Chapter III.
This little explanation with Mr. Knightley gave Emma considerable
pleasure. It was one of the agreeable recollections of the ball, which she
walked about the lawn the next morning to enjoy. She was extremely glad
that they had come to so good an understanding respecting the Eltons, and
that their opinions of both husband and wife were so much alike; and his
praise of Harriet, his concession in her favour, was peculiarly gratifying.
The impertinence of the Eltons, which for a few minutes had threatened to
ruin the rest of her evening, had been the occasion of some of its highest
satisfactions; and she looked forward to another happy result—the cure of
Harriet’s infatuation. From Harriet’s manner of speaking of the
circumstance before they quitted the ball-room, she had strong hopes. It
seemed as if her eyes were suddenly opened, and she were enabled to see
that Mr. Elton was not the superior creature she had believed him. The fever
was over, and Emma could harbour little fear of the pulse being quickened
again by injurious courtesy. She depended on the evil feelings of the Eltons
for supplying all the discipline of pointed neglect that could be further
requisite. Harriet rational, Frank Churchill not too much in love, and Mr.
Knightley not wanting to quarrel with her; how very happy a summer must
be before her!
She was not to see Frank Churchill this morning. He had told her, that he
could not allow himself the pleasure of stopping at Hartfield, as he was to
be at home by the middle of the day. She did not regret it.
Having arranged all these matters, looked them through, and put them all
to rights, she was just turning to the house, with spirits freshened up for the
demands of the two little boys, as well as of their grandpapa, when the great
iron sweep-gate opened, and two persons entered whom she had never less
expected to see together—Frank Churchill, with Harriet leaning on his arm
—actually Harriet! A moment sufficed to convince her that something
extraordinary had happened. Harriet looked white and frightened, and he
was trying to cheer her. The iron gates and the front door were not twenty
yards asunder;—they were all three soon in the hall; and Harriet
immediately sinking into a chair, fainted away.
A young lady who faints must be recovered; questions must be answered,
and surprises be explained. Such events are very interesting ; but the
suspense of them cannot last long. A few minutes made Emma acquainted
with the whole.
Miss Smith, and Miss Bickerton, another parlour boarder at Mrs.
Goddard’s, who had been also at the ball, had walked out together, and
taken a road—the Richmond road, which, though apparently public enough
for safety, had led them into alarm. About half a mile beyond Highbury,
making a sudden turn, and deeply shaded by elms on each side, it became
for a considerable stretch very retired; and when the young ladies had
advanced some way into it, they had suddenly perceived, at a small distance
before them, on a broader patch of greensward by the side, a party of
gipsies. A child on the watch came towards them to beg; and Miss
Bickerton, excessively frightened, gave a great scream, and calling on
Harriet to follow her, ran up a steep bank, cleared a slight hedge at the top,
and made the best of her way by a short cut back to Highbury. But poor
Harriet could not follow. She had suffered very much from cramp after
dancing, and her first attempt to mount the bank brought on such a return of
it as made her absolutely powerless; and in this state, and exceedingly
terrified, she had been obliged to remain.
How the trampers might have behaved, had the young ladies been more
courageous, must be doubtful; but such an invitation for attack could not be
resisted; and Harriet was soon assailed by half a dozen children, headed by
a stout woman and a great boy, all clamorous, and impertinent in look,
though not absolutely in word. More and more frightened, she immediately
promised them money, and taking out her purse, gave them a shilling, and
begged them not to want more, or to use her ill. She was then able to walk,
though but slowly, and was moving away—but her terror and her purse
were too tempting; and she was followed, or rather surrounded, by the
whole gang, demanding more.
In this state Frank Churchill had found her, she trembling and
conditioning, they loud and insolent. By a most fortunate chance, his
leaving Highbury had been delayed so as to bring him to her assistance at
this critical moment. The pleasantness of the morning had induced him to
walk forward, and leave his horses to meet him by another road, a mile or
two beyond Highbury; and happening to have borrowed a pair of scissors
the night before of Miss Bates, and to have forgotten to restore them, he had
been obliged to stop at her door, and go in for a few minutes: he was
therefore later than he had intended; and being on foot, was unseen by the
whole party till almost close to them. The terror which the woman and boy
had been creating in Harriet was then their own portion. He had left them
completely frightened; and Harriet eagerly clinging to him, and hardly able
to speak, had just strength enough to reach Hartfield, before her spirits were
quite overcome. It was his idea to bring her to Hartfield; he had thought of
no other place.
This was the amount of the whole story,—of his communication and of
Harriet’s, as soon as she had recovered her senses and speech. He dared not
stay longer than to see her well; these several delays left him not another
minute to lose; and Emma engaging to give assurance of her safety to Mrs.
Goddard, and notice of there being such a set of people in the
neighbourhood to Mr. Knightley, he set off, with all the grateful blessings
that she could utter for her friend and herself.
Such an adventure as this,—a fine young man and a lovely young woman
thrown together in such a way,—could hardly fail of suggesting certain
ideas to the coldest heart and the steadiest brain. So Emma thought, at least.
Could a linguist, could a grammarian, could even a mathematician have
seen what she did, have witnessed their appearance together, and heard their
history of it, without feeling that circumstances had been at work to make
them peculiarly interesting to each other? How much more must an
imaginist, like herself, be on fire with speculation and foresight!—
especially with such a ground-work of anticipation as her mind had already
made.
It was a very extraordinary thing! Nothing of the sort had ever occurred
before to any young ladies in the place, within her memory ; no rencontre,
no alarm of the kind: and now it had happened to the very person, and at the
very hour, when the other very person was chancing to pass by to rescue
her! It certainly was very extraordinary! And knowing, as she did, the
favourable state of mind of each at this period, it struck her the more. He
was wishing to get the better of his attachment to herself, she just
recovering from her mania for Mr. Elton. It seemed as if every thing united
to promise the most interesting consequences. It was not possible that the
occurrence should not be strongly recommending each to the other.
In the few minutes’ conversation which she had yet had with him, while
Harriet had been partially insensible, he had spoken of her terror, her
naïveté, her fervor as she seized and clung to his arm, with a sensibility
amused and delighted; and just at last, after Harriet’s own account had been
given, he had expressed his indignation at the abominable folly of Miss
Bickerton in the warmest terms. Every thing was to take its natural course,
however, neither impelled nor assisted. She would not stir a step, nor drop a
hint. No, she had had enough of interference. There could be no harm in a
scheme, a mere passive scheme. It was no more than a wish. Beyond it she
would on no account proceed.
Emma’s first resolution was to keep her father from the knowledge of
what had passed, aware of the anxiety and alarm it would occasion: but she
soon felt that concealment must be impossible. Within half an hour it was
known all over Highbury. It was the very event to engage those who talk
most, the young and the low; and all the youth and servants in the place
were soon in the happiness of frightful news. The last night’s ball seemed
lost in the gipsies. Poor Mr. Woodhouse trembled as he sat, and, as Emma
had foreseen, would scarcely be satisfied without their promising never to
go beyond the shrubbery again. It was some comfort to him that many
enquiries after himself and Miss Woodhouse (for his neighbours knew that
he loved to be enquired after), as well as Miss Smith, were coming in
during the rest of the day; and he had the pleasure of returning for answer,
that they were all very indifferent; which, though not exactly true, for she
was perfectly well, and Harriet not much otherwise, Emma would not
interfere with. She had an unhappy state of health in general for the child of
such a man, for she hardly knew what indisposition was; and if he did not
invent illnesses for her, she could make no figure in a message.
The gipsies did not wait for the operations of justice; they took
themselves off in a hurry. The young ladies of Highbury might have walked
again in safety before their panic began, and the whole history dwindled
soon into a matter of little importance but to Emma and her nephews: in her
imagination it maintained its ground; and Henry and John were still asking
every day for the story of Harriet and the gipsies, and still tenaciously
setting her right if she varied in the slightest particular from the original
recital.
