← catalogue

Emma

by Jane Austen · English · Gutenberg #158 · 899,675 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Emma
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Emma

Author: Jane Austen


        
Release date: August 1, 1994 [eBook #158]
                Most recently updated: June 21, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/158

Credits: An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMMA ***




Emma

by Jane Austen


Contents

 VOLUME I.
 CHAPTER I.
 CHAPTER II.
 CHAPTER III.
 CHAPTER IV.
 CHAPTER V.
 CHAPTER VI.
 CHAPTER VII.
 CHAPTER VIII.
 CHAPTER IX.
 CHAPTER X.
 CHAPTER XI.
 CHAPTER XII.
 CHAPTER XIII.
 CHAPTER XIV.
 CHAPTER XV.
 CHAPTER XVI.
 CHAPTER XVII.
 CHAPTER XVIII.

 VOLUME II.
 CHAPTER I.
 CHAPTER II.
 CHAPTER III.
 CHAPTER IV.
 CHAPTER V.
 CHAPTER VI.
 CHAPTER VII.
 CHAPTER VIII.
 CHAPTER IX.
 CHAPTER X.
 CHAPTER XI.
 CHAPTER XII.
 CHAPTER XIII.
 CHAPTER XIV.
 CHAPTER XV.
 CHAPTER XVI.
 CHAPTER XVII.
 CHAPTER XVIII.

 VOLUME III.
 CHAPTER I.
 CHAPTER II.
 CHAPTER III.
 CHAPTER IV.
 CHAPTER V.
 CHAPTER VI.
 CHAPTER VII.
 CHAPTER VIII.
 CHAPTER IX.
 CHAPTER X.
 CHAPTER XI.
 CHAPTER XII.
 CHAPTER XIII.
 CHAPTER XIV.
 CHAPTER XV.
 CHAPTER XVI.
 CHAPTER XVII.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
 CHAPTER XIX.




VOLUME I




CHAPTER I


Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and
happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of
existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very
little to distress or vex her.

She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate,
indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister’s marriage,
been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had
died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance
of her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman
as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.

Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse’s family, less as a
governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly
of Emma. Between _them_ it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even
before Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess,
the mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any
restraint; and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they
had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached,
and Emma doing just what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor’s
judgment, but directed chiefly by her own.

The real evils, indeed, of Emma’s situation were the power of having
rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too
well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to
her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so
unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with
her.

Sorrow came—a gentle sorrow—but not at all in the shape of any
disagreeable consciousness.—Miss Taylor married. It was Miss Taylor’s
loss which first brought grief. It was on the wedding-day of this
beloved friend that Emma first sat in mournful thought of any
continuance. The wedding over, and the bride-people gone, her father
and herself were left to dine together, with no prospect of a third to
cheer a long evening. Her father composed himself to sleep after
dinner, as usual, and she had then only to sit and think of what she
had lost.

The event had every promise of happiness for her friend. Mr. Weston was
a man of unexceptionable character, easy fortune, suitable age, and
pleasant manners; and there was some satisfaction in considering with
what self-denying, generous friendship she had always wished and
promoted the match; but it was a black morning’s work for her. The want
of Miss Taylor would be felt every hour of every day. She recalled her
past kindness—the kindness, the affection of sixteen years—how she had
taught and how she had played with her from five years old—how she had
devoted all her powers to attach and amuse her in health—and how nursed
her through the various illnesses of childhood. A large debt of
gratitude was owing here; but the intercourse of the last seven years,
the equal footing and perfect unreserve which had soon followed
Isabella’s marriage, on their being left to each other, was yet a
dearer, tenderer recollection. She had been a friend and companion such
as few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing
all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and
peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of
hers—one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had
such an affection for her as could never find fault.

How was she to bear the change?—It was true that her friend was going
only half a mile from them; but Emma was aware that great must be the
difference between a Mrs. Weston, only half a mile from them, and a
Miss Taylor in the house; and with all her advantages, natural and
domestic, she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual
solitude. She dearly loved her father, but he was no companion for her.
He could not meet her in conversation, rational or playful.

The evil of the actual disparity in their ages (and Mr. Woodhouse had
not married early) was much increased by his constitution and habits;
for having been a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind
or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though
everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable
temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time.

Her sister, though comparatively but little removed by matrimony, being
settled in London, only sixteen miles off, was much beyond her daily
reach; and many a long October and November evening must be struggled
through at Hartfield, before Christmas brought the next visit from
Isabella and her husband, and their little children, to fill the house,
and give her pleasant society again.

Highbury, the large and populous village, almost amounting to a town,
to which Hartfield, in spite of its separate lawn, and shrubberies, and
name, did really belong, afforded her no equals. The Woodhouses were
first in consequence there. All looked up to them. She had many
acquaintance in the place, for her father was universally civil, but
not one among them who could be accepted in lieu of Miss Taylor for
even half a day. It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but
sigh over it, and wish for impossible things, till her father awoke,
and made it necessary to be cheerful. His spirits required support. He
was a nervous man, easily depressed; fond of every body that he was
used to, and hating to part with them; hating change of every kind.
Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always disagreeable; and he was
by no means yet reconciled to his own daughter’s marrying, nor could
ever speak of her but with compassion, though it had been entirely a
match of affection, when he was now obliged to part with Miss Taylor
too; and from his habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able
to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself, he
was very much disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for
herself as for them, and would have been a great deal happier if she
had spent all the rest of her life at Hartfield. Emma smiled and
chatted as cheerfully as she could, to keep him from such thoughts; but
when tea came, it was impossible for him not to say exactly as he had
said at dinner,

“Poor Miss Taylor!—I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that
Mr. Weston ever thought of her!”

“I cannot agree with you, papa; you know I cannot. Mr. Weston is such a
good-humoured, pleasant, excellent man, that he thoroughly deserves a
good wife;—and you would not have had Miss Taylor live with us for
ever, and bear all my odd humours, when she might have a house of her
own?”

“A house of her own!—But where is the advantage of a house of her own?
This is three times as large.—And you have never any odd humours, my
dear.”

“How often we shall be going to see them, and they coming to see us!—We
shall be always meeting! _We_ must begin; we must go and pay wedding
visit very soon.”

“My dear, how am I to get so far? Randalls is such a distance. I could
not walk half so far.”

“No, papa, nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage,
to be sure.”

“The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to for such a
little way;—and where are the poor horses to be while we are paying our
visit?”

“They are to be put into Mr. Weston’s stable, papa. You know we have
settled all that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Weston last
night. And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going
to Randalls, because of his daughter’s being housemaid there. I only
doubt whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing,
papa. You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you
mentioned her—James is so obliged to you!”

“I am very glad I did think of her. It was very lucky, for I would not
have had poor James think himself slighted upon any account; and I am
sure she will make a very good servant: she is a civil, pretty-spoken
girl; I have a great opinion of her. Whenever I see her, she always
curtseys and asks me how I do, in a very pretty manner; and when you
have had her here to do needlework, I observe she always turns the lock
of the door the right way and never bangs it. I am sure she will be an
excellent servant; and it will be a great comfort to poor Miss Taylor
to have somebody about her that she is used to see. Whenever James goes
over to see his daughter, you know, she will be hearing of us. He will
be able to tell her how we all are.”

Emma spared no exertions to maintain this happier flow of ideas, and
hoped, by the help of backgammon, to get her father tolerably through
the evening, and be attacked by no regrets but her own. The
backgammon-table was placed; but a visitor immediately afterwards
walked in and made it unnecessary.

Mr. Knightley, a sensible man about seven or eight-and-thirty, was not
only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but particularly
connected with it, as the elder brother of Isabella’s husband. He lived
about a mile from Highbury, was a frequent visitor, and always welcome,
and at this time more welcome than usual, as coming directly from their
mutual connexions in London. He had returned to a late dinner, after
some days’ absence, and now walked up to Hartfield to say that all were
well in Brunswick Square. It was a happy circumstance, and animated Mr.
Woodhouse for some time. Mr. Knightley had a cheerful manner, which
always did him good; and his many inquiries after “poor Isabella” and
her children were answered most satisfactorily. When this was over, Mr.
Woodhouse gratefully observed, “It is very kind of you, Mr. Knightley,
to come out at this late hour to call upon us. I am afraid you must
have had a shocking walk.”

“Not at all, sir. It is a beautiful moonlight night; and so mild that I
must draw back from your great fire.”

“But you must have found it very damp and dirty. I wish you may not
catch cold.”

“Dirty, sir! Look at my shoes. Not a speck on them.”

“Well! that is quite surprising, for we have had a vast deal of rain
here. It rained dreadfully hard for half an hour while we were at
breakfast. I wanted them to put off the wedding.”

“By the bye—I have not wished you joy. Being pretty well aware of what
sort of joy you must both be feeling, I have been in no hurry with my
congratulations; but I hope it all went off tolerably well. How did you
all behave? Who cried most?”

“Ah! poor Miss Taylor! ’Tis a sad business.”

“Poor Mr. and Miss Woodhouse, if you please; but I cannot possibly say
‘poor Miss Taylor.’ I have a great regard for you and Emma; but when it
comes to the question of dependence or independence!—At any rate, it
must be better to have only one to please than two.”

“Especially when _one_ of those two is such a fanciful, troublesome
creature!” said Emma playfully. “That is what you have in your head, I
know—and what you would certainly say if my father were not by.”

“I believe it is very true, my dear, indeed,” said Mr. Woodhouse, with
a sigh. “I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome.”

“My dearest papa! You do not think I could mean _you_, or suppose Mr.
Knightley to mean _you_. What a horrible idea! Oh no! I meant only
myself. Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know—in a
joke—it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another.”

Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults
in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them: and
though this was not particularly agreeable to Emma herself, she knew it
would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him
really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by
every body.

“Emma knows I never flatter her,” said Mr. Knightley, “but I meant no
reflection on any body. Miss Taylor has been used to have two persons
to please; she will now have but one. The chances are that she must be
a gainer.”

“Well,” said Emma, willing to let it pass—“you want to hear about the
wedding; and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved
charmingly. Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks:
not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh no; we all felt that
we were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting
every day.”

“Dear Emma bears every thing so well,” said her father. “But, Mr.
Knightley, she is really very sorry to lose poor Miss Taylor, and I am
sure she _will_ miss her more than she thinks for.”

Emma turned away her head, divided between tears and smiles. “It is
impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion,” said Mr.
Knightley. “We should not like her so well as we do, sir, if we could
suppose it; but she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor’s
advantage; she knows how very acceptable it must be, at Miss Taylor’s
time of life, to be settled in a home of her own, and how important to
her to be secure of a comfortable provision, and therefore cannot allow
herself to feel so much pain as pleasure. Every friend of Miss Taylor
must be glad to have her so happily married.”

“And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me,” said Emma, “and a
very considerable one—that I made the match myself. I made the match,
you know, four years ago; and to have it take place, and be proved in
the right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again,
may comfort me for any thing.”

Mr. Knightley shook his head at her. Her father fondly replied, “Ah! my
dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for
whatever you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make any more
matches.”

“I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for
other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world! And after such
success, you know!—Every body said that Mr. Weston would never marry
again. Oh dear, no! Mr. Weston, who had been a widower so long, and who
seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife, so constantly occupied
either in his business in town or among his friends here, always
acceptable wherever he went, always cheerful—Mr. Weston need not spend
a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it. Oh no! Mr.
Weston certainly would never marry again. Some people even talked of a
promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the
uncle not letting him. All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the
subject, but I believed none of it.

“Ever since the day—about four years ago—that Miss Taylor and I met
with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted
away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from
Farmer Mitchell’s, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the
match from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this
instance, dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off
match-making.”

“I do not understand what you mean by ‘success,’” said Mr. Knightley.
“Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately
spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring
about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady’s mind! But
if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it,
means only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, ‘I
think it would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor if Mr. Weston were
to marry her,’ and saying it again to yourself every now and then
afterwards, why do you talk of success? Where is your merit? What are
you proud of? You made a lucky guess; and _that_ is all that can be
said.”

“And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?—I
pity you.—I thought you cleverer—for, depend upon it a lucky guess is
never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my poor
word ‘success,’ which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so
entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures;
but I think there may be a third—a something between the do-nothing and
the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston’s visits here, and given
many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might
not have come to any thing after all. I think you must know Hartfield
enough to comprehend that.”

“A straightforward, open-hearted man like Weston, and a rational,
unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their
own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than
good to them, by interference.”

“Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others,” rejoined
Mr. Woodhouse, understanding but in part. “But, my dear, pray do not
make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up one’s family
circle grievously.”

“Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr.
Elton, papa,—I must look about for a wife for him. There is nobody in
Highbury who deserves him—and he has been here a whole year, and has
fitted up his house so comfortably, that it would be a shame to have
him single any longer—and I thought when he was joining their hands
to-day, he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same
kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and this is
the only way I have of doing him a service.”

“Mr. Elton is a very pretty young man, to be sure, and a very good
young man, and I have a great regard for him. But if you want to shew
him any attention, my dear, ask him to come and dine with us some day.
That will be a much better thing. I dare say Mr. Knightley will be so
kind as to meet him.”

“With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time,” said Mr. Knightley,
laughing, “and I agree with you entirely, that it will be a much better
thing. Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish
and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife. Depend upon it, a
man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself.”




CHAPTER II


Mr. Weston was a native of Highbury, and born of a respectable family,
which for the last two or three generations had been rising into
gentility and property. He had received a good education, but, on
succeeding early in life to a small independence, had become indisposed
for any of the more homely pursuits in which his brothers were engaged,
and had satisfied an active, cheerful mind and social temper by
entering into the militia of his county, then embodied.

Captain Weston was a general favourite; and when the chances of his
military life had introduced him to Miss Churchill, of a great
Yorkshire family, and Miss Churchill fell in love with him, nobody was
surprized, except her brother and his wife, who had never seen him, and
who were full of pride and importance, which the connexion would
offend.

Miss Churchill, however, being of age, and with the full command of her
fortune—though her fortune bore no proportion to the family-estate—was
not to be dissuaded from the marriage, and it took place, to the
infinite mortification of Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, who threw her off
with due decorum. It was an unsuitable connexion, and did not produce
much happiness. Mrs. Weston ought to have found more in it, for she had
a husband whose warm heart and sweet temper made him think every thing
due to her in return for the great goodness of being in love with him;
but though she had one sort of spirit, she had not the best. She had
resolution enough to pursue her own will in spite of her brother, but
not enough to refrain from unreasonable regrets at that brother’s
unreasonable anger, nor from missing the luxuries of her former home.
They lived beyond their income, but still it was nothing in comparison
of Enscombe: she did not cease to love her husband, but she wanted at
once to be the wife of Captain Weston, and Miss Churchill of Enscombe.

Captain Weston, who had been considered, especially by the Churchills,
as making such an amazing match, was proved to have much the worst of
the bargain; for when his wife died, after a three years’ marriage, he
was rather a poorer man than at first, and with a child to maintain.
From the expense of the child, however, he was soon relieved. The boy
had, with the additional softening claim of a lingering illness of his
mother’s, been the means of a sort of reconciliation; and Mr. and Mrs.
Churchill, having no children of their own, nor any other young
creature of equal kindred to care for, offered to take the whole charge
of the little Frank soon after her decease. Some scruples and some
reluctance the widower-father may be supposed to have felt; but as they
were overcome by other considerations, the child was given up to the
care and the wealth of the Churchills, and he had only his own comfort
to seek, and his own situation to improve as he could.

A complete change of life became desirable. He quitted the militia and
engaged in trade, having brothers already established in a good way in
London, which afforded him a favourable opening. It was a concern which
brought just employment enough. He had still a small house in Highbury,
where most of his leisure days were spent; and between useful
occupation and the pleasures of society, the next eighteen or twenty
years of his life passed cheerfully away. He had, by that time,
realised an easy competence—enough to secure the purchase of a little
estate adjoining Highbury, which he had always longed for—enough to
marry a woman as portionless even as Miss Taylor, and to live according
to the wishes of his own friendly and social disposition.

It was now some time since Miss Taylor had begun to influence his
schemes; but as it was not the tyrannic influence of youth on youth, it
had not shaken his determination of never settling till he could
purchase Randalls, and the sale of Randalls was long looked forward to;
but he had gone steadily on, with these objects in view, till they were
accomplished. He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained
his wife; and was beginning a new period of existence, with every
probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through. He had
never been an unhappy man; his own temper had secured him from that,
even in his first marriage; but his second must shew him how delightful
a well-judging and truly amiable woman could be, and must give him the
pleasantest proof of its being a great deal better to choose than to be
chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it.

He had only himself to please in his choice: his fortune was his own;
for as to Frank, it was more than being tacitly brought up as his
uncle’s heir, it had become so avowed an adoption as to have him assume
the name of Churchill on coming of age. It was most unlikely,
therefore, that he should ever want his father’s assistance. His father
had no apprehension of it. The aunt was a capricious woman, and
governed her husband entirely; but it was not in Mr. Weston’s nature to
imagine that any caprice could be strong enough to affect one so dear,
and, as he believed, so deservedly dear. He saw his son every year in
London, and was proud of him; and his fond report of him as a very fine
young man had made Highbury feel a sort of pride in him too. He was
looked on as sufficiently belonging to the place to make his merits and
prospects a kind of common concern.

Mr. Frank Churchill was one of the boasts of Highbury, and a lively
curiosity to see him prevailed, though the compliment was so little
returned that he had never been there in his life. His coming to visit
his father had been often talked of but never achieved.

Now, upon his father’s marriage, it was very generally proposed, as a
most proper attention, that the visit should take place. There was not
a dissentient voice on the subject, either when Mrs. Perry drank tea
with Mrs. and Miss Bates, or when Mrs. and Miss Bates returned the
visit. Now was the time for Mr. Frank Churchill to come among them; and
the hope strengthened when it was understood that he had written to his
new mother on the occasion. For a few days, every morning visit in
Highbury included some mention of the handsome letter Mrs. Weston had
received. “I suppose you have heard of the handsome letter Mr. Frank
Churchill has written to Mrs. Weston? I understand it was a very
handsome letter, indeed. Mr. Woodhouse told me of it. Mr. Woodhouse saw
the letter, and he says he never saw such a handsome letter in his
life.”

It was, indeed, a highly prized letter. Mrs. Weston had, of course,
formed a very favourable idea of the young man; and such a pleasing
attention was an irresistible proof of his great good sense, and a most
welcome addition to every source and every expression of congratulation
which her marriage had already secured. She felt herself a most
fortunate woman; and she had lived long enough to know how fortunate
she might well be thought, where the only regret was for a partial
separation from friends whose friendship for her had never cooled, and
who could ill bear to part with her.

She knew that at times she must be missed; and could not think, without
pain, of Emma’s losing a single pleasure, or suffering an hour’s ennui,
from the want of her companionableness: but dear Emma was of no feeble
character; she was more equal to her situation than most girls would
have been, and had sense, and energy, and spirits that might be hoped
would bear her well and happily through its little difficulties and
privations. And then there was such comfort in the very easy distance
of Randalls from Hartfield, so convenient for even solitary female
walking, and in Mr. Weston’s disposition and circumstances, which would
make the approaching season no hindrance to their spending half the
evenings in the week together.

Her situation was altogether the subject of hours of gratitude to Mrs.
Weston, and of moments only of regret; and her satisfaction—her more
than satisfaction—her cheerful enjoyment, was so just and so apparent,
that Emma, well as she knew her father, was sometimes taken by surprize
at his being still able to pity ‘poor Miss Taylor,’ when they left her
at Randalls in the centre of every domestic comfort, or saw her go away
in the evening attended by her pleasant husband to a carriage of her
own. But never did she go without Mr. Woodhouse’s giving a gentle sigh,
and saying, “Ah, poor Miss Taylor! She would be very glad to stay.”

There was no recovering Miss Taylor—nor much likelihood of ceasing to
pity her; but a few weeks brought some alleviation to Mr. Woodhouse.
The compliments of his neighbours were over; he was no longer teased by
being wished joy of so sorrowful an event; and the wedding-cake, which
had been a great distress to him, was all eat up. His own stomach could
bear nothing rich, and he could never believe other people to be
different from himself. What was unwholesome to him he regarded as
unfit for any body; and he had, therefore, earnestly tried to dissuade
them from having any wedding-cake at all, and when that proved vain, as
earnestly tried to prevent any body’s eating it. He had been at the
pains of consulting Mr. Perry, the apothecary, on the subject. Mr.
Perry was an intelligent, gentlemanlike man, whose frequent visits were
one of the comforts of Mr. Woodhouse’s life; and upon being applied to,
he could not but acknowledge (though it seemed rather against the bias
of inclination) that wedding-cake might certainly disagree with
many—perhaps with most people, unless taken moderately. With such an
opinion, in confirmation of his own, Mr. Woodhouse hoped to influence
every visitor of the newly married pair; but still the cake was eaten;
and there was no rest for his benevolent nerves till it was all gone.

There was a strange rumour in Highbury of all the little Perrys being
seen with a slice of Mrs. Weston’s wedding-cake in their hands: but Mr.
Woodhouse would never believe it.




CHAPTER III


Mr. Woodhouse was fond of society in his own way. He liked very much to
have his friends come and see him; and from various united causes, from
his long residence at Hartfield, and his good nature, from his fortune,
his house, and his daughter, he could command the visits of his own
little circle, in a great measure, as he liked. He had not much
intercourse with any families beyond that circle; his horror of late
hours, and large dinner-parties, made him unfit for any acquaintance
but such as would visit him on his own terms. Fortunately for him,
Highbury, including Randalls in the same parish, and Donwell Abbey in
the parish adjoining, the seat of Mr. Knightley, comprehended many
such. Not unfrequently, through Emma’s persuasion, he had some of the
chosen and the best to dine with him: but evening parties were what he
preferred; and, unless he fancied himself at any time unequal to
company, there was scarcely an evening in the week in which Emma could
not make up a card-table for him.

Real, long-standing regard brought the Westons and Mr. Knightley; and
by Mr. Elton, a young man living alone without liking it, the privilege
of exchanging any vacant evening of his own blank solitude for the
elegancies and society of Mr. Woodhouse’s drawing-room, and the smiles
of his lovely daughter, was in no danger of being thrown away.

After these came a second set; among the most come-at-able of whom were
Mrs. and Miss Bates, and Mrs. Goddard, three ladies almost always at
the service of an invitation from Hartfield, and who were fetched and
carried home so often, that Mr. Woodhouse thought it no hardship for
either James or the horses. Had it taken place only once a year, it
would have been a grievance.

Mrs. Bates, the widow of a former vicar of Highbury, was a very old
lady, almost past every thing but tea and quadrille. She lived with her
single daughter in a very small way, and was considered with all the
regard and respect which a harmless old lady, under such untoward
circumstances, can excite. Her daughter enjoyed a most uncommon degree
of popularity for a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor married.
Miss Bates stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having
much of the public favour; and she had no intellectual superiority to
make atonement to herself, or frighten those who might hate her into
outward respect. She had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her
youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was
devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a
small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and
a woman whom no one named without good-will. It was her own universal
good-will and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved
every body, was interested in every body’s happiness, quicksighted to
every body’s merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and
surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother, and so many good
neighbours and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing. The
simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful
spirit, were a recommendation to every body, and a mine of felicity to
herself. She was a great talker upon little matters, which exactly
suited Mr. Woodhouse, full of trivial communications and harmless
gossip.

Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a School—not of a seminary, or an
establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of
refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant
morality, upon new principles and new systems—and where young ladies
for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity—but a
real, honest, old-fashioned Boarding-school, where a reasonable
quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where
girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into
a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies. Mrs.
Goddard’s school was in high repute—and very deservedly; for Highbury
was reckoned a particularly healthy spot: she had an ample house and
garden, gave the children plenty of wholesome food, let them run about
a great deal in the summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains with
her own hands. It was no wonder that a train of twenty young couple now
walked after her to church. She was a plain, motherly kind of woman,
who had worked hard in her youth, and now thought herself entitled to
the occasional holiday of a tea-visit; and having formerly owed much to
Mr. Woodhouse’s kindness, felt his particular claim on her to leave her
neat parlour, hung round with fancy-work, whenever she could, and win
or lose a few sixpences by his fireside.

These were the ladies whom Emma found herself very frequently able to
collect; and happy was she, for her father’s sake, in the power;
though, as far as she was herself concerned, it was no remedy for the
absence of Mrs. Weston. She was delighted to see her father look
comfortable, and very much pleased with herself for contriving things
so well; but the quiet prosings of three such women made her feel that
every evening so spent was indeed one of the long evenings she had
fearfully anticipated.

As she sat one morning, looking forward to exactly such a close of the
present day, a note was brought from Mrs. Goddard, requesting, in most
respectful terms, to be allowed to bring Miss Smith with her; a most
welcome request: for Miss Smith was a girl of seventeen, whom Emma knew
very well by sight, and had long felt an interest in, on account of her
beauty. A very gracious invitation was returned, and the evening no
longer dreaded by the fair mistress of the mansion.

Harriet Smith was the natural daughter of somebody. Somebody had placed
her, several years back, at Mrs. Goddard’s school, and somebody had
lately raised her from the condition of scholar to that of
parlour-boarder. This was all that was generally known of her history.
She had no visible friends but what had been acquired at Highbury, and
was now just returned from a long visit in the country to some young
ladies who had been at school there with her.

She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort
which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a
fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of
great sweetness, and, before the end of the evening, Emma was as much
pleased with her manners as her person, and quite determined to
continue the acquaintance.

She was not struck by any thing remarkably clever in Miss Smith’s
conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging—not
inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk—and yet so far from pushing,
shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly
grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly impressed by
the appearance of every thing in so superior a style to what she had
been used to, that she must have good sense, and deserve encouragement.
Encouragement should be given. Those soft blue eyes, and all those
natural graces, should not be wasted on the inferior society of
Highbury and its connexions. The acquaintance she had already formed
were unworthy of her. The friends from whom she had just parted, though
very good sort of people, must be doing her harm. They were a family of
the name of Martin, whom Emma well knew by character, as renting a
large farm of Mr. Knightley, and residing in the parish of Donwell—very
creditably, she believed—she knew Mr. Knightley thought highly of
them—but they must be coarse and unpolished, and very unfit to be the
intimates of a girl who wanted only a little more knowledge and
elegance to be quite perfect. _She_ would notice her; she would improve
her; she would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her
into good society; she would form her opinions and her manners. It
would be an interesting, and certainly a very kind undertaking; highly
becoming her own situation in life, her leisure, and powers.

She was so busy in admiring those soft blue eyes, in talking and
listening, and forming all these schemes in the in-betweens, that the
evening flew away at a very unusual rate; and the supper-table, which
always closed such parties, and for which she had been used to sit and
watch the due time, was all set out and ready, and moved forwards to
the fire, before she was aware. With an alacrity beyond the common
impulse of a spirit which yet was never indifferent to the credit of
doing every thing well and attentively, with the real good-will of a
mind delighted with its own ideas, did she then do all the honours of
the meal, and help and recommend the minced chicken and scalloped
oysters, with an urgency which she knew would be acceptable to the
early hours and civil scruples of their guests.

Upon such occasions poor Mr. Woodhouse’s feelings were in sad warfare.
He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his
youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him
rather sorry to see any thing put on it; and while his hospitality
would have welcomed his visitors to every thing, his care for their
health made him grieve that they would eat.

Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he
could, with thorough self-approbation, recommend; though he might
constrain himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing the nicer
things, to say:

“Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg
boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg
better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body
else; but you need not be afraid, they are very small, you see—one of
our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a
_little_ bit of tart—a _very_ little bit. Ours are all apple-tarts. You
need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the
custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to _half_ a glass of wine? A
_small_ half-glass, put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it
could disagree with you.”

Emma allowed her father to talk—but supplied her visitors in a much
more satisfactory style, and on the present evening had particular
pleasure in sending them away happy. The happiness of Miss Smith was
quite equal to her intentions. Miss Woodhouse was so great a personage
in Highbury, that the prospect of the introduction had given as much
panic as pleasure; but the humble, grateful little girl went off with
highly gratified feelings, delighted with the affability with which
Miss Woodhouse had treated her all the evening, and actually shaken
hands with her at last!




CHAPTER IV


Harriet Smith’s intimacy at Hartfield was soon a settled thing. Quick
and decided in her ways, Emma lost no time in inviting, encouraging,
and telling her to come very often; and as their acquaintance
increased, so did their satisfaction in each other. As a walking
companion, Emma had very early foreseen how useful she might find her.
In that respect Mrs. Weston’s loss had been important. Her father never
went beyond the shrubbery, where two divisions of the ground sufficed
him for his long walk, or his short, as the year varied; and since Mrs.
Weston’s marriage her exercise had been too much confined. She had
ventured once alone to Randalls, but it was not pleasant; and a Harriet
Smith, therefore, one whom she could summon at any time to a walk,
would be a valuable addition to her privileges. But in every respect,
as she saw more of her, she approved her, and was confirmed in all her
kind designs.

Harriet certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, grateful
disposition, was totally free from conceit, and only desiring to be
guided by any one she looked up to. Her early attachment to herself was
very amiable; and her inclination for good company, and power of
appreciating what was elegant and clever, shewed that there was no want
of taste, though strength of understanding must not be expected.
Altogether she was quite convinced of Harriet Smith’s being exactly the
young friend she wanted—exactly the something which her home required.
Such a friend as Mrs. Weston was out of the question. Two such could
never be granted. Two such she did not want. It was quite a different
sort of thing, a sentiment distinct and independent. Mrs. Weston was
the object of a regard which had its basis in gratitude and esteem.
Harriet would be loved as one to whom she could be useful. For Mrs.
Weston there was nothing to be done; for Harriet every thing.

Her first attempts at usefulness were in an endeavour to find out who
were the parents, but Harriet could not tell. She was ready to tell
every thing in her power, but on this subject questions were vain. Emma
was obliged to fancy what she liked—but she could never believe that in
the same situation _she_ should not have discovered the truth. Harriet
had no penetration. She had been satisfied to hear and believe just
what Mrs. Goddard chose to tell her; and looked no farther.

Mrs. Goddard, and the teachers, and the girls and the affairs of the
school in general, formed naturally a great part of the
conversation—and but for her acquaintance with the Martins of
Abbey-Mill Farm, it must have been the whole. But the Martins occupied
her thoughts a good deal; she had spent two very happy months with
them, and now loved to talk of the pleasures of her visit, and describe
the many comforts and wonders of the place. Emma encouraged her
talkativeness—amused by such a picture of another set of beings, and
enjoying the youthful simplicity which could speak with so much
exultation of Mrs. Martin’s having “_two_ parlours, two very good
parlours, indeed; one of them quite as large as Mrs. Goddard’s
drawing-room; and of her having an upper maid who had lived
five-and-twenty years with her; and of their having eight cows, two of
them Alderneys, and one a little Welch cow, a very pretty little Welch
cow indeed; and of Mrs. Martin’s saying as she was so fond of it, it
should be called _her_ cow; and of their having a very handsome
summer-house in their garden, where some day next year they were all to
drink tea:—a very handsome summer-house, large enough to hold a dozen
people.”

For some time she was amused, without thinking beyond the immediate
cause; but as she came to understand the family better, other feelings
arose. She had taken up a wrong idea, fancying it was a mother and
daughter, a son and son’s wife, who all lived together; but when it
appeared that the Mr. Martin, who bore a part in the narrative, and was
always mentioned with approbation for his great good-nature in doing
something or other, was a single man; that there was no young Mrs.
Martin, no wife in the case; she did suspect danger to her poor little
friend from all this hospitality and kindness, and that, if she were
not taken care of, she might be required to sink herself forever.

With this inspiriting notion, her questions increased in number and
meaning; and she particularly led Harriet to talk more of Mr. Martin,
and there was evidently no dislike to it. Harriet was very ready to
speak of the share he had had in their moonlight walks and merry
evening games; and dwelt a good deal upon his being so very
good-humoured and obliging. He had gone three miles round one day in
order to bring her some walnuts, because she had said how fond she was
of them, and in every thing else he was so very obliging. He had his
shepherd’s son into the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her.
She was very fond of singing. He could sing a little himself. She
believed he was very clever, and understood every thing. He had a very
fine flock, and, while she was with them, he had been bid more for his
wool than any body in the country. She believed every body spoke well
of him. His mother and sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Martin had
told her one day (and there was a blush as she said it,) that it was
impossible for any body to be a better son, and therefore she was sure,
whenever he married, he would make a good husband. Not that she
_wanted_ him to marry. She was in no hurry at all.

“Well done, Mrs. Martin!” thought Emma. “You know what you are about.”

“And when she had come away, Mrs. Martin was so very kind as to send
Mrs. Goddard a beautiful goose—the finest goose Mrs. Goddard had ever
seen. Mrs. Goddard had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three
teachers, Miss Nash, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson, to sup with
her.”

“Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of
his own business? He does not read?”

“Oh yes!—that is, no—I do not know—but I believe he has read a good
deal—but not what you would think any thing of. He reads the
Agricultural Reports, and some other books that lay in one of the
window seats—but he reads all _them_ to himself. But sometimes of an
evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of
the Elegant Extracts, very entertaining. And I know he has read the
Vicar of Wakefield. He never read the Romance of the Forest, nor The
Children of the Abbey. He had never heard of such books before I
mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he
can.”

The next question was—

“What sort of looking man is Mr. Martin?”

“Oh! not handsome—not at all handsome. I thought him very plain at
first, but I do not think him so plain now. One does not, you know,
after a time. But did you never see him? He is in Highbury every now
and then, and he is sure to ride through every week in his way to
Kingston. He has passed you very often.”

“That may be, and I may have seen him fifty times, but without having
any idea of his name. A young farmer, whether on horseback or on foot,
is the very last sort of person to raise my curiosity. The yeomanry are
precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to
do. A degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance might interest
me; I might hope to be useful to their families in some way or other.
But a farmer can need none of my help, and is, therefore, in one sense,
as much above my notice as in every other he is below it.”

“To be sure. Oh yes! It is not likely you should ever have observed
him; but he knows you very well indeed—I mean by sight.”

“I have no doubt of his being a very respectable young man. I know,
indeed, that he is so, and, as such, wish him well. What do you imagine
his age to be?”

“He was four-and-twenty the 8th of last June, and my birthday is the
23rd just a fortnight and a day’s difference—which is very odd.”

“Only four-and-twenty. That is too young to settle. His mother is
perfectly right not to be in a hurry. They seem very comfortable as
they are, and if she were to take any pains to marry him, she would
probably repent it. Six years hence, if he could meet with a good sort
of young woman in the same rank as his own, with a little money, it
might be very desirable.”

“Six years hence! Dear Miss Woodhouse, he would be thirty years old!”

“Well, and that is as early as most men can afford to marry, who are
not born to an independence. Mr. Martin, I imagine, has his fortune
entirely to make—cannot be at all beforehand with the world. Whatever
money he might come into when his father died, whatever his share of
the family property, it is, I dare say, all afloat, all employed in his
stock, and so forth; and though, with diligence and good luck, he may
be rich in time, it is next to impossible that he should have realised
any thing yet.”

“To be sure, so it is. But they live very comfortably. They have no
indoors man, else they do not want for any thing; and Mrs. Martin talks
of taking a boy another year.”

“I wish you may not get into a scrape, Harriet, whenever he does
marry;—I mean, as to being acquainted with his wife—for though his
sisters, from a superior education, are not to be altogether objected
to, it does not follow that he might marry any body at all fit for you
to notice. The misfortune of your birth ought to make you particularly
careful as to your associates. There can be no doubt of your being a
gentleman’s daughter, and you must support your claim to that station
by every thing within your own power, or there will be plenty of people
who would take pleasure in degrading you.”

“Yes, to be sure, I suppose there are. But while I visit at Hartfield,
and you are so kind to me, Miss Woodhouse, I am not afraid of what any
body can do.”

“You understand the force of influence pretty well, Harriet; but I
would have you so firmly established in good society, as to be
independent even of Hartfield and Miss Woodhouse. I want to see you
permanently well connected, and to that end it will be advisable to
have as few odd acquaintance as may be; and, therefore, I say that if
you should still be in this country when Mr. Martin marries, I wish you
may not be drawn in by your intimacy with the sisters, to be acquainted
with the wife, who will probably be some mere farmer’s daughter,
without education.”

“To be sure. Yes. Not that I think Mr. Martin would ever marry any body
but what had had some education—and been very well brought up. However,
I do not mean to set up my opinion against yours—and I am sure I shall
not wish for the acquaintance of his wife. I shall always have a great
regard for the Miss Martins, especially Elizabeth, and should be very
sorry to give them up, for they are quite as well educated as me. But
if he marries a very ignorant, vulgar woman, certainly I had better not
visit her, if I can help it.”

Emma watched her through the fluctuations of this speech, and saw no
alarming symptoms of love. The young man had been the first admirer,
but she trusted there was no other hold, and that there would be no
serious difficulty, on Harriet’s side, to oppose any friendly
arrangement of her own.

They met Mr. Martin the very next day, as they were walking on the
Donwell road. He was on foot, and after looking very respectfully at
her, looked with most unfeigned satisfaction at her companion. Emma was
not sorry to have such an opportunity of survey; and walking a few
yards forward, while they talked together, soon made her quick eye
sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Robert Martin. His appearance was very
neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no
other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with gentlemen, she
thought he must lose all the ground he had gained in Harriet’s
inclination. Harriet was not insensible of manner; she had voluntarily
noticed her father’s gentleness with admiration as well as wonder. Mr.
Martin looked as if he did not know what manner was.

They remained but a few minutes together, as Miss Woodhouse must not be
kept waiting; and Harriet then came running to her with a smiling face,
and in a flutter of spirits, which Miss Woodhouse hoped very soon to
compose.

“Only think of our happening to meet him!—How very odd! It was quite a
chance, he said, that he had not gone round by Randalls. He did not
think we ever walked this road. He thought we walked towards Randalls
most days. He has not been able to get the Romance of the Forest yet.
He was so busy the last time he was at Kingston that he quite forgot
it, but he goes again to-morrow. So very odd we should happen to meet!
Well, Miss Woodhouse, is he like what you expected? What do you think
of him? Do you think him so very plain?”

“He is very plain, undoubtedly—remarkably plain:—but that is nothing
compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no right to expect
much, and I did not expect much; but I had no idea that he could be so
very clownish, so totally without air. I had imagined him, I confess, a
degree or two nearer gentility.”

“To be sure,” said Harriet, in a mortified voice, “he is not so genteel
as real gentlemen.”

“I think, Harriet, since your acquaintance with us, you have been
repeatedly in the company of some such very real gentlemen, that you
must yourself be struck with the difference in Mr. Martin. At
Hartfield, you have had very good specimens of well educated, well bred
men. I should be surprized if, after seeing them, you could be in
company with Mr. Martin again without perceiving him to be a very
inferior creature—and rather wondering at yourself for having ever
thought him at all agreeable before. Do not you begin to feel that now?
Were not you struck? I am sure you must have been struck by his awkward
look and abrupt manner, and the uncouthness of a voice which I heard to
be wholly unmodulated as I stood here.”

“Certainly, he is not like Mr. Knightley. He has not such a fine air
and way of walking as Mr. Knightley. I see the difference plain enough.
But Mr. Knightley is so very fine a man!”

“Mr. Knightley’s air is so remarkably good that it is not fair to
compare Mr. Martin with _him_. You might not see one in a hundred with
_gentleman_ so plainly written as in Mr. Knightley. But he is not the
only gentleman you have been lately used to. What say you to Mr. Weston
and Mr. Elton? Compare Mr. Martin with either of _them_. Compare their
manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being
silent. You must see the difference.”

“Oh yes!—there is a great difference. But Mr. Weston is almost an old
man. Mr. Weston must be between forty and fifty.”

“Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a person
grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not
be bad; the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or
awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later
age. Mr. Martin is now awkward and abrupt; what will he be at Mr.
Weston’s time of life?”

“There is no saying, indeed,” replied Harriet rather solemnly.

“But there may be pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross,
vulgar farmer, totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of
nothing but profit and loss.”

“Will he, indeed? That will be very bad.”

“How much his business engrosses him already is very plain from the
circumstance of his forgetting to inquire for the book you recommended.
He was a great deal too full of the market to think of any thing
else—which is just as it should be, for a thriving man. What has he to
do with books? And I have no doubt that he _will_ thrive, and be a very
rich man in time—and his being illiterate and coarse need not disturb
_us_.”

“I wonder he did not remember the book”—was all Harriet’s answer, and
spoken with a degree of grave displeasure which Emma thought might be
safely left to itself. She, therefore, said no more for some time. Her
next beginning was,

“In one respect, perhaps, Mr. Elton’s manners are superior to Mr.
Knightley’s or Mr. Weston’s. They have more gentleness. They might be
more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness,
almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in _him_,
because there is so much good-humour with it—but that would not do to
be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley’s downright, decided, commanding
sort of manner, though it suits _him_ very well; his figure, and look,
and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to
set about copying him, he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I
think a young man might be very safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as
a model. Mr. Elton is good-humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle. He
seems to me to be grown particularly gentle of late. I do not know
whether he has any design of ingratiating himself with either of us,
Harriet, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are
softer than they used to be. If he means any thing, it must be to
please you. Did not I tell you what he said of you the other day?”

She then repeated some warm personal praise which she had drawn from
Mr. Elton, and now did full justice to; and Harriet blushed and smiled,
and said she had always thought Mr. Elton very agreeable.

Mr. Elton was the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young
farmer out of Harriet’s head. She thought it would be an excellent
match; and only too palpably desirable, natural, and probable, for her
to have much merit in planning it. She feared it was what every body
else must think of and predict. It was not likely, however, that any
body should have equalled her in the date of the plan, as it had
entered her brain during the very first evening of Harriet’s coming to
Hartfield. The longer she considered it, the greater was her sense of
its expediency. Mr. Elton’s situation was most suitable, quite the
gentleman himself, and without low connexions; at the same time, not of
any family that could fairly object to the doubtful birth of Harriet.
He had a comfortable home for her, and Emma imagined a very sufficient
income; for though the vicarage of Highbury was not large, he was known
to have some independent property; and she thought very highly of him
as a good-humoured, well-meaning, respectable young man, without any
deficiency of useful understanding or knowledge of the world.

She had already satisfied herself that he thought Harriet a beautiful
girl, which she trusted, with such frequent meetings at Hartfield, was
foundation enough on his side; and on Harriet’s there could be little
doubt that the idea of being preferred by him would have all the usual
weight and efficacy. And he was really a very pleasing young man, a
young man whom any woman not fastidious might like. He was reckoned
very handsome; his person much admired in general, though not by her,
there being a want of elegance of feature which she could not dispense
with:—but the girl who could be gratified by a Robert Martin’s riding
about the country to get walnuts for her might very well be conquered
by Mr. Elton’s admiration.




CHAPTER V


“I do not know what your opinion may be, Mrs. Weston,” said Mr.
Knightley, “of this great intimacy between Emma and Harriet Smith, but
I think it a bad thing.”

“A bad thing! Do you really think it a bad thing?—why so?”

“I think they will neither of them do the other any good.”

“You surprize me! Emma must do Harriet good: and by supplying her with
a new object of interest, Harriet may be said to do Emma good. I have
been seeing their intimacy with the greatest pleasure. How very
differently we feel!—Not think they will do each other any good! This
will certainly be the beginning of one of our quarrels about Emma, Mr.
Knightley.”

“Perhaps you think I am come on purpose to quarrel with you, knowing
Weston to be out, and that you must still fight your own battle.”

“Mr. Weston would undoubtedly support me, if he were here, for he
thinks exactly as I do on the subject. We were speaking of it only
yesterday, and agreeing how fortunate it was for Emma, that there
should be such a girl in Highbury for her to associate with. Mr.
Knightley, I shall not allow you to be a fair judge in this case. You
are so much used to live alone, that you do not know the value of a
companion; and, perhaps no man can be a good judge of the comfort a
woman feels in the society of one of her own sex, after being used to
it all her life. I can imagine your objection to Harriet Smith. She is
not the superior young woman which Emma’s friend ought to be. But on
the other hand, as Emma wants to see her better informed, it will be an
inducement to her to read more herself. They will read together. She
means it, I know.”

“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years
old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times
of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists
they were—very well chosen, and very neatly arranged—sometimes
alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up
when only fourteen—I remember thinking it did her judgment so much
credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made
out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of
steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring
industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the
understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely
affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing.—You never could persuade her
to read half so much as you wished.—You know you could not.”

“I dare say,” replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, “that I thought so
_then_;—but since we have parted, I can never remember Emma’s omitting
to do any thing I wished.”

“There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory as _that_,”—said
Mr. Knightley, feelingly; and for a moment or two he had done. “But I,”
he soon added, “who have had no such charm thrown over my senses, must
still see, hear, and remember. Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest
of her family. At ten years old, she had the misfortune of being able
to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was
always quick and assured: Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since
she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In
her mother she lost the only person able to cope with her. She inherits
her mother’s talents, and must have been under subjection to her.”

“I should have been sorry, Mr. Knightley, to be dependent on _your_
recommendation, had I quitted Mr. Woodhouse’s family and wanted another
situation; I do not think you would have spoken a good word for me to
any body. I am sure you always thought me unfit for the office I held.”

“Yes,” said he, smiling. “You are better placed _here_; very fit for a
wife, but not at all for a governess. But you were preparing yourself
to be an excellent wife all the time you were at Hartfield. You might
not give Emma such a complete education as your powers would seem to
promise; but you were receiving a very good education from _her_, on
the very material matrimonial point of submitting your own will, and
doing as you were bid; and if Weston had asked me to recommend him a
wife, I should certainly have named Miss Taylor.”

“Thank you. There will be very little merit in making a good wife to
such a man as Mr. Weston.”

“Why, to own the truth, I am afraid you are rather thrown away, and
that with every disposition to bear, there will be nothing to be borne.
We will not despair, however. Weston may grow cross from the wantonness
of comfort, or his son may plague him.”

“I hope not _that_.—It is not likely. No, Mr. Knightley, do not
foretell vexation from that quarter.”

“Not I, indeed. I only name possibilities. I do not pretend to Emma’s
genius for foretelling and guessing. I hope, with all my heart, the
young man may be a Weston in merit, and a Churchill in fortune.—But
Harriet Smith—I have not half done about Harriet Smith. I think her the
very worst sort of companion that Emma could possibly have. She knows
nothing herself, and looks upon Emma as knowing every thing. She is a
flatterer in all her ways; and so much the worse, because undesigned.
Her ignorance is hourly flattery. How can Emma imagine she has any
thing to learn herself, while Harriet is presenting such a delightful
inferiority? And as for Harriet, I will venture to say that _she_
cannot gain by the acquaintance. Hartfield will only put her out of
conceit with all the other places she belongs to. She will grow just
refined enough to be uncomfortable with those among whom birth and
circumstances have placed her home. I am much mistaken if Emma’s
doctrines give any strength of mind, or tend at all to make a girl
adapt herself rationally to the varieties of her situation in
life.—They only give a little polish.”

“I either depend more upon Emma’s good sense than you do, or am more
anxious for her present comfort; for I cannot lament the acquaintance.
How well she looked last night!”

“Oh! you would rather talk of her person than her mind, would you? Very
well; I shall not attempt to deny Emma’s being pretty.”

“Pretty! say beautiful rather. Can you imagine any thing nearer perfect
beauty than Emma altogether—face and figure?”

“I do not know what I could imagine, but I confess that I have seldom
seen a face or figure more pleasing to me than hers. But I am a partial
old friend.”

“Such an eye!—the true hazle eye—and so brilliant! regular features,
open countenance, with a complexion! oh! what a bloom of full health,
and such a pretty height and size; such a firm and upright figure!
There is health, not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her
glance. One hears sometimes of a child being ‘the picture of health;’
now, Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete picture of
grown-up health. She is loveliness itself. Mr. Knightley, is not she?”

“I have not a fault to find with her person,” he replied. “I think her
all you describe. I love to look at her; and I will add this praise,
that I do not think her personally vain. Considering how very handsome
she is, she appears to be little occupied with it; her vanity lies
another way. Mrs. Weston, I am not to be talked out of my dislike of
Harriet Smith, or my dread of its doing them both harm.”

“And I, Mr. Knightley, am equally stout in my confidence of its not
doing them any harm. With all dear Emma’s little faults, she is an
excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder
sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which may be
trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no
lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred
times.”

“Very well; I will not plague you any more. Emma shall be an angel, and
I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings John and
Isabella. John loves Emma with a reasonable and therefore not a blind
affection, and Isabella always thinks as he does; except when he is not
quite frightened enough about the children. I am sure of having their
opinions with me.”

“I know that you all love her really too well to be unjust or unkind;
but excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if I take the liberty (I consider myself,
you know, as having somewhat of the privilege of speech that Emma’s
mother might have had) the liberty of hinting that I do not think any
possible good can arise from Harriet Smith’s intimacy being made a
matter of much discussion among you. Pray excuse me; but supposing any
little inconvenience may be apprehended from the intimacy, it cannot be
expected that Emma, accountable to nobody but her father, who perfectly
approves the acquaintance, should put an end to it, so long as it is a
source of pleasure to herself. It has been so many years my province to
give advice, that you cannot be surprized, Mr. Knightley, at this
little remains of office.”

“Not at all,” cried he; “I am much obliged to you for it. It is very
good advice, and it shall have a better fate than your advice has often
found; for it shall be attended to.”

“Mrs. John Knightley is easily alarmed, and might be made unhappy about
her sister.”

“Be satisfied,” said he, “I will not raise any outcry. I will keep my
ill-humour to myself. I have a very sincere interest in Emma. Isabella
does not seem more my sister; has never excited a greater interest;
perhaps hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one
feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her!”

“So do I,” said Mrs. Weston gently, “very much.”

“She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just
nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she
cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love
with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some
doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts
to attach her; and she goes so seldom from home.”

“There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her
resolution at present,” said Mrs. Weston, “as can well be; and while
she is so happy at Hartfield, I cannot wish her to be forming any
attachment which would be creating such difficulties on poor Mr.
Woodhouse’s account. I do not recommend matrimony at present to Emma,
though I mean no slight to the state, I assure you.”

Part of her meaning was to conceal some favourite thoughts of her own
and Mr. Weston’s on the subject, as much as possible. There were wishes
at Randalls respecting Emma’s destiny, but it was not desirable to have
them suspected; and the quiet transition which Mr. Knightley soon
afterwards made to “What does Weston think of the weather; shall we
have rain?” convinced her that he had nothing more to say or surmise
about Hartfield.




CHAPTER VI


Emma could not feel a doubt of having given Harriet’s fancy a proper
direction and raised the gratitude of her young vanity to a very good
purpose, for she found her decidedly more sensible than before of Mr.
Elton’s being a remarkably handsome man, with most agreeable manners;
and as she had no hesitation in following up the assurance of his
admiration by agreeable hints, she was soon pretty confident of
creating as much liking on Harriet’s side, as there could be any
occasion for. She was quite convinced of Mr. Elton’s being in the
fairest way of falling in love, if not in love already. She had no
scruple with regard to him. He talked of Harriet, and praised her so
warmly, that she could not suppose any thing wanting which a little
time would not add. His perception of the striking improvement of
Harriet’s manner, since her introduction at Hartfield, was not one of
the least agreeable proofs of his growing attachment.

“You have given Miss Smith all that she required,” said he; “you have
made her graceful and easy. She was a beautiful creature when she came
to you, but, in my opinion, the attractions you have added are
infinitely superior to what she received from nature.”

“I am glad you think I have been useful to her; but Harriet only wanted
drawing out, and receiving a few, very few hints. She had all the
natural grace of sweetness of temper and artlessness in herself. I have
done very little.”

“If it were admissible to contradict a lady,” said the gallant Mr.
Elton—

“I have perhaps given her a little more decision of character, have
taught her to think on points which had not fallen in her way before.”

“Exactly so; that is what principally strikes me. So much superadded
decision of character! Skilful has been the hand!”

“Great has been the pleasure, I am sure. I never met with a disposition
more truly amiable.”

“I have no doubt of it.” And it was spoken with a sort of sighing
animation, which had a vast deal of the lover. She was not less pleased
another day with the manner in which he seconded a sudden wish of hers,
to have Harriet’s picture.

“Did you ever have your likeness taken, Harriet?” said she: “did you
ever sit for your picture?”

Harriet was on the point of leaving the room, and only stopt to say,
with a very interesting naïveté,

“Oh! dear, no, never.”

No sooner was she out of sight, than Emma exclaimed,

“What an exquisite possession a good picture of her would be! I would
give any money for it. I almost long to attempt her likeness myself.
You do not know it I dare say, but two or three years ago I had a great
passion for taking likenesses, and attempted several of my friends, and
was thought to have a tolerable eye in general. But from one cause or
another, I gave it up in disgust. But really, I could almost venture,
if Harriet would sit to me. It would be such a delight to have her
picture!”

“Let me entreat you,” cried Mr. Elton; “it would indeed be a delight!
Let me entreat you, Miss Woodhouse, to exercise so charming a talent in
favour of your friend. I know what your drawings are. How could you
suppose me ignorant? Is not this room rich in specimens of your
landscapes and flowers; and has not Mrs. Weston some inimitable
figure-pieces in her drawing-room, at Randalls?”

Yes, good man!—thought Emma—but what has all that to do with taking
likenesses? You know nothing of drawing. Don’t pretend to be in
raptures about mine. Keep your raptures for Harriet’s face. “Well, if
you give me such kind encouragement, Mr. Elton, I believe I shall try
what I can do. Harriet’s features are very delicate, which makes a
likeness difficult; and yet there is a peculiarity in the shape of the
eye and the lines about the mouth which one ought to catch.”

“Exactly so—The shape of the eye and the lines about the mouth—I have
not a doubt of your success. Pray, pray attempt it. As you will do it,
it will indeed, to use your own words, be an exquisite possession.”

“But I am afraid, Mr. Elton, Harriet will not like to sit. She thinks
so little of her own beauty. Did not you observe her manner of
answering me? How completely it meant, ‘why should my picture be
drawn?’”

“Oh! yes, I observed it, I assure you. It was not lost on me. But still
I cannot imagine she would not be persuaded.”

Harriet was soon back again, and the proposal almost immediately made;
and she had no scruples which could stand many minutes against the
earnest pressing of both the others. Emma wished to go to work
directly, and therefore produced the portfolio containing her various
attempts at portraits, for not one of them had ever been finished, that
they might decide together on the best size for Harriet. Her many
beginnings were displayed. Miniatures, half-lengths, whole-lengths,
pencil, crayon, and water-colours had been all tried in turn. She had
always wanted to do every thing, and had made more progress both in
drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as
she would ever submit to. She played and sang;—and drew in almost every
style; but steadiness had always been wanting; and in nothing had she
approached the degree of excellence which she would have been glad to
command, and ought not to have failed of. She was not much deceived as
to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not
unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for
accomplishment often higher than it deserved.

There was merit in every drawing—in the least finished, perhaps the
most; her style was spirited; but had there been much less, or had
there been ten times more, the delight and admiration of her two
companions would have been the same. They were both in ecstasies. A
likeness pleases every body; and Miss Woodhouse’s performances must be
capital.

“No great variety of faces for you,” said Emma. “I had only my own
family to study from. There is my father—another of my father—but the
idea of sitting for his picture made him so nervous, that I could only
take him by stealth; neither of them very like therefore. Mrs. Weston
again, and again, and again, you see. Dear Mrs. Weston! always my
kindest friend on every occasion. She would sit whenever I asked her.
There is my sister; and really quite her own little elegant figure!—and
the face not unlike. I should have made a good likeness of her, if she
would have sat longer, but she was in such a hurry to have me draw her
four children that she would not be quiet. Then, here come all my
attempts at three of those four children;—there they are, Henry and
John and Bella, from one end of the sheet to the other, and any one of
them might do for any one of the rest. She was so eager to have them
drawn that I could not refuse; but there is no making children of three
or four years old stand still you know; nor can it be very easy to take
any likeness of them, beyond the air and complexion, unless they are
coarser featured than any of mama’s children ever were. Here is my
sketch of the fourth, who was a baby. I took him as he was sleeping on
the sofa, and it is as strong a likeness of his cockade as you would
wish to see. He had nestled down his head most conveniently. That’s
very like. I am rather proud of little George. The corner of the sofa
is very good. Then here is my last,”—unclosing a pretty sketch of a
gentleman in small size, whole-length—“my last and my best—my brother,
Mr. John Knightley.—This did not want much of being finished, when I
put it away in a pet, and vowed I would never take another likeness. I
could not help being provoked; for after all my pains, and when I had
really made a very good likeness of it—(Mrs. Weston and I were quite
agreed in thinking it _very_ like)—only too handsome—too flattering—but
that was a fault on the right side”—after all this, came poor dear
Isabella’s cold approbation of—“Yes, it was a little like—but to be
sure it did not do him justice. We had had a great deal of trouble in
persuading him to sit at all. It was made a great favour of; and
altogether it was more than I could bear; and so I never would finish
it, to have it apologised over as an unfavourable likeness, to every
morning visitor in Brunswick Square;—and, as I said, I did then
forswear ever drawing any body again. But for Harriet’s sake, or rather
for my own, and as there are no husbands and wives in the case _at_
_present_, I will break my resolution now.”

Mr. Elton seemed very properly struck and delighted by the idea, and
was repeating, “No husbands and wives in the case at present indeed, as
you observe. Exactly so. No husbands and wives,” with so interesting a
consciousness, that Emma began to consider whether she had not better
leave them together at once. But as she wanted to be drawing, the
declaration must wait a little longer.

She had soon fixed on the size and sort of portrait. It was to be a
whole-length in water-colours, like Mr. John Knightley’s, and was
destined, if she could please herself, to hold a very honourable
station over the mantelpiece.

The sitting began; and Harriet, smiling and blushing, and afraid of not
keeping her attitude and countenance, presented a very sweet mixture of
youthful expression to the steady eyes of the artist. But there was no
doing any thing, with Mr. Elton fidgeting behind her and watching every
touch. She gave him credit for stationing himself where he might gaze
and gaze again without offence; but was really obliged to put an end to
it, and request him to place himself elsewhere. It then occurred to her
to employ him in reading.

“If he would be so good as to read to them, it would be a kindness
indeed! It would amuse away the difficulties of her part, and lessen
the irksomeness of Miss Smith’s.”

Mr. Elton was only too happy. Harriet listened, and Emma drew in peace.
She must allow him to be still frequently coming to look; any thing
less would certainly have been too little in a lover; and he was ready
at the smallest intermission of the pencil, to jump up and see the
progress, and be charmed.—There was no being displeased with such an
encourager, for his admiration made him discern a likeness almost
before it was possible. She could not respect his eye, but his love and
his complaisance were unexceptionable.

The sitting was altogether very satisfactory; she was quite enough
pleased with the first day’s sketch to wish to go on. There was no want
of likeness, she had been fortunate in the attitude, and as she meant
to throw in a little improvement to the figure, to give a little more
height, and considerably more elegance, she had great confidence of its
being in every way a pretty drawing at last, and of its filling its
destined place with credit to them both—a standing memorial of the
beauty of one, the skill of the other, and the friendship of both; with
as many other agreeable associations as Mr. Elton’s very promising
attachment was likely to add.

Harriet was to sit again the next day; and Mr. Elton, just as he ought,
entreated for the permission of attending and reading to them again.

“By all means. We shall be most happy to consider you as one of the
party.”

The same civilities and courtesies, the same success and satisfaction,
took place on the morrow, and accompanied the whole progress of the
picture, which was rapid and happy. Every body who saw it was pleased,
but Mr. Elton was in continual raptures, and defended it through every
criticism.

“Miss Woodhouse has given her friend the only beauty she
wanted,”—observed Mrs. Weston to him—not in the least suspecting that
she was addressing a lover.—“The expression of the eye is most correct,
but Miss Smith has not those eyebrows and eyelashes. It is the fault of
her face that she has them not.”

“Do you think so?” replied he. “I cannot agree with you. It appears to
me a most perfect resemblance in every feature. I never saw such a
likeness in my life. We must allow for the effect of shade, you know.”

“You have made her too tall, Emma,” said Mr. Knightley.

Emma knew that she had, but would not own it; and Mr. Elton warmly
added,

“Oh no! certainly not too tall; not in the least too tall. Consider,
she is sitting down—which naturally presents a different—which in short
gives exactly the idea—and the proportions must be preserved, you know.
Proportions, fore-shortening.—Oh no! it gives one exactly the idea of
such a height as Miss Smith’s. Exactly so indeed!”

“It is very pretty,” said Mr. Woodhouse. “So prettily done! Just as
your drawings always are, my dear. I do not know any body who draws so
well as you do. The only thing I do not thoroughly like is, that she
seems to be sitting out of doors, with only a little shawl over her
shoulders—and it makes one think she must catch cold.”

“But, my dear papa, it is supposed to be summer; a warm day in summer.
Look at the tree.”

“But it is never safe to sit out of doors, my dear.”

“You, sir, may say any thing,” cried Mr. Elton, “but I must confess
that I regard it as a most happy thought, the placing of Miss Smith out
of doors; and the tree is touched with such inimitable spirit! Any
other situation would have been much less in character. The naïveté of
Miss Smith’s manners—and altogether—Oh, it is most admirable! I cannot
keep my eyes from it. I never saw such a likeness.”

The next thing wanted was to get the picture framed; and here were a
few difficulties. It must be done directly; it must be done in London;
the order must go through the hands of some intelligent person whose
taste could be depended on; and Isabella, the usual doer of all
commissions, must not be applied to, because it was December, and Mr.
Woodhouse could not bear the idea of her stirring out of her house in
the fogs of December. But no sooner was the distress known to Mr.
Elton, than it was removed. His gallantry was always on the alert.
“Might he be trusted with the commission, what infinite pleasure should
he have in executing it! he could ride to London at any time. It was
impossible to say how much he should be gratified by being employed on
such an errand.”

“He was too good!—she could not endure the thought!—she would not give
him such a troublesome office for the world,”—brought on the desired
repetition of entreaties and assurances,—and a very few minutes settled
the business.

Mr. Elton was to take the drawing to London, chuse the frame, and give
the directions; and Emma thought she could so pack it as to ensure its
safety without much incommoding him, while he seemed mostly fearful of
not being incommoded enough.

“What a precious deposit!” said he with a tender sigh, as he received
it.

“This man is almost too gallant to be in love,” thought Emma. “I should
say so, but that I suppose there may be a hundred different ways of
being in love. He is an excellent young man, and will suit Harriet
exactly; it will be an ‘Exactly so,’ as he says himself; but he does
sigh and languish, and study for compliments rather more than I could
endure as a principal. I come in for a pretty good share as a second.
But it is his gratitude on Harriet’s account.”




CHAPTER VII


The very day of Mr. Elton’s going to London produced a fresh occasion
for Emma’s services towards her friend. Harriet had been at Hartfield,
as usual, soon after breakfast; and, after a time, had gone home to
return again to dinner: she returned, and sooner than had been talked
of, and with an agitated, hurried look, announcing something
extraordinary to have happened which she was longing to tell. Half a
minute brought it all out. She had heard, as soon as she got back to
Mrs. Goddard’s, that Mr. Martin had been there an hour before, and
finding she was not at home, nor particularly expected, had left a
little parcel for her from one of his sisters, and gone away; and on
opening this parcel, she had actually found, besides the two songs
which she had lent Elizabeth to copy, a letter to herself; and this
letter was from him, from Mr. Martin, and contained a direct proposal
of marriage. “Who could have thought it? She was so surprized she did
not know what to do. Yes, quite a proposal of marriage; and a very good
letter, at least she thought so. And he wrote as if he really loved her
very much—but she did not know—and so, she was come as fast as she
could to ask Miss Woodhouse what she should do.—” Emma was half-ashamed
of her friend for seeming so pleased and so doubtful.

“Upon my word,” she cried, “the young man is determined not to lose any
thing for want of asking. He will connect himself well if he can.”

“Will you read the letter?” cried Harriet. “Pray do. I’d rather you
would.”

Emma was not sorry to be pressed. She read, and was surprized. The
style of the letter was much above her expectation. There were not
merely no grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have
disgraced a gentleman; the language, though plain, was strong and
unaffected, and the sentiments it conveyed very much to the credit of
the writer. It was short, but expressed good sense, warm attachment,
liberality, propriety, even delicacy of feeling. She paused over it,
while Harriet stood anxiously watching for her opinion, with a “Well,
well,” and was at last forced to add, “Is it a good letter? or is it
too short?”

“Yes, indeed, a very good letter,” replied Emma rather slowly—“so good
a letter, Harriet, that every thing considered, I think one of his
sisters must have helped him. I can hardly imagine the young man whom I
saw talking with you the other day could express himself so well, if
left quite to his own powers, and yet it is not the style of a woman;
no, certainly, it is too strong and concise; not diffuse enough for a
woman. No doubt he is a sensible man, and I suppose may have a natural
talent for—thinks strongly and clearly—and when he takes a pen in hand,
his thoughts naturally find proper words. It is so with some men. Yes,
I understand the sort of mind. Vigorous, decided, with sentiments to a
certain point, not coarse. A better written letter, Harriet (returning
it,) than I had expected.”

“Well,” said the still waiting Harriet;—“well—and—and what shall I do?”

“What shall you do! In what respect? Do you mean with regard to this
letter?”

“Yes.”

“But what are you in doubt of? You must answer it of course—and
speedily.”

“Yes. But what shall I say? Dear Miss Woodhouse, do advise me.”

“Oh no, no! the letter had much better be all your own. You will
express yourself very properly, I am sure. There is no danger of your
not being intelligible, which is the first thing. Your meaning must be
unequivocal; no doubts or demurs: and such expressions of gratitude and
concern for the pain you are inflicting as propriety requires, will
present themselves unbidden to _your_ mind, I am persuaded. You need
not be prompted to write with the appearance of sorrow for his
disappointment.”

“You think I ought to refuse him then,” said Harriet, looking down.

“Ought to refuse him! My dear Harriet, what do you mean? Are you in any
doubt as to that? I thought—but I beg your pardon, perhaps I have been
under a mistake. I certainly have been misunderstanding you, if you
feel in doubt as to the _purport_ of your answer. I had imagined you
were consulting me only as to the wording of it.”

Harriet was silent. With a little reserve of manner, Emma continued:

“You mean to return a favourable answer, I collect.”

“No, I do not; that is, I do not mean—What shall I do? What would you
advise me to do? Pray, dear Miss Woodhouse, tell me what I ought to
do.”

“I shall not give you any advice, Harriet. I will have nothing to do
with it. This is a point which you must settle with your feelings.”

“I had no notion that he liked me so very much,” said Harriet,
contemplating the letter. For a little while Emma persevered in her
silence; but beginning to apprehend the bewitching flattery of that
letter might be too powerful, she thought it best to say,

“I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman _doubts_ as
to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to
refuse him. If she can hesitate as to ‘Yes,’ she ought to say ‘No’
directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful
feelings, with half a heart. I thought it my duty as a friend, and
older than yourself, to say thus much to you. But do not imagine that I
want to influence you.”

“Oh! no, I am sure you are a great deal too kind to—but if you would
just advise me what I had best do—No, no, I do not mean that—As you
say, one’s mind ought to be quite made up—One should not be
hesitating—It is a very serious thing.—It will be safer to say ‘No,’
perhaps.—Do you think I had better say ‘No?’”

“Not for the world,” said Emma, smiling graciously, “would I advise you
either way. You must be the best judge of your own happiness. If you
prefer Mr. Martin to every other person; if you think him the most
agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you
hesitate? You blush, Harriet.—Does any body else occur to you at this
moment under such a definition? Harriet, Harriet, do not deceive
yourself; do not be run away with by gratitude and compassion. At this
moment whom are you thinking of?”

The symptoms were favourable.—Instead of answering, Harriet turned away
confused, and stood thoughtfully by the fire; and though the letter was
still in her hand, it was now mechanically twisted about without
regard. Emma waited the result with impatience, but not without strong
hopes. At last, with some hesitation, Harriet said—

“Miss Woodhouse, as you will not give me your opinion, I must do as
well as I can by myself; and I have now quite determined, and really
almost made up my mind—to refuse Mr. Martin. Do you think I am right?”

“Perfectly, perfectly right, my dearest Harriet; you are doing just
what you ought. While you were at all in suspense I kept my feelings to
myself, but now that you are so completely decided I have no hesitation
in approving. Dear Harriet, I give myself joy of this. It would have
grieved me to lose your acquaintance, which must have been the
consequence of your marrying Mr. Martin. While you were in the smallest
degree wavering, I said nothing about it, because I would not
influence; but it would have been the loss of a friend to me. I could
not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey-Mill Farm. Now I am
secure of you for ever.”

Harriet had not surmised her own danger, but the idea of it struck her
forcibly.

“You could not have visited me!” she cried, looking aghast. “No, to be
sure you could not; but I never thought of that before. That would have
been too dreadful!—What an escape!—Dear Miss Woodhouse, I would not
give up the pleasure and honour of being intimate with you for any
thing in the world.”

“Indeed, Harriet, it would have been a severe pang to lose you; but it
must have been. You would have thrown yourself out of all good society.
I must have given you up.”

“Dear me!—How should I ever have borne it! It would have killed me
never to come to Hartfield any more!”

“Dear affectionate creature!—_You_ banished to Abbey-Mill Farm!—_You_
confined to the society of the illiterate and vulgar all your life! I
wonder how the young man could have the assurance to ask it. He must
have a pretty good opinion of himself.”

“I do not think he is conceited either, in general,” said Harriet, her
conscience opposing such censure; “at least, he is very good natured,
and I shall always feel much obliged to him, and have a great regard
for—but that is quite a different thing from—and you know, though he
may like me, it does not follow that I should—and certainly I must
confess that since my visiting here I have seen people—and if one comes
to compare them, person and manners, there is no comparison at all,
_one_ is so very handsome and agreeable. However, I do really think Mr.
Martin a very amiable young man, and have a great opinion of him; and
his being so much attached to me—and his writing such a letter—but as
to leaving you, it is what I would not do upon any consideration.”

“Thank you, thank you, my own sweet little friend. We will not be
parted. A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or
because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.”

“Oh no;—and it is but a short letter too.”

Emma felt the bad taste of her friend, but let it pass with a “very
true; and it would be a small consolation to her, for the clownish
manner which might be offending her every hour of the day, to know that
her husband could write a good letter.”

“Oh! yes, very. Nobody cares for a letter; the thing is, to be always
happy with pleasant companions. I am quite determined to refuse him.
But how shall I do? What shall I say?”

Emma assured her there would be no difficulty in the answer, and
advised its being written directly, which was agreed to, in the hope of
her assistance; and though Emma continued to protest against any
assistance being wanted, it was in fact given in the formation of every
sentence. The looking over his letter again, in replying to it, had
such a softening tendency, that it was particularly necessary to brace
her up with a few decisive expressions; and she was so very much
concerned at the idea of making him unhappy, and thought so much of
what his mother and sisters would think and say, and was so anxious
that they should not fancy her ungrateful, that Emma believed if the
young man had come in her way at that moment, he would have been
accepted after all.

This letter, however, was written, and sealed, and sent. The business
was finished, and Harriet safe. She was rather low all the evening, but
Emma could allow for her amiable regrets, and sometimes relieved them
by speaking of her own affection, sometimes by bringing forward the
idea of Mr. Elton.

“I shall never be invited to Abbey-Mill again,” was said in rather a
sorrowful tone.

“Nor, if you were, could I ever bear to part with you, my Harriet. You
are a great deal too necessary at Hartfield to be spared to
Abbey-Mill.”

“And I am sure I should never want to go there; for I am never happy
but at Hartfield.”

Some time afterwards it was, “I think Mrs. Goddard would be very much
surprized if she knew what had happened. I am sure Miss Nash would—for
Miss Nash thinks her own sister very well married, and it is only a
linen-draper.”

“One should be sorry to see greater pride or refinement in the teacher
of a school, Harriet. I dare say Miss Nash would envy you such an
opportunity as this of being married. Even this conquest would appear
valuable in her eyes. As to any thing superior for you, I suppose she
is quite in the dark. The attentions of a certain person can hardly be
among the tittle-tattle of Highbury yet. Hitherto I fancy you and I are
the only people to whom his looks and manners have explained
themselves.”

Harriet blushed and smiled, and said something about wondering that
people should like her so much. The idea of Mr. Elton was certainly
cheering; but still, after a time, she was tender-hearted again towards
the rejected Mr. Martin.

“Now he has got my letter,” said she softly. “I wonder what they are
all doing—whether his sisters know—if he is unhappy, they will be
unhappy too. I hope he will not mind it so very much.”

“Let us think of those among our absent friends who are more cheerfully
employed,” cried Emma. “At this moment, perhaps, Mr. Elton is shewing
your picture to his mother and sisters, telling how much more beautiful
is the original, and after being asked for it five or six times,
allowing them to hear your name, your own dear name.”

“My picture!—But he has left my picture in Bond-street.”

“Has he so!—Then I know nothing of Mr. Elton. No, my dear little modest
Harriet, depend upon it the picture will not be in Bond-street till
just before he mounts his horse to-morrow. It is his companion all this
evening, his solace, his delight. It opens his designs to his family,
it introduces you among them, it diffuses through the party those
pleasantest feelings of our nature, eager curiosity and warm
prepossession. How cheerful, how animated, how suspicious, how busy
their imaginations all are!”

Harriet smiled again, and her smiles grew stronger.




CHAPTER VIII


Harriet slept at Hartfield that night. For some weeks past she had been
spending more than half her time there, and gradually getting to have a
bed-room appropriated to herself; and Emma judged it best in every
respect, safest and kindest, to keep her with them as much as possible
just at present. She was obliged to go the next morning for an hour or
two to Mrs. Goddard’s, but it was then to be settled that she should
return to Hartfield, to make a regular visit of some days.

While she was gone, Mr. Knightley called, and sat some time with Mr.
Woodhouse and Emma, till Mr. Woodhouse, who had previously made up his
mind to walk out, was persuaded by his daughter not to defer it, and
was induced by the entreaties of both, though against the scruples of
his own civility, to leave Mr. Knightley for that purpose. Mr.
Knightley, who had nothing of ceremony about him, was offering by his
short, decided answers, an amusing contrast to the protracted apologies
and civil hesitations of the other.

“Well, I believe, if you will excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if you will not
consider me as doing a very rude thing, I shall take Emma’s advice and
go out for a quarter of an hour. As the sun is out, I believe I had
better take my three turns while I can. I treat you without ceremony,
Mr. Knightley. We invalids think we are privileged people.”

“My dear sir, do not make a stranger of me.”

“I leave an excellent substitute in my daughter. Emma will be happy to
entertain you. And therefore I think I will beg your excuse and take my
three turns—my winter walk.”

“You cannot do better, sir.”

“I would ask for the pleasure of your company, Mr. Knightley, but I am
a very slow walker, and my pace would be tedious to you; and, besides,
you have another long walk before you, to Donwell Abbey.”

“Thank you, sir, thank you; I am going this moment myself; and I think
the sooner _you_ go the better. I will fetch your greatcoat and open
the garden door for you.”

Mr. Woodhouse at last was off; but Mr. Knightley, instead of being
immediately off likewise, sat down again, seemingly inclined for more
chat. He began speaking of Harriet, and speaking of her with more
voluntary praise than Emma had ever heard before.

“I cannot rate her beauty as you do,” said he; “but she is a pretty
little creature, and I am inclined to think very well of her
disposition. Her character depends upon those she is with; but in good
hands she will turn out a valuable woman.”

“I am glad you think so; and the good hands, I hope, may not be
wanting.”

“Come,” said he, “you are anxious for a compliment, so I will tell you
that you have improved her. You have cured her of her school-girl’s
giggle; she really does you credit.”

“Thank you. I should be mortified indeed if I did not believe I had
been of some use; but it is not every body who will bestow praise where
they may. _You_ do not often overpower me with it.”

“You are expecting her again, you say, this morning?”

“Almost every moment. She has been gone longer already than she
intended.”

“Something has happened to delay her; some visitors perhaps.”

“Highbury gossips!—Tiresome wretches!”

“Harriet may not consider every body tiresome that you would.”

Emma knew this was too true for contradiction, and therefore said
nothing. He presently added, with a smile,

“I do not pretend to fix on times or places, but I must tell you that I
have good reason to believe your little friend will soon hear of
something to her advantage.”

“Indeed! how so? of what sort?”

“A very serious sort, I assure you;” still smiling.

“Very serious! I can think of but one thing—Who is in love with her?
Who makes you their confidant?”

Emma was more than half in hopes of Mr. Elton’s having dropt a hint.
Mr. Knightley was a sort of general friend and adviser, and she knew
Mr. Elton looked up to him.

“I have reason to think,” he replied, “that Harriet Smith will soon
have an offer of marriage, and from a most unexceptionable
quarter:—Robert Martin is the man. Her visit to Abbey-Mill, this
summer, seems to have done his business. He is desperately in love and
means to marry her.”

“He is very obliging,” said Emma; “but is he sure that Harriet means to
marry him?”

“Well, well, means to make her an offer then. Will that do? He came to
the Abbey two evenings ago, on purpose to consult me about it. He knows
I have a thorough regard for him and all his family, and, I believe,
considers me as one of his best friends. He came to ask me whether I
thought it would be imprudent in him to settle so early; whether I
thought her too young: in short, whether I approved his choice
altogether; having some apprehension perhaps of her being considered
(especially since _your_ making so much of her) as in a line of society
above him. I was very much pleased with all that he said. I never hear
better sense from any one than Robert Martin. He always speaks to the
purpose; open, straightforward, and very well judging. He told me every
thing; his circumstances and plans, and what they all proposed doing in
the event of his marriage. He is an excellent young man, both as son
and brother. I had no hesitation in advising him to marry. He proved to
me that he could afford it; and that being the case, I was convinced he
could not do better. I praised the fair lady too, and altogether sent
him away very happy. If he had never esteemed my opinion before, he
would have thought highly of me then; and, I dare say, left the house
thinking me the best friend and counsellor man ever had. This happened
the night before last. Now, as we may fairly suppose, he would not
allow much time to pass before he spoke to the lady, and as he does not
appear to have spoken yesterday, it is not unlikely that he should be
at Mrs. Goddard’s to-day; and she may be detained by a visitor, without
thinking him at all a tiresome wretch.”

“Pray, Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, who had been smiling to herself
through a great part of this speech, “how do you know that Mr. Martin
did not speak yesterday?”

“Certainly,” replied he, surprized, “I do not absolutely know it; but
it may be inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?”

“Come,” said she, “I will tell you something, in return for what you
have told me. He did speak yesterday—that is, he wrote, and was
refused.”

This was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr.
Knightley actually looked red with surprize and displeasure, as he
stood up, in tall indignation, and said,

“Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the
foolish girl about?”

“Oh! to be sure,” cried Emma, “it is always incomprehensible to a man
that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always
imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her.”

“Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the
meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin? madness, if it is
so; but I hope you are mistaken.”

“I saw her answer!—nothing could be clearer.”

“You saw her answer!—you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your
doing. You persuaded her to refuse him.”

“And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing) I should not
feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Martin is a very respectable young man,
but I cannot admit him to be Harriet’s equal; and am rather surprized
indeed that he should have ventured to address her. By your account, he
does seem to have had some scruples. It is a pity that they were ever
got over.”

“Not Harriet’s equal!” exclaimed Mr. Knightley loudly and warmly; and
with calmer asperity, added, a few moments afterwards, “No, he is not
her equal indeed, for he is as much her superior in sense as in
situation. Emma, your infatuation about that girl blinds you. What are
Harriet Smith’s claims, either of birth, nature or education, to any
connexion higher than Robert Martin? She is the natural daughter of
nobody knows whom, with probably no settled provision at all, and
certainly no respectable relations. She is known only as
parlour-boarder at a common school. She is not a sensible girl, nor a
girl of any information. She has been taught nothing useful, and is too
young and too simple to have acquired any thing herself. At her age she
can have no experience, and with her little wit, is not very likely
ever to have any that can avail her. She is pretty, and she is good
tempered, and that is all. My only scruple in advising the match was on
his account, as being beneath his deserts, and a bad connexion for him.
I felt that, as to fortune, in all probability he might do much better;
and that as to a rational companion or useful helpmate, he could not do
worse. But I could not reason so to a man in love, and was willing to
trust to there being no harm in her, to her having that sort of
disposition, which, in good hands, like his, might be easily led aright
and turn out very well. The advantage of the match I felt to be all on
her side; and had not the smallest doubt (nor have I now) that there
would be a general cry-out upon her extreme good luck. Even _your_
satisfaction I made sure of. It crossed my mind immediately that you
would not regret your friend’s leaving Highbury, for the sake of her
being settled so well. I remember saying to myself, ‘Even Emma, with
all her partiality for Harriet, will think this a good match.’”

“I cannot help wondering at your knowing so little of Emma as to say
any such thing. What! think a farmer, (and with all his sense and all
his merit Mr. Martin is nothing more,) a good match for my intimate
friend! Not regret her leaving Highbury for the sake of marrying a man
whom I could never admit as an acquaintance of my own! I wonder you
should think it possible for me to have such feelings. I assure you
mine are very different. I must think your statement by no means fair.
You are not just to Harriet’s claims. They would be estimated very
differently by others as well as myself; Mr. Martin may be the richest
of the two, but he is undoubtedly her inferior as to rank in
society.—The sphere in which she moves is much above his.—It would be a
degradation.”

“A degradation to illegitimacy and ignorance, to be married to a
respectable, intelligent gentleman-farmer!”

“As to the circumstances of her birth, though in a legal sense she may
be called Nobody, it will not hold in common sense. She is not to pay
for the offence of others, by being held below the level of those with
whom she is brought up.—There can scarcely be a doubt that her father
is a gentleman—and a gentleman of fortune.—Her allowance is very
liberal; nothing has ever been grudged for her improvement or
comfort.—That she is a gentleman’s daughter, is indubitable to me; that
she associates with gentlemen’s daughters, no one, I apprehend, will
deny.—She is superior to Mr. Robert Martin.”

“Whoever might be her parents,” said Mr. Knightley, “whoever may have
had the charge of her, it does not appear to have been any part of
their plan to introduce her into what you would call good society.
After receiving a very indifferent education she is left in Mrs.
Goddard’s hands to shift as she can;—to move, in short, in Mrs.
Goddard’s line, to have Mrs. Goddard’s acquaintance. Her friends
evidently thought this good enough for her; and it _was_ good enough.
She desired nothing better herself. Till you chose to turn her into a
friend, her mind had no distaste for her own set, nor any ambition
beyond it. She was as happy as possible with the Martins in the summer.
She had no sense of superiority then. If she has it now, you have given
it. You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma. Robert Martin would
never have proceeded so far, if he had not felt persuaded of her not
being disinclined to him. I know him well. He has too much real feeling
to address any woman on the haphazard of selfish passion. And as to
conceit, he is the farthest from it of any man I know. Depend upon it
he had encouragement.”

It was most convenient to Emma not to make a direct reply to this
assertion; she chose rather to take up her own line of the subject
again.

“You are a very warm friend to Mr. Martin; but, as I said before, are
unjust to Harriet. Harriet’s claims to marry well are not so
contemptible as you represent them. She is not a clever girl, but she
has better sense than you are aware of, and does not deserve to have
her understanding spoken of so slightingly. Waiving that point,
however, and supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and
good-natured, let me tell you, that in the degree she possesses them,
they are not trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she
is, in fact, a beautiful girl, and must be thought so by ninety-nine
people out of an hundred; and till it appears that men are much more
philosophic on the subject of beauty than they are generally supposed;
till they do fall in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome
faces, a girl, with such loveliness as Harriet, has a certainty of
being admired and sought after, of having the power of chusing from
among many, consequently a claim to be nice. Her good-nature, too, is
not so very slight a claim, comprehending, as it does, real, thorough
sweetness of temper and manner, a very humble opinion of herself, and a
great readiness to be pleased with other people. I am very much
mistaken if your sex in general would not think such beauty, and such
temper, the highest claims a woman could possess.”

“Upon my word, Emma, to hear you abusing the reason you have, is almost
enough to make me think so too. Better be without sense, than misapply
it as you do.”

“To be sure!” cried she playfully. “I know _that_ is the feeling of you
all. I know that such a girl as Harriet is exactly what every man
delights in—what at once bewitches his senses and satisfies his
judgment. Oh! Harriet may pick and chuse. Were you, yourself, ever to
marry, she is the very woman for you. And is she, at seventeen, just
entering into life, just beginning to be known, to be wondered at
because she does not accept the first offer she receives? No—pray let
her have time to look about her.”

“I have always thought it a very foolish intimacy,” said Mr. Knightley
presently, “though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now
perceive that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet. You will
puff her up with such ideas of her own beauty, and of what she has a
claim to, that, in a little while, nobody within her reach will be good
enough for her. Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of
mischief. Nothing so easy as for a young lady to raise her expectations
too high. Miss Harriet Smith may not find offers of marriage flow in so
fast, though she is a very pretty girl. Men of sense, whatever you may
chuse to say, do not want silly wives. Men of family would not be very
fond of connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity—and most
prudent men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they
might be involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be
revealed. Let her marry Robert Martin, and she is safe, respectable,
and happy for ever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry
greatly, and teach her to be satisfied with nothing less than a man of
consequence and large fortune, she may be a parlour-boarder at Mrs.
Goddard’s all the rest of her life—or, at least, (for Harriet Smith is
a girl who will marry somebody or other,) till she grow desperate, and
is glad to catch at the old writing-master’s son.”

“We think so very differently on this point, Mr. Knightley, that there
can be no use in canvassing it. We shall only be making each other more
angry. But as to my _letting_ her marry Robert Martin, it is
impossible; she has refused him, and so decidedly, I think, as must
prevent any second application. She must abide by the evil of having
refused him, whatever it may be; and as to the refusal itself, I will
not pretend to say that I might not influence her a little; but I
assure you there was very little for me or for any body to do. His
appearance is so much against him, and his manner so bad, that if she
ever were disposed to favour him, she is not now. I can imagine, that
before she had seen any body superior, she might tolerate him. He was
the brother of her friends, and he took pains to please her; and
altogether, having seen nobody better (that must have been his great
assistant) she might not, while she was at Abbey-Mill, find him
disagreeable. But the case is altered now. She knows now what gentlemen
are; and nothing but a gentleman in education and manner has any chance
with Harriet.”

“Nonsense, errant nonsense, as ever was talked!” cried Mr.
Knightley.—“Robert Martin’s manners have sense, sincerity, and
good-humour to recommend them; and his mind has more true gentility
than Harriet Smith could understand.”

Emma made no answer, and tried to look cheerfully unconcerned, but was
really feeling uncomfortable and wanting him very much to be gone. She
did not repent what she had done; she still thought herself a better
judge of such a point of female right and refinement than he could be;
but yet she had a sort of habitual respect for his judgment in general,
which made her dislike having it so loudly against her; and to have him
sitting just opposite to her in angry state, was very disagreeable.
Some minutes passed in this unpleasant silence, with only one attempt
on Emma’s side to talk of the weather, but he made no answer. He was
thinking. The result of his thoughts appeared at last in these words.

“Robert Martin has no great loss—if he can but think so; and I hope it
will not be long before he does. Your views for Harriet are best known
to yourself; but as you make no secret of your love of match-making, it
is fair to suppose that views, and plans, and projects you have;—and as
a friend I shall just hint to you that if Elton is the man, I think it
will be all labour in vain.”

Emma laughed and disclaimed. He continued,

“Depend upon it, Elton will not do. Elton is a very good sort of man,
and a very respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make
an imprudent match. He knows the value of a good income as well as any
body. Elton may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally. He is
as well acquainted with his own claims, as you can be with Harriet’s.
He knows that he is a very handsome young man, and a great favourite
wherever he goes; and from his general way of talking in unreserved
moments, when there are only men present, I am convinced that he does
not mean to throw himself away. I have heard him speak with great
animation of a large family of young ladies that his sisters are
intimate with, who have all twenty thousand pounds apiece.”

“I am very much obliged to you,” said Emma, laughing again. “If I had
set my heart on Mr. Elton’s marrying Harriet, it would have been very
kind to open my eyes; but at present I only want to keep Harriet to
myself. I have done with match-making indeed. I could never hope to
equal my own doings at Randalls. I shall leave off while I am well.”

“Good morning to you,”—said he, rising and walking off abruptly. He was
very much vexed. He felt the disappointment of the young man, and was
mortified to have been the means of promoting it, by the sanction he
had given; and the part which he was persuaded Emma had taken in the
affair, was provoking him exceedingly.

Emma remained in a state of vexation too; but there was more
indistinctness in the causes of her’s, than in his. She did not always
feel so absolutely satisfied with herself, so entirely convinced that
her opinions were right and her adversary’s wrong, as Mr. Knightley. He
walked off in more complete self-approbation than he left for her. She
was not so materially cast down, however, but that a little time and
the return of Harriet were very adequate restoratives. Harriet’s
staying away so long was beginning to make her uneasy. The possibility
of the young man’s coming to Mrs. Goddard’s that morning, and meeting
with Harriet and pleading his own cause, gave alarming ideas. The dread
of such a failure after all became the prominent uneasiness; and when
Harriet appeared, and in very good spirits, and without having any such
reason to give for her long absence, she felt a satisfaction which
settled her with her own mind, and convinced her, that let Mr.
Knightley think or say what he would, she had done nothing which
woman’s friendship and woman’s feelings would not justify.

He had frightened her a little about Mr. Elton; but when she considered
that Mr. Knightley could not have observed him as she had done, neither
with the interest, nor (she must be allowed to tell herself, in spite
of Mr. Knightley’s pretensions) with the skill of such an observer on
such a question as herself, that he had spoken it hastily and in anger,
she was able to believe, that he had rather said what he wished
resentfully to be true, than what he knew any thing about. He certainly
might have heard Mr. Elton speak with more unreserve than she had ever
done, and Mr. Elton might not be of an imprudent, inconsiderate
disposition as to money matters; he might naturally be rather attentive
than otherwise to them; but then, Mr. Knightley did not make due
allowance for the influence of a strong passion at war with all
interested motives. Mr. Knightley saw no such passion, and of course
thought nothing of its effects; but she saw too much of it to feel a
doubt of its overcoming any hesitations that a reasonable prudence
might originally suggest; and more than a reasonable, becoming degree
of prudence, she was very sure did not belong to Mr. Elton.

Harriet’s cheerful look and manner established hers: she came back, not
to think of Mr. Martin, but to talk of Mr. Elton. Miss Nash had been
telling her something, which she repeated immediately with great
delight. Mr. Perry had been to Mrs. Goddard’s to attend a sick child,
and Miss Nash had seen him, and he had told Miss Nash, that as he was
coming back yesterday from Clayton Park, he had met Mr. Elton, and
found to his great surprize, that Mr. Elton was actually on his road to
London, and not meaning to return till the morrow, though it was the
whist-club night, which he had been never known to miss before; and Mr.
Perry had remonstrated with him about it, and told him how shabby it
was in him, their best player, to absent himself, and tried very much
to persuade him to put off his journey only one day; but it would not
do; Mr. Elton had been determined to go on, and had said in a _very_
_particular_ way indeed, that he was going on business which he would
not put off for any inducement in the world; and something about a very
enviable commission, and being the bearer of something exceedingly
precious. Mr. Perry could not quite understand him, but he was very
sure there must be a _lady_ in the case, and he told him so; and Mr.
Elton only looked very conscious and smiling, and rode off in great
spirits. Miss Nash had told her all this, and had talked a great deal
more about Mr. Elton; and said, looking so very significantly at her,
“that she did not pretend to understand what his business might be, but
she only knew that any woman whom Mr. Elton could prefer, she should
think the luckiest woman in the world; for, beyond a doubt, Mr. Elton
had not his equal for beauty or agreeableness.”




CHAPTER IX


Mr. Knightley might quarrel with her, but Emma could not quarrel with
herself. He was so much displeased, that it was longer than usual
before he came to Hartfield again; and when they did meet, his grave
looks shewed that she was not forgiven. She was sorry, but could not
repent. On the contrary, her plans and proceedings were more and more
justified and endeared to her by the general appearances of the next
few days.

The Picture, elegantly framed, came safely to hand soon after Mr.
Elton’s return, and being hung over the mantelpiece of the common
sitting-room, he got up to look at it, and sighed out his half
sentences of admiration just as he ought; and as for Harriet’s
feelings, they were visibly forming themselves into as strong and
steady an attachment as her youth and sort of mind admitted. Emma was
soon perfectly satisfied of Mr. Martin’s being no otherwise remembered,
than as he furnished a contrast with Mr. Elton, of the utmost advantage
to the latter.

Her views of improving her little friend’s mind, by a great deal of
useful reading and conversation, had never yet led to more than a few
first chapters, and the intention of going on to-morrow. It was much
easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination
range and work at Harriet’s fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge
her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts; and the only literary
pursuit which engaged Harriet at present, the only mental provision she
was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing
all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into a thin
quarto of hot-pressed paper, made up by her friend, and ornamented with
ciphers and trophies.

In this age of literature, such collections on a very grand scale are
not uncommon. Miss Nash, head-teacher at Mrs. Goddard’s, had written
out at least three hundred; and Harriet, who had taken the first hint
of it from her, hoped, with Miss Woodhouse’s help, to get a great many
more. Emma assisted with her invention, memory and taste; and as
Harriet wrote a very pretty hand, it was likely to be an arrangement of
the first order, in form as well as quantity.

Mr. Woodhouse was almost as much interested in the business as the
girls, and tried very often to recollect something worth their putting
in. “So many clever riddles as there used to be when he was young—he
wondered he could not remember them! but he hoped he should in time.”
And it always ended in “Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.”

His good friend Perry, too, whom he had spoken to on the subject, did
not at present recollect any thing of the riddle kind; but he had
desired Perry to be upon the watch, and as he went about so much,
something, he thought, might come from that quarter.

It was by no means his daughter’s wish that the intellects of Highbury
in general should be put under requisition. Mr. Elton was the only one
whose assistance she asked. He was invited to contribute any really
good enigmas, charades, or conundrums that he might recollect; and she
had the pleasure of seeing him most intently at work with his
recollections; and at the same time, as she could perceive, most
earnestly careful that nothing ungallant, nothing that did not breathe
a compliment to the sex should pass his lips. They owed to him their
two or three politest puzzles; and the joy and exultation with which at
last he recalled, and rather sentimentally recited, that well-known
charade,

My first doth affliction denote,
    Which my second is destin’d to feel
And my whole is the best antidote
    That affliction to soften and heal.—


made her quite sorry to acknowledge that they had transcribed it some
pages ago already.

“Why will not you write one yourself for us, Mr. Elton?” said she;
“that is the only security for its freshness; and nothing could be
easier to you.”

“Oh no! he had never written, hardly ever, any thing of the kind in his
life. The stupidest fellow! He was afraid not even Miss Woodhouse”—he
stopt a moment—“or Miss Smith could inspire him.”

The very next day however produced some proof of inspiration. He called
for a few moments, just to leave a piece of paper on the table
containing, as he said, a charade, which a friend of his had addressed
to a young lady, the object of his admiration, but which, from his
manner, Emma was immediately convinced must be his own.

“I do not offer it for Miss Smith’s collection,” said he. “Being my
friend’s, I have no right to expose it in any degree to the public eye,
but perhaps you may not dislike looking at it.”

The speech was more to Emma than to Harriet, which Emma could
understand. There was deep consciousness about him, and he found it
easier to meet her eye than her friend’s. He was gone the next
moment:—after another moment’s pause,

“Take it,” said Emma, smiling, and pushing the paper towards
Harriet—“it is for you. Take your own.”

But Harriet was in a tremor, and could not touch it; and Emma, never
loth to be first, was obliged to examine it herself.

To Miss——


CHARADE.


My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
    Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.
Another view of man, my second brings,
    Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!

But ah! united, what reverse we have!
    Man’s boasted power and freedom, all are flown;
Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
    And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.

    Thy ready wit the word will soon supply,
    May its approval beam in that soft eye!


She cast her eye over it, pondered, caught the meaning, read it through
again to be quite certain, and quite mistress of the lines, and then
passing it to Harriet, sat happily smiling, and saying to herself,
while Harriet was puzzling over the paper in all the confusion of hope
and dulness, “Very well, Mr. Elton, very well indeed. I have read worse
charades. _Courtship_—a very good hint. I give you credit for it. This
is feeling your way. This is saying very plainly—‘Pray, Miss Smith,
give me leave to pay my addresses to you. Approve my charade and my
intentions in the same glance.’

May its approval beam in that soft eye!


Harriet exactly. Soft is the very word for her eye—of all epithets, the
justest that could be given.

Thy ready wit the word will soon supply.


Humph—Harriet’s ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in
love, indeed, to describe her so. Ah! Mr. Knightley, I wish you had the
benefit of this; I think this would convince you. For once in your life
you would be obliged to own yourself mistaken. An excellent charade
indeed! and very much to the purpose. Things must come to a crisis soon
now.”

She was obliged to break off from these very pleasant observations,
which were otherwise of a sort to run into great length, by the
eagerness of Harriet’s wondering questions.

“What can it be, Miss Woodhouse?—what can it be? I have not an idea—I
cannot guess it in the least. What can it possibly be? Do try to find
it out, Miss Woodhouse. Do help me. I never saw any thing so hard. Is
it kingdom? I wonder who the friend was—and who could be the young
lady. Do you think it is a good one? Can it be woman?

And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.


Can it be Neptune?

Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!


Or a trident? or a mermaid? or a shark? Oh, no! shark is only one
syllable. It must be very clever, or he would not have brought it. Oh!
Miss Woodhouse, do you think we shall ever find it out?”

“Mermaids and sharks! Nonsense! My dear Harriet, what are you thinking
of? Where would be the use of his bringing us a charade made by a
friend upon a mermaid or a shark? Give me the paper and listen.

For Miss ———, read Miss Smith.

My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
    Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.


That is _court_.

Another view of man, my second brings;
    Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!


That is _ship_;—plain as it can be.—Now for the cream.

But ah! united, (_courtship_, you know,) what reverse we have!
    Man’s boasted power and freedom, all are flown.
Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
    And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.


A very proper compliment!—and then follows the application, which I
think, my dear Harriet, you cannot find much difficulty in
comprehending. Read it in comfort to yourself. There can be no doubt of
its being written for you and to you.”

Harriet could not long resist so delightful a persuasion. She read the
concluding lines, and was all flutter and happiness. She could not
speak. But she was not wanted to speak. It was enough for her to feel.
Emma spoke for her.

“There is so pointed, and so particular a meaning in this compliment,”
said she, “that I cannot have a doubt as to Mr. Elton’s intentions. You
are his object—and you will soon receive the completest proof of it. I
thought it must be so. I thought I could not be so deceived; but now,
it is clear; the state of his mind is as clear and decided, as my
wishes on the subject have been ever since I knew you. Yes, Harriet,
just so long have I been wanting the very circumstance to happen that
has happened. I could never tell whether an attachment between you and
Mr. Elton were most desirable or most natural. Its probability and its
eligibility have really so equalled each other! I am very happy. I
congratulate you, my dear Harriet, with all my heart. This is an
attachment which a woman may well feel pride in creating. This is a
connexion which offers nothing but good. It will give you every thing
that you want—consideration, independence, a proper home—it will fix
you in the centre of all your real friends, close to Hartfield and to
me, and confirm our intimacy for ever. This, Harriet, is an alliance
which can never raise a blush in either of us.”

“Dear Miss Woodhouse!”—and “Dear Miss Woodhouse,” was all that Harriet,
with many tender embraces could articulate at first; but when they did
arrive at something more like conversation, it was sufficiently clear
to her friend that she saw, felt, anticipated, and remembered just as
she ought. Mr. Elton’s superiority had very ample acknowledgment.

“Whatever you say is always right,” cried Harriet, “and therefore I
suppose, and believe, and hope it must be so; but otherwise I could not
have imagined it. It is so much beyond any thing I deserve. Mr. Elton,
who might marry any body! There cannot be two opinions about _him_. He
is so very superior. Only think of those sweet verses—‘To Miss ———.’
Dear me, how clever!—Could it really be meant for me?”

“I cannot make a question, or listen to a question about that. It is a
certainty. Receive it on my judgment. It is a sort of prologue to the
play, a motto to the chapter; and will be soon followed by
matter-of-fact prose.”

“It is a sort of thing which nobody could have expected. I am sure, a
month ago, I had no more idea myself!—The strangest things do take
place!”

“When Miss Smiths and Mr. Eltons get acquainted—they do indeed—and
really it is strange; it is out of the common course that what is so
evidently, so palpably desirable—what courts the pre-arrangement of
other people, should so immediately shape itself into the proper form.
You and Mr. Elton are by situation called together; you belong to one
another by every circumstance of your respective homes. Your marrying
will be equal to the match at Randalls. There does seem to be a
something in the air of Hartfield which gives love exactly the right
direction, and sends it into the very channel where it ought to flow.

The course of true love never did run smooth—


A Hartfield edition of Shakespeare would have a long note on that
passage.”

“That Mr. Elton should really be in love with me,—me, of all people,
who did not know him, to speak to him, at Michaelmas! And he, the very
handsomest man that ever was, and a man that every body looks up to,
quite like Mr. Knightley! His company so sought after, that every body
says he need not eat a single meal by himself if he does not chuse it;
that he has more invitations than there are days in the week. And so
excellent in the Church! Miss Nash has put down all the texts he has
ever preached from since he came to Highbury. Dear me! When I look back
to the first time I saw him! How little did I think!—The two Abbots and
I ran into the front room and peeped through the blind when we heard he
was going by, and Miss Nash came and scolded us away, and staid to look
through herself; however, she called me back presently, and let me look
too, which was very good-natured. And how beautiful we thought he
looked! He was arm-in-arm with Mr. Cole.”

“This is an alliance which, whoever—whatever your friends may be, must
be agreeable to them, provided at least they have common sense; and we
are not to be addressing our conduct to fools. If they are anxious to
see you _happily_ married, here is a man whose amiable character gives
every assurance of it;—if they wish to have you settled in the same
country and circle which they have chosen to place you in, here it will
be accomplished; and if their only object is that you should, in the
common phrase, be _well_ married, here is the comfortable fortune, the
respectable establishment, the rise in the world which must satisfy
them.”

“Yes, very true. How nicely you talk; I love to hear you. You
understand every thing. You and Mr. Elton are one as clever as the
other. This charade!—If I had studied a twelvemonth, I could never have
made any thing like it.”

“I thought he meant to try his skill, by his manner of declining it
yesterday.”

“I do think it is, without exception, the best charade I ever read.”

“I never read one more to the purpose, certainly.”

“It is as long again as almost all we have had before.”

“I do not consider its length as particularly in its favour. Such
things in general cannot be too short.”

Harriet was too intent on the lines to hear. The most satisfactory
comparisons were rising in her mind.

“It is one thing,” said she, presently—her cheeks in a glow—“to have
very good sense in a common way, like every body else, and if there is
any thing to say, to sit down and write a letter, and say just what you
must, in a short way; and another, to write verses and charades like
this.”

Emma could not have desired a more spirited rejection of Mr. Martin’s
prose.

“Such sweet lines!” continued Harriet—“these two last!—But how shall I
ever be able to return the paper, or say I have found it out?—Oh! Miss
Woodhouse, what can we do about that?”

“Leave it to me. You do nothing. He will be here this evening, I dare
say, and then I will give it him back, and some nonsense or other will
pass between us, and you shall not be committed.—Your soft eyes shall
chuse their own time for beaming. Trust to me.”

“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, what a pity that I must not write this beautiful
charade into my book! I am sure I have not got one half so good.”

“Leave out the two last lines, and there is no reason why you should
not write it into your book.”

“Oh! but those two lines are”—

—“The best of all. Granted;—for private enjoyment; and for private
enjoyment keep them. They are not at all the less written you know,
because you divide them. The couplet does not cease to be, nor does its
meaning change. But take it away, and all _appropriation_ ceases, and a
very pretty gallant charade remains, fit for any collection. Depend
upon it, he would not like to have his charade slighted, much better
than his passion. A poet in love must be encouraged in both capacities,
or neither. Give me the book, I will write it down, and then there can
be no possible reflection on you.”

Harriet submitted, though her mind could hardly separate the parts, so
as to feel quite sure that her friend were not writing down a
declaration of love. It seemed too precious an offering for any degree
of publicity.

“I shall never let that book go out of my own hands,” said she.

“Very well,” replied Emma; “a most natural feeling; and the longer it
lasts, the better I shall be pleased. But here is my father coming: you
will not object to my reading the charade to him. It will be giving him
so much pleasure! He loves any thing of the sort, and especially any
thing that pays woman a compliment. He has the tenderest spirit of
gallantry towards us all!—You must let me read it to him.”

Harriet looked grave.

“My dear Harriet, you must not refine too much upon this charade.—You
will betray your feelings improperly, if you are too conscious and too
quick, and appear to affix more meaning, or even quite all the meaning
which may be affixed to it. Do not be overpowered by such a little
tribute of admiration. If he had been anxious for secrecy, he would not
have left the paper while I was by; but he rather pushed it towards me
than towards you. Do not let us be too solemn on the business. He has
encouragement enough to proceed, without our sighing out our souls over
this charade.”

“Oh! no—I hope I shall not be ridiculous about it. Do as you please.”

Mr. Woodhouse came in, and very soon led to the subject again, by the
recurrence of his very frequent inquiry of “Well, my dears, how does
your book go on?—Have you got any thing fresh?”

“Yes, papa; we have something to read you, something quite fresh. A
piece of paper was found on the table this morning—(dropt, we suppose,
by a fairy)—containing a very pretty charade, and we have just copied
it in.”

She read it to him, just as he liked to have any thing read, slowly and
distinctly, and two or three times over, with explanations of every
part as she proceeded—and he was very much pleased, and, as she had
foreseen, especially struck with the complimentary conclusion.

“Aye, that’s very just, indeed, that’s very properly said. Very true.
‘Woman, lovely woman.’ It is such a pretty charade, my dear, that I can
easily guess what fairy brought it.—Nobody could have written so
prettily, but you, Emma.”

Emma only nodded, and smiled.—After a little thinking, and a very
tender sigh, he added,

“Ah! it is no difficulty to see who you take after! Your dear mother
was so clever at all those things! If I had but her memory! But I can
remember nothing;—not even that particular riddle which you have heard
me mention; I can only recollect the first stanza; and there are
several.

Kitty, a fair but frozen maid,
    Kindled a flame I yet deplore,
The hood-wink’d boy I called to aid,
Though of his near approach afraid,
    So fatal to my suit before.


And that is all that I can recollect of it—but it is very clever all
the way through. But I think, my dear, you said you had got it.”

“Yes, papa, it is written out in our second page. We copied it from the
Elegant Extracts. It was Garrick’s, you know.”

“Aye, very true.—I wish I could recollect more of it.

Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.


The name makes me think of poor Isabella; for she was very near being
christened Catherine after her grandmama. I hope we shall have her here
next week. Have you thought, my dear, where you shall put her—and what
room there will be for the children?”

“Oh! yes—she will have her own room, of course; the room she always
has;—and there is the nursery for the children,—just as usual, you
know. Why should there be any change?”

“I do not know, my dear—but it is so long since she was here!—not since
last Easter, and then only for a few days.—Mr. John Knightley’s being a
lawyer is very inconvenient.—Poor Isabella!—she is sadly taken away
from us all!—and how sorry she will be when she comes, not to see Miss
Taylor here!”

“She will not be surprized, papa, at least.”

“I do not know, my dear. I am sure I was very much surprized when I
first heard she was going to be married.”

“We must ask Mr. and Mrs. Weston to dine with us, while Isabella is
here.”

“Yes, my dear, if there is time.—But—(in a very depressed tone)—she is
coming for only one week. There will not be time for any thing.”

“It is unfortunate that they cannot stay longer—but it seems a case of
necessity. Mr. John Knightley must be in town again on the 28th, and we
ought to be thankful, papa, that we are to have the whole of the time
they can give to the country, that two or three days are not to be
taken out for the Abbey. Mr. Knightley promises to give up his claim
this Christmas—though you know it is longer since they were with him,
than with us.”

“It would be very hard, indeed, my dear, if poor Isabella were to be
anywhere but at Hartfield.”

Mr. Woodhouse could never allow for Mr. Knightley’s claims on his
brother, or any body’s claims on Isabella, except his own. He sat
musing a little while, and then said,

“But I do not see why poor Isabella should be obliged to go back so
soon, though he does. I think, Emma, I shall try and persuade her to
stay longer with us. She and the children might stay very well.”

“Ah! papa—that is what you never have been able to accomplish, and I do
not think you ever will. Isabella cannot bear to stay behind her
husband.”

This was too true for contradiction. Unwelcome as it was, Mr. Woodhouse
could only give a submissive sigh; and as Emma saw his spirits affected
by the idea of his daughter’s attachment to her husband, she
immediately led to such a branch of the subject as must raise them.

“Harriet must give us as much of her company as she can while my
brother and sister are here. I am sure she will be pleased with the
children. We are very proud of the children, are not we, papa? I wonder
which she will think the handsomest, Henry or John?”

“Aye, I wonder which she will. Poor little dears, how glad they will be
to come. They are very fond of being at Hartfield, Harriet.”

“I dare say they are, sir. I am sure I do not know who is not.”

“Henry is a fine boy, but John is very like his mama. Henry is the
eldest, he was named after me, not after his father. John, the second,
is named after his father. Some people are surprized, I believe, that
the eldest was not, but Isabella would have him called Henry, which I
thought very pretty of her. And he is a very clever boy, indeed. They
are all remarkably clever; and they have so many pretty ways. They will
come and stand by my chair, and say, ‘Grandpapa, can you give me a bit
of string?’ and once Henry asked me for a knife, but I told him knives
were only made for grandpapas. I think their father is too rough with
them very often.”

“He appears rough to you,” said Emma, “because you are so very gentle
yourself; but if you could compare him with other papas, you would not
think him rough. He wishes his boys to be active and hardy; and if they
misbehave, can give them a sharp word now and then; but he is an
affectionate father—certainly Mr. John Knightley is an affectionate
father. The children are all fond of him.”

“And then their uncle comes in, and tosses them up to the ceiling in a
very frightful way!”

“But they like it, papa; there is nothing they like so much. It is such
enjoyment to them, that if their uncle did not lay down the rule of
their taking turns, whichever began would never give way to the other.”

“Well, I cannot understand it.”

“That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot
understand the pleasures of the other.”

Later in the morning, and just as the girls were going to separate in
preparation for the regular four o’clock dinner, the hero of this
inimitable charade walked in again. Harriet turned away; but Emma could
receive him with the usual smile, and her quick eye soon discerned in
his the consciousness of having made a push—of having thrown a die; and
she imagined he was come to see how it might turn up. His ostensible
reason, however, was to ask whether Mr. Woodhouse’s party could be made
up in the evening without him, or whether he should be in the smallest
degree necessary at Hartfield. If he were, every thing else must give
way; but otherwise his friend Cole had been saying so much about his
dining with him—had made such a point of it, that he had promised him
conditionally to come.

Emma thanked him, but could not allow of his disappointing his friend
on their account; her father was sure of his rubber. He re-urged—she
re-declined; and he seemed then about to make his bow, when taking the
paper from the table, she returned it—

“Oh! here is the charade you were so obliging as to leave with us;
thank you for the sight of it. We admired it so much, that I have
ventured to write it into Miss Smith’s collection. Your friend will not
take it amiss I hope. Of course I have not transcribed beyond the first
eight lines.”

Mr. Elton certainly did not very well know what to say. He looked
rather doubtingly—rather confused; said something about
“honour,”—glanced at Emma and at Harriet, and then seeing the book open
on the table, took it up, and examined it very attentively. With the
view of passing off an awkward moment, Emma smilingly said,

“You must make my apologies to your friend; but so good a charade must
not be confined to one or two. He may be sure of every woman’s
approbation while he writes with such gallantry.”

“I have no hesitation in saying,” replied Mr. Elton, though hesitating
a good deal while he spoke; “I have no hesitation in saying—at least if
my friend feels at all as _I_ do—I have not the smallest doubt that,
could he see his little effusion honoured as _I_ see it, (looking at
the book again, and replacing it on the table), he would consider it as
the proudest moment of his life.”

After this speech he was gone as soon as possible. Emma could not think
it too soon; for with all his good and agreeable qualities, there was a
sort of parade in his speeches which was very apt to incline her to
laugh. She ran away to indulge the inclination, leaving the tender and
the sublime of pleasure to Harriet’s share.




CHAPTER X


Though now the middle of December, there had yet been no weather to
prevent the young ladies from tolerably regular exercise; and on the
morrow, Emma had a charitable visit to pay to a poor sick family, who
lived a little way out of Highbury.

Their road to this detached cottage was down Vicarage Lane, a lane
leading at right angles from the broad, though irregular, main street
of the place; and, as may be inferred, containing the blessed abode of
Mr. Elton. A few inferior dwellings were first to be passed, and then,
about a quarter of a mile down the lane rose the Vicarage, an old and
not very good house, almost as close to the road as it could be. It had
no advantage of situation; but had been very much smartened up by the
present proprietor; and, such as it was, there could be no possibility
of the two friends passing it without a slackened pace and observing
eyes.—Emma’s remark was—

“There it is. There go you and your riddle-book one of these
days.”—Harriet’s was—

“Oh, what a sweet house!—How very beautiful!—There are the yellow
curtains that Miss Nash admires so much.”

“I do not often walk this way _now_,” said Emma, as they proceeded,
“but _then_ there will be an inducement, and I shall gradually get
intimately acquainted with all the hedges, gates, pools and pollards of
this part of Highbury.”

Harriet, she found, had never in her life been inside the Vicarage, and
her curiosity to see it was so extreme, that, considering exteriors and
probabilities, Emma could only class it, as a proof of love, with Mr.
Elton’s seeing ready wit in her.

“I wish we could contrive it,” said she; “but I cannot think of any
tolerable pretence for going in;—no servant that I want to inquire
about of his housekeeper—no message from my father.”

She pondered, but could think of nothing. After a mutual silence of
some minutes, Harriet thus began again—

“I do so wonder, Miss Woodhouse, that you should not be married, or
going to be married! so charming as you are!”—

Emma laughed, and replied,

“My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry;
I must find other people charming—one other person at least. And I am
not only, not going to be married, at present, but have very little
intention of ever marrying at all.”

“Ah!—so you say; but I cannot believe it.”

“I must see somebody very superior to any one I have seen yet, to be
tempted; Mr. Elton, you know, (recollecting herself,) is out of the
question: and I do _not_ wish to see any such person. I would rather
not be tempted. I cannot really change for the better. If I were to
marry, I must expect to repent it.”

“Dear me!—it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!”—

“I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall
in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been
in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever
shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a
situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want;
consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much
mistress of their husband’s house as I am of Hartfield; and never,
never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always
first and always right in any man’s eyes as I am in my father’s.”

“But then, to be an old maid at last, like Miss Bates!”

“That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if I
thought I should ever be like Miss Bates! so silly—so satisfied—so
smiling—so prosing—so undistinguishing and unfastidious—and so apt to
tell every thing relative to every body about me, I would marry
to-morrow. But between _us_, I am convinced there never can be any
likeness, except in being unmarried.”

“But still, you will be an old maid! and that’s so dreadful!”

“Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty
only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single
woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable
old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of
good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and
pleasant as any body else. And the distinction is not quite so much
against the candour and common sense of the world as appears at first;
for a very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour
the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very
small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and
cross. This does not apply, however, to Miss Bates; she is only too
good natured and too silly to suit me; but, in general, she is very
much to the taste of every body, though single and though poor. Poverty
certainly has not contracted her mind: I really believe, if she had
only a shilling in the world, she would be very likely to give away
sixpence of it; and nobody is afraid of her: that is a great charm.”

“Dear me! but what shall you do? how shall you employ yourself when you
grow old?”

“If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great
many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more
in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty. Woman’s
usual occupations of hand and mind will be as open to me then as they
are now; or with no important variation. If I draw less, I shall read
more; if I give up music, I shall take to carpet-work. And as for
objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is in truth the
great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil
to be avoided in _not_ marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the
children of a sister I love so much, to care about. There will be
enough of them, in all probability, to supply every sort of sensation
that declining life can need. There will be enough for every hope and
every fear; and though my attachment to none can equal that of a
parent, it suits my ideas of comfort better than what is warmer and
blinder. My nephews and nieces!—I shall often have a niece with me.”

“Do you know Miss Bates’s niece? That is, I know you must have seen her
a hundred times—but are you acquainted?”

“Oh! yes; we are always forced to be acquainted whenever she comes to
Highbury. By the bye, _that_ is almost enough to put one out of conceit
with a niece. Heaven forbid! at least, that I should ever bore people
half so much about all the Knightleys together, as she does about Jane
Fairfax. One is sick of the very name of Jane Fairfax. Every letter
from her is read forty times over; her compliments to all friends go
round and round again; and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of
a stomacher, or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears
of nothing else for a month. I wish Jane Fairfax very well; but she
tires me to death.”

They were now approaching the cottage, and all idle topics were
superseded. Emma was very compassionate; and the distresses of the poor
were as sure of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her
counsel and her patience, as from her purse. She understood their ways,
could allow for their ignorance and their temptations, had no romantic
expectations of extraordinary virtue from those for whom education had
done so little; entered into their troubles with ready sympathy, and
always gave her assistance with as much intelligence as good-will. In
the present instance, it was sickness and poverty together which she
came to visit; and after remaining there as long as she could give
comfort or advice, she quitted the cottage with such an impression of
the scene as made her say to Harriet, as they walked away,

“These are the sights, Harriet, to do one good. How trifling they make
every thing else appear!—I feel now as if I could think of nothing but
these poor creatures all the rest of the day; and yet, who can say how
soon it may all vanish from my mind?”

“Very true,” said Harriet. “Poor creatures! one can think of nothing
else.”

“And really, I do not think the impression will soon be over,” said
Emma, as she crossed the low hedge, and tottering footstep which ended
the narrow, slippery path through the cottage garden, and brought them
into the lane again. “I do not think it will,” stopping to look once
more at all the outward wretchedness of the place, and recall the still
greater within.

“Oh! dear, no,” said her companion.

They walked on. The lane made a slight bend; and when that bend was
passed, Mr. Elton was immediately in sight; and so near as to give Emma
time only to say farther,

“Ah! Harriet, here comes a very sudden trial of our stability in good
thoughts. Well, (smiling,) I hope it may be allowed that if compassion
has produced exertion and relief to the sufferers, it has done all that
is truly important. If we feel for the wretched, enough to do all we
can for them, the rest is empty sympathy, only distressing to
ourselves.”

Harriet could just answer, “Oh! dear, yes,” before the gentleman joined
them. The wants and sufferings of the poor family, however, were the
first subject on meeting. He had been going to call on them. His visit
he would now defer; but they had a very interesting parley about what
could be done and should be done. Mr. Elton then turned back to
accompany them.

“To fall in with each other on such an errand as this,” thought Emma;
“to meet in a charitable scheme; this will bring a great increase of
love on each side. I should not wonder if it were to bring on the
declaration. It must, if I were not here. I wish I were anywhere else.”

Anxious to separate herself from them as far as she could, she soon
afterwards took possession of a narrow footpath, a little raised on one
side of the lane, leaving them together in the main road. But she had
not been there two minutes when she found that Harriet’s habits of
dependence and imitation were bringing her up too, and that, in short,
they would both be soon after her. This would not do; she immediately
stopped, under pretence of having some alteration to make in the lacing
of her half-boot, and stooping down in complete occupation of the
footpath, begged them to have the goodness to walk on, and she would
follow in half a minute. They did as they were desired; and by the time
she judged it reasonable to have done with her boot, she had the
comfort of farther delay in her power, being overtaken by a child from
the cottage, setting out, according to orders, with her pitcher, to
fetch broth from Hartfield. To walk by the side of this child, and talk
to and question her, was the most natural thing in the world, or would
have been the most natural, had she been acting just then without
design; and by this means the others were still able to keep ahead,
without any obligation of waiting for her. She gained on them, however,
involuntarily: the child’s pace was quick, and theirs rather slow; and
she was the more concerned at it, from their being evidently in a
conversation which interested them. Mr. Elton was speaking with
animation, Harriet listening with a very pleased attention; and Emma,
having sent the child on, was beginning to think how she might draw
back a little more, when they both looked around, and she was obliged
to join them.

Mr. Elton was still talking, still engaged in some interesting detail;
and Emma experienced some disappointment when she found that he was
only giving his fair companion an account of the yesterday’s party at
his friend Cole’s, and that she was come in herself for the Stilton
cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root, and
all the dessert.

“This would soon have led to something better, of course,” was her
consoling reflection; “any thing interests between those who love; and
any thing will serve as introduction to what is near the heart. If I
could but have kept longer away!”

They now walked on together quietly, till within view of the vicarage
pales, when a sudden resolution, of at least getting Harriet into the
house, made her again find something very much amiss about her boot,
and fall behind to arrange it once more. She then broke the lace off
short, and dexterously throwing it into a ditch, was presently obliged
to entreat them to stop, and acknowledged her inability to put herself
to rights so as to be able to walk home in tolerable comfort.

“Part of my lace is gone,” said she, “and I do not know how I am to
contrive. I really am a most troublesome companion to you both, but I
hope I am not often so ill-equipped. Mr. Elton, I must beg leave to
stop at your house, and ask your housekeeper for a bit of ribband or
string, or any thing just to keep my boot on.”

Mr. Elton looked all happiness at this proposition; and nothing could
exceed his alertness and attention in conducting them into his house
and endeavouring to make every thing appear to advantage. The room they
were taken into was the one he chiefly occupied, and looking forwards;
behind it was another with which it immediately communicated; the door
between them was open, and Emma passed into it with the housekeeper to
receive her assistance in the most comfortable manner. She was obliged
to leave the door ajar as she found it; but she fully intended that Mr.
Elton should close it. It was not closed, however, it still remained
ajar; but by engaging the housekeeper in incessant conversation, she
hoped to make it practicable for him to chuse his own subject in the
adjoining room. For ten minutes she could hear nothing but herself. It
could be protracted no longer. She was then obliged to be finished, and
make her appearance.

The lovers were standing together at one of the windows. It had a most
favourable aspect; and, for half a minute, Emma felt the glory of
having schemed successfully. But it would not do; he had not come to
the point. He had been most agreeable, most delightful; he had told
Harriet that he had seen them go by, and had purposely followed them;
other little gallantries and allusions had been dropt, but nothing
serious.

“Cautious, very cautious,” thought Emma; “he advances inch by inch, and
will hazard nothing till he believes himself secure.”

Still, however, though every thing had not been accomplished by her
ingenious device, she could not but flatter herself that it had been
the occasion of much present enjoyment to both, and must be leading
them forward to the great event.




CHAPTER XI


Mr. Elton must now be left to himself. It was no longer in Emma’s power
to superintend his happiness or quicken his measures. The coming of her
sister’s family was so very near at hand, that first in anticipation,
and then in reality, it became henceforth her prime object of interest;
and during the ten days of their stay at Hartfield it was not to be
expected—she did not herself expect—that any thing beyond occasional,
fortuitous assistance could be afforded by her to the lovers. They
might advance rapidly if they would, however; they must advance somehow
or other whether they would or no. She hardly wished to have more
leisure for them. There are people, who the more you do for them, the
less they will do for themselves.

Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley, from having been longer than usual absent
from Surry, were exciting of course rather more than the usual
interest. Till this year, every long vacation since their marriage had
been divided between Hartfield and Donwell Abbey; but all the holidays
of this autumn had been given to sea-bathing for the children, and it
was therefore many months since they had been seen in a regular way by
their Surry connexions, or seen at all by Mr. Woodhouse, who could not
be induced to get so far as London, even for poor Isabella’s sake; and
who consequently was now most nervously and apprehensively happy in
forestalling this too short visit.

He thought much of the evils of the journey for her, and not a little
of the fatigues of his own horses and coachman who were to bring some
of the party the last half of the way; but his alarms were needless;
the sixteen miles being happily accomplished, and Mr. and Mrs. John
Knightley, their five children, and a competent number of
nursery-maids, all reaching Hartfield in safety. The bustle and joy of
such an arrival, the many to be talked to, welcomed, encouraged, and
variously dispersed and disposed of, produced a noise and confusion
which his nerves could not have borne under any other cause, nor have
endured much longer even for this; but the ways of Hartfield and the
feelings of her father were so respected by Mrs. John Knightley, that
in spite of maternal solicitude for the immediate enjoyment of her
little ones, and for their having instantly all the liberty and
attendance, all the eating and drinking, and sleeping and playing,
which they could possibly wish for, without the smallest delay, the
children were never allowed to be long a disturbance to him, either in
themselves or in any restless attendance on them.

Mrs. John Knightley was a pretty, elegant little woman, of gentle,
quiet manners, and a disposition remarkably amiable and affectionate;
wrapt up in her family; a devoted wife, a doating mother, and so
tenderly attached to her father and sister that, but for these higher
ties, a warmer love might have seemed impossible. She could never see a
fault in any of them. She was not a woman of strong understanding or
any quickness; and with this resemblance of her father, she inherited
also much of his constitution; was delicate in her own health,
over-careful of that of her children, had many fears and many nerves,
and was as fond of her own Mr. Wingfield in town as her father could be
of Mr. Perry. They were alike too, in a general benevolence of temper,
and a strong habit of regard for every old acquaintance.

Mr. John Knightley was a tall, gentleman-like, and very clever man;
rising in his profession, domestic, and respectable in his private
character; but with reserved manners which prevented his being
generally pleasing; and capable of being sometimes out of humour. He
was not an ill-tempered man, not so often unreasonably cross as to
deserve such a reproach; but his temper was not his great perfection;
and, indeed, with such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that
any natural defects in it should not be increased. The extreme
sweetness of her temper must hurt his. He had all the clearness and
quickness of mind which she wanted, and he could sometimes act an
ungracious, or say a severe thing.

He was not a great favourite with his fair sister-in-law. Nothing wrong
in him escaped her. She was quick in feeling the little injuries to
Isabella, which Isabella never felt herself. Perhaps she might have
passed over more had his manners been flattering to Isabella’s sister,
but they were only those of a calmly kind brother and friend, without
praise and without blindness; but hardly any degree of personal
compliment could have made her regardless of that greatest fault of all
in her eyes which he sometimes fell into, the want of respectful
forbearance towards her father. There he had not always the patience
that could have been wished. Mr. Woodhouse’s peculiarities and
fidgetiness were sometimes provoking him to a rational remonstrance or
sharp retort equally ill-bestowed. It did not often happen; for Mr.
John Knightley had really a great regard for his father-in-law, and
generally a strong sense of what was due to him; but it was too often
for Emma’s charity, especially as there was all the pain of
apprehension frequently to be endured, though the offence came not. The
beginning, however, of every visit displayed none but the properest
feelings, and this being of necessity so short might be hoped to pass
away in unsullied cordiality. They had not been long seated and
composed when Mr. Woodhouse, with a melancholy shake of the head and a
sigh, called his daughter’s attention to the sad change at Hartfield
since she had been there last.

“Ah, my dear,” said he, “poor Miss Taylor—It is a grievous business.”

“Oh yes, sir,” cried she with ready sympathy, “how you must miss her!
And dear Emma, too!—What a dreadful loss to you both!—I have been so
grieved for you.—I could not imagine how you could possibly do without
her.—It is a sad change indeed.—But I hope she is pretty well, sir.”

“Pretty well, my dear—I hope—pretty well.—I do not know but that the
place agrees with her tolerably.”

Mr. John Knightley here asked Emma quietly whether there were any
doubts of the air of Randalls.

“Oh! no—none in the least. I never saw Mrs. Weston better in my
life—never looking so well. Papa is only speaking his own regret.”

“Very much to the honour of both,” was the handsome reply.

“And do you see her, sir, tolerably often?” asked Isabella in the
plaintive tone which just suited her father.

Mr. Woodhouse hesitated.—“Not near so often, my dear, as I could wish.”

“Oh! papa, we have missed seeing them but one entire day since they
married. Either in the morning or evening of every day, excepting one,
have we seen either Mr. Weston or Mrs. Weston, and generally both,
either at Randalls or here—and as you may suppose, Isabella, most
frequently here. They are very, very kind in their visits. Mr. Weston
is really as kind as herself. Papa, if you speak in that melancholy
way, you will be giving Isabella a false idea of us all. Every body
must be aware that Miss Taylor must be missed, but every body ought
also to be assured that Mr. and Mrs. Weston do really prevent our
missing her by any means to the extent we ourselves anticipated—which
is the exact truth.”

“Just as it should be,” said Mr. John Knightley, “and just as I hoped
it was from your letters. Her wish of shewing you attention could not
be doubted, and his being a disengaged and social man makes it all
easy. I have been always telling you, my love, that I had no idea of
the change being so very material to Hartfield as you apprehended; and
now you have Emma’s account, I hope you will be satisfied.”

“Why, to be sure,” said Mr. Woodhouse—“yes, certainly—I cannot deny
that Mrs. Weston, poor Mrs. Weston, does come and see us pretty
often—but then—she is always obliged to go away again.”

“It would be very hard upon Mr. Weston if she did not, papa.—You quite
forget poor Mr. Weston.”

“I think, indeed,” said John Knightley pleasantly, “that Mr. Weston has
some little claim. You and I, Emma, will venture to take the part of
the poor husband. I, being a husband, and you not being a wife, the
claims of the man may very likely strike us with equal force. As for
Isabella, she has been married long enough to see the convenience of
putting all the Mr. Westons aside as much as she can.”

“Me, my love,” cried his wife, hearing and understanding only in part.—
“Are you talking about me?—I am sure nobody ought to be, or can be, a
greater advocate for matrimony than I am; and if it had not been for
the misery of her leaving Hartfield, I should never have thought of
Miss Taylor but as the most fortunate woman in the world; and as to
slighting Mr. Weston, that excellent Mr. Weston, I think there is
nothing he does not deserve. I believe he is one of the very
best-tempered men that ever existed. Excepting yourself and your
brother, I do not know his equal for temper. I shall never forget his
flying Henry’s kite for him that very windy day last Easter—and ever
since his particular kindness last September twelvemonth in writing
that note, at twelve o’clock at night, on purpose to assure me that
there was no scarlet fever at Cobham, I have been convinced there could
not be a more feeling heart nor a better man in existence.—If any body
can deserve him, it must be Miss Taylor.”

“Where is the young man?” said John Knightley. “Has he been here on
this occasion—or has he not?”

“He has not been here yet,” replied Emma. “There was a strong
expectation of his coming soon after the marriage, but it ended in
nothing; and I have not heard him mentioned lately.”

“But you should tell them of the letter, my dear,” said her father. “He
wrote a letter to poor Mrs. Weston, to congratulate her, and a very
proper, handsome letter it was. She shewed it to me. I thought it very
well done of him indeed. Whether it was his own idea you know, one
cannot tell. He is but young, and his uncle, perhaps—”

“My dear papa, he is three-and-twenty. You forget how time passes.”

“Three-and-twenty!—is he indeed?—Well, I could not have thought it—and
he was but two years old when he lost his poor mother! Well, time does
fly indeed!—and my memory is very bad. However, it was an exceeding
good, pretty letter, and gave Mr. and Mrs. Weston a great deal of
pleasure. I remember it was written from Weymouth, and dated Sept.
28th—and began, ‘My dear Madam,’ but I forget how it went on; and it
was signed ‘F. C. Weston Churchill.’—I remember that perfectly.”

“How very pleasing and proper of him!” cried the good-hearted Mrs. John
Knightley. “I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But
how sad it is that he should not live at home with his father! There is
something so shocking in a child’s being taken away from his parents
and natural home! I never could comprehend how Mr. Weston could part
with him. To give up one’s child! I really never could think well of
any body who proposed such a thing to any body else.”

“Nobody ever did think well of the Churchills, I fancy,” observed Mr.
John Knightley coolly. “But you need not imagine Mr. Weston to have
felt what you would feel in giving up Henry or John. Mr. Weston is
rather an easy, cheerful-tempered man, than a man of strong feelings;
he takes things as he finds them, and makes enjoyment of them somehow
or other, depending, I suspect, much more upon what is called society
for his comforts, that is, upon the power of eating and drinking, and
playing whist with his neighbours five times a week, than upon family
affection, or any thing that home affords.”

Emma could not like what bordered on a reflection on Mr. Weston, and
had half a mind to take it up; but she struggled, and let it pass. She
would keep the peace if possible; and there was something honourable
and valuable in the strong domestic habits, the all-sufficiency of home
to himself, whence resulted her brother’s disposition to look down on
the common rate of social intercourse, and those to whom it was
important.—It had a high claim to forbearance.




CHAPTER XII


Mr. Knightley was to dine with them—rather against the inclination of
Mr. Woodhouse, who did not like that any one should share with him in
Isabella’s first day. Emma’s sense of right however had decided it; and
besides the consideration of what was due to each brother, she had
particular pleasure, from the circumstance of the late disagreement
between Mr. Knightley and herself, in procuring him the proper
invitation.

She hoped they might now become friends again. She thought it was time
to make up. Making-up indeed would not do. _She_ certainly had not been
in the wrong, and _he_ would never own that he had. Concession must be
out of the question; but it was time to appear to forget that they had
ever quarrelled; and she hoped it might rather assist the restoration
of friendship, that when he came into the room she had one of the
children with her—the youngest, a nice little girl about eight months
old, who was now making her first visit to Hartfield, and very happy to
be danced about in her aunt’s arms. It did assist; for though he began
with grave looks and short questions, he was soon led on to talk of
them all in the usual way, and to take the child out of her arms with
all the unceremoniousness of perfect amity. Emma felt they were friends
again; and the conviction giving her at first great satisfaction, and
then a little sauciness, she could not help saying, as he was admiring
the baby,

“What a comfort it is, that we think alike about our nephews and
nieces. As to men and women, our opinions are sometimes very different;
but with regard to these children, I observe we never disagree.”

“If you were as much guided by nature in your estimate of men and
women, and as little under the power of fancy and whim in your dealings
with them, as you are where these children are concerned, we might
always think alike.”

“To be sure—our discordancies must always arise from my being in the
wrong.”

“Yes,” said he, smiling—“and reason good. I was sixteen years old when
you were born.”

“A material difference then,” she replied—“and no doubt you were much
my superior in judgment at that period of our lives; but does not the
lapse of one-and-twenty years bring our understandings a good deal
nearer?”

“Yes—a good deal _nearer_.”

“But still, not near enough to give me a chance of being right, if we
think differently.”

“I have still the advantage of you by sixteen years’ experience, and by
not being a pretty young woman and a spoiled child. Come, my dear Emma,
let us be friends, and say no more about it. Tell your aunt, little
Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing
old grievances, and that if she were not wrong before, she is now.”

“That’s true,” she cried—“very true. Little Emma, grow up a better
woman than your aunt. Be infinitely cleverer and not half so conceited.
Now, Mr. Knightley, a word or two more, and I have done. As far as good
intentions went, we were _both_ right, and I must say that no effects
on my side of the argument have yet proved wrong. I only want to know
that Mr. Martin is not very, very bitterly disappointed.”

“A man cannot be more so,” was his short, full answer.

“Ah!—Indeed I am very sorry.—Come, shake hands with me.”

This had just taken place and with great cordiality, when John
Knightley made his appearance, and “How d’ye do, George?” and “John,
how are you?” succeeded in the true English style, burying under a
calmness that seemed all but indifference, the real attachment which
would have led either of them, if requisite, to do every thing for the
good of the other.

The evening was quiet and conversable, as Mr. Woodhouse declined cards
entirely for the sake of comfortable talk with his dear Isabella, and
the little party made two natural divisions; on one side he and his
daughter; on the other the two Mr. Knightleys; their subjects totally
distinct, or very rarely mixing—and Emma only occasionally joining in
one or the other.

The brothers talked of their own concerns and pursuits, but principally
of those of the elder, whose temper was by much the most communicative,
and who was always the greater talker. As a magistrate, he had
generally some point of law to consult John about, or, at least, some
curious anecdote to give; and as a farmer, as keeping in hand the
home-farm at Donwell, he had to tell what every field was to bear next
year, and to give all such local information as could not fail of being
interesting to a brother whose home it had equally been the longest
part of his life, and whose attachments were strong. The plan of a
drain, the change of a fence, the felling of a tree, and the
destination of every acre for wheat, turnips, or spring corn, was
entered into with as much equality of interest by John, as his cooler
manners rendered possible; and if his willing brother ever left him any
thing to inquire about, his inquiries even approached a tone of
eagerness.

While they were thus comfortably occupied, Mr. Woodhouse was enjoying a
full flow of happy regrets and fearful affection with his daughter.

“My poor dear Isabella,” said he, fondly taking her hand, and
interrupting, for a few moments, her busy labours for some one of her
five children—“How long it is, how terribly long since you were here!
And how tired you must be after your journey! You must go to bed early,
my dear—and I recommend a little gruel to you before you go.—You and I
will have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear Emma, suppose we all
have a little gruel.”

Emma could not suppose any such thing, knowing as she did, that both
the Mr. Knightleys were as unpersuadable on that article as
herself;—and two basins only were ordered. After a little more
discourse in praise of gruel, with some wondering at its not being
taken every evening by every body, he proceeded to say, with an air of
grave reflection,

“It was an awkward business, my dear, your spending the autumn at South
End instead of coming here. I never had much opinion of the sea air.”

“Mr. Wingfield most strenuously recommended it, sir—or we should not
have gone. He recommended it for all the children, but particularly for
the weakness in little Bella’s throat,—both sea air and bathing.”

“Ah! my dear, but Perry had many doubts about the sea doing her any
good; and as to myself, I have been long perfectly convinced, though
perhaps I never told you so before, that the sea is very rarely of use
to any body. I am sure it almost killed me once.”

“Come, come,” cried Emma, feeling this to be an unsafe subject, “I must
beg you not to talk of the sea. It makes me envious and miserable;—I
who have never seen it! South End is prohibited, if you please. My dear
Isabella, I have not heard you make one inquiry about Mr. Perry yet;
and he never forgets you.”

“Oh! good Mr. Perry—how is he, sir?”

“Why, pretty well; but not quite well. Poor Perry is bilious, and he
has not time to take care of himself—he tells me he has not time to
take care of himself—which is very sad—but he is always wanted all
round the country. I suppose there is not a man in such practice
anywhere. But then there is not so clever a man any where.”

“And Mrs. Perry and the children, how are they? do the children grow? I
have a great regard for Mr. Perry. I hope he will be calling soon. He
will be so pleased to see my little ones.”

“I hope he will be here to-morrow, for I have a question or two to ask
him about myself of some consequence. And, my dear, whenever he comes,
you had better let him look at little Bella’s throat.”

“Oh! my dear sir, her throat is so much better that I have hardly any
uneasiness about it. Either bathing has been of the greatest service to
her, or else it is to be attributed to an excellent embrocation of Mr.
Wingfield’s, which we have been applying at times ever since August.”

“It is not very likely, my dear, that bathing should have been of use
to her—and if I had known you were wanting an embrocation, I would have
spoken to—

“You seem to me to have forgotten Mrs. and Miss Bates,” said Emma, “I
have not heard one inquiry after them.”

“Oh! the good Bateses—I am quite ashamed of myself—but you mention them
in most of your letters. I hope they are quite well. Good old Mrs.
Bates—I will call upon her to-morrow, and take my children.—They are
always so pleased to see my children.—And that excellent Miss
Bates!—such thorough worthy people!—How are they, sir?”

“Why, pretty well, my dear, upon the whole. But poor Mrs. Bates had a
bad cold about a month ago.”

“How sorry I am! But colds were never so prevalent as they have been
this autumn. Mr. Wingfield told me that he has never known them more
general or heavy—except when it has been quite an influenza.”

“That has been a good deal the case, my dear; but not to the degree you
mention. Perry says that colds have been very general, but not so heavy
as he has very often known them in November. Perry does not call it
altogether a sickly season.”

“No, I do not know that Mr. Wingfield considers it _very_ sickly
except—

“Ah! my poor dear child, the truth is, that in London it is always a
sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. It is a
dreadful thing to have you forced to live there! so far off!—and the
air so bad!”

“No, indeed—_we_ are not at all in a bad air. Our part of London is
very superior to most others!—You must not confound us with London in
general, my dear sir. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very
different from almost all the rest. We are so very airy! I should be
unwilling, I own, to live in any other part of the town;—there is
hardly any other that I could be satisfied to have my children in: but
_we_ are so remarkably airy!—Mr. Wingfield thinks the vicinity of
Brunswick Square decidedly the most favourable as to air.”

“Ah! my dear, it is not like Hartfield. You make the best of it—but
after you have been a week at Hartfield, you are all of you different
creatures; you do not look like the same. Now I cannot say, that I
think you are any of you looking well at present.”

“I am sorry to hear you say so, sir; but I assure you, excepting those
little nervous head-aches and palpitations which I am never entirely
free from anywhere, I am quite well myself; and if the children were
rather pale before they went to bed, it was only because they were a
little more tired than usual, from their journey and the happiness of
coming. I hope you will think better of their looks to-morrow; for I
assure you Mr. Wingfield told me, that he did not believe he had ever
sent us off altogether, in such good case. I trust, at least, that you
do not think Mr. Knightley looking ill,” turning her eyes with
affectionate anxiety towards her husband.

“Middling, my dear; I cannot compliment you. I think Mr. John Knightley
very far from looking well.”

“What is the matter, sir?—Did you speak to me?” cried Mr. John
Knightley, hearing his own name.

“I am sorry to find, my love, that my father does not think you looking
well—but I hope it is only from being a little fatigued. I could have
wished, however, as you know, that you had seen Mr. Wingfield before
you left home.”

“My dear Isabella,”—exclaimed he hastily—“pray do not concern yourself
about my looks. Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and
the children, and let me look as I chuse.”

“I did not thoroughly understand what you were telling your brother,”
cried Emma, “about your friend Mr. Graham’s intending to have a bailiff
from Scotland, to look after his new estate. What will it answer? Will
not the old prejudice be too strong?”

And she talked in this way so long and successfully that, when forced
to give her attention again to her father and sister, she had nothing
worse to hear than Isabella’s kind inquiry after Jane Fairfax; and Jane
Fairfax, though no great favourite with her in general, she was at that
moment very happy to assist in praising.

“That sweet, amiable Jane Fairfax!” said Mrs. John Knightley.—“It is so
long since I have seen her, except now and then for a moment
accidentally in town! What happiness it must be to her good old
grandmother and excellent aunt, when she comes to visit them! I always
regret excessively on dear Emma’s account that she cannot be more at
Highbury; but now their daughter is married, I suppose Colonel and Mrs.
Campbell will not be able to part with her at all. She would be such a
delightful companion for Emma.”

Mr. Woodhouse agreed to it all, but added,

“Our little friend Harriet Smith, however, is just such another pretty
kind of young person. You will like Harriet. Emma could not have a
better companion than Harriet.”

“I am most happy to hear it—but only Jane Fairfax one knows to be so
very accomplished and superior!—and exactly Emma’s age.”

This topic was discussed very happily, and others succeeded of similar
moment, and passed away with similar harmony; but the evening did not
close without a little return of agitation. The gruel came and supplied
a great deal to be said—much praise and many comments—undoubting
decision of its wholesomeness for every constitution, and pretty severe
Philippics upon the many houses where it was never met with
tolerably;—but, unfortunately, among the failures which the daughter
had to instance, the most recent, and therefore most prominent, was in
her own cook at South End, a young woman hired for the time, who never
had been able to understand what she meant by a basin of nice smooth
gruel, thin, but not too thin. Often as she had wished for and ordered
it, she had never been able to get any thing tolerable. Here was a
dangerous opening.

“Ah!” said Mr. Woodhouse, shaking his head and fixing his eyes on her
with tender concern.—The ejaculation in Emma’s ear expressed, “Ah!
there is no end of the sad consequences of your going to South End. It
does not bear talking of.” And for a little while she hoped he would
not talk of it, and that a silent rumination might suffice to restore
him to the relish of his own smooth gruel. After an interval of some
minutes, however, he began with,

“I shall always be very sorry that you went to the sea this autumn,
instead of coming here.”

“But why should you be sorry, sir?—I assure you, it did the children a
great deal of good.”

“And, moreover, if you must go to the sea, it had better not have been
to South End. South End is an unhealthy place. Perry was surprized to
hear you had fixed upon South End.”

“I know there is such an idea with many people, but indeed it is quite
a mistake, sir.—We all had our health perfectly well there, never found
the least inconvenience from the mud; and Mr. Wingfield says it is
entirely a mistake to suppose the place unhealthy; and I am sure he may
be depended on, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air,
and his own brother and family have been there repeatedly.”

“You should have gone to Cromer, my dear, if you went anywhere.—Perry
was a week at Cromer once, and he holds it to be the best of all the
sea-bathing places. A fine open sea, he says, and very pure air. And,
by what I understand, you might have had lodgings there quite away from
the sea—a quarter of a mile off—very comfortable. You should have
consulted Perry.”

“But, my dear sir, the difference of the journey;—only consider how
great it would have been.—An hundred miles, perhaps, instead of forty.”

“Ah! my dear, as Perry says, where health is at stake, nothing else
should be considered; and if one is to travel, there is not much to
chuse between forty miles and an hundred.—Better not move at all,
better stay in London altogether than travel forty miles to get into a
worse air. This is just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very
ill-judged measure.”

Emma’s attempts to stop her father had been vain; and when he had
reached such a point as this, she could not wonder at her
brother-in-law’s breaking out.

“Mr. Perry,” said he, in a voice of very strong displeasure, “would do
as well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. Why does he make it
any business of his, to wonder at what I do?—at my taking my family to
one part of the coast or another?—I may be allowed, I hope, the use of
my judgment as well as Mr. Perry.—I want his directions no more than
his drugs.” He paused—and growing cooler in a moment, added, with only
sarcastic dryness, “If Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and
five children a distance of an hundred and thirty miles with no greater
expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as
willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could himself.”

“True, true,” cried Mr. Knightley, with most ready interposition—“very
true. That’s a consideration indeed.—But John, as to what I was telling
you of my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the
right that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive
any difficulty. I should not attempt it, if it were to be the means of
inconvenience to the Highbury people, but if you call to mind exactly
the present line of the path.... The only way of proving it, however,
will be to turn to our maps. I shall see you at the Abbey to-morrow
morning I hope, and then we will look them over, and you shall give me
your opinion.”

Mr. Woodhouse was rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his
friend Perry, to whom he had, in fact, though unconsciously, been
attributing many of his own feelings and expressions;—but the soothing
attentions of his daughters gradually removed the present evil, and the
immediate alertness of one brother, and better recollections of the
other, prevented any renewal of it.




CHAPTER XIII


There could hardly be a happier creature in the world than Mrs. John
Knightley, in this short visit to Hartfield, going about every morning
among her old acquaintance with her five children, and talking over
what she had done every evening with her father and sister. She had
nothing to wish otherwise, but that the days did not pass so swiftly.
It was a delightful visit;—perfect, in being much too short.

In general their evenings were less engaged with friends than their
mornings; but one complete dinner engagement, and out of the house too,
there was no avoiding, though at Christmas. Mr. Weston would take no
denial; they must all dine at Randalls one day;—even Mr. Woodhouse was
persuaded to think it a possible thing in preference to a division of
the party.

How they were all to be conveyed, he would have made a difficulty if he
could, but as his son and daughter’s carriage and horses were actually
at Hartfield, he was not able to make more than a simple question on
that head; it hardly amounted to a doubt; nor did it occupy Emma long
to convince him that they might in one of the carriages find room for
Harriet also.

Harriet, Mr. Elton, and Mr. Knightley, their own especial set, were the
only persons invited to meet them;—the hours were to be early, as well
as the numbers few; Mr. Woodhouse’s habits and inclination being
consulted in every thing.

The evening before this great event (for it was a very great event that
Mr. Woodhouse should dine out, on the 24th of December) had been spent
by Harriet at Hartfield, and she had gone home so much indisposed with
a cold, that, but for her own earnest wish of being nursed by Mrs.
Goddard, Emma could not have allowed her to leave the house. Emma
called on her the next day, and found her doom already signed with
regard to Randalls. She was very feverish and had a bad sore throat:
Mrs. Goddard was full of care and affection, Mr. Perry was talked of,
and Harriet herself was too ill and low to resist the authority which
excluded her from this delightful engagement, though she could not
speak of her loss without many tears.

Emma sat with her as long as she could, to attend her in Mrs. Goddard’s
unavoidable absences, and raise her spirits by representing how much
Mr. Elton’s would be depressed when he knew her state; and left her at
last tolerably comfortable, in the sweet dependence of his having a
most comfortless visit, and of their all missing her very much. She had
not advanced many yards from Mrs. Goddard’s door, when she was met by
Mr. Elton himself, evidently coming towards it, and as they walked on
slowly together in conversation about the invalid—of whom he, on the
rumour of considerable illness, had been going to inquire, that he
might carry some report of her to Hartfield—they were overtaken by Mr.
John Knightley returning from the daily visit to Donwell, with his two
eldest boys, whose healthy, glowing faces shewed all the benefit of a
country run, and seemed to ensure a quick despatch of the roast mutton
and rice pudding they were hastening home for. They joined company and
proceeded together. Emma was just describing the nature of her friend’s
complaint;—“a throat very much inflamed, with a great deal of heat
about her, a quick, low pulse, &c. and she was sorry to find from Mrs.
Goddard that Harriet was liable to very bad sore-throats, and had often
alarmed her with them.” Mr. Elton looked all alarm on the occasion, as
he exclaimed,

“A sore-throat!—I hope not infectious. I hope not of a putrid
infectious sort. Has Perry seen her? Indeed you should take care of
yourself as well as of your friend. Let me entreat you to run no risks.
Why does not Perry see her?”

Emma, who was not really at all frightened herself, tranquillised this
excess of apprehension by assurances of Mrs. Goddard’s experience and
care; but as there must still remain a degree of uneasiness which she
could not wish to reason away, which she would rather feed and assist
than not, she added soon afterwards—as if quite another subject,

“It is so cold, so very cold—and looks and feels so very much like
snow, that if it were to any other place or with any other party, I
should really try not to go out to-day—and dissuade my father from
venturing; but as he has made up his mind, and does not seem to feel
the cold himself, I do not like to interfere, as I know it would be so
great a disappointment to Mr. and Mrs. Weston. But, upon my word, Mr.
Elton, in your case, I should certainly excuse myself. You appear to me
a little hoarse already, and when you consider what demand of voice and
what fatigues to-morrow will bring, I think it would be no more than
common prudence to stay at home and take care of yourself to-night.”

Mr. Elton looked as if he did not very well know what answer to make;
which was exactly the case; for though very much gratified by the kind
care of such a fair lady, and not liking to resist any advice of her’s,
he had not really the least inclination to give up the visit;—but Emma,
too eager and busy in her own previous conceptions and views to hear
him impartially, or see him with clear vision, was very well satisfied
with his muttering acknowledgment of its being “very cold, certainly
very cold,” and walked on, rejoicing in having extricated him from
Randalls, and secured him the power of sending to inquire after Harriet
every hour of the evening.

“You do quite right,” said she;—“we will make your apologies to Mr. and
Mrs. Weston.”

But hardly had she so spoken, when she found her brother was civilly
offering a seat in his carriage, if the weather were Mr. Elton’s only
objection, and Mr. Elton actually accepting the offer with much prompt
satisfaction. It was a done thing; Mr. Elton was to go, and never had
his broad handsome face expressed more pleasure than at this moment;
never had his smile been stronger, nor his eyes more exulting than when
he next looked at her.

“Well,” said she to herself, “this is most strange!—After I had got him
off so well, to chuse to go into company, and leave Harriet ill
behind!—Most strange indeed!—But there is, I believe, in many men,
especially single men, such an inclination—such a passion for dining
out—a dinner engagement is so high in the class of their pleasures,
their employments, their dignities, almost their duties, that any thing
gives way to it—and this must be the case with Mr. Elton; a most
valuable, amiable, pleasing young man undoubtedly, and very much in
love with Harriet; but still, he cannot refuse an invitation, he must
dine out wherever he is asked. What a strange thing love is! he can see
ready wit in Harriet, but will not dine alone for her.”

Soon afterwards Mr. Elton quitted them, and she could not but do him
the justice of feeling that there was a great deal of sentiment in his
manner of naming Harriet at parting; in the tone of his voice while
assuring her that he should call at Mrs. Goddard’s for news of her fair
friend, the last thing before he prepared for the happiness of meeting
her again, when he hoped to be able to give a better report; and he
sighed and smiled himself off in a way that left the balance of
approbation much in his favour.

After a few minutes of entire silence between them, John Knightley
began with—

“I never in my life saw a man more intent on being agreeable than Mr.
Elton. It is downright labour to him where ladies are concerned. With
men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to
please, every feature works.”

“Mr. Elton’s manners are not perfect,” replied Emma; “but where there
is a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a
great deal. Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he
will have the advantage over negligent superiority. There is such
perfect good-temper and good-will in Mr. Elton as one cannot but
value.”

“Yes,” said Mr. John Knightley presently, with some slyness, “he seems
to have a great deal of good-will towards you.”

“Me!” she replied with a smile of astonishment, “are you imagining me
to be Mr. Elton’s object?”

“Such an imagination has crossed me, I own, Emma; and if it never
occurred to you before, you may as well take it into consideration
now.”

“Mr. Elton in love with me!—What an idea!”

“I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider whether it is
so or not, and to regulate your behaviour accordingly. I think your
manners to him encouraging. I speak as a friend, Emma. You had better
look about you, and ascertain what you do, and what you mean to do.”

“I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I
are very good friends, and nothing more;” and she walked on, amusing
herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a
partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of
high pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into; and not very
well pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant, and
in want of counsel. He said no more.

Mr. Woodhouse had so completely made up his min

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/158