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First published by Victor Gollancz Limited 1990
St Martin’s Griffin edition published 1997
This ebook published by RHCP Digital 2018
Text copyright © The Estate of Joan Aiken, 1990
The moral right of the author has been asserted
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–448–12044–4
All correspondence to:
RHCP Digital
Penguin Random House Children’s
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL
For
Liz Francke
in New Zealand
THE SILENCE OF HERONDALE
THE TROUBLE WITH PROJECT X
HATE BEGINS AT HOME
THE RIBS OF DEATH
THE WINDSCREEN WEEPERS
THE EMBROIDERED SUNSET
THE BUTTERFLY PICNIC
DIED ON A RAINY SUNDAY
VOICES IN AN EMPTY HOUSE
CASTLE BAREBANE
THE FIVE-MINUTE MARRIAGE
THE SMILE OF THE STRANGER
THE LIGHTNING TREE
THE YOUNG LADY FROM PARIS
FOUL MATTER
MANSFIELD REVISITED
DECEPTION
BLACKGROUND
EMMA WATSON
Chapter 1 
The marriage of Miss Jane Bates to Lieutenant Fairfax was accompanied by the usual good omens: church bells rang, the sun shone, and many handkerchiefs were waved. But these omens were to prove delusive, for the Lieutenant, an excellent officer and a most deserving young man, had the misfortune, not more than three weeks after the wedding, to be posted overseas with his regiment, and killed in action before he had another chance to revisit his native land. His young widow, soon sinking under the combined assaults of consumption and sorrow, bequeathed the care of the fatherless child to her elderly parents, for Lieutenant Fairfax possessed no family of his own.
The Reverend George Bates, vicar of Highbury, a man already in frail health and advanced years at the time of this occurrence, proved unequal to the unwonted exertions and fatigues laid on him by the addition to his modest household of a lively four-year-old girl: an attack of the bronchial affection to which he was at all times subject soon carried him off. His widow and remaining unmarried daughter (considerably older than her sister Jane) were thereupon obliged to remove themselves from the vicarage and since he, a man of keen intelligence but little judgment and much given to impulsive, unthinking generosity, had left them remarkably ill-provided for, their new quarters must necessarily be very humble: the drawing-room floor of a house in the middle of Highbury village. The ground premises were occupied by people in business (a barber shop); the establishment owned no garden. The village itself, however, enjoyed a pleasant, airy situation in the lovely county of Surry, and early anxieties that the little girl might inherit such a weakness of the lungs as had despatched her unfortunate mother and grandfather were in due course allayed. All that the fond care of a doting grandmother and deeply attached aunt might accomplish was done; and nobody had any expectation but that little Jane would remain in Highbury, taught only what very limited means could command, growing up with no advantages of connection or improvement to be engrafted on what nature had given her in good understanding and a pleasing person.
That the child’s disposition and capacities were both above average was a fact not lost upon either her affectionate relatives or on more impartial and discerning neighbours; and such services as might, without offence, be offered were soon at her disposal. Mrs Pryor, wife of the incoming vicar, who had seen her own four children carried off untimely by the cholera, was very ready to teach little Jane her letters and multiplication tables, finding the child an eager and biddable pupil. Equally advantageous, but on a more mundane level, was an attention from the chief family of the village: wearing-apparel, very little spoiled and of excellent quality, was contributed by Mr and Mrs Woodhouse, who had two daughters, both of larger size than the orphan. Isabella, the firstborn, was seven years older, while Emma Woodhouse, though born in the same year as Jane, was so remarkably healthy, well-grown, and forward for her age that she had the appearance of being at least two years older. — This system of outgrown clothes being handed on was begun so early, while the children concerned were not of an age to comprehend the difference between worn or new garments, that it soon became a matter of accustomed usage by most of the parties to it. Indeed the scheme was so sensible, and so well-intentioned, that none of the adults involved ever paused a moment to conjecture as to the possible effect on a proud and sensitive nature of being perpetually obliged to appear in the village street clad in bonnets, boots, and pelisses, however superior in quality, which were already familiar to neighbours as having been worn several years previously by the young Misses Woodhouse, and having been chosen, in the first place, to fit the tastes and measurements of another.
“That cerise muslin becomes you far better than it ever did Emma Woodhouse, especially now that it has faded,” some old lady would be sure to exclaim, encountering small Jane on her way to daily lessons at the vicarage; or, “Bless me, child! you must take to growing a little quicker, indeed you must! Why, I can remember that Isabella wore that pelisse when she was but four years old, and here you are turned six and it still fits you well enough!”
Little Jane remained, indeed, over a number of years, diminutive for her age, possibly due to the somewhat cramped and airless circumstances of her nurture; at this time she was a thin, dark, soft-spoken child; pale to a fault, her single manifestation of possible future beauty a pair of large expressive dark eyes inherited from her father; her Aunt Hetty continually lamented the lank straightness of her hair, while the similarly lanky proportions of hands, feet, and limbs appeared to indicate that in years to come her present deficiency of stature might be rectified. — She never made any outward complaint when the parcels of used clothing were delivered at the shop below-stairs, but silently attended as her aunt and grandmother clucked and contrived, patching and re-lining articles where necessary, fitting the sleeves of one garment to the bodice of another; she stood in patient compliance while petticoats were tried on her and deep tucks pinned into them, sleeves shortened and hems adjusted; only, sometimes, she would let out an involuntary, almost inaudible sigh; and once, upon her grandmother’s thoughtfully remarking, “I wonder that poor dear Mrs Woodhouse will so often put little Emma into that particularly brilliant shade of puce, I do not think it a very becoming colour,” little Jane was heard to murmur a heartfelt “Yes!” of agreement. Her Aunt Hetty, a woman of boundlessly kind nature but not distinguished either for intellect or observation, made no conjectures as to why Jane would sometimes linger wistfully outside the windows of Ford’s the draper’s shop, studying the goods therein displayed, but was simply thankful that their darling should be so well and warmly clothed at so little cost to themselves; and Jane, who was noticing and intelligent well in advance of her years, rapidly began to understand how straitened were the means that provided her home, how every halfpenny must be stretched to its limit and beyond. — She had never owned a new garment in her life.
Besides wearing-apparel, the Woodhouse family supplied another benefit which was reckoned at an infinitely greater value by its recipient.
Mrs Pryor, while teaching her apt pupil various nursery songs and ballads, had soon discovered in the child a sweet true voice and a remarkably accurate musical ear. Accordingly she ventured to suggest to the well-disposed Mrs Woodhouse the possibility of little Jane’s being permitted to share the services of Signor Negretti who came twice weekly from London to give Isabella and Emma instruction on the pianoforte. A request so reasonable and so practical was instantly acceded to, and it therefore became a matter of habit that Patty the maid should, every Tuesday and Thursday, escort Jane round to the shrubbery side-door of Hartfield, the large comfortable house on the outskirts of Highbury where dwelt Mr Woodhouse and his family.
Soon, for Jane, those two days would become the most precious of the week, haloed around with joy.
The peculiar disposition of Mr Woodhouse, a nervous man, whose flow of spirits, never high, could easily be irritated by unwelcome sounds (such as the jangle and repetition of juvenile finger-exercises on the pianoforte) had rendered essential the introduction into his establishment of a secondary instrument, used solely for the children’s lessons and inevitable hours of practice, situated at a sufficient distance from the rooms normally occupied by the master of the house to afford him no source of distress. A disused store-room adjacent to the housekeeper’s parlour was allotted for the purpose, and to this haven Jane was soon permitted to repair whenever she chose, her right to make use of it seldom, if ever, challenged by the Woodhouse young ladies, and her ingress by the side door precluding, in general, the necessity of encountering either servants or members of the family. How many hours of solitude and happiness were passed by Jane in this chamber it would be impossible to compute, but the portion of her childhood thus occupied became paramount in shaping her whole character and therefore her subsequent career.
After a year of lessons, to the great wonder of all the village, Signor Negretti put forward a request to Mrs Woodhouse that he might be permitted to give Jane tuition on her own, since she had wholly outstripped both her fellow-pupils, even the thirteen-year-old Isabella.
“And I should be most happy to teach the young lady gratis, for nothing,” asseverated the enthusiastic teacher, who of course was well aware of his pupil’s circumstances, “for she has a talent quite formidable — prodigious!”
But this offer the generous Woodhouses would not, for a moment, consider: “They were only too happy to pay for the dear child, were rejoiced at her talent, the more especially since this might afford the means of her being able to earn for herself a respectable living in years to come.”
Young Miss Isabella Woodhouse had no ear at all for music, and no taste for it. The day when, after numerous entreaties, her parents permitted her to discontinue the lessons with Signor Negretti was the happiest of her childhood. But little Emma, her junior, though sadly idle and disinclined for practice, possessed a good ear and considerable taste and could, if only she would apply herself, play charmingly; it was a thousand pities, and the teacher’s continual despair, that her application was so infrequent and so unequal. “Ah, Miss Emma!” he lamented, week after week, “if only you would give yourself to practise as does little Miss Jane.”
These declarations Jane, of course, did not hear; she only observed that the teacher, invariably weary and discouraged-looking when she first entered the music-room and Emma skipped out of the door, would appear refreshed, and gradually return to better spirits as her own lesson proceeded.
Emma Woodhouse was at this time a cheerful, handsome, easy-tempered child, on to whose fundamentally amiable and carefree disposition beautiful manners were being engrafted by her gentle sensitive mother. In the fullness of time Emma would grow completely aware of what was due from her to persons less fortunate than herself. But her character was not, and had no capacity to be, a highly perceptive one; alertness to the feelings of other individuals would never form a prime factor. And to find herself adversely compared, week after week, to a child in all other ways so seemingly inferior, so less well endowed in every visible particular: birth, looks, residence, manner, family — and one who, furthermore, was invariably dressed in her own outworn garments — was something she found perplexing, equally hard to bear and hard to understand, the hardest thing, in fact, yet encountered in her otherwise indulged and comfortable existence.
The connection between the two children remained, simply, that they shared the same music teacher twice a week; no spontaneous friendship had ever sprung up.
“Should we not invite little Jane Fairfax round to play with you some time, Emma dear?” was a proposal sometimes tentatively put forward by Mrs Woodhouse, whose own relations with the Bates ladies had been established when the former vicar was still alive, and were both benevolent and cordial, taking into consideration their very different styles of living.
But Emma would always answer her mother’s suggestion with: “Oh, Mamma — need we? Jane is so stiff and dull, she never has anything to say, except about books.”
“Well, but, my darling, that is because poor Jane leads such a narrow, confined life, shut up in those three small rooms with her aunt and grandmother; kind, well-meaning ladies to be sure, but both of them past their first youth; whereas you have dear Bella to teach you I do not know how many games, and Papa and myself to take you for drives with James, and our big garden to roll and run and jump about in; only think how lucky you are compared with poor Jane.”
Such arguments carry remarkably little weight with the young, however; and liking cannot be forced; apart from their parity of age the natures of the two children were really so dissimilar that, lacking some cataclysm, there seemed remarkably little chance of a bond between them ever forming.
Mrs Woodhouse possessed too much good nature, and also too much sound common sense, to exert the weight of authority in such a matter over her extremely strong-willed younger child, where the issue would be of only doubtful benefit to either of the parties concerned. For would it, in the end, be a true kindness to little Jane Fairfax to be instilling in her a taste for such a wider and more agreeable existence as she might never again experience, destined, as she seemed to be, for a life passed in the service of others? And would it advantage little Emma, already rather too fond of her own way, to expose to her almost certain domination a silent, gentle, more self-effacing child upon whom, because of her humble circumstances, Emma was accustomed to look as inferior?
Solicitous to protect Jane, Emma’s mother did not reflect that the boot might conceivably be on the other foot; that Jane, because of her mental attainments, might be in a position to give Emma some salutary set-down.
The value of friendship between two rather lonely children began, in any case, to seem of minor importance to Mrs Woodhouse, beset, as she was, with greater cares, the chief of which were well-founded anxieties about her own health and about the ability of her husband, a kindly and devoted but not strong-natured man, to shoulder the responsibilities of the household, should she be obliged to take to her bed for any protracted period. — She was in expectation of a confinement which, judging from her two previous experiences, might be difficult, even dangerous. Her frame was not robust. Many matters must be set in order before the approaching event. And a fervent wish to avoid any discord or household upset, such as might ensue if little Emma were constrained to some course that did not please her, became the overriding factor. Mrs Woodhouse did not attempt to enforce her private, intuitive feeling that a friendship between the two children might be of value to both. Only the unspoken wish was picked up and, as such things do, may have influenced her daughter in a contrary direction.
Mr Woodhouse, a valetudinarian himself, in continual agitation about his own health, was acutely afflicted by the sight of indisposition in others, even the thought of it; therefore, on the increasingly frequent occasions when she found herself unfit for the kind of lively, cheerful conversation he preferred, it became his wife’s habit to plead household duties and betake herself to the housekeeper’s parlour where Mrs Hill, a kindly woman with understanding far in advance of her education, would leave her mistress in peace to enjoy the solace of music. For, from here, if the door were left ajar, the sound of Jane’s piano practising could be heard, and the pleasure this afforded to Mrs Woodhouse it would be impossible to overestimate. She would sit for a half-hour or so, listening to whatever Jane chanced to be playing, whether Haydn, Scarlatti, or Cramer, then return, refreshed and with strength and optimism renewed, to the demands of her husband’s company.
In the month of October, after a disastrously mismanaged birth, Mrs Woodhouse was interred, with due ceremony, in Highbury churchyard, along with her third and stillborn child. Her husband, utterly stricken by this event, found himself obliged to take to his bed, from which, three weeks later, he arose, aged, apparently, by ten years, piteous and woe-begone, with white hair and faltering gait.
At the commencement of this period of mourning, thirteen-year-old Isabella had been carried off by kindly cousins to stay at their house in Kent. But six-year-old Emma refused to be removed from her home into what she envisaged as a place of exile. She kicked, she screamed, she wept, she stormed, and in general behaved herself so abominably that the invitation on her behalf by the cousins was hastily withdrawn, since they had no confidence that they would be able to manage the child.
“I have never known her behave so,” said Mrs Hill the housekeeper, into whose charge Emma was, perforce, relinquished.
Some days of total solitude were therefore passed by the unhappy orphan, and it was left to the compassion and initiative of a friend and neighbour, young Mr Knightley, a sensible and well-disposed man still in his twenties, to undertake the search for a governess who might be able to come at short notice and undertake her charge. — He achieved this through the Pryors, who, by great good luck, were acquainted with the very person for the task, a young lady, a connection of theirs, recently obliged to quit her first post at Weybridge, not through any fault of her own, but because the family were departing abroad. She was free to commence her new duties at the end of a week, did so, and rapidly grew to be so much a part of the Woodhouse family circle that Emma, for once, apparently almost forgetting her own mother, turned to dear Miss Taylor for all the affection, the kindness, the support, and continuous, happy, unimpeded intercourse that would normally be expected from a parent. All these Miss Taylor was able to provide without stint, and the only evil of Emma’s new life must be, as before, that of being allowed rather too much of her own way.
Soon she had forgotten, or at least pushed out of memory, the terrible days before Miss Taylor’s arrival.
On the first of these, little Jane Fairfax had arrived, unheralded, at the house. News of the death of Mrs Woodhouse had, of course, been passed in hushed tones about the village and discussed with due solemnity. But, such is the natural self-absorption of early childhood, Jane had not related this event in any way to her own doings. It never occurred to her, for example, that the fatality might affect the twice-weekly visits of Signor Negretti. For almost a year, now, she had been accustomed to take her way unescorted to Hartfield whenever she chose; Patty, her grandmother’s sole servant, had a thousand daily tasks to perform, and it was such a short way through the village that no one felt the least anxiety about the child. Nor did her aunt think to warn her that at present the usual music classes must very probably have been suspended; so, as was her custom, she ran eagerly along the narrow path among the Hartfield laurel-bushes—only to stop short when she reached the lawn, startled at the wholly unwonted sight of Emma, huddled miserably on the low, broad bench that encircled the cedar tree.
Not only was Emma never to be found alone in the garden at such a time of day, but this was an Emma never seen, never even imagined by Jane before: an utterly wretched, crumpled, tear-drenched Emma, her cheeks pale and smeared, her shoe-laces undone, hair uncurled, hardly so much as combed, and, most astonishing of all, instead of her usual carefully chosen attire, she wore a plain, unbecoming black serge dress at least two sizes too large for her. (It had been one of Isabella’s, made at the time of their grandfather’s death four years previously, which nobody had, as yet, found time to alter.)
“Oh — Emma —” exclaimed Jane, pausing irresolutely, “I am sorry, I did not know — that is, I was told you had gone away into Kent —”
She was very ready to turn tail and run homeward, for at various former encounters Emma’s manner to her had been decidedly rebuffing. But this time, perhaps, might be different?
Emma looked up. Her hazel eyes were reddened, hardly to be glimpsed between swollen lids. She cried out wildly, “Jane, Jane, my mother is dead! Mamma is dead! How shall I ever go on without her?”
Jane was much struck. That Emma, always so surrounded by friends, comfort, affection, should appear thus solitary was strange indeed.
“But — have you not your papa still — Mr Woodhouse?”
“Yes; but he is in bed, where he lies and cries, and if I go near him he only tells me to run away to Mrs Hill.”
“Well, but you do have Mrs Hill — and Serle, and James, and your maid Rebecca —”
“They are only servants!”
“And your sister — Miss Isabella —”
“She is not the same as Mamma! Besides, she is in Kent.”
This was unarguable.
“Oh, Jane!” cried Emma. “What shall I ever do?”
An appeal so simple, so heartfelt, was not to be resisted; certainly not by Jane, who, though she could not recall her own mother with any clarity, was all too familiar with the anguish of a loss only a few years past; she remembered, also, what a kind, gentle, solicitous lady Mrs Woodhouse had always been, not infrequently stepping into the music-room for a moment to say a kind approving word.
Without a moment’s hesitation she ran to the bench, flung her arms round the other child, and embraced Emma tightly, crying out, “Oh, poor, poor Emma! I am so truly sorry for you! Indeed it is dreadful — I do not know how you can bear it.”
Such sympathy, so spontaneous, direct, utterly sincere, was the only thing, just then, that could have done Emma any good, and she laid her head on Jane’s shoulder and wept abundantly for many minutes.
“What shall I ever do?” she repeated, over and over. “Who is there to take care of me? Mr Knightley sent a message to Papa that he is finding a governess. A governess! I am sure she will be hateful. How can she ever, ever take the place of Mamma?”
“Well; if she is hateful,” said Jane stoutly, “I will stand by you.”
The thought that she might actually be of use to Emma was sweet indeed.
“Oh, yes!” cried the other. “Do! We shall be friends for ever, shall we not? And tell each other all our secrets!”
“Everything,” said Jane, who had no secrets to impart. “And love each other best, always. And never be cross or unkind.”
This promise ratified, over and over, many times, they huddled together, clasping each other like two fledgling birds blown from a nest, until Serle’s voice calling, “Miss Emma! Miss Emma! Where ever have you got to? Come in, now, like a good girl, to your dinner!” brought Emma to her feet and, for the time being, separated them.
Jane, finding the hour so late, turned homewards to her own dinner, deep in thought. But her step was unusually elastic, and her head held high; pity, aghast pity for Emma’s stricken state being, within her breast, almost equally combined with a species of wondering joy at this undreamed-of friendship that had, like a gift from the gods, been so suddenly and unexpectedly bestowed. A friend! Emma Woodhouse has offered to be my friend! thought Jane. Now we shall be able to do so many delightful things together. We can take walks — perhaps Mr Knightley will come with us — he is very fond of Emma, I know — and she will come back to my house, sometimes, and look at all the drawings I have made for Mrs Pryor, and my paper dolls, and Aunt Hetty will bake one of her sweet cakes for us, I am sure. We can have pretend tea-parties, using acorn tea-cups; and play house under the table with the red cloth cover.
In preparation for which events, she collected a great many acorn-cups and persuaded Aunt Hetty to cut her out a new set of spillikins.
Before any such plans could be put into execution, however, Emma’s mourning dresses must be made; she could not endure to be seen outside the grounds of Hartfield looking, as she said, such a fright, in clothes that fitted her so ill. With which feelings, Jane could only sympathize.
For six days, therefore, with the cordial permission of her aunt and grandmother, Jane went daily to Hartfield, where the two children, usually in the garden, for the season was fine, mild, and open, amused themselves with I-spy, Bilbocatch, conundrums, and other quiet pastimes considered permissible during the period of mourning: cards, counters, dolls, and other such playthings were naturally put by for the time.
Jane’s first suggestion had been for hide-and-seek. Ever since the commencement of her visits to the house, she had been longing to explore the Hartfield gardens. Now that, for the first time, she was at liberty to roam about the shrubberies, walks, and wildernesses of the extensive grounds, she had discovered in herself considerable skill for locating crafty, unexpected places in which to hide, crouched among the ivy against a wall, perched in the mossy niche over a lion’s head fountain, or just above eye-level in the fork of an old willow; but hide-and-seek proved unsatisfactory as an activity, involving, as it did, long spells of solitary waiting, or of solitary search for the other player, during which periods Emma rapidly became bored and restless. If she were the seeker, her attempts to find Jane would grow more and more languid and desultory; if the hider, she would begin, from her place of concealment, to call impatiently, “I’m here! I’m here! Come and find me. Jane, Jane, I am here!”
And, when Jane had reached her, “I’m tired of this game. Let’s do something else. Let’s play weddings.” Since Emma was the hostess, she must of course command the choice of game; Jane, too, had been taught good manners. Yet to her this “wedding” game, which consisted of planning imaginary nuptials for all the inhabitants of Highbury, seemed intolerably slow and dull.
They would sit for hours together in the revolving summer-house and discuss the imaginary ceremonies down to the most minute detail; Jane, who had never attended a wedding in her whole existence, sometimes wondered at Emma’s grasp of the procedure.
“And what about Mr Knightley? Whom shall he marry?” she asked, stifling a yawn, when the Misses Cox and the Gilberts and the Otways had all been run through, with their hymns, gloves, bouquets, lace trimmings, white satin, the love scenes, the wording, the proposals, and the presents.
“Mr Knightley? He is by far too old to marry. — His brother, now, Mr John, I have sometimes wondered — but Mr Knightley is much too old. And so is Mr Weston. In any case, Mr Weston is a widower, he was married before …”
Emma’s voice faltered. Mr Weston’s marriage had been brought to an end by the death of his young wife, and that was a subject too closely allied to her own trouble. Jane, with ready comprehension, said quickly, “Well, then, how about Miss Bickerton, the young lady who has become a parlour boarder at Mrs Goddard’s school? What gentleman would do for her?”
“Miss Bickerton? She is scarcely older than my sister — far too young to marry. In any case, I daresay she will have to become a teacher; or an old maid; Mrs Goddard told Papa that she has no family, but is paid for by charitable subscription.”
This careless comment cast Jane into silence. Young though she was, she had already begun to speculate, with a great many doubts, on the subject of her own future.
“Who else could be married?” demanded Emma, yawning in her turn. “Come on, Jane! Think of somebody else, do! You are so quiet; you never have ideas.”
“Am I quiet?” said Jane in surprise.
“Yes; too quiet.”
“Well:” said Jane after some thought, “I suppose it is because Aunt Hetty talks so much.”
On the following morning at breakfast Aunt Hetty’s usual flow of incessant conversation was, for a wonder, stilled; the cause of this, to Jane’s observant eye, seemed to be a long white envelope with a red lawyer’s seal which Patty had brought from the post office. For once, Aunt Hetty did not try to persuade Jane to eat a second slice of bread-and-butter; her request to leave the table and make herself ready for the daily visit to Hartfield was absently granted, and as she put on her pelisse (for the mornings were growing chill) she heard a low-voiced conversation between her elders.
“Should the child be informed? What is your opinion, ma’am? So very kind! So very unexpected! I hardly know what to think —”
From the old lady, her grandmother: “Had we not better wait and invite the opinion of some gentleman with greater knowledge — it may, you know, be our legal duty to tell her — but Mr Knightley, perhaps — or Mr Pryor —”
“Run along, Jane dear,” said Aunt Hetty. “That is right. I daresay Emma will be waiting for you so impatiently —”
But on that morning Jane, with the acute sensitivity of the natural solitary, detected a change, a coolness in Emma’s welcome.
“Oh, are you there, Jane?” she said listlessly. “It is very cold today. What shall we play to keep warm?”
“Shall we stay indoors? Go to the music room and play duets?” Jane suggested.
This plan had, for some days, been lurking at the back of her mind, since there were a few pieces for four hands on the piano which she had long been eager to try; they had been procured by Mrs Woodhouse for her daughters before the day of Isabella’s rebellion against music, and from that time had lain in their place unopened.
But — “Duets?” cried Emma with a look of disgust. “I thank you, no! What a disagreeable idea! Duets are wretched things! You only say that —” she checked herself, looked, for a moment, very downcast, then burst out irrepressibly, “You need not think yourself the best pianist in Surry, just because Mamma left you one hundred pounds! It is no great matter, after all!”
This remark was so incomprehensible to Jane that she stood perfectly still, wondering if she had heard amiss.
“What can you possibly mean, Emma? Your Mamma left me one hundred pounds? What can you be talking about? She did not leave me anything.”
“Yes — she did,” muttered Emma resentfully. “Her Will was read yesterday. Mr Cox the lawyer came and read it to Papa. Mamma had money of her own, and she left one hundred pounds ‘to my young neighbour Jane Fairfax, to be used for her education, because of the very great pleasure her music has given to me.’”
“One hundred pounds! But I do not understand.” Jane was totally puzzled. “Mrs Woodhouse never came into the music-room while I was practising — except, perhaps, for a moment sometimes, just at the end …” her voice faltered as she remembered the thin, pale, elegant lady who would now never come again. At this moment she began to comprehend the full permanence of death. “I do not think Mrs Woodhouse ever heard me playing, above once or twice,” she said doubtfully.
“Well: she did.” Emma’s tone held all the outrage of the child who has been unjustly excluded from some privilege enjoyed by his siblings. “She used to go and sit in Mrs Hill’s room and listen; Serle told me so. And now she has left you one hundred pounds. She has not left me any money — nor Isabella; not until we are twenty-one when we shall have thirty thousand; but what use is that? I think it is very unfair.”
“But, Emma,” began Jane, “you have everything now —” She looked about her at the gardens. A thick frost today whitened the lawns.
“I don’t have Mamma!” cried out Emma passionately.
“It is far too cold, sitting here like this,” said Jane in haste, to forestall an imminent outburst of tears. “Let us run races. Quick, Emma! I will beat you to the chestnut tree.”
Jane, though so small for her age, was nimbler than the more heavily-built but somewhat clumsy Emma; she won two races out of three.
Soon tiring of this diversion — “Let us go and talk to James and the horses,” Emma proposed. “If we ask, I daresay Serle will give us some bread for them.”
Jane, in secret, was a little afraid of the huge glossy carriage horses, but of course offered no objection to this plan; however, when they reached the cobbled stable-yard they found the stalls empty; neither James nor the horses were there. Tom, the stable-lad, told them James had taken the carriage to Kingston to meet the new governess and, he added, ought to be returning very shortly with his passenger. Accordingly, after loitering about the yard and jumping off the horse-block a few times, they dawdled round to the front carriage-sweep with its great iron gates, and so were at hand to witness the arrival and descent from the conveyance of Miss Taylor, who proved to be, not at all the severe elderly lady of Emma’s imaginings, but young, pretty, and kind-faced.
“Which of you is my pupil?” she asked immediately, and, on being told, “What game were you playing? May I not play it too? Or should I first go and introduce myself to your Papa?”
“Oh, no. Papa does not at present come from his chamber until two or three in the afternoon,” explained Emma, while Jane excitedly cried, “Do, please, ma’am, play hide-and-seek with us!” — longing to put to use a few of the ingenious hiding-places that she had discovered.
“Very well!” answered the new governess, laughing. “Do you, then, go and hide — what is your name? Jane? — while Emma and I begin to make one another’s acquaintance. We shall give you no more than three minutes by my timepiece, then come in search. Away with you!”
Overjoyed, without observing Emma’s discontented expression, Jane sped off. Emma has found a grown-up friend, she thought comfortably; that lady will be kind to her, I am sure. Buried under this pleasant impression remained the strange radiance of that one hundred pounds. What a thing, what a thing to have happened! That must have been what Grandma and Aunt Hetty were talking about at breakfast.
Jane knew just where she planned to conceal herself, in a kind of double laurel-hedge that formed a boundary between the shrubbery and the lawn; one of the trees in it was already of large stature and had a fork, several feet above the ground, where she could perch hidden in a nest of greenery. Thither she flew, and, as soon as she was in position, called out loudly, “I am ready!” and settled herself to wait in patience.
Great patience was required of her, for the seekers proceeded at what seemed to her a most dawdling pace. Several times she saw them in the distance, talking to one another, but walking in the wrong direction, and she was tempted to call again, but restrained herself.
And then, unexpectedly, she heard their voices close by; apparently they were strolling down the wide dry walk that lay along the border of the shrubbery.
“And is Jane Fairfax your great friend?” Miss Taylor was asking kindly. “Does she share lessons with you and your sister?”
“Oh dear — no!” came Emma’s reply, in a tone of pitying astonishment. “Jane’s family are quite poor. She has no father or mother, and lives with her grandmother over a barber’s shop. Mamma used to call on them, but it was out of kindness. And Jane will never be able to marry, for they have no money, none at all. Except —” Emma hesitated, then went on. “When she is grown, Jane will be obliged to earn her living, she will be —”
There she halted, possibly because she had been on the point of saying, “be a governess.” Belated caution had overtaken her.
“Well,” commented the new governess in a neutral tone, “that is very sad for Jane, to be sure, but it would not, surely, hinder your being friends?”
“No; but, the thing is, Jane is so dull!” declared Emma roundly. “She does not talk about things that interest me. And the only games she knows are so babyish — like this one. Hide-and-seek! Or running races — such games are only fit for boys, I think.”
“But would you not like to learn your lessons with her?” suggested Miss Taylor. “Lessons, I believe, are better not learned alone, but in company. Perhaps if you did so, you would have more things to talk about. You would come to know her better, and like her better.”
“Oh no, I am very sure I should not! I should not like that plan at all! Once we were used to take music lessons together but Signor Negretti said —”
The voices died away along the laurel walk.
Jane sat petrified in the tree for a few minutes, then scrambled down, stiff-legged, and ran trembling away in the opposite direction. She felt quite sick and breathless; bewildered, too, with pain, as if some organ, her heart perhaps, had been dragged bodily from its proper site. She would, unthinking, have made her way directly homewards, but, by chance, encountered the other two, face to face, while crossing the carriage-sweep.
“Why, there she is, after all! In what clever place were you hiding, Jane? We quite thought we had searched everywhere!”
“She must have been in the hay-loft,” asserted Emma. “But we had agreed that was to be out of bounds.”
Jane said neither yes or no to this, but murmured in a low tone that she must go home; she had seen the stable-clock, it was late, Aunt Hetty would be growing anxious.
“Are you ill, child? You seem so pale?” said Miss Taylor, troubled, a little, by something in her manner.
“Oh — Jane is always pale!” cried Emma. “It is nothing out of the common.”
Jane declared, stiffly and gruffly, that she was not ill, not the least bit; she dared say no more. Without another look or word she turned and trudged off down the driveway, between the gates.
“What a queer, abrupt little creature,” said Miss Taylor, puzzled, looking after her. “But — I suppose — no one has had time to teach her deportment —”
“She is very dull,” repeated Emma. “And selfish; she only wants to play the games that she is good at, not what other people enjoy. — But, Miss Taylor, never mind about Jane! May I come and see you unpack your boxes?”
“Of course, my dear, you may.”
Jane, when she arrived home, gave no account to her aunt and grandmother of the conversation she had overheard, merely explained that Miss Taylor, the new governess, had arrived, that she appeared a kind, pleasant lady, that Emma seemed ready to like and trust her.
“I am very glad to hear that,” observed old Mrs Bates. “Poor little Emma! She is said to be somewhat hard to please. It is very fortunate for her that she has had you to keep her company during her lonely days.”
Jane made no answer to this, but endeavoured to eat her dinner. It was soon remarked, however, that she had no appetite, and, soon afterwards, upon her falling into a severe fit of shivering, which rapidly increased to tears and nervous fever, she was put to bed by her anxious relatives, and Mr Perry the apothecary summoned. — This was to be the first of a series of acute headaches accompanied by violent sickness which would at intervals, from that time on, afflict Jane for many years of her life. None of the usual remedies, eagerly applied by Mr Perry or her aunt, were of the least efficacy to the sufferer, who lay prostrate for three days, tossing and turning wretchedly upon her narrow cot in the small stuffy chamber where, since it was shared with her aunt, she could at no time be certain of any privacy. — She could not even weep in peace.
Listeners hear no good of themselves, she thought. Well, Aunt Hetty has often told me that; and now I can see that it is true. I hope that I never, ever, have the misfortune to overhear anything, ever again. Very dull! Very dull! Emma Woodhouse thinks that I am very dull. But, if she thought so, why then did she offer to be friends with me in the first place? She did not have to. I am sure I would never have asked it.
Poor Jane’s sore, sensitive mind was not, at that juncture, capable of comprehending the fact that Emma, in distress and bewilderment after the first true calamity in her secure and cherished life, was crippled by misery and temporarily incapable of justice or kindness: such a conclusion would, in any case, be far above a child’s understanding. The only thing clear to Jane was a sense of utter betrayal, of having the ground cut from under her feet.
“And I will never, never,” she said to herself, turning wretchedly away from her aunt’s hopeful proffer of custard-pudding, “I will never, ever again, make such a promise to anybody; nor trust any other person, no, not in the whole of my life.”
“Do try just a mouthful of the pudding, dear; you have taken nothing for so long!”
“No, thank you, Aunt Hetty.”
The pudding was sorrowfully withdrawn, and Jane lay staring at the blank wall, deaf to the pleas of her aunt, while in her ears, over and over again, she heard the receding echo of that other voice and its illusory promise: “We’ll be friends for ever, shall we not? And tell each other all our secrets. And love each other always!”
The Knightley brothers, George and John, who inherited the Donwell Abbey estate, about a mile outside Highbury, were old and valued friends of the Woodhouse family. John, the younger brother, was just now away at university, reading law, but George, his father’s death occurring shortly before he attained his majority, had succeeded to the not inconsiderable property and its responsibilities; he, therefore, lived at home in the Abbey, looking after his lands. Having been acquainted with the Woodhouse girls from birth, he was regarded by them in the light of an elder brother, and so regarded himself; he was prepared to counsel, reprimand, or rejoice, as occasion offered; and entered with the fullest sympathy into their distress at the loss of their mother, having himself so recently suffered a similar bereavement; and he lost no time in establishing a friendly alliance with their new governess in order to promote the welfare of the girls in any way that might occur to him.
“Emma,” said he to Miss Taylor, “has a great need of more company and more competition; she is far too apt to consider herself the pinnacle of perfection, since Isabella, being sweet-natured and so much the elder (and far from Emma’s intellectual equal), has always given way to her; Emma can wind Isabella round her little finger. Do you not agree, Miss Taylor, that Emma ought to have other children to play with, and to learn with?”
“It might be better, undoubtedly,” replied the new governess with some hesitation. “But there is so little choice, in this neighbourhood.”
“There are the Cox girls.”
A doubtful, troubled expression passed over Miss Taylor’s countenance.
“Emma dislikes them exceedingly. And I must confess I should be sorry to see the dear child acquire any of their pert mincing ways.”
“Well then, the Martin sisters.”
“Farmers’ daughters? I do not think Mr Woodhouse would agree —”
“They are decent, wholesome children,” said he impatiently. “Emma could come to no possible harm amongst them.”
“Oh, I am sure not! But she herself is so very reluctant also —”
“Well, then, how about little Jane Fairfax? Her family are unexceptionable, and she is a quiet, thoughtful, well-behaved small person; very forward at her lessons, I understand from Mrs Pryor; she would give Emma some healthy rivalry —”
“Oh, I agree.” Miss Taylor looked even more troubled. “But, for some reason, Jane and dear Emma do not seem to get on well together. Where the fault may lie, I cannot pretend to say. You know how unaccountable children can be, Mr Knightley. And Emma — a sweet and most engaging child but she can at times be a little wilful — seems to have set her face absolutely against having Jane here, either to play or to share instruction — except for the piano lessons, of course, but those in any case Jane receives by herself. And when she comes for them, or to practise, she slips in and out as silently as a little ghost. You know that it can be difficult trying to persuade Emma into a course that she has set her mind against —”
“Say rather, impossible! In fact she has you, too, under her thumb! Well,” he said, “I shall see what I can do myself to remedy the situation.”
Mr John Knightley had, some four years previously, with the cordial sanction of Mrs Woodhouse, taught Isabella to ride upon the old grey pony which had been the childhood pet and companion of the Donwell Abbey boys. This faithful friend had long since been laid to rest, but Mr Knightley took pains to search out and buy a pair of gentle, well-behaved ponies from one of his tenant farmers, and now proposed to Emma that he should teach her, in her turn, to ride.
“For I have often heard you grumble about the tedium and familiarity of all the walks around Highbury: down Vicarage Lane and back; along Donwell Lane and back; over the Common Field; whereas, in the saddle, you could venture a great deal farther afield and see much more.”
Emma was quite enraptured at the plan.
“Oh yes, yes! Dear Mr Knightley, when can I start? — Does Papa agree?” she added as an afterthought.
Mr Woodhouse, in his present melancholy and enfeebled condition, had, in fact, been exceedingly difficult to convince as to the advantages of the proposed scheme. “Poor dear little Emma tired so very soon; and, just supposing the horse took fright and she was thrown? that did not bear thinking of; horses were such unaccountable, restless, nervous, fidgety beasts; he was sure he should be cast into a wretched state of anxiety and distress of spirits all the while that the lesson was taking place.”
But Mr Knightley was able to assure his elderly friend that the pony in question was one of the most aged, peaceful creatures imaginable, with a pace that seldom accelerated beyond a slow walk; also that, since it was of diminutive stature, no possible risk from falling off it was to be apprehended. “It would merely be like falling off a chair, my dear sir.” And he engaged to fetch in Miss Bates and Mrs Goddard to sit with Mr Woodhouse and allay his anxieties with their cheerful conversation each time that a riding lesson was in progress.
So far, very good; and Emma was, in truth, so eager to commence learning without delay that she even agreed to make use of her sister Isabella’s old riding habit, while waiting for a new one of her own to be made; the broadcloth skirts were accordingly pressed out, and Miss Taylor escorted her pupil to the paddock where the lessons were to take place, Emma chattering gaily all the way.
“When I have learned to ride, Miss Taylor — can you ride, by the by?”
“Yes, my love; I was brought up in Wales, you see, where almost everybody has to be able to ride, because the villages are so very far apart —”
“Then Mr Knightley can lend us his mare and we can go exploring to Burgh Heath and Box Hill and a great many pleasant places. Highbury is so dull! James can come with us on one of the carriage horses —”
“Hardly