‘Miss Bates?’ wavered Emma, too much on her mind to do more than wait.
‘She is willing to come to Hartfield as soon as we desire her presence. She will stay as long as she is needed – as long as you are needed by your sister.’
They had talked of this the night before, but the swiftness of the actual happening startled Emma; she felt she had no part in it except to quieten her father – that had always been so much of her days—
‘She asked but one favour – a favour I understand you had already undertook to arrange for her—’
A blush began on Emma’s cheeks; despite everything, Miss Bates’ favour brought memory of Frank. ‘The pianoforte!’ she exclaimed.
‘Precisely. I do not understand exactly – She feels it had something to do with her mother’s death – you had offered to remove it? she was not clear.’
‘You were away. She still wants it gone?’
‘So I understand. She seems in dread of it.’
‘I had meant to ask if it could go to Donwell?’
‘Whatever you think best, Emma.’
‘But if she is not in her rooms?’
‘She was most particular – she wants it gone, until Mr Churchill returns to claim it. Donwell will serve, I have no doubt.’
At the name of Churchill, Emma’s blush increased but she felt no temptation to reveal their meetings.
‘I will have Robert Martin arrange to remove the pianoforte. I must be away back to London again.’ He was hasty, his manner brusque, his face hardly turned towards her. ‘Two days I will give you and then you must be ready.’
‘My father?’ queried Emma.
‘Mr Woodhouse is not expecting a baby,’ said Knightley in a brutal voice that astonished Emma. ‘Miss Bates will keep him comfortable. She is not loquacious at the moment but I have no doubt that when her first grief has abated the words will take over from the tears and she can express her gratitude to your father in so many sentences of goodwill; that all his mind will be turned on when he can be allowed to express his fears of what passes in London. He will know nothing of the bankruptcy, of course. I am assured that those two will manage very comfortably together. Their words will mix like the waters of the Amazon and make a great double flow.’
So be it. If it were to be done, it were best done quickly; Mr Woodhouse must be told at the last minute when all the new arrangements for his comfort were in place. Miss Bates, who had never been housekeeper for more than a few rooms, must be taught to deal with Sterne in a way that made that headstrong cook take responsibility as she had always wished but never been allowed to do under Emma’s governance. Mr and Mrs Weston must be informed and recruited as advisers to Miss Bates and comforters to Mr Woodhouse – it was as well Mrs Weston’s health had returned. James must be given orders to prepare for the sixteen-mile journey to London and yet persuaded not to inform his master immediately.
These arrangements and more – she felt it necessary to check every store in the house, personally – kept Emma so busy that she had no leisure to think of herself. The dark image of London became dimmer. All her energies were devoted to departing from her father in a way which left him, if not happy, at least content; that seemed nearly too much to hope.
Miss Bates was soon in the house; her silent burden of sorrow battled with her wish to speak compliments of the great state in which she found herself, so that she would utter a few words, fall silent for a few seconds and then start again, rather as a pump, improperly handled, gives its water in fits and starts. She did, however, make much of an effort to smile which, in Emma’s view, gave promise of more sanguine times ahead.
She chose to break the news of her departure on her last evening, after dinner when Mr and Mrs Weston had come for a visit. They would support her.
‘Papa, I have something to tell you.’
‘What can you mean, my dear? I hope James is not unwell. He has been acting very strange of late; if I did not know it to be impossible I would say he hid from me behind the door this morning.’
‘Oh, papa. You must not be worried but I am to go to London!’ It was a fearful cry, her own anxieties surfacing at a most awkward time.
‘Isabella!’ cried Mr Woodhouse.
‘Mr Woodhouse, dear friend,’ Mr Weston, smiling, Mrs Weston, smiling, Miss Bates, smiling, drew close. ‘What cannot be changed must be endured. Mrs John Knightley is in excellent health, excellent – I have it from Perry – but she is a little tired.’
‘Five children,’ smiled Mrs Weston. ‘Having only one, I know the amount of work that such joy must be earned by. It is natural that she should want her sister to be at her side.’
‘Emma!’ gasped Mr Woodhouse.
What cannot be altered must be endured. As Emma recovered herself enough to smile too, Mr Woodhouse found himself surrounded by a wall of cheerful faces and, if one of them were to leave, three were to stay behind. After an hour of investigating every vexatious circumstance he was even able to abandon the contemplation of his own discomfort for long enough to consider his daughter’s. ‘But, my dear, I recollect you dislike London excessively.’
‘Mrs Knightley cannot dislike a place she has never visited’ – Mr Weston firmly. ‘She can only dislike the idea; and ideas have seldom much grounding in reality. In my view, ideas and imagination do more damage—’
‘We must also consider,’ interrupted Mrs Weston, ‘that Mr Knightley’s business has required his presence in London recently and that he is in residence there at the present time and it never does for a man to be separated from his wife.’
‘Alas!’ By the feeling in the word, it was clear Mr Woodhouse saw this as a reference to his separation from his wife twenty years ago. ‘Alas, poor Mrs Woodhouse!’
There was a silence, broken only by a dreadfully large gulp from Miss Bates who had quite given up her smile. Mr Woodhouse turned to her and his kindly eyes met hers – wide and welling.
‘Ah, poor Miss Bates. Poor, poor Bates!’ Such a wealth and depth of sorrow was shared and exchanged between these two that the others could not presume to enter it. They exchanged glances, however, which expressed the consciousness that they had brought together two feeling souls who would find satisfaction in a similar understanding of life’s woes. All had been done that could be done to prepare for Emma’s departure.
All, that is, for her father. It was an exhausted young lady who found herself in her room at nine o’clock at night with her clothes laid out but none packed, none examined for imperfections, none chosen.
‘Oh, Merry,’ she cried when the maid appeared. ‘I am going to London tomorrow and I have not brought a pair of new stockings nor trimmed a bonnet.’
‘London’s the place for trimming, ma’am,’ said Merry longingly. ‘I’ve heard there’re ribbons made of gold with sparklers dropping off them like icicles off a roof-edge. You won’t be wanting Ford’s trimmings once you’re in London.’
Emma sat on the bed and looked at her stout, rosy-cheeked maid. How she would be looking forward to a trip to London! ‘Now, I will sit here and command while you pack.’
It was as much of a surprise to Emma as it may be to the reader that this exercise, not thought of, except to be rather dreaded, raised Emma’s spirits considerably. It was not that her wardrobe was inspiring; apart from a few new gowns made around the time of her marriage; she had little more fashionable than a second-hand study of Isabella’s magazines and a country dressmaker could provide – but it led her to the thought that, even with the dismal reason for her visit to the capital city, she must, nevertheless, venture outside of the house, on occasions, if only to accompany the children. She must see sights that she had heard of only from books; she might do more – visit a theatre or, at least, an interesting church. There were shops, galleries, public buildings, parks.
By the time Emma lay down and closed her eyes, her head was spinning
with visions of London which gradually became strangely similar to scenes from the novels of Smollett and Fielding, as if Mr Weston’s proscription of ideas and imagination versus reality had taken root in contrary mode. Faces, darkened, smiling, grimacing, threatening, turned around as if in a kaleidoscope.
Just before dawn, the kaleidoscope stopped and Emma sat up abruptly. ‘What if Frank Churchill should not have kept his word to me and is still at Donwell? And the pianoforte, his pianoforte, about to arrive?’
Up till now, she had not doubted Mr Churchill’s intention to leave. Why should he want to stay, with no food, heating, light? But night fears made the worst seem possible.
Without waiting to wrap herself against the cold, Emma went through to her upstairs room and sat at her little desk.
Dear Mr Martin, I had intended to apprise Mr Knightley of my suspicion that some person had broken in at Donwell Abbey – through a pane shattered in a side door – but Mr Knightley has now left for London. Would you therefore do me the favour of ascertaining whether there are any grounds for my anxiety while conveying the pianoforte thence – I see no point in worrying Mr Knightley at the present time—
Many drafts produced this short note; it would have to do. It was not elegant, but the point was made; and Mr Martin was a conscientious man. She need not worry further – except to pass the letter to James with instructions to deliver it to Abbey-Mill Farm on his return from London.
Skipping her cold feet across the polished floorboards, Emma re-entered her bedroom where Merry wonderingly attended her mistress’s return from such an unusually early visit to her desk. She held out a pair of not very warm curling tongs.
‘Shall I heat them, ma’am?’
‘No,’ cried Emma, ‘London must take me as it finds me!’
Chapter 14
The day was colder than of late, but bright. Emma, sitting close to the window of the carriage so that she should miss nothing passing – neither grand house arising out of its shrubberies like a head from a ruff, nor grand equipage dashing along the road at great risk to her own humbler conveyance – felt the absence of rain a great blessing. Rain always made her sad and would have made her task of raising the spirits of the Knightley household far more taxing. A bright sky made a bright face.
Now that Emma had time on her own, she could feel the weight of the responsibility Mr Knightley had put on her. She must keep Isabella, so close to her confinement, cheerful in her husband’s absence and ignorant of the true reason. She could not believe that a wife so devoted to her husband had not guessed that something was amiss. On the other hand, John Knightley had always struck Emma as a very close, secret sort of man so perhaps he did not confide his business affairs to his wife. Moreover, his legal work had sometimes caused him to stop away for more than a week or two. To which might be added Isabella’s occupation with her children. ‘Yet I hope Knightley would have told me anything half so important,’ she said to herself.
Sixteen miles was all that had stood between Emma and the city for her whole lifetime. Now the miles disappeared under James’s horses and the wheels of the carriage with startling rapidity. One minute they were in the country with a signpost saying they still had six miles yet, and the next they were crossing a fine stone bridge over a river that could only be the Thames – the bridge was called ‘Westminster’ – then they were among houses and even over a patch of cobbling which made the horses’ hoofs ring.
Emma sat as close to the window as she could without sacrificing propriety, and was just beginning to feel herself in the centre of the noisy, bustling, jostling, dirty city that she had thought she most dreaded – so many people in one spot as she had believed impossible – her heartbeat fast, her cheek flushed – when their way had turned and it seemed they were almost come to the country again. There were cows, sheep, hedgerows, a fence with a style in it, even a brook. Perhaps James had mistaken the path. She tapped on the window. He guessed her meaning even before she spoke.
‘Five minutes to Brunswick Square, ma’am.’ He was confident, calm. There could be no mistake.
Emma had set herself to becoming calm – to finding an even temper that would sustain the distressing scenes she must witness – Isabella in bed, desolate, the children wild and sorrowful – when James called again, ‘Bedford Square, ma’am!’ ‘Russell Square, ma’am!’ ‘Brunswick Square!’
They were passing through – or around: Bedford Square was gated at either end so they may not enter – a series of large and elegant spaces surrounded by tall houses. The size, the grandeur, the proximity to grass, trees and sky was quite unlike anything Emma had expected of London. Why had Isabella not told her? It was true that she had often refuted their father’s anxieties about their health with descriptions of their part of London being very ‘airy,’ very healthy. Emma was surprised, impressed, and hardly felt as if she were in London – at least the London of her imagination – at all. The carriage came to a standstill.
Casting out topographical questions, Emma composed her face into quiet sympathy; it was not difficult. Now that she was outside Mr John Knightley’s own front door, she felt the magnitude of his falling even more keenly than she had before. This was a large front door, tall, broad and ornamented with a brass doorknob and knocker. It was at the top of a tall, wide, marble flight of steps and above it arose a wall of windows, of wrought-iron balconies. It was an imposing residence, made – as she thought to herself with some surprise since she had never seen the like before – more imposing by the identically magnificent houses to which it was affixed on either side and which continued round the square.
Their neighbourliness, their nearness, their upright jaunty look – although stately too – was not like the country. After all, she was in London. Here, she could already see, where people lived in rows, not by ones or twos, it would be terrible to lose your place, like a soldier who falls out of line – a shame and humiliation. Poor, poor John Knightley.
Such unhappy ideas occupied Emma’s thoughts in the few moments she stood outside the house, quite long enough to lower her spirits to an appropriate level.
‘I shall knock,’ announced James, seeing his mistress apparently reluctant. But before he could do so, the door burst open and two figures flew out towards Emma.
‘We have been waiting all morning!’
‘We saw you arrive from the nursery but Nurse made us brush our hair.’
‘We have set up a game of spillikins!’
Where was the sorrow, the gloom, the despondency? Wildness, perhaps, was present, but a gleeful wildness.
Emma was pulled inside by either arm, through a high-ceilinged hallway and into a pretty, finely furnished sitting-room.
‘But your mama!’ – an expostulation. ‘I cannot sit down with you.’
‘She’s sleeping!’
‘Sleeps tight as a mole! – We looked in.’
Emma confessed herself touched by the scene before her, the table set with three chairs, the spillikins expectantly arranged; it was clear the boys were resolved to enjoy their aunt’s company from the first moment of her arrival.
‘Papa is teaching me chess,’ said Henry, the elder, ‘but he has been too much away for me to progress very far.’
‘I wanted cup and ball!’ cried John, the younger. ‘But Henry felt certain you would be too tired. But I said I had never seen you tired at Grandpapa’s so I did not see why you should be tired in London, just because you’ve sat in a carriage for a few hours.’
Emma smiled, her relief at their childish high spirits allowing her to be persuaded to ‘just one game of spillikins before I unpack’ – and ‘just one more before I visit your dear mama’ – and ‘this is the very last, Henry, and you must not press me further’.
But the light, sun under thin cloud, turned the corner of the square and came through the wide windows and she was still sitting with the slender pieces of carved ivory �
� quite as intent on winning as her nephews – when Mr Knightley entered the room.
‘My dear! Emma!’ None of them had heard him coming into the house and he was able to take in the contented scene of domestic harmony before Emma rose hastily, the colour of her cheeks deepened by a guilty blush.
‘Oh, Knightley – the boys – it is too dreadful – and I have not seen poor Isabella yet – I have not even visited my room!’
But Mr Knightley looked at her with such loving approbation and the boys danced about crying that she was ‘the spillikins queen’ or some such nonsense so that she gave up her guilty look and kissed Mr Knightley instead and told him she thought London a bright, lively place – not at all the dark dreariness she had expected. ‘It is quite as sunny as Hartfield.’ she said, pointing at the streaks across the carpet.
The sun shines on all alike, if it is allowed to—’ he stopped himself.
‘Ah!’ Emma glanced at the boys as she recognised that Knightley was thinking of their father’s sad incarceration.
‘You must know, my dear,’ Mr Knightley sat down and crossed his legs, ‘that this area is quite new, built on land owned by the Foundling Hospital which you may walk around if you wish. We are hardly in the city – although it is but ten minutes’ brisk walk from Lincoln’s Inn Fields, whence I came today, where my brother carried on his work.’
The boys soon tired of such talk and left to see if their mama had woken. On their uncle’s inquiry whether they had not a nursemaid to attend them, they fled even faster, with scornful cries of ‘Nurses are for the babies, not for us!’
Knightley observed after their departure that it was high time they were sent to school, but Emma found herself laughing.
‘I must admit I did not expect such a smiling reception.’
Knightley moved his place so he could sit close to her on the sofa. ‘I am glad of it. There is much unhappiness to come. But if only I can ward it off until after your sister’s confinement – if I can do that and release my poor brother from a different sort of confinement – if this can be done, the house held on to a few months longer, then it may not be so bad.’
Emma & Knightley Page 9