Chapter Text
The table clock struck three in the drawing room at Hartfield, and Harriet Smith rose to leave.
She looked very well, Emma reflected. Harriet's hair was curled perfectly and her bonnet was trimmed in just the way Emma liked - a few touches, nothing more. And since Emma had made Harriet a gift of several of her own dresses, Harriet's dress was also to Emma's taste.
Yes, the overall effect was very pleasing, and a credit both to Emma, as its architect, and Harriet herself.
As mistress of Hartfield, Emma rose too, to bid her friend farewell, and of course so did Mr Knightley, the other guest at this impromptu tea party. Emma’s father Mr Woodhouse, an elderly gentleman with health almost as poor as he believed it to be, remained seated, and nobody minded.
Mr Knightley was the Woodhouses’ neighbour and friend, living at Donwell Abbey hardly a mile away; Harriet Smith, Emma’s recent friend and protege, lived still at the school for young ladies in Highbury itself, a fair walk from Hartfield, but not so far as to prevent Harriet and Emma visiting very frequently. Emma had made a project of showing to Harriet that despite her modest, indeed unknown, origins, she was a worthy friend for Emma Woodhouse. And Harriet had shown Emma that a determined, and very pretty, young woman could indeed become a popular member of Highbury society.
Yes, it was all working out just as Emma planned. Before long she would make a match for Harriet with some suitable young gentleman. Emma had seen off an unconscionable offer on Harriet’s behalf - a farmer! - in the spring, but perhaps some gentleman-acquaintance of Mr Knightley might suit.
“Will you call tomorrow?” Harriet asked Emma, kissing her affectionately.
“Yes, and we shall call together on Miss Bates, and have tea, and be very merry.” Emma noted the look of satisfaction on Mr Knightley's face at this declaration.
Mr Knightley, some years Emma’s senior, had at first been critical of Emma’s choice of companion, but no more. The result of Emma’s good work was that Mr Knightley himself - the very model of what a gentleman ought to be, and the very last word in proper behaviour - approved of Harriet, and even liked her. This, to Emma, was a great satisfaction, and she was glad that her own friendship with Mr Knightley might now proceed, free of any previous awkwardness over this matter. Proceed how , was not something Emma had yet precisely decided. But in a summer of engagements and marriages - Mr and Mrs Weston, the parson Mr Elton - Emma was beginning to feel that marriage might not be an unwelcome state.
In fact, she had begun to think of her own marriage as almost definite - as almost a certainty that Christmas might settle the matter, should she hint at it. There was certainly no more suitable match - no match more longed-for by all their acquaintance - than that of Emma Woodhouse and Mr Knightley. She liked him well enough, and he was so often at Hartfield that marriage could make little change. “-I shall bring Miss Bates some of our apples,” she added, gilding the lily. Miss Bates was a lady in reduced circumstances, and an old friend of the Woodhouses. “We set them in store in September and they are as fresh now as ever.”
“In December,” exclaimed Harriet. For it was almost the year’s end, and fruit a luxury.
“Even in December.” Hartfield’s orchards were large and well-tended, though not as vast as those at Donwell. Mr Knightley’s apples were superior, but Emma had offered hers, and won the point.
Harriet said, “Perhaps Miss Bates would like some rosehip syrup too, for her mother. I will bring some, for the roses in our garden gave off many hips this year.”
“A kind thought,” said Mr Knightley, smiling at Harriet.
“I did not have the making of it,” said Harriet, “although I read aloud the recipe for the younger girls. But it will be a pleasure to see it used. The recipe is from Mrs Glasse’s book, and I found it very good, even though Dr Johnson says ladies cannot write about food.”
“Dr Johnson says a great many things,” said Mr Knightley.
“Oh yes! I so enjoyed his Travels to the Western Isles. I fear he was not a good traveller, though.”
“And perhaps not a good judge of ladies’ abilities,” said Mr Knightley.
“Certainly he offers no recipes for rosehip syrup,” said Harriet, and all present smiled.
This was right, Emma reflected, this was as things ought to be. Their little circle, all in harmony. Even her father, who did not much care for company, enjoyed Harriet’s visits, and today they had all been talking together of Emma's plans for improvements in Hartfield’s park.
“Then goodbye, Emma. Goodbye, Mr Woodhouse.” Harriet gave a very pretty curtsey to her hosts.
Mr Woodhouse shook his head and wondered at the need for Harriet to go home at all, as it would be dark not two hours’ hence, which everyone pretended not to hear.
“Goodbye, Mr Knightley.”
Mr Knightley bowed to Harriet, and gallantly lifted her glove to his lips. Harriet blushed and curtseyed again, and took her leave.
“Well,” said Emma, sitting on the sofa once more. “I see you have come round to my conviction that Harriet Smith is a worthy friend.” She addressed Mr Knightley; her father was already resubmerged in his book.
Mr Knightley stood by the window, his hands behind his back, watching Harriet make her way across Hartfield's generous lawns. He made no reply, but inclined his head a little.
“She looks well, she behaves well, I am quite justified in my choice of her as companion,” said Emma. It was rare to have any kind of triumph over Mr Knightley, and the sweetness was not to be rushed.
Mr Knightley turned and faced the room. In the low winter sun his face was half-lit, and showed his aristocratic looks to their best effect. “She has many fine qualities,” he said.
“From you that is praise indeed.”
“It is only the truth.” Mr Knightley glanced out of the window once more, although Harriet must now be gone from view. “Harriet Smith is beautiful, as we all saw from the start, and modest, and kind.” He smiled, and took up his teacup, and sipped, whilst in his eyes dawned a faraway look. A strange look, in fact.
Emma opened her lips to remark on this but Mr Knightley went on, “Yes, and under your tutelage Harriet is growing into the kind of young woman any man may be pleased to marry.”
And in that moment, a chill settled over Emma's heart, and her pleasant evening was ruined.
“Harriet is but a girl,” said Emma.
They were alone now, or nearly so. Mr Woodhouse was asleep beside the fire, and Emma and Mr Knightley stood at the far end of the room, supposedly admiring some new sheet music at the pianoforte.
“As are you, Emma.”
“I am mistress of Hartfield. Harriet has barely left the schoolroom. She will not be thinking of marriage just yet.”
“You yourself have been matchmaking for her all summer! Did she not have a proposal from my own tenant? Mr Robert Martin?”
“Which she refused,” said Emma. She did not mention that she herself had advised this course. She had barely seen Mr Martin, but could not believe him to be anything but dull and coarse. She knew Mr Knightley disliked snobbery, so cast about for another reason. “-Harriet is not ready to marry.”
Mr Knightley turned over some pages of the music. His quick eye marked the notes. “I disagree. I think Miss Smith, were the right offer to be made, is very ready to enter married life.” He smiled that faraway smile again. It was infuriating.
“And what kind of offer might that be?” asked Emma, whilst wishing she didn't.
“A man with a home and an income, of course. If I were to make a suggestion, it would be that she marry an older man, with a steady hand and a reputation so unblemished as to completely remove all question of Miss Smith's unknown background.”
“Mr Robert Martin,” said Emma. Mr Martin, indeed, now seemed like a very fair prospect.
“He is indeed such a man. But Miss Smith turned him down.”
“I advised her,” confessed Emma. “I felt the match beneath her. But now-” Now, she would be pleased to see Harriet married to the milk-man so long as nothing occurred to upset Hartfield’s established circle.
“That was months ago now. We have all changed and grown since that time.”
“What do you mean?” Emma scooped up a sheaf of music sheets and set them down again on the polished pianoforte.
“The entirety of Highbury is a different thing now. Miss Taylor, your companion, now married and become Mrs Weston. Frank Churchill, idling dandy, reformed to a doting son to Mr Weston and, one imagines, an acceptable suitor for Miss Bates’ niece Jane Fairfax.”
“-Another young lady for whom you have high praise. You are becoming quite the lothario, Mr Knightley.”
“I hardly think expressing admiration for a lady's good qualities constitutes womanising, Emma.” His mouth twitched in amusement.
“What a vulgar phrase, from your lips.”
Mr Knightley laughed. “You must teach me gentility, then. Your skills are well proven in Miss Smith.”
“Oh, enough Miss Smith. Let us talk of something else. How is your brother, and my dear sister? Did you see them when you were in town?” Mr Knightley had been lately to London on business, and of course stayed with his younger brother, Mr John Knightley, who had for some years been married to Emma’s older sister Isabella.
“They are well, and exceptionally keen for me to marry.”
“That is not news. They have been wanting you to marry since I can remember.” Emma winced, for they said the same to her.
“They wish the children to have little cousins to play with.”
“As do I,” said Emma, feeling that she was somehow in the wrong in this discussion, too. “Of course we all wish what is best for the children.”
“Additionally,” said Mr Knightley, “they wish to see Donwell Abbey put to better use. As a family home. And perhaps their wish is a good one.”
Emma hesitated. His hint, until this afternoon, would have been a welcome one, seized upon as a sign that her idea about their marriage was sound. But now his unspoken suggestion troubled her. “You plan to marry? After all this while?”
He chuckled. “I am not so decrepit.” He was thirty-seven to Emma's twenty-one. Harriet was but twenty.
“I mean, I only meant, that you are used to the bachelor life. That you enjoy your independence, and your …” Emma searched for words. “You enjoy your visits among the village, and here, and have no need of more company.”
“I fear no amount of visiting will provide my nephews and niece with a cousin.”
Emma walked around the piano and arranged the sheet music into an unknown order. “So you do mean to marry.”
“I am fortunate not to be constrained by lack of money, or lack of approval from my relations. Having made up my mind I have no reason to wait.” He hesitated. “No reason, that is, except to ascertain the willingness of the lady concerned.”
The music was now in an appalling state. Emma thrust the sheets aside. “Indeed. So which lady will you marry?”
Mr Knightley smiled. “I rather think I should ask her first, before sharing that information. Imagine the devastation to my pride if she should turn me down.”
“No woman would refuse you,” said Emma, feeling the painful truth of this.
Mr Knightley bowed.
Shortly thereafter, it growing fully dark, he also took his leave.
Emma threw herself onto the sofa.
“What is it my dear?” asked her father. “Is it supper time?”
“Almost.”
“Will Mr Knightley stay?”
“He has gone home, papa.”
“Ah yes. We will be à deux again, then.”
“Yes indeed. And perhaps cards later?”
“I am tired, I may just read.”
“Then so will I.”
Emma did not read. After supper, she paced about the drawing room as restlessly as a husband awaiting the midwife. Nothing pleased her. She could not settle to reading, or sketching, or the piano, even if her music had not been shuffled about into a horror of composers and concertos.
Mr Knightley, to marry.
Surely he could not be thinking of Harriet.
No. He must be hinting at an interest in Emma herself. It was no false pride to think it. They were dear friends, their families already closely connected - both in the first set of Highbury families - Of course it must be Emma.
-He kissed Harriet’s hand. Mr Knightley never kissed anyone's hand. Only Mrs Weston, upon her marriage. -Jane Fairfax, after that virtuoso recital last summer. -Miss Bates, at Christmas. In essence, nobody. Mr Knightley did not make foolish gestures.
Mr Knightley did nothing foolish at all.
“Oh!” Emma gestured in frustration and the movement swept a heap of building plans onto the drawing room’s polished floor.
“My dear.”
“It is nothing. I will go to bed.”
In her large, cold bedroom Emma allowed her maid to undress her, and wrap her in her nightgown and robe, and knot her hair into two dozen tight curls, and bring her warm water to wash her face.
Mr Knightley, married.
Emma and her father, alone again at Hartfield.
Impossible.