Emma in Love (7 page)

The wind, having got up, redoubled its strength; and both Emma and Harriet were forced to hold down their hats; while, this time unmistakably, the refrains of a piano sounded even at the furthest limit of the shrubbery, and along with it a good number of youthful voices, singing in unison.

“Why, it is the ‘
pont d'Avignon
',” cried Harriet. “I am
so very partial to that song, Mrs. Knightley. It does make me wish Mr. Martin would want to travel abroad – like Mr. Knightley once did—”

Emma frowned; and had her poor little friend dared, she would have said she scowled. References to Mr. Knightley's aptitude for travel as a young man were, it seemed, as unwelcome as the proposition that the Baroness d'Almane visit Emma's school. Not for the first time since the occasion of their marriages four years ago, Harriet reflected that there was a quality she might call static, had the idea or the term been known to her, in Emma and in her union with Mr. Knightley. Why did she not wish to gallivant somewhere abroad with her husband – they had not even taken a wedding journey of any adventurous nature, having waited until it was possible to leave Mr. Woodhouse for but a fortnight's absence, and then for a tour of the seaside! Even this short journey became impossible, when Mr. Woodhouse's chicken house was broken into and several of his fowls taken. Mr Knightley and his bride were needed at home. There was no change to be noted at the Abbey, either: Emma had gone from a house unaltered since the death of her mother, to the permanence of Donwell Abbey. Harriet wondered if she knew she was in a different phase of life, now, to the one she had enjoyed as Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield. Mr. Knightley was no more – and no less – than a father to her, in reality.

Such were Harriet's thoughts and musings, though her fear and admiration for her friend would not have permitted her to sum them up thus. Perfection was Mrs. Knightley of Donwell: it was only on occasions such as this one that a glimmer of suspicion entered the young countrywoman's mind, the suspicion being that Emma was altogether too rigorous in the application of her moral and practical code; and should enjoy herself sometimes, with the sense of mischief she so frequently demonstrated in the days before marriage to Mr. Knightley.

As for Emma, she seemed to think of the music and singing from her old home as almost a sacrilege; and it was only after Harriet Martin cajoled her, that she resolved to stay where she was, despite the wind and its irresistible message from France. “You are so very accomplished, dear Mrs. Knightley – you have brought your crayons all the way here and everyone awaits your delightful sketch … Why, since you last sat here, the copper beech is down in the storm and there is an entirely new prospect, across the village. We all await your rendering of it, Mrs. Knightley!”

Harriet cried out that the wind brought the hour, in the chimes of the church clock by the Vicarage – that it was grown far later than she had dreamed it to be – that dear Robert awaited her, and she had promised him a shepherd's pie for his midday meal.

“I must fly, Mrs. Knightley. You will promise to show me your delightful sketch when it is done? Oh, look who comes! What a strange coincidence: were we not talking of him this morning as we walked here, though I believe we spoke of Jane Fairfax's French companion more. They say she was abducted, you know – I wished to inform you—”

Emma looked out across the shrubbery, her sensation being that of the listener to tales of imagined beings – Odysseus, maybe, or the hunter Actaeon on his pursuit of the fair Diana – who then sees that mythical being appear in the landscape before him. Her crayon was poised. The background to the picture became of a sudden a great deal more interesting than before; and as the foreground of the anticipated sketch now grew in appeal with the approach of the figure on horseback, she felt all the unexpectedness of gratitude, that she had not gone down to Hartfield to complain of the noise.

A Frenchwoman might be in there, for all she cared, instilling in her nephews and nieces songs they had no ability to understand.

But here, and now drawing level with her as Harriet made off as fast as she could through the beech wood to Donwell, was none other than Captain Brocklehurst, astride a very fine chestnut mare. Mr. Frank Churchill was not with him, was Emma's last conscious thought.

Captain Brocklehurst, dismounting, bowed with a
most particular smile to Mrs. Knightley, and asked if he might witness the sketch of a draughtswoman of whom everyone in Highbury spoke with unstinting praise.

“You do me too much honour, sir,” said Emma; but her eyes danced and her colour – as Harriet would have noted, had she turned in her headlong flight to domestic harmony – turned a most becoming shade of pink.

Human nature is so well inclined to the receiving of compliments, that any amount of annoyance or interference will go unchecked, in order for the succession of pleasant remarks to continue.

So it was, on the rustic bench at Hartfield that day. Songs – and on occasion lively airs played on the pianoforte – emanated with increasing frequency from the open windows of the house. Cheers, of a suspiciously rabble-rousing nature, rose at intervals. Despite all this, Emma could be perceived to be sitting as still as a statue; or, as indeed was the case, as model for the artist's pen: for, while Captain Brocklehurst spoke, he drew; and the expertise and fluency with
which he wielded the crayon, taken slyly from her box, served only as further proof of the extent of connoisseurship of the young man.

“This is an unexpected honour,” the Captain had said, “to find the subject – the most beautiful in Surrey – and to find the means by which I may make an attempt, however humble, to depict her—”

“You must not leave out Box Hill,” said Emma, laughing. “Another famous landmark, Captain. You must not neglect to visit there and to paint – if you are regular with the brush, as I suspect.”

“Indeed, I am; but Box Hill does not have heavenly eyes,” came the reply, with perhaps too practised an ease. “Nor, if I may say so, the distinguished line of neck and head. Ah yes, Mrs. Elton has told us of her husband's travelling to London – before they were married, naturally! – solely in order to have a likeness of you framed, Mrs. Knightley. Is that not the case?”

“No, it is not,” said Emma, who found that laughter was putting her in a better frame of mind than she had known since the disastrous day of John Knightley's accidental meeting with Miss Fairfax – and his subsequent ill humour, which continued to affect her own. “The sketch Mr. Elton took to London was
by
me, I fear;
I
was not the subject. That was Harriet Smith – Mrs. Martin, as she is now.”

“But Mr. Elton took the trouble to go all the way to
the capital for the fair talents of an exceptional person,” put in Captain Brocklehurst, eagerly. “If the portrait he carried showed the head of a Miss Smith, it was of the head of a Miss Woodhouse that he dreamed when he undertook the mission.”

Emma could not help smiling at the dexterity of her portraitist's extrication from his
gaffe
: she wondered, however, why he had come to be on intimate terms with Mrs. Elton, and how.

“If you will be good enough to turn a little in the direction of the orchard, Mrs. Knightley. Ah yes, it is most affecting. It is sad indeed that Mr. Woodhouse, of whom I have heard so much, cannot be here to see his daughter drawn, rather than always drawing: complimented instead of constantly working for the benefit of others, however ungrateful they might be!”

Emma found her complacency brought to an abrupt halt by this tone of familiarity. Frank Churchill must be the one who confided stories of the past, to his brother-in-law: Emma knew him as indiscreet, and paused, thinking back on those matters, not secret but not in need of an airing, either, which had constituted her past life at Hartfield.

“Do not be concerned, please, Mrs. Knightley – I have brought a frown to your lovely face and I must wait until it is gone before I continue to draw it,” cried the Captain, laying down the crayon. “Be assured that
instinct guides me, not tittle-tattle: I saw you by the door of a simple house in the street at Highbury – at Miss Bates's. There, I have said it. I saw your degree of concern for others, your desire that lives not blessed as yours has been should not founder on the rocks of poverty or misfortune.”

“Indeed it is so,” said Emma sighing; and she could not help herself from reflecting that Captain Brocklehurst was very handsome – more handsome, by far, than Mr. Churchill, there was no denying it. That he was more sensible also to the efforts made by Emma to assist those with fewer advantages than herself only caused an increase in the good looks of the new visitor to Randalls. It was a pity, a very great pity, came the next thought, that Captain Brocklehurst could not be invited to the dinner at Donwell Abbey – an occasion in which Emma had lost all interest, since the evident mutual dislike of John Knightley and Miss Fairfax. The whole party was a grave mistake. If Mr. Knightley had permitted it, she would have found a reason to cancel the evening altogether.

“The frown of the goddess does not diminish,” said the Captain softly. “There are too many responsibilities, on such slender shoulders. Shall we walk in the beech woods? Now your companion has fled, may I accompany you to the Abbey?”

Emma shook her head, but rose nevertheless and
made her way down the winding path in the shrubbery towards the house. As she went, a teasing, happy, rebellious jig burst out of the drawing-room windows; and she halted. The Captain soon caught up with her. “Those will be the melodies Miss Fairfax's friend has brought with her. She was in exile in Switzerland – so she informed Mrs. Elton. A very dramatic life indeed, so I understand – and still so young!”

Emma, who often reflected that her life lacked drama in the extreme, stopped again, and turned to look up at the Captain, giving him a demure glance.

“But the style of her life … her adventures in wild lands … has told on her,” said Captain Brocklehurst in a grave tone. “She has not the freshness – the incomparable loveliness—” He broke off; it was too evident he referred to Emma. Blushing at her determination to extract a further compliment from him, she walked on.

“Let me say, dear Mrs. Knightley, that Frank is devastated by the fate of Miss Fairfax.”

Emma felt, for a moment, the brush of the Captain's fingers against her hand: to disguise her knowledge of it, she pulled a head of lavender from the low hedge by the path and lifted it to her nostrils. She had not wished to speak of the scandal of Highbury – as it remained, even after four years. But she had a strong sense at that moment that there would be a scandal this summer, which would make the jilt of Miss Fairfax by Frank
Churchill a small misdemeanour of the past. What this would be, she could not say; but, standing now by the tall yew at the side of Hartfield, and with a waltz floating out from the windows beyond, her sense was that here and now was the beginning of the imbroglio: it was to do with the music, and the strong scent of lavender, and the sudden feeling that freedom lay somewhere in the future, even if she had not known how to embrace it in the past.

“My sister was as good as ordered by our father to marry Frank,” continued the Captain. “I have a duty to tell you this, Mrs. Knightley, for you have Miss Fairfax's interests at heart, I know. It must be hard indeed for the poor girl to have us come here to Randalls. But it was so long since Mr. Weston had seen his son. It was not known that Mrs. Smallridge would invite herself for the summer to the Vicarage. When Mrs. Weston wrote to Frank of it, he asked me to come south with him, as an aid in an uncomfortable situation. I was happy to assist him.— If I do, which I doubt,” added the charming young man in tones of great modesty. “We can travel about together, you know, Mrs. Knightley – it is less likely that Frank will come face to face with Miss Fairfax. That would be dreadful indeed.”

“Dreadful,” echoed Emma, who had in her mind placed Captain Brocklehurst at her table at Donwell Abbey and made Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill so
little interested in each other that their contiguity was of no importance at all. Now, of course, she saw this as impossible.

“Frank still loves her,” said Captain Brocklehurst in a low voice behind Emma. “It is as hard for him, as it is for Miss Fairfax. And there is no greater pain,” continued the gallant Captain, as the music in the house abruptly stopped and a medley of children's voices called out, as a new game was embarked on, “no more excruciating agony, than to love from afar: to worship and yet not to speak of it. Do not you agree, Mrs. Knightley?”

Great was Emma's consternation when once she had left the environs of Hartfield and run – or walked so rapidly there was no distinguishing it from a full-fledged run – through the beech woods which separated her old home from her new one: new, as still she found it, though there were those recently come to Highbury who had not known a Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield: Mrs. Knightley, staid and well settled at the Abbey, was all they had ever heard.

She was not staid on this occasion. Captain Brocklehurst had been too forward.— Yet each time she upbraided him in her mind, his handsome face obtruded, and she smiled, as she hurried along a path
she took with Harriet, or sometimes with Mrs. Weston, but seldom alone.— He had suggested he accompany her.— No, certainly not! Emma must return to Donwell Abbey without an escort; but she wished from the bottom of her heart that she had not permitted little Mrs. Martin to dash off like that and leave her to her thoughts along the way. He was the handsomest man, certainly, ever to visit Highbury.

There were few pleasant memories, for Emma, of the last quarter of an hour at Hartfield before her abrupt departure. Miss Whynne had stepped out of the French windows to the drawing-room, and had come to the corner of the shrubbery; she had seemed unsurprised to see Mrs. Knightley there, and had paid no attention to Captain Brocklehurst at all. She was so very sorry – one thing had led to another.— The Baroness had brought the Smallridge children— And now here they were, running out to play hunt-the-slipper in the bushes, as Emma would never have permitted in her days as her father's châtelaine. She did hope Mrs. Knightley would understand. As for the music – were they not the liveliest tunes? The Baroness had brought them from France – all committed to memory, dear Mrs. Knightley; not a note written down. Is not it most extraordinary?