Copyright © 1996 by Rachel Billington
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Originally published in 1996 by Hodder and Stoughton, London.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Billington, Rachel.
[Perfect Happiness]
Emma & Knightley : Perfect Happiness in Highbury / Rachel Billington.
p. cm.
Previously published as: Perfect Happiness.
A sequel to Jane Austen’s Emma.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4022-1207-9
ISBN-10: 1-4022-1207-0
1. Married women--Fiction. 2. England--Fiction. I. Austen, Jane, 1775-1817. Emma. II. Title. III. Title: Emma and Knightley.
PR6052.I4P47 2008
823’.914--dc22
2007042424
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About the Author
Back Cover
For Kevin
Chapter 1
Emma Knightley, handsome, clever and rich, with a husband whose affection for her was only equalled by her affection for him, had passed upward of a year of marriage in what may be described as perfect happiness; certainly this is how she described it to herself as she sat at her writing desk from which she had an excellent view of her father, Mr Woodhouse, taking a turn round the shrubbery on the arm of her beloved Mr Knightley.
Emma smiled as she watched them, smiled and repressed a sigh as she saw the tender way in which Mr Knightley – she would never bring herself to call him George – put his upright, manly self between the cool autumnal breeze and the frail figure of her father. Since she, herself, usually performed this daily office for her father – Mr Knightley often being occupied in the mornings when her father felt the air most conducive to good health – seldom did she have the opportunity of seeing her parent as he appeared at a distance to the objective eye.
His walking was tentative, it could not be denied, but then he had never been quick, or never since she could remember him. It was possible – Emma considered the idea from the heights of her still new stature as a wife – that his sense of himself as an invalid had stemmed from the early death of Mrs Woodhouse, causing him to distrust health. If that were the cause – and, by his affectionate accounts of his wife, she had possessed all the vivacity, intellectual vigour and good health that any woman could wish for – then it was understandable that her adoring husband’s temperament should receive a severe shock at her unexpected death; that he would never be the same, but always fearful, not just for himself, but for his daughters (Emma had an elder sister, Isabella), their husbands, Isabella’s five children (soon to be six), his friends, acquaintances and, in short, the whole world, small as it was, that he inhabited.
For Mr Woodhouse, a draught from a not properly closed window was as dangerous as a wind chased from Petersburg over the snowy wastes of Siberia; a sneeze from relation or friend caused as much consternation as the plague spots in a Turkoman port; a boot only slightly damp from a walk across mown grass excited his terror to such an extent that the wearer – usually Emma, who was his nearest and dearest, although not of an especially active, energetic disposition – must submit to a hot mustard bath and constant enquiries as to her temperature.
All this Emma had known since she was a child and such was her love for her father, so fond was she of him, that she had thought of it as illustrating the kindness of his heart rather than as any weakness of character. But that had been before her marriage.
Making no more pretence to write her letter – it was to be a note to mark the birthday of her eldest nephew, Henry, who was with his family, in London – she once again contemplated the two figures so closely adjoined in the pathway. They had now turned and were directly facing her, although they were seen some way off and the sunlight in their faces would have precluded them from any view of Emma.
Ah, indeed! thought Emma, it is the contrast that makes me uneasy. But this was too dangerous a way of thinking and must be quelled instantly. Yet, as is often the case, this little acknowledgement of unease led on to a much graver one for, as she watched her father with the same fond eyes that had put him first all her life; that had, indeed, insisted that she could never leave his side and thus brought her husband from his home at Donwell Abbey into her home of Hartfield, she found herself wondering how long he, Mr Woodhouse, an avowed invalid, would live.
It was a terrible thought for a daughter to have about her father, so terrible, so utterly filled with vice that she disowned it at once, clanged shut the door into her heart that had revealed such grimacing horror, and, in a moment, was smiling once more into the sunny garden and thinking, with all contentment, how wonderful it was that her strong Mr Knightley, so much outdoors with his farm business, such a powerful walker that it needed all her wiles to persuade him into using the carriage, should yet so comfortably subdue his step to fit her father’s. He did it, she knew, not only out of his love for her or even out of his respect for his father-in-law but because he truly loved her father. He had told her so; and Mr Knightley never lied.
Emma dropped her eyes to her paper, now adorned with blobs of ink resembling some fantastic beast. Another thought, as misshapen as the ink, appeared irrepressible in her mind. Why was it that the more patient, kind, understanding, candid, Mr Knightley showed himself to her father, the more uneasy, restless and unsympathetic she herself became? Why, in the face of such goodness, was she tempted to become bad?
Scrumpling the paper with a frown, Emma stood up briskly; she would go and
meet the two people she loved most in the world and join their pleasure in each other’s company with her own delight in theirs. She was on the point of summoning her maid to bring shawl and hat when the girl herself appeared, holding a letter which had that moment been brought to the door.
Seeing at once it was from the very household, that of her sister, to whom she should have been writing, Emma sat back down on her seat again and broke the seal to the envelope. First, however, she noted with satisfaction that Mr Knightley and her father had turned their backs to her and were started on their second turn round the shrubbery. News from his eldest daughter, whether good, bad or of no real account, was equally capable of arousing Mr Woodhouse’s fears – as if change itself was threat – so Emma was in the habit of first apprising herself of such information as Henry’s little successes at school or baby Emma’s new tooth; and then gradually passing it on to her father.
For her, to the contrary, news from outside the house of Hartfield where her days passed so quietly, was always exciting and as eagerly read as a romance. Emma, whose fertile imagination had become very active, as if to compensate for an uneventful life, seldom admitted herself disappointed with even the dullest material. On this occasion, however, she had no need to use any exceptional powers, and, as she read, her mobile face expressed consternation, shock and something most like disbelief. Her youthfully clear skin changed from pink to pale to pink and finally – as tears started in her eyes – to a pallor from which all colour had drained. Indeed, it almost looked as if she must faint, so shocking to her were the contents of the letter.
But Emma was no weakling and soon she had wiped her eye with her little embroidered kerchief and, with a more resolute expression, picked up the letter once more.
My dearest Emma, I take up a pen to write to you as soon as I could free myself from my poor little Emma – who is feverish and needs the nursing of her mama. I feel it my duty to tell you the sad news as soon as possible – in part because you will be sure to hear it from those unhappy people at Randalls and it will be easier for all of you if you have it already and can be preparing to give comfort where it most surely will be needed.
You may wonder why it is I and not my dear John writing to you or to Mr Knightley – but John has been away some days now and when the letter came from Mr Churchill I felt obliged to open a missive that was obviously delivered in urgency. You will, of course, convey everything – this letter whole – to your Mr Knightley for he is such a man as will always help in a case like this.
But I must come to the point of what I have to tell or my little dear will call me away. In short, Jane Fairfax – or Mrs Churchill as she has been for nearly a year now – gave birth to a baby boy, five days gone now and – although the baby is strong and healthy and called Frank – after his father – the mother – poor Jane – contracted a high fever which, barely twenty-four hours later, took her away. I understand she has been delicate, even sickly, since her marriage and – perhaps, you will know the circumstances of this better than I – rather before. But it has nevertheless come as a completely unlooked-for shock to the Churchill family.
Mr Churchill wrote that Frank Churchill is almost out of his mind; that, indeed, is the reason for writing to me who knows him so little. Mr Churchill hopes – through me – to contact the Campbells who treated Jane so long as a daughter. He feels that they may be the best people to influence his son into a greater calmness. But they – as always at this time of year – are with their daughter, Mrs Dixon, in Ireland. Poor old man, he was intending to avoid laying the burden of Frank on the Westons when Mrs Weston is likely to be soon herself – indisposed – nor did he wish to cause more grief than was necessary to our dear old friends, Miss Bates and Mrs Bates. The loss of their beloved niece, their granddaughter is enough—
At this point, Emma put down the dreadful letter, although it still had another page or two to run. She was struck, not by the easy emotion of surprised horror, as on her first reading, but by a deeper sense of what this would mean to her particular circle of friends.
Frank Churchill, although brought up by his uncle whose name he took, was her own dear Mrs Western’s son-in-law; Mrs Weston who before she married Frank’s widowed father had been first Emma’s governess and then her closest friend. Mr and Mrs Weston both worshipped Frank as if his imperfections – of which she, Emma, knew more than most – were virtues. Jane Fairfax – a true daughter of Highbury, although brought up by the Campbells since the age of nine – was the centre of joy and happiness in the little Bates’ household which had nothing much else of comfort. Mrs Bates was old and infirm, they lived in a narrow house in Highbury which, for reasons Emma had never understood, they had continued to inhabit, even after Jane had married the inheritor of a large fortune.
At least the Westons had each other, a new young family since Mrs Weston was expecting again; for the Bates, however, Jane was everything – and now they had nothing.
Emma was aroused by this depressing picture of the Bates’s future – which would surely affect her father deeply since Mrs Bates and Miss Bates dined at their table more than once in a fortnight – by a tear dropping from her eye on to the letter so that it reduced the word Frank to a small lake.
Frank she would not think of. She had been glad that he and Jane had spent their time between London and Yorkshire, only once visiting the Westons at Randalls and then for but a day. She would not enter into Frank’s suffering. That was beyond her.
With a stern expression on her still pale face, Emma looked up and saw her husband but a few feet away, staring at her intently. The sun had come round and now he could see her through the glass of the window and his face showed all the loving anxiety of a man who sees that his wife is sad but cannot that very instant, as he would like, take her in his arms and smooth out the trouble with caresses.
Oh how Emma loved him in that moment, as she saw, fully revealed, his love for her! And how conscious was she, too, of the peacefulness that this terrible letter had come to rupture. How quiet they had been together! How good to each other! Gone now were the shades of restlessness. Tragedy had restored calm in her breast.
Chapter 2
Mr Knightley was ever deliberate in his behaviour. For him were written the lines by Mr Lovelace: ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, lov’d I not honour more.’ He took Mr Woodhouse on his third turn about the shrubbery with as much attention as if he were not aching to be beside his Emma, holding her pretty smooth hand and asking her, with all devotion, ‘What is it, my dearest, that has made you so troubled?’
Indeed, it took a full half-hour for Mr Knightley to complete the final turn in the shrubbery and settle Mr Woodhouse in his favourite chair in the drawing-room, with the book he most preferred falling asleep over; only then did Knightley allow himself to come to his wife and ask her that question.
By that time Emma had endeavoured to calm herself by taking up her sewing in the cosy little parlour they had made upstairs all for themselves; the moment Knightley held her little hands clasped in his big strong ones and looked so closely into her face that she could see every beloved line and wrinkle and the little greying at his temples, she burst out weeping – ‘It is too bad! Too terrible!’
‘Oh, my dearest’ – gravely. ‘What can such a passion mean? Not Isabella? The children?’
‘No! No! It is not that.’ Emma took the letter from her bosom and gave it over, somewhat damp and crumpled.
‘A letter – Ah – So you were reading it when I saw you through the window?’
‘Yes. Yes,’ cried Emma impatiently, even in her sorrow noticing how Mr Knightley had delayed coming to her. ‘Read it and see if it is not a dreadful thing.’
Hesitating no longer – for he had only waited till her tears had ceased to fall and now he could see she was more herself – Mr Knightley took the letter to the window where he stood quietly reading.
Emma found that the v
ery sight of her husband taking command of this terrible news had made her heart beat less excitedly. He would make everything easy – or as easy as anything could be in such circumstances. She had perfect reliance on him.
‘My dear, this is sad news indeed.’
‘So young!’ cried Emma; as she spoke she pictured Jane Fairfax, her colourless clear skin always like mother of pearl and so unlike her own rosy-cheeked health. She pictured Jane’s slender fingers flying over the keys of the pianoforte with an execution that none could match in Highbury and certainly far exceeded any talent that she, Emma, could boast of. Jane had always excelled in everything, education, elegance, even – now she had gone for ever Emma could admit it – beauty.
‘Her life has not found the happiness she deserved.’
‘Deserved?’ Emma looked up suddenly. ‘Does one deserve happiness?’
‘Goodness. Virtue. Does it not deserve happiness?’
This was a more philosophical approach than Emma had expected from Mr Knightley and she found herself crying out with a voice that shocked her by its petulance, ‘Oh, sir, I believe Jane Fairfax was made for tragedy. And now she brings her own tragedy to break our peaceful lives!’
‘Oh, Emma! Emma!’ Knightley came back to her immediately and held her so close that she could feel his warmness. ‘Nothing will break. It is a tragedy indeed; but such things must happen and let us not forget the baby is alive and well. In their sorrow, her relations – Mr and Mrs Weston, Mrs Bates, Miss Bates – will have a baby to dote on; there has been a death, certainly, but a birth also.’
‘Oh, you are so good!’ This was the Mr Knightley Emma loved, who could put everything to rights, tell her how to think and behave. ‘I had almost forgot the baby, little Frank. Of course a healthy boy will go at least some way to softening the loss of the mother.’
Mr Knightley found himself near smiling at the eagerness with which Emma snatched at the chance of a mitigation of general unhappiness. It was in her nature, part of her youthfulness, for she was nearly seventeen years younger than him. While he understood that tragedies occurred and were borne with as well as possible, if not forgot, day by day, absorbed into other happier states until their outlines were blurred, she must take up one position or another, see either tragedy or joy, sorrow or delight. It was a decisiveness in her which he both admired her for and feared. Yet if the image of the baby made her more able to sustain this news, made her stronger for her father, for her dear friend Mrs Weston and the Bates’s, all of whom would certainly rely on her for sympathy and comfort, then his mention of the Churchill son and heir had been a happy choice.
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