|
Emma
by Jane Austen
VOLUME III
CHAPTER XIV
What totally different feelings did Emma take back into the house
from what she had brought out!--she had then been only daring to
hope for a little respite of suffering;--she was now in an exquisite
flutter of happiness, and such happiness moreover as she believed
must still be greater when the flutter should have passed away.
They sat down to tea--the same party round the same table-- how
often it had been collected!--and how often had her eyes fallen
on the same shrubs in the lawn, and observed the same beautiful
effect of the western sun!--But never in such a state of spirits,
never in any thing like it; and it was with difficulty that she
could summon enough of her usual self to be the attentive lady of
the house, or even the attentive daughter.
Poor Mr. Woodhouse little suspected what was plotting against him
in the breast of that man whom he was so cordially welcoming, and
so anxiously hoping might not have taken cold from his ride.--Could
he have seen the heart, he would have cared very little for the
lungs; but without the most distant imagination of the impending
evil, without the slightest perception of any thing extraordinary
in the looks or ways of either, he repeated to them very comfortably
all the articles of news he had received from Mr. Perry, and talked
on with much self-contentment, totally unsuspicious of what they
could have told him in return.
As long as Mr. Knightley remained with them, Emma's fever continued;
but when he was gone, she began to be a little tranquillised and
subdued--and in the course of the sleepless night, which was the
tax for such an evening, she found one or two such very serious
points to consider, as made her feel, that even her happiness must
have some alloy. Her father--and Harriet. She could not be alone
without feeling the full weight of their separate claims; and how
to guard the comfort of both to the utmost, was the question. With
respect to her father, it was a question soon answered. She hardly
knew yet what Mr. Knightley would ask; but a very short parley with
her own heart produced the most solemn resolution of never quitting
her father.--She even wept over the idea of it, as a sin of thought.
While he lived, it must be only an engagement; but she flattered
herself, that if divested of the danger of drawing her away, it
might become an increase of comfort to him.-- How to do her best
by Harriet, was of more difficult decision;-- how to spare her from
any unnecessary pain; how to make her any possible atonement; how
to appear least her enemy?-- On these subjects, her perplexity and
distress were very great-- and her mind had to pass again and again
through every bitter reproach and sorrowful regret that had ever
surrounded it.-- She could only resolve at last, that she would
still avoid a meeting with her, and communicate all that need be
told by letter;that it would be inexpressibly desirable to have
her removed just now for a time from Highbury, and--indulging in
one scheme more-- nearly resolve, that it might be practicable to
get an invitation for her to Brunswick Square.--Isabella had been
pleased with Harriet; and a few weeks spent in London must give
her some amusement.-- She did not think it in Harriet's nature to
escape being benefited by novelty and variety, by the streets, the
shops, and the children.-- At any rate, it would be a proof of attention
and kindness in herself, from whom every thing was due; a separation
for the present; an averting of the evil day, when they must all
be together again.
She rose early, and wrote her letter to Harriet; an employment
which left her so very serious, so nearly sad, that Mr. Knightley,
in walking up to Hartfield to breakfast, did not arrive at all too
soon; and half an hour stolen afterwards to go over the same ground
again with him, literally and figuratively, was quite necessary
to reinstate her in a proper share of the happiness of the evening
before.
He had not left her long, by no means long enough for her to have
the slightest inclination for thinking of any body else, when a
letter was brought her from Randalls--a very thick letter;--she
guessed what it must contain, and deprecated the necessity of reading
it.-- She was now in perfect charity with Frank Churchill; she wanted
no explanations, she wanted only to have her thoughts to herself--
and as for understanding any thing he wrote, she was sure she was
incapable of it.--It must be waded through, however. She opened
the packet; it was too surely so;--a note from Mrs. Weston to herself,
ushered in the letter from Frank to Mrs. Weston.
"I have the greatest pleasure, my dear Emma, in forwarding
to you the enclosed. I know what thorough justice you will do it,
and have scarcely a doubt of its happy effect.--I think we shall
never materially disagree about the writer again; but I will not
delay you by a long preface.--We are quite well.-- This letter has
been the cure of all the little nervousness I have been feeling
lately.--I did not quite like your looks on Tuesday, but it was
an ungenial morning; and though you will never own being affected
by weather, I think every body feels a north-east wind.-- I felt
for your dear father very much in the storm of Tuesday afternoon
and yesterday morning, but had the comfort of hearing last night,
by Mr. Perry, that it had not made him ill. "Yours ever,
"A. W."
[To Mrs. Weston.]
WINDSOR-JULY.
MY DEAR MADAM,
"If I made myself intelligible yesterday, this letter will
be expected; but expected or not, I know it will be read with candour
and indulgence.-- You are all goodness, and I believe there will
be need of even all your goodness to allow for some parts of my
past conduct.--But I have been forgiven by one who had still more
to resent. My courage rises while I write. It is very difficult
for the prosperous to be humble. I have already met with such success
in two applications for pardon, that I may be in danger of thinking
myself too sure of yours, and of those among your friends who have
had any ground of offence.--You must all endeavour to comprehend
the exact nature of my situation when I first arrived at Randalls;
you must consider me as having a secret which was to be kept at
all hazards. This was the fact. My right to place myself in a situation
requiring such concealment, is another question. I shall not discuss
it here. For my temptation to think it a right, I refer every caviller
to a brick house, sashed windows below, and casements above, in
Highbury. I dared not address her openly; my difficulties in the
then state of Enscombe must be too well known to require definition;
and I was fortunate enough to prevail, before we parted at Weymouth,
and to induce the most upright female mind in the creation to stoop
in charity to a secret engagement.-- Had she refused, I should have
gone mad.--But you will be ready to say, what was your hope in doing
this?--What did you look forward to?-- To any thing, every thing--to
time, chance, circumstance, slow effects, sudden bursts, perseverance
and weariness, health and sickness. Every possibility of good was
before me, and the first of blessings secured, in obtaining her
promises of faith and correspondence.If you need farther explanation,
I have the honour, my dear madam, of being your husband's son, and
the advantage of inheriting a disposition to hope for good, which
no inheritance of houses or lands can ever equal the value of.--See
me, then, under these circumstances, arriving on my first visit
to Randalls;--and here I am conscious of wrong, for that visit might
have been sooner paid. You will look back and see that I did not
come till Miss Fairfax was in Highbury; and as you were the person
slighted, you will forgive me instantly; but I must work on my father's
compassion, by reminding him, that so long as I absented myself
from his house, so long I lost the blessing of knowing you. My behaviour,
during the very happy fortnight which I spent with you, did not,
I hope, lay me open to reprehension, excepting on one point. And
now I come to the principal, the only important part of my conduct
while belonging to you, which excites my own anxiety, or requires
very solicitous explanation. With the greatest respect, and the
warmest friendship, do I mention Miss Woodhouse; my father perhaps
will think I ought to add, with the deepest humiliation.-- A few
words which dropped from him yesterday spoke his opinion, and some
censure I acknowledge myself liable to.--My behaviour to Miss Woodhouse
indicated, I believe, more than it ought.--In order to assist a
concealment so essential to me, I was led on to make more than an
allowable use of the sort of intimacy into which we were immediately
thrown.--I cannot deny that Miss Woodhouse was my ostensible object--but
I am sure you will believe the declaration, that had I not been
convinced of her indifference, I would not have been induced by
any selfish views to go on.-- Amiable and delightful as Miss Woodhouse
is, she never gave me the idea of a young woman likely to be attached;
and that she was perfectly free from any tendency to being attached
to me, was as much my conviction as my wish.--She received my attentions
with an easy, friendly, goodhumoured playfulness, which exactly
suited me. We seemed to understand each other. From our relative
situation, those attentions were her due, and were felt to be so.--Whether
Miss Woodhouse began really to understand me before the expiration
of that fortnight, I cannot say;--when I called to take leave of
her, I remember that I was within a moment of confessing the truth,
and I then fancied she was not without suspicion; but I have no
doubt of her having since detected me, at least in some degree.--
She may not have surmised the whole, but her quickness must have
penetrated a part. I cannot doubt it. You will find, whenever the
subject becomes freed from its present restraints, that it did not
take her wholly by surprize. She frequently gave me hints of it.
I remember her telling me at the ball, that I owed Mrs. Elton gratitude
for her attentions to Miss Fairfax.-- I hope this history of my
conduct towards her will be admitted by you and my father as great
extenuation of what you saw amiss. While you considered me as having
sinned against Emma Woodhouse, I could deserve nothing from either.
Acquit me here, and procure for me, when it is allowable, the acquittal
and good wishes of that said Emma Woodhouse, whom I regard with
so much brotherly affection, as to long to have her as deeply and
as happily in love as myself.-- Whatever strange things I said or
did during that fortnight, you have now a key to. My heart was in
Highbury, and my business was to get my body thither as often as
might be, and with the least suspicion. If you remember any queernesses,
set them all to the right account.-- Of the pianoforte so much talked
of, I feel it only necessary to say, that its being ordered was
absolutely unknown to Miss F--, who would never have allowed me
to send it, had any choice been given her.-- The delicacy of her
mind throughout the whole engagement, my dear madam, is much beyond
my power of doing justice to. You will soon, I earnestly hope, know
her thoroughly yourself.-- No description can describe her. She
must tell you herself what she is-- yet not by word, for never was
there a human creature who would so designedly suppress her own
merit.--Since I began this letter, which will be longer than I foresaw,
I have heard from her.-- She gives a good account of her own health;
but as she never complains, I dare not depend. I want to have your
opinion of her looks. I know you will soon call on her; she is living
in dread of the visit. Perhaps it is paid already. Let me hear from
you without delay; I am impatient for a thousand particulars. Remember
how few minutes I was at Randalls, and in how bewildered, how mad
a state: and I am not much better yet; still insane either from
happiness or misery. When I think of the kindness and favour I have
met with, of her excellence and patience, and my uncle's generosity,
I am mad with joy: but when I recollect all the uneasiness I occasioned
her, and how little I deserve to be forgiven, I am mad with anger.
If I could but see her again!--But I must not propose it yet. My
uncle has been too good for me to encroach.--I must still add to
this long letter. You have not heard all that you ought to hear.
I could not give any connected detail yesterday; but the suddenness,
and, in one light, the unseasonableness with which the affair burst
out, needs explanation; for though the event of the 26th ult., as
you will conclude, immediately opened to me the happiest prospects,
I should not have presumed on such early measures, but from the
very particular circumstances, which left me not an hour to lose.
I should myself have shrunk from any thing so hasty, and she would
have felt every scruple of mine with multiplied strength and refinement.--
But I had no choice. The hasty engagement she had entered into with
that woman--Here, my dear madam, I was obliged to leave off abruptly,
to recollect and compose myself.--I have been walking over the country,and
am now, I hope, rational enough to make the rest of my letter what
it ought to be.--It is, in fact, a most mortifying retrospect for
me. I behaved shamefully. And here I can admit, that my manners
to Miss W., in being unpleasant to Miss F., were highly blameable.
She disapproved them, which ought to have been enough.--My plea
of concealing the truth she did not think sufficient.--She was displeased;
I thought unreasonably so: I thought her, on a thousand occasions,
unnecessarily scrupulous and cautious: I thought her even cold.
But she was always right. If I had followed her judgment, and subdued
my spirits to the level of what she deemed proper, I should have
escaped the greatest unhappiness I have ever known.--We quarrelled.--
Do you remember the morning spent at Donwell?--There every little
dissatisfaction that had occurred before came to a crisis. I was
late; I met her walking home by herself, and wanted to walk with
her, but she would not suffer it. She absolutely refused to allow
me, which I then thought most unreasonable. Now, however, I see
nothing in it but a very natural and consistent degree of discretion.
While I, to blind the world to our engagement, was behaving one
hour with objectionable particularity to another woman, was she
to be consenting the next to a proposal which might have made every
previous caution useless?--Had we been met walking together between
Donwell and Highbury, the truth must have been suspected.-- I was
mad enough, however, to resent.--I doubted her affection. I doubted
it more the next day on Box Hill; when, provoked by such conduct
on my side, such shameful, insolent neglect of her, and such apparent
devotion to Miss W., as it would have been impossible for any woman
of sense to endure, she spoke her resentment in a form of words
perfectly intelligible to me.-- In short, my dear madam, it was
a quarrel blameless on her side, abominable on mine; and I returned
the same evening to Richmond, though I might have staid with you
till the next morning, merely because I would be as angry with her
as possible. Even then, I was not such a fool as not to mean to
be reconciled in time; but I was the injured person, injured by
her coldness, and I went away determined that she should make the
first advances.--I shall always congratulate myself that you were
not of the Box Hill party. Had you witnessed my behaviour there,
I can hardly suppose you would ever have thought well of me again.
Its effect upon her appears in the immediate resolution it produced:
as soon as she found I was really gone from Randalls, she closed
with the offer of that officious Mrs. Elton; the whole system of
whose treatment of her, by the bye, has ever filled me with indignation
and hatred. I must not quarrel with a spirit of forbearance which
has been so richly extended towards myself; but, otherwise, I should
loudly protest against the share of it which that woman has known.--
"Jane," indeed!--You will observe that I have not yet
indulged myself in calling her by that name, even to you. Think,
then, what I must have endured in hearing it bandied between the
Eltons with all the vulgarity of needless repetition, and all the
insolence of imaginary superiority. Have patience with me, I shall
soon have done.-- She closed with this offer, resolving to break
with me entirely, and wrote the next day to tell me that we never
were to meet again.-- She felt the engagement to be a source of
repentance and misery to each: she dissolved it.--This letter reached
me on the very morning of my poor aunt's death. I answered it within
an hour; but from the confusion of my mind, and the multiplicity
of usiness falling on me at once, my answer, instead of being sent
with all the many other letters of that day, was locked up in my
writing-desk; and I, trusting that I had written enough, though
but a few lines, to satisfy her, remained without any uneasiness.--I
was rather disappointed that I did not hear from her again speedily;
but I made excuses for her, and was too busy, and--may I add?--
too cheerful in my views to be captious.--We removed to Windsor;
and two days afterwards I received a parcel from her, my own letters
all returned!--and a few lines at the same time by the post, stating
her extreme surprize at not having had the smallest reply to her
last; and adding, that as silence on such a point could not be misconstrued,
and as it must be equally desirable to both to have every subordinate
arrangement concluded as soon as possible, she now sent me, by a
safe conveyance, all my letters, and requested, that if I could
not directly command hers, so as to send them to Highbury within
a week, I would forward them after that period to her at--: in short,
the full direction to Mr. Smallridge's, near Bristol, stared me
in the face. I knew the name, the place, I knew all about it, and
instantly saw what she had been doing. It was perfectly accordant
with that resolution of character which I knew her to possess; and
the secrecy she had maintained, as to any such design in her former
letter, was equally descriptive of its anxious delicacy. For the
world would not she have seemed to threaten me.--Imagine the shock;
imagine how, till I had actually detected my own blunder, I raved
at the blunders of the post.-- What was to be done?--One thing only.--I
must speak to my uncle.Without his sanction I could not hope to
be listened to again.-- I spoke; circumstances were in my favour;
the late event had softened away his pride, and he was, earlier
than I could have anticipated, wholly reconciled and complying;
and could say at last, poor man! with a deep sigh, that he wished
I might find as much happiness in the marriage state as he had done.--I
felt that it would be of a different sort.--Are you disposed to
pity me for what I must have suffered in opening the cause to him,
for my suspense while all was at stake?--No; do not pity me till
I reached Highbury, and saw how ill I had made her. Do not pity
me till I saw her wan, sick looks.--I reached Highbury at the time
of day when, from my knowledge of their late breakfast hour, I was
certain of a good chance of finding her alone.--I was not disappointed;
and at last I was not disappointed either in the object of my journey.
A great deal of very reasonable, very just displeasure I had to
persuade away. But it is done; we are reconciled, dearer, much dearer,
than ever, and no moment's uneasiness can ever occur between us
again. Now, my dear madam, I will release you; but I could not conclude
before. A thousand and a thousand thanks for all the kindness you
have ever shewn me, and ten thousand for the attentions your heart
will dictate towards her.--If you think me in a way to be happier
than I deserve, I am quite of your opinion.--Miss W. calls me the
child of good fortune. I hope she is right.--In one respect, my
good fortune is undoubted, that of being able to subscribe myself,
Your obliged and affectionate Son,
F. C. WESTON CHURCHILL.
|
