Emma
creature!” said Emma playfully. “That is what you have in your head, I
know—and what you would certainly say if my father were not by.”
“I believe it is very true, my dear, indeed,” said Mr. Woodhouse, with
a sigh. “I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome.”
“My dearest papa! You do not think I could mean _you_, or suppose Mr.
Knightley to mean _you_. What a horrible idea! Oh no! I meant only
myself. Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know—in a
joke—it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another.”
Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults
in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them: and
though this was not particularly agreeable to Emma herself, she knew it
would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him
really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by
every body.
“Emma knows I never flatter her,” said Mr. Knightley, “but I meant no
reflection on any body. Miss Taylor has been used to have two persons
to please; she will now have but one. The chances are that she must be
a gainer.”
“Well,” said Emma, willing to let it pass—“you want to hear about the
wedding; and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved
charmingly. Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks:
not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh no; we all felt that
we were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting
every day.”
“Dear Emma bears every thing so well,” said her father. “But, Mr.
Knightley, she is really very sorry to lose poor Miss Taylor, and I am
sure she _will_ miss her more than she thinks for.”
Emma turned away her head, divided between tears and smiles. “It is
impossible that Emma should not miss such a companion,” said Mr.
Knightley. “We should not like her so well as we do, sir, if we could
suppose it; but she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor’s
advantage; she knows how very acceptable it must be, at Miss Taylor’s
time of life, to be settled in a home of her own, and how important to
her to be secure of a comfortable provision, and therefore cannot allow
herself to feel so much pain as pleasure. Every friend of Miss Taylor
must be glad to have her so happily married.”
“And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me,” said Emma, “and a
very considerable one—that I made the match myself. I made the match,
you know, four years ago; and to have it take place, and be proved in
the right, when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again,
may comfort me for any thing.”
Mr. Knightley shook his head at her. Her father fondly replied, “Ah! my
dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for
whatever you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make any more
matches.”
“I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for
other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world! And after such
success, you know!—Every body said that Mr. Weston would never marry
again. Oh dear, no! Mr. Weston, who had been a widower so long, and who
seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife, so constantly occupied
either in his business in town or among his friends here, always
acceptable wherever he went, always cheerful—Mr. Weston need not spend
a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it. Oh no! Mr.
Weston certainly would never marry again. Some people even talked of a
promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the
uncle not letting him. All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the
subject, but I believed none of it.
“Ever since the day—about four years ago—that Miss Taylor and I met
with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted
away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from
Farmer Mitchell’s, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the
match from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this
instance, dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off
match-making.”
“I do not understand what you mean by ‘success,’” said Mr. Knightley.
“Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately
spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring
about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady’s mind! But
if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it,
means only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, ‘I
think it would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor if Mr. Weston were
to marry her,’ and saying it again to yourself every now and then
afterwards, why do you talk of success? Where is your merit? What are
you proud of? You made a lucky guess; and _that_ is all that can be
said.”
“And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?—I
pity you.—I thought you cleverer—for, depend upon it a lucky guess is
never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my poor
word ‘success,’ which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so
entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures;
but I think there may be a third—a something between the do-nothing and
the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Weston’s visits here, and given
many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might
not have come to any thing after all. I think you must know Hartfield
enough to comprehend that.”
“A straightforward, open-hearted man like Weston, and a rational,
unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their
own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than
good to them, by interference.”
“Emma never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others,” rejoined
Mr. Woodhouse, understanding but in part. “But, my dear, pray do not
make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up one’s family
circle grievously.”
“Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr.
Elton, papa,—I must look about for a wife for him. There is nobody in
Highbury who deserves him—and he has been here a whole year, and has
fitted up his house so comfortably, that it would be a shame to have
him single any longer—and I thought when he was joining their hands
to-day, he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same
kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and this is
the only way I have of doing him a service.”
“Mr. Elton is a very pretty young man, to be sure, and a very good
young man, and I have a great regard for him. But if you want to shew
him any attention, my dear, ask him to come and dine with us some day.
That will be a much better thing. I dare say Mr. Knightley will be so
kind as to meet him.”
“With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time,” said Mr. Knightley,
laughing, “and I agree with you entirely, that it will be a much better
thing. Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish
and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife. Depend upon it, a
man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself.”
CHAPTER II
Mr. Weston was a native of Highbury, and born of a respectable family,
which for the last two or three generations had been rising into
gentility and property. He had received a good education, but, on
succeeding early in life to a small independence, had become indisposed
for any of the more homely pursuits in which his brothers were engaged,
and had satisfied an active, cheerful mind and social temper by
entering into the militia of his county, then embodied.
Captain Weston was a general favourite; and when the chances of his
military life had introduced him to Miss Churchill, of a great
Yorkshire family, and Miss Churchill fell in love with him, nobody was
surprized, except her brother and his wife, who had never seen him, and
who were full of pride and importance, which the connexion would
offend.
Miss Churchill, however, being of age, and with the full command of her
fortune—though her fortune bore no proportion to the family-estate—was
not to be dissuaded from the marriage, and it took place, to the
infinite mortification of Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, who threw her off
with due decorum. It was an unsuitable connexion, and did not produce
much happiness. Mrs. Weston ought to have found more in it, for she had
a husband whose warm heart and sweet temper made him think every thing
due to her in return for the great goodness of being in love with him;
but though she had one sort of spirit, she had not the best. She had
resolution enough to pursue her own will in spite of her brother, but
not enough to refrain from unreasonable regrets at that brother’s
unreasonable anger, nor from missing the luxuries of her former home.
They lived beyond their income, but still it was nothing in comparison
of Enscombe: she did not cease to love her husband, but she wanted at
once to be the wife of Captain Weston, and Miss Churchill of Enscombe.
Captain Weston, who had been considered, especially by the Churchills,
as making such an amazing match, was proved to have much the worst of
the bargain; for when his wife died, after a three years’ marriage, he
was rather a poorer man than at first, and with a child to maintain.
From the expense of the child, however, he was soon relieved. The boy
had, with the additional softening claim of a lingering illness of his
mother’s, been the means of a sort of reconciliation; and Mr. and Mrs.
Churchill, having no children of their own, nor any other young
creature of equal kindred to care for, offered to take the whole charge
of the little Frank soon after her decease. Some scruples and some
reluctance the widower-father may be supposed to have felt; but as they
were overcome by other considerations, the child was given up to the
care and the wealth of the Churchills, and he had only his own comfort
to seek, and his own situation to improve as he could.
A complete change of life became desirable. He quitted the militia and
engaged in trade, having brothers already established in a good way in
London, which afforded him a favourable opening. It was a concern which
brought just employment enough. He had still a small house in Highbury,
where most of his leisure days were spent; and between useful
occupation and the pleasures of society, the next eighteen or twenty
years of his life passed cheerfully away. He had, by that time,
realised an easy competence—enough to secure the purchase of a little
estate adjoining Highbury, which he had always longed for—enough to
marry a woman as portionless even as Miss Taylor, and to live according
to the wishes of his own friendly and social disposition.
It was now some time since Miss Taylor had begun to influence his
schemes; but as it was not the tyrannic influence of youth on youth, it
had not shaken his determination of never settling till he could
purchase Randalls, and the sale of Randalls was long looked forward to;
but he had gone steadily on, with these objects in view, till they were
accomplished. He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained
his wife; and was beginning a new period of existence, with every
probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through. He had
never been an unhappy man; his own temper had secured him from that,
even in his first marriage; but his second must shew him how delightful
a well-judging and truly amiable woman could be, and must give him the
pleasantest proof of its being a great deal better to choose than to be
chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it.
He had only himself to please in his choice: his fortune was his own;
for as to Frank, it was more than being tacitly brought up as his
uncle’s heir, it had become so avowed an adoption as to have him assume
the name of Churchill on coming of age. It was most unlikely,