Emma
his age to be?”
“He was four-and-twenty the 8th of last June, and my birthday is the
23rd just a fortnight and a day’s difference—which is very odd.”
“Only four-and-twenty. That is too young to settle. His mother is
perfectly right not to be in a hurry. They seem very comfortable as
they are, and if she were to take any pains to marry him, she would
probably repent it. Six years hence, if he could meet with a good sort
of young woman in the same rank as his own, with a little money, it
might be very desirable.”
“Six years hence! Dear Miss Woodhouse, he would be thirty years old!”
“Well, and that is as early as most men can afford to marry, who are
not born to an independence. Mr. Martin, I imagine, has his fortune
entirely to make—cannot be at all beforehand with the world. Whatever
money he might come into when his father died, whatever his share of
the family property, it is, I dare say, all afloat, all employed in his
stock, and so forth; and though, with diligence and good luck, he may
be rich in time, it is next to impossible that he should have realised
any thing yet.”
“To be sure, so it is. But they live very comfortably. They have no
indoors man, else they do not want for any thing; and Mrs. Martin talks
of taking a boy another year.”
“I wish you may not get into a scrape, Harriet, whenever he does
marry;—I mean, as to being acquainted with his wife—for though his
sisters, from a superior education, are not to be altogether objected
to, it does not follow that he might marry any body at all fit for you
to notice. The misfortune of your birth ought to make you particularly
careful as to your associates. There can be no doubt of your being a
gentleman’s daughter, and you must support your claim to that station
by every thing within your own power, or there will be plenty of people
who would take pleasure in degrading you.”
“Yes, to be sure, I suppose there are. But while I visit at Hartfield,
and you are so kind to me, Miss Woodhouse, I am not afraid of what any
body can do.”
“You understand the force of influence pretty well, Harriet; but I
would have you so firmly established in good society, as to be
independent even of Hartfield and Miss Woodhouse. I want to see you
permanently well connected, and to that end it will be advisable to
have as few odd acquaintance as may be; and, therefore, I say that if
you should still be in this country when Mr. Martin marries, I wish you
may not be drawn in by your intimacy with the sisters, to be acquainted
with the wife, who will probably be some mere farmer’s daughter,
without education.”
“To be sure. Yes. Not that I think Mr. Martin would ever marry any body
but what had had some education—and been very well brought up. However,
I do not mean to set up my opinion against yours—and I am sure I shall
not wish for the acquaintance of his wife. I shall always have a great
regard for the Miss Martins, especially Elizabeth, and should be very
sorry to give them up, for they are quite as well educated as me. But
if he marries a very ignorant, vulgar woman, certainly I had better not
visit her, if I can help it.”
Emma watched her through the fluctuations of this speech, and saw no
alarming symptoms of love. The young man had been the first admirer,
but she trusted there was no other hold, and that there would be no
serious difficulty, on Harriet’s side, to oppose any friendly
arrangement of her own.
They met Mr. Martin the very next day, as they were walking on the
Donwell road. He was on foot, and after looking very respectfully at
her, looked with most unfeigned satisfaction at her companion. Emma was
not sorry to have such an opportunity of survey; and walking a few
yards forward, while they talked together, soon made her quick eye
sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Robert Martin. His appearance was very
neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no
other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with gentlemen, she
thought he must lose all the ground he had gained in Harriet’s
inclination. Harriet was not insensible of manner; she had voluntarily
noticed her father’s gentleness with admiration as well as wonder. Mr.
Martin looked as if he did not know what manner was.
They remained but a few minutes together, as Miss Woodhouse must not be
kept waiting; and Harriet then came running to her with a smiling face,
and in a flutter of spirits, which Miss Woodhouse hoped very soon to
compose.
“Only think of our happening to meet him!—How very odd! It was quite a
chance, he said, that he had not gone round by Randalls. He did not
think we ever walked this road. He thought we walked towards Randalls
most days. He has not been able to get the Romance of the Forest yet.
He was so busy the last time he was at Kingston that he quite forgot
it, but he goes again to-morrow. So very odd we should happen to meet!
Well, Miss Woodhouse, is he like what you expected? What do you think
of him? Do you think him so very plain?”
“He is very plain, undoubtedly—remarkably plain:—but that is nothing
compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no right to expect
much, and I did not expect much; but I had no idea that he could be so
very clownish, so totally without air. I had imagined him, I confess, a
degree or two nearer gentility.”
“To be sure,” said Harriet, in a mortified voice, “he is not so genteel
as real gentlemen.”
“I think, Harriet, since your acquaintance with us, you have been
repeatedly in the company of some such very real gentlemen, that you
must yourself be struck with the difference in Mr. Martin. At
Hartfield, you have had very good specimens of well educated, well bred
men. I should be surprized if, after seeing them, you could be in
company with Mr. Martin again without perceiving him to be a very
inferior creature—and rather wondering at yourself for having ever
thought him at all agreeable before. Do not you begin to feel that now?
Were not you struck? I am sure you must have been struck by his awkward
look and abrupt manner, and the uncouthness of a voice which I heard to
be wholly unmodulated as I stood here.”
“Certainly, he is not like Mr. Knightley. He has not such a fine air
and way of walking as Mr. Knightley. I see the difference plain enough.
But Mr. Knightley is so very fine a man!”
“Mr. Knightley’s air is so remarkably good that it is not fair to
compare Mr. Martin with _him_. You might not see one in a hundred with
_gentleman_ so plainly written as in Mr. Knightley. But he is not the
only gentleman you have been lately used to. What say you to Mr. Weston
and Mr. Elton? Compare Mr. Martin with either of _them_. Compare their
manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being
silent. You must see the difference.”
“Oh yes!—there is a great difference. But Mr. Weston is almost an old
man. Mr. Weston must be between forty and fifty.”
“Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a person
grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not
be bad; the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or
awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later
age. Mr. Martin is now awkward and abrupt; what will he be at Mr.
Weston’s time of life?”
“There is no saying, indeed,” replied Harriet rather solemnly.
“But there may be pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross,
vulgar farmer, totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of
nothing but profit and loss.”
“Will he, indeed? That will be very bad.”
“How much his business engrosses him already is very plain from the
circumstance of his forgetting to inquire for the book you recommended.
He was a great deal too full of the market to think of any thing
else—which is just as it should be, for a thriving man. What has he to
do with books? And I have no doubt that he _will_ thrive, and be a very
rich man in time—and his being illiterate and coarse need not disturb
_us_.”
“I wonder he did not remember the book”—was all Harriet’s answer, and
spoken with a degree of grave displeasure which Emma thought might be
safely left to itself. She, therefore, said no more for some time. Her
next beginning was,
“In one respect, perhaps, Mr. Elton’s manners are superior to Mr.
Knightley’s or Mr. Weston’s. They have more gentleness. They might be
more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness,
almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in _him_,
because there is so much good-humour with it—but that would not do to
be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley’s downright, decided, commanding
sort of manner, though it suits _him_ very well; his figure, and look,
and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to
set about copying him, he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I
think a young man might be very safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as
a model. Mr. Elton is good-humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle. He
seems to me to be grown particularly gentle of late. I do not know
whether he has any design of ingratiating himself with either of us,
Harriet, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are
softer than they used to be. If he means any thing, it must be to
please you. Did not I tell you what he said of you the other day?”
She then repeated some warm personal praise which she had drawn from
Mr. Elton, and now did full justice to; and Harriet blushed and smiled,
and said she had always thought Mr. Elton very agreeable.
Mr. Elton was the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young
farmer out of Harriet’s head. She thought it would be an excellent
match; and only too palpably desirable, natural, and probable, for her
to have much merit in planning it. She feared it was what every body
else must think of and predict. It was not likely, however, that any
body should have equalled her in the date of the plan, as it had
entered her brain during the very first evening of Harriet’s coming to
Hartfield. The longer she considered it, the greater was her sense of
its expediency. Mr. Elton’s situation was most suitable, quite the
gentleman himself, and without low connexions; at the same time, not of
any family that could fairly object to the doubtful birth of Harriet.
He had a comfortable home for her, and Emma imagined a very sufficient
income; for though the vicarage of Highbury was not large, he was known
to have some independent property; and she thought very highly of him
as a good-humoured, well-meaning, respectable young man, without any
deficiency of useful understanding or knowledge of the world.
She had already satisfied herself that he thought Harriet a beautiful
girl, which she trusted, with such frequent meetings at Hartfield, was
foundation enough on his side; and on Harriet’s there could be little
doubt that the idea of being preferred by him would have all the usual
weight and efficacy. And he was really a very pleasing young man, a
young man whom any woman not fastidious might like. He was reckoned
very handsome; his person much admired in general, though not by her,
there being a want of elegance of feature which she could not dispense
with:—but the girl who could be gratified by a Robert Martin’s riding
about the country to get walnuts for her might very well be conquered
by Mr. Elton’s admiration.
CHAPTER V
“I do not know what your opinion may be, Mrs. Weston,” said Mr.
Knightley, “of this great intimacy between Emma and Harriet Smith, but
I think it a bad thing.”
“A bad thing! Do you really think it a bad thing?—why so?”
“I think they will neither of them do the other any good.”
“You surprize me! Emma must do Harriet good: and by supplying her with
a new object of interest, Harriet may be said to do Emma good. I have