‘I cannot believe it of him. To ask her to leave without giving her parents any notice of it was bad enough; to deny her even the protection of a servant was monstrous,’ I said.
‘She was not even allowed to stay until Monday. My father ordered the carriage for her on Sunday morning, at seven o’clock, and she was sent packing like an adventuress. What will her father and mother say! After courting her from the protection of real friends to this – almost double the distance from her home – to then drive her out of the house, without the considerations even of decent civility! The dear creature thought she must have offended our father, to be treated thus, and I could do nothing but reassure her that she had given him no just cause of offence. She was generous to the last, saying it was of no consequence.’
‘No consequence?’ I asked, as angry as my father, though from a very different cause. ‘To be sent away with no thought given to her comfort, or the appearance of the thing? To have to travel upwards of sixty miles, nay, nearer seventy, and to be taken by post, at her age, alone, unattended!’
‘She maintained her dignity whilst I was with her, but as soon as the door was closed behind me I heard her break out into weeping. I went to her the following morning and helped her to pack. I begged her to write to me, though I had no right to ask anything of her after the way she had been treated, and she promised she would let me know that she was safe at Fullerton. Even then, I was forced to use subterfuge, for you know how my father is, and how he never lets me receive letters unless he has approved the correspondence. I had to ask her to write to me under cover to my maid. Thank God I thought to ask her if she had any money, and to furnish her with what she needed for the journey, otherwise I dread to think what might have happened to her. But I think the thing that wounded her most was that she did not get to take her leave of you. She asked me very humbly to give her remembrances to you.’
I thought of her sweet nature and I shook my head in disbelief. That anyone could so use her....
‘She must have passed close by Woodston as she travelled,’ I said. ‘I wish I had known. I would have stopped the coach and escorted her myself.’
‘And now we are to see no more of her. My father has forbidden me even to think of her! And all because he imagined her an heiress, through no fault of her own. When I think of the way he encouraged her, and encouraged you to think of her, and now he has done to you what he has done to me, banished your beloved—’
‘But I, at least, have my independence, and need take no notice,’ I said.
‘But what do you intend to do?’ she asked.
‘What I have intended to do for many weeks past. Ask her to marry me.’
‘But our father has expressly forbidden any such thing. You would not dare cross him.’
‘Indeed he would not,’ came a voice from behind us. Our father had entered the room. ‘Eleanor, you are not ready. The coach will leave in half an hour. If your things are not packed you will go without them.’
I nodded to Eleanor and she left the room.
‘And you, sir, will do the same,’ he said.
‘No, I will not. I will do what I would have done anyway, before many more weeks had passed: offer Miss Morland my hand.’
‘You will do no such thing!’ he roared.
‘You cannot stop me,’ I said, looking him in the eye. ‘I believe she is in love with me, and I am most certainly in love with her. Do you now expect me, having encouraged her affections, to jilt her? For I am bound to her in honour as well as in affection, as much as if there had been a formal engagement between us.’
‘But there is no engagement, and once you are in Hereford and she is back in Fullerton, there will never be any suggestion of one.’
‘I am not going to Hereford.’
‘You will do as you are told!’
‘No, sir, I will not. You cannot command me. I am my own man. You must go to Hereford without me – though why you still think it necessary to go, since it was an excuse trumped up at a moment’s notice, to rid yourself dishonourably of Miss Morland, I cannot imagine. And I am going to Fullerton.’
‘Why, you—’
I left him blustering, and we parted in dreadful disagreement. I was in such an agitation of mind that I returned almost instantly to Woodston to compose myself. But tomorrow I go to Fullerton.
Tuesday 30 April
I am now over half-way to my destination. Tomorrow my fate will be decided. Will Catherine forgive me for my father’s behaviour? What will her family think? Will her father allow me to pay my addresses to her, after the way she was shamefully used? I can only hope so.
MAY
Wednesday 1 May
This morning found me at Fullerton, a village not unlike Woodston, where I looked about me and saw, at some small distance, the church, and beside it the parsonage. As I made my way to the gate I found myself the object of every eye, for travellers were evidently little seen in the neighbourhood. As I approached the house I found that I was observed by a collection of children, Catherine’s brothers and sisters, who had gathered at the window on hearing the telltale sounds of a visitor. I rang the bell and was admitted to the drawing room, where I found Catherine alone. She sprang up and said, startled, ‘Henry!’
And with that one word I knew she was mine.
She blushed and stammered and offered me a seat, which I took, but hardly had I sat down when her mother entered the room, closely followed by sundry brothers and sisters.
I sprang up and Catherine introduced me.
‘I must apologize for my sudden appearance. I have no right to expect a welcome here after what has passed, but I had to be sure that Miss Morland had reached her home in safety. I knew nothing of her sudden departure, being attending to business in my own parish, and I am more sorry than I can say that she was left to endure such a journey alone,’ I immediately began.
Mrs Morland was generous in her reception of me, saying, ‘Well, now, if that is not good of you, Mr Tilney. I am sure it was not your fault that Catherine had such a strange journey and there is no harm done, as you see. Besides, it is a great comfort to find that Catherine is not a poor helpless creature, but can shift very well for herself.’
I began to apologize for my father but she did me the kindness of judging me apart from him and saying that she had long been wanting to thank me for my friendship towards Catherine.
‘She has told us a great deal about you and your sister in her letters. We are always happy to see Catherine’s friends here. The future is what matters, and the present, not the past. Pray, do not say another word about it.’
I was not ill-inclined to obey her request, for, although my heart was greatly relieved by such unlooked-for mildness, it was not in my power to say anything at all. Seeing Catherine again, having so much to say to her that could not be said in company, rendered me mute and I sat down again in silence.