Emma (65 page)

Emma amused herself by protesting that it was very extraordinary, indeed, and that she had not a syllable to say for him.

“I cannot imagine,” said Mrs Elton, feeling the indignity as a wife ought to do, “I cannot imagine how he could do such a thing by you, of all people in the world! The very last person whom one should expect to be forgotten! My dear Mr E, he must have left a message for you, I am sure he must. Not even Knightley could be so very eccentric, and his servants forgot it. Depend upon it, that was the case, and very likely to happen with the Donwell servants, who are all, I have often observed, extremely awkward and remiss. I am sure I would not have such a creature as his Harry stand at our sideboard for any consideration. And as for Mrs Hodges, Wright holds her very cheap indeed. She promised Wright a receipt, and never sent it.”

“I met William Larkins,” continued Mr Elton, “as I got near the house, and he told me I should not find his master at home, but I did not believe him. William seemed rather out of humour. He did not know what was come to his master lately, he said, but he could hardly ever get the speech of him. I have nothing to do with William’s wants, but it really is of very great importance that
I
should see Knightley today, and it becomes a matter therefore of very serious inconvenience that I should have had this hot walk to no purpose.”

Emma felt that she could not do better than go home directly. In all probability she was at this very time waited for there, and Mr Knightley might be preserved from sinking deeper in aggression towards Mr Elton, if not towards William Larkins.

She was pleased on taking leave to find Miss Fairfax determined to attend her out of the room, to go with her even downstairs. It gave her an opportunity which she immediately made use of to say, “It is as well, perhaps, that I have not had the possibility. Had you not been surrounded by other friends, I might have been tempted to introduce a subject, to ask questions, to speak more openly than might have been strictly correct. I feel that I should certainly have been impertinent.”

“Oh!” cried Jane, with a blush and a hesitation which Emma thought infinitely more becoming to her than all the elegance of all her usual composure. “There would have been no danger. The danger would have been of my wearying you. You could not have gratified me more than by expressing an interest. Indeed, Miss Woodhouse”—speaking more collectedly—“with the consciousness which I have of misconduct, very great misconduct, it is particularly consoling to me to know that those of my friends, whose good opinion is most worth preserving, are not disgusted to such a degree as to—I have not time for half that I could wish to say. I long to make apologies, excuses, to urge something for myself. I feel it so very due. But, unfortunately—in short, if your compassion does not stand my friend—”

“Oh! You are too scrupulous, indeed you are,” cried Emma warmly, and taking her hand. “You owe me no apologies, and everybody to whom you might be supposed to owe them, is so perfectly satisfied, so delighted even—”

“You are very kind, but I know what my manners were to you. So cold and artificial! I had always a part to act. It was a life of deceit! I know that I must have disgusted you.”

“Pray say no more. I feel that all the apologies should be on my side. Let us forgive each other at once. We must do whatever is to be done quickest, and I think our feelings will lose no time there. I hope you have pleasant accounts from Windsor?”

“Very.”

“And the next news, I suppose, will be, that we are to lose you—just as I begin to know you.”

“Oh, as to all that, of course nothing can be thought of yet. I am here till claimed by Colonel and Mrs Campbell.”

“Nothing can be actually settled yet, perhaps,” replied Emma, smiling, “but, excuse me, it must be thought of.”

The smile was returned as Jane answered, “You are very right, it has been thought of. And I will own to you—I am sure it will be safe—that so far as our living with Mr Churchill at Enscombe, it is settled. There must be three months, at least, of deep mourning, but when they are over, I imagine there will be nothing more to wait for.”

“Thank you, thank you. This is just what I wanted to be assured of. Oh, if you knew how much I love everything that is decided and open! Goodbye, goodbye.”

Chapter Seventeen

Mrs Weston’s friends were all made happy by her safety, and if the satisfaction of her well-doing could be increased to Emma, it was by knowing her to be the mother of a little girl. She had been decided in wishing for a Miss Weston. She would not acknowledge that it was with any view of making a match for her hereafter with either of Isabella’s sons, but she was convinced that a daughter would suit both father and mother best. It would be a great comfort to Mr Weston, as he grew older—and even Mr Weston might be growing older ten years hence—to have his fireside enlivened by the sports and the nonsense, the freaks and the fancies of a child never banished from home, and Mrs Weston—no one could doubt that a daughter would be most to her, and it would be quite a pity that anyone who so well knew how to teach should not have their powers in exercise again.

“She has had the advantage, you know, of practising on me,” she continued, “like La Baronne d’Almane on La Comtesse d’Ostalis, in Madame de Genlis’ Adelaide and Theodore, and we shall now see her own little Adelaide educated on a more perfect plan.”

“That is,” replied Mr Knightley, “she will indulge her even more than she did you, and believe that she does not indulge her at all. It will be the only difference.”

“Poor child!” cried Emma. “At that rate, what will become of her?”

“Nothing very bad. The fate of thousands. She will be disagreeable in infancy, and correct herself as she grows older. I am losing all my bitterness against spoilt children, my dearest Emma. I who am owing all my happiness to
you
, would not it be horrible ingratitude in me to be severe on them?” He took her hand, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. His eyes conveyed any number of deeper promises that he wished to carry out, but which Emma had asked him to withhold until after the wedding.

Emma blushed prettily, laughed, and replied, “But I had the assistance of all your endeavours to counteract the indulgence of other people. I doubt whether my own sense would have corrected me without it.”

“Do you? I have no doubt. Nature gave you understanding, Miss Taylor gave you principles. You must have done well. My interference was quite as likely to do harm as good. It was very natural for you to say, ‘What right has he to lecture me?’ and I am afraid very natural for you to feel that it was done in a disagreeable manner. I do not believe I did you any good. The good was all to myself, by making you an object of the tenderest affection to me. I could not think about you so much without doting on you, faults and all, and by dint of fancying so many errors, have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least.”

“I am sure you were of use to me,” cried Emma. “I was very often influenced rightly by you—oftener than I would own at the time. I am very sure you did me good. And if poor little Anna Weston is to be spoiled, it will be the greatest humanity in you to do as much for her as you have done for me, except falling in love with her when she is thirteen.”

“How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your saucy looks—‘Mr Knightley, I am going to do so-and-so, papa says I may, or I have Miss Taylor’s leave’—something which you knew I did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad feelings instead of one.”

“What an amiable creature I was! No wonder you should hold my speeches in such affectionate remembrance.”

“‘Mr Knightley’. You always called me ‘Mr Knightley’, and from habit, it has not so very formal a sound. And yet it is formal. I want you to call me something else, but I do not know what.”

“I remember once calling you ‘George,’ in one of my amiable fits, about ten years ago. I did it because I thought it would offend you, but as you made no objection, I never did it again.”

“And cannot you call me ‘George’ now?”

“Impossible! I never can call you anything but ‘Mr Knightley’. I will not promise even to equal the elegant terseness of Mrs Elton, by calling you Mr K. But I will promise,” she added presently, laughing and blushing, “I will promise to call you once by your Christian name. I do not say when, but perhaps you may guess where, in the building in which N takes M for better, for worse.”

Emma grieved that she could not be more openly just to one important service which his better sense would have rendered her, to the advice which would have saved her from the worst of all her womanly follies—her wilful intimacy with Harriet Smith. But it was too tender a subject. She could not enter on it. Harriet was very seldom mentioned between them. This on his side might merely proceed from her not being thought of, but Emma was rather inclined to attribute it to delicacy, and a suspicion from some appearances that their friendship were declining. She was aware herself that parting under any other circumstances, they certainly should have corresponded more, and that her intelligence would not have rested, as it now almost wholly did, on Isabella’s letters. He might observe that it was so. The pain of being obliged to practise concealment towards him was very little inferior to the pain of having made Harriet unhappy.

Isabella sent quite as good an account of her visitor as could be expected. On her first arrival she had thought her out of spirits, which appeared perfectly natural as there was a dentist to be consulted, but since that business had been over, she did not appear to find Harriet different from what she had known her before. Isabella, to be sure, was no very quick observer, yet if Harriet had not been equal to playing with the children, it would not have escaped her. Emma’s comforts and hopes were most agreeably carried on by Harriet’s being to stay longer, her fortnight was likely to be a month at least. Mr and Mrs John Knightley were to come down in August, and she was invited to remain till they could bring her back.

“John does not even mention your friend,” said Mr Knightley. “Here is his answer, if you like to see it.”

It was the answer to the communication of his intended marriage. Emma accepted it with a very eager hand, with an impatience all alive to know what he would say about it, and not at all checked by hearing that her friend was unmentioned.

“John enters like a brother into my happiness,” continued Mr Knightley, “but he is no complimenter, and though I well know him to have, likewise, a most brotherly affection for you, he is so far from making flourishes that any other young woman might think him rather cool in her praise. But I am not afraid of your seeing what he writes.”

“He writes like a sensible man,” replied Emma, when she had read the letter. “I honour his sincerity. It is very plain that he considers the good fortune of the engagement as all on my side, but that he is not without hope of my growing, in time, as worthy of your affection, as you think me already. Had he said anything to bear a different construction, I should not have believed him.”

“My Emma, he means no such thing. He only means—”

“He and I should differ very little in our estimation of the two,” interrupted she, with a sort of serious smile. “Much less, perhaps, than he is aware of, if we could enter without ceremony or reserve on the subject.”

“Emma, my dear Emma—”

“Oh!” she cried with more thorough gaiety. “If you fancy your brother does not do me justice, only wait till my dear father is in the secret, and hear his opinion. Depend upon it, he will be much farther from doing
you
justice. He will think all the happiness, all the advantage, on your side of the question, all the merit on mine. I wish I may not sink into ‘poor Emma’ with him at once. His tender compassion towards oppressed worth can go no farther.”

“Ah!” he cried. “I wish your father might be half as easily convinced as John will be of our having every right that equal worth can give to be happy together. I am amused by one part of John’s letter—did you notice it?—where he says that my information did not take him wholly by surprise, that he was rather in expectation of hearing something of the kind.”

“If I understand your brother, he only means so far as your having some thoughts of marrying. He had no idea of me. He seems perfectly unprepared for that.”

“Yes, yes—but I am amused that he should have seen so far into my feelings. What has he been judging by? I am not conscious of any difference in my spirits or conversation that could prepare him at this time for my marrying any more than at another. But it was so, I suppose. I dare say there was a difference when I was staying with them the other day. I believe I did not play with the children quite so much as usual. I remember one evening the poor boys saying, ‘Uncle seems always tired now’.”

The time was coming when the news must spread farther, and other persons’ reception of it tried. As soon as Mrs Weston was sufficiently recovered to admit Mr Woodhouse’s visits, Emma having it in view that her gentle reasonings should be employed in the cause, resolved first to announce it at home then at Randalls. But how to break it to her father at last! She had bound herself to do it in such an hour of Mr Knightley’s absence, or when it came to the point her heart would have failed her and she must have put it off, but Mr Knightley was to come at such a time, and follow up the beginning she was to make.

She was forced to speak, and to speak cheerfully too. She must not make it a more decided subject of misery to him by a melancholy tone herself. She must not appear to think it a misfortune. With all the spirits she could command, she prepared him first for something strange, then in a few words said that if his consent and approbation could be obtained—which she trusted would be attended with no difficulty, since it was a plan to promote the happiness of all—she and Mr Knightley meant to marry, by which means Hartfield would receive the constant addition of that person’s company whom she knew he loved, next to his daughters and Mrs Weston, best in the world.