Emma (67 page)

“Oh! I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other, unless they are slaps to my bottom made in desire, and therefore, you must give me a plain, direct answer. Are you quite sure that you understand the terms on which Mr Martin and Harriet now are?”

“I am quite sure,” he replied, speaking very distinctly, though his eyes strayed down as though he was thinking about the spankings she had mentioned—as though the elected celibacy wore on him as it did her, “that he told me she had accepted him, and that there was no obscurity, nothing doubtful, in the words he used, and I think I can give you a proof that it must be so. He asked my opinion as to what he was now to do. He knew of no one but Mrs Goddard to whom he could apply for information of her relations or friends. Could I mention anything more fit to be done, than to go to Mrs Goddard? I assured him that I could not. Then, he said, he would endeavour to see her in the course of this day.”

“I am perfectly satisfied,” replied Emma, with the brightest smiles, “and most sincerely wish them happy.”

“You are materially changed since we talked on this subject before.”

“I hope so—for at that time I was a fool.”

“And I am changed also, for I am now very willing to grant you all Harriet’s good qualities. I have taken some pains for your sake, and for Robert Martin’s sake—whom I have always had reason to believe as much in love with her as ever—to get acquainted with her. I have often talked to her a good deal. You must have seen that I did. Sometimes, indeed, I have thought you were half suspecting me of pleading poor Martin’s cause, which was never the case, but from all my observations, I am convinced of her being an artless, amiable girl, with very good notions, very seriously good principles, and placing her happiness in the affections and utility of domestic life. Much of this, I have no doubt, she may thank you for.”

“Me!” cried Emma, shaking her head. “Ah! Poor Harriet!”

“Now on other concerns, darling. I miss you. Pray you will consent to meet me in the gazebo again?” he asked.

“One day we shall have to find a more comfortable location.”

“Here, then.”

Emma laughed. “Mr Knightley, I quite agree that I have a similar desire, but I am determined to store up my hunger for a later date.”

“Emma, your hand then. Your hand taking my prick for a polish, or your delectable mouth. Say you will, or say you will allow me to disappear beneath your skirts to sample you again. Your nectar alone keeps me awake at night. That and the thought of losing myself between your thighs as you smile sweetly up at me.”

“Mr Knightley!”

She checked herself, however, and submitted quietly to a little more praise than she thought she deserved.

Their conversation was soon afterwards closed by the entrance of her father. She was not sorry. She wanted to be alone. Her mind was in a state of flutter and wonder which made it impossible for her to be collected. She was in dancing, singing, exclaiming spirits, and till she had moved about and talked to herself, and laughed and reflected, she could be fit for nothing rational while Mr Knightley tempted her to succumb.

Her father’s business was to announce James’ being gone out to put the horses to, preparatory to their now daily drive to Randalls, and she had, therefore, an immediate excuse for disappearing.

The joy, the gratitude, the exquisite delight of her sensations may be imagined. The sole grievance and alloy thus removed in the prospect of Harriet’s welfare, she was really in danger of becoming too happy for security. What had she to wish for? Nothing but to grow more worthy of him whose intentions and judgement had been ever so superior to her own. Nothing but that the lessons of her past folly might teach her humility and circumspection in future.

Serious she was, very serious in her thankfulness, and in her resolutions, and yet there was no preventing a laugh, sometimes in the very midst of them. She must laugh at such a close! Such an end of the doleful disappointment of five weeks back! Such a heart—such a Harriet!

Now there would be pleasure in her returning—everything would be a pleasure. It would be a great pleasure to know Robert Martin.

High in the rank of her most serious and heartfelt felicities was the reflection that all necessity of concealment from Mr Knightley would soon be over. The disguise, equivocation, mystery, so hateful to her to practise, might soon be over. She could now look forward to giving him that full and perfect confidence which her disposition was most ready to welcome as a duty and a joy.

In the gayest and happiest spirits she set forward with her father, not always listening, but always agreeing to what he said, and whether in speech or silence conniving at the comfortable persuasion of his being obliged to go to Randalls every day, or poor Mrs Weston would be disappointed.

They arrived. Mrs Weston was alone in the drawing room, but hardly had they been told of the baby, and Mr Woodhouse received the thanks for coming which he asked for, when a glimpse was caught through the blind of two figures passing near the window.

“It is Frank and Miss Fairfax,” said Mrs Weston. “I was just going to tell you of our agreeable surprise in seeing him arrive this morning. He stays till tomorrow, and Miss Fairfax has been persuaded to spend the day with us. They are coming in, I hope.”

In half a minute they were in the room. Emma was extremely glad to see him—but there was a degree of confusion—a number of embarrassing recollections on each side. They met readily and smiling, but with a consciousness which at first allowed little to be said, and having all sat down again, there was for some time such a blank in the circle that Emma began to doubt whether the wish now indulged, which she had long felt, of seeing Frank Churchill once more, and of seeing him with Jane, would yield its proportion of pleasure.

When Mr Weston joined the party, however, and when the baby was fetched, there was no longer a want of subject or animation—or of courage and opportunity for Frank Churchill to draw near her and say, “I have to thank you, Miss Woodhouse, for a very kind forgiving message in one of Mrs Weston’s letters. I hope time has not made you less willing to pardon. I hope you do not retract what you then said.”

“No, indeed,” cried Emma, most happy to begin, “not in the least. I am particularly glad to see and shake hands with you—and to give you joy in person.”

He thanked her with all his heart, and continued some time to speak with serious feeling of his gratitude and happiness.

“Is not she looking well?” said he, turning his eyes towards Jane. “Better than she ever used to do? You see how my father and Mrs Weston dote upon her.”

But his spirits were soon rising again, and with laughing eyes, after mentioning the expected return of the Campbells, he named the name of Dixon. Emma blushed, and forbade its being pronounced in her hearing.

“I can never think of it,” she cried, “without extreme shame.”

“The shame,” he answered, “is all mine, or ought to be. But is it possible that you had no suspicion? I mean of late. Early, I know, you had none.”

“I never had the smallest, I assure you.”

“That appears quite wonderful. I was once very near—and I wish I had—it would have been better. But though I was always doing wrong things, they were very bad wrong things, and such as did me no service. It would have been a much better transgression had I broken the bond of secrecy and told you everything.”

“It is not now worth a regret,” said Emma.

“I have some hope,” resumed he, “of my uncle’s being persuaded to pay a visit at Randalls, he wants to be introduced to her. When the Campbells are returned, we shall meet them in London, and continue there, I trust, till we may carry her northward. But now I am at such a distance from her—is not it hard, Miss Woodhouse? Till this morning, we have not once met since the day of reconciliation. Do not you pity me?”

Emma spoke her pity so very kindly, that with a sudden accession of gay thought, he cried, “Ah! By the bye”—then sinking his voice, and looking demure for the moment—“I hope Mr Knightley is well?” He paused. She coloured and laughed. “I know you saw my letter, and think you may remember my wish in your favour. Let me return your congratulations. I assure you that I have heard the news with the warmest interest and satisfaction. He is a man whom I cannot presume to praise.”

Emma was delighted, and only wanted him to go on in the same style, but his mind was the next moment in his own concerns and with his own Jane, and his next words were, “Did you ever see such a skin? Such smoothness! Such delicacy! and yet without being actually fair. One cannot call her fair. It is a most uncommon complexion, with her dark eyelashes and hair—a most distinguishing complexion! So peculiarly the lady in it. Just colour enough for beauty.”

“I have always admired her complexion,” replied Emma, archly, “but do not I remember the time when you found fault with her for being so pale? When we first began to talk of her. Have you quite forgotten?”

“Oh no—what an impudent dog I was! How could I dare—”

But he laughed so heartily at the recollection, that Emma could not help saying, “I do suspect that in the midst of your perplexities at that time, you had very great amusement in tricking us all. I am sure you had. I am sure it was a consolation to you.”

“Oh! No, no, no—how can you suspect me of such a thing? I was the most miserable wretch!”

“Not quite so miserable as to be insensible to mirth. I am sure it was a source of high entertainment to you to feel that you were taking us all in. Perhaps I am the readier to suspect because, to tell you the truth, I think it might have been some amusement to myself in the same situation. I think there is a little likeness between us.”

He bowed.

“If not in our dispositions,” she presently added, with a look of true sensibility, “there is a likeness in our destiny, the destiny which bids fair to connect us with two characters so much superior to our own.”

“True, true,” he answered, warmly. “No, not true on your side. You can have no superior, but most true on mine. She is a complete angel. Look at her. Is not she an angel in every gesture? Observe the turn of her throat. Observe her eyes, as she is looking up at my father. You will be glad to hear”—inclining his head, and whispering seriously—“that my uncle means to give her all my aunt’s jewels. They are to be new set. I am resolved to have some in an ornament for the head. Will not it be beautiful in her dark hair?”

“Very beautiful, indeed,” replied Emma, and she spoke so kindly, that he gratefully burst out—

“How delighted I am to see you again! And to see you in such excellent looks! I would not have missed this meeting for the world. I should certainly have called at Hartfield, had you failed to come.”

The others had been talking of the child, Mrs Weston giving an account of a little alarm she had been under, the evening before, from the infant’s appearing not quite well. She believed she had been foolish, but it had alarmed her, and she had been within half a minute of sending for Mr Perry. Perhaps she ought to be ashamed, but Mr Weston had been almost as uneasy as herself. In ten minutes, however, the child had been perfectly well again.

This was her history, and particularly interesting it was to Mr Woodhouse, who commended her very much for thinking of sending for Perry, and only regretted that she had not done it. She should always send for Perry if the child appeared in the slightest degree disordered, were it only for a moment. She could not be too soon alarmed, nor send for Perry too often. It was a pity, perhaps, that he had not come last night, for, though the child seemed well now, very well considering, it would probably have been better if Perry had seen it.

Frank Churchill caught the name.

“Perry!” said he to Emma, and trying, as he spoke, to catch Miss Fairfax’s eye. “My friend Mr Perry! What are they saying about Mr Perry? Has he been here this morning? And how does he travel now? Has he set up his carriage?”

Emma soon recollected, and understood him, and while she joined in the laugh, it was evident from Jane’s countenance that she too was really hearing him, though trying to seem deaf.

“Such an extraordinary dream of mine!” he cried. “I can never think of it without laughing. She hears us, she hears us, Miss Woodhouse. I see it in her cheek, her smile, her vain attempt to frown. Look at her. Do not you see that at this instant the very passage of her own letter which sent me the report is passing under her eye—that the whole blunder is spread before her—that she can attend to nothing else, though pretending to listen to the others?”

Jane was forced to smile completely, for a moment, and the smile partly remained as she turned towards him, and said in a conscious, low, yet steady voice, “How you can bear such recollections is astonishing to me! They
will
sometimes obtrude—but how you can court them!”

He had a great deal to say in return, and very entertainingly, but Emma’s feelings were chiefly with Jane in the argument, and on leaving Randalls, and falling naturally into a comparison of the two men, she felt that pleased as she had been to see Frank Churchill, and really regarding him as she did with friendship, she had never been more sensible of Mr Knightley’s high superiority of character. The happiness of this most happy day received its completion in the animated contemplation of his worth which this comparison produced.

Chapter Nineteen

If Emma had still, at intervals, an anxious feeling for Harriet, a momentary doubt of its being possible for her to be really cured of her attachment to Mr Knightley, and really able to accept another man from unbiased inclination, it was not long that she had to suffer from the recurrence of any such uncertainty. A very few days brought the party from London, and she had no sooner an opportunity of being one hour alone with Harriet, than she became perfectly satisfied—unaccountable as it was!—that Robert Martin had thoroughly supplanted Mr Knightley, and was now forming all her views of happiness.

Harriet was a little distressed—did look a little foolish at first, but having once owned that she had been presumptuous and silly and self-deceived before, her pain and confusion seemed to die away with the words, and leave her without a care for the past, and with the fullest exultation in the present and future. For as to her friend’s approbation, Emma had instantly removed every fear of that nature by meeting her with the most unqualified congratulations.