by Jane Austen
‘Tom Musgrave?’ almost shrieked Jane. ‘You are not going to see him, surely? After he caused the death of that poor unfortunate woman?’
‘There is no pleasing you, Jane,’ said Robert. ‘First you grumble because Lord Osborne never comes to call. Then you raise objections to his friend Tom Musgrave. But we may as well find out what he wants.’
What Tom Musgrave wanted, it seemed, was an interview with Miss Emma Watson. Very coldly and unwillingly did Mrs Robert Watson permit the young lady (who, in a back room, had been endeavouring to give little Gussie instruction on the harp) to be sent for. She would have remained herself, overseeing the visit, but Tom Musgrave, who looked thin, haggard, and hag-ridden, unexpectedly mustered up the courage to demand that the interview be a private one.
Robert, with a curt jerk of the head, ushered his wife out of the room.
‘Perhaps he means to propose, after all! Though I never knew that he showed any interest in Emma. Mag was the one he was partial to – or Elizabeth.’
‘But he has disgraced himself! I am surprised that he dares to show his face in a respectable neighbourhood!’
‘After all, though, Jane, he does have six thousand a year.’
Tom Musgrave had not come to propose to Emma. His prime intention was to grovel in shame, regret, and useless repentance. How could he have been such a cow-handed, reckless, clumsy, cursed fool as to have overturned that poor unfortunate woman and so made an end of her? And little Charles too – the best little fellow that ever handled a bat-and-ball, ready for any lark; it broke his heart to think of the poor father, Captain Blake, over there in the West Indies, probably to this very day ignorant of his loss. And Mrs Blake such a great, great friend of yours, Miss Emma—
All this was poured out, chokingly, almost into Emma’s lap.
‘Please, please, Mr Musgrave, stop!’ she besought him. ‘You are only upsetting yourself to no purpose. I do not blame you – indeed I don’t. In fact, you and I are somewhat in the same position – it is said of me that I caused my father’s death – perhaps even on purpose – and I have to bear that, knowing that I did no such thing, had no such intention. So I can enter very fully into your feelings. And I assure you that I am not angry with you—’
‘You do not blame me? You forgive me?’
‘Really it is not for me to forgive – I am not the injured party,’ said Emma. ‘But I am sure that – that Mr Howard forgives you. It is his duty to do so as a Christian clergyman,’ she could not help adding rather drily.
‘Oh, you do me so much good, Miss Emma.’ Tom Musgrave mopped his eyes unaffectedly. ‘I am so very much obliged to you!’
She could not help feeling rather kindly towards him – he looked so much like a great overgrown schoolboy.
‘I think we are distantly related, are we not? My aunt Maria’s first husband, Mr Turner – was he not your great-uncle or second cousin or something of that sort?’ she added, in a kindly effort to encourage him.
‘It may be so – I am not sure – yes, perhaps . . . But, Miss Emma, what I am also come to ask,’ he went on, gathering urgency, ‘is, will you put in a good word for me with your sister Elizabeth? She will listen to you, I am certain – but I can’t get near her. She will not see me! I have been out to Clissocks half a dozen times, but to no avail. And I do so, I do so much want to see her. To tell truth, Miss Emma, your sister Miss Elizabeth is the one for me. I do not know why I have hummed and ha’ed for so long. I have been the veriest fool. When I saw her at that last Assembly – looking somehow so changed – so smiling and sweet-tempered and good – I do not know why it had taken me so long to notice – to understand . . .’
It was the effect of the bandoline, thought Emma. And Mrs Blake’s Persian silk cloak.
‘Then,’ he rushed on, ‘your father died, and I did that dreadful thing, and I thought I must have lost her for ever. And everybody in the neighbourhood hates and despises me. I despise myself. I do nothing but stay at home and train my horses. (I have got a rattling fine pair, by the bye, Miss Emma!) I do not wish to see people, not at all. Even Osborne has cut me off. He is courting Miss Edwards – though, between you and I, his heart ain’t in the business. If Lady Osborne did not hang over him like one of those Valkyries, obliging him to marry money, he’d be off like a scalded cat – what was I saying?’
‘You were talking about your feeling for my sister Elizabeth.’
‘Well! She’s the one for me. But, you see, I can’t get near her to tell her so.’
‘Even if you could,’ said Emma sadly, ‘you might not be able to make any impression on her. My sister Elizabeth is gentle, Mr Musgrave, but she is wholly inflexible and obdurate once she has formed a resolution. Or so I have found. She is angry with me over our father’s death, so I do not believe that my good offices with her will be of much help to you, Mr Musgrave. But still, I will do for you what I can. I will write her a letter, and ask her to see you. That is all I can offer. Then it is up to you.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss Emma. You are a true friend indeed.’
He glanced about the cheerless, crowded room in which they were talking, and said, seriously, ‘And if, Miss Emma, by any chance I am successful in my suit – if I should have the happiness of setting up house with your sister – I can assure you that you would be our first and most welcome guest!’
‘That is very kind of you,’ she said smiling faintly. ‘I will remember.’
Two minutes after he had bowed and gone, Jane was back in the room, feverish with curiosity.
‘Well? Well? What was all that about? Well?’
‘He wants to marry Elizabeth,’ said Emma.
‘Elizabeth? And he asks your permission? Why? And why in the world should he take a notion to marry Elizabeth?
‘He did not ask my permission,’ said Emma. ‘Merely my good offices in persuading her to see him.’
‘How very extraordinary! I must say, I do not see why Elizabeth should be so nice in deciding whom she will and will not see; but why should he want to marry her? Is it because he has disgraced himself and no one else will have him?’
‘He did not inform me,’ said Emma, and escaped to her room.
A man, she thought, when she was alone, must always have some worth in society even when he has disgraced himself. But a woman has not. Why is that? It is because a man can earn money. Even in disgrace he has command of that. But a woman has no financial value. How unfair that is!
For the rest of the evening Jane was huffing, sparking, and fuming, like a fire that has been laid with damp wood, over the equally provoking mysteries of why Tom Musgrave should want Elizabeth, and why she should not want him.
***
Emma wrote to Elizabeth: wrote an earnest, heartfelt letter in which, first, she begged that the relations between them might be restored to what they had been before the death of Mr Watson: ‘You and Sam are my best friends in all the family; without your affectionate, sisterly recognition I feel lost indeed;’ secondly, she asked for a hearing for Tom Musgrave: ‘Poor fellow, I know he has not shown himself, hitherto, a very estimable character, but I truly believe that he has undergone a change of heart since what happened, and I consider that, if anybody can influence him to good purpose, it is yourself. At all events, he has his heart fixed on you, and I think you should at least do him the justice of granting him a hearing.’
She had no reply to this letter. But Elizabeth had never been a good correspondent. At the time when Emma was first exiled from home, as she felt it, to the house of Aunt Turner in Shropshire, and longing for letters from the family, Elizabeth had very seldom found the time for correspondence, and when she did, her letters were scanty, plain, and matter-of-fact: ‘The black sow has littered, the fruit blossom is very late, Papa has a cold.’ It was from Sam, always, that news came depicting thoughts and feelings and actions, news that made up a recognizable vi
sion of the longed-for life at home. So Emma did not expect a reply from Elizabeth. She knew she must wait for news from some other source.
The source, when it arrived, was not particularly agreeable: Margaret rode in with Dr Harding, who had business in Croydon. Margaret, it seemed, suffered from a troublesome tooth and had need to visit the dentist, Mr Pilsbrow. But the prime reason for her visit was to pay a call at Beech Hanger and give voice to a whole flood of complaints about her house-mates at Clissocks.
‘The way that Penelope and Thickstaffe go on is nothing less than outrageous! If I were Dr Harding I would pack them both out of doors. They are for ever colloguing together in corners or out at the far ends of the garden, walking along paths together, whispering under trees.’
‘Then he has no need to pack them out of doors,’ Emma could not help interjecting.
Robert was at his office, and Margaret’s jeremiad was being addressed to herself and Jane. Jane listened, all agog, but Emma, who had heard the same kind of thing before, several times, could not help feeling that even the attempt to educate little Gussie, hopeless though it seemed, would be a more useful way of passing the time.
Margaret turned away irritably from Emma to Jane, who was demanding, ‘But what do they talk about? Are they making love?’
‘Oh, la! I never got close enough to hear. But I think partly he is urging her to persuade the old doctor to sink some more of his cash in the canal venture, and I think she ain’t willing. “For,” says she, “he is close-fisted enough as it is, he begrudges me the fountain and the hermit’s grotto I asked for, and, try as I will, I cannot get him to fix a date for a ball. Ball? says the doctor, why, whom should we invite? We do not know above fifteen couple in the neighbourhood.” And Thickstaffe partly agrees with the doctor there. And so they all go at it, hammer and tongs.’
‘A ball?’ said Jane thoughtfully. ‘Does she really intend a ball?’
It gave Emma some amusement to see how the possibility of being invited to a ball at Clissocks weighed with Jane against the day-to-day interest of maintaining her quarrel with Penelope. And did the advantage of being able to display herself as a member of the family in this parvenu mansion outstrip the annoyance of being obliged to watch Penelope queening it as mistress of the occasion?
But Margaret’s main object of grievance had yet to be disclosed.
‘I do not know why you thought it your business to stand advocate for Tom Musgrave with Elizabeth!’ she burst out resentfully to Emma. ‘You was never his best friend, I was the one he chiefly addressed himself to in the family, and indeed I could have had him for myself if so inclined, but – a worthless puppy! I would not touch him with a bargepole. Especially now! But why you should feel entitled to stand his advocate, Emma, passes comprehension.’
‘Oh, did Elizabeth show you my letter, then?’ asked Emma, somewhat surprised.
‘Of course not, but I read it, as anyone might, for she leaves her things out on her dresser for anybody to see that might chance to pass through her bedroom.’
‘Did Tom Musgrave come to see her? Did she agree to that?’
‘Ay, he came, but I do not think he can have popped the question, for though they was above an hour talking out in the grape arbour, out of earshot, at the end of it all he left, looking mighty serious, and, as for Elizabeth, she’s mum as a mole, an oyster’s a tattle-box compared to her. Not a word has she let drop since, as to what passed. But, if she was going to have him, you’d expect she’d be a bit more frisky, not so quiet and meagre as mostly she goes about.’
‘Perhaps she is thinking it over. Six thousand a year. She would be a great simpleton to pass that up,’ said Jane, sighing at the thought of so much money passing into the hands of somebody else. ‘What a shame he did not offer it to you,’ she could not resist adding spitefully to Emma.
Emma rose and said that she would take little Gussie for a walk. This was an act of almost pure altruism, for the walks about the outskirts of Croydon were very dull, up littered chalk tracks through vegetable allotments and over grimy, spoiled downland. Apart from its great cherry-orchard, Croydon was fast being eaten up by fugitives from London; there were new houses thrown up every week. And if Mr Thickstaffe succeeds in persuading Parliament to cut his Grand Canal through to Portsmouth, thought Emma, it will soon become a part of London itself.
On a walk, little Gussie was a reluctant, mulish companion. She grumbled, she whined, she trailed her feet in the dust, she complained of being stung by wasps, nettles, and adders.
‘Nonsense, Gussie, there are no wasps and adders at this time of year. And if you walk through nettles, you have only yourself to blame.’
Meanwhile, Emma was certain, back at Beech Hanger, Margaret and Jane would be enjoy ably pulling her character to pieces.
Never mind. Let them do so. She had Captain Fremantle’s letter with her like a talisman; not since she first received it had she been parted from it by more than a hand’s breadth. It lay under her pillow by night, and was tucked in her reticule by day. And each night she read a chapter of the book about Saxon kings. I shall be able to discuss Caedwalla on equal terms when he comes back, she thought hopefully.
‘Why don’t you pick a nice bunch of dandelions?’ she suggested to little Gussie.
‘Shan’t! Don’t like dandelions!’
‘Well, then, listen, and I will tell you the tale of the fox and the crane.’
But Gussie was not interested in foxes and cranes. She had a blister on her heel big as a penny-piece, she asserted, and she limped and wailed all the way home, ceasing her complaints only as the gates of Beech Hanger came in sight, when she broke into a run.
Inside, all the way up the front path, Robert’s gardener had set clumps of blooming pansies in the newly dug flowerbeds.
Gussie pranced past these, methodically tweaking up all the pansies on the right-hand side, and tossing them behind her on to the gravel path.
‘Don’t do that, you odious child!’ exclaimed Emma, bereft of all patience, and she gave Gussie a slap on the wrist. Roaring with fury, Gussie darted indoors and sought the succour and furtherance of her mother.
‘She hit me! Emma beat me! Send her away! I hate her! I hate her!’
‘What is this I hear?’
Jane, fierce as a dragon in defence of her young, came into the hall.
‘Yes, I gave her a slap,’ said Emma. ‘Which she richly deserved, for pulling up all the pansies. Look!’ She pointed through the open front door.
‘Didn’t do it! Emma pulled them up! Emma did it!’ wailed Gussie, clinging on to her mother’s hand.
‘Oh! You little liar!’
‘Don’t you dare to call my child a liar, miss!’ exploded Jane. ‘How could you? Poor little precious, then!’
‘Look, look, Mamma, I got a bad foot. I’m poorly, I’m very poorly!’
‘There, there, Mamma will make it all better. How about a nice spoonful of apricot jam?’
‘I suppose you think McGregor had pulled up all the pansies he had just planted?’ Emma suggested, going off to her room.
‘Robert shall hear of this directly he comes home!’ Jane flung after her. Margaret, emerging from the parlour, helped Jane comfort and cosset the child, who, pleased with this new audience, redoubled her cries and wails.
To her surprise, Emma found a note on her dressing-table.
‘Delivered by hand, it was, miss, not twenty minutes since,’ said the maid Jemima, bringing in a handful of clean bedroom crockery. ‘By the lad who takes round the milk.’
‘Who can it be from?’ Emma prised open the small, rather dusty cover.
‘Dear Mam,’ said the note in uneducated handwriting. ‘I should be Oblig’d if you could come, as here is a Lady what knows you is not at all Well. She dont know I rite, but I make so bold. Brigit Riley.’
The address was in Epsom.
Good heavens, thought Emma. Brigit Riley? An Irish name? Can it be – it must be – Aunt Maria! But – in Epsom? But why does she not write herself? Oh my gracious me! I must go to her at once. But how?
Then she recollected that, at this very moment, Margaret was in the house, about to be picked up by Dr Harding and taken back to Clissocks. The road they would take passed through Epsom, a small pleasant town. On the way hither Mr Thickstaffe had given Emma much more information than she wanted about Epsom’s decline as a spa and watering-place in favour of the new seaside resorts such as Weymouth and Brightelmstone.
Having crammed a few needments into a bag, Emma ran downstairs, just as Dr Harding’s carriage drew up outside the front gate.
Dr Harding would not come into the house. He would never come in. He disliked Jane Watson and, though he would not be embroiled in the feud between her and his wife, yet while the feud continued, he did not choose to enter into social relations here.
Emma ran to the carriage.
‘Dr Harding! I am so glad to see you! Can you carry me as far as Epsom? Can you be so kind? I have an errand there.’
‘Epsom? Ay, and farther if you wish, young lady. But what is your business in Epsom?’
‘Well, I am not quite sure. I have had a request for help. I think it may relate to my aunt O’Brien. But I will be so greatly obliged if you can carry me there so that I may find out.’
‘That’s of course,’ said he. ‘Now, just hurry up your sister Margaret, will you? I don’t like to keep the nags waiting on this dismal gusty hillside.’
Emma went indoors and informed a pale, furious Jane that she was off to Epsom.
‘Very well!’ said Jane icily. ‘And, so far as I am concerned, you may just stay there! You are not at all welcome under this roof, from now on, let me tell you. Just wait until your brother hears what has occurred!’
Emma nodded, and returned to the carriage, from which she watched with a detached eye the affectionate and clinging embrace of Jane and Margaret as they bade one another farewell.
‘Well!’ said Margaret entering the carriage and shaking herself. ‘What an imbroglio! I should think you was well out of that household, Emma! What a little toad, what a viper that child is! I wonder, I really do, you ever stood her for so long.’