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Emma
by Jane Austen
VOLUME I
CHAPTER XVI
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 every thing she had been wishing for!--Such a development
of every thing 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 mis-judgment, 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 any thing. 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 every thing 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 thick-headed 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 judgment, 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 any thing 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 shewn 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 connexion 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 shewing 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 any thing 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
some one 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 any body else who
would be at all desirable for her;--William Coxe--Oh! no, I could
not endure William Coxe-- a pert young lawyer."
She stopt to blush and laugh at her own relapse, and 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 any body'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 any thing 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 every body 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?"
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, and speaking pleasantly of every body. 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.
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