‘I can forgive everything but pretence,’ she replied.
‘Then let me urge that it was not altogether pretence,’ he said with a laugh.
‘Then let me assert that you are not altogether unforgiven. Tell me now, what do you think of us at Highbury, you who are such a stranger here? Will you stay long among us?’
His face darkened. He had gone a little grey with the passing years, but he had retained much of his old slimness of figure and his face had lost none of its lively expressiveness.
‘I fear not long,’ he said. ‘To tell the truth, Miss Woodhouse … Emma … Randalls is no place for a worldly fellow like myself to feel easy in. The only comforts my stepmother acknowledges are those of religion. But I should not speak so of one who is your dear friend.’
It occurred to Emma that he had probably already ascertained that she and Mrs Weston no longer remained on the terms of intimacy that once had existed between them.
She said, ‘Alas, Mrs Weston is much changed from what she was when your father lived, certainly.’
‘True,’ he agreed, encouraged by her response. ‘I fear she is so taken up with the joys of the next world that she has quite forgotten that one may be comfortable in this without mortal sin.’
‘Or even with,’ said Emma. ‘So you will not stay long at Randalls?’
A new voice cut into the conversation.
‘I have assured Mr Churchill that, should he desire to extend his stay in Highbury with greater convenience, Mr E and I will be delighted to put him up at the vicarage.’
It was Mrs Elton, exercising her imagined prerogative as hostess to interrupt.
Emma smiled at her and said, ‘I fear that that would be merely to exchange the deficiencies of one religion for another. Pray, do not be offended, Mrs Elton. I merely mean that Mr Churchill has been telling me how much he regrets that his stepmother keeps no stable, and I know that your good husband and yourself have no need of more than Betsy, your old brown cob. But a gentleman must have his horses, so I have invited Mr Churchill to come to Hartfield, when he has finished his visit at Randalls, and enjoy the run of my husband’s stables. They are quite the best in the county, I do believe.’
‘So they are,’ said Mrs Elton acidly. ‘Mr K is a fine judge of horseflesh at least. There is a trifle of supper laid out in the dining-room. Mr Churchill, if you would like to lead the way.’
‘Willingly,’ said Frank Churchill.
He reached for Emma’s arm but hesitated when he saw his hostess’s arm proffered to him. Then with a smile he said, ‘I shall be delighted to try your husband’s mounts, Mrs Knightley. Thank you.’
And led the slightly mollified Mrs Elton in to supper.
Less than a week later (and it was thought a credit to his good nature that he endured Randalls so long) Frank Churchill took up residence at Hartfield.
Knightley, who had never cared for Churchill in the old days, was soon won to a change of opinion by the younger man’s enthusiasm for hunting which almost matched his own.
‘Says I’ve got the best string of horses he’s seen anywhere in the county,’ he said complacently. ‘Matured into a man of judgment, that young fellow. Always knew he would once he settled down.’
Churchill for his part was even more struck by the alteration in Knightley, though he would never have ventured to speak openly of it without Emma’s encouragement.
‘Knightley feels you are much improved from what you used to be,’ she told him when they were alone one day.
‘I’m flattered, I think,’ he answered with a smile.
‘And what think you of Knightley? Is he not much improved too?’
‘He is certainly more … weighty,’ said Churchill, glancing at his hostess anxiously, in case his witticism offended.
Emma laughed.
‘You have a keen eye!’
Encouraged, Churchill continued.
‘And yet he is less weighty too! He was such a fearsome fellow to us young scallywags in the old days. I was always afraid he was about to lecture me on my ill manners, or my lightness of thought, or my flimsy morals! Now, though he is as firm as ever in his opinions on all matters of note, yet he is no firmer than any country gentleman might be expected to be who has received his father’s notions, and his notions before him, without feeling any need to submit them to the test of his own reason!’
He paused, fearful once more he might have spoken too boldly, but Emma offered no reprimand of word or look and he went on, ‘On judgment of horses and wine-shippers alone does he show any of that true moral passion which once informed his very cough!’
‘In short, Mr Churchill, you feel my husband has changed from a variety of preaching prig into a type of toping centaur!’
Frank Churchill was truly shocked to hear Emma speak so freely, though what she said expressed his feelings precisely. And with the shock came another more pleasurable feeling of sensuous complicity in the closeness implied by her openness with him.
‘Emma,’ he said, taking a step towards her.
But before that small step could be followed by a second much greater one, the door burst open, and a maid rushed in crying, ‘Madam! madam! come at once. It’s your father, madam! The old gentleman is close to dying!’
For forty years at least Mr Woodhouse had seemed so close to dying that his actual and necessary approach to that condition had passed almost unnoticed. Now at last, to Emma’s horror, he had taken a positive step.
He had suddenly cried out, half risen, then fallen back into his chair unconscious. By the time Mr Perry, the apothecary, arrived, he had recovered consciousness but was unable to speak or move his limbs.
Mr Perry diagnosed a seizure, spoke learnedly of a sudden rush of blood to the head, and called for a bowl and towel so that he could open a vein. Emma, looking down at the pale skinny frame of her father, thought to herself that he looked to be suffering more from a lack of blood than an excess of it, but Mr Perry had been treating the old man for many decades now, and for once she was ready to bow to expert judgment.
Frank Churchill, however, whose adoptive father had died of the same cause (which he suspected to be excessive bleeding as much as the seizure itself) urged caution; and Perry, who was an intelligent, gentlemanlike man, prepared to admit (to himself at least) that many of his treatments owed more to custom than to knowledge, readily put up his knife, and prescribed stillness and warmth instead.
At this point, the front door of the house burst open and footsteps were heard making up the stairs. It was Knightley, who had been out riding while all the excitement took place. Apprised of the events by the groom who took his horse, he now burst into the bedroom and cried, ‘What? Is the old man dead?’
To Emma, there seemed more of eager expectation than grief in his voice, though a moment’s thought would have told her that her father’s death could be as little welcome to Knightley as to herself. But she did not spare the moment, and replied angrily, ‘No, sir, he is not dead, though he is like to be if such a noise as you make further disturbs his poor mind. This is not a stable yard, sir, nor a tap-room!’
Discomfited, Knightley stammered, ‘No, Emma, I only meant …’ and retreated before her angry gaze.
Within twenty-four hours Mr Woodhouse recovered his speech, though it remained slow and somewhat indistinct. And over the next few days his power of movement returned fully to his left side, though his right was still partially paralysed.
These recoveries Emma credited as much to Frank Churchill as to Mr Perry. In many ways, the gratitude of a beautiful woman is more dangerous to a man than her love, for love can be irrational, while gratitude, being based on reasonable cause, makes him think the better of himself, and for a man it is always self-importance that lines the bottom of a dangerous liaison.
Emma was delighted with her father’s progress. Curiously, the old man, after a lifetime of alarums and crises based on such inconsequentials as sitting in a draught; rising too early or too late; over-exertion b
y walking; too rich a diet; too lively a company; too long a supper; or too short an afternoon nap; seemed to treat this very real ailment as a trivial and temporary inconvenience. Emma was ready to be encouraged by this to hope for a complete recovery, but Mr Perry was far less sanguine. Fearful of approaching Emma direct, and distrusting Knightley’s ability to be a gentler bearer of bad news than himself, he decided to confide in Frank Churchill. What he had to say chimed perfectly with Churchill’s own knowledge of the subject. At Mr Woodhouse’s age, such a seizure as this was almost invariably the precursor of a more severe attack. It might come in days, it would certainly come in months, and it would beyond all reasonable doubt be fatal.
Churchill passed a sleepless night uncertain of his best course of action. Should Emma be prepared for the worst, or should she be permitted to enjoy her father’s few remaining weeks in the bliss of ignorance? He had almost decided for the latter course when he rose next morning and rode down to Highbury to see Lawyer Coxe on a matter connected with Randalls. Though left wealthy by his adoptive parents, Frank Churchill had neglected his investments in the years immediately following Jane’s death, and had suffered considerable losses. He had retained enough to live on, but not to be careless with, and he had been distressed to see the dilapidated state into which Mrs Weston was allowing his future inheritance to fall. His stepmother had been unmoved by his suggestions for repair and he had consulted Coxe to see what might be done to force her to maintain the property.
Coxe’s researches had been fruitless. Nothing could be done.
‘Except perhaps, if you, sir, would care to invest a little of your own money.’
‘What do you mean?’ inquired Churchill.
‘It might be possible to persuade Mrs Weston to convert, let us say, the old stables into a Roman Catholic chapel. Once on the premises, the constructors could at your expense, and unbeknown to Mrs Weston, examine and make good any large defects in the main building.’
Coxe’s subtle, complexity-loving mind was delighted with the scheme, but Churchill was less enthusiastic.
‘It smacks too much of subterfuge,’ he said. ‘Besides, what should I want with a house that has a Romish chapel and no stable?’
‘In architecture at least, apostasy is as easy as conversion,’ said Coxe. ‘And it is better than having no house at all as is like to be the case if Mrs Weston’s neglect continues. Poor Highbury! Randalls crumbling, Hartfield like to follow, what sad days have I lived to see!’
‘Hartfield? What say you of Hartfield?’
Mr Coxe had said too much, but was soon persuaded, under oaths of secrecy, to say more, and Randalls was completely forgotten as Churchill rode back to Hartfield.
His agitation was so great that he confronted Emma directly with a demand to know the truth of the matter and, after an initial anger at Coxe’s indiscretion, she replied as frankly.
‘So it is true,’ said Churchill. ‘With your father’s death, Hartfield, and all that goes with it, must be sold to pay your husband’s debts. Monstrous! Monstrous!’
‘It is monstrous indeed, Mr Churchill, but a monster not to be feared yet awhile. My father mends daily and, who knows? he may yet live another twenty years.’
She laughed gaily, and he understood her laughter was a prayer. He tried to laugh with her, or at least to smile, but it was an effort hard to make, for he found his dilemma increased tenfold. To tell her the truth of her father’s condition now would not be merely to deprive her of the hope of years of life for a beloved parent. It would also be to tell that by the year’s end she could be homeless and penniless.
This agony of decision had better be endured in private. But before he could excuse himself, Emma spoke.
‘Mr Churchill,’ she said, ‘you’re strangely rapt. What is it that so moves you?’
He had forgotten how perceptive of reaction, how sensitive of nuance she was.
‘Emma,’ he said, ‘will you not call me Frank?’
‘If you will be frank, that is what I shall call you,’ she rejoined. ‘So tell me why you seem so troubled.’
There was nothing else for it. He told her.
‘I am no apothecary, you understand,’ he concluded. ‘I speak but from observation.’
‘And you have discussed this with Perry too?’
He admitted as much.
‘There are other physicians,’ she said.
He never admired her as much as at this moment. Knowing the turbulence of emotion that must be raging through her breast, he looked in vain for any sign of it on her face or in her voice and could find none, except perhaps a little not unbecoming pallor around the eyes.
There were other physicians. She consulted them discreetly, and even contrived to have one of them examine her father under pretence of visiting Hartfield to look at a gelding her husband wished to sell.
They confirmed unanimously Perry’s judgment that this present seizure was but a harbinger of a much larger attack, almost certain to be fatal in a man of Mr Woodhouse’s years and constitution. There was some disagreement on timing, but not one of them would stake his professional reputation beyond six months.
Poor Emma wept, but she wept alone, and only Churchill guessed at the agony of spirit in which she passed the next few days. Such nobility confirmed him in his next move. He had already at the time of revelation of Mr Woodhouse’s true condition been moved to recognize in himself a deep, almost worshipping love for Emma. Now he knew that come what may, he had to tell it. If she repulsed him, then that was merely the end of his own worthless life; but if, even in the repulse, there was the slightest sign that her awareness of inspiring such a deep, unselfish love might bring one iota of comfort to her wounded soul, then the sacrifice was well worthwhile.
He spoke. She was astounded.
‘Mr Churchill … how can you speak so … ? You are a guest in our house … you alone know my present unhappiness … this is not the act of a gentleman, let alone a friend!’
Horribly chastened, he yet did not withdraw.
‘Emma, forgive me. It is my care for you as much as my passion that makes me speak. How shall I bear to think of you, orphaned, friendless, in poverty? Emma, I cannot provide against the loss of your dear father, but friendship I can supply; and what I have of wealth is yours to dispose of. Emma, I beg you, let me help …’
‘You are too familiar, sir,’ she said angrily. ‘You overreach yourself!’
‘Emma!’ he said, reproved. ‘Miss Woodhouse …’
‘Mrs Knightley, sir!’ she cried. ‘You forget. I have a husband.’
And she strode magnificently from the room.
It is not to be imagined that Knightley was so far removed from the realities of life as to be unconcerned about the future. At the moment his debts were huge and, with the punitive interest thereon, steadily mounting. But with the greater part of the latest (and so far as the security of the Hartfield estate was concerned, the last) post-obit advance still in his hands, plus his income from Donwell Abbey, he was for the moment comfortable enough. But old Mr Woodhouse’s seizure had been a nasty jolt to his spirits. Like all who knew him well, he too had come to consider his father-in-law would live forever, and had indulged in some self-congratulatory mirth at the way in which he believed he had deceived the moneylenders.
Now suddenly the old man had showed he was mortal man.
The consequences of his death were unavoidable and Knightley now faced up to them for the first time. Hartfield must go in its entirety, house, land, stables, horses, everything. There was no avoiding it. All that would remain to him of this, the crowning glory of Highbury, was its fairest jewel, Emma.
It was small consolation. He could not think of his wife without anger. He compared himself now with what he had been twenty years before. Then he had been rich and respected, a fine figure of a man in the prime of life, dignified of mien, weighty of speech, sage and serious, the acknowledged exemplar of all the best qualities which went into the composition of an Engli
sh country gentleman.
Now (suddenly the last infirmity of despair, which is honesty, was upon him) he was fat, corpulent, gross; a toper, a sot, a grotesque gourmandizer, who thought more of his horses than his human household, neglected his duties both public and private, and was, all in all, a laughingstock throughout the county.
And what was the significant, the catalyzing difference between himself twenty years ago and himself now?
Marriage!
He had married a vain, posturing, empty-headed girl nearly twenty years younger than himself in the arrogant belief that he could influence her development, and alter her make-up, to fit his mould. Yet how had they started?
By the abandonment of his own elegant country seat, Donwell Abbey, to set up house here at Hartfield in order not to fret or inconvenience old Mr Woodhouse!
And later, whose voice had it been that urged upon him the propriety, the advantage, the necessity of admitting the John Knightleys into Donwell? Emma’s, of course! Talking of the needs of her dear sister, the care and comfort of her dear nephews and nieces! Thus had he admitted his own brother, that cold, calculating, subtle Cain of a brother, into a situation to which he had no rights and few expectations.
‘I have sold my birthright for a mess of potage!’ proclaimed Knightley, whose Christian thoughts turned more easily to the violence of the Old Testament than to the gentler virtues of the New.
So he sat, tracing the course of his decline over two decades, and every downward step seemed to have been carved out for him by Emma.
By the time he had finished his tragic autobiography (and his third bottle of port) he felt it almost as a consoling justice that his wife was going to lose forever her beloved Hartfield.
But if that were just, then even juster would it be for himself to regain Donwell, and this was what he now set his mind to.
It was, or had been a steady mind, and a clear mind, but even before it was corroded by port wine and shaken out of its foundings by the bumping jog of a horse, it had never had the cold sharp edge of John Knightley’s. John had long been aware of the extent of his brother’s borrowings. In fairness, if there had been anything he could have done either by word or deed to stay the sad decline, he would have spoken or acted. But judging rightly that no interference of his would be allowed to influence events, he had looked ahead to their necessary conclusion and set about preparing his defences accordingly.
There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union Page 21