I no longer heard her for I had to pay attention to my letter, but when I had come to the end of it, Sophia was still abominating long engagements.
I sanded the letter, and as I did so Harville left his seat, moved to the window, and invited Anne to join him with a smile. They had moved so close to me that I could not help overhearing what was being said.
‘Look here,’ he began, unfolding a parcel in his hand, and displaying a small miniature painting, ‘do you know who that is?’
Anne took it and looked at it, and declared it to be Captain Benwick.
He agreed, and said it was for Louisa.
‘But,’ he went on sadly, ‘it was not done for her. It was drawn at the Cape, in compliance with a promise to my poor sister, and he was bringing it home for her. And I have now the charge of getting it properly set for another! It was a commission to me! But who else was there to employ? I hope I can allow for him. I am not sorry, indeed, to make it over to another. He undertakes it,’ he said, looking at me and referring to the letter I was engaged upon. ‘He is writing about it now.’ His voice dropped. ‘Poor Fanny! she would not have forgotten him so soon!’
‘No,’ replied Anne, in a low, feeling voice, ‘that, I can easily believe.’
Her ready sympathy won Harville’s gratitude. I, too, was grateful to her, for giving solace to Harville’s spirits.
‘It was not in her nature,’ he said, drawn on by Anne’s manner. ‘She doted on him.’
‘It would not be the nature of any woman who truly loved,’ said Anne.
I started, and I was glad at that moment that there was no one near enough to see it. Could I believe what I was hearing? Could Anne really be saying that a woman who truly loved would never forget a man so soon? And could she mean something by it? For I thought she glanced in my direction. Did she mean that she had not forgotten me? I felt my hopes stir—and then sink. The two cases were not alike. Fanny had been dead for less than a year, but Anne and I had been separated for eight years. That was a difference in time indeed.
Even so, I strained to hear what she would say next, for I felt sure there was more to her words than Harville could know, and my every nerve was on fire. I glanced at her, too, in the mirror that hung over the table, so that I could catch her expression. Next to her, I saw Harville smile and shake his head.
Anne spoke out more decidedly.
‘We certainly do not forget you so soon as you forget us,’ she told him. ‘It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.’
Is that what she thought? I wondered. Did she believe that occupation and exertion had weakened my impressions? That I had forgotten her in the press of other concerns?
It was a new idea to me, and one that troubled me greatly.
‘Granting your assertion that the world does all this so soon for men (which, however, I do not think I shall grant),’ said Harville, his words putting new heart in me, for he was speaking up for all men, ‘it does not apply to Benwick. He has not been forced upon any exertion. The peace turned him on shore at the very moment, and he has been living with us, in our little family circle, ever since.’
‘True,’ said Anne, ‘very true; I did not recollect; but what shall we say now, Captain Harville? If the change be not from outward circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man’s nature, which has done the business for Captain Benwick.’
I longed to speak but I could not, for I feared what I would say; that I would blurt out my feelings before everyone, astonishing them with the fervour of my passion.
‘No, no, it is not man’s nature,’ said Harville. ‘I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.’
‘Your feelings may be the strongest,’ replied Anne, ‘but the same spirit of analogy will authorize me to assert that ours are the most tender. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own. It would be too hard, indeed, if woman’s feelings were to be added to all this.’
As she spoke, she faltered, overcome with emotion, and I dropped my pen on the floor, so agitated was I, and nearly bursting with all I wanted to say.
‘Have you finished your letter?’ Harville asked me, his attention attracted by the noise.
I was about to admit that I had when an idea occurred to me, and saying, ‘Not quite, a few lines more. I shall have done in five minutes,’ I pulled another sheet of paper towards me, picked up my pen, dipped it in the ink, and began to write. My pen scrawled across the paper in my haste as my feelings poured out of me.
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.
And as I wrote, I heard more and more words that almost overpowered me.
‘I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps, you will say, these were all written by men,’ Harville was saying.
‘Perhaps I shall,’ said Anne. ‘Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. I will not allow books to prove anything.’
Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story, I thought. And I was determined to tell Anne mine:
I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.
‘But how shall we prove anything?’ Harville asked.
‘We never shall,’ admitted Anne. ‘We each begin, probably, with a little bias towards our own sex; and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle; many of which circumstances (perhaps those very cases which strike us the most) may be precisely such as cannot be brought forward without betraying a confidence, or, in some respect, saying what should not be said.’
With every word, I was more and more convinced that she had not forgotten me, that she loved me still, for what else could her talk about betraying a confidence mean?
Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?
‘Ah! if I could but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look at his wife and children, and watches the boat that he has sent them off in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says, ‘ “God knows whether we ever meet again!”’ said Harville.
‘Oh! I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures! I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman,’ said Anne.