Mr. Kendal had never heard the story before, but he remembered many circumstances in corroboration. He knew that Mr. Pringle had a nephew in the army, he recollected that he had made a figure in Maria’s letters to India; and that he had subsequently married a lady in the Mauritius, and settled down on her father’s estate. He testified also to the bright gay youth of poor Maria, and his surprise at the premature loss of beauty and spirits; and from his knowledge of old Mr. Meadows, he believed him capable of such an act of domestic tyranny. Maria had always been looked upon as a mere child, and if her father did not choose to part with her, he would think it for her good, and his own peace, for her not to be aware of the proposal. He was much struck, for he had not suspected his sister-in-law to be capable of such permanent feeling.
‘There was little to help her in driving it away,’ said Albinia. ‘Few occupations or interests, and very little change, to prevent it from preying on her spirits.’
‘True,’ said Mr. Kendal; ‘a narrow education and limited sphere are sad evils in such cases.’
‘Do you think anything can be a cure for disappointment?’ asked Sophy, in such a solemn, earnest tone, that Albinia was disposed to laugh; but she knew that this would be a dire offence, and was much surprised that Sophy had so far broken through her reserve, as to mingle in their conversation on such a subject.
‘Occupation,’ said Mr. Kendal, but speaking rather as if from duty than from conviction. ‘There are many sources of happiness, even if shipwreck have been made on one venture. Your aunt had few resources to which to turn her mind. Every pursuit or study is a help stored up against the vacuity which renders every care more corroding.’
‘Well!’ said Sophy, in her blunt, downright way, ‘I think it would take all the spirit out of everything.’
‘I hope you will never be tried,’ said Mr. Kendal, with a mournful smile, as if he did not choose to confess that she had divined too rightly the probable effect of trouble upon her own temperament.
‘I suppose,’ said Albinia, ‘that the real cure can be but one thing for that, as for any other trouble. I mean, “Thy will be done.” I don’t suppose anything else would give energy to turn to other duties. But it would be more to the purpose to resolve to be more considerate to poor Maria.’
‘I shall never be impatient with her again,’ said Sophy.
And though at first the discovery of so romantic a cause for poor Miss Meadows’s fretfulness dignified it in Sophy’s eyes, yet it did not prove sufficient to make it tolerable when she tormented the window-blinds, teased the fire, was shocked at Sophy’s favourite studies, or insisting on her wishing to see Maria Drury. Nay, the bathos often rendered her petty unconscious provocations the more harassing, and Sophy often felt, in an agony of self-reproach, that she ought to have known herself too well to expect to show forbearance with any one when she was under the influence of ill-temper.