Free Emma in Love by Emma Tennant Page A

She must remember Miss Whynne; and the rebuke she had administered outside the drawing-room windows at Hartfield had gone quite beyond what was necessary, she knew. “Oh, Mrs. Knightley, I quite understand! Of course there was no arrangement that there should be music lessons here! Yes, I shall accompany the Smallridge children immediately to the Vicarage. I know their mother will be most profuse in her apologies, Mrs. Knightley!”
    Throughout all this, Captain Brocklehurst stood very still and looking as fine as a statue, by the tallest shrubs; and Emma fancied he concealed a smile: this enraged and embarrassed her even further to remember, though it was true that Miss Whynne, before relapsing into servility, had shown an almost revolutionary spirit. Emma thought he frowned at the loudness of her voice and gaiety of expression. The Baroness might bring equality and liberty where she pleased, concludedEmma, as she slowed her pace, the familiar stone walls of Donwell coming into view; but she should not infect the servants here. Miss Whynne was not a servant. Thus replied Emma’s sense of fairness, and she paused, dropping almost to a saunter, as she examined her treatment of poor Miss Whynne. Then she picked up again; and walked to the gardens, where late roses appeared to greet her with an accordance of her views, each white bloom bending on a fragile stem: Miss Whynne was in the employ of Emma’s brother-in-law; and doubly so, of Mr. Knightley’s brother; and it would be unacceptable in the extreme if the governess were to inculcate her charges with Revolutionary songs. And neglect the mathematics!— It was with some embarrassment that Emma at this juncture realised she had brought back with her the book she had intended to leave at Hartfield,
Practical Education
.
    A man approached the doors of Donwell, and he stood awhile, as if expecting to be met there, twisting his cap in his hands as he waited.
    Emma recognised young Abdy, an ostler at the Crown Inn; she recalled hearing his father, who had long suffered from rheumatic gout, was on his deathbed, and, as so often before, she admonished herself for failing to visit the old man regularly.— Now it was too late. Something told her young Abdy brought bad news. He had received relief from the parish council, had he not?But Emma knew, with a sinking of the heart, that Mr. Knightley had refused to aid the family directly, and had referred Abdy to the parish, even as his father lay dying. She knew also that there were those who considered Mr. Knightley to lack generosity in the matter.— Mrs. Weston, loved by Emma, was amongst them; and she, who in turn loved Emma, would not give away her ideas on the subject for the world.
    However, there was no mistaking them.
    All this had at least the effect of banishing Captain Brocklehurst’s face, with its bright blue eyes and silky dark moustache, from Emma’s thoughts. She paused, as if the very object of being out of doors on this day in late summer had been to pick roses for the house; and she snipped a bloom betwixt finger and thumb; not without pricking herself on a thorn. She stood a moment without any feeling of dismay, as the blood trickled from her finger. The wide doors swung open, and Mr. Knightley stepped out. Still twisting his cap, young Abdy went up close to him. Both set off down the lime walk.
    Emma did not at first suffer any emotion other than slight surprise. Surely Mr. Knightley had seen her there? Was it not a demonstration of a lack of cordiality quite outstanding even in one as taciturn and reserved as Mr. Knightley, not to greet his own wife on her appearance at home after an expedition such as she had undergone?But then, how could Mr. Knightley know what Emma had undergone? And how could she describe it, in any case? She blushed, when she thought of all the unbidden feelings which had come to visit her, in the brief hour since she was last at the Abbey: she had had no