The good news was that the entail, drawn up nearly a hundred years before, could be interpreted as applying only to the estate as it existed then, and not in its expanded form a century later. Three generations of Knightleys, including George himself in his younger, steadier days, had made wise purchase of fertile land and productive farms on Donwell’s boundaries, till the estate had doubled in size with much of the most profitable acreage being in the most recently acquired portions.
‘These are yours by common inheritance,’ argued Coxe, ‘and are therefore disposable as you wish, either by testament after your death or by sale within your life.’
Now the dilemma which John Knightley had gleefully forecast for his brother was his own. To test the validity of Lawyer Coxe’s judgment in the courts could eat up the entire value of the disputed land, and more.
Emma joined in her husband’s triumph, and when she encountered her sister in Ford’s shop, she was ready to greet her with all the condescending generosity of victory, but Isabella had gathered her younger children around her with a low cry of, ‘Behold your aunt who would rob your poor brother!’ and swept them out of the door.
A farm and five acres was selected to be offered at auction. All the countryside understood this as a test case, and waited with the excited interest of spectators at a prize-fight to see how John Knightley would react. The general opinion was that he could not sit back and do nothing, there must be an injunction against the sale sought in a court of law, and William Coxe sat back in happy expectation of a long, complex and profitable case.
But John Knightley was not a man to let emotion rule sense. A few days before the proposed sale, he rode quietly down to Hartfield one morning, and presented himself before his brother with an expression so mild and conciliatory that George’s instinctive wrath was stayed in his bosom.
Emma, made aware of his presence in the house, had no such balm to her agitation as, with straining ear, she engaged her father in their daily session of backgammon. The sound of furious dispute would scarcely have calmed her feelings, but the silence that proclaimed its absence disturbed her so much that she quite lost track of the game and defeated her father three times in a row, bringing on one of his nervous headaches.
In the library meanwhile, the two Knightleys were circling each other like wary animals.
‘Brother,’ said John, ‘this is an ill business and I am sorry for it.’
‘I am sorry for it too,’ said George, ‘but it is not of my making.’
‘No,’ admitted John. ‘I acknowledge I am much at fault.’
George was quite nonplussed by this.
‘No, well, that is to say … Brother, will you not sit and take a glass of madeira against the chill air?’
‘Thank you, I should like that.’
John sat, George poured, together they drank, offering no toast, but implying a truce.
‘Brother,’ resumed John,’ ‘I come to tell you there is no dispute between us on any important issue. Beyond doubt the estate is yours, while you live.’
Instantly George was ready for wrath, but even more quickly John disarmed him.
‘If it is your wish that I and my family leave Donwell, then of course we will depart within twenty-four hours,’ he continued.
‘No!’ protested George. ‘What talk is this? Shall I thrust out my own brother, and my wife’s sister, and my dear nieces and nephews that I love?’
‘It would look ill,’ agreed John, with no trace of satire. ‘But, brother, in this business of selling the farm, there we must look to all our interests.’
Again George bridled. Again John was quickly a calming influence.
‘It may be that you have the right of it. Or may be not. But let me ask you this, brother. What is it above all else that you want?’
‘Why, nothing but what is mine!’ declared George.
‘Which nobody shall deny,’ said John. ‘We are close bound together in many ways, brother, and the one of us scarce can move without disturbing the other. There is the entail on Donwell; no one will deny your rights there, but the heir must have his rights too, don’t you agree? And then there is –’ he made a gesture with his wine glass – ‘Hartfield. This is no small estate, brother, our two wives the sole heirs, and mine the elder sister, just as you are the elder brother. A strange cross-relationship, when you think of it.’
‘There is no entail here,’ proclaimed George. ‘It will be left equally, I have the old man’s word on it.’
‘Equal shares is how estates decay,’ murmured John. ‘It is the wasting disease that entails were devised to cure. Brother, think of this. If I die tomorrow, my Henry becomes your heir, and is of an age and ability now that he could run Donwell as well as I, were he called upon to do it. When you die, he will have to do that, of course, and he will care for his mother and brothers and sisters too, till they can care for themselves. But what of your Emma when you die? Suppose the old man to have died first. Then half of Hartfield is my Isabella’s which means it is mine, to do with as I will. I am no tyrant, and I would consult my wife’s desires, but sisters do not always live in that rational accord that brothers achieve. There is no such difficulty in dividing up and selling off Hartfield as exists in regard to Donwell, is there?’
The threat, or rather the complex of threats, was presented so mildly that George Knightley knew a solution must be close on its heels, so he kept his temper once more, and said, ‘Continue, brother. I am listening.’
He listened for half an hour, spoke himself for the other half, then both men went from the house and rode into Highbury together. John Knightley, feeling that in this case it would be neither wise nor diplomatic to represent himself, had summoned Mr Ackroyd, a lawyer from Esher, to represent him, and he was already waiting in William Coxe’s chambers.
‘By God, brother, you were sure of your powers of persuasion!’ said George with some irritation.
‘Not so, brother. I was sure of your powers of reason,’ replied John.
The lawyers got to work. They would have preferred weeks, but driven by the two Knightleys, who, each in his separate way, were not easily to be denied, by the end of a long afternoon, they had hammered out an agreement inscribed it on paper, had it signed, countersigned and witnessed, and had copies made for each party’s safekeeping.
The terminology was long-winded but the terms were simple. In brief, George Knightley invested the management of Donwell in his brother’s hands during his lifetime, and after that in his nephew, Henry’s. In return, he, George would receive a fixed income from the estate revenues, and in consideration of this agreement, John had signed an undertaking on his wife’s behalf to renounce all her future interest in the Hartfield estate in favour of her sister, Emma.
Each of the brothers presented this agreement as a triumph. Each of the sisters received it as a disaster.
‘You fool!’ cried Emma. ‘Before, you had the largest estate in the district, and half of the second largest in fee, with the use of the whole of it in practice. Now you have given away Donwell, where we would have lived after my father died, with half of Hartfield at our disposal also!’
‘You fool!’ wept Isabella. ‘Before, we had the expectation of owning half of Hartfield in our own right. Now we own nothing!’
The brothers urged their own cases, talking of what would happen when this one died and that one died, but hypotheses of mortality are of little comfort to female pride. Emma and Isabella both felt themselves demeaned by the brothers’ agreement, though only Emma felt enraged by the law which permitted her husband to treat as his own what was in fact hers.
Not the least unhappy outcome of this agreement was a permanent coolness of relationship between Emma and Isabella. On the surface, much of the old familiarity between the two households was renewed, but gone forever was that old easy trust which a shared childhood creates.
Emma suffered the worse for it. Isabella had her large family to occupy her mind and emotions. Emma had only her ailing fat
her, her absent husband, and no one else besides. Mrs Weston was plunged even further into her unhealthy devotions, and Emma did not care to make a friend and confidante of anyone else in Highbury’s small society.
Also the whole question of the brothers’ agreement continued to rankle with her much more than with her more easy-going sister. Indeed, as time passed, Isabella came to applaud the wisdom of her husband’s action. She was, in all but legal fact, the mistress of Donwell, and her brother-in-law’s decease, which his ever-increasing intemperance promised could hardly be long, would confirm her in this station.
Emma, on the other hand, had no advancement to look for. She had always considered herself the mistress of Hartfield since before her twentieth year; and marriage to Knightley, which had promised so much, looked as if now it was going to give her nothing but what had always been hers. This she might have come to accept, but there was a worse alternative threatening.
The trouble was that George Knightley’s income from Donwell, though more than generous, for John was at pains to appear just in the eyes of the county, soon proved inadequate to his needs. To this income was added an allowance from the Hartfield estate of which he was the titular manager, though more and more in recent years as her father failed and her husband floundered, Emma had taken over real control. Knightley applied to his father-in-law for an increase which Emma permitted to the limits of what the estate could bear. But when her husband within a twelvemonth demanded more, and in terms which sent poor Mr Woodhouse into one of his trembles, she threw off any pretence that the decision was not in fact hers, and said coldly, ‘Mr Knightley, this will not do. You have foolishly given over one estate which was yours. You shall not drag down another which is not. What you receive now is enough for any two ordinary gentlemen. You shall have no more.’
Amazed, for though his wife was not above scolding him, never before had she berated him as a master might berate a servant, Knightley flew into a terrible rage and raised his hand as though he would strike her. Emma did not flinch, but regarded him with cool contempt till the hand fell once more to his side.
‘Not mine!’ he thundered. ‘Not mine indeed, while that poor shadow still shivers on the threshold’ … (this with a contemptuous upwards gesture at the bedroom to which Mr Woodhouse had retired with a bowl of soothing gruel) … ‘but it shall be mine, madam! Oh yes. It shall be mine!’
He strode out of the house, crying for his horse and a moment later Emma heard the thunder of hoofbeats as he galloped away along the drive.
At that moment, a wish that he might fall and break his neck drifted across her mind, like the first brown leaf that falls from the rich woods of summer. But it was hardly noticed, and soon all seemed green again as, warm with triumph, she went up to attend to her father.
In the months that followed, Knightley referred no more to money. Indeed his attitude, was on the whole more concerned and conciliatory than for many a year, and though there seemed little evidence that he had moderated his habits, it pleased Emma to think that he was somehow managing his affairs so as to stay within his means.
For her part, she now dropped all pretence that the management of Hartfield was carried on either by her father or her husband, and after an initial affectation of surprise, all those concerned with the estate were happy to acknowledge openly what they had long recognized privately.
It was this new openness that brought Lawyer Coxe into a conflict of loyalties. Hitherto the affairs of Hartfield and the affairs of Knightley had been treatable as one. Now that was clearly not the case, and though his first and natural inclination was to put his loyalty to the husband before that to the wife, in the end he felt he had to speak.
The simple fact of the case was that Knightley had for some time been financing his excesses by a series of postobit loans. The moneylenders, seeing the richness of the Hartfield estate and the weakness of its aged owner, had not stinted their offerings. While the debts that Knightley was running up had remained within the compass of the estate to repay, albeit with much trimming and selling, Coxe, who had made the arrangement, had been able to quiet his conscience.
But now Knightley was negotiating a loan of such proportions that Coxe could see no way in which the total debt could be repaid without selling off the house itself, and at this point he was constrained to speak.
Emma listened in a silence which the paleness of her handsome face did not let him mistake for resignation.
‘But these figures are not credible,’ she finally interjected, ‘my husband’s excesses, even if he worked at them night and day, could not eat up such a sum!’
‘There is the interest,’ said Coxe.
‘Interest?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Coxe, and named a figure which turned Emma’s cheeks, already pale, almost translucent with restrained fury.
‘He agreed that much? Oh, the fool!’
‘It is not an unusual sum,’ said Coxe, defensive of his sex.
‘Then there are more stupid fellows in the world than even I had dreamt of!’ snapped Emma. ‘So, let me understand this. When my father dies and the estate descends to my husband and myself, these bonds fall due, and the law will require that Hartfield be sold to repay them?’
‘If there is no other source of money, yes.’
‘What if my father has in the meantime disposed of the estate elsewhere?’
‘Why, then I fear Mr Knightley would end up in jail, where he would be like to spend the rest of his days unless the debt were discharged.’
‘He would at least learn the art of frugal living there,’ said Emma, frowning. ‘And if he did die in jail, what then? Does the debt fail with him?’
‘No. It is a charge upon his estate, and therefore upon his beneficiaries, which is to say, yourself, Mrs Knightley.’
‘That is a monstrous imposition!’ complained Emma, whose rapid mind had been looking for ways to remove the value of Hartfield out of Knightley’s way till such time as she might be able to enjoy it alone. ‘Does that debt never die?’
‘It would die with you,’ replied Coxe. ‘The law does not pursue beyond the first heir. And of course it would die if Mr Knightley predeceased your esteemed father. That is the risk the moneylenders take in these post-obits. They are careful to study the health of those concerned. In this case, the dangers your husband faces in the hunting field would be set against the age and reported frailty of Mr Woodhouse. The degree of risk to the lenders is, of course, reflected in the interest rate.’
Which was so high that the lenders cannot have been too impressed with Knightley’s hopes of longevity, thought Emma. But it would have been higher had they known that Mr Woodhouse had continued in the same frail state of health for more than half a century now!
Perhaps, after all, her father would outlive her husband. And a little flurry of brown leaves drifted down from the summer trees.
And so Emma Knightley approached her forty-first birthday, concealing beneath her still beautiful exterior the anxieties which would have scored ageing lines on weaker flesh.
She had instructed Lawyer Coxe to say nothing of their conversation to her husband, an imposition of silence he was all too happy to accept. She meanwhile made a visit to London where she consulted another lawyer who confirmed what Coxe had said, but assured her he could put all to rights with a deed of separation, linked by a codicillary convenant to a testamentary trusteeship, upon which she recognized him as a charlatan, eager to dip his own spoon into this rich country mess, and returned to Hartfield resolved to put no more trust in lawyers.
On her return with a trunkful of the new fashions which had been her excuse for visiting London, she found Highbury buzzing with the news that Mr Frank Churchill was soon to visit Highbury.
Nothing had been seen of Churchill since the occasion of Mr Weston’s funeral, but news of such a celebrity could not fail to be brought to the town. Five years earlier, there had been general shock and sorrow at the news of his wife’s decease. It seemed that the i
nteresting paleness of Jane Fairfax’s complexion stemmed not from the application of powder to cover disfiguring freckles, as some had suggested, but from a natural pre-inclination to consumption, which dreadful disease had struck her down. Mr Churchill (so it was reported) had long mourned her death, but finally his natural high spirits had been recovered and now he was touring the country to renew old acquaintance. What more natural than that he should visit his stepmother, particularly as Randalls would, by Mr Weston’s will, become his on Mrs Weston’s death.
It was not anticipated that he would find life at Randalls very congenial.
Mrs Elton, the vicar’s wife, so eager to be first as to be always forward, had arranged a ‘little evening assemblage’ at the vicarage to welcome what she called ‘the prodigal’. Emma had little mind to attend, till she heard that the John Knightleys were going, upon which she accepted the invitation, planning to stay only long enough to reconfirm the George Knightleys’ precedence in Highbury.
They arrived late, and found the gathering already crowded with Highbury notables, loud in conversation, but Emma’s appearance in the most daring of her new London gowns was so striking that she was at once the object of all eyes. Mr and Mrs Elton she greeted with a charming condescension, putting them with a single smile both at their ease and in their place.
Frank Churchill was deep in conversation at the room’s centre with Isabella and John Knightley. Emma and her husband joined the group. Within half a minute, by a turn of her shoulder, a flutter of her fan, Emma had put Frank Churchill face to face with her, and thirty seconds after that, they were having a tête-à-tête while the Knightley brothers and Isabella formed a quite distinct and, in Isabella’s case at least, slightly disgruntled group a few yards away.
‘You have not changed, Miss Woodhouse … Mrs Knightley,’ smiled Churchill.
‘You must call me Emma,’ she answered lightly. ‘We are old friends, are we not?’
‘Indeed I hope so. You have forgiven me, then, for pretending to be a little in love with you all those years ago?’
There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union Page 20