Emma and the Werewolves (5 page)

The next question
was—

“
What sort of looking man
is Mr. Martin?”

“
Oh! not handsome—not at
all handsome. I thought him very plain at first, but I do not think
him so plain now. One does not, you know, after a time. But did you
never see him? He is in Highbury every now and then, and he is sure
to ride through every week in his way to Kingston. He has passed
you very often.”

“
That may be, and I may
have seen him fifty times, but without having any idea of his name.
A young farmer, whether on horseback or on foot, is the very last
sort of person to raise my curiosity. The yeomanry are precisely
the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do. A
degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance might interest me;
I might hope to be useful to their families in some way or other.
But a farmer can need none of my help, and is, therefore, in one
sense, as much above my notice as in every other he is below
it.”

“
To be sure. Oh yes! It is
not likely you should ever have observed him; but he knows you very
well indeed—I mean by sight.”

“
I have no doubt of his
being a very respectable young man. I know, indeed, that he is so,
and, as such, wish him well. What do you imagine his age to
be?”

“
He was four-and-twenty the
8th of last June, and my birthday is the 23rd just a fortnight and
a day’s difference—which is very odd.”

“
Only four-and-twenty. That
is too young to settle. His mother is perfectly right not to be in
a hurry. They seem very comfortable as they are, and if she were to
take any pains to marry him, she would probably repent it. Six
years hence, if he could meet with a good sort of young woman in
the same rank as his own, with a little money, it might be very
desirable.”

“
Six years hence! Dear Miss
Woodhouse, he would be thirty years old!”

“
Well, and that is as early
as most men can afford to marry, who are not born to an
independence. Mr. Martin, I imagine, has his fortune entirely to
make—cannot be at all beforehand with the world. Whatever money he
might come into when his father died, whatever his share of the
family property, it is, I dare say, all afloat, all employed in his
stock, and so forth; and though, with diligence and good luck, he
may be rich in time, it is next to impossible that he should have
realised any thing yet.”

“
To be sure, so it is. But
they live very comfortably. They have no indoors man, else they do
not want for any thing; and Mrs. Martin talks of taking a boy
another year.”

“
I wish you may not get
into a scrape, Harriet, whenever he does marry; I mean, as to being
acquainted with his wife—for though his sisters, from a superior
education, are not to be altogether objected to, it does not follow
that he might marry any body at all fit for you to notice. The
misfortune of your birth ought to make you particularly careful as
to your associates. There can be no doubt of your being a
gentleman’s daughter, and you must support your claim to that
station by every thing within your own power, or there will be
plenty of people who would take pleasure in degrading
you.”

“
Yes, to be sure, I suppose
there are. But while I visit at Hartfield, and you are so kind to
me, Miss Woodhouse, I am not afraid of what any body can
do.”

“
You understand the force
of influence pretty well, Harriet; but I would have you so firmly
established in good society, as to be independent even of Hartfield
and Miss Woodhouse. I want to see you permanently well connected,
and to that end it will be advisable to have as few odd
acquaintance as may be; and, therefore, I say that if you should
still be in this country when Mr. Martin marries, I wish you may
not be drawn in by your intimacy with the sisters, to be acquainted
with the wife, who will probably be some mere farmer’s daughter,
without education.”

“
To be sure. Yes. Not that
I think Mr. Martin would ever marry any body but what had had some
education—and been very well brought up. However, I do not mean to
set up my opinion against your’s—and I am sure I shall not wish for
the acquaintance of his wife. I shall always have a great regard
for the Miss Martins, especially Elizabeth, and should be very
sorry to give them up, for they are quite as well educated as me.
But if he marries a very ignorant, vulgar woman, certainly I had
better not visit her, if I can help it.”

Emma watched her through the fluctuations of
this speech, and saw no alarming symptoms of love. The young man
had been the first admirer, but she trusted there was no other
hold, and that there would be no serious difficulty, on Harriet’s
side, to oppose any friendly arrangement of her own.

“
Emma,” Harriet asked her
in a voice no greater than whisper changing the subject of their
talk to one Emma cared not for. “What do you think is happening
here in Highbury?”

“
It is of no concern to
such as us,” Emma informed her. “Let the men deal with it. Mayhaps
whatever brought this dread upon us is gone already, moved on to
better and more suitable grounds. Who knows?” And with that, Emma
was done their talk until Harriet dropped the topic and selected
one more becoming to a lady of Emma’s station.

They met Mr. Martin the very next day, as
they were walking on the Donwell road. He was on foot, and after
looking very respectfully at her, looked with most unfeigned
satisfaction at her companion. Emma was not sorry to have such an
opportunity of survey; and walking a few yards forward, while they
talked together, soon made her quick eye sufficiently acquainted
with Mr. Robert Martin. His appearance was very neat, and he looked
like a sensible young man, but his person had no other advantage;
and when he came to be contrasted with gentlemen, she thought he
must lose all the ground he had gained in Harriet’s inclination.
Harriet was not insensible of manner; she had voluntarily noticed
her father’s gentleness with admiration as well as wonder. Mr.
Martin looked as if he did not know what manner was.

They remained but a few minutes together, as
Miss Woodhouse must not be kept waiting; and Harriet then came
running to her with a smiling face, and in a flutter of spirits,
which Miss Woodhouse hoped very soon to compose.

“
Only think of our
happening to meet him! How very odd! It was quite a chance, he
said, that he had not gone round by Randalls. He did not think we
ever walked this road. He thought we walked towards Randalls most
days. He has not been able to get the ‘Romance of the Forest’ yet.
He was so busy the last time he was at Kingston that he quite
forgot it, but he goes again to-morrow. So very odd we should
happen to meet! Well, Miss Woodhouse, is he like what you expected?
What do you think of him? Do you think him so very
plain?”

“
He is very plain,
undoubtedly—remarkably plain: but that is nothing compared with his
entire want of gentility. I had no right to expect much, and I did
not expect much; but I had no idea that he could be so very
clownish, so totally without air. I had imagined him, I confess, a
degree or two nearer gentility.”

“
To be sure,” said Harriet,
in a mortified voice, “he is not so genteel as real
gentlemen.”

“
I think, Harriet, since
your acquaintance with us, you have been repeatedly in the company
of some such very real gentlemen, that you must yourself be struck
with the difference in Mr. Martin. At Hartfield, you have had very
good specimens of well educated, well bred men. I should be
surprized if, after seeing them, you could be in company with Mr.
Martin again without perceiving him to be a very inferior
creature—and rather wondering at yourself for having ever thought
him at all agreeable before. Do not you begin to feel that now?
Were not you struck? I am sure you must have been struck by his
awkward look and abrupt manner, and the uncouthness of a voice
which I heard to be wholly unmodulated as I stood here.”

“
Certainly, he is not like
Mr. Knightley. He has not such a fine air and way of walking as Mr.
Knightley. I see the difference plain enough. But Mr. Knightley is
so very fine a man!”

“
Mr. Knightley’s air is so
remarkably good that it is not fair to compare Mr. Martin with him.
You might not see one in a hundred with gentleman so plainly
written as in Mr. Knightley. But he is not the only gentleman you
have been lately used to. What say you to Mr. Weston and Mr. Elton?
Compare Mr. Martin with either of them. Compare their manner of
carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being silent. You
must see the difference.”

“
Oh yes! there is a great
difference. But Mr. Weston is almost an old man. Mr. Weston must be
between forty and fifty.”

“
Which makes his good
manners the more valuable. The older a person grows, Harriet, the
more important it is that their manners should not be bad; the more
glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness
becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later age. Mr.
Martin is now awkward and abrupt; what will he be at Mr. Weston’s
time of life?”

“
There is no saying,
indeed,” replied Harriet rather solemnly.

“
But there may be pretty
good guessing. He will be a completely gross, vulgar farmer,
totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of nothing but
profit and loss.”

“
Will he, indeed? That will
be very bad.”

“
How much his business
engrosses him already is very plain from the circumstance of his
forgetting to inquire for the book you recommended. He was a great
deal too full of the market to think of any thing else—which is
just as it should be, for a thriving man. What has he to do with
books? And I have no doubt that he will thrive, and be a very rich
man in time—and his being illiterate and coarse need not disturb
us.”

“
I wonder he did not
remember the book,” was all Harriet’s answer, and spoken with a
degree of grave displeasure which Emma thought might be safely left
to itself. She, therefore, said no more for some time. Her next
beginning was—

“
In one respect, perhaps,
Mr. Elton’s manners are superior to Mr. Knightley’s or Mr.
Weston’s. They have more gentleness. They might be more safely held
up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness, almost a
bluntness in Mr. Weston, which every body likes in him, because
there is so much good-humour with it—but that would not do to be
copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley’s downright, decided,
commanding sort of manner, though it suits him very well; his
figure, and look, and situation in life seem to allow it; but if
any young man were to set about copying him, he would not be
sufferable. On the contrary, I think a young man might be very
safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as a model. Mr. Elton is
good-humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle. He seems to me to be
grown particularly gentle of late. I do not know whether he has any
design of ingratiating himself with either of us, Harriet, by
additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are softer
than they used to be. If he means any thing, it must be to please
you. Did not I tell you what he said of you the other
day?”

She then repeated some warm personal praise
which she had drawn from Mr. Elton, and now did full justice to;
and Harriet blushed and smiled, and said she had always thought Mr.
Elton very agreeable.

Mr. Elton was the very person fixed on by
Emma for driving the young farmer out of Harriet’s head. She
thought it would be an excellent match; and only too palpably
desirable, natural, and probable, for her to have much merit in
planning it. She feared it was what every body else must think of
and predict. It was not likely, however, that any body should have
equalled her in the date of the plan, as it had entered her brain
during the very first evening of Harriet’s coming to Hartfield.
That night, the animal or whatever it was had struck again. Mr.
Martin they had discovered the next day had lost yet another cow to
the thing’s hungry belly and sick violence but Emma had other
things on her mind.

The longer she considered Harriet and Mr.
Elton, the greater was her sense of its expediency. Mr. Elton’s
situation was most suitable, quite the gentleman himself, and
without low connexions; at the same time, not of any family that
could fairly object to the doubtful birth of Harriet. He had a
comfortable home for her, and Emma imagined a very sufficient
income; for though the vicarage of Highbury was not large, he was
known to have some independent property; and she thought very
highly of him as a good-humoured, well-meaning, respectable young
man, without any deficiency of useful understanding or knowledge of
the world.

She had already satisfied herself that he
thought Harriet a beautiful girl, which she trusted, with such
frequent meetings at Hartfield, was foundation enough on his side;
and on Harriet’s there could be little doubt that the idea of being
preferred by him would have all the usual weight and efficacy. And
he was really a very pleasing young man, a young man whom any woman
not fastidious might like. He was reckoned very handsome; his
person much admired in general, though not by her, there being a
want of elegance of feature which she could not dispense with: but
the girl who could be gratified by a Robert Martin’s riding about
the country to get walnuts, even in the face of danger, for her
might very well be conquered by Mr. Elton’s admiration.