The day was colder than of late, but bright. Emma, sitting close to the window of the carriage so that she should miss nothing passing – neither grand house arising out of its shrubberies like a head from a ruff, nor grand equipage dashing along the road at great risk to her own humbler conveyance – felt the absence of rain a great blessing. Rain always made her sad and would have made her task of raising the spirits of the Knightley household far more taxing. A bright sky made a bright face.
Now that Emma had time on her own, she could feel the weight of the responsibility Mr Knightley had put on her. She must keep Isabella, so close to her confinement, cheerful in her husband’s absence and ignorant of the true reason. She could not believe that a wife so devoted to her husband had not guessed that something was amiss. On the other hand, John Knightley had always struck Emma as a very close, secret sort of man so perhaps he did not confide his business affairs to his wife. Moreover, his legal work had sometimes caused him to stop away for more than a week or two. To which might be added Isabella’s occupation with her children. ‘Yet I hope Knightley would have told me anything half so important,’ she said to herself.
Sixteen miles was all that had stood between Emma and the city for her whole lifetime. Now the miles disappeared under James’s horses and the wheels of the carriage with startling rapidity. One minute they were in the country with a signpost saying they still had six miles yet, and the next they were crossing a fine stone bridge over a river that could only be the Thames – the bridge was called ‘Westminster’ – then they were among houses and even over a patch of cobbling which made the horses’ hoofs ring.
Emma sat as close to the window as she could without sacrificing propriety, and was just beginning to feel herself in the centre of the noisy, bustling, jostling, dirty city that she had thought she most dreaded – so many people in one spot as she had believed impossible – her heartbeat fast, her cheek flushed – when their way had turned and it seemed they were almost come to the country again. There were cows, sheep, hedgerows, a fence with a style in it, even a brook. Perhaps James had mistaken the path. She tapped on the window. He guessed her meaning even before she spoke.
‘Five minutes to Brunswick Square, ma’am.’ He was confident, calm. There could be no mistake.
Emma had set herself to becoming calm – to finding an even temper that would sustain the distressing scenes she must witness – Isabella in bed, desolate, the children wild and sorrowful – when James called again, ‘Bedford Square, ma’am!’ ‘Russell Square, ma’am!’ ‘Brunswick Square!’
They were passing through – or around: Bedford Square was gated at either end so they may not enter – a series of large and elegant spaces surrounded by tall houses. The size, the grandeur, the proximity to grass, trees and sky was quite unlike anything Emma had expected of London. Why had Isabella not told her? It was true that she had often refuted their father’s anxieties about their health with descriptions of their part of London being very ‘airy,’ very healthy. Emma was surprised, impressed, and hardly felt as if she were in London – at least the London of her imagination – at all. The carriage came to a standstill.
Casting out topographical questions, Emma composed her face into quiet sympathy; it was not difficult. Now that she was outside Mr John Knightley’s own front door, she felt the magnitude of his falling even more keenly than she had before. This was a large front door, tall, broad and ornamented with a brass doorknob and knocker. It was at the top of a tall, wide, marble flight of steps and above it arose a wall of windows, of wrought-iron balconies. It was an imposing residence, made – as she thought to herself with some surprise since she had never seen the like before – more imposing by the identically magnificent houses to which it was affixed on either side and which continued round the square.
Their neighbourliness, their nearness, their upright jaunty look – although stately too – was not like the country. After all, she was in London. Here, she could already see, where people lived in rows, not by ones or twos, it would be terrible to lose your place, like a soldier who falls out of line – a shame and humiliation. Poor, poor John Knightley.
Such unhappy ideas occupied Emma’s thoughts in the few moments she stood outside the house, quite long enough to lower her spirits to an appropriate level.
‘I shall knock,’ announced James, seeing his mistress apparently reluctant. But before he could do so, the door burst open and two figures flew out towards Emma.
‘We have been waiting all morning!’
‘We saw you arrive from the nursery but Nurse made us brush our hair.’
‘We have set up a game of spillikins!’
Where was the sorrow, the gloom, the despondency? Wildness, perhaps, was present, but a gleeful wildness.
Emma was pulled inside by either arm, through a high-ceilinged hallway and into a pretty, finely furnished sitting-room.
‘But your mama!’ – an expostulation. ‘I cannot sit down with you.’
‘She’s sleeping!’
‘Sleeps tight as a mole! – We looked in.’
Emma confessed herself touched by the scene before her, the table set with three chairs, the spillikins expectantly arranged; it was clear the boys were resolved to enjoy their aunt’s company from the first moment of her arrival.
‘Papa is teaching me chess,’ said Henry, the elder, ‘but he has been too much away for me to progress very far.’
‘I wanted cup and ball!’ cried John, the younger. ‘But Henry felt certain you would be too tired. But I said I had never seen you tired at Grandpapa’s so I did not see why you should be tired in London, just because you’ve sat in a carriage for a few hours.’
Emma smiled, her relief at their childish high spirits allowing her to be persuaded to ‘just one game of spillikins before I unpack’ – and ‘just one more before I visit your dear mama’ – and ‘this is the very last, Henry, and you must not press me further’.
But the light, sun under thin cloud, turned the corner of the square and came through the wide windows and she was still sitting with the slender pieces of carved ivory – quite as intent on winning as her nephews – when Mr Knightley entered the room.
‘My dear! Emma!’ None of them had heard him coming into the house and he was able to take in the contented scene of domestic harmony before Emma rose hastily, the colour of her cheeks deepened by a guilty blush.
‘Oh, Knightley – the boys – it is too dreadful – and I have not seen poor Isabella yet – I have not even visited my room!’
But Mr Knightley looked at her with such loving approbation and the boys danced about crying that she was ‘the spillikins queen’ or some such nonsense so that she gave up her guilty look and kissed Mr Knightley instead and told him she thought London a bright, lively place – not at all the dark dreariness she had expected. ‘It is quite as sunny as Hartfield.’ she said, pointing at the streaks across the carpet.
The sun shines on all alike, if it is allowed to—’ he stopped himself.
‘Ah!’ Emma glanced at the boys as she recognised that Knightley was thinking of their father’s sad incarceration.
‘You must know, my dear,’ Mr Knightley sat down and crossed his legs, ‘that this area is quite new, built on land owned by the Foundling Hospital which you may walk around if you wish. We are hardly in the city – although it is but ten minutes’ brisk walk from Lincoln’s Inn Fields, whence I came today, where my brother carried on his work.’
The boys soon tired of such talk and left to see if their mama had woken. On their uncle’s inquiry whether they had not a nursemaid to attend them, they fled even faster, with scornful cries of ‘Nurses are for the babies, not for us!’
Knightley observed after their departure that it was high time they were sent to school, but Emma found herself laughing.
‘I must admit I did not expect such a smiling reception.’
Knightley moved his place so he could sit close to her on the sofa. ‘I am glad of it. There is much unhappiness to come. But if only I can ward it off until after your sister’s confinement – if I can do that and release my poor brother from a different sort of confinement – if this can be done, the house held on to a few months longer, then it may not be so bad.’
Over his face came the grey, despairing look that aged him so and had so frightened Emma at Hartfield. She stood.
‘I shall go to Isabella or it will be time for dinner.’
‘Yes. Do not overtax yourself after dinner—’ he hesitated, took her hand, ‘I must tell you that there is no bedchamber big enough for us both here – I am in lodgings. It is a modest place but clean enough – in Henrietta Street.’
‘Oh, Knightley!’
‘It is not as I would wish it’ – bitter – ‘but then nothing is as I would wish it.’
Something more was hidden in this ‘nothing’ but Emma must go to her sister, must overcome her own disappointment that her husband would not be at her side during the nights and greet Isabella with all the affection that she very truly felt.
Her sister stood by her mirror, welcoming.
‘Look! I am dressed in your honour! I had grown so slovenly in my dear husband’s absence.’
‘You did not have to dress for me, Isabella. What does your doctor advise?’
‘Dear Mr Wingfield. You will meet him tomorrow, I have no doubt. He has been in attendance every day. I have absolute confidence in him and he in me. Rest, it is all he prescribes. So I rest; it’s the boys who suffer – but you have been with them. Did you find them well?’
Isabella’s pride in her children was as great as any young mother and as she went through the different virtues and (very few) vices of each of her five children in turn, Emma understood that it was not so odd that she suspected little of the disaster that had struck her husband. Her outlook was so narrow, so limited to her family circle, of whom John Knightley was an honoured but not intimate member, that she had no time or will to think of the world outside. The set-aside position of Brunswick Square could only encourage this tendency.
If you can keep the boys from going wild, that will be such a service. How dull that sounds! But you will not be dull. Although I shall rest, you shall have visitors – go out to the shops – Mr Knightley must arrange seats at the theatre!’
‘You are kind, Isabella – but I have come not on my own account, but on yours—’
‘Yes. Yes. But do not believe I am such a poor-spirited creature that I wilt entirely under my husband’s absence. He is often gone on business; no man has ever worked so hard. I am glad you are come, however – very glad and only sorry that we cannot house Mr Knightley here also – but you who have never seen London must take advantage of your visit. When Harriet Smith came—’
‘Ah, Mrs Martin!’
‘Yes, yes. The marriage was arranged in this very house, you know. She and Robert Martin and the children went to Astley’s – I wonder if you should enjoy that, although you are already married!’
As Isabella laughed at her own witticism and said, if her sister would give her the benefit of her arm, they must go down to dinner directly or Cook would give in to her fierce temper, Emma reflected that she seemed anything but downhearted. Whether that would make the blow to come more cruel she had not the leisure to consider but, if Isabella could insist – which it seemed she would – on her, Emma, going about the town, like a regular visitor, then it would be hard to think of a reason why not. It was a strange position Emma felt herself in – a great sword hung over the family, had wounded already its most important member, yet inside the house all was merriment. She must take the advice of Mr Knightley.
The time for this came after dinner when all the children and Isabella had removed themselves upstairs.
‘It seems odd, Mr Knightley, that I have caused such an upheaval in my father’s life to come and lead a life of pleasure—’
He looked startled.
Isabella insists I go out – she talks of visits – theatre – shops—’
He attended closely.
‘It is odd that I know what she doesn’t know.’
‘Poor Emma – to keep such a secret! I must warn you that my efforts towards secrecy may not serve and then your presence will be a necessity and there will be no pleasure. Meanwhile, do as you think fit; my brother’s situation will not be made worse by the smiles of his family. I shall be busy too often, I fear, to take you around very much and my mind is too heavy; but take advantage of what comes your way. I would not be the one to stop you in any pleasures, even if Isabella did not insist—’
‘—But the creditors?’
‘Trust that to me.’ He turned away – ‘I must take my leave.’
‘I shall take over the running of the house from Isabella.’
‘Yes. Yes.’ He was impatient to be gone, she observed, out into the cold darkness, not even telling her when he would return.
Emma stood beside the curtain long after his firm steps – they were firm – had disappeared; and then, sighing for a husband who was not confiding everything in her, sighing for Hartfield and for home, she made her way upstairs.