People: Elinor and Colonel Brandon
Text: Mrs. Jennings went out early, leaving the Dashwood sisters to continue to delve the depths of Willoughby’s changed character and Marianne’ despair. They were looking forward to the lack of interruption when a knock was heard at the door. Peering out the window, Marianne spied Colonel Brandon. Not wishing to see him, she ran off to her room to hide.
Elinor was left to greet him and invite him to have a seat in the parlor. Brandon indicated that he had something that he wanted to share with Elinor. He hesitated and seemed uneasy. Elinor was quick to guess the subject.
“I understand you,” said Elinor. “You have something to tell me of Mr. Willoughby, that will open his character farther. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship that can be shown to Marianne.”
“At Barton Park, I alluded to a lady I had once known, as resembling in some measure your sister Marianne.”
“Indeed,” answered Elinor, “I have not forgotten the conversation.”
“This lady, an orphan from her infancy, was under the guardianship of my father. From our earliest years, we were playfellows and friends. I cannot remember a time that I did not love Eliza. As we grew our affection was strong. But at seventeen, she was lost to me forever. She was married against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large and our estate much encumbered. But my brother had no regard for her. From the first, he treated her unkindly. She resigned herself at first to the misery. During that time, I traveled to India. She later divorced.
“It was nearly three years after this unhappy period that I returned to England. My first care was to seek for her. It was fruitless. I could not trace her beyond her first seducer. After I had been in England six months, I did find her. The blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had once doted, was in the last stage of consumption. I placed her in comfortable lodgings and visited her daily until she died. She left to my care her only child, the offspring of her first guilty connection, a little girl. She visited me often in Delaford. People suspected that she was mine.
“Last February, she disappeared. She had gone to Bath with one of her friends. For eight months, I knew nothing about her till the day of the picnic last fall which I had to cancel. She was with child.”
“Good heavens!” cried Elinor. “Could it be! Could Willoughby…”
“Yes, he had left the girl, whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation of utmost distress, with no credible home, no help, no friends. He left her promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.”
Elinor’s thanks followed this speech with grateful earnestness. She expected material advantage to Marianne, from the communication. He put an end to his visit, leaving Elinor full of compassion and esteem for him.
Emotion: empathy
Insight: 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 knows Willoughby well, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust…”
Wow! What a tale of sorrow and heartbreak and misery! Colonel Brandon lost the love of his life to a sinful lifestyle after her divorce from his brother and eventual death. And then to have her daughter be seduced and become pregnant by Willoughby exposes his low character and deviant, sexual promiscuity. Willoughby left the girl, only fourteen, to fend for herself. And Colonel Brandon is sharing this story only because he loves Marianne and hopes that it will help her to stop trying to justify Willoughby for his behavior towards her.
May we be less quick to share our passions than Marianne. She completely gave her heart to a man who did not deserve her affections. His selfish character, his easiness to leave a young girl pregnant while wooing Marianne and then to move on to Miss Grey and her fifty-thousand pounds lays open to disdain all who know of him. Let us be diligent to guard our own purity and be cautious to give our love to someone who has little respect for purity. And may we be open to adopt the changes we need to make, once we learn the truth of someone’s real character.
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