“Would you think it, Greville? Emma, the wild unthinking Emma, is a grave thoughtful phylosopher. [He would like that—it would please him.] ’Tis true, Greville, and I will convince you it is when I see you. But how I am running on. I say nothing about this giddy wild girl of mine. What shall we do with her, Greville? Would you believe on Sattarday we had a little quarel, and I did slap her on her hands and when she came to kiss me and make it up, I took her on my lap and cried. Pray do you blame me or not? Pray tell me. O Greville, you don’t know how I love her. When she comes and looks in my face and calls me mother endead I then truly am a mother, and the mother’s feelings rise at once and tels me I am or ought to be a mother for she has a wright to my protection and I will do all in my power to prevent her falling into the error her poor miserable mother fell into.”
She paused and read this over with a deep sense of its pathos. But would it touch or anger Greville? Who could tell? No, he must not think her unhappy—it might appear to refer to past differences, to upbraid him. She wrote on hurriedly.
“But why do I say miserable? Am I not happy abbove any of my sex?—at least in my situation. Does not Greville love me, or at least like me. Is he not a father to my child? Why do I call myself miserable? No, it was a mistake, and I will be happy, chearful and kind. Again, my dear Greville, the recollection of past scenes brings tears to my eys, but they are tears of happiness, Greville. I am obliged to give a shilling a day for the bathing house and whoman and two pence for the dress. It is a great expense and it fretts me when I think of it. No letter from my dear Greville. Why, my dearest Greville, what is the reason you don’t write. Give my dear kind love and compliments to Pliney [Pliny, Sir William’s nickname] and tell him I put you under his care and he must be answereble for you to me wen I see him.”
So Emma, fluttering, perturbed, fighting the darkening shadows. And again:
“Pray, my dear Greville, lett me come home soon. I have been 3 weeks and if I stay a fortnight longer that will be five weeks, you know, and then the expense is above 2 guineas a week with washing. Sure I shall have a letter to-day. Can you, Greville—no, you can’t have forgot your poor Emma allready. Though I am but a few weeks absent my heart will not one moment leave you. Don’t you recollect what you said at parting? How you should be happy to see me again?”
But Greville had no intention of writing until just before her return. The last thing he desired was to feed the flame of her passion for him, and the thing he most desired was to loosen the bond gently, insensibly, and with as much certainty and as little cruelty as possible. And the pleading in her letters could not obliterate in the tranquil coldness of his mind the scenes and tempers which had disturbed him, nor, even if he could have forgiven those, could he forget for one moment the money necessities of his position.
The hint about the little Emma also was irritating and she had repeated it more plainly since. He must have encouraged Emma far beyond what was sensible if she could make so cool a proposition as to bring the child back with her. Very few men would have undertaken the schooling, and proper gratitude for that boon should have silenced her.
He and Sir William had returned to London when that letter reached him and was followed by another, which ended:
“My dear Greville, don’t be angry, but I gave my grandmother five guineas, for she had laid some money out on Emma, that I would not take her awhay shabbily. But Emma shall pay you. My dear Greville, I wish I was with you.”
He foresaw himself eternally the prey of needy vulgar relations, with Emma growing older, more violent-tempered, more of a burden daily. It hardened his resolution, and after writing a brief letter entirely forbidding the Emma project and speaking of his desire for greater freedom and more solitude when she returned home, he opened the matter resolutely with Sir William that night. It had become really necessary from his point of view, for the Ambassador was returning to Naples in August, and there must be a sufficient understanding for letters to proceed on. There was no difficulty in opening the subject, for Miss Middleton had been seen and approved, and Sir William’s mind was full of her.