CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVI


The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think
and be miserable.--It was a wretched business indeed!--Such an overthrow
of every thing she had been wishing for!--Such a development of every
thing most unwelcome!--Such a blow for Harriet!--that was the worst
of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation, of some sort
or other; but, compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light;
and she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken--
more in error--more disgraced by mis-judgment, than she actually was,
could the effects of her blunders have been confined to herself.

"If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have
borne any thing. He might have doubled his presumption to me--
but poor Harriet!"

How she could have been so deceived!--He protested that he
had never thought seriously of Harriet--never! She looked back
as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken
up the idea, she supposed, and made every thing bend to it.
His manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering, dubious,
or she could not have been so misled.

The picture!--How eager he had been about the picture!--
and the charade!--and an hundred other circumstances;--
how clearly they had seemed to point at Harriet. To be sure,
the charade, with its "ready wit"--but then the "soft eyes"--
in fact it suited neither; it was a jumble without taste or truth.
Who could have seen through such thick-headed nonsense?

Certainly she had often, especially of late, thought his manners
to herself unnecessarily gallant; but it had passed as his way,
as a mere error of judgment, of knowledge, of taste, as one proof
among others that he had not always lived in the best society,
that with all the gentleness of his address, true elegance
was sometimes wanting; but, till this very day, she had never,
for an instant, suspected it to mean any thing but grateful respect
to her as Harriet's friend.

To Mr. John Knightley was she indebted for her first idea on
the subject, for the first start of its possibility. There was
no denying that those brothers had penetration. She remembered
what Mr. Knightley had once said to her about Mr. Elton, the caution
he had given, the conviction he had professed that Mr. Elton would
never marry indiscreetly; and blushed to think how much truer
a knowledge of his character had been there shewn than any she
had reached herself. It was dreadfully mortifying; but Mr. Elton
was proving himself, in many respects, the very reverse of what she
had meant and believed him; proud, assuming, conceited; very full
of his own claims, and little concerned about the feelings of others.

Contrary to the usual course of things, Mr. Elton's wanting
to pay his addresses to her had sunk him in her opinion.
His professions and his proposals did him no service. She thought
nothing of his attachment, and was insulted by his hopes.
He wanted to marry well, and having the arrogance to raise his
eyes to her, pretended to be in love; but she was perfectly easy
as to his not suffering any disappointment that need be cared for.
There had been no real affection either in his language or manners.
Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could
hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice,
less allied with real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him.
He only wanted to aggrandise and enrich himself; and if Miss Woodhouse
of Hartfield, the heiress of thirty thousand pounds, were not quite
so easily obtained as he had fancied, he would soon try for Miss
Somebody else with twenty, or with ten.

But--that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as
aware of his views, accepting his attentions, meaning (in short),
to marry him!--should suppose himself her equal in connexion
or mind!--look down upon her friend, so well understanding the
gradations of rank below him, and be so blind to what rose above,
as to fancy himself shewing no presumption in addressing her!--
It was most provoking.

Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he
was her inferior in talent, and all the elegancies of mind.
The very want of such equality might prevent his perception of it;
but he must know that in fortune and consequence she was greatly
his superior. He must know that the Woodhouses had been settled
for several generations at Hartfield, the younger branch
of a very ancient family--and that the Eltons were nobody.
The landed property of Hartfield certainly was inconsiderable,
being but a sort of notch in the Donwell Abbey estate, to which all
the rest of Highbury belonged; but their fortune, from other sources,
was such as to make them scarcely secondary to Donwell Abbey itself,
in every other kind of consequence; and the Woodhouses had long
held a high place in the consideration of the neighbourhood which
Mr. Elton had first entered not two years ago, to make his way
as he could, without any alliances but in trade, or any thing
to recommend him to notice but his situation and his civility.--
But he had fancied her in love with him; that evidently must
have been his dependence; and after raving a little about the
seeming incongruity of gentle manners and a conceited head,
Emma was obliged in common honesty to stop and admit that her own
behaviour to him had been so complaisant and obliging, so full of
courtesy and attention, as (supposing her real motive unperceived)
might warrant a man of ordinary observation and delicacy,
like Mr. Elton, in fancying himself a very decided favourite. If _she_
had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to wonder
that _he_, with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken hers.

The first error and the worst lay at her door. It was foolish,
it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two
people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much,
making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought
to be simple. She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved
to do such things no more.

"Here have I," said she, "actually talked poor Harriet into being
very much attached to this man. She might never have thought of him
but for me; and certainly never would have thought of him with hope,
if I had not assured her of his attachment, for she is as modest
and humble as I used to think him. Oh! that I had been satisfied with
persuading her not to accept young Martin. There I was quite right.
That was well done of me; but there I should have stopped, and left
the rest to time and chance. I was introducing her into good company,
and giving her the opportunity of pleasing some one worth having;
I ought not to have attempted more. But now, poor girl, her peace
is cut up for some time. I have been but half a friend to her;
and if she were _not_ to feel this disappointment so very much, I am
sure I have not an idea of any body else who would be at all desirable
for her;--William Coxe--Oh! no, I could not endure William Coxe--
a pert young lawyer."

She stopt to blush and laugh at her own relapse, and then resumed
a more serious, more dispiriting cogitation upon what had been,
and might be, and must be. The distressing explanation she had
to make to Harriet, and all that poor Harriet would be suffering,
with the awkwardness of future meetings, the difficulties of
continuing or discontinuing the acquaintance, of subduing feelings,
concealing resentment, and avoiding eclat, were enough to occupy
her in most unmirthful reflections some time longer, and she went
to bed at last with nothing settled but the conviction of her having
blundered most dreadfully.

To youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma's, though under
temporary gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail
to bring return of spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning
are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the
distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they
will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.

Emma got up on the morrow more disposed for comfort than she had
gone to bed, more ready to see alleviations of the evil before her,
and to depend on getting tolerably out of it.

It was a great consolation that Mr. Elton should not be really
in love with her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking
to disappoint him--that Harriet's nature should not be of that
superior sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive--
and that there could be no necessity for any body's knowing
what had passed except the three principals, and especially
for her father's being given a moment's uneasiness about it.

These were very cheering thoughts; and the sight of a great deal
of snow on the ground did her further service, for any thing was
welcome that might justify their all three being quite asunder
at present.

The weather was most favourable for her; though Christmas Day,
she could not go to church. Mr. Woodhouse would have been miserable
had his daughter attempted it, and she was therefore safe from
either exciting or receiving unpleasant and most unsuitable ideas.
The ground covered with snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled
state between frost and thaw, which is of all others the most
unfriendly for exercise, every morning beginning in rain or snow,
and every evening setting in to freeze, she was for many days a most
honourable prisoner. No intercourse with Harriet possible but by note;
no church for her on Sunday any more than on Christmas Day; and no
need to find excuses for Mr. Elton's absenting himself.

It was weather which might fairly confine every body at home;
and though she hoped and believed him to be really taking comfort
in some society or other, it was very pleasant to have her father
so well satisfied with his being all alone in his own house,
too wise to stir out; and to hear him say to Mr. Knightley, whom no
weather could keep entirely from them,--

"Ah! Mr. Knightley, why do not you stay at home like poor Mr. Elton?"

These days of confinement would have been, but for her private
perplexities, remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly
suited her brother, whose feelings must always be of great importance
to his companions; and he had, besides, so thoroughly cleared off
his ill-humour at Randalls, that his amiableness never failed him
during the rest of his stay at Hartfield. He was always agreeable
and obliging, and speaking pleasantly of every body. But with all
the hopes of cheerfulness, and all the present comfort of delay,
there was still such an evil hanging over her in the hour of explanation
with Harriet, as made it impossible for Emma to be ever perfectly at ease.