, for I cannot think what else you would put there. Besides, you must have shops, else how would you buy your food? You cannot have it delivered?’
Sophia and Benjamin smiled and I took pity on her, saying, ‘We take it with us.’
‘And how do you eat it?’ asked Miss Musgrove. ‘You cannot have a table and chairs, so I suppose you sit on deck and balance a plate on your knees?’
‘And I suppose you think we eat with our fingers?’ Benjamin asked, laughing even more.
‘You cannot mean you have cutlery?’
‘That is exactly what I mean.’
‘I should not like to eat at sea, all the same,’ said Miss Louisa. ‘I would hate my meat raw.’
‘Raw?’ demanded Benjamin.
‘I would not thank you for raw meat either,’ said Sophia. ‘We have a cook to dress the food, and a servant to wait on us.’
I saw Anne smiling, and I was taken back to the time when she had been as ignorant of the habits on board ship as the Musgrove girls now were. I remembered the delight I had taken in educating her, for I had felt the glow of her intelligence, and I had been heartened by the pleasure she had taken in learning about everything connected with me.
I resolutely turned my attention back to the Miss Musgroves. They would not be satisfied until I had explained to them everything about living on a ship: the food, the work, the hours, the daily routine.
Miss Musgrove then brought out the Navy List and the two sisters pored over it in an attempt to find out the ships I had commanded.
‘Your first was the Asp, I remember; we will look for the Asp,’ she said.
I remembered the Asp fondly, as every man remembers his first command. I thought of the happy times I had had with her but I would not admit it, teasing them by saying she had been a worn-out and broken-up old vessel.
‘The Admiralty entertain themselves now and then with sending a few hundred men to sea in a ship not fit to be employed,’ I said. ‘But they have a great many to provide for; and among the thousands that may just as well go to the bottom as not, it is impossible for them to distinguish the very set who may be least missed.’
The two girls did not know what to make of this speech, but Benjamin laughed and said that never was there a better sloop than the Asp in her day.
‘You were a lucky fellow to get her!’ he said, turning to the ladies and saying, ‘He knows there must have been twenty better men than himself applying for her at the same time. Lucky fellow to get anything so soon, with no more interest than his.’
‘I felt my luck, Admiral, I assure you,’ I replied. ‘It was a great object with me at that time: to be at sea, a very great object; I wanted to be doing something.’
I felt my mood darken again as I recalled the reasons for it. I had been eager to escape because I had been rejected, and I had wanted something to take my mind off my troubles, for I had not wanted to spend the rest of my life brooding about Anne.
Benjamin luckily knew nothing of this.
‘To be sure you did,’ he replied. ‘What should a young fellow like you do ashore for half a year together? If a man has not a wife, he soon wants to be afloat again.’
‘I am sure you should have been given a better ship, whatever you say,’ Miss Louisa remarked, ‘for I am sure you deserved it.’
‘Did you have any great adventures on the Asp?’’ asked Miss Musgrove.
‘Many,’ I said.
I regaled them with tales of my time with the Asp, the privateers I had taken, and the French frigate I had secured.
‘I brought her into Plymouth,’ I said, as they hung on my every word. ‘We had not been six hours in the Sound, when a gale came on, which lasted four days and nights, and which would have done for poor old Asp in half the time, our touch with the Great Nation not having much improved our condition. Four-and-twenty hours later, and I should only have been a gallant Captain Wentworth, in a small paragraph at one corner of the newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody would have thought about me.’
I thought I saw Anne shuddering, and I felt as though the years had rolled away, leaving us close once more. But then I saw her pull her shawl higher and I realized she had done nothing more than shiver with the cold.
My attention was soon drawn back to the Miss Musgroves, who were full of exclamations of pity and horror. Then, having dispensed with the Asp, the girls began to look for the Laconia, and I took the List out of their hands to save them the trouble. I read aloud the statement of her name and rate, and present noncommissioned class.
‘She, too, was one of the best friends man ever had,’ I said. ‘Ah! those were pleasant days! How fast I made money in the Laconia! A friend of mine and I had such a lovely cruise together off the Western Islands. Poor Harville, sister! You know how much he wanted money: worse than myself. He had a wife,’ I said, thinking of Harriet, and the day on which I had stood up with him at his wedding. ‘Excellent fellow! I shall never forget his happiness. He felt it all so much for her sake. I wished for him again the next summer, when I had still the same luck in the Mediterranean.’
Mrs Musgrove spoke, in a low voice, and took me by surprise by saying something about it being a lucky day for them when I was made captain of that ship. I did not understand her and I did not know how to reply.
‘My brother,’ whispered Miss Musgrove. ‘Mama is thinking of poor Richard, who died.’
I was none the wiser and waited expectantly for more to follow, and follow it did. It seemed that Richard Musgrove had been, for a time, under my command. I searched my memory and remembered him eventually, a troublesome youth, with little aptitude for the sea.
‘Poor dear fellow!’ continued Mrs Musgrove, ‘he was grown so steady, and such an excellent correspondent, while he was under your care! Ah! it would have been a happy thing if he had never left you. I assure you, Captain Wentworth, we are very sorry he ever left you.’
I remembered the difficulty I had had in making him write even one letter to his family; that is, one letter that was not begging for money, and I could not echo her sentiment, but I did not say so, for I saw that she was suffering. Instead, I joined her on the sofa, and entered into conversation with her about her son. I did everything in my power, by sympathy and a listening ear, to soothe her pain.
By and by, she calmed herself, until she was ready to join in the general conversation once more.
‘What a great traveller you must have been, ma’am!’ she said to my sister.
My sister told her of her travels, saying, ‘But I never went beyond the Straits, and never was in the West Indies. We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies.’
Mrs Musgrove did not disagree, indeed I would have been surprised if she could accuse herself of having ever called them anything in the whole course of her life!