Emma (2 page)

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 walked with an air of confidence Emma envied, and a stride she followed with her gaze. He lived about a mile from Highbury, was a frequent visitor, always welcome, and at this time more welcome than usual, as coming directly from their mutual connections 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 and warm smile which always did him good, and his many enquiries after ‘poor Isabella’ and her children were answered most satisfactorily, a twinkle of humour lighting his eyes upon each reply.

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 moonlit night and so mild that I must draw back from your great fire and claim a spot beside Emma.”

“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.” Mr Knightley indeed left the close fire for the cooler bench where Emma sat, but well within range of the conversation shared with her father.

“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 by—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?” Mr Knightley’s knowing brow lifted in her direction.

“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, resting her hand on Mr Knightley’s sleeve. “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 everybody. Though she suspected Mr Knightley chose to correct her in place of a more telling discussion regarding her person, and his. She had not missed his many looks, or the regard he held when he thought he had not been seen. Together with Miss Taylor, she determined it to be certainly true. Mr Knightley sought her out and not being one to forego freedom for any man, it was her duty to resist. Though claiming innocence of the effect of small touches and smiles, she knew that should he wish for more, she would dance away unscathed yet pleased for securing his continued interest.

“Emma knows I never flatter her,” said Mr Knightley, “but I meant no reflection on anybody. 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, removing her hand and willing to let his words pass, “you want to hear about the wedding, and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved charmingly. Everybody was punctual, everybody 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 everything 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 anything.”

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, for I shall never marry and leave you, but I must indeed for other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world. And after such success, you know! Everybody 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, a patronising smile on his handsome face. “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 anything 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 today, 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 show 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 choose his own wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself.”

“I doubt that very much, Mr Knightley, as you yourself have yet to secure a wife of your own. I can only assume that you either think little of the attachment or believe yourself above it. If you knew your own mind so freely, you would wish for my assistance in all matters, as my father has. Or perhaps you bide your time, observing my success until you gather your courage to request my talents?”

“Your father is right. Matchmaking is an unsettling endeavour to occupy your time. Pray be done with it and move on to your own matching lest you interfere where you shouldn’t and perplex the clear of mind.” Mr Knightley’s firm delivery could not be misconstrued.

Owning as much determination as he possessed, Emma saw his words as a challenge to be met and met it would be.

Chapter Two

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 surprised—except her brother and his wife, who had never seen him and who were full of pride and importance, which the connection would offend. Despite his reservations that she remain true to her family, he was convinced by his new love that they had only the best of futures ahead.

Miss Churchill, however, being of age, and with the full command of her form and fortune—though her fortune bore no proportion to the family estate, and her form was womanly enough to test the will of a saint, let alone Mr Weston—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 after it became clear she was well and truly with child. It was an unsuitable connection, and did not produce much happiness. Mrs Weston ought to have found more in it, for she had a husband she had seduced beyond his will, whose warm heart, simple mind and sweet temper made him think everything 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 or the attentions of other men of greater fortune than her own Mr Weston. And thus, they lived beyond their income while she encouraged discreet suitors, but still it was nothing in comparison to 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 long years’ marriage, he was rather a poorer man than at first, and with a child to maintain of whose origin he was no longer entirely certain. 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, as he loved the boy, regardless of his mother’s faults, 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, so much the better.

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.