EMMA.[45]

EMMA.[45]

I.

Emma Woodhouse, whose Christian name supplies the title to the novel in which she figures as heroine, is one of Jane Austen’s lively, warm-hearted girls; but her personality is rendered quite distinct from that of Elizabeth Bennet by a thousand light yet significant touches. Emma’s circumstances alone would have sufficed, with the moulding power which such influences have in reality, and in the hands of a true artist, to shape her—always within certain limits—those of a well-principled, well-educated, essentially feminine girl, who is also a thorough lady, to different ends.

The novel of “Emma” is largely the record of the girl-heroine’s rash blunders and errors; but to me it is instructive and comforting to find the faults, with their impressive enough lessons, not only so girlish, but always within the region, I may say, of an innocent, upright, kindly, well-bred girl, whose many failings lean to virtue’s side. Emma Woodhouse is as incapable of deliberate undutifulness, dishonourable double-dealing, heartless levity, or disgraceful imprudence, and the coarse, evil-minded rubbing shoulders with vice, as I not only earnestly hope, but fervently believe, every God-fearing, virtuous, loving girl in any rank, in any nation, is to this day, however impudently and wickedly she may be travestied in the lower literature of her country.

Emma Woodhouse, at twenty-one years of age, is at the head of her father’s comfortable, well-ordered establishment of Hartfield, in the village of Highbury, sixteen miles from London, where Emma’s elder sister Isabella, who has been married for several years, is settled.

The two sisters are the sole children of Mr. Woodhouse, who has been a widower since Emma was a child. But her dead mother’s place has been well supplied by an excellent governess, chaperon, and family friend. Miss Taylor, who marries and settles unexceptionably, with a worthy husband, in a country house at half a mile’s distance from Hartfield.

Emma is introduced to the reader on the afternoon of Miss Taylor’s wedding-day, left, for the first time in her life, to dine and spend a long evening with her father, a most amiable man, but a confirmed invalid, whose valetudinarian weaknesses and absurdities Jane Austen often makes irresistibly ridiculous—though all the time she treats him with larger-hearted, gentler consideration than is to be found in her manner of dealing with the foibles of the characters in “Pride and Prejudice,” and “Northanger Abbey;” for the very good reason that the authoress, when she wrote “Emma,” was no longer the brilliant, rather hard girl, but the mature merciful, woman. Between the writing of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma” she had learnt a grand lesson—the acquisition of which, though it cost the labour of a lifetime, would be well worth the time and trouble—that of tolerance: “to make allowance for us all,” which is not the mere result of a facile, careless temper, or a secret fellow-feeling with the offender in his offence, or a low moral standard, but is simply the widened sympathy and deepened comprehension, both of the better Christian and the greater genius. Thus Mr. Woodhouse is respectable and lovable, in spite of his mild egotism and foolish hypochondria; while Miss Bates—one of the gems of the book—is still more winning in her singleness of heart and inexhaustible contentment and charity, along with her shallow simplicity, thorough humdrumness, and boundless garrulity.

While her father is taking his after-dinner nap Emma contemplates, a little ruefully, the prospect of many such tête-à-tête dinners and long evenings. Yet though Jane Austen tells us plainly that the real evils to which Emma is exposed consist of her having too much of her own way, and being slightly inclined to think too well of herself, she is full of tender reverence and care for her father, in deed even more than in word. All through their history she considers his well-being as the first thing, never hesitates to make sacrifices to ensure it, and caters for his entertainment with the anxious, womanly forethought of a much older and wiser person. In the same way, though it is distinctly a disadvantage and stumbling-block to Emma Woodhouse—not only that the Woodhouses are the persons of greatest consequence in their social circle, but that the circle over which Emma reigns, far too entirely for her own good, is composed of the most commonplace narrow elements that can be found in any village or country neighbourhood—and though Emma wearies of it, becomes impatient of it, is guilty of girlish ebullitions of fretting and fuming where her engagements and acquaintances are concerned—still she never once behaves with the absolute insolence, hardly with the superciliousness, of underbred, ungenerous, self-engrossed youth, exulting in its passing advantages, spurning at what it can see of the defects and infirmities of an older, perhaps more incapable, and illiterate generation, while it is blind in its ignorance to indemnifying stores of homely wisdom and experience.

The claims of hospitality are sacred to the girl, and she is always not only a good woman, but a gentlewoman. We are sure that such vulgar, mean words as “old frumps” and “old tabbies” have never soiled Emma Woodhouse’s lips. Once she so far forgets herself as to prove guilty of being noisy and conspicuous at a picnic, and in the course of that indiscretion of publicly taking off and laughing at an old friend; but Emma does not require the sharp rebuke of the hero to be bitterly sorry for the offence, very much ashamed of it, and eagerly desirous to atone for it by all the kindness in her power.

On the evening of Miss Taylor’s wedding-day, Emma is striving to chat cheerfully with her father, who, fond of everybody he is used to, hates to part with any one of them, hates changes of every kind, and matrimony as the cause of change, and keeps speaking of the fortunate bride with uncalled-for compassion. “Poor Miss Taylor! I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her!”

“I cannot agree with you, papa;” Emma tries to arrest his lamentations, and to put the step which has been taken in the pleasantest light, by dwelling on the excellence of Mr. Weston’s character and temper (Jane Austen is apt to bring forward temper as of cardinal importance), on Miss Taylor’s natural satisfaction in having a house of her own—for how often they will be going to see her and she will be coming to see them. They must begin, they must go and pay their wedding visit very soon.

“My dear, how am I to get so far?” objects plaintive Mr. Woodhouse. “Randall’s is such a distance, I could not walk half so far.”

“No, papa! nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage, to be sure.”

“The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to, for such a little way; and where are the poor horses to be, while we are paying our visit?”[46]

“They are to be put into Mr. Weston’s stables, papa. You know we have settled that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Weston last night. And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going to Randalls, because of his daughter’s being housemaid there. I only doubt whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing, papa. You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her—James is so obliged to you.”

Mr. Woodhouse’s kindness and innocent self-importance are equally gratified by being reminded of this good deed. He is enticed to expatiate on civil, pretty-spoken Hannah, for whom he has procured an advantageous place—not the least of its advantages in Mr. Woodhouse’s eyes being, that when James goes over to see his daughter, he will carry her news of the family at Hartfield.

Emma spares no exertions to encourage the happier train of thought, and by the help of backgammon is sanguine about getting her father tolerably through the evening, when a frequent visitor, another near neighbour, walks in, and renders the backgammon-table unnecessary.

“Mr. Knightley, a sensible man about seven or eight and thirty, was not only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but connected with it as the elder brother of Isabella Woodhouse’s husband.”

Did ever hero enter more unassumingly on the scene? Was ever even the merest walking gentleman more succinctly or prosaically described? And yet George Knightley is a very hero of heroes, far in advance of Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice” where the highest manliness and generosity of character are in question.

I shall only pause a moment to remark that Jane Austen, in depriving Mr. Knightley of the bloom of youth, goes in the teeth of contemporary standards of age to which she herself paid deference in “Sense and Sensibility,” when she made Marianne Dashwood regard Colonel Brandon—a contemporary of Mr. Knightley’s—as quite an old man, fitted for flannel vests and rheumatism.

To Mr. Knightley Emma starts an idea which has taken possession of her susceptible imagination, and which has a considerable influence on her later conduct.

“I made the match, you know, four years ago,” she says triumphantly, in allusion to the topic of the day. “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 anything.”

Mr. Knightley shakes his head at her. He has known her from infancy, seen her grow up with all that is charming in her, only slightly spoilt. He has more than an old friend’s regard for her, but he is also one of the few persons among her friends who sees her faults, and tells her of them—a process not particularly agreeable to Emma, and still more distasteful to her doting father; so that she has to assert stoutly, as if she liked the censure, “Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know, in a joke, only in a joke. We always say what we like to each other.”

In defiance of Mr. Knightley’s shake of the head—indeed, spurred on by it—Emma insists that she arranged the match from the day Mr. Weston gallantly went and borrowed two umbrellas from Farmer Mitchell’s, and brought them to her and Miss Taylor when it began to drizzle in Broadway Lane. Emma boasts of the success of her scheme, and laughingly announces herself a future match-maker.

She does not go unchallenged by Mr. Knightley.

“I do not know what you mean by ‘success,’” he says, and observes, with brotherly bluntness and irony, that her time has been properly and delicately spent if she has been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about a marriage—a worthy employment for a young lady’s mind. Then he treats her pretensions with smiling scorn, and alleges she made a lucky guess, which is all that can be said.

Emma argues that she promoted Mr. Weston’s visits to Hartfield, and when her father begs in all sincerity that she will make no more matches, craves mischievously to be allowed one exception. “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. He has been here a whole year, and he 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 of doing him service.”

“Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken,” said Mr. Knightley, “but leave him to choose his own wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven and twenty can take care of himself.”

My readers will observe that Emma is as disengaged and disinterested in making matches for her friends as if she were a young matron. She has not a notion of the incumbency of marriage on herself, as even Jane and Elizabeth Bennet felt it, to a certain extent, to be an obligation on them. There is no worldly necessity for it in Emma’s case. She is the independent mistress of Hartfield, at the head of her indulgent father’s establishment, and amply provided for in the future. Jane Austen’s women, as a rule, are not too susceptible. Love and marriage for themselves are not the beginning, middle, and end of their dreams. They are quite willing to grant due prominence to other influences and interests. They would have blushed to have been engrossed by one passion, however lawful—even honourable. It is only because Catherine Morland is very young and simple that she is so entranced by Henry Tilney’s attentions. As it is, had the couple been finally separated, she would have submitted to the inevitable, and been content in time without him. Fanny Price’s devotion to her cousin Edmund is the habit of many years, and is largely made up of gratitude for constant protection and kindness. When Edmund Bertram’s marriage to Mary Crawford appears certain, and when Henry Crawford is wooing Fanny with manly ardour and tender consideration for her difficulties, she is in a fair way—Jane Austen does not conceal it—for transferring her gentle affections from Edmund to Henry. The author’s older women are fine, sensible creatures, capable of being useful and happy in all the relations of life. They can love, with what unselfish fidelity after hope is gone, Anne Elliot shows; but they are always mistresses of themselves, never love-sick—the poor puppets and slaves of passion.

Mr. Weston, Miss Taylor’s husband, has been a widower like Mr. Woodhouse, and his son by the first wife is destined to play a prominent part in the story. Frank Churchill has been early adopted by a wealthy, childless uncle and aunt—his mother’s relations—who give him their name, and are to make him their heir. He has been seldom seen in Highbury, but his praises have gone before him, and it does not diminish his popularity that he writes “a very handsome letter” to his stepmother, though he is not able to pay her a visit.

Within the round of Hartfield visiting—abridged, as it is, by Mr. Woodhouse’s delicate health and invalid habits—are Donwell Abbey,[47] Mr. Knightley’s seat; the vicarage occupied by the young bachelor clergyman, Mr. Elton; the houses in the village which belong respectively to Mr. and Mrs. Perry, the country doctor and his wife; Mrs. Bates, the widow of the late vicar, and her daughter; and Mrs. Goddard, who was the mistress of a school—not a seminary.

Jane Austen gives her view of the education of the period, which was in a transition state, in her definition of a school as distinguished from a seminary—not “an establishment, or anything which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality, upon new principles and new systems, and where young ladies, for enormous pay, might be screwed out of health and into vanity—but a real, honest, old-fashioned boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies.” These views were regarded as eminently sensible, moderate, and practical in their day; and no doubt there was, and is, some truth in them. At the same time, the general notion of education is narrow and prejudiced, to be held by so able a woman.

Mr. Woodhouse’s habits make him go abroad rarely, but he is fond of company in a quiet way at home, and Emma finds such company is best secured in the form of “tea visits” from such accommodating old neighbours as the Bateses and Mrs. Goddard. She is delighted to see her father look comfortable, and very much pleased with herself for contriving things so well; but the prosings of the elderly and homely guests do not prove very congenial entertainment for the bright, clever young girl. Therefore she welcomes Mrs. Goddard’s respectful request to be allowed to bring a parlour boarder,[48] Miss Smith, with her.

Harriet Smith is a plump, blooming, blue-eyed, sweet-tempered girl, whose beauty delights Emma’s eye, while her innocent deference and gratitude, together with her unqualified admiration for everything at Hartfield—including its young mistress—touch Emma’s heart and flatter her vanity. She determines, in modern parlance, to “cultivate” Harriet Smith, who is to a great extent friendless, to improve her, to raise her into better society, and to make a companion of her.

Emma does not scruple to propose detaching the girl from the only friends she has—a farmer’s family named Martin. Some of the daughters had been school-fellows of Harriet’s at Mrs. Goddard’s, and they and their mother and brother had been kind to her. These Martins are tenants of Mr. Knightley at the Abbey Mill Farm, and Emma knows that he thinks highly of them; but in her youthful aristocratic fashion she leaps to the conclusion that, from their rank in life, they must be coarse and unpolished. She will be doing a good deed to separate Harriet from her former allies, to whom the girl is so superior. It will be a delightful and praise-worthy task to improve and introduce into Emma’s world this very pretty, modest young creature, who is, of course, to look up to her benefactress and attach herself closely to her.

There is a comical, often-quoted contretemps constantly occurring at these parties of Emma’s. They usually end with suppers,[49] in which such little delicacies as minced chicken and scalloped oysters, carefully provided by the young hostess, are peculiarly acceptable to the guests, whose narrow incomes for the most part necessitate frugal living. But though poor Mr. Woodhouse would have made his guests welcome to anything and everything, his care for their health, in an egotistical reflection of his own experience, causes him to grieve that they will eat. “He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him rather sorry to see anything put upon it. Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could with thorough self-approbation recommend, though he might constrain himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing away the nicer things, to say—

“‘Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs? An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than anybody; I would not recommend an egg boiled by anybody else. But you need not be afraid; they are very small, you see; one of our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a little bit of tart—a very little bit. Ours are all apple-tarts. You need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to half a glass of wine?—a small half-glass put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could disagree with you.’”

Imagine the dilemma of the poor, baulked ladies, with their healthy appetites and the little treats laid before them, while the guests could hardly refuse the well-meant advice of the host.

But Emma comes to the rescue, allows her father to talk, but supplies the wants of her company in a much more satisfactory style. She is never indifferent to doing the honours of her father’s house “well and attentively.” Well-bred girls of Emma Woodhouse’s era would in her position have felt ashamed to be found “mooning” and self-absorbed, destitute of any sense of responsibility and thought for others. Nobody then described selfishness with enthusiasm, as an irresistible charm and crowning merit.

Harriet Smith’s intimacy at Hartfield is soon a settled thing. Emma does nothing by halves. As for the simple, docile girl whom Emma has taken up, Harriet is only too proud and pleased to be thus distinguished by the beautiful, “elegant” Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield.

Emma amuses herself by encouraging Harriet’s prattle, which, when it forsakes school-life, runs persistently on the two months’ holiday she had spent with the Martins at Abbey Mill Farm. At first Harriet is in blissful ignorance of the social inferiority of the Farm, and talks with exultation of the two parlours—one of them quite as large as Mrs. Goddard’s drawing-room; the upper maid, who had lived five-and-twenty years with Mrs. Martin; the eight cows—one of them a little Welsh cow, a very pretty little Welsh cow, of which Harriet had been so fond Mrs. Martin had said it should be called her cow; and the handsome summer-house in the garden, in which, some day next year, they are all to drink tea. And Harriet, after a little encouragement, shows no dislike to talk of the young farmer who is the master of the house. He has shared in the moonlight walks and merry games of his sisters and their friend. “He had gone three miles round one day in order to bring her some walnuts because she had said how fond she was of them, and in everything else he was so very obliging. He had his shepherd’s son into the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very fond of singing. He could sing a little himself. She believed he was very clever, and understood everything. He had a very fine flock, and while she was with them he had been bid more for his wool than anybody in the county. She believed everybody spoke well of him. His mother and sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Martin had told her one day (there was a blush as she said it) that it was impossible for anybody to be a better son, and therefore she was sure whenever he married, he would make a good husband. Not that she wanted him to marry. She was in no hurry at all.”

“Well done, Mrs. Martin,” thought Emma; “you know what you are about.”

“And when she had come away Mrs. Martin was so very kind as to send Mrs. Goddard a beautiful goose—the finest goose Mrs. Goddard had ever seen. Mrs. Goddard had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three teachers—Miss Nash, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson—to sup with her.”

“Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of his own business. He does not read?”

“Oh, yes—that is, no—I do not know, but I believe he has read a good deal, but not what you would think anything of. He reads the agricultural reports, and some other books that lie in one of the window-seats, but he reads all them to himself. But sometimes of an evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of ‘Elegant Extracts,’ very entertaining. And I know he has read the ‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ He never read the ‘Romance of the Forest,’ nor ‘The Children of the Abbey.’ He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now, as soon as ever he can.”

Emma sets herself to change all these cordial relations with the Martins, above all the appreciation of young Martin, in which she sees special danger for her protégée.

Emma begins by gently “setting down” Harriet as to the position of yeomen, and the improbability of her—Emma Woodhouse—having noticed one of them, since Harriet supposes Miss Woodhouse must have seen and known Robert Martin when he rode to market. On the occasion of an accidental encounter between the young farmer and the two girls, Emma takes care to let Harriet perceive that she thinks the young man very plain and clownish in his air. Emma makes Harriet contrast his lack of “gentility”—which, by the way, was not so odious a word last century—with the well-bred manners of Mr. Elton, among others of their acquaintance.

In fact, it is for the young vicar that Emma destines her friend; and in order to bring about an attachment and marriage, which she considers will be advantageous to both, Emma encourages Mr. Elton to spend many of his disengaged evenings at Hartfield, where she has always Harriet Smith with her. The young mistress of the house is altogether oblivious of the fact that the gentleman who, though well enough disposed, is by no means without self-love, and a head which is liable to be turned, may altogether mistake her graciousness.

Mr. Knightley does not approve of the great intimacy between Emma and Harriet Smith. There is no use in Mrs. Weston, Emma’s attached old friend, urging that it may induce Emma to read more; as she wishes to see Harriet better informed, the girls will read together.

“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up, at various times, of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were, very well chosen, and neatly arranged—sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen, I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time, and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting a course of steady reading from Emma.”

Mr. Knightley adds his estimate of the pretty, popular girl. “Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years’ old she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always quick and assured, Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house, and of you all.”

He inveighs against the unsuitable friendship between Emma and Harriet Smith, as sure to be injurious to both. Harriet is an unconscious flatterer. Her ignorance is in itself hourly flattery. On the other hand, Hartfield will put Harriet out of conceit with her natural sphere. She will only grow refined enough to be uncomfortable among the people with whom her lot is cast.

In the middle of their argument, the two friends break off the dispute to agree in their affectionate admiration of Emma’s person. Here is a graphic and charming picture of the heroine, which removes her attractions far out of the category of what is sickly and fantastic:—“Such an eye! the true hazel eye—and so brilliant! regular features, open countenance, with a complexion—oh, what a bloom of full health! and such a pretty height and size! such a firm and upright figure! There is health not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her glance. One hears something of a child’s being ‘the picture of health;’ now, Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete picture of grown-up health.”

Yes, indeed, that is what every girl—plain or handsome, should desire to be, for her own good and that of all connected with her. In a summary of the bountiful gifts bestowed on the late Catherine Tait, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, what were reckoned as not the least were the health and strength, beyond those of ordinary women, which fitted her for the worthy performance of her many and arduous duties. Will girls never lay the lesson to heart in time, before they so often fritter and fling away, by culpable neglect and recklessness, one of God’s greatest boons?

Mr. Knightley returns to the charge of the mischievous association of the girls, until he stirs up Mrs. Weston to protest, with regard to Emma: “Where shall we see a better daughter, a kinder sister, a truer friend?”

“Very well,” he answers, “I will not plague you any more. Emma shall be an angel, and I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings John and Isabella. John loves Emma with a reasonable and therefore not a blind affection; and Isabella always thinks as he does, except when he is not quite frightened enough about the children. I am sure of having their opinions with me.”

“I have a very sincere interest in Emma,” Mr. Knightley repeats. “Isabella does not seem more my sister; has never excited a greater interest; perhaps, hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her?”

“So do I,” said Mrs. Weston gently, “very much.”

“She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love, with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts to attract her; and she goes so seldom from home.”

“There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her resolution at present,” says Mrs. Weston, “as can well be.”

The truth is, Mrs. Weston and her husband have a pet plan for their favourite Emma, which is not to be disclosed prematurely.

Emma paints Harriet’s miniature, and Mr. Elton lends all the help of his advice, while complimenting Miss Woodhouse on her talent for drawing, which she regards as his gratitude on Harriet’s account.

Emma takes care to fix upon Mr. Elton as the person with whom she can entrust her little picture to be conveyed to London and framed; while he shows a sufficient sense of her confidence. “He will suit Harriet exactly,” reflects Emma, complacently; “but he does sigh, and languish, and study for compliments, rather more than I could endure as a principal.”

In the meantime, Harriet receives a direct proposal of marriage from young Martin, couched in manly, unaffected terms.

Poor little Harriet, who is really as guileless and kind-hearted as she is simple and silly, is at first much and favourably impressed.

But Emma’s influence, though she does not mean to exercise it unduly, causes Harriet, not without lingering regret, to resolve to decline the offer.

“I could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey Mill Farm,” says Emma, and Harriet is fixed in her resolve.

“That would have been too dreadful, dear Miss Woodhouse. I would not give up the pleasure and honour of being acquainted with you, for anything in the world.”

Mr. Knightley comes in a happy mood to Hartfield, to tell Emma something that will please her about her little friend, Harriet Smith. Though he has condemned the friendship, he can appreciate Harriet’s girlish good qualities; he is even magnanimous enough to compliment Emma on having cured her companion of her school-girl giggle. Robert Martin has confided his attachment to his friend and landlord, who is eager to inform Emma that Harriet Smith will soon have an offer of marriage from a most unexceptionable quarter—Robert Martin is the man. Her visit to Abbey Mill in the summer has done his business, and he means to marry her.

“He is very obliging,” said the well-informed Emma; “but is he sure that Harriet means to marry him?”

“Well, well—means to make her an offer, then; will that do?” Mr. Knightley, “who had nothing of ceremony about him,” conceives that Emma is speaking from some scruple of womanly dignity as to his mode of expressing himself. He enlarges on the advantages of the marriage, and his satisfaction with it. He ends with the laughing supposition that Martin may be detaining Harriet in Highbury at that very moment, and she may not be thinking him one of those “tiresome wretches”—as Emma has just styled the Highbury gossips.

“Pray, Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, who has been smiling to herself, “how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?”

Certainly he did not absolutely know, but he had understood Harriet Smith was with her all that day.

“Come,” said she, “I will tell you something in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday; that is, he wrote, and was refused.”

Mr. Knightley is incredulous and indignant. At last he accuses Emma, with reason, as the moving spirit in the step Harriet has taken. “You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma,” he said; and with equal sense and sincerity he contrasts Harriet with Robert Martin, to the advantage of the latter, and remarks how happy the girl had been among the Martins, till Emma’s injudicious interference.

In the hot argument which ensues, Mr. Knightley takes occasion to tell Emma that if she intends to make a match between Elton and Harriet, her labour will be in vain.

Emma laughs and disclaims.

But Mr. Knightley’s penetration is not to be baffled, and he goes on to assure her Elton will not do. He is a good sort of young man, and a respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make an imprudent marriage.

It is Emma’s turn to be incredulous, though she will not admit her intentions.

The two part in mutual vexation, which causes a coolness between them for weeks.

Emma’s pride is now piqued to accomplish her design; her head gets so full of it, that she is ill-judged enough to let Harriet see what she wishes and expects, and actually talks the foolish girl—who is, at least, perfectly unassuming—into a persuasion that she has inspired Mr. Elton with a passion for her, the belief in which is more than sufficient to create an answering passion in Harriet’s soft, childish heart.

We have next an example of an old favourite employment with girls. Instead of the reading, which never went beyond a few chapters, the only literary pursuit which engages Harriet, and in which Emma, too, takes an interest, the only mental provision she is making for the evening of life,[50] is the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort she can come across.

These were days when, in gatherings of young people even a little above Harriet in rank and education, the company in cropped hair and white frocks, in Brutuses and high-necked, short-waisted coats, played at such ingenious games as “The Traveller,” and circulated riddles for the general entertainment. A new riddle was quite a precious possession to a girl, nearly as good as a new song.

Miss Nash, Mrs. Goddard’s head teacher, had written out as many as three hundred riddles, and Harriet hopes to have more.

Mr. Woodhouse is almost as much interested in the work as the girls, and tries in vain to revive old recollections of the excellent riddles of his youth, which always end in

Mr. Elton, who is constantly with the girls, is induced to furnish a riddle of his own composition—though, with the bashfulness of incipient authorship, he passes it off as a charade which a friend of his has addressed to a young lady, the object of his admiration—and he is gone the next moment. The charade is as follows:—

Emma reads, ponders, catches the meaning “courtship,” and happily confident that Mr. Elton, is coming to the point, hands the paper to Harriet.

“‘That soft eye’ can only refer to Harriet,” thinks Emma. “‘Thy ready wit.’ Humph! Harriet’s ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in love to describe her so.”

Harriet’s ready wit exhibits itself in not having an idea of the answer. Can it be “Woman,” or “Neptune,” or “Trident?”

Emma is slightly exasperated; but she takes pains to explain the riddle in detail, and to draw the strongest inferences from its subject, while Harriet beams and blushes with joy and confusion.

Emma now becomes as assiduous as ever Mrs. Bennet, of Longbourn House, showed herself with regard to her daughter, Jane, and her lover Bingley, in making opportunities for Mr. Elton to propose to Harriet Smith.

But lovers are perverse, and will not always avail themselves of the best-planned assistance.

In the course of a walk which Emma and Harriet chance to take past the vicarage, in which the girls are overtaken by the vicar, Emma, having discovered that Harriet had never been inside the house, perpetrates a ruse to enable her friend to see her future home. Emma contrives to break her boot-lace, then announces the accident, and asks Mr. Elton to allow her to go into the vicarage and get a bit of riband or string from his housekeeper to keep the boot on.

Mr. Elton looks all happiness, and is as alert in conducting the ladies to his house as can be wished. But though Emma retires with the housekeeper, and stays as long away as she can manage, she finds on her return that the two standing together at one of the windows, however friendly, are not yet an engaged couple.

Christmas brings Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley and their children to enliven Hartfield.

Mrs. John Knightley is a pretty, elegant little woman, gentle and quiet, wrapt up in her family—a devoted wife, a doting mother, and so tenderly attached to her father and sister, that but for those higher ties, a warmer love might have seemed impossible. She has inherited her father’s delicate constitution, is over-careful of her children, has many fears and nerves, and is as fond of her own doctor in town as her father can be of his Mr. Perry.

Mr. John Knightley is tall, gentlemanlike, very clever, a rising barrister. He is domestic and estimable in private life. But he has a cold, dry manner, and he is capable of being sometimes out of humour. He has all the mental clearness and quickness his wife lacks, and he can on occasions act an ungracious, or say a severe thing. He is not a great favourite with his sister-in-law. She is quick in feeling the little injuries to Isabella which Isabella never feels for herself. Perhaps Emma might have passed over more, had his manners been more flattering to Isabella’s sister; but they are only those of a calmly kind brother and friend. However, his chief offence is, now and then, a want of forbearance with Mr. Woodhouse’s peculiarities and fidgetiness. Mr. John Knightley has really a great regard for his father-in-law, but sometimes the younger man cannot resist delivering a rational remonstrance, or a sharp retort equally ill-bestowed. It does not often happen, but it occurs too frequently for Emma’s charity.

Though such collisions do not usually take place early in the Knightleys’ visits, one is brought about on the very evening of John Knightley and his wife’s arrival.

Mr. Woodhouse and Isabella are very happy, expatiating on the merits of a basin of nice, smooth gruel—thin, but not too thin—and exchanging their little valetudinarian confidences, when, unfortunately, a reference is made to Mrs. Knightley’s last sea-bathing experience at Southend, seeing that the two great medical authorities of the father and daughter—Perry and Wingfield—differ on the respective recommendations of Southend and Cromer.

“Southend is an unhealthy place,” Mr. Woodhouse harps. “Perry was surprised to hear you had fixed on Southend.”

“We had all our health perfectly well there,” Isabella defends her side of the question. “Mr. Wingfield says it is entirely a mistake to suppose the place unhealthy. I am sure he may be depended upon, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air. His own brother and family have been there repeatedly.”

“You should have gone to Cromer, my dear,” insists Mr. Woodhouse. “Perry was a week at Cromer once, and he holds it to be the best of all the sea-bathing places. Better not move at all, better stay in London altogether, than travel forty miles to get into a worse air. That is just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very ill-judged measure.”

John Knightley is able to stand this no longer. “Mr. Perry,” he said, “would do well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. I may be allowed, I hope, the use of my judgment as well as Mr. Perry. I want his directions no more than his drugs.” Then, more coolly, “If Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and five children a distance of a hundred and thirty miles, with no greater expense and inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to Southend, as he could be himself.”

“True, true,” said George Knightley, hastily changing the subject, and warding off further danger, as Emma is accustomed to do. Still, Mr. Woodhouse is rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his friend Perry—to whom he has, in fact, though unconsciously, been attributing many of his own feelings and expressions, Jane Austen adds with a masterly touch—so that it requires all the soothing attentions of his daughters to set him at ease again.

Mr. Knightley of Donwell Abbey had joined the family at dinner. Emma had recognised his right to do so, and she had hoped that they might be friends again, for it was time their disagreement should end. She trusted their nephews and nieces would serve as a bond of union, and help in the peace-making. Accordingly, when he found her with the youngest, a child of eight months, in her arms, though he looked grave, and spoke shortly to begin with, he soon took the child out of her arms, with the unceremoniousness of restored amity.

The conviction gave Emma first satisfaction, and then a temptation to sauciness. It was a comfort they thought alike on their nephews and nieces, she said.

He was not unwilling to renew the old discussions half-banteringly, acquiescing in the mock humility of her assertion that, in their differences, she must always be in the wrong. Yes, and reason good, he said; he was sixteen years old when she was born, and he had the advantage of not being a pretty woman and a spoilt child. But “tell your aunt, little Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing old grievances.”

“I only want to know,” said Emma, “that Mr. Martin is not very, very bitterly disappointed.”

“A man cannot be more so,” was his short, full answer.

“Ah! indeed, I am very sorry,” Emma made the penitent acknowledgment; “come, shake hands with me.”

This ceremony had just taken place with great cordiality, when John Knightley made his appearance, and “How d’ye do, George?” and “John, how are you?” succeeded in the true English style (which has not warmed much in the course of nearly another century), burying under a calmness that seemed all but indifference the real attachment which would have led either of them, if requisite, to do everything for the good of the other.

There could not be a happier creature than Mrs. John Knightley in her visit to Hartfield, going about every morning among her old acquaintances, with her five children, and talking every evening over what she had done with her father and sister.

The animation of the Knightleys’ visit nerves Mr. Woodhouse to the exertion of dining out with them at Randalls; where Mr. and Mrs. Weston consult his comfort in every respect, by fixing an early dinner-hour, and limiting their invited guests to his family and particular set, including the elder Mr. Knightley, Mr. Elton, and Harriet Smith.

The incidents in connection with this dinner-party furnish a strange and unwelcome revelation to Emma’s mind. In the first place, Harriet is attacked by a feverish sore-throat, and cannot form one of the party. Emma considers that Mr. Elton ought to make an excuse to be absent also—in fact, she is so obliging as to furnish him with one. She complains of the coldness of the weather,—wonders how any one would dine out who could help it. She and her father cannot disappoint the Westons, but there is no such obligation on Mr. Elton. She detects some hoarseness in his voice already. With the duties of next day—Sunday—before him, she thinks it would be no more than common prudence in him to stay at home and take care of himself.

Mr. Elton looks as if he did not know what to answer. He is not accustomed to contradict a lady, especially when her anxiety for his welfare is of the most gratifying description. But the next moment, a little to her disgust, Emma hears him accept with alacrity an offer from John Knightley, to secure him from any exposure to the weather by giving him a seat in their carriage.

The second shock to Emma is John Knightley’s hinting that Mr. Elton’s exaggerated efforts to please ladies, culminate in his desire to oblige Emma.

She laughs the idea to scorn; still, as coming from a man of her brother-in-law’s judgment and penetration, it annoys her.

There is additional discomposure in her drive in company with John Knightley and Mr. Elton, while her father and Isabella occupy the other carriage, to Randalls. Mr. Elton is in exasperatingly good spirits, in spite of the tidings which Emma takes care to convey to him, that there is no abatement in Harriet’s indisposition. He outdoes himself in blandness. John Knightley, on the contrary, indulges in a fit of ill-humour at being dragged from the hearth-rug at Hartfield and his children’s company at dessert, and growls in the most approved fashion over the folly of dining out, the whole way between Hartfield and Randalls—Emma being unable to afford him the sedative of “Very true, my love!” which, no doubt, is administered by his usual travelling companion.

Mr. Elton’s happy countenance and solicitous attentions haunt Emma all the evening, spoiling her pleasure, frightening her with the remembrance of John Knightley’s view of the case, which she herself defines as “absurd and insufferable.” In the drawing-room she is still farther offended by Mr. Elton’s asking her to promise him not to expose herself to infection in visiting Harriet Smith, and calling upon Mrs. Weston to support him in his entreaty. “So scrupulous for others, so careless of herself. She wanted me to nurse my cold by staying at home to-day, and yet will not promise to avoid the danger of catching an ulcerated sore-throat herself? Is that fair, Mrs. Weston? Judge between us.” Well might Mrs. Weston look surprised, and Emma feel too much provoked to be able to answer him.

John Knightley comes into the room with a cool report that it is snowing hard, and a caustic congratulation of poor Mr. Woodhouse’s spirit in venturing out with his carriage and horses in such weather.

Jolly Mr. Weston wishes that the roads may become impassable, to keep them all at Randalls.

Mr. Woodhouse and his elder daughter are in consternation. How can the chronic invalid face being overturned on the common, or the fond mother consent to be blocked up, for days and nights, from her children? (The country roads of last century were less trustworthy than those of to-day.)

Helpful George Knightley comes back from walking down the sweep and along Highbury Road, with the comforting assurance that matters are not nearly so bad as his brother and Mr. Weston have supposed. In some cases the ground is hardly white, and both of the coachmen agree there is no real difficulty.

Everybody is in a hurry to get off, and by John Knightley’s forgetfulness in following his wife into her father’s carriage, Emma finds herself, to her dismay, in the Knightleys’ carriage, alone with Mr. Elton. She believes that he has drunk too much of the Westons’ good wine,[51] and will want to talk nonsense. To restrain him, she prepares to speak with exquisite calmness of the weather; but scarcely has she begun, scarcely have they passed the gate, when she finds Mr. Elton actually and unmistakably making violent love to her.

Emma clings to the refuge of thinking her companion half intoxicated; disgraceful as the excuse is—above all in a clergyman—it was not altogether unwarranted by the lax practices of the time.

But Mr. Elton has only drunk wine enough to elevate his spirits, not at all to confuse his intellect. Emma, in her trepidation and vexation, strives to parry his addresses and to recall him to his senses, by an attempt at playful reproach. “I am very much astonished, Mr. Elton. This to me! You take me for my friend. Any message to Miss Smith I shall be happy to deliver.”

But Mr. Elton repeats, with undaunted assurance and a great show of amazement, “Message to Miss Smith!” what can she possibly mean?

“Mr. Elton, this is the most extraordinary conduct,” cries the distressed Emma. “You are not yourself; say no more, and I will endeavour to forget it.”

Far from it, Mr. Elton resumes the subject of his passion, and presses for a favourable answer.

As Emma’s notion of his inebriety yields to a conviction of his inconsistency and presumption, she speaks with fewer struggles for politeness; but her indignation is principally directed against what she declares is the contrast between his behaviour to Miss Smith during the last month—what she has herself witnessed, of his daily attentions,—and his present most unwarrantable profession of love to herself, which is far, indeed, from affording her gratification.

“Good Heavens!” cries Mr. Elton, “what can be the meaning of this? Miss Smith—I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence; never paid her any attentions but as your friend; never cared whether she were dead or alive but as your friend.”

This is plain speaking from the compliment-paying Mr. Elton; but worse is to come.

“Miss Smith, indeed! Oh! Miss Woodhouse, who can think of Miss Smith when Miss Woodhouse is near? No!” in accents meant to be insinuating, “I am sure you have seen and understood me.”

It has all been a miserable mistake, in the course of which Emma has not only grossly misled poor, foolish little Harriet, Emma has also fed with false hopes the conceit and interested motives—rather than the honest regard—of a vain, ambitious man, who has been seeking wealth and worldly position as the first recommendations in a wife.

Emma is struck dumb, and when she says nothing her silence is still farther misinterpreted.

“Charming Miss Woodhouse, allow me to interpret this interesting silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.”

Then Emma finds her voice: “No, sir, it confesses no such thing.”

She tells him again in no measured terms how completely she has misunderstood him. Shaken and staggered as she is by his behaviour, she still goes back to her persuasion of his attachment to Miss Smith. Does he mean to say he has never thought seriously of her?

“Never,” cries Elton, affronted in his turn. “I think seriously of Miss Smith! Miss Smith is a very good sort of girl, and I should be happy to see her respectably settled. I wish her extremely well, and, no doubt, there are men who would not object to——Everybody has their own level; but as for myself, I am not, I think, quite so much at a loss, I need not so totally despair of an equal alliance, as to be addressing myself to Miss Smith.”

The smallness of Mr. Elton’s nature is betrayed in his manner of speaking of Harriet at this time, as well as in many of his subsequent actions. He is not a fool—at least, not where men are concerned, like Mr. Collins in “Pride and Prejudice.” Mr. Elton is altogether a better-bred man. But in this last specimen of a clergyman who is at once a coxcomb and a fortune-hunter, Jane Austen deals another blow at parsonolatry. One must think of Henry Tilney, Edward Ferrars, and Edmund Bertram, to understand how heartily she respected her father’s cloth when it was worthily worn.

Mr. Elton is almost as obstinate as Emma, and hardly more flattering in reminding her of the encouragement he has received.

“Encouragement!” cries Emma, insulted by the word. “I gave you no encouragement, sir; you have been entirely mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my friend. In no other light could you have been more to me than a common acquaintance.”

“He was too angry to say another word, her manner too decided to invite supplication, and in this state of swelling resentment and mutually deep mortification they had to continue together a few minutes longer, for the fears of Mr. Woodhouse had confined them to a foot pace. If there had not been so much anger there would have been desperate awkwardness; but their straightforward emotions left no room for the little zigzags of embarrassment. Without knowing when the carriage turned into Vicarage Lane or when it stopped, they found themselves, all at once, at the door of his house; and he was out before another syllable passed. Emma then felt it indispensable to wish him a good night. The compliment was just returned, coldly and proudly; and under indescribable irritation of spirits she was then conveyed to Hartfield.”

It is a wretched business, Emma decides when she has retired for the night, and her maid has curled her hair—in those days of curls—and she is left alone with full opportunity for the unpleasant operation of thinking. Such a blow for Harriet! That is the worst of all. Emma’s conscience and heart are in the right place, though her wilfulness and self-confidence may carry her away; so her first thought is, “If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have borne anything. He might have doubled his presumption to me—but poor Harriet!”

Emma cannot spare any pity for Mr. Elton’s disappointment. She has never been personally vain, as George Knightley noted, and she is shrewd enough to comprehend the kind of attraction of Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield, and her thirty thousand pounds, to Mr. Elton, the vicar of Highbury, without any connections to speak of, with only a moderate income, and nothing but his situation and civility to recommend him. She feels inclined at first to accuse him of double dealing in his manner towards Harriet and herself; and it is hard for her to be dislodged from the most sincere conviction that she has lent his forward advances to intimacy with herself, and his delusion as to her partiality to him, no encouragement.

But Emma’s honesty is too great for her and her present peace. On looking back, she cannot help seeing how many incidents in connection with the miniature, his charade, &c., might have had a double significance. How far her own fancy had coloured looks and words; how much the wish had been father to the thought! Then, when she passes in review before her, her own constant invitations to Mr. Elton—the complaisance with which she treated all he said and did—her furbished-up apology for entering the vicarage, she blushes with shame at the misconstruction he might have put on such behaviour, and the sufficient though mistaken warrant she had afforded for such misconstruction. She heartily repents what she has done, wishes she had submitted to be warned by Mr. Knightley—almost wishes she had consented to Harriet’s marriage with Robert Martin.

It is a great relief to Emma when, by the time the snow-storm has ended, and Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley have returned to London, a ceremonious note comes from Mr. Elton to Mr. Woodhouse, announcing that he is about to comply with the pressing entreaties of some friends to pass a few weeks in Bath. His absence could not be better timed, and the unpleasant task of breaking to Harriet Smith his defection—or, rather, the worse explanation that he has never been her suitor—will be got over before he comes back. Emma is fain to trust that Harriet has not a retentive nature, and will soon forget her imaginary lover. But the match-maker is punished by Harriet’s very meekness and uncomplainingness under the double injury—though it is some time before Emma recognises in her friend the weak tenacity of a nature which is feeble in its gentleness and guilelessness.

II.

Jane Fairfax enters presently on the scene. Jane is the grand-daughter of the old vicar, the daughter of a young officer who fell in action, and whose wife did not survive her loss. Their little child had been committed to the care of her affectionate grandmother and aunt, who, however, could only have afforded her the most slender advantages in the way of education, had a compassionate fellow-officer of her late father not stepped forward, and taken the little girl to be educated with his own daughter. Jane’s home from childhood to womanhood has, therefore, been with the family of Colonel Campbell, and she has only returned at intervals to visit her relatives, Mrs. and Miss Bates, at Highbury.

The intention had been that the unprovided-for girl should be trained to render herself independent by teaching. But her friends shrank from anticipating what Jane Austen calls “the evil of Jane Fairfax’s going out into the world to earn her bread.” Farther on in the book, the author expresses still more decidedly, through her heroine, her pity for a woman in Jane Fairfax’s position. These were the settled opinions of gentlewomen in Jane Austen’s generation. We cannot now regard them as either very liberal or very wholesome, in the light of what has been developed of womanly independence, usefulness, courage, and cheerfulness. Most people of native spirit and intelligence, whatever their grade, would now be disposed to regard Jane Fairfax’s position, after she was grown up, in Colonel Campbell’s family—however good and kind they might be—as more detrimental to Jane’s self-respect, more disparaging in the eyes of others, more trying in every way, than encountering the ordeal of working for herself among comparative strangers.

Another—what I must call weakness and prejudice of the gifted writer, is visible here and elsewhere. In dwelling on the superior cultivation and refinement of the more intelligent and polished society which Jane Fairfax shared, while she resided in the London house of a man of good position and large income, to what she must have submitted to in the village of Highbury, in the house of her excellent but poorly-educated grandmother and aunt, whose narrow means are in keeping with their confined interests, I think Jane Austen’s aristocratic bias carries her too far in the line of mere superficial advantages. True culture is not so dependent on rank and wealth; and culture, though something, is hardly of such importance as she makes it. A rough diamond is a great deal better worth than a polished pebble. But Jane Fairfax is the diamond, not the pebble; so that polish is not wasted on her. She has a very pleasing person, a good understanding, and, what is more to the purpose, an excellent heart, which is not injured by her undesirable circumstances. She does not learn to despise and undervalue Highbury or her homely kindred, in London, among her influential friends. She is a sort of heroine in Highbury, when she comes there on her periodical visits.

Jane Austen gives Emma Woodhouse’s impression of Jane Fairfax, when Emma sees Jane, after two years’ absence. Jane is very elegant, remarkably elegant (an exploded term of commendation often used by Jane Austen, when she desires to impress on her readers somebody’s special grace and refinement); and Emma has herself the highest value for elegance. “Her height was pretty, just such as almost everybody would think tall; her figure particularly graceful; her size a most becoming medium between fat and thin, though a slight appearance of ill-health seemed to point out the likeliest evil of the two. Emma could not but feel all this; and then her face, her features—there was more beauty in them altogether than she had remembered: it was not regular, but it was very pleasing beauty. Her eyes—a deep grey, with dark eyelashes and eyebrows—had never been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil at as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed no fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty of which elegance was the reigning character, and as such she must in honour, by all her principles, admire it; elegance of which, whether of person or mind, she saw so little in Highbury. There, not to be vulgar was distinction and merit.”

Yet Emma has no inclination, or only the most fleeting disposition, to cultivate Jane’s friendship. The fact is, the two girls, of the same age, have all their lives been held up to each other as most desirable companions and friends, until human nature, in its waywardness, has rebelled against the obligation.

George Knightley has told Emma very frankly that she does not like Jane Fairfax, because Emma sees in her the really accomplished young woman that Emma wishes to be herself, but that she has not the self-denial and perseverance to become actually. Emma, in her best and most candid moments, is driven to own there is some truth in this accusation. At other times she defends her bad taste in preferring Harriet Smith as a friend, by asserting that she—Emma—can never get acquainted with Jane Fairfax. “She did not know how it was, but there was such coldness and reserve, such apparent indifference whether she pleased or not; and then her aunt was such an eternal talker! and she was made such a fuss with by everybody; and it was always imagined that they were to be so intimate; because their ages were the same, everybody had supposed they must be so fond of each other.”

In the meantime Miss Campbell, with whom Jane had been brought up, though inferior to her friend both in beauty and accomplishments, has, as Jane Austen says, “by that luck which so often defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs,” engaged the affections and married happily, after a short acquaintance, a Mr. Dixon, a young, agreeable, and rich man.

Jane Fairfax is one-and-twenty, the age at which she had fixed, in her own mind, on beginning her career as a governess. The following are the strong terms in which the author refers to the step about to be taken:—“With the fortitude of a devoted noviciate, she had resolved at one-and-twenty to complete the sacrifice, and retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever.” Surely this is exaggerated language, even for the last century, and reflects painfully both on the footing which governesses occupied, and on the qualifications deemed essential to gentlewomen, among our mothers and grandmothers. There is also an inconsistency in it where this tale is concerned, and one perceives that Jane Austen’s rooted class prejudices cause even so wise a woman to contradict herself; for in the beginning of the book we have an evident indication how much respected and liked Mrs. Weston had been when, as Miss Taylor, she had filled the post of governess to Emma Woodhouse. No relations in the story are happier and pleasanter than those which are involved in the warm and lasting friendship between the two who had been formerly teacher and pupil. Why might not Jane Fairfax have looked forward to being another Miss Taylor?

Colonel and Mrs. Campbell’s good sense had led them to acquiesce in Jane Fairfax’s determination, loth as they were to lose her company, and it was only because she had not been quite well, or in equal spirits for some time, that they had used their influence to induce her not to enter immediately on her arduous duties, but to spend the last three months of her liberty with her fond grandmother and aunt in Janet’s native air, while the Campbells paid their first visit to their married daughter settled in Ireland.

Emma heard the first, not very welcome news of Jane Fairfax’s coming, as she sought to get rid of Harriet Smith’s dolefulness, and at the same time to do an irksome duty by taking Harriet to call at the Bateses. Mrs. and Miss Bates loved to be called on, and Emma knew she was “considered by the very few who presumed ever to see imperfection in her, as rather negligent in that respect, and as not contributing what she ought to the stock of their scanty comforts.”

“She had had many a hint from Mr. Knightley, and some from her own heart, as to her deficiency, but none were equal to counteract the persuasion of its being very disagreeable—a waste of time—tiresome women—and all the horror of being in danger of falling in with the second and third rate of Highbury, who were calling on them for ever, and therefore she seldom went near them.” But now she made the sudden resolution of not passing their door without going in, observing, as she proposed it to Harriet, that as well as she could calculate, they were just now quite safe from any letter from Jane Fairfax.

“The house belonged to people in business; Mrs. and Miss Bates occupied the drawing-room floor; and there, in the very moderate-sized apartment which was everything to them, the visitors were most cordially and even gratefully welcomed; the quiet, neat old lady, who, with her knitting, was seated in the warmest corner, wanting even to give up her place to Miss Woodhouse; and her more active, talking daughter almost ready to overpower them with care and kindness, thanks for their visit, solicitude for their shoes, anxious inquiries after Mr. Woodhouse’s health, cheerful communications about her mother’s, and sweet cake from the buffet.”

Emma had argued without her host, as she soon hears from Miss Bates, who prattles with the delightful abandon of the most innocent, unsuspicious heart, in company with the most honest thick head in the world. She rambles, breaks off, diverges right and left in her monologues, as only a very talkative, simple-minded, elderly woman—a Mrs. Nickleby or a Miss Bates—can wander, pull herself up, and start afresh in her conversation. Miss Bates has only just finished reading a letter from her niece to a previous visitor, and, of course, mentions what she has been about.

“Emma’s politeness was at hand directly, to say, with smiling interest, ‘Have you heard from Miss Fairfax so lately? I am extremely happy. I hope she is well?’”

“‘Thank you, you are so kind!’ replied the happily-deceived aunt, while eagerly hunting for the letter. ‘Oh, here it is! I was sure it could not be far off; but I had put my huswife upon it, you see, without being aware, and so it was quite hid, but I had it in my hand so very lately that I was almost sure it must be on the table. I was reading it to Mrs. Cole, and since she went away I was reading it again to my mother, for it is such a pleasure to her—a letter from Jane—that she can never hear it often enough; so I knew it could not be far off, and here it is, only put under my huswife; and since you are so kind as to wish to hear what she says——But first of all I really must, in justice to Jane, apologise for her writing so short a letter, only two pages you see, hardly two, and in general she fills the whole paper and crosses half. My mother often wonders that I can make it out so well. She often says, when the letter is first opened, “Well, Hetty, now I think you will be put to it to make out all that checker-work”—don’t you, ma’am? And then I tell her I am sure she would contrive to make it out for herself, if she had nobody to do it for her, every word of it. I am sure she would pore over it till she had made out every word. And, indeed, though my mother’s eyes are not so good as they were, she can see amazingly well still, thank God! with the help of spectacles. It is such a blessing! My mother’s are really very good indeed. Jane often says when she is here, ‘I am sure, grandmamma, you must have had very strong eyes to see as you do, and so much fine work as you have done too! I only wish my eyes may last me as well.’

“All this spoken extremely fast, obliged Miss Bates to stop for breath; and Emma said something civil about the excellence of Miss Fairfax’s handwriting.

“‘You are extremely kind,’ replied Miss Bates, highly gratified, ‘you who are such a judge, and write so beautifully yourself. I am sure there is nobody’s praise that could give us so much pleasure as Miss Woodhouse’s. My mother does not hear, she is a little deaf, you know. Ma’am,’ addressing her, ‘do you hear what Miss Woodhouse is so obliging as to say about Jane’s handwriting?’

“And Emma had the advantage of hearing her own silly compliment repeated twice over before the good old lady could comprehend it. She was pondering in the meanwhile upon the possibility, without seeming very rude, of making her escape from Jane Fairfax’s letter, and had almost resolved on hurrying away directly, under some slight excuse, when Miss Bates turned to her again and seized her attention.

“‘My mother’s deafness is very trifling, you see, just nothing at all. By only raising my voice, and saying anything two or three times over, she is sure to hear; but then she is used to my voice. But it is very remarkable that she should always hear Jane better than she does me. Jane speaks so distinct! However, she will not find her grandmamma at all deafer than she was two years ago, which is saying a great deal at my mother’s time of life; and it really is full two years, you know, since she was here. We never were so long without seeing her before, and as I was telling Mrs. Cole, we shall hardly know how to make enough of her now.’

“‘Are you expecting Miss Fairfax here soon?’

“‘Oh, yes, next week.’

“‘Indeed! That must be a very great pleasure.’

“‘Thank you. You are very kind. Yes, next week. Everybody is so surprised; and everybody says the same obliging things. I am sure she will be as happy to see her friends at Highbury as they can be to see her. Yes, Friday or Saturday; she cannot say which, because Colonel Campbell will be wanting the carriage himself one of those days. So very good of him to send her the whole way. But they always do, you know. Oh, yes, Friday or Saturday next. That is what she writes about. That is the reason of her writing out of rule, as we call it; for, in the common course, we should not have heard from her before Tuesday or Wednesday.’

“‘Yes, so I imagined. I was afraid there could be little chance of my hearing anything of Miss Fairfax to-day.’[52]

“‘So obliging of you!’ the kindly soul took the words in good faith, and surely smote Emma’s better nature. ‘No, we should not have heard, if it had not been for this particular circumstance, of her being to come here so soon. My mother is so delighted, for she is to be three months with us, at least. Three months, she says so positively, as I am going to have the pleasure of reading to you. The case is, you see, that the Campbells are going to Ireland. Mrs. Dixon has persuaded her father and mother to come over and see her directly. They had not intended to go over till the summer, but she is so impatient to see them again; for, till she married last October, she was never away from them so much as a week, which must make it very strange to be—in different kingdoms, I was going to say, but, however, different countries; and so she wrote a very urgent letter to her mother, or her father—I declare I do not know which it was, but we shall see presently in Jane’s letter—wrote in Mr. Dixon’s name as well as her own, to press their coming over directly; and they would give them the meeting in Dublin, and take them back to their country-seat—Ballycraig—a beautiful place, I fancy. Jane has heard a great deal of its beauty—from Mr. Dixon, I mean; I do not know that she has ever heard about it from anybody else; but it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his addresses, and as Jane used to be very often walking out with them—for Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular about their daughter’s not walking out often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all blame them—of course she heard everything he might be telling Miss Campbell about his own home in Ireland; and I think she wrote us word that he had shown them some drawings of the place—views that he had taken himself. He is a most amiable, charming young man, I believe. Jane was quite longing to go to Ireland from his account of things.’

“At this moment an ingenious and animating idea entering Emma’s brain with regard to Jane Fairfax, this charming Mr. Dixon, and the not going to Ireland, she said, with the insidious design of further discovery—‘You must feel it very fortunate that Miss Fairfax should be allowed to come to you at such a time. Considering the very particular friendship between her and Mrs. Dixon, you could hardly have expected her to be excused from accompanying Colonel and Mrs. Campbell.’

“‘Very true; very true, indeed. The very thing that we have always been rather afraid of; for we should not have liked to have her at such a distance from us for months together—not able to come if anything was to happen; but you see everything turns out for the best. They want her (Mr. and Mrs. Dixon) excessively to come over with Colonel and Mrs. Campbell; quite depend upon it; nothing can be more kind and pressing than their joint invitation, Jane says, as you will hear presently. Mr. Dixon does not seem in the least backward in any attention. He is a most charming young man. Ever since the service he rendered Jane at Weymouth, when they were out in that party on the water, and she, by the sudden whirling round of something or other among the sails, would have been dashed into the sea at once, and actually was all but gone, if he had not, with the greatest presence of mind, caught hold of her habit—I can never think of it without trembling—but ever since we had the history of that day, I have been so fond of Mr. Dixon!’

“‘But in spite of all her friend’s urgency, and her own wish of seeing Ireland, Miss Fairfax prefers devoting her time to you and Mrs. Bates?’

“‘Yes—entirely her own doing, entirely her own choice; and Colonel and Mrs. Campbell think she does quite right, just what they should recommend; and, indeed, they particularly wish her to try her native air, as she has not been quite so well as usual lately.’”

The idea which has entered into Emma’s idle, fertile brain, is that Mr. Dixon, while paying his addresses to the well-endowed Miss Campbell, may in his secret heart have preferred her portionless friend; that there may also have been an unfortunate hidden attachment on Jane Fairfax’s part—one result of which is her disinclination to visit the Dixons.

Altogether, Emma’s notion is neither very sensible nor charitable. But sensible and amiable conclusions are not always to be expected from spoilt girls, who, with rather an overweening opinion of their own deserts, are not altogether indisposed to find fault with the alleged perfections of threatened rivals. My readers will long ago have discovered that caution and prudence are not Emma Woodhouse’s strong points. Emma guesses as much herself, and on that very account is the more tempted to take a naughty pleasure in detecting undreamt of follies in that model of discretion—Jane Fairfax. But it is only by degrees that Emma is led on to the serious offence against fairness and kindness, of attributing anything more dishonourable than a rash, ill-judged bestowal of her affections, to Jane Fairfax.

When Emma and Jane first meet again on the occasion of Jane’s three months’ visit to Highbury, Emma is shaken for a moment, in her unreasonable dislike and unjustifiable fancies, till the old influences begin anew to work. Miss Bates is more tiresome than ever in her anxiety about her niece’s health. It is affectation in Jane to praise Emma’s playing on the piano,[53] when her own is so superior; worst of all, Jane Fairfax is so cold and reserved in her perfect good breeding—if anything more reserved on the subject of Weymouth and the Dixons than on any other, and Emma believes she knows how to explain this caution.

But neither is Jane Fairfax communicative on another topic which is of the deepest interest to all Highbury, including even Emma Woodhouse, who considers herself above local gossip in general. Jane Fairfax had met Mr. Weston’s son, Frank Churchill, at Weymouth, but not a syllable of real information can Emma get from her as to what he is like. “Is he handsome?” She believes he is reckoned a very fine young man. “Is he agreeable?” “He is generally thought so.” “Does he appear a sensible young man? a young man of information?” “At a watering-place, or in a common London acquaintance, it is difficult to decide on such points.”

Emma cannot forgive Jane Fairfax.

For Emma Woodhouse has a double source of interest in Frank Churchill. He is her friend, Mrs. Weston’s unknown step-son, who has indeed written her “a very handsome letter,” on her marriage with his father, but has not yet shown her the attention of coming to Randalls. He is kept away, his friends agree, by the tyrannical whims of the aunt who adopted him.

Emma with her lively penetration has also seen, and that not with displeasure, in spite of her protest against marriage for herself, that Mr. and Mrs. Weston have fixed on her, as far as they can have any choice in the matter, for Frank’s wife—nay, that all Highbury look on them as a predestined happy couple. Everything is so suitable—age, good looks, agreeable qualities, position, fortune. Emma does not deny these recommendations. No wonder she is curious to hear more of Frank Churchill.

Highbury is suddenly excited by the announcement of the approaching marriage of Mr. Elton, who has improved his time in Bath, and only returned to proclaim his happiness and prepare for his bride.

Emma is bent, as part of her atonement, on breaking the news to Harriet Smith, when Harriet comes in heated and agitated, crying “Oh, Miss Woodhouse, what do you think has happened?”

The blow has fallen already, Emma is sure, and prepares to bestow all the kindness that is due from her.

But the susceptible Harriet is occupied with quite another train of ideas. She has been shopping in Ford the linendraper’s, when who should come in but Elizabeth Martin and her brother, the first time Harriet has met them since she refused young Martin. She thought she would have fainted. The sister had seen her directly, and looked another way. When the brother found her out, there was a little whispering, and Harriet had guessed he was persuading his sister to go up to her and speak to her as usual. She had been in such a tremble; but she had seen that the Martins, especially the brother, had tried to behave with the old kindness and friendliness. Poor little Harriet had been conscience-stricken, yet comforted by his good nature.

It is in the middle of this comical counter-current of distress, which at last swells high enough to provoke and alarm Emma, that in order to put the Martins out of Harriet’s silly, vacillating head, her friend, in a hurry, and not at all with the tender care she had intended, tells the girl of Mr. Elton’s prospects. And the shock revives Mr. Elton’s supremacy.

The future Mrs. Elton is a Miss Hawkins, who is said to be handsome, elegant, highly accomplished, perfectly amiable, and the possessor of ten thousand pounds. No wonder Mr. Elton is triumphant in the abundant consolation which has come to him.

Emma, while satisfied that a Mrs. Elton will be a relief and an aid in renewing her intercourse with the vicar, and while too indifferent on the subject to think much of the lady, has this sop for her mortification on Harriet’s account, that though, doubtless, good enough for Mr. Elton and Highbury, there is no superiority of connexion on Miss Hawkins’ side. She brings no name, no blood, no alliance. She is the younger daughter of a Bristol merchant. “All the grandeur of the connexion seemed dependent on the elder sister, who was very well married, to a gentleman in a great way, near Bristol, who kept two carriages. That was the wind-up of the history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins.”

From these reflections, we may judge that Emma has more than a tinge of Mr. Darcy’s pride and superciliousness. Was Jane Austen herself entirely free from the same defects? We are all fallible mortals.

Harriet Smith, easily carried captive by public opinion, now hears so much of Mr. Elton in every house she enters, and is so impressed by the gifts, graces, and happiness of the bride, that she would have been in a fair way to break her heart over her disappointment, had it not been for the diversion caused by a slight revival of her intercourse with the Martins. Under the influence of Robert Martin’s good feeling, his sister has called again for Harriet; and Emma is sufficiently shrewd to comprehend the danger of a heart’s being caught on the rebound. She takes care to regulate Harriet’s return of this civility. She herself carries Harriet in the Hartfield carriage to Abbey Mill Farm,[54] and pays a visit to an old servant while Harriet makes her call, which is thus abridged to a quarter of an hour’s length. Harriet’s account of it is rather a sad one. Mrs. Martin and the girls have been as uncomfortable as their visitor; and just when they were becoming more cordial, in consequence of somebody saying that Harriet was grown, when the whole party could not help looking at the wainscot by the window, where the different heights of all the girls stood as they had been noted by him last summer, the Hartfield carriage was announced. That was enough; the style and the shortness of the visit could not be mistaken. Fourteen minutes to be given to those with whom Harriet had thankfully passed six weeks, not six months ago!

Though Emma has contrived it all, she has the grace to feel it is a bad business, and would have given a great deal to have had the Martins in a higher rank of life.

It is some comfort to Emma to hear that Frank Churchill is at last coming to Randalls, to stay a whole fortnight. His father brings him at once to the Woodhouses; and the young man is, as nearly as possible, all that Emma’s fancy had painted him—handsome, gentlemanlike, lively, eager to be pleased, and by no means unwilling to admire, and show that he admires, Emma Woodhouse.

After he has won her good-will by his warm praises of his stepmother, and contrived in complimenting Mrs. Weston to compliment Emma, she begins to wonder if he, too, is aware of what their friends expect from their knowing each other, and whether his merry compliments are signs of acquiescence or defiance. As for herself, she must wait and know him better before she has any opinion on the subject; but the first impression is greatly in his favour.

Mr. Weston has business at the Crown Inn, and his son asks carelessly if there is a family named Fairfax—no, he believes the name is Barnes, or Bates—living near, as he has a call to make on them. There had been that degree of acquaintance between him and one of the members of the family, when living at Weymouth, which requires such an attention, and it may be as well shown then as afterwards.

To be sure, his father knows the Bateses and Miss Fairfax; let Frank call upon her by all means.

Any day will do, the young man explains; there is no particular necessity for calling that morning.

But Mr. Weston decides promptly that the mark of respect ought to be shown at once. Frank had met Jane Fairfax at the Campbells, where she was everybody’s equal; here she is with a poor old grandmother who has barely enough to live on. If he does not call early it will be a slight. And the young man allows himself to be convinced.

Mrs. Weston, in her turn, brings Frank Churchill—with whom she is on the happiest terms—the following day; and Emma walks and shops with them in Highbury. She is on such an easy footing with the young fellow already as to inquire about his visit of the previous morning.

He thanks Emma for her preparatory hint about the talkative aunt, who would otherwise have been the death of him. As it was, she entangled him into a visit of three-quarters of an hour’s length, when he had only meant to stay ten minutes.

Emma asks how he thinks Miss Fairfax is looking?

Ill, very ill, he tells her, that is, if a young lady can ever be allowed to look ill, and Miss Fairfax is naturally so pale as almost to give the appearance of bad health—a most deplorable want of complexion.

Emma defends Jane Fairfax’s soft, delicate skin from the accusation of having a sickly hue; but her companion only makes the defence adroitly into an opportunity for professing his preference for “a fine glow of health.”

Still Emma insists he must admire Miss Fairfax in spite of her complexion.

But he only shakes his head, laughs, and says he cannot separate Miss Fairfax and her complexion.

Emma is curious to know how much he had known of Jane Fairfax at Weymouth.

But when he first leaves the question unanswered, because he must go into a shop and show himself a citizen of Highbury by buying something, and then asserts it is always a lady’s right to decide on the degree of acquaintance, she has to inform him he is as discreet as Miss Fairfax herself.

After all, he is not unwilling to return to the subject, and talk of Miss Fairfax and her piano-playing; and Emma is as foolishly elated as a child, by a chance admission of his, which seems to confirm her former conclusion. Frank Churchill has proclaimed his own inability to judge Miss Fairfax’s musical powers, but added that a gentleman who was a musical man would never ask the young lady to whom he was engaged to sit down to “the instrument,” if Miss Fairfax could sit down instead. The next moment Frank has to admit that the gentleman was Mr. Dixon, and the lady, to whom he was on the point of marriage, Miss Campbell.

Emma, in her amusement at the corroboration of her suspicions, does not attempt to conceal her inference from what her companion has said. Poor Mrs. Dixon! As to Miss Fairfax, she must have felt the improper and dangerous distinction.

Frank Churchill hesitates a little. “There appeared such a perfectly good understanding among them;” but the next moment he owns that it is impossible for him to tell how it might have been behind the scenes, and leaves Emma to suppose what she likes.

Emma’s good opinion of Frank Churchill is in some danger of being nipped in the bud, when she hears that he has gone off to London merely to have his hair cut. A sudden freak seems to have seized him at breakfast, and he has sent for a chaise and set off, intending to return to dinner; but with no more important view that appeared than having his hair cut. There is no harm in his travelling sixteen miles on such an errand, but there is an air of foppery and nonsense in it which Emma cannot approve.

His father only calls him a coxcomb; but Mrs. Weston passes the matter over as quietly as possible, and Mr. Knightley, when informed of the expedition, is heard to mutter over his newspaper, “Hum! just the trifling, silly fellow I took him for.”

Frank Churchill comes back punctually. He has got his hair cut, and he laughs at himself with a good grace, but without seeming really ashamed of what he has done.

At a dinner-party in the neighbourhood, Emma receives a very interesting addition to the little history she has made out for Jane Fairfax. A fine piano from Broadwood’s has arrived at the Bateses’, to the great astonishment of the family, who have at length come to the conclusion that it is one of Colonel Campbell’s kind gifts.

But why should Colonel Campbell present Jane Fairfax with a piano at this late date, and in this mysterious manner? Emma, on the first opportunity, taxes Frank Churchill with sharing her thoughts on the subject. The piano has not come from the Campbells; it might have come from the Dixons, from Mr. as well as Mrs. Dixon; and then Emma is so foolish and wrong as to repeat to Frank Churchill all her suspicions of Mr. Dixon’s secret preference for Jane, and Jane’s response to that preference, without, however, for a moment impugning the good intentions and principles of either.

He hears it all with the greatest gravity, and fully acknowledges the probability of her version of the gift. He is ready to be guided by her greater penetration. He did see in it at first only a mark of paternal kindness from Colonel Campbell; but when she mentioned Mrs. Dixon, he has felt how much more likely it is that the piano should be the tribute of warm female friendship; and now he can regard it in no other light than as an offering of love.

Oh! mischievous, thoughtless Frank, and credulous, confident Emma!

Miss Bates and Jane Fairfax, Harriet Smith, and other less important guests, join the party in the evening. Jane looks superior to all the others; still Emma can affectionately rejoice in the blooming sweetness and artless manner of her friend, with regard to whom it could never have been guessed how many tears she had been shedding lately. For “to be in company nicely dressed herself, and seeing others nicely dressed, to sit and smile, and look pretty, and say nothing, was enough for the happiness of the present hour.”

When the gentlemen join the ladies in the drawing-room, Frank Churchill immediately seeks out Emma, and enters into an animated conversation with her, devoting himself to her.

Once, indeed, she notices him looking intently across the room at Miss Fairfax. “What is the matter?” Emma asks.

He starts. “Thank you for rousing me,” he replies; “I believe I have been very rude; but really, Miss Fairfax has done her hair in so odd a way that I cannot keep my eyes from her. I never saw anything so outré. Those curls! I see nobody else looking like her. I must go and ask whether it is an Irish fashion—shall I? Yes, I will; I declare I will, and you shall see how she likes it—whether she colours.”

He is gone immediately, and Emma soon sees him standing before Miss Fairfax and talking to her; but as to the effect of his conversation, he has placed himself inadvertently exactly between her and Emma, so that the latter can distinguish nothing.

Mrs. Weston tells Emma that Mr. Knightley’s carriage—for the use of which on this occasion, Emma, who stands up for proper dignity, had already complimented him—brought over Miss Bates and Jane Fairfax, and is to take them home again.

Both Mrs. Weston and her old pupil are agreed in their praise of Mr. Knightley’s consideration and kindness. But when Mrs. Weston suggests another motive, and says Emma has infected her, for she has made a match between Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax, the listener bursts forth into vehement opposition. How can Mrs. Weston think of such a thing! Mr. Knightley must not marry. Emma cannot have little Henry, her nephew, cut out of Donwell. Jane Fairfax mistress of the Abbey! No, no! Mr. Knightley does not want to marry. Mrs. Weston is not to put it in his head. He is as happy as possible by himself, with his farm, and his sheep, and his library, and all the parish to manage. And he is extremely fond of his brother’s children. He has no occasion to marry, either to fill up his time or his heart.

Mrs. Weston is accustomed to Emma’s ebullitions. The elder lady contents herself with reminding her companion that if the gentleman really loves Jane Fairfax——

“Nonsense,” Emma interrupts the speaker hotly. “He does not care about Jane Fairfax in the way of love; I am sure he does not.”

Emma goes on to protest in extravagant terms that it would be a shameful, degrading connexion to have Miss Bates haunting the Abbey, thanking him all day long for his great kindness in marrying Jane, and then flying off through half a sentence to her mother’s old petticoat, not that it was such a very old petticoat either.

“For shame, Emma!” Mrs. Weston cries out at being diverted against her conscience; and she will not resign her fancy. She has heard Mr. Knightley speak so very highly of Jane Fairfax. He is so concerned for her welfare. He is such an admirer of her music. What if he and not the Campbells prove the donor of the piano?

Emma, too, remains unconvinced, and as indignant as unconvinced. Mrs. Weston takes up ideas and runs away with them, as she has many a time reproached Emma for doing. She believes nothing of the kind of the piano. Only absolute proof will convince her that Mr. Knightley has any thought of marrying Jane Fairfax.

In the interest of the argument, Emma has lost sight of Frank Churchill, beyond the fact that he had found a seat next Miss Fairfax. Presently, however, he comes over to join their host in pressing Miss Woodhouse—the young lady of most consequence at the party—to play and sing.

Emma complies, only attempting what she can accomplish with credit. She is agreeably surprised by having Frank Churchill volunteer a pleasant second. He has all the praise usual on such occasions, and the two sing together again to their mutual satisfaction and that of the company.