Emma (19 page)

It was only as she greeted the much-needed solitude that she allowed herself to revisit the coach. In her mind, however, Mr Elton was replaced by Mr Knightley, his hands on her legs as he professed undying affection. Had it gone thusly, Emma could not be certain she would have lashed out to make him stop. On the contrary, her thighs shivered in a new way and her kitty tingled with anticipation. She should like Mr Knightley on his knees there. She should like his fine lips to kiss her limbs and his tongue to wickedly coax other parts of her into bliss as Mrs Weston had once described in hushed tones.

The conversation ending the party with his offer to bring her home came to mind as she wished she had accepted his invitation and wondered if he would have taken liberties with her as Mr Elton had tried. Her pulse raced and Emma barely caught the gasp such images brought forth. Her sex ached and hidden in the quiet of her room she pressed a hand to it, wishing it were Mr Knightley’s hand easing the slow throb.

Chapter Sixteen

The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable. It was a wretched business indeed! Such an overthrow of everything she had been wishing for! Such a development of everything most unwelcome! Such a blow for Harriet! That was the worst of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation, of some sort or other, but compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light, and she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken—more in error—more disgraced by misjudgement, than she actually was, could the effects of her blunders have been confined to herself.

“If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have borne anything. He might have doubled his presumption to me—but poor Harriet!”

How she could have been so deceived! He protested that he had never thought seriously of Harriet—never! She looked back as well as she could, but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made everything bend to it. His manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so misled.

The picture! How eager he had been about the picture! And the charade! And an hundred other circumstances, how clearly they had seemed to point at Harriet. To be sure, the charade, with its ‘ready wit’—but then the ‘soft eyes’—in fact it suited neither, it was a jumble without taste or truth. Who could have seen through such thickheaded nonsense?

Certainly she had often, especially of late, thought his manners to herself unnecessarily gallant, but it had passed as his way, as a mere error of judgement, of knowledge, of taste, as one proof among others that he had not always lived in the best society—that with all the gentleness of his address, true elegance was sometimes wanting. But till this very day, she had never for an instant suspected it to mean anything but grateful respect to her as Harriet’s friend.

To Mr John Knightley was she indebted for her first idea on the subject, for the first start of its possibility. There was no denying that those brothers had penetration. She remembered what Mr Knightley had once said to her about Mr Elton, the caution he had given, the conviction he had professed that Mr Elton would never marry indiscreetly, and blushed to think how much truer a knowledge of his character had been there shown than any she had reached herself. It was dreadfully mortifying, but Mr Elton was proving himself, in many respects, the very reverse of what she had meant and believed him—proud, assuming, conceited, very full of his own claims and little concerned about the feelings of others.

Contrary to the usual course of things, Mr Elton’s wanting to pay his addresses to her had sunk him in her opinion. His professions and his proposals did him no service. She thought nothing of his attachment, and was insulted by his hopes. He wanted to marry well, and having the arrogance to raise his eyes to her, pretended to be in love, but she was perfectly easy as to his not suffering any disappointment that need be cared for. There had been no real affection either in his language or manners. Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance, but she could hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less allied with real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him. He only wanted to aggrandise and enrich himself, and if Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield, the heiress of thirty thousand pounds, were not quite so easily obtained as he had fancied, he would soon try for Miss Somebody Else with twenty, or with ten.

But—that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as aware of his views, accepting his attentions, meaning, in short, to marry him! Should suppose himself her equal in connection or mind! Look down upon her friend, so well understanding the gradations of rank below him, and be so blind to what rose above, as to fancy himself showing no presumption in addressing her! It was most provoking.

Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he was her inferior in talent, and all the elegancies of mind. The very want of such equality might prevent his perception of it, but he must know that in fortune and consequence she was greatly his superior. He must know that the Woodhouses had been settled for several generations at Hartfield, the younger branch of a very ancient family—and that the Eltons were nobody. The landed property of Hartfield certainly was inconsiderable, being but a sort of notch in the Donwell Abbey estate, to which all the rest of Highbury belonged, but their fortune from other sources was such as to make them scarcely secondary to Donwell Abbey itself in every other kind of consequence. And the Woodhouses had long held a high place in the consideration of the neighbourhood which Mr Elton had first entered not two years ago, to make his way as he could, without any alliances but in trade, or anything to recommend him to notice but his situation and his civility.

But he had fancied her in love with him, that evidently must have been his dependence, and after raving a little about the seeming incongruity of gentle manners and a conceited head, Emma was obliged in common honesty to stop and admit that her own behaviour to him had been so complaisant and obliging, so full of courtesy and attention, as—supposing her real motive unperceived—might warrant a man of ordinary observation and delicacy, like Mr Elton, in fancying himself a very decided favourite. If
she
had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to wonder that
he
, with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken hers.

The first error and the worst lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.

“Here have I,” said she, “actually talked poor Harriet into being very much attached to this man. She might never have thought of him but for me, and certainly never would have thought of him with hope, if I had not assured her of his attachment, for she is as modest and humble as I used to think him. Oh! That I had been satisfied with persuading her not to accept young Martin. There I was quite right. That was well done of me, but there I should have stopped, and left the rest to time and chance. I was introducing her into good company, and giving her the opportunity of pleasing someone worth having, I ought not to have attempted more. But now, poor girl, her peace is cut up for some time. I have been but half a friend to her, and if she were
not
to feel this disappointment so very much, I am sure I have not an idea of anybody else who would be at all desirable for her. William Coxe—Oh! No, I could not endure William Coxe—a pert young lawyer.”

She stopped to blush and laugh at her own relapse, then resumed a more serious, more dispiriting cogitation upon what had been, and might be, and must be. The distressing explanation she had to make to Harriet, and all that poor Harriet would be suffering—with the awkwardness of future meetings, the difficulties of continuing or discontinuing the acquaintance, of subduing feelings, concealing resentment and avoiding eclat—were enough to occupy her in most unmirthful reflections some time longer, and she went to bed at last with nothing settled but the conviction of her having blundered most dreadfully.

To youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma’s, though under temporary gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation, and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.

Emma got up on the morrow more disposed for comfort than she had gone to bed, more ready to see alleviations of the evil before her, and to depend on getting tolerably out of it.

It was a great consolation that Mr Elton should not be really in love with her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking to disappoint him—that Harriet’s nature should not be of that superior sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive—and that there could be no necessity for anybody’s knowing what had passed except the three principals, and especially for her father’s being given a moment’s uneasiness about it.

These were very cheering thoughts, and the sight of a great deal of snow on the ground did her further service, for anything was welcome that might justify their all three being quite asunder at present.

The weather was most favourable for her, though Christmas Day, she could not go to church. Mr Woodhouse would have been miserable had his daughter attempted it, and she was therefore safe from either exciting or receiving unpleasant and most unsuitable ideas. The ground covered with snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and thaw which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise, every morning beginning in rain or snow, and every evening setting in to freeze, she was for many days a most honourable prisoner. No intercourse with Harriet possible but by note, no church for her on Sunday any more than on Christmas Day, and no need to find excuses for Mr Elton’s absenting himself.

It was weather which might fairly confine everybody at home, and though she hoped and believed him to be really taking comfort in some society or other, it was very pleasant to have her father so well satisfied with his being all alone in his own house, too wise to stir out, and to hear him say to Mr Knightley, whom no weather could keep entirely from them, “Ah! Mr Knightley, why do not you stay at home like poor Mr Elton?”

And all in all, she knew the reason why. She’d quite set Mr Knightley up as an instructor of the sensual arts and left him no information regarding her intentions for the progress of anything different than friend and tutor. She flattered herself that he would wish for more and not obtaining it, would seek her out for explanation. Between moments of concern where she wondered what would become of a meeting when weather permitted she, Harriet and Mr Elton to visit, and how that meeting might go, Emma dreaded the revelation of truth to her dear friend and her part in believing so wholly that she had well-judged Mr Elton regarding Harriet. She blushed to be reminded of her failure. Yet telling would happen.

It was in those moments, when she could no longer dwell on her blind pursuit to see them coupled, that she thought of Mr Knightley and how she might address her plans regarding him. Though it would seem to require more boldness than confronting Harriet, it did not. She’d known Mr Knightley far too long, he’d instructed her far too many times on other matters, and he’d never disclose their changed association to her father. Beyond that, he’d made his feelings about her known—at least in part—upon the delivery of his kiss.

No, she was certain that at least there she had it right. He’d accept her as she expected and for that she could not find shame in the asking. Throughout the strain of bad weather upon bad weather, she waited for the right moment. For that distraction, she was most grateful. For in truth, the matter with she, Mr Elton and Harriet had consumed her more fragile nerves. The birth of a new plan stretched hope towards the new purpose regarding her person and Mr Knightley’s to such an extent that now she only bided her time to find Mr Knightley unencumbered by his brother so that such a conversation as she had in mind might take place.

These days of confinement would have been, but for her private perplexities, remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly suited her brother, whose feelings must always be of great importance to his companions. And he had besides so thoroughly cleared off his ill-humour at Randalls that his amiableness never failed him during the rest of his stay at Hartfield. He was always agreeable and obliging, speaking pleasantly of everybody, and it gave her mind pause on matters that would otherwise consume her good humour. But with all the hopes of cheerfulness, and all the present comfort of delay, there was still such an evil hanging over her in the hour of explanation with Harriet, as made it impossible for Emma to be ever perfectly at ease.

Chapter Seventeen

Mr and Mrs John Knightley were not detained long at Hartfield. The weather soon improved enough for those to move who must move, and Mr Woodhouse having as usual tried to persuade his daughter to stay behind with all her children, was obliged to see the whole party set off, and return to his lamentations over the destiny of poor Isabella—which poor Isabella, passing her life with those she doted on, full of their merits, blind to their faults, and always innocently busy, might have been a model of right feminine happiness.

The evening of the very day on which they went brought a note from Mr Elton to Mr Woodhouse, a long, civil, ceremonious note to say with Mr Elton’s best compliments that he was proposing to leave Highbury the following morning in his way to Bath, where in compliance with the pressing entreaties of some friends he had engaged to spend a few weeks. He very much regretted the impossibility he was under, from various circumstances of weather and business, of taking a personal leave of Mr Woodhouse, of whose friendly civilities he should ever retain a grateful sense—and had Mr Woodhouse any commands, should be happy to attend to them.