Chapter XVI.
The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think
and be miserable. It was a wretched business, indeed. Such an overthrow of
every thing she had been wishing for! Such a development of every thing
most unwelcome! Such a blow for Harriet!—that was the worst of all.
Every part of it brought pain and humiliation of some sort or other; but,
compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light; and she would gladly have
submitted to feel yet more mistaken—more in error—more disgraced by
misjudgment than she actually was,—could the effects of her blunders have
been confined to herself.
“If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have borne any
thing. He might have doubled his presumption to me—but poor Harriet!”
How she could have been so deceived! He protested that he had never
thought seriously of Harriet—never! She looked back as well as she could;
but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made
every thing bend to it. His manners, however, must have been unmarked,
wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so misled.
The picture! How eager he had been about the picture!—and the charade!
—and a hundred other circumstances;—how clearly they had seemed to
point at Harriet. To be sure, the charade, with its “ready wit”—but then, the
“soft eyes”—in fact it suited neither; it was a jumble without taste or truth.
Who could have seen through such thick-headed nonsense?
Certainly she had often, especially of late, thought his manners to herself
unnecessarily gallant; but it had passed as his way, as a mere error of
judgment, of knowledge, of taste, as one proof, among others, that he had
not always lived in the best society; that with all the gentleness of his
address, true elegance was sometimes wanting; but, till this very day, she
had never for an instant suspected it to mean any thing but grateful respect
to her as Harriet’s friend.
To Mr. John Knightley was she indebted for her first idea on the subject,
for the first start of its possibility. There was no denying that those brothers
had penetration. She remembered what Mr. Knightley had once said to her
about Mr. Elton, the caution he had given the conviction he had professed
that Mr. Elton would never marry indiscreetly; and blushed to think how
much truer a knowledge of his character had been there shown than any she
had reached herself. It was dreadfully mortifying; but Mr. Elton was
proving himself, in many respects, the very reverse of what she had meant
and believed him; proud, assuming, conceited: very full of his own claims,
and little concerned about the feelings of others.
Contrary to the usual course of things, Mr. Elton’s wanting to pay his
addresses to her had sunk him in her opinion. His professions and his
proposals did him no service. She thought nothing of his attachment, and
was insulted by his hopes. He wanted to marry well, and having the
arrogance to raise his eyes to her, pretended to be in love; but she was
perfectly easy as to his not suffering any disappointment that need be cared
for. There had been no real affection either in his language or manners.
Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could hardly
devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less allied with
real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him. He only wanted to
aggrandise and enrich himself; and if Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield, the
heiress of thirty thousand pounds, were not quite so easily obtained as he
had fancied, he would soon try for Miss Somebody else with twenty, or
with ten.
But, that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as aware
of his views, accepting his intentions, meaning, in short, to marry him!—
should suppose himself her equal in connection or mind!—look down upon
her friend, so well understanding the gradations of rank below him, and be
so blind to what rose above, as to fancy himself showing no presumption in
addressing her!—it was most provoking.
Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he was her
inferior in talent, and all the elegancies of mind. The very want of such
equality might prevent his perception of it; but he must know that in fortune
and consequence she was greatly his superior. He must know that the
Woodhouses had been settled for several generations at Hartfield, the
younger branch of a very ancient family,—and that the Eltons were nobody.
The landed property of Hartfield certainly was inconsiderable, being but a
sort of notch in the Donwell Abbey estate, to which all the rest of Highbury
belonged; but their fortune, from other sources, was such as to make them
scarcely secondary to Donwell Abbey itself, in every other kind of
consequence; and the Woodhouses had long held a high place in the
consideration of the neighbourhood which Mr. Elton had first entered not
two years ago, to make his way as he could, without any alliances but in
trade, or any thing to recommend him to notice but his situation and his
civility. But he had fancied her in love with him; that evidently must have
been his dependence; and after raving a little about the seeming incongruity
of gentle manners and a conceited head, Emma was obliged, in common
honesty, to stop and admit, that her own behaviour to him had been so
complaisant and obliging, so full of courtesy and attention, as (supposing
her real motive unperceived) might warrant a man of ordinary observation
and delicacy, like Mr. Elton, in fancying himself a very decided favourite. If
she had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to wonder that he,
with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken hers.
The first error, and the worst, lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong,
to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was
adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be
serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and
ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.
“Here have I,” said she, “actually talked poor Harriet into being very
much attached to this man. She might never have thought of him but for
me; and certainly never would have thought of him with hope, if I had not
assured her of his attachment, for she is as modest and humble as I used to
think him. Oh that I had been satisfied with persuading her not to accept
young Martin! There I was quite right: that was well done of me; but there I
should have stopped, and left the rest to time and chance. I was introducing
her into good company, and giving her the opportunity of pleasing some
one worth having; I ought not to have attempted more. But now, poor girl,
her peace is cut up for some time. I have been but half a friend to her; and if
she were not to feel this disappointment so very much, I am sure I have not
an idea of any body else who would be at all desirable for her:—William
Coxe—oh no, I could not endure William Coxe,—a pert young lawyer.”
She stopped to blush and laugh at her own relapse, and then resumed a
more serious, more dispiriting cogitation upon what had been, and might be,
and must be. The distressing explanation she had to make to Harriet, and all
that poor Harriet would be suffering, with the awkwardness of future
meetings, the difficulties of continuing or discontinuing the acquaintance, of
subduing feelings, concealing resentment, and avoiding éclat, were enough
to occupy her in most unmirthful reflections some time longer, and she went
to bed at last with nothing settled but the conviction of her having
blundered most dreadfully.
To youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma’s, though under temporary
gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits.
The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of
powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the
eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and
brighter hope.
Emma got up on the morrow more disposed for comfort than she had
gone to bed; more ready to see alleviations of the evil before her, and to
depend on getting tolerably out of it.
It was a great consolation that Mr. Elton should not be really in love with
her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking to disappoint him; that
Harriet’s nature should not be of that superior sort in which the feelings are
most acute and retentive; and that there could be no necessity for any
body’s knowing what had passed except the three principals, and especially
for her father’s being given a moment’s uneasiness about it.
These were very cheering thoughts; and the sight of a great deal of snow
on the ground did her further service, for any thing was welcome that might
justify their all three being quite asunder at present.
The weather was most favourable for her; though Christmas-day, she
could not go to church. Mr. Woodhouse would have been miserable had his
daughter attempted it, and she was therefore safe from either exciting or
receiving unpleasant and most unsuitable ideas. The ground covered with
snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and thaw,
which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise, every morning
beginning in rain or snow, and every evening setting in to freeze, she was
for many days a most honourable prisoner. No intercourse with Harriet
possible but by note; no church for her on Sunday any more than on
Christmas-day; and no need to find excuses for Mr. Elton’s absenting
himself.
It was weather which might fairly confine every body at home; and
though she hoped and believed him to be really taking comfort in some
society or other, it was very pleasant to have her father so well satisfied
with his being all alone in his own house, too wise to stir out; and to hear
him say to Mr. Knightley, whom no weather could keep entirely from them,
—
“Ah, Mr. Knightley, why do not you stay at home like poor Mr. Elton?”
These days of confinement would have been, but for her private
perplexities, remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly suited her
brother, whose feelings must always be of great importance to his
companions; and he had, besides, so thoroughly cleared off his ill-humour
at Randalls, that his amiableness never failed him during the rest of his stay
at Hartfield. He was always agreeable and obliging, and speaking pleasantly
of every body. But with all the hopes of cheerfulness, and all the present
comfort of delay, there was still such an evil hanging over her in the hour of
explanation with Harriet, as made it impossible for Emma to be ever
perfectly at ease.
