‘First,’ he said, ‘I must personally make up the losses. It is my duty, my dear, and if it were not, the guardians have made it clear that they will sue me for negligence, against which suit I would have no defence.’
‘But the money, John, do we have it? What will it leave us? Answer my question, I beg you!’
‘Two questions, I think, and so, two answers. Yes, we have it, answers the first. Nothing, answers the second. It will leave us nothing. No, please, wife, before you give yourself over wholly to the vapours, hear me out. There is worse. Word of this failure has spread quickly. Already the firm is beset by queries from clients fearful that I have embezzled every penny in the City! My reputation is quite vanished. I shall never get work as a lawyer in London again. Emma, you are better suited than your sister to deal with such emergencies, I think. I beg you to stay with her and offer what comfort you can.’
This was the nearest to a compliment that her brother-in-law had ever offered Emma. At the time of her marriage, he had made it clear that he felt his brother was acting foolishly. As the years went by, and George Knightley’s character had decayed as Emma’s had formed, John had been more tender towards her, but Emma had never accepted his attempts at rapprochement since this would have involved an admission that her situation deserved sympathy, and her pride could not permit that.
Now she held her weeping sister in her arms and suddenly she saw an answer to all their problems, her own as well as the John Knightleys’.
‘Sister,’ she said firmly, ‘cease your weeping, for all is to be well. Your husband will have work to do, your family will have shelter, and you and I shall visit and talk to each other daily, as it has long been my wish for us to do. You shall have Donwell Abbey!’
Isabella stopped crying immediately and looked at Emma with dawning hope.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘The house stands empty, the estate lacks stewardship now that Knightley is so much in Parliament,’ said Emma. ‘Why should you not live at Donwell till Knightley himself requires the house again, which if Papa continues healthy may not be for many years yet?’
‘Emma! Is it possible? Oh, too marvellous! Though I know it must be Henry’s one day, and it would seem very fitting that he should grow acquainted with the estate …’
Isabella’s voice died away in sudden awareness of her solecism. The fact was that Donwell Abbey was entailed, and in the event of George Knightley’s dying without an heir, the estate would pass first to his younger brother, John, and after that to John and Isabella’s eldest son, Henry. The one flaw in Isabella’s delight at her sister’s marriage had been her awareness that Emma’s first male child would deprive her own son of his inheritance. But more than ten years had passed with no sign of a pregnancy and Isabella had come to believe there would not be one. This present time, in the face of her sister’s kindness, however, was not the best occasion to be voicing this belief.
Emma laughed, understanding her sister’s thoughts.
‘Don’t look so distressed, Bella,’ she said. ‘I am not offended. And to show you so, I will go this very instant to Knightley’s Westminster house and get him to put all matters in train.’
Emma hated to waste time once her mind was settled and she sped round to Westminster as quickly as might be. A footman opened the door and tried to keep her waiting in the hall while he went to inform his master of her arrival.
‘Fool!’ she said. ‘I am Mrs Knightley,’ and swept by him into a very prettily furnished reception room, calling her husband’s name. He appeared within a few moments, looking black-faced and displeased, like a great Friesian bull.
‘Emma, what are you doing here? I told you that I would call on you in Brunswick Square this evening if my duties permitted.’
‘I know you did, Mr Knightley, but emergencies alter circumstances. Have you not heard of your brother’s misfortune?’
‘Something of it has reached my ears,’ he said negligently. ‘The silly fellow has been dipping his fingers in other people’s salad bowls, so they say.’
‘Not so! It is a most tragic situation!’ protested Emma. ‘I wonder you can take it so lightly. Let me explain it, and my solution, to you.’
She did so, rapidly but with all necessary detail. When she had finished, she paused like an actress expecting applause.
‘What’s this!’ cried Knightley. ‘Let John and your giddy sister and their monstrous brood into Donwell? You must be mad, wife! What little I can spare to relieve hardship they shall have. I am a Christian and know my duty! But Donwell! Not while I live! Think on, Emma. When the old man dies, we shall return there ourselves. And what shall we do if the John Knightleys are camped all round the place, like the lost tribes of Israel!’
Emma was taken aback. She had not expected such opposition to her plan. She turned away from her husband and stood leaning against a pretty little marquetry table with a jewel-encrusted lady’s fan on it.
‘I have promised Isabella,’ she said.
‘Then you must unpromise her as soon as may be!’ said Knightley firmly. ‘Go at once and undo this mischief as quickly as you can.’
Slowly Emma turned. In her hand was the fan.
‘This is a very pretty ornament,’ she mused. ‘Is not this Lord Upton’s coat of arms I see engraved on the handle?’
Lord Upton was the Tory peer who had sponsored her husband. Himself gross of flesh and torpid of character, he had a wife whose appetites were reputedly so voracious that even elderly clergymen spared to be alone in her company.
‘No ornament,’ said Knightley, flushing. ‘Lord Upton and his wife called on me this morning. Her ladyship must have left it behind. Give it to me and I shall return it to his Lordship in the House.’
Somewhere above them a board creaked, and Emma sighed and said, ‘A careless lady indeed. I should like to make her acquaintance. Give me her address, and I shall return the fan myself. It will distance my mind and occupy the time, husband, for to tell you the truth, I do not look forward to being the bearer of such bad news in Brunswick Square.’
‘Give me the fan!’ thundered Knightley.
‘Gladly, if I were to be speeding back to tell Isabella all is settled. But you know how I hate to bring ill tidings. I have not seen your house, Knightley. Will you not conduct me round the upstairs apartments?’
Husband and wife faced each other for a long moment, he gross and frustrated and scarlet, she slim and erect and smiling.
‘They shall have Donwell till John sets himself up once more,’ growled Knightley finally. ‘But I’ll have an agreement! They shall not think themselves settled there forever!’
‘Of course they shall not!’ said Emma, gracious in triumph. ‘I will bring John back within the hour to make arrangements. Here is this beautiful fan, husband. Take care to see her ladyship has it restored to her at once. I doubt she will rest secure till she can shade her delicate skin behind it once more!’
Now followed a period of much happiness in Emma’s life, for she was always at her happiest when she felt herself the mistress of events and relationships. She did not doubt of her husband’s infidelities, but so long as he kept them to the environs of the Palace of Westminster, and no rumour of them reached Ford’s shop in Highbury, she would not pretend an outrage she could not feel.
Besides, it pleased her that his carnal passions were engaged elsewhere, as she herself had long ceased to anticipate Knightly’s corpulent embraces with anything but horror.
The John Knightleys were soon installed at Donwell, and the arrangement quickly proved satisfactory to everyone, even to Knightley. His lawyer, Mr William Coxe of Highbury, and John Knightley, acting for himself, drew up a note of agreement covering the terms of John’s stewardship of the Abbey estate. For several years, following Knightley’s growing neglect, the revenues had steadily declined and the house itself had begun to assume a somewhat dilapidated appearance. Now all was changed. Under John’s stewardship the estate prospered again, and
the revenues soon equalled, then exceeded, their previous levels. Within a twelvemonth, Knightley was congratulating himself gleefully on having got a first-class manager, free of charge, as though the whole arrangement had been his own stratagem.
Emma and Isabella, in the meanwhile, were rarely out of each other’s company and usually in temper in it. It was true that, from time to time, Isabella put on airs as if she were the true mistress of Donwell, and Emma felt constrained to remind her of her real situation. Isabella was immediately and genuinely contrite, though secretly she comforted herself with the thought that, one day, she might be in fact what she was at present by favour, and that certainly her beloved son, Henry, must eventually become lord of the estate. If she felt guilty at the thought that this could only be achieved by her brother-in-law’s death, his treatment of Emma soon assuaged the guilt. In any case, hers was such an easy, sunny temper, taking pleasure – or pain – from the present with little real planning for the future (that was her husband’s prerogative) that George’s death only occurred to her as part of nature’s course, never man’s interference.
Emma, on the other hand, with a mind made for analysis (albeit often wrong) and a constitution for conspiracy (though frequently flawed) could not conceive of a desired end without a premeditated means, and she watched speculatively as Isabella pressed another large helping of venison pasty on her bulging brother-in-law; or sent to the cellar for another bottle of port to help the poor insomniac Member of Parliament to a healthy slumber; or spoke of a wild young stallion offered for sale at Esher horse-fair which only the best rider in the county could hope to master.
But whatever her suspicions, Emma had to admit that her husband needed little urging to pursue his excesses. Nor did retribution follow. He drank more port, and did not die of an apoplexy. He bought more horses and failed to break his neck. He spent time in London even when the House had risen, and he did not appear either diseased or debilitated.
But it was in the end his excesses which brought the two families to a new point of crisis.
As the years passed and Donwell prospered, the rising income from the estate was steadily matched and frequently overtaken by Knightley’s increasing expenses. He kept no check, merely sending all his private accounts to his brother for settlement. John Knightley was not a man to act precipitately. He guessed that his brother would, after these many years in Parliament, hardly be susceptible to reason. Besides, he had his own large family to think of. It would not do to speak without preparation. If crisis there were (and a crisis there must be, of that he was sure) he would delay it until the time and occasion were of his own choosing. So he laid his plans.
First he dropped hints that he was thinking of returning to London to renew his legal practise. Alarmed at the thought of losing so excellent, and so cheap, a manager, George protested, arguing the uncertainty of the move, the unhappiness of the family. John considered. George pressed. John allowed himself to be persuaded. And George was so relieved that he raised no objection to signing a new note of agreement confirming John’s stewardship of Donwell.
Six months elapsed, and one day as George was visiting the Abbey, his brother called him into the room which he used as his management office. His face was stern and he wasted neither time nor words.
‘Brother,’ he said, throwing a sheaf of papers on to the table between them. ‘These bills upon the estate, they are out of all proportion!’
‘Out of proportion, John?’ replied Knightley, taken aback. ‘What does that mean? Is there no money to meet them? Does not the estate prosper?’
‘Indeed it does, brother. But only because of the labour and the care which your nephew, Henry, and I myself bestow upon it. Think on, brother. Is it just that we should see the fruits of our labour so wildly dissipated? That you are entitled to a good competence we do not deny. But that we should toil to pay for your pleasures while our own family suffers neglect and deprivation, where lies the justice of that?’
Knightley struck the table a blow which came close to splitting it.
‘Dear God!’ he cried. ‘Neglect and deprivation, you say? When all the county knows ’tis only my care and kindness that has kept you and your gipsy brood out of the workhouse! Will you deny me what is my own, sir? You are at Donwell on sufference! It is an act of my charity that you loll here at your ease while better men toil for a pittance. My property, sir. Recall that we are talking of my property!’
‘And a pretty property it would be, brother, if it had stayed in your care!’ cried John Knightley, becoming passionate beyond his customary cold and restrained nature. ‘What would it have been like if I had not so managed it these many years? Yes, it is your property, surely, but not yours without condition; it is not yours to pillage and neglect! It belongs to our family, sir. It is yours only in entail and upon your death it will pass to me. Or if I do not outlive you, sir, which the hard work and long hours I expend on Donwell makes not unlikely, then it will be my son’s, and his after him. These bills are outrageous, sir. You must moderate your excesses or find other sources of finance for them. The law will be on my side in this, I promise you!’
‘Other sources ..! The law ..!’
George Knightley rose to his feet, stuttering and staggering, so that it seemed for a moment as if the argument were to be resolved by his instant death. But then he recovered and strode out of the room crying, ‘We shall see, sir! Other sources … the law … we shall see!’
Isabella, warned by her husband to keep herself and the children out of the way during George’s visit that day, had naturally placed herself in a situation from which she could hear all, not a difficult task as the volume of the dispute attracted the attention of men in the fields two furlongs away.
Now she rushed in to her husband, pale-faced and alarmed.
‘John!’ she cried. ‘I have never heard your brother in such a rage. He will surely return with dogs and bailiffs to throw us out!’
‘Let him try,’ said John Knightley. ‘Let him try.’
‘You are sure of what you said?’ demanded Isabella. ‘You are sure the law will be on our side?’
‘I believe it to be so,’ replied John. ‘These entails are complicated matters, but their aim is always to stop the debauchers of one generation depriving the next of its rightful due. Also, the note of agreement George signed has given me something of a trustee’s standing in this. Besides, to test my position at law might cost him half of what the estate is worth anyway! He will scarcely risk that!’
He spoke confidently, but he knew that the battle was not so easily won. His brother might now appear as a hard-drinking, hard-riding, grossly self-indulgent and mammothly overweight country squire, but he had proved for many years of his adult life that he was a man of sharp judgment, well-versed in affairs. He might not be willing to enter into the expense of time and money involved in legal proceedings, but he would certainly spend a bit of both in taking legal advice.
This was precisely what Knightley did, after a brief interval in which he raged around Hartfield, drinking brandy and threatening fratricide, to the disgust of his wife and the dismay of old Mr Woodhouse, who feared that the rapid cooling consequent upon such an overheating must surely bring on a cold, if not a tertian fever.
Emma, when her husband had cooled into coherence, drew out of him an account of what had passed at Donwell.
As she listened, she found herself uncertain as to what her own feelings on the matter were. Indignation that Knightley should have been refused immediate access to the revenues of his own estate warred with understanding of her brother-in-law’s motives. She herself regarded the waste of money upon pleasures she did not share with some horror, and would dearly have loved to find some device to limit her husband’s expenses. But her pride in her position as wife of the owner of the largest estate in the district required that the John Knightleys be put in their place. As her husband sent for his lawyer, Mr Coxe, she began her own campaign by sending a servant up to the Abbey, res
cinding an invitation to dinner at Hartfield the following day, with the cold excuse that it was no longer convenient.
William Coxe came quickly. Twenty years ago he had been a pert young lawyer. With age had come a superficial gravity, but beneath it he was as light and lively as ever, with a love of litigation which went far beyond simple profit.
His first advice, which was to sue John Knightley for back-rental for the Abbey estate, a course of action which, if admitted, must surely end with the incarceration of John and probably all his family in the Fleet, was rejected. Also rejected were his proposals to send a posse of bailiffs backed by militia into Donwell, and to swear out a warrant of distraint before the local magistrate (who was George Knightley) against the said John, on suspicion of embezzlement, mismanagement, and general malfeasance.
‘Come, man!’ cried Knightley, his anger now finding a nearer target. ‘What? What? Do you tell me I should commit my own brother to the common jail? Is this your best advice, Lawyer Coxe? You show me your comb in this, sir, for it is a coxcomb’s advice!’
Pleased with his pun, he allowed himself to be mollified by the lawyer’s apologies and when the man asked, ‘Then what is it you wish to learn of me, Squire Knightley?’ he replied, ‘How to get my money, that is all I wish. This damned entail’s at the bottom of things. All would be well if I could sell off the damned place and have a capital sum to live off.’
Coxe now began to study the problem in a more moderate manner and within a few days returned with news, both good and bad. The bad was that it appeared that the note of agreement between John Knightley and his brother, might indeed be seen as investing in John full authority for the discreet disposal of estate revenues. In other words, George could not take out of these revenues more than the superfluity after all expenses were met and a reasonable amount set aside for re-investment in the estate’s future.
There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union Page 19