Emma
can do it, where there is no doubt of _her_ regard, must, I think, be
the happiest of mortals.—Frank Churchill is, indeed, the favourite of
fortune. Every thing turns out for his good.—He meets with a young
woman at a watering-place, gains her affection, cannot even weary her
by negligent treatment—and had he and all his family sought round the
world for a perfect wife for him, they could not have found her
superior.—His aunt is in the way.—His aunt dies.—He has only to
speak.—His friends are eager to promote his happiness.—He had used
every body ill—and they are all delighted to forgive him.—He is a
fortunate man indeed!”
“You speak as if you envied him.”
“And I do envy him, Emma. In one respect he is the object of my envy.”
Emma could say no more. They seemed to be within half a sentence of
Harriet, and her immediate feeling was to avert the subject, if
possible. She made her plan; she would speak of something totally
different—the children in Brunswick Square; and she only waited for
breath to begin, when Mr. Knightley startled her, by saying,
“You will not ask me what is the point of envy.—You are determined, I
see, to have no curiosity.—You are wise—but _I_ cannot be wise. Emma, I
must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the
next moment.”
“Oh! then, don’t speak it, don’t speak it,” she eagerly cried. “Take a
little time, consider, do not commit yourself.”
“Thank you,” said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not
another syllable followed.
Emma could not bear to give him pain. He was wishing to confide in
her—perhaps to consult her;—cost her what it would, she would listen.
She might assist his resolution, or reconcile him to it; she might give
just praise to Harriet, or, by representing to him his own
independence, relieve him from that state of indecision, which must be
more intolerable than any alternative to such a mind as his.—They had
reached the house.
“You are going in, I suppose?” said he.
“No,”—replied Emma—quite confirmed by the depressed manner in which he
still spoke—“I should like to take another turn. Mr. Perry is not
gone.” And, after proceeding a few steps, she added—“I stopped you
ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you
pain.—But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to
ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation—as a
friend, indeed, you may command me.—I will hear whatever you like. I
will tell you exactly what I think.”
“As a friend!”—repeated Mr. Knightley.—“Emma, that I fear is a word—No,
I have no wish—Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?—I have gone too far
already for concealment.—Emma, I accept your offer—Extraordinary as it
may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend.—Tell me,
then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?”
He stopped in his earnestness to look the question, and the expression
of his eyes overpowered her.
“My dearest Emma,” said he, “for dearest you will always be, whatever
the event of this hour’s conversation, my dearest, most beloved
Emma—tell me at once. Say ‘No,’ if it is to be said.”—She could really
say nothing.—“You are silent,” he cried, with great animation;
“absolutely silent! at present I ask no more.”
Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The
dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most
prominent feeling.
“I cannot make speeches, Emma:” he soon resumed; and in a tone of such
sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably
convincing.—“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it
more. But you know what I am.—You hear nothing but truth from me.—I
have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other
woman in England would have borne it.—Bear with the truths I would tell
you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner,
perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a
very indifferent lover.—But you understand me.—Yes, you see, you
understand my feelings—and will return them if you can. At present, I
ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.”
While he spoke, Emma’s mind was most busy, and, with all the wonderful
velocity of thought, had been able—and yet without losing a word—to
catch and comprehend the exact truth of the whole; to see that
Harriet’s hopes had been entirely groundless, a mistake, a delusion, as
complete a delusion as any of her own—that Harriet was nothing; that
she was every thing herself; that what she had been saying relative to
Harriet had been all taken as the language of her own feelings; and
that her agitation, her doubts, her reluctance, her discouragement, had
been all received as discouragement from herself.—And not only was
there time for these convictions, with all their glow of attendant
happiness; there was time also to rejoice that Harriet’s secret had not
escaped her, and to resolve that it need not, and should not.—It was
all the service she could now render her poor friend; for as to any of
that heroism of sentiment which might have prompted her to entreat him
to transfer his affection from herself to Harriet, as infinitely the
most worthy of the two—or even the more simple sublimity of resolving
to refuse him at once and for ever, without vouchsafing any motive,
because he could not marry them both, Emma had it not. She felt for
Harriet, with pain and with contrition; but no flight of generosity run
mad, opposing all that could be probable or reasonable, entered her
brain. She had led her friend astray, and it would be a reproach to her
for ever; but her judgment was as strong as her feelings, and as strong
as it had ever been before, in reprobating any such alliance for him,
as most unequal and degrading. Her way was clear, though not quite
smooth.—She spoke then, on being so entreated.—What did she say?—Just
what she ought, of course. A lady always does.—She said enough to shew
there need not be despair—and to invite him to say more himself. He
_had_ despaired at one period; he had received such an injunction to
caution and silence, as for the time crushed every hope;—she had begun
by refusing to hear him.—The change had perhaps been somewhat
sudden;—her proposal of taking another turn, her renewing the
conversation which she had just put an end to, might be a little
extraordinary!—She felt its inconsistency; but Mr. Knightley was so
obliging as to put up with it, and seek no farther explanation.
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
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