Emma and the Werewolves (16 page)

“
Ah! my dear, but Perry had
many doubts about the sea doing her any good; and as to myself, I
have been long perfectly convinced, though perhaps I never told you
so before, that the sea is very rarely of use to any body. I am
sure it almost killed me once.”

“
Come, come,” cried Emma,
feeling this to be an unsafe subject, “I must beg you not to talk
of the sea. It makes me envious and miserable; I who have never
seen it! South End is prohibited, if you please. My dear Isabella,
I have not heard you make one inquiry about Mr. Perry yet; and he
never forgets you.”

“
Oh! good Mr. Perry—how is
he, sir?”

“
Why, pretty well; but not
quite well. Poor Perry is bilious, and he has not time to take care
of himself—he tells me he has not time to take care of
himself—which is very sad—but he is always wanted all round the
country. I suppose there is not a man in such practice anywhere.
But then there is not so clever a man any where.”

“
And Mrs. Perry and the
children, how are they? do the children grow? I have a great regard
for Mr. Perry. I hope he will be calling soon. He will be so
pleased to see my little ones.”

“
I hope he will be here
to-morrow, for I have a question or two to ask him about myself of
some consequence. And, my dear, whenever he comes, you had better
let him look at little Bella’s throat.”

“
Oh! my dear sir, her
throat is so much better that I have hardly any uneasiness about
it. Either bathing has been of the greatest service to her, or else
it is to be attributed to an excellent embrocation of Mr.
Wingfield’s, which we have been applying at times ever since
August.”

“
It is not very likely, my
dear, that bathing should have been of use to her—and if I had
known you were wanting an embrocation, I would have spoken
to—

“
You seem to me to have
forgotten Mrs. and Miss Bates,” said Emma, “I have not heard one
inquiry after them.”

“
Oh! the good Bateses—I am
quite ashamed of myself—but you mention them in most of your
letters. I hope they are quite well. Good old Mrs. Bates—I will
call upon her to-morrow, and take my children. They are always so
pleased to see my children. And that excellent Miss Bates! such
thorough worthy people! How are they, sir?”

“
Why, pretty well, my dear,
upon the whole. But poor Mrs. Bates had a bad cold about a month
ago.”

“
How sorry I am! But colds
were never so prevalent as they have been this autumn. Mr.
Wingfield told me that he has never known them more general or
heavy—except when it has been quite an influenza.”

“
That has been a good deal
the case, my dear; but not to the degree you mention. Perry says
that colds have been very general, but not so heavy as he has very
often known them in November. Perry does not call it altogether a
sickly season.”

“
No, I do not know that Mr.
Wingfield considers it very sickly except—

“
Ah! my poor dear child,
the truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody
is healthy in London, nobody can be. It is a dreadful thing to have
you forced to live there! so far off! and the air so
bad!”

“
No, indeed—we are not at
all in a bad air. Our part of London is very superior to most
others! You must not confound us with London in general, my dear
sir. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very different from
almost all the rest. We are so very airy! I should be unwilling, I
own, to live in any other part of the town; there is hardly any
other that I could be satisfied to have my children in: but we are
so remarkably airy! Mr. Wingfield thinks the vicinity of Brunswick
Square decidedly the most favourable as to air.”

“
Ah! my dear, it is not
like Hartfield. You make the best of it—but after you have been a
week at Hartfield, you are all of you different creatures; you do
not look like the same. Now I cannot say, that I think you are any
of you looking well at present.”

“
I am sorry to hear you say
so, sir; but I assure you, excepting those little nervous
head-aches and palpitations which I am never entirely free from
anywhere, I am quite well myself; and if the children were rather
pale before they went to bed, it was only because they were a
little more tired than usual, from their journey and the happiness
of coming. I hope you will think better of their looks to-morrow;
for I assure you Mr. Wingfield told me, that he did not believe he
had ever sent us off altogether, in such good case. I trust, at
least, that you do not think Mr. Knightley looking ill,” turning
her eyes with affectionate anxiety towards her husband.

“
Middling, my dear; I
cannot compliment you. I think Mr. John Knightley very far from
looking well.”

“
What is the matter, sir?
Did you speak to me?” cried Mr. John Knightley, hearing his own
name.

“
I am sorry to find, my
love, that my father does not think you looking well—but I hope it
is only from being a little fatigued. I could have wished, however,
as you know, that you had seen Mr. Wingfield before you left
home.”

“
My dear Isabella,”
—exclaimed he hastily— “pray do not concern yourself about my
looks. Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and the
children, and let me look as I chuse.”

“
I did not thoroughly
understand what you were telling your brother,” cried Emma, “about
your friend Mr. Graham’s intending to have a bailiff from Scotland,
to look after his new estate. What will it answer? Will not the old
prejudice be too strong?”

And she talked in this way so long and
successfully that, when forced to give her attention again to her
father and sister, she had nothing worse to hear than Isabella’s
kind inquiry after Jane Fairfax; and Jane Fairfax, though no great
favourite with her in general, she was at that moment very happy to
assist in praising.

“
That sweet, amiable Jane
Fairfax!” said Mrs. John Knightley. “It is so long since I have
seen her, except now and then for a moment accidentally in town!
What happiness it must be to her good old grandmother and excellent
aunt, when she comes to visit them! I always regret excessively on
dear Emma’s account that she cannot be more at Highbury; but now
their daughter is married, I suppose Colonel and Mrs. Campbell will
not be able to part with her at all. She would be such a delightful
companion for Emma.”

Mr. Woodhouse agreed to it all, but
added,

“
Our little friend Harriet
Smith, however, is just such another pretty kind of young person.
You will like Harriet. Emma could not have a better companion than
Harriet.”

“
I am most happy to hear
it—but only Jane Fairfax one knows to be so very accomplished and
superior! and exactly Emma’s age.”

This topic was discussed
very happily, and others succeeded of similar moment, and passed
away with similar harmony; but the evening did not close without a
little return of agitation. The gruel came and supplied a great
deal to be said—much praise and many comments—undoubting decision
of its wholesomeness for every constitution, and pretty severe
Philippics upon the many houses where it was never met with
tolerable; but, unfortunately, among the failures which the
daughter had to instance, the most recent, and therefore most
prominent, was in her own cook at South End, a young woman hired
for the time, who never had been able to understand what she meant
by a basin of nice smooth gruel, thin, but not too thin. Often as
she had wished for and ordered it, she had never been able to get
any thing tolerable. Here was a dangerous opening.

“
Ah!” said Mr. Woodhouse,
shaking his head and fixing his eyes on her with tender concern.
The ejaculation in Emma’s ear expressed, “Ah! there is no end of
the sad consequences of your going to South End. It does not bear
talking of.” And for a little while she hoped he would not talk of
it, and that a silent rumination might suffice to restore him to
the relish of his own smooth gruel. After an interval of some
minutes, however, he began with,

“
I shall always be very
sorry that you went to the sea this autumn, instead of coming
here.”

“
But why should you be
sorry, sir? I assure you, it did the children a great deal of
good.”

“
And, moreover, if you must
go to the sea, it had better not have been to South End. South End
is an unhealthy place. Perry was surprized to hear you had fixed
upon South End.”

“
I know there is such an
idea with many people, but indeed it is quite a mistake, sir. We
all had our health perfectly well there, never found the least
inconvenience from the mud; and Mr. Wingfield says it is entirely a
mistake to suppose the place unhealthy; and I am sure he may be
depended on, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air,
and his own brother and family have been there
repeatedly.”

“
You should have gone to
Cromer, my dear, if you went anywhere. Perry was a week at Cromer
once, and he holds it to be the best of all the sea-bathing places.
A fine open sea, he says, and very pure air. And, by what I
understand, you might have had lodgings there quite away from the
sea—a quarter of a mile off—very comfortable. You should have
consulted Perry.”

“
But, my dear sir, the
difference of the journey; only consider how great it would have
been. An hundred miles, perhaps, instead of forty.”

“
Ah! my dear, as Perry
says, where health is at stake, nothing else should be considered;
and if one is to travel, there is not much to chuse between forty
miles and an hundred. Better not move at all, better stay in London
altogether than travel forty miles to get into a worse air. This is
just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very ill-judged
measure.”

Emma’s attempts to stop her father had been
vain; and when he had reached such a point as this, she could not
wonder at her brother-in-law’s breaking out.

“
Mr. Perry,” said he, in a
voice of very strong displeasure, “would do as well to keep his
opinion till it is asked for. Why does he make it any business of
his, to wonder at what I do? at my taking my family to one part of
the coast or another? I may be allowed, I hope, the use of my
judgment as well as Mr. Perry. I want his directions no more than
his drugs.” He paused—and growing cooler in a moment, added, with
only sarcastic dryness, “If Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a
wife and five children a distance of an hundred and thirty miles
with no greater expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty,
I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could
himself.”

“
True, true,” cried Mr.
Knightley, with most ready interposition, “very true. That’s a
consideration indeed. But John, as to what I was telling you of my
idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the right
that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive any
difficulty. I should not attempt it, if it were to be the means of
inconvenience to the Highbury people, but if you call to mind
exactly the present line of the path . . . . The only way of
proving it, however, will be to turn to our maps. I shall see you
at the Abbey to-morrow morning I hope, and then we will look them
over, and you shall give me your opinion.”

Mr. Woodhouse was rather agitated by such
harsh reflections on his friend Perry, to whom he had, in fact,
though unconsciously, been attributing many of his own feelings and
expressions; but the soothing attentions of his daughters gradually
removed the present evil, and the immediate alertness of one
brother, and better recollections of the other, prevented any
renewal of it.

* * * *

Chapter XIII

K
nightley awoke, sitting up
straight in
his bed, drenched in sweat. Something was not right in Highbury.
This was not the simple presence of the were-creatures. He had long
grown accustomed to the flood of power pouring into him when he
came into their presence. No, this was something more . . . worse.
The rays of the sun were still visible through the
window.

He arose at once, having slept in his
clothes, and began to arm himself. He tucked silver blades up his
sleeves and into his boots. He ran from his house into the
surrounding woods. Something was calling out to him, demanding his
attention. Knightley knew he had to be careful. If he was caught
out and about, armed, at this early hour, the questions would be
too many. While he was known for his walks, the belt of blades
around his waist would be rather shocking and unexplainable except
with the truth, and Highbury was far from being ready for that.

The strange feeling led him to a rundown
shack near the poorer section of the village. He smelt it before he
saw it. A vile stench of decay and death hung upon the air around
it. Knightley crept through the early morning shadows towards it.
Its ancient and derelict door hung slightly open; only darkness
could be seen inside. Knightley slipped a pair of daggers from his
belt and steeled himself for the worst. Could this place be the
nest of evil from which the were-creatures had come? He thought it
highly unlikely. The things seemed to travel in packs from one
region to the next, playing with the places they visited like a cat
did its prey until they had their fill of terror and flesh and
finally moved on.