The husband had died just in time to be spared the full knowledge of
it. They had previously known embarrassments enough to try the
friendship of their friends, and to prove that Mr Elliot's had better
not be tried; but it was not till his death that the wretched state of
his affairs was fully known. With a confidence in Mr Elliot's regard,
more creditable to his feelings than his judgement, Mr Smith had
appointed him the executor of his will; but Mr Elliot would not act,
and the difficulties and distress which this refusal had heaped on her,
in addition to the inevitable sufferings of her situation, had been
such as could not be related without anguish of spirit, or listened to
without corresponding indignation.
Anne was shewn some letters of his on the occasion, answers to urgent
applications from Mrs Smith, which all breathed the same stern
resolution of not engaging in a fruitless trouble, and, under a cold
civility, the same hard-hearted indifference to any of the evils it
might bring on her. It was a dreadful picture of ingratitude and
inhumanity; and Anne felt, at some moments, that no flagrant open crime
could have been worse. She had a great deal to listen to; all the
particulars of past sad scenes, all the minutiae of distress upon
distress, which in former conversations had been merely hinted at, were
dwelt on now with a natural indulgence. Anne could perfectly
comprehend the exquisite relief, and was only the more inclined to
wonder at the composure of her friend's usual state of mind.
There was one circumstance in the history of her grievances of
particular irritation. She had good reason to believe that some
property of her husband in the West Indies, which had been for many
years under a sort of sequestration for the payment of its own
incumbrances, might be recoverable by proper measures; and this
property, though not large, would be enough to make her comparatively
rich. But there was nobody to stir in it. Mr Elliot would do nothing,
and she could do nothing herself, equally disabled from personal
exertion by her state of bodily weakness, and from employing others by
her want of money. She had no natural connexions to assist her even
with their counsel, and she could not afford to purchase the assistance
of the law. This was a cruel aggravation of actually straitened means.
To feel that she ought to be in better circumstances, that a little
trouble in the right place might do it, and to fear that delay might be
even weakening her claims, was hard to bear.