Emma with her lively penetration has also seen, and that not with displeasure, in spite of her protest against marriage for herself, that Mr. and Mrs. Weston have fixed on her, as far as they can have any choice in the matter, for Frank’s wife—nay, that all Highbury look on them as a predestined happy couple. Everything is so suitable—age, good looks, agreeable qualities, position, fortune. Emma does not deny these recommendations. No wonder she is curious to hear more of Frank Churchill.
Highbury is suddenly excited by the announcement of the approaching marriage of Mr. Elton, who has improved his time in Bath, and only returned to proclaim his happiness and prepare for his bride.
Emma is bent, as part of her atonement, on breaking the news to Harriet Smith, when Harriet comes in heated and agitated, crying “Oh, Miss Woodhouse, what do you think has happened?”
The blow has fallen already, Emma is sure, and prepares to bestow all the kindness that is due from her.
But the susceptible Harriet is occupied with quite another train of ideas. She has been shopping in Ford the linendraper’s, when who should come in but Elizabeth Martin and her brother, the first time Harriet has met them since she refused young Martin. She thought she would have fainted. The sister had seen her directly, and looked another way. When the brother found her out, there was a little whispering, and Harriet had guessed he was persuading his sister to go up to her and speak to her as usual. She had been in such a tremble; but she had seen that the Martins, especially the brother, had tried to behave with the old kindness and friendliness. Poor little Harriet had been conscience-stricken, yet comforted by his good nature.
It is in the middle of this comical counter-current of distress, which at last swells high enough to provoke and alarm Emma, that in order to put the Martins out of Harriet’s silly, vacillating head, her friend, in a hurry, and not at all with the tender care she had intended, tells the girl of Mr. Elton’s prospects. And the shock revives Mr. Elton’s supremacy.
The future Mrs. Elton is a Miss Hawkins, who is said to be handsome, elegant, highly accomplished, perfectly amiable, and the possessor of ten thousand pounds. No wonder Mr. Elton is triumphant in the abundant consolation which has come to him.
Emma, while satisfied that a Mrs. Elton will be a relief and an aid in renewing her intercourse with the vicar, and while too indifferent on the subject to think much of the lady, has this sop for her mortification on Harriet’s account, that though, doubtless, good enough for Mr. Elton and Highbury, there is no superiority of connexion on Miss Hawkins’ side. She brings no name, no blood, no alliance. She is the younger daughter of a Bristol merchant. “All the grandeur of the connexion seemed dependent on the elder sister, who was very well married, to a gentleman in a great way, near Bristol, who kept two carriages. That was the wind-up of the history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins.”
From these reflections, we may judge that Emma has more than a tinge of Mr. Darcy’s pride and superciliousness. Was Jane Austen herself entirely free from the same defects? We are all fallible mortals.
Harriet Smith, easily carried captive by public opinion, now hears so much of Mr. Elton in every house she enters, and is so impressed by the gifts, graces, and happiness of the bride, that she would have been in a fair way to break her heart over her disappointment, had it not been for the diversion caused by a slight revival of her intercourse with the Martins. Under the influence of Robert Martin’s good feeling, his sister has called again for Harriet; and Emma is sufficiently shrewd to comprehend the danger of a heart’s being caught on the rebound. She takes care to regulate Harriet’s return of this civility. She herself carries Harriet in the Hartfield carriage to Abbey Mill Farm,[54] and pays a visit to an old servant while Harriet makes her call, which is thus abridged to a quarter of an hour’s length. Harriet’s account of it is rather a sad one. Mrs. Martin and the girls have been as uncomfortable as their visitor; and just when they were becoming more cordial, in consequence of somebody saying that Harriet was grown, when the whole party could not help looking at the wainscot by the window, where the different heights of all the girls stood as they had been noted by him last summer, the Hartfield carriage was announced. That was enough; the style and the shortness of the visit could not be mistaken. Fourteen minutes to be given to those with whom Harriet had thankfully passed six weeks, not six months ago!