Emma and the Werewolves (65 page)

Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth
belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something
is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken; but where, as in
this case, though the conduct is mistaken, the feelings are not, it
may not be very material. Mr. Knightley could not impute to Emma a
more relenting heart than she possessed, or a heart more disposed
to accept of his.

He had, in fact, been
wholly unsuspicious of his own influence. He had followed her into
the shrubbery with no idea of trying it. He had come, in his
anxiety to see how she bore Frank Churchill’s engagement, with no
selfish view, no view at all, but of endeavouring, if she allowed
him an opening, to soothe or to counsel her. The rest had been the
work of the moment, the immediate effect of what he heard, on his
feelings. The delightful assurance of her total indifference
towards Frank Churchill, of her having a heart completely
disengaged from him, had given birth to the hope, that, in time, he
might gain her affection himself; but it had been no present
hope—he had only, in the momentary conquest of eagerness over
judgment, aspired to be told that she did not forbid his attempt to
attach her. The superior hopes which gradually opened were so much
the more enchanting. The affection, which he had been asking to be
allowed to create, if he could, was already his! Within half an
hour, he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind, to
something so like perfect happiness, that it could bear no other
name.

Her change was equal. This
one half-hour had given to each the same precious certainty of
being beloved, had cleared from each the same degree of ignorance,
jealousy, or distrust. On his side, there had been a long-standing
jealousy, old as the arrival, or even the expectation, of Frank
Churchill. He had been in love with Emma, and jealous of Frank
Churchill, from about the same period, one sentiment having
probably enlightened him as to the other. It was his jealousy of
Frank Churchill that had taken him from the country. The Box Hill
party had decided him on going away. He would save himself from
witnessing again such permitted, encouraged attentions. He had gone
to learn to be indifferent. But he had gone to a wrong place. There
was too much domestic happiness in his brother’s house; woman wore
too amiable a form in it; Isabella was too much like Emma—differing
only in those striking inferiorities, which always brought the
other in brilliancy before him, for much to have been done, even
had his time been longer. He had stayed on, however, vigorously,
day after day—till this very morning’s post had conveyed the
history of Jane Fairfax. Then, with the gladness which must be
felt, nay, which he did not scruple to feel, having never believed
Frank Churchill to be at all deserving Emma, was there so much fond
solicitude, so much keen anxiety for her, that he could stay no
longer. He had ridden home through the rain; and had walked up
directly after dinner, to see how this sweetest and best of all
creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults, bore the
discovery.

He had found her agitated and low. Frank
Churchill was a villain. He heard her declare that she had never
loved him. Frank Churchill’s character was not desperate. She was
his own Emma, by hand and word, when they returned into the house;
and if he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have
deemed him a very good sort of fellow.

* * * *

Chapter XIV

W
hat 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 business 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,