Emma in Love (13 page)

Was it this, Emma pondered long, which had continued the union of Mr. Knightley and Miss Woodhouse in the same vein as it had been since she could remember, as a child? With George the uncle of his brother John's children, as they increased in number and he aged, a bachelor; and Emma their young aunt? Was it the failure to take a journey away from Mr. Woodhouse that accounted for Mr. Knightley's enduring propensity to blame and praise her, however he might try to rid himself of the habit? Was it because the couple had remained in her father's house – though the responsibility was theirs, to care for him – which had kept the temperature of the marriage low? They were friends; they
were
brother and sister; Emma, with the greatest bitterness she had known, saw it all now.

So the image of the never-visited sea obtruded yet again, and of two women, both lovely, but one of a great and sensational beauty, as they stood on Weymouth sands. Poor Jane, thought Emma; she will need to find a husband soon if she is to elude the advances of this woman from across the sea. And she smiled at herself for the first time that day, in the glass that had been her husband's mother's – just as this bedchamber, where
Emma slept always unaccompanied, had been Mrs. Knightley's own. She smiled, because she knew she must discover instantly how Mrs. Weston had come to be apprised of the secrets of the Frenchwoman's life; and that she would go to Randalls now, whether the arrangements for the dinner were delayed or no. Emma smiled also, because, if there was one thing she hated, it was concealment and secrecy. And, while visiting Mrs. Weston, she might come to understand – or so she dimly felt – not just the truth of the friendship between Jane Fairfax and the Baroness d'Almane, but also the secrets of her own heart.

It was not so simple an accomplishment, to leave a house such as Donwell Abbey when a dinner party was in preparation, as the mistress of the Abbey might have hoped.

There came a further plea for guidance from Mrs. Hodges on the subject of pastry, and Mrs. Bates's teeth, last described at some length by Miss Bates on the occasion of an afternoon visit, where rock cakes had been served along with the lemonade, and which had threatened to extract the old lady's remaining specimens; to this Emma had replied, with all the placid assurance of one who thinks of little but the dental predicaments of her guests, that the pastries should be made as light as possible. She wished to demonstrate to
a French visitor to Highbury that pastry was not an art exclusively reserved for the Gallic race: if necessary, Mrs. Hodges should try her hand at
mille feuilles
and
vol-au-vent
, and place chicken in a béchamel sauce between the exquisitely thin wafers.

As she reached the hall, there came Mr. Knightley from the library: however softly Emma walked, she knew he sensed her as she passed; and, if she might like him for it on most days, today she uttered a stifled exclamation of annoyance when the door opened and her husband came out, followed by his brother John Knightley. The latter was, as he would be found to be every day, in an explosively ill humour: even his pipe had been extinguished. He held in his hands a thick ledger, which he carried before him like a tombstone.

“My dear Emma,” said Mr. Knightley, who did not see the look of anger on his brother's face, as John stood behind him, in the doorway, “I have been meaning for some time now, to give you certain items—” and he stepped forward to take her hand. Unthinkingly, she flinched away from him. “You are correct, to wonder why I have not thought of it before,” cried Mr. Knightley, who was quick at first to show his pain at this rebuff; but then covered it over with a step backwards into the library and a disappearance from sight. This move left John Knightley and Emma standing and staring at each other: Emma wished herself at Randalls,
if not an hundred miles away from her brother-in-law. But the thought came to her, that any match Mr. Knightley might hope to make, between his brother and the French woman, was doomed to failure from the start. It was laughable, to imagine Elise seeing John Knightley in any favourable sense; and if Emma had found the opportunity to indulge her desire to laugh, she would have done so.

Mr. Knightley reappeared. He frowned at his brother; but, John Knightley being incapable of taking any hint, whether agreeable or otherwise, remained exactly where he stood, his eyes fastened this time on the red leather box, the covering extremely worn and antique, which Mr. Knightley held in his hands. It was evident, even to Emma in her state of preoccupation, that the box had been removed from the safe in the library that very morning, and had lain on the desk between Mr. Knightley and his brother; for John Knightley examined the box with a greedy, almost menacing air; and at one point it seemed probable that he would lay down his ledger and make a petulant demand for old Mrs. Knightley's jewel casket and its contents.

This was what it was though Emma had seen it only once, just before she was married and installed at Donwell Abbey. Mr. Knightley, smiling in a very fatherly fashion, had warned her playfully not to try to enter the safe – “but the jewels that are here, loveliest Emma,
were my mother's, and will henceforth be yours”; and only a complete lack of interest in baubles and decorations on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Knightley both, had resulted in the family heirlooms remaining where they were during all of the four years since the marriage of the squire of Donwell to Miss Woodhouse. Indeed, Emma had worn the tiara on her wedding day – she recalled a very fine strand of pearls, which had also graced her bridal dress – but there had been a dearth of occasions, ever since, at Highbury, that called for the wearing of jewellery— and, as Emma did not care to emulate the customs of Mrs. Elton – there had been none at which she would have felt comfortable with the grandeur and old-fashioned settings of old Mrs. Knightley's gems.

“For our party tonight, dear Emma,” said Mr. Knightley, who saw Emma smile at him – for she felt ashamed of her clear desire to escape the purlieus of the Abbey; and now, for the first time in her life, desired to conceal her real wishes from him. “It occurred to me – as we are so many at dinner – you might like to wear the pearls – and indeed, so I am told, pearls are in need of constant contact with the lovely skin of the wearer—” He broke off, and, also unusually for him, he blushed. John Knightley, who muttered something to the effect that his Isabella could well have worn the pearl necklace if there had been no use for it at the Abbey, now at last
took his leave; bearing his ledger, he made his way to his room. Emma could do little but pretend relief at being left alone with Mr. Knightley; this did not prevent her from reflecting that something was afoot between the brothers, which had resulted in bad blood; and she could not help feeling that John Knightley had indeed demanded the jewellery to which he, as younger son, had no right in the family estate; while his brother George, in refusing him, had resolved to present it to Emma, as an irrevocable step.

“You say nothing, dearest Emma,” said Mr. Knightley, his face still exhibiting the signs of anxiety she had seen there before. Did he fear she had no need of him; that, like a child who has learnt to weather a storm, she had found calm within, despite the tempests of the night before? How little he knows me, Emma thought; and then was forced, from the sheer need for honesty that was ever in her nature, to amend this: how little he knows me
now
. My thoughts were not with him: indeed, he does know his Emma well enough to sense their absence since the return from the walk to the Abdys' cottage, and the Vicarage. And I go walking again, Emma's musings continued; yet my journey does not concern Mr. Knightley or the Donwell Abbey estate one jot. She felt no guilt at this, as she remembered how she had suffered a strange absence of guilt, or of concern for her life, in the wildest passage of the storm.

“You shall choose a new setting – this diadem will look fine in your hair, Emma,” said Mr. Knightley, lifting an arc of stones, dull with disuse, from the velvet interior of the box. “But for tonight, I hope and trust you will wish to wear the pearls. Say you will, Emma, it would have given pleasure to my mother. You will be the cynosure of all eyes.”

Emma saw he fumbled, and blushed again as he pulled the strand from its resting place; and the thought came to her irresistibly that Mr. Knightley was no longer young: she thought of a painting, or a cartoon, where an elderly admirer with his gouty hands tries in vain to fasten a clasp at a young beauty's neck.

“And where do you go, at this early hour?” continued Mr. Knightley; Emma detected a note in his voice that was distinctly arch. He cannot show his fear of losing my affection for him, she thought; but no answering compassion came. With a coolness of which she would not have been capable even two days back, she replied that she went to Randalls; the day promised to be hot; and she had every wish to go there and back across the fields, before the lack of shade would send her into the woods, where she had no desire to go. “You are right, Emma,” said Mr. Knightley gravely; “you have not forgot the gypsies which came to plague poor Harriet Smith when she went walking there. At this time of year, however Larkins may try to keep them out, they do
return; and I would not have you frightened by the ruffians, for anything.”

Emma could not answer that her fear of the seclusion of the woods lay in a fear of her own, newly-discovered and unowned passion: she would not walk alone with a certain person.— She felt the spring of the overhanging branch, as it touched her face. She felt the change to lips, dry and hot, that came close to hers and brushed her cheek. She must walk in open fields.

“Why do you not take Harriet with you this morning, my dear?” said Mr. Knightley. It was as if some part of his mind was conscious of the battle which waged inside his wife; and he tried both to fight and to assuage it.

Emma shook her head. She could have smiled, to be reminded of her friendship with mild little Harriet Martin: why, once she had attempted to marry the girl to every bachelor in Highbury; but had she not herself found happiness in those soft blue eyes? Where was that feeling now? She was hard put to recall it, she must own.

Yet, as Mr. Knightley spoke, Harriet Martin did indeed materialise, at the tall oak door to the Abbey, and linger on the flagstones, uncertain whether or not she might come in; and for a moment Emma suspected her husband of summoning her, so that thoughts of another might be banished before they could take a stronger hold. But this idea she banished in turn: Harriet came of her own free will; she was walking in the direction of
Randalls, for she had some ribbon she knew would do very well for Mrs. Weston's adorable little girl; “and I am not of an age to wear such a pale pink, Mrs. Knightley,” cried the artless creature, holding up a length of the pastel ribbon to her face. “My husband dear Robert does not say so, but I know you will agree; this ribbon is for a child, is that not so?”

Emma did not know how to reply. Harriet seemed indeed a child, as she stood and simpered in the hall. How Emma could have spent so many hours in her company was a puzzle, indeed.

“Now you have a shady walk, Emma!” cried Mr. Knightley; and Emma knew he was relieved for other reasons than the lack of sun on her fair skin. “Off you go, the two of you,” he persevered, with a greater show of confidence. “I will see you, Emma, at midday, I have no doubt. There are arrangements – new arrangements – and you have not seen the half of them, my dear.”

Emma had no way of imagining to what Mr. Knightley might refer. He had made his habitual face, on having to move his mother's table from the library to the dining-room – but it was still in place, and she assumed he would make a great deal of the move once again, and exact a placement of the guests from her, before moving the larger and smaller chairs, which were as much a part of the old Abbey as was the Knightley family itself. Emma, with a show of friendship, assured both Mr.
Knightley and Harriet Martin that she would not be gone many hours.

“But I go alone,” she said, and with an unaccustomed sharpness, which she was unable to prevent; and which, as she saw, offended poor Harriet as deeply as Mr. Knightley had a short time earlier been hurt to the quick. “I go so fast. I am taller than you, dear Harriet, and with longer legs—”

No amount of excuses could dissuade Mr. Knightley and Mrs. Martin from standing by the Abbey door with long faces, as she went. Emma reflected that she had never felt so trapped, as she was today: watched, wondered over; wanted back in the home. For this reason she increased her pace. A sun even hotter than the one of the day before gathered in strength as she walked across the fields; there was no sign of last night's storm; and the leaves on the trees in the woodland which bordered Mr. Knightley's fields were turning to a brown and orange already, in the drought.

She did not turn once, to see if she was still perceived, and within ten minutes the roof of Randalls came into sight – as did Mr. Weston himself, as robust and genial as the bright day which sent him out to inspect his small acreage, on the edge of the Abbey fields.

Great was Emma's desire to escape Mr. Weston, however often he repeated he was back much earlier than he had expected, from London; and delighted to find her here. She found to her shame that she searched for a ruse in order to rid herself of him – as she had Mr. Knightley and Harriet, on the steps of Donwell. Here, however, the plea of a superior fastness of movement would not do the trick; for it was at Randalls that Emma wished to remain, until her questions on the subject of the Baroness were answered; it was more a matter of feigning the need for remaining stationary than the contrary, which occupied Emma's imaginings.

“I daresay you are a little disconcerted, Mrs. Knightley,” Mr. Weston began, before Emma could confront him with the absolute necessity of going in to the house to find his wife, bringing her out, and leaving them both alone here. “You must think my son a peculiarly heartless young man.— No, I will take no polite denial. You think ill of Frank, dear Emma, for breaking the heart of Jane Fairfax, and finding the temerity to visit us here while she stays at the Vicarage. Let me assure you that the little party from Enscombe set off without the least idea that Miss Fairfax would be at Highbury! Poor Frank went quite green when my wife was constrained to pass the information to him, upon arrival.”