第 五十 章 · 第50章

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 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,

Your obliged and affectionate Son,

F. C. WESTON CHURCHILL.